“Take that, zombie!”

Glitch's eyes were on the large television screen and her hands on the controller. Yet another zombie axed. The game, while more morbid than Glitch's usual selections, was proving to be entertaining. She couldn't wait to explore more of the post-apocalyptic landscape. She'd even dimmed all the lights in the room so she could see it better.

It wasn't long before she located a dilapidated mansion. Sweet, there had to be some nice loot in there. She cautiously entered the building. Two zombies. Still not alert. Simple. She switched out the ax for a shotgun. Two headshots later, the room was clear. She moved the player character through the the entryway, ready to search for whatever treasures were there.

And that was when the mother of all zombie jump scares popped out from behind the staircase. Half of its face was missing, an eye was hanging out of its socket, and it was rendered with a particularly hideous texture, to boot.

“EEK!” she yelped, fumbling the controller. With a nasty snarl, the monster leaped onto the player character and slashed at him. “YOU DIED” appeared on the screen in big, bloody red letters. Glitch cursed silently. The damn zombie came out of nowhere.

Why were there so many gorgons who looked alike? These 'zombie' appeared to be a whole race of gorgons whose powers tormented them into piteous creatures and this... this shiny technology person took delight in watching them get cut down in completely terrible, gruesome ways. Why?

Kalos lingered behind the couch behind the TV where she typically found a morning news show to entertain herself. Today, there was this horrible gorgon killing show and Kalos did not approve. She was on the side of the poor gorgon zombie.

Until, of course, one jumped out and tried to grab them through the magical mirror that showed them other places.

The technology-being squeaked an almost cute sound. Kalos shouted a full body visceral gut reaction and fell backwards in her scramble to get away. Weapons! They needed weapons! She grabbed a pillow that had been discarded from the couch and popped up from behind the couch, ready to push the zombie back into teh mirror until she could convince it that she was a gorgon friend.

Oh no. Distracted by the game, Glitch hadn't seen the coral girl come in. And now, she was wielding a pillow and looking frightened. Glitch quickly dropped the controller and turned to face her.

“Oh my gawd I'm so sorry! I didn't know you were watching!” Glitch felt horrible. The zombie gave her a jolt, so it had to be positively terrifying to a little kid. There was a reason the game was rated M for Mature. If she'd known such a young person was in the room, she'd have quit playing it in an instant. Think. What would her parents do? Why, calm the girl down, of course.

“It's okay,” she gently reassured her, kneeling down to her level. “The zombies weren't real. They can't hurt you.” Aware that her own appearance wasn't the most human, Glitch hoped she wasn't scaring the coral girl further.

The zombie did not come through the glass, but the technology being had moved too quickly. Kalos popped up, ready to face down a zombie with her mighty battle cry of a high pitched "Ahhh!" The first thing that moved got a defense pillow deployed as forcefully as she could at it.

It turned out to be the technology being. She'd been talking and getting down to Kalos' level. Kalos had been busy defending herself. Oops.

Now that Kalos could see the glass, the zombie was gone. Instead some red letters were shown.

> “It's okay. The zombies weren't real. They can't hurt you.”

"Zombies are not real?" Her eyebrows bunched at the glass and then more at the technology person in front of her. "How were you watching the zombie gorgon die? Why did you enjoy murder?"

“Oof!” Leaving little time for Glitch to react, the pillow slammed into her face. Amidst the explosion of feathers, Glitch stayed put, surprised but completely unharmed. She should have seen that one coming.

“Zombie what? Murder?” came her confused reply. Medusa wasn't in the game, and zombies weren't usually sympathized with. Of course, children had their own brand of logic.

“No no no, it's all just a game,” Glitch tried to explain. “A game where the guy fights zombies to survive. It's a scary game. I'm sorry you saw it. Here, I'll turn it off.” She reached over, about to press the eject button.

Kalos was equal parts satisfied and horrified to see the pillow burst open and feathers explode out in a rain of fluff. She had used her weapon well. The weapon was lacking. She would have to clean that up and hide the evidence. Maybe under this big couch. Between the cushions.

> “Zombie what? Murder?”

"Yes. Behind the glass!" Kalos pointed. Emphatically. Obviously she had seen it. She had been delighting in the carnage and egging the moving picture on.

"How is watching people die a game?" This girl was seriously messed up. Kalos sniffed and kicked at a feather had caught a flow of air and was trying to escape back toward where the kitchen was.

"I wasn't scared. I was thinking the zombies need someone to be their friend."

“Umm...” This girl knew what TV and video games were, right? Even for someone her age, she seemed oddly ignorant of those subjects. Well, if someone needed to explain that vital information to her, Glitch was going to make her best attempt.

“Okay, first of all, you wouldn't have much luck making friends with zombies. They're mindless monsters that try to eat people's brains or turn them into one of them.”

“Also, what's on the screen isn't real. See?” She showed her the disc. “Just a game.” She pulled out a different case, which was labeled 'ChibiPlumberKart.' “Let's play this one instead. I promise it's not violent or scary or anything.”

"No one is mindless." Kalos rolled her eyes at this gorgon's callous talk about other peoples. How small minded she was.

> “Also, what's on the screen isn't real. See?”

The girl showed her a circle that showed Kalos her own face back on one side (her hero could be in there! She smiled at it just in case), and a bloody faced gorgon on the other. More red letters of this hybrid fool's language scrawled across the front. The girl looked between the disk and the glass that now showed black and also reflected Kalos back to herself.

> “Just a game.”

"That glass can show real things. I have seen my heroes and cars and people talking about the nudes." The news was both the most interesting and most boring things she'd ever seen in her life. Sometimes they sat and talked too much. Sometimes they showed cars and explosions and heroes.

