firstofitskind | Ultrazone Laser Tag, Baltimore, Tuesday Afternoon

Ultrazone Laser Tag, Baltimore, Tuesday Afternoon

The whole 'Dad' thing was, in Liam's opinion, going pretty great. Yeah, they'd had a few hiccups already (and he was sure there would be more to come) but they'd worked past them. And this last weekend, getting to spoil the hell out of tiny baby Nina was really amazing. Even if, yes, thinking about the way she'd been treated growing up made him, quite honestly, furious.

Today wasn't about Nina, however. Well, that was a lie- it kind of was, because he'd told her he wanted to get to know Prompto better, make a real connection to the kid that he hoped would drive home the fact that he had no intention of whisking Nina away or whatever.

And what better way to do that than with an activity that involved running around and shooting at each other? With fake weapons, of course.

[ooc: for the chocobro. no, not that one. the other one. and NFB for distance!]

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"I, uh, I think you'll be fine," said Prompto, who almost had a face a normal color for a moment there, before the reminder of his probably extremely misplaced hubris sent it flaring up again, this time with the added bonus of rubbing the back of his neck.

"So I guess we're good to get started, then?"

You know. Started shooting at each other. With laser. Shooting at his sister's dad with lasers.

Wasn't his life supposed to be normal after graduation?

Oh, Prompto. 'Normal'. That was so cute.

Liam gave the sensor vest he was wearing one last tug and then nodded. "I'm ready to go," he confirmed. "Do we- are we supposed to start at opposite ends of the arena, or...?"

Hey, it was like practice for when he would shoot his actual dad (like, his actual actual dad!) with not-lasers in probably a year or so from now!

Fun!

Prompto nodded. "We'll head to our respective homebases," he explained, with a cock of his head in the respective directions, "and once we're there and ready, everything can get started, and it's go time, I guess."

How many times had Liam shot at Sandoval? (Okay, more often, it was shooting at people Sandoval had hired to kill him, but there was a couple instances where he'd cut out the middleman) So that was one more thing they'd have in common!

... That was a terrible thing to have in common.

"See you on the other side, then," he said, heading for the one that matched the color of the vest he was wearing. "Good luck."

Did Prompto take a few minutes to practice a few moves, each one increasingly more ridiculous than the last, once he was in his home base, under the guise of just getting used to the grip and the weight of the laser gun, complete with more than a few pew-pew noises thrown in?

Uhhhh, were chocobos the most amazing birds in the multiverse?

Of course he did!

But, eventually, he could only put it off with distracting messing around for so long, before he figured he'd better...get out there...and...find Liam. To shoot at...

God, whose idea was this, anyway?

And while Prompto legitimately was pretty impressive with a gun, this whole stealth aspect of it? Not so much. Not even close. The whole fact that he was going to attempt to sneak around and try to find Liam off-guard was probably laughable, but, if anything, he could at least skirt the wall a little, gun lifted on the ready, to at least cut down on the likelihood of Liam maybe finding him first...

Liam's idea, actually. Sorry, Prompto. For that and the fact that Liam was absolutely good at both the shooting part and the stealth aspect. Kind of necessary, when your job involved a lot of sneaking around the way Liam's former occupation did.

Sneak, sneak, sneak... ah, was that a flash of blond right there, near the wall?

Liam let off a few shots in quick succession before ducking back down behind some cover.

Yeah, they hadn't gotten around to covering a whole lot of the sneaking parts yet; they weren't exactly throwing Crownsguard on recon missions!

And another thing about laser guns were that they didn't have nearly as many cues to give you a heads-up for a shot coming your way. Prompto didn't even know just how close he got to getting got before noticing the movement from where Liam's shots had come from right before he disappeared under cover and dropped down into a roll to the side, coming up long enough to fire a few shots of his own toward where the shots had come from (even if it was likely that he had long since moved on), and then remaining crouched behind the barricade, eyes now sharp for the next sign of movement.

He...shouldn't be surprised that he'd wound up just on the defense this quickly, really...

Thing was, sometimes a bodyguard needed to be a statement, and sometimes... Sometimes they needed to be more or less invisible.

That's where those sneaking skills would come in handy.

Liam was pleased to note that while Prompto definitely needed some practice at the stealth aspect, his reaction time was nothing to sneeze at.

He headed towards a tower structure, hoping to make use of the higher vantage point to try and spot Prompto again.

Okay, now that he'd been shot at and successfully managed to evage, Prompto's brain was starting to switch gears a little, where he was no longer just a bunch of internal flails about being awkward, but starting to settle into the moment. The same way his brain had to switch gears during training, where it took a hot minute before it was less about just spending time with his friends and more about it being go time, there was work to do, this was important.

So he took a moment, while protected by the barricade, to consider the setting, and try to figure out what he next move should be. And this was where he was really wishing Ignis was there with him, because Ignis would know exactly what to do and direct him accordingly, but it was just him this time, so he had to try and think like Ignis.

Blah blah blah cooking, blah blah blah work, blah blah blah when was even the last time you washed that shirt, Prompto...

Okay, thinking like Ignis wasn't going to work, but he figured, if he made his way up to higher ground, he'd have the advantage and could maybe get, if not a good snipe shot in, at least a better lay of the land from above, and he slowly started to make his way there, trying to keep low along to the walls and barriers so he wasn't as exposed before ducking inside the walls.

Great minds think alike?

Spotting a flash of movement from said higher vantage point, Liam took aim and fired once again.

