The Gamer Chapter 1311 – Fusion Festival 18 – Crane Game (Patreon)

What was most outstanding about the two-story building in front of them was the sheer number of lights plastered all over its surface. Although shut off at this time of day, the many-coloured bulbs still communicated the intent of the building: there was fun to be had here. Stingy people would beg to differ though.

They were standing in front of an arcade. A sizable one at that, leaning more onto the design of modern Japanese arcades. When they entered, the machines on display ranged from the American classics, like Street Fighters, Mortal Kombat, and various racing or dancing games, to things that John had never seen in any mundane arcade. There was a game about banging drums (actual, physical drums), about sliding to melodies, and a bunch of gacha games about spending unreasonable amounts of money for waifu pngs. Had John been more into anime, he would have perhaps felt drawn towards them. The arcade at least was nice enough to hand out memory cards to people to maintain their progress in those games.

Not interested in gambling for pictures of cute girls when he was there with his very own adorable woman, it drew John to a different corner of the arcade. They aimed at the multiplayer games, like air hockey, billiard, and other such table games one would expect to find at an arcade, and walked straight past them. Their actual goal was behind them.

Taking up an entire corner of the ground floor and, from what John knew, the majority of the upper floor were various crane games. Glass box after glass box filled with all manners of plushies, figurines, or other small to enormous rewards (including one that had various five-minute ramen packages), stood about, forming corridors and dead ends. The cranes came not just with claws, but also hooks and boxing gloves, oddly enough, transforming the various challenges.

A large poster at the entrance of the area informed any potential darers of the crane game of three things. One, the machines only took Tokens, coins specifically. Two, USD could be exchanged for Tokens at the front desk. Three, if more than twenty Tokens were spent on any given machine, the customer was entitled to calling a member of staff over to move the item of desire to an easily snatched position.

A second sign a few steps later stated, in big, bold letters: CUSTOMERS ARE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGE THEY DO TO MACHINES.

“I guess they have to deal with some advanced gamer rage around here,” John joked.

“Statement: crane games frustrate. If they do not wish their machines to be destroyed on the regular, they should make them more forgiving.”

“They do have difficulty stickers.” John pointed at the upper left corner of the window of one of the crane machines. There was a yellow circle with the word ‘Medium’ at the centre. Others were marked with green and red, communicating the expected difficulty quite effectively.

“Affirmative,” was Beatrice’s entire response.

John did not have any particular fondness for crane games, if he was being honest. The nostalgia he felt for arcades was second hand. That was to say that, in his age bracket, they had already all moved out of town and the era of the home console had been firmly established. Arcades had been this mystical place where pre-PC gamers went to hang out and play Street Fighter against each other. For an isolated nerd of the new age, that had sounded like heaven. The reality on the ground had almost certainly been different.

He did have some experience with crane games. Those were almost universally money and time wasting. Regardless, it drew him there today. That was because for him, who could afford and get practically anything he wanted, just buying things for his girls was pretty meaningless. Battling the arcane mechanics of the crane game, however, that was a challenge even for them. Any gift earned here, however cheap its material value may be, would be worth its paid price in memories.

“So, what do we want?” John asked and looked around. His eyes were naturally drawn to the crane game where a single Samus figurine was standing on a pedestal. Another stark difference between American and Japanese crane game etiquette was that the crane games weren’t just filled up with plushies or something. Typically, there was one or just a few of the same or similar items in each machine. That was because the arcade was run in a way that expected people to stay at one machine until they won what they wanted.

They ultimately still made an enormous profit on the items. They had to, otherwise buying these machines and having them take up space would never pay off. Much like beer in bars, while the beverage appeared overpriced at first, it was usually astounding how little profit was made on each drink after considering rent, taxes, wages, utilities, transportation costs, and the price of buying it on the bar’s side. Taxes and rent were not a great issue here, as Fusion’s taxes were incredibly low and practically everyone in the Hudson Barrier owned the place where they ran their business.

