Empire State of Mind

[Madotsuki]

Madotsuki briefly took note of an older man whom really didn't seem like the kind of guy to be here. His tattered trenchcoat looked as if he made his way up from Tier 7, although what he was doing in an arcade, the dreamer had no idea. It wasn't the man himself that had caught her interest, however-- it was the fact that the machine he was playing, "Terminator: Salvation," had a picture of him on the side. The situation was so surreal that she pinched her cheek to see if she was dreaming; playing a game starring yourself sounded like a thing she'd do while wandering the dreamscape. However, when she tested it, she was fully awake.

Still a little confused as to what she just witnessed, she left the man behind and began searching for a game to play. It didn't take long before she found a suitable machine: some sort of dancing game with a pad decorated with arrows that could accommodate two players. It was titled "Project Diva EX," and a familiar face smiled at her from the top of the cabinet, her face framed with teal hair. Apparently that robot she saw at the Song and Dance was much more popular than starring in a shoddy Tier 5 club implied.

Shrugging, she inserted a token just as another kid joined her and inserted his. He waved at her, and Madotsuki waved back before turning to the game again. It asked for the two players to select their characters and displayed about 10 of them. Madotsuki wasn't sure how to select the characters at first, since there wasn't any typical controller, but she eventually realized that the dance pad was her controller. The cast were all interesting in their own way, but the Night Terror settled on picking a girl with red pigtails in the shape of drills named "Kasane Teto." The boy chose the girl with the teal hair, which taught the dreamer that her name was "Hatsune Miku."

After selecting a random song, the game began. The idea of the game was to copy the arrows that fell down the screen by moving your feet to the area of the mat that they indicated. While the idea seemed a bit awkward in Madotsuki's eyes, she actually found it quite appealing. The song that was chosen was something about a princess in a kingdom of yellow, although the dreamer was too busy trying to keep up with her opponent to pay any real attention to the lyrics.

The song ended, and as she took the moment to wipe the sweat off her face and catch her breath, she saw that the boy had beaten her by several thousand points. He gave her a warm smile and grabbed the tickets that started feeding out of the machine. Stuffing the reward away in his pockets, he held another token to the insert slot. "Want another try?"

But before she could answer, the screen glitched out. The two watched in confusion as a figure slowly started to form from the static; it was Miku, but at the same time, it wasn't. Her lower jaw was replaced with the mandibles of a spider, her eyes glowed a vibrant red and several parts of her body were ripped away to reveal the robotic endoskeleton inside her. The voice of Miku crackled from the machine in Japanese, and panic started to blossom inside her chest as she realized what the malformed dancer was saying:

"Skynet takes no prisoners."

Madotsuki glanced at the boy beside her. Tears rimmed his eyes and his body was stock still. Slowly, he turned his head towards his dancing partner. "W-what's going on?" he squeaked, starting to step away from the machine. A quick look at the screen, and the dreamer saw that Miku was now flanked by two more robots, much like the ones painted on the side of the Terminator game she saw earlier. Miku spoke once more.

"You cannot run from Skynet. You cannot escape. Submit to the eternal rest."

The screen broke into static again as Miku's distorted laughter raked the air. It didn't sound like it was originating from any one place, but rather, it emenated from every single machine in the building. Upon hearing this, the boy finally broke and ran off, screaming at the top of his lungs. Glancing around her, Madotsuki noticed that the majority of the crowd was following his lead. She could barely hear Rush crying out that he was SO going to get fired for this.

It wasn't that the dreamer was terrified of the whole situation (after all, she had seen things far more disturbing than this), but there was the fact that other people might be getting hurt later. Those machines meant business, and they were going to play the system until it broke like putty in their cold, metallic claws. No, she needed to stop this... or at least figure out what was going on. Considering that the robots resembled the ones from the Terminator game, that may give her a clue.

Hiro apparently had the same idea-- when Madotsuki arrived at her destination, she caught a glimpse of him sharing a conversation with the man she saw earlier. The guy in the trenchcoat slipped the samurai some sort of deformed square and ran off. Hiro pocketed the chip and started glancing around. The Night Terror waved her hands to get the hacker's attention amongst the chaotic din. It worked. Hiro made his way over to her and grabbed her firmly by the hand.

"We need to go," he said, a grim look in his eyes. With a pace akin to running, he led her outside of the arcade, leaving behind the flashing lights and panicked screams.