Chapter 2: The Bet

"Here, let's go!" Tatsumi says while handing a PS5 controller to Rin,

"Oh, no, no," Rin says,

"We'll take this to the damn arcade room!" Rin yells demandingly while she drags Tatsumi.

"Sure!" Tatsumi shouts back at Rin,

"But whoever is first, gets a bonus advantage in the game, ok?" Tatsumi asks,

"Alright" Rin answers

Once the moment Rin said "Alright", Tatsumi immediately runs at full speed from the hallway to the stairs,

"Hey!" Rin says while she also runs at full speed, trying to catch up to Tatsumi. After a few minutes of Rin running as fast as she can from the room on the third floor to the stairs to go to the living room where the arcade room is, Rin catches up really quick to Tatsumi,

"Huh?!" Tatsumi says while looking surprised,

"Don't underestimate me, Tatsumi!" Rin says while she runs,

'Since we can cheat here, Tatsumi. How about this?' Rin thought of a plan.

They were both about to go to the arcade room, which is on the 1st floor, living room of the mansion, right at the moment Tatsumi is about to touch the door, indicating that he wins, Rin tackles Tatsumi and that made Tatsumi slipped and fall,

*THUD*

Tatsumi manages to not fall down on the ground by putting both of his hands on the floor but across from his vision, Rin is there, looking at him, all cute. She closes her eyes, indicating something from Tatsumi,

'Does she really want to-' Tatsumi thinks. Tatsumi took the initiative and gets his face closer and closer to Rin's cute and gorgeous face but,

"I win~," Rin says. Tatsumi opens his eyes and sees Rin with a smug face, he hangs his head up and sees that Rin touched the door to the arcade room.

'EH?!' Tatsumi thought.

'It worked!' Rin thought,

'Although, I wouldn't mind if he did ki-. Stop! You've only met him, Rin, chill!' Rin talks to herself in thought. Tatsumi stood up with a tear in his eye,

'Wow, just...' Tatsumi is mentally scarred, just when he thought he is about to have his first kiss, it was just a trick for Rin to win the race.

'W O W! This piece of-' Tatsumi thought.

"Since I win, I'm gonna put in, 'No HP Regen'" Rin says while pushing buttons in the side panel of the arcade room door.

"Shall we go inside the arcade room, now?" Tatsumi says while having a villain's grin on his face.

'I'll teach you pain, Rin, emotional PAIN!' Tatsumi has these thoughts in his head when he said those words.

Tatsumi opens the door to the arcade room and they both head inside, the arcade room is very large and spacious, although, it's just a bunch of stadiums like a Pokemon Stadium kind of thing.

"Wait, how does this work?" Tatsumi asks,

"You'll see" Rin replies.

Tatsumi followed Rin into one of the stadiums, an AI says,

"Stand still on both of these" While pointing out where to stand with a TV literally showing a down arrow.

"Game challenge!" Rin shouts and a huge glitched shockwave erupts in the stadium.

"Pick your game" The AI replies,

"Call of Duty, am I right, Tatsumi?" Rin double-checks to see if she is right.

Tatsumi nods at her, indicating that she's right.

"Alright" She takes Tatsumi's answer as a yes, she picks Call of Duty.

*WOOSH* A gust flowed by as the AI transports them to a private place. Tatsumi closed his eyes as this happened.

**************************************************

Tatsumi opens his eyes, seeing a menu, equip your weapons and perks.

'Don't tell me that arcades here literally put you inside the game.' Tatsumi thought while in disbelief that this kind of thing is real.

"Well it seems like I only have one weapon, which is the Desert Eagle, I guess I'll equip that," Tatsumi says and presses the confirm button then a Perk menu pops up, there were only 3 perks available due to the fact that he is only level 1, the unusual thing here is in Call of Duty, a certain amount of perks are unlocked for you, but in this world/game, the system doesn't work that way, you have to grind yourself up to get more perks for the games you play, it depends on which game you play of course.

"I guess I'll go with these 3 perks, they're not that bad," Tatsumi says as he presses and drags the 3 perks to the perks slot, the 3 perks is E.O.D, Kill Chain, and Battle Hardened. After equipping the perks, he presses the confirm button which makes him go to some sort of lobby to wait for the enemy player to ready up as well.

