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"How's it going, Midori?" Momoi asked her sister.
"Ten seconds after I started the game, my band of seven dwarves was attacked by a horde of skeletal chinchillas," Midori explained, her voice as deadpan as always. "My miner, Urist Dimplecave, dug a tunnel straight down with the pickaxe he had in hand, and his comrades filled it in after him before they were torn to pieces. I had him dig further downward until he found a vast cavern. He has survived by drinking muddy water from ponds within it, and catching turtles and eating them raw. Currently, he is being chased around the cavern by a hungry giant spider. I'm expecting a game over soon."
"Sounds pretty rough for him!" Momoi replied, though she sounded more far entertained than sympathetic.
"The game tells me that Urist 'has been ecstatic lately', actually," Midori noted. "I believe it was because he was taken by a strange mood just prior to the spider incident. He carved a turtle shell figurine of a goat, of masterful craftsdwarfship, and named it 'Fondledpoison the Dungeon of Feed.'"
"Uh-huh. That definitely seems like a lasting mood boost, even with the imminent death and all," Momoi said. "What about you, Aris? You're trying Adventure Mode, right?"
"I am an elf named Riliri Cuddledfires," Aris replied. Rather than facing Momoi, the dark-haired girl continued to stare at her screen and tap at her keyboard. "My specialty is wrestling. I have just choked an archangel unconscious. Now I shall bear witness to the mystical slab that it zealously guarded, inscribed long ago by a conniving deity in order to allow a primordial force of darkness to manifest in our world, and with the knowledge of its true name bind that demon to my service." She paused. "Also, I am a legendary flautist and dancer."
"I'm surprised you have time for that stuff on top of wrestling angels," Momoi said. "Everyone needs a hobby, I guess." Wandering over to Yuzu, she peered curiously over the redhead's shoulder. "What's new in your fortress, Yuzu?"
"I just caught a vampire," Yuzu said. "She was sneaky. She drained one poor dwarf's blood without any witnesses around, and then she accused another dwarf of her own crime."
"How'd you figure out she was lying?" Momoi asked.
"The dwarf she accused is a three-month-old baby and has never left his mother's side," Yuzu explained.
"Yeah, that wasn't exactly a brilliant plan," Momoi noted. "Gonna toss her into the magma?"
"No. I'll lock her in an alcove forever and make her my fortress's treasurer," Yuzu said. "She's immortal, so she won't get hungry, thirsty, or unhappy. She doesn't need to sleep, either. She'll just do paperwork forever, without stopping or complaining."
"That seems practical," Momoi said. "I wonder how it works, for the dwarves. I guess they slip notes back and forth under the door or something. A lot of notes."
"Did you get tired of playing, Sis?" Midori asked.
"Sorta, but it's more that I automated everything and my fortress is running itself," Momoi explained. "I'm just waiting for the humans to send another trading caravan so I can massacre them all and start a war. If that doesn't make things exciting, I guess I've won the game." She headed back to her own screen. "Oh. Suppose I'd better do something about that mandate, though..."
A few minutes later, there came a knock on the door. "Come in," Midori said.
The door opened to reveal Yuuka, who was a far less dreaded visitor nowadays than she had been in the past. That said, the Game Development Club had never gone out of their way to make any visitor feel welcome, except for the one from Schale that had come some time ago. Aside from Midori's invitation, no one acknowledged the treasurer.
Yuuka clearly hadn't expected otherwise. "Hey there, girls," she said amiably, stepping inside the club room and closing the door behind her. "Playing games as usual, I see. I hope that you make them once in a while, too." She leaned over and peered at Momoi's screen, which was the closest to her. "That's one weird game, though. It just looks like a bunch of symbols," she remarked.
"It isn't symbols," Momoi said, annoyance creeping into her voice. "You're watching the mayor of my dwarf fortress getting stomped to death by an angry herd of giant elephants."
"Oh," Yuuka responded. She said nothing more for a moment. "...Shouldn't you be doing something about that?"
"Nah. This is perfect," Momoi replied. "He mandated that my master leatherworker sew him four pairs of giant elephant leather socks, upon pain of his hammerer breaking some far more useful dwarf's limbs if the deed wasn't done. I didn't have any giant elephant leather. I figured it was a win-win if I sent him to get it, alone and unarmed."
"I... see," Yuuka said, with obvious confusion.
"Are you here to drain our blood, Miss Yuuka?" Aris asked spontaneously.
"What?" asked Yuuka. She looked even more confused.
"No, Aris, she isn't," said Midori. "But that does raise a good question. What brings you here, Yuuka?"
Yuuka looked relieved by the change of topic. "Well, your club hasn't submitted a budget, and that's pretty unusual," she said. "You may be a provisional club, but you can still ask us for stuff, you know. Whatever it is that you need to make games. Mind you, I do mean to make games, not play them. But if you want new computers or anything like that, you can put in a request for them. Within reason." She rubbed the back of her neck as she looked around at the others present. "You can ask for things like chairs and tables, too. Do all of you really prefer sitting on the floor like that?"
"It's a gamer tradition," Momoi said. "When you're really in the zone, you gotta put your face as close to the screen as possible. Can't do that in a chair!" She demonstrated by practically blocking her monitor with her face.
"Let me warn you, if you ruin your eyes doing that, your club budget won't cover glasses. Or contact lenses," Yuuka informed her.
"Sacrifices must be made," Momoi retorted.
Yuuka sighed. "Listen, girls. I suppose you've never done this before, so you might not know how. I'll show you how it goes, just this once," she said, trying to sound stern and failing for the most part. "Pretend I'm your club treasurer. Is there anything you want so that you can make better games?"
Abruptly, Aris stood up and walked over to Yuuka.
"You're the programmer, right, Aris? Do you want a new keyboard?" Yuuka asked, smiling at her. "The girls in Veritas are always putting in requests for these really fancy ones, though I don't understand the difference."
Aris didn't answer. She put one hand around Yuuka's shoulders, another under her knees, and picked the treasurer up.
"Wha?!" Yuuka shouted. "H-Hey! What are you doing? Put me down!" After the initial outburst of surprise, she calmed down, seeming more confused than anything. Midori, Momoi and Yuzu also stared at Aris in confusion.
Aris began walking toward the cabinet on the side of the room.
Yuzu was the first to realize what Aris was doing. "No, Aris, you can't do that! Yuuka's not immortal!" the redhead exclaimed, raising her voice as best as she could, which wasn't very much. "Uh, I mean..." Her face pale, she looked desperately at the other girls. Horror slowly dawned in Midori and Momoi's eyes.
"She'll get unhappy!" Midori shouted.
"She'll cause the worst tantrum spiral you've ever seen!" Momoi elaborated, her voice even more shrill than her sister's. The blonde rushed over to Aris and grabbed her arm, but it only resulted in her being dragged along as Aris forged onwards, undaunted. "Help me, Midori!"
Aware by now that something more than her dignity was at stake, Yuuka was flailing and shouting incoherently, but Aris effortlessly tossed the girl over her shoulder so that she had a free hand to open the cabinet with. "I will find her turtle shells to carve," she declared.
Yuzu dived for the cabinet as it opened, trying to get inside it first.
"That isn't going to heeeeelp!" Midori screamed.