Quoted By:
You and W managed to score the occasional odd win, the two of you preferring to play different characters and switch up your playstyles for the fun of it.
But the more you kept playing, the more W learned. And she was a <span class="mu-i">fast</span> learner.
By the tenth set, W was already hard-reading every other player and punishing them for the tiniest little error in their playing styles. Right when it was getting downright scary and demoralizing to go up against her, you all made the rational decision to switch games for the sake of your collective pride.
The co-op games offered a nice change of pace, forcing you all to rely on one another to stay alive and fight off hordes of monsters as you progressed through the level. This was where W needed the most guidance. You would often find yourselves slowing down in order to allow her to catch up and learn the game. She had no idea what the items did, which weapons to use, what strategies to stick to, or what classes and characters offered her the most advantages based on her preferred playstyle.
Your time playing the game ended up being one big tutorial for the cloned blonde to figure out how to play. But she seemed to be enjoying the challenge, and no one really got frustrated by her lack of knowledge.
Besides, the more she got stuck, the more she would ask for help. And having her communicate with you at all was a new and exciting development. With each and every interaction, you could sense her start to come alive in her own right, and she was that much closer to becoming a real girl.
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A little while later, once you were all a bit burned out on games, you fired up the Prowler’s projector, popped in a movie, sat back and let yourself relax. The first movie you chose made Cindy groan.
It was the Karate Kid Part 1. You doubted that she’d ever seen it, and you felt that it was mildly important for her to understand the reference that Andre made.
To say that it was nostalgic for you and Flint was an understatement. You had to catch yourselves a couple of times just to avoid talking through the whole movie. A couple times, you spotted W imitating the moves she was seeing some of the characters act out. The motions of “wax-on, wax-off” seemed to amuse her to a certain degree.
<span class="mu-s">“I’m glad Matt didn’t train me by making me wash a car…”</span> Cindy muttered. She’d made many such comments during the movie, and absolutely couldn’t resist pointing out that Daniel won the competition with an illegal move that rightly should’ve seen him disqualified. You’d seen and heard similar arguments before, but you often found that the Rule of Cool made for more memorable and impactful moments in cinematic history.
The next movie was Cindy’s choice, and it was some horror movie that came out a few years back that you hadn’t bothered seeing. It was admittedly decent, and it got a few good laughs out of you all during some of the cheesier scenes. But W, on the other hand, seemed to be taking the jumpscares rather poorly.