*DING* A ringing sound is heard in the lobby, it indicates that the other player is done customizing. There is a menu in front of Tatsumi that says, "Loading..." with a progress bar. Once the progress bar is full, Tatsumi and Rin see each other's stats, weapons, and perks.

"What the..." Tatsumi says while looking at her weapons and perks.

Rin, LVL 30, EXP 250/3000

Strength: 50

Dexterity: 40

Intelligence: 95

Endurance: 47

Primary Weapon: Dragunov

Secondary Weapon: M4 Carbine

Equipped Perks: Cold-Blooded, Alert, and Amped.

'I'm gonna die!' Tatsumi thought with a fake smile engraved in his face as if he knows he will die the second they both entered the map in Call Of Duty.

Meanwhile on the other side,

"Wow, he doesn't even have a rifle?!" Rin says while looking really surprised at Jin's stats. Then she let out a smile,

"Well, this is gonna be easy!" Rin optimistically says.

A menu that says, "Currently creating a custom map for the battle" pops up in both of their faces with a loading bar that is slowly increasing.

"So they make custom maps for the arcade games here? I'm not even lying but this might be a bit better than the Call of Duty in my world." Jin says as he looks intrigued about the fact that they make a custom map for a game like Call Of Duty.

When the loading bar finally filled up, a huge whoosh sound is heard in both of their rooms, and a very beaming light appears in both of their rooms.

"Not one of those bright lights again!!!" Tatsumi yells as he exits out of that lobby.

*************************************************

*THUD*

Tatsumi groans as he slowly gains back his senses, as he opened his eyes, a very futuristic-looking interface appeared in his sight,

"Woah!" Tatsumi is astonished as he sees the interface, the interface is almost the same as every FPS games interface, it has an ammo counter, hp and...

"Stamina?" Tatsumi says as he looked confused. In Call of Duty, there was no such thing as a stamina bar.

"I better go hide or I'm gonna get sniped by Rin," Tatsumi says while laughing nervously to himself. Tatsumi finds a spot that he can hide on as he waits to know the position of his enemy.

The map is really not that detailed, it looked like one of those Counter-Strike: Source custom maps, where it only has colors and not actual textures, It has a lot of spots to hide on and there are about 2 sniper towers on each team's side.

Tatsumi advances forward, more into the enemy team's side but he keeps his guard up, checking all spots that Rin could be in.

"Heh, Tatsumi, you just don't realize it, huh?" Rin says as she steadily aims her sniper in one of the sniper towers at Tatsumi's head, who is wide open and basically, asking for a death wish.

"You're dead!" Rin shouts as she shoots a sniper bullet, shaking the air because of the bullet's pressure.

Tatsumi notices the bullet sound and he immediately gets to cover, he almost got hit by the sniper shot,

"So that's where you are, Rin?" Tatsumi says as he cocks his Desert Eagle.

'Shit, I got spotted' Rin says in her thoughts as she goes back down from the tower to the entrance of the tower.

As Rin is about to go out of the tower, a shot is heard through the vicinity that shocked the atmosphere, an inch away from Rin's body, a bullet is found, stuck in the wall.

'EH?!' Rin shouts inside her thoughts.

Rin is very shocked as if her soul is about to leave her body when that bullet came in like lightning. Rin gains back her senses and goes back to cover after that frightening moment.

'Damn! I calculated it off!' Tatsumi says as he has a disappointed look on himself.

Tatsumi reloads his Desert Eagle and the ammo counter on his interface decreased by 1.

Rin equips her secondary weapon, M4 Carbine, an assault rifle, a very reliable and strong full-auto rifle. Rin peeks to see where Tatsumi's spot is, as she never saw where the bullet came from. Tatsumi also peeks, because of Rin's High Alert perk, it alerted her that someone is spotting her, and as they both saw each other, a barrage of bullet sounds is overheard.

They both traded shots, with Tatsumi getting hit twice in the body while Rin getting hit only once, Tatsumi's HP is only 25 while Rin's HP is 20 but because of the No HP Regen option being on, they can't get those health points back.

'Well this is bad, now I gotta be careful because I'm one shot away from meeting the grim reaper in the grave.' Tatsumi says in his thoughts.

'Yes! I inflicted a lot of damage on him but damn, his pistol can do some damage, what is that pistol?!' Rin says in her thoughts.

'Well, I have an advantage here since she is trapped in the entrance of the towe-' Tatsumi didn't finish that thought, because he heard footsteps across from him.

