A servant! Kalos frowned. "This princess is no good if she gets stolen." Why were they all so dumb? "I need to be best one. Big and fierce." But everyone was terribly puny... except for the guys that looked wicked and mean and Kalos did not want to be evil even if evil was strong.

"I do not like this." It was under duress that Kalos chose the princess, she hoped that she made her opinion known about the stupidity of it all. "I choose her only because her pink is a good pink." An incredibly familiar pink, in fact. And she had a pink car. Somehow her choice was a little more okay once Kalos saw the crown and car.

She took the instructions to heart and did exactly as the automaton had instructed, but the car only jiggled. "I am not going." She moved the steering stick again, as instructed, without touching any of the other buttons. "I am not going! Help!"

Oh... Kalos wanted something big and strong. And all the characters were cute and cartoon-like. “But Damsel Pink rules with kindness,” she told the girl, hoping to cheer her up.

As soon as the race started, MiniDino's cart zoomed past the start line. But for some strange reason, Damsel Pink's cart only wiggled in place. Aware of Kalos' frustration, Glitch stopped her car. “What the heck?” she wondered, squinting at the screen. Bug? Bad controller? And then it dawned on her. “Oh.” She facepalmed. She'd played games so often she'd forgotten the basic instructions for this one. “My bad. You also need to hold that A button down to start going faster.”

Ruling with kindness was good. Not getting kidnapped was better.

Kalos' panic was taken seriously by Glitch, who also seemed to rule by kindness whenever the one needing help was not a zombie. Kalos had to push the A. She then had to be reminded which one was the A. And then, she zoomed! It was far too easy to get caught up in watching the other side of the screen and since she was last off the line, Kalos' pink cart spun out when the timer ended.

"I didn't get to the end." But now she had a much better idea of what to do for next time. The TV made some sad whomp, whomp sounds and Kalos puffed out her cheeks in annoyance. "Unkind."

So the first run didn't go smoothly. But no worries, it was only a video game. “Get ready. I'm restarting the level.”

Once again, all carts were at the beginning of the track. When the countdown finished, Glitch held down the A button and moved MiniDino's cart forward. At suboptimal speed.

Glitch didn't normally go easy against her opponents. However, Kalos was both young and a noob to video games, so she was going to make an exception. She kept an eye on the other half of the screen to make sure the coral girl was doing all right.

This time she knew what was going on. She knew what the controls did. She knew to push the "A." She knew she was the pink one and she knew the sounds that indicated when it was time to mash that button.

"Princess Pink!" Kalos cheered the avatar on as she turned corners and bumped into the big spikey one and spun out. "Noooo! You can do it, Princess Pink!" By the end of the race, Kalos was standing on the couch and had the controller in raised arms twisted to the side in concert with the last large swerve of the race track.

She came in a solid 4th place and jumped and whooped because she'd finished the race!

"Again!"

Seconds after Damsel Pink finished, MiniDino puttered in to sixth place. Kalos had to be the happiest fourth-placer Glitch had ever seen. “Looks like you beat me. Congrats!” she said, offering the girl a high five. No way was she going to tell her how getting first on that track was no problem for an experienced player. Nope, destroying someone's excitement was outright evil.

Of course, Glitch was happy to play again. “Want to try a different track?” she asked. She liked switching things up, as running the same track over and over again got old to her quick. “We've got mountains, a farm, a dungeon, even an underwater Atlantis-type one.” All neat tracks, in her opinion.

> “Looks like you beat me. Congrats!”

Kalos looked at the automaton in horror as she raised her hand to protect herself. "I would never hit you." She scrambled down from standing on top of the soft and squishy part of the lounge.

It was strange, though, despite the clear attempt to protect herself from Kalos the Glitch seemed very happy. Even by losing she was very happy. Finishing a race made for enough happiness to even make enduring a beating alright? They should race more, then. Because racing and not getting beat was even better.

> “Want to try a different track?”

"Not underwater. Something new? I know this farm. So. Maybe what is a mountain?" She scooted herself back onto the lounge very slowly so the Glitch would not be afraid. Kalos should watch her own actions. Standing and turning had scared her new friend.

Glitch raised an eyelid and slowly lowered her hand. Kalos thought she was afraid of being hit? She did hit her with the pillow. No, no, maybe she intended to say something else. Did Kalos think that she'd raised her hand to hit her? “I, uh... wouldn't hit you, either.”

What was a mountain? Even if Glitch knew what Kalos' native language was, there was no way she'd be able to translate. Instead, Glitch started drawing a straight line in the air. “They're those big pointy rocks that stick up-” Her finger made a jagged motion up, then back down. “-out of the ground,” she finished, realizing that this had to be one of her dumbest explanations ever. “The game will show them better.”

She pressed some buttons, and a racetrack winding through snowy purple mountain peaks appeared on the T.V.

The glitch said she wouldn't hit Kalos, but Kalos doubted that to be true. She had killed people before. Kalos had seen it on tv.

"It's good not to hit." And that was that. The girl tried to draw in the air in order to explain, but the diconnect was too large. Was the controller supposed to go up like that? Kalos repeated the movement with controller in hand.

> “The game will show them better.”

And the game did show them.

"Ooooh. Big rocks." Like really, really big rocks. She wanted to comment about the color and size of them, but when that flag dropped and the beep, beep, changed to a boop, the coral girl became wholly focused on pushing the A and steering her kart.

The track was incredibly winding! And at the top of the top, the characters on the sidelines that were cheering for them... they looked cold? "Are there mountains here? On the land near here, I mean?" Why did the people not fall off of these mountains? They didn't seem to be holding on...

Was that a look of awe Glitch spotted on Kalos' face? If it was, she could understand; this was one of the game's prettier levels. It was times like these when the game's lack of a “no race just drive leisurely around” setting was regrettable.

When the race started, Glitch made sure to keep her cart's speed down. As a mountainous course, there were a lot more places along the track where falling was a hazard.

“New York's got tons, though there aren't really any here in the city. Do they-Whoa!” Glitch swerved to avoid crashing into an NPC cart, nearly going over the edge in the process. “Do they have them where you're from?”

She drew her eyebrows down in concentration, though one of her coral growths was low growing over her eyes and the action of furrowing her brow made it harder to see.

Kalos reached up to brush whatever it was out of her eyes, not realizing that it was just her. Her kart, as a result, did not zig. It did not zag.
It just drove right off the edge of one of those purple mountain majesties.

"Oh! I'm falling." And trying to raise up the controller did nothing to stop that fact. But a flying turtle on a cloud picked her up?

"Who... is the fishing turtle?" He helpfully put her back on track, though she saw no other racers anywhere close by. Kalos promptly drove off the side of the mountain again.

Should have zigged.

"Are there other games?"

“The turtle's there to bring racers back to the track if they fall. I don't know his name, or if he even has one. He's kind of... background,” Glitch replied with a shrug as she finished the race.

She opened up a cabinet, and inside was a shelf lined with games. “Yeah, quite a few here. Let's see...” Zombie game. Horror game. War game. Zombie horror war game. Okay, most of the games there weren't little kid friendly. In fact, Glitch only found two more that were: one educational ABCs, the other, a cutesy dress up. She showed the cases to Kalos.

“Were you wanting to try one of these instead?” Glitch kind of hoped not; both options were too kiddie for her.