To the thoughts of economic activity and how to stimulate it, John and Beatrice found two machines situated right next to each other that they could lose a lot of money and coins to. The Gamer would be fishing for the aforementioned Samus figurine (the blonde’s ass was just fantastic in her Zero Suit). For her part, Beatrice was angling to grab a new board game.

John immediately started throwing coins into the machine. Mindlessly hooking away, he talked to Beatrice, “You know, you’ve become capable of your own motivation, become your own person – but I don’t think I’ve heard anything about you having a dream yet.”

The passive maid hummed, just to indicate that she had heard his question. Her hands moved the joystick for her crane. Left, right, forwards, backwards, she carefully manoeuvred it around. “Question for clarity. Does the following definition match the spirit of your question? Dream: a goal an individual seeks to attain, often serving as the self-measure for the success of their life or a particular segment of their life.”

“Yeah, that works.” John hit the button to lower the crane for the third time. The hook brushed over the special ring attached to the packaging of the figurine. The entire thing wobbled slightly. Mockingly, the ring straightened above the dropping hole, giving John nothing. Another Token landed in the machine.

Beatrice still fidgeted with the controls. “Would you be able to name me examples of dreams from the other haremettes?”

“Sure.” John pressed the button for the seventh time. The crane seemed to be even further away. Caring absolutely nothing for his money, he had freshly minted it and just wanted to get it into circulation, he just kept dumping the coins in there. “Metra wants to find a new king of Akkad, for example. Jane finally beat Moira, so I guess she is searching for something new, but I think she wants to do right by the country we happened to build through all of her various projects. Momo wants to make more discoveries from ancient history. Lydia wants to see her country in ascension. Of course, there’s a couple who don’t have any concrete goals. I think Nathalia knows in what direction she wants to move, but not exactly what she wants to do – besides getting my seed. Lorelei wants to see spirituality prosper in Fusion and to have the Order take a leading role within that. Lee… wants to beat her procrastination for good.”

“Your structure got mixed up.”

“Yeah, I was rambling a bit,” John acknowledged. In the corner of his eye, he saw Beatrice’s crane go down for the first time. It missed entirely. Giggling, John earned himself the closest thing to a poisonous glare the passive maid was capable of. “So?”

“Confession: I do not know.” Beatrice returned to moving her crane around carefully. “I am content with my daily duties. I lend a hand around the house. I prepared ingredients. I make sure no aspects of design degrade or lose symmetry. I scratch Velka behind the ears. I tell fools they are fools. I run rapid calculations. I please you. You please me. The day ends. It repeats.” She pressed the button and the crane went down. A little bit of electricity sparked between her horns when the empty claw went back up.

“How about one step lower. Do you have any side projects you would like to start?” John asked her. “Like Aclysia’s maid university?”

“Spontaneously, I have no such desires,” Beatrice responded. She turned her head, just in time to see John, who was now almost twenty-five Tokens poorer, fish the Samus figurine. Slowly it was carried over to the hole, then dropped a short distance off the hook. The Gamer retrieved it from the machine and inspected it carefully.

‘My God, what an ass,’ he thought. ‘If only I had a girlfriend willing to wear an outfit of similar tightness… Oh wait, I do!’ He would have high-fived himself, had a double been there. “I do live the best life,” he said to himself, then addressed Beatrice. “I want you to live your best life too. I’m happy that you find it pleasing to be my maid first and foremost. Still, I don’t want you to be just my maid if there’s anything else you’d like to do.”

“I will inspect my desires carefully and come back to you when I have found something,” Beatrice told him and pressed the button the third time.

John deemed it too dangerous to remain around. His presence, his chuckles more than anything, were likely to make Beatrice forget her usual neutrality and replace it with an urge to continuously sass him while stabbing the machine. It was always so interesting to see people react to the frustration of games with inaccurate inputs.

“I’ll be back in a flash,” he promised her and walked away after kissing her on the cheek.

Leaving one’s date alone was typically regarded as a bad move. With Beatrice, John deemed that she would appreciate her little breaks alone. While she wasn’t exactly an introvert, it was hard to say what she was in that regard, she did appreciate removal of distractions around her.

