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"Okay, so I'm putting it on 'Roadtripper' and 'Easy'. Does anyone have a problem with that?" Minku looked at her friends, sitting in a small circle with one laptop between them. Ochako sat to her right, Tenya to her left, and Shouto straight across from her.
"Seeing as I believe none of the rest of us have played the game before, putting it on 'Easy' makes sense!" Tenya adjusted his glasses as he spoke.
"What's 'Roadtripper' do?" Ochako asked.
"It's the middle option for competitiveness," Minku said as she picked her player character. She was going to use Zoe, the former eldrich deity first introduced back in the first game, and made a proper romancable character in the Second Term DLC. Zoe was Minku's favorite character by a long shot, so obviously she wanted to play as her! "But the lowest competitive option removes MVP options, even, so that's lame. Here, Tenya, pick your player character."
"Thank you," Tenya took the laptop, "I just pick one of these people to play as? Why are two of them greyed out?"
"Because I haven't bought the DLC to play as those two," Minku explained, "Pick someone else."
"Very well. I shall pick this pleasant-looking Oz fellow," Tenya said.
"You would pick Oz," Minku snickered as the laptop was then handed to Ochako.
"Gosh, they're all so cute!" Ochako exclaimed, "Really, I love the way this looks!"
"Right?!" Minku enthused, "I love the art in this series. It really is so wonderfully aesthetic."
"I think this guy is dead," Shouto commented when he took the laptop for himself.
"Brian? Yeah he's a zombie."
"Amazing. I'm going to play as him."
Week One
"I forgot that Camp Director Miss Weaving and Coach were at The Hole," Minku grumbled. "I never really cared for Camp Director Miss Weaving."
"Who?" the others were clustering around now. Screw circles, they all wanted to see the screen!
"...Don't worry about it!" Minku smiled, just a little too wide, "She's just an NPC from Monster Camp. Not very important to this game. We probably won't see her again for the rest of the run. Anyway, I'm going to have us throw pies into The Hole. ...Shit, that did the opposite of what I wanted."
"Remind me what the goal of the game is again?" Tenya asked as he took the laptop for his turn.
"We need to get one stat to twenty-five, while making sure that none of the other stats drop to zero," Minku explained, "If you click here... see, those are the places we can go! But if any of our stats fall to zero... Game Over!"
"I see," Tenya nodded, then directed the car to drive to the Lake. "So I must pick an activity, and then...?"
"And then you'll read through the event, get a choice, and that choice will move some of our stats from one attribute to another," Minku explained, then let Tenya do just that.
And then he traded his entire house for a hermit crab shell.
"Oh my gods," Ochako burst into giggles, "That's crazy, oh my gods."
"It seemed a fair trade!"
"I too would trade my father's house for a shell," Shouto agreed sagely, which just sent Ochako into a deeper fit of laughter. "Right now, in real life."
"Uraraka, stop laughing!" Tenya nudged her with the laptop, "It's your turn."
"Woohoo!" Ochako took the device, "Let's go and visit a movie studio!"
"Ah, the movie studio," Minku nodded sagely, "What a wonderful place to visit."
"Free food! Let's rob the buffet! ...Wait, why am I the movie's director now?"
"This game seems rather silly," Shouto commented.
"Oh yeah, for sure," Minku agreed, "That's part of it's charm."
"I talked to a greek muse and she said that I should fill the movie with corgis. She did not give me further instructions."
"Yeah, don't worry about it," Minku waved it off, "Shouto, it's your turn!"
"Alright," Shouto nodded, "I'm going to take us to the Pet Contest... am I entering an actual person into the Pet Contest?"
"Don't think about it too hard!"
"Bartenders are the sexiest thing known to monsterkind?" Ochako mused, reading over Shouto's shoulder, "Can I do something with this information?"
"You could become a bartender?" Tenya offered.
Minku snerked. "My elder brother is a bartender. I'm going to tell him about this."
"Ooo, can I meet him? Ask him for tips?"
"Uh... Maybe? I'll talk to him about it..." Minku shifted slightly away from Ochako, looking up to the ceiling. Something about what Ochako was asking was very clearly making her somewhat uncomfortable. "Anyway! Weekend time~ Time to trade and map out and pick up hitchhikers~!"
Week Two
"I'm going first now?" Tenya asked when the laptop was passed to him, "Why?"
"Because the game randomizes player order every week," Minku shrugged. "Now take your turn!"