The other gorgon offered that they play a different game.

"I can watch?" A new circle was set into a rectangle of plastic and then a new picture came on the glass. Kalos edged around the couch, forgetting the feather mess for now since there were bright colors and funny sounds happening. She found a seat, entranced and more than a little concerned looking.

"So the circles tell the glass what to show?" She needed some of those flat circles.

Glitch shrugged. It was hard to think of zombies as anything but mindless. Well, except for Amber. Geez. Leave it to the little kids to make you feel bad about enjoying those games.

She paused, her eyes sporting a perplexed look. Did she say nudes? What type of person watched that stuff with kids around?! Oh well, that one was not her problem. “That's true. A lot isn't real, though. There's stuff like movies and cartoons and reality shows.”

Glitch hadn't been counting on the girl's willingness to watch the game, but she was glad she accepted. “Sure.” She held out a second controller for her to take. “In fact, I can show you how to play if you'd like.” Video games were fun, and she didn't want the first one to ruin it all for her.

"Circles?" It took Glitch a moment to decipher the girl's words. “Oh, you mean the discs. Yeah, you could say that, um... Sorry, what's your name? I'm Glitch, by the way.”

> “A lot isn't real... reality shows.”

This person had a strange definition of 'real.' Kalos felt an incredible disbelief. It was a thing that had gotten her kicked many times before so before she had at least tried, but her heroes assured her that no one would kick her here. Not even for making bad faces. So Kalos stopped trying to hide the skeptical disbelief and showed the robot girl how very wrong she had to be while she settled onto the couch.

It worked. She stopped talking nonsense and went right to helpfulness.

> "I can show you how to play if you'd like.”

"I can play?" Yes, the coral girl could see it now. There was more than one controller like the one in the robot's hands. Kalos picked up the other one and marvelled at how smooth it was and what it felt like to push all the buttons.

> "I'm Glitch, by the way."

"I have the name Kalos." It still didn't quite feel like her own even though she had picked it herself. "It is meaning beautiful. What is Glitch mean?"

The girl seemed like a curious one. From the way she was inspecting the controller, Glitch had a good guess that it was her first time holding one.

“Kalos? That's a nice name.” It kind of reminded her of another game, for some reason. “Glitch is short for my real name, Gladys Fitch. Gladys was too much of an old lady name, so I've gone by Glitch since I was like, five. Though, what a glitch really is...” She took a moment to think of how to explain it. “It's when a video game like this does something it isn't supposed to. Weird stuff like the game freezing and characters turning invisible.”

A menu appeared with ChibiPlumber, ChibiBro, Damsel Pink, and more than a dozen other colorful characters. “You can use the arrows to go between characters and the A to pick one,” she said, demonstrating with her own controller. She herself navigated to her personal favorite, MiniDino.

"Why is Gladys an old lady name?" As far as she could tell it had nothing in it to indicate an age. Usually age was determined in numbers. Kalos found Glitch to be a harder sounding name. "Gladys is lovely and soft." Though, after giving Glitch an eyefull, Kalos deemed that perhaps a hard name was what she wanted, since she seemed quite hard. "Do you do weird things you aren't supposed to do?" Invisible was not in her vocabulary, but she was anxious to see what it was.

As for what was on the screen, Kalos had no idea what to do. The buttons were pressable and fun to press. She mashed them all until things happened. "I don't know what A is." Or why she was holding a controller. But, really, she could mash those buttons all day long.

Glitch shrugged. “Not many teens have it, but loads of elders do. Going by Gladys always felt kind of funny. But thanks.”

She let out a small laugh. “Because I call myself Glitch? Nah. At least, nothing much weirder than anyone else.” Presumably. At least nothing like an actual glitch.

The screen had become utter chaos, as Kalos's excited button mashing triggered pop-up menu after pop-up menu, ultimately pulling up the options and changing a lot of them. “Whoa, hold on a moment, haha.” Glitch attempted to set everything back to the way it was before, whatever that was. Geez, she'd never really messed with the settings. “The A's that green button. If it's okay to ask, do you not read English?” If Kalos was a foreigner, that would explain some of the strange things she'd said.

Kalos liked that Glitch did not see herself as weirder than anyone else. Certainly, Glitch's sense of justice was ill-defined as a mass murderess, but the automaton was abnormal to the eye. And yet, perfectly normal when spoken to.

Apparently Kalos' enthusiasm over the buttons was laughable. She stopped at Glitch's request and held the controller limply so that nothing else would get pressed on accident. Or on purpose.

"I do not read." Kalos confirmed. "But I am speaking this English. That's the important one." Really, it had hardly even come up...

Once the screen came up again, Kalos insisted on choosing the squatty little mushroom because once Kalos learned how to roll over each character, she heard him say 'I'mmmm the best!' and Kalos wanted to be the best one. "What is the name of this one?"

“I see. No worries, this game doesn't have much to read.” And that was Glitch's type of game, anyway. To hell with reading instructions, because that was boring.

She would have smiled at Kalos' enthusiasm, but alas, her face was no good for that. “That's Mush. He's the princess's loyal attendant. He helps rescue her whenever she gets kidnapped. Which is nice, because that happens a loootttt.”

She selected the first track, a simple loop around a lake. “You use this to move and steer,” the robot girl explained, motioning to the stick on Kalos' controller. “The goal's to go around the track as fast as possible. Try not to crash into things. Or fall into the water.”

The start line appeared on the screen, and the announcer's voice could be heard. “Ready. Get set. Go!”