John made it around a few corners of crane games, on the lookout for something he could surprise her with on his return. The most stereotypical and still fitting option jumped into his eyes eventually: a massive, round, chunky, pillowy, cushion of a seal-themed plushie. Grey with black eyes, it was the peak of simple, cheap design and large enough that it just barely could be carried in front of a normal sized person without getting in the way.

John needed it. He needed it for the exclusive reason that Beatrice would look adorable holding it.

Any crane to lift such a monstrosity of a plushie would have taken up too much space in the arcade. Instead, there was a ball with a key in it that one needed to grab. There were a couple of duds containing key chains, just something to make the grabbing harder. The main target was clearly marked.

With a lot of money at his disposal, John went to swift work. Click-clack went the mechanism. The excited alarm sounds of the machine accompanied the humming of the crane moving around. The arm lowered and missed. Click-clack went the mechanism. John dragged around the claw to almost the same position as before, tried again, and won himself a keychain. Click-lack went the mechanism. He had to try all over again now, because pulling the dud had gotten his target in the wrong position.

John needed seventeen attempts to get what he wanted. Swiftly unmaking the plastic container, he pulled out the key, then left the ball and the duds in a basket for the local workers to reuse. The key followed after he had unlocked the cabinet containing his price. With an oversized seal plushie in arms, he returned to where he had left Beatrice.

The passive maid was still fidgeting with the controls. Lowering her head, she tried to get a better viewing angle. As best the Gamer could, he sneaked towards her. A failed endeavour from the start. He himself had chosen the Perks that made Beatrice a universal awareness machine. The moment he stepped into her circle, her head turned around.

“What is that?” she asked, with a glance at the big spherical seal.

“A present,” John responded.

“Request: stand here please,” Beatrice said and pointed at the space next to her. “I will now test its usefulness.” Pressing the button for what was probably around the ninth time, the passive maid sent the claw into another miss. No sooner was that confirmed than the dragon maid planted her face in the plushie and let out a quiet scream of frustration. Her fists beat the happily grinning, fat body of the sphere-seal. After five seconds, she robotically straightened up. “Statement: I like it,” she said with an unmoved expression.

“I thought you would.” John grinned.

The date continued in a constant stream of back and forth banter, silence, and John harvesting Beatrice’s frustration for his own enjoyment. The roles were usually switched when it came to that and it was nice to see the usually so emotionless maid let her self-control go lax like that. Eventually, they had enough of the crane games and switched to some other activities. This was one of the last places that still allowed John to play Guitar Hero.

Granted, the difficulty was a bit of a joke when one had reflexes like him. It was still fun to hit the rhythm. It was even more fun to see Beatrice lose herself in the combination of her favoured things: numbers going up and sustaining a combo streak.

After an hour in the arcade, they had to turn around and leave. Beatrice carried the big seal in front of her. She cuddled it tightly, squishing the comical face, and rested her chin on the fluffy surface as they walked home.

“Idea: I would like to open an orphanage,” Beatrice suddenly stated.

On one hand, the caring profession did not seem to fit the passive maid. On the other hand, John could see Beatrice playing the surrogate surprisingly well. Perhaps this would help her become more caring too, if she wanted that. Ultimately, she would not have too much time to care for the orphanage herself. That would have to be delegated to people she hired.

“There’s never a shortage of orphans in the Abyss,” John said and nodded. “I’ll help you with that, if you want.”

“Negative.”

John chuckled, he had expected nothing else. “Alright, then just let me know if you ever need help with it.”

“Affirmative.” Beatrice squeezed the plushie a little harder, before storing it away in her inventory. “Statement: I cannot allow it to get dirty.”

“That would, indeed, be a grave sin… although I think our washing machine could deal with that thing. Monstrosity that it is.”

“Aclysia invested great money in its creation.”

“I’m just saying that it is quite enormous.”

“Monstrosity has a negative connotation.”

“Indeed, it does,” John surrendered with a sigh. Getting involved in semantics with Beatrice was a losing proposition. Instead, he put an arm around her waist and kissed her on the cheek. He wanted to, anyway, but she turned her head and he kissed her on the lips instead.

Happily, they returned home.