"Alright, very well! Let us head to this wealthy mansion!"
"Ooo, babysitting... Are you trying to get us to the Merkingdom Feast?" Minku asked, a grin widening on her face.
"Yes, that was the idea," Tenya nodded, "I thought that it sounded high class, and quite frankly the other locations either confuse or scare me."
"I don't know... Knifeland does sound pretty cool..." Ochako said with a teasing lilt to her voice.
"Oh dear. Is that where you want to go?"
"Nah, I think I'd rather aim for the City of Vice," Ochako shook her head, "But it does sound cool, doesn't it? Maybe if we play again I'll try to get there."
"Play again?" Minku blinked, "One run can take up to like... three hours, especially if all of us want to go to different locations. We are not going to play more than once tonight. No way."
"Fair enough!" Ochako laughed, "Wow, that's pretty long actually..."
"Did you just bury those children alive?" Shouto asked Tenya, pointing to the screen.
"...No comment."
"Art exhibition!" Ochako cheered, "Let's go see some art! ...Or make some art!"
"...Isn't that just The Scream but surrounded by six sets of buttocks?"
"Who says 'buttocks'?"
"I don't think you should worry about that too much," Shouto said, "This game does not seem to take itself particularly seriously."
"...That robot just threw away our GPS." Ochako sounded highly disgruntled.
"Oh, Calculester..." Minku shook her head fondly.
"Wait, hold on, what was that?" Ochako asked as Minku was clicking through her LARP event, "They have a vampire friend who... turns into a hot dog stand?"
"Yeah, Liam," Minku said, continuing to read her event without slowing down, "He's romancable in the first game. Not my favorite of the love interests, but he's not too bad."
"And he turns... into a hot dog stand."
"Yeah? They already mentioned that."
Ochako blinked, not quite sure how to deal with that. "Okay then."
A minute later, it was Ochako's turn, and she brought the group to a Dungeon, where they taught the local slimes to run a high end restaurant instead of run themselves through on the swords of incoming adventurers.
"It's so sweet!" Ochako cooed, "Isn't it just so sweet and cute?"
Week Three
"I don't want to go to the Stamina location," Shouto said, and denied the beginning of the three-event plotline that would grant them a deeper layer to the music festival, "I want to go to Cryptid Prom. It sounds fun."
"Nooo..." Minku made a strange, throaty noise, "No, I wanted to go there..."
"Too bad," Shouto said blandly, "Anyway, let's go to the Abandoned Village."
At the Abandoned Village, Shouto suggested that they attempt to find out what happened to the people who used to live in this village by doing something that Sherlock Holmes used to do - a lot of cocaine!
"No!" Tenya yelped, "Why would you choose that?"
Minku and Ochako burst out laughing, not so much at the game as to at Tenya's reaction to it.
"It sounded funny," Shouto responded simply, "Why shouldn't I pick it?"
Tenya just sputtered, the girls still laughing behind him as Shouto finished out his turn.
"Merkingdom outpost!" Minku squealed when she saw her options for her turn, "Let's go there! We might get to see Miranda~."
"Who is Miranda?" Shouto asked.
"She's one of the original six love interests," Minku explained, "And one of the merkingdom's princesses! She's my favorite of the original six, hands down. Let's go watch a public execution!"
"Let's what?" Tenya sounded appalled.
"Did I stutter?" Minku laughed lightly, "Let's go watch a public execution! Ooo, I get to help judge them... AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION LETS GO!!!"
"Oh no, my soul..." Ochako pouted, "I need that to take us to the City of Vice."
"Why are we encouraging audience participation in public executions?" Tenya looked appalled, "What is wrong with this game?"
"...Tenya's a pussy," Ochako said after a beat of silence. Minku snorted.
"I don't think he looks like a cat at all," Shouto frowned.
"No, that's not - let's just move on now. It's my turn, isn't it? Let's go to the reptile show! Charming snakes?"
Minku began to snicker even before the event began, and burst into real laughter when Ochako summoned the Mongoose to deal with Scott and Polly's new snake-boyfriends.
"He ate them!" She gasped, honestly a little delighted, "Oh my goodness, he ate them!"
"I do not know that I will want to play this game again in the future," Tenya shook his head, "It seems to me that it is rather... much. In a way that I am not fully comfortable with."
"I mean, I guess it's not for everyone," Minku shrugged, "Do you want to continue playing right now?"