And, just like that, a spot near the shoulder of Prompto's vest lit up, alerting him and anyone else around to the fact that he had, in fact, taken a hit, and while it did make him grunt out a faint curse, he reminded himself that it was just one hit, and that it would be more hits if it kept him from getting into the safety of the tower structure as quickly as he could.

He considered changing his course then, because wouldn't Liam then expect him to climb to the top? But down here felt way more vulnerable, and as long as he stayed well hidden at the top and didn't move, maybe he could keep an eye out for when Liam might move and then Prompto could return the favor.

Or they could both hide out in their respective towers waiting for the other one to move all day, which didn't sound like too terrible of an idea, if you asked Prompto! His impatience, adreneline, and inability to sit still for long might have something else to say about it, but right now, that seemed perfectly fine to him!

Liam allowed himself a moment to feel a bit of smug satisfaction when he saw that one of his shots had hit its mark.

And then it was back to, well... having the same internal debate as Prompto was. Did he wait out the rest of their allotted time in the arena up here, a scenario that was very much true to life (except in real life, there wasn't a buzzer that would sound to indicate to both sides that the time they'd paid for had expired, and they had to vacate to allow the next group in), or did he go back down, maybe try to find which tower Prompto had been heading for, try and get the jump on him there?

Prompto was more than okay with just waiting out the clock! Well, perhaps not entirely. There was definitely a part of him that would get increasingly antsy as the minutes dragged on, and he got to thinking how this would work better if they had teams, most of his experience was with teams now, not solo work, but how would that work out? Him and Noct vs. Liam and Nina? Nina and him vs. maybe Liam and Ignis? Liam and the Argentums vs. the remaining chocobros?

And then Prompto reminded himself that he should probably focus on the current skirmish rather than already thinking about future ones that would probably only exist in his own imagination.

So he shifted a little so he could peer out over the low wall of the tower and started scanning the area for movement, hoping his little chocobro fluff of hair wouldn't give him away....

....you know, he hated when the guys called his Chocobo Butt for his hair, but a chocobo plushy could make for a pretty good decoy right about now! Man! Coulda, woulda, shoulda...

Okay, but see, the fact that he was coming up with possible future scenarios was a good sign, a sign that maybe some part of him was willing to acknowledge a level of permanence to this whole... situation? Arrangment? Something.

Or at least, if Liam could read thoughts from a distance, that's how he'd feel, anyway.

Right now he was just going to continue to contemplate whether he should be the one to break this standoff they apparently had going, here.

On the one hand, running out the clock seemed like a good idea to get a better, fresh start on this, now that he sort of understood Liam's style a little better. And Ignis would probably approve of him holding his ground and not changing position if he didn't have to.

On the other hand, he would definitely be losing this round because he was the only one who'd gotten a hit so far.

"Damn," he muttered to himself, giving one more peek over the edge of the tower to search for movement in a moment of desperate hope, and then, if he didn't see anything soon, he was going tos start trying to maybe map out the best way to make it over to where he figured Liam was without being noticed or seen

Or have Liam realize he was on the move again...

There probably would've been a lot less 'hunker down and wait for the other person to move' if they'd gone into this with teams rather than one-on-one.

Especially since Liam didn't really... know how this was supposed to work? He hadn't played a lot of games before, okay?

And Prompto's life for the past year or so had been so heavily focused on teamwork that he almost didn't even know what to do with himself, either. It was honestly a little weird, if he was honest, and he wondered if that was just as much of a deciding factor in getting to move, the idea that he didn't really like just being out there on his own and even if it meant getting shot again, he'd rather just find Liam than just stay isolated, than anything else.

Whatever the reason, though, Prompto did decide to finally get on the move, still skirting the walls as he tried to make it over to where he figured Liam was hiding out, turning each and every corner with a quick and dramatic turn and aim of his gun so that he could be quick on getting a hit in the event that he finally turned a corner and happened onto where Liam was.

Liam frowned.

Was that just a shadow, or was that actual movement?

It was hard to tell, with the way the arena's spotlights kept doing wide, sweeping arcs of the space.

He elected to stay put for the time being.

And eventually, after a few false turns and wrong directions, Prompto found himself stumbling, honestly a bit unexpectedly, despite the fact that he was venturing out specifically to find Liam...actually onto him.

There was a brief second of surprise, followed by a small surge of victory, and then, finally, thirdly, he remembered why he was looking for Liam in the first place and fired off a shot.

Retreating back the way he came quickly in the following beat, hoping he just didn't wind up tripping over his own feet as he did it, and honestly kind of hoping the shot even stuck, but aim was never really something he had to worry about much....it was everything else that got in his way!

Liam grimaced as the shot hit its mark, lighting up his vest. And then-

And then he jumped down off the edge of the tower, despite the bored teenager who'd been manning front counter explicitly forbidding that when he'd recited by rote to Liam and Prompto the rules of the place.

Look, it was both faster than trying to follow Prompto back down, and more likely to enable him to avoid being shot again while making his way down.

Which meant that when Prompto did make it to the bottom of the tower the normal way, he was more than a little surprised to pop out the passageway there to find that Liam was already there.

Like....how??? He didn't just...jump, did he?

Somehow, Prompto just knew that he totally did just jump, but he didn't have time to be impressed by that or to ask if Liam could show him how (which was actually a good thing because Prompto actually did not do well with heights and would have instantly regretted asking that question), and instead just backed up back into the bottom of the tower as quick as he could, hoping Liam wasn't pretty much expecting him to pop up there to get a shot in before he disappeared back inside.

He was totally already anticipating his vest lighting up, though.

Damn!

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Ultrazone Laser Tag, Baltimore, Tuesday Afternoon

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