'Rin, are you stupid?' Tatsumi says those very insulting words in his head.

And yes, Rin is going around the area to flank Tatsumi but Tatsumi is ahead of her plan, as he also goes where Rin went to flank her.

COUNTER FLANK! A very simple plan when it comes to FPS games, as we all know that Tatsumi is very good at FPS games and his intelligent stat point is very high. Tatsumi prepares his plan and calculates scenarios that are possible if he does this decision,

"If I counter flank her, she might just run so I need to chase her as fast as possible but..." Tatsumi mutters to himself quietly

'If recoil and spread isn't a thing here, I should be able to run and shoot but I don't know so I might just chase and stay in one position, shoot, then run again if I miss the shot' Tatsumi thought.

'Where is he?' Rin thought as she looked for Tatsumi

'Don't tell me?!' Rin continued and she turned around, to find that Tatsumi is there, ready to shoot her

'Crap!' Tatsumi thought and tries to shoot anyway, knowing he's gonna miss. Rin dodges the shot with ease and runs to cover.

'Shit, that was close' Rin says as she sighed with relief.

Tatsumi peeks and Rin is nowhere to be found,

'I blew it! That was my chance of winning!' Tatsumi thought with a dissatisfied look on his face.

'That aside, I can still win this, just gotta think of a solution' Tatsumi thought again

Tatsumi reloads his weapon and silent-walks to the other side of the structure, hoping that Rin wouldn't expect that he is gonna be there. As he arrived at the other side of the structure, he peeks and Rin isn't in any spot that he predicted her to be in. Tatsumi randomly shot a bullet that made the atmosphere shook.

"H-how?!" Rin shouted as she is surprised by the fact that he knew where she was

Tatsumi looks at her, smiling confidently.

"I'm always a step ahead of you," Tatsumi says while he cackled.

'You were close though if I hadn't focused on the environment behind me' Tatsumi says this in his head as the game ended.

'I guess the arcades here modify the game, so it's actually just 1v1 and you have one life.' Tatsumi also thought this because the game is over after Rin lost to him. A light shined on both of them and made them float back to the bright light.

"I should already get used to this!!" Tatsumi complained once again because of the shining light that appears in his eyes every time.

They return back to the arcade room, safe and sound.

"Noooooo!!! How did I lose?!" Rin pouts as she rolls around the floor

"Come on, don't be a sore loser, Rin," Tatsumi says to Rin.

"Now..." Tatsumi lowers the pitch of his voice and started to look like a pervert.

"Where is my reward?" Tatsumi says as he puts his hand out, prompting Rin to give him his reward.

The arcade door creaks open and a figure ran in the door,

"Huh?" Rin and Tatsumi both say in unison as they saw the figure running into the arcade room. The figure is Kazumi

"Oh I found you guys," Kazumi says

"Nevermind that" Kazumi continued.

"Heh..." Another figure appears outside the door, she looked like Kazumi, just with a different hairstyle. The figure has black hair and red eyes, just like Kazumi's appearance. The figure just had a different hairstyle, her hair is long, straight hair while Kazumi's hairstyle is a ponytail.

"Kazumi! You can't beat me, come back to your place, where you actually belong!" The figure says as she summoned a sword that seemed to resemble the Japanese sword, "Odachi".

Kazumi sighed,

"How many times have I said that I will never come back to that distasteful place!" Kazumi says as she has a wrathful face in her face.

"I summon thee, The Sword of Tsukuyomi" Kazumi chants and a sword appears in her hand, the sword also resembled the Japanese sword, Kusanagi.

"Sorry, you two. I might need your assist here" Kazumi apologized for the inconvenience and asked for assistance. Both of them nodded at her and Rin summons her weapon, which appears to be a glaive. Tatsumi tries to summon his only weapon, Desert Eagle but when he summoned it, he got a different weapon.

"Eh?!" Tatsumi says, confused.

He has a katana instead of a gun. While Tatsumi is still confused, he shrugged it off at the heat of the moment as they need to fight this person, who is probably Kazumi's archnemesis.

"Hey, Tatsumi. You haven't really seen how this world works" Kazumi says to Tatsumi and Tatsumi nods at her.

"Well, you'll learn it the fun way," Kazumi says to him as she gave him a radiant smile, like a sudden beam of sunlight enlightening the dark, arcade room.