"I said that I would play it with the three of you, and I shall," Tenya nodded sharply, "I just do not know that I will do so again in the future."
"Fair enough. It's your turn, anyways."
Tenya took the group to the planetarium, to see a meteor shower that was apparently currently happening. When it was time to make a wish, he wished for clarity on what to wish for, getting an event that to him was honestly mostly a little perplexing, only to be surprised by a sharp gasp from Minku.
"Our magic!" she said, pointing, "Our magic is is low!"
"Oh, so it is," Ochako blinked.
"You said that the game ended if we ran out of something, right?" Shouto asked, "So, we need to get more magic, then."
"Yes, and soon," Minku nodded, "Elsewise the game will end early!"
"Well, that's no good," Ochako shook her head, "We'll have to fix that next week, won't we?"
Week Four
On the way to a Cult Gathering, the narrator stopped them to ask if they wanted start the Mind Plot, but Ochako was the one whose turn it presently was, and that was not in the slightest where she wanted to go, so she declined the offer. Shouto let out a small whine at this, but Minku gave him a nudge and a look to remind him that he had done the same thing to her not all that long ago.
On to the Cult Gathering!
"So we have to sacrifice something to this cult's god... and one of the options is newsletter subscriptions that we weren't reading anyway? What's the downside?" Ochako giggled.
"You lost mind and are taking away from me taking us where I want to go," Shouto pointed out.
"I meant the downside for me," Ochako rolled her eyes fondly, "I don't want to go to Cryptid Prom, after all."
"Hmph," said Shouto, "I'm taking us to a biker bar."
"...Do you know those people?" Ochako asked, pointing to the new NPCs on the screen, "I feel like I'm missing something with them."
"That's not just you," Minku sighed, "I don't know where they came from either. Especially not the unicorn... I know that the storm spirit woman is one of the DLC player characters in Monster Camp, but that's really all I know about her."
"Huh."
A moment later, it was Tenya's turn - made longer by the sudden interjection of getting to play 'I Spy' with Polly and Scott. The answer was...
"Why on Earth was the answer 'creepy insectoids invisible to the naked eye'?" Tenya asked. He sounded more rattled than Minku thought was reasonable, especially since the game did not have any visuals for the insectoids.
"Well, obviously Polly can see them," Shouto shrugged, "Therefore, it was valid according to the terms of the game."
"This game is madness," Tenya shook his head as he took the car on to the Fancy Motel, "Pure and utter madness."
"You say that, but you're the one who just decided to pillage the other motel rooms," Minku pointed out with a snicker.
"...I need the money."
Minku and Ochako both burst into shrieks of laughter, while Shouto's laugh was more of a deeply amused chuckle.
"Gas station, gas station... PIZZA GIRL!" Minku grinned wide as she took her turn - filling up the car with magical fuel. Which is what you would expect from a gas station, really.
"That's the girl who was running the motel last turn," Tenya pointed out.
"Yeah, her name's Sadie!" Minku nodded as she explained, "But everyone calls her Pizza Girl because that was her job in Monster Camp. It's like why people still call Aaravi, 'The Slayer'!"
"Who?"
"...Our current hitchhiker?"
Week Five
"Shit," Minku growled, passing the laptop off to Tenya with a huff, "I thought that would be a hype check, not a magic check. Fuck."
"I don't understand what the big deal is?" Shouto quirked an eyebrow.
"That event type is special. If I'd passed all three stat checks, I would've been able to raise stats without lowering any. But I failed... I brought down the total number of stats that we have to work with."
"That stinks," Ochako shrugged, "But I'm sure we'll manage. We're playing on Easy, right? So we have more stats to work with in the first place."
"I hope you're right..." Minku muttered darkly.
"Tenya! Our money!" Shouto cut Minku off by pointing at the screen, gasping.
"Tenya, how could you! We're almost out of money now!" Ochako gasped in faux horror.
"...I have made an error," he said blandly, holding out the laptop, "My apologies."
"Don't let us die," Minku admonished Ochako as she took the laptop.
"I won't! I just have to discarge this tension in this event that for some reason reminds me of one of the stories that Cementoss assigned us in class, and um... why are the animals reverse furries now?"
"It's probably fine," Shouto took his turn, and had his character do some truly impressive juggling in order to make them enough money that they were now at least two bad decisions away from a Game Over.
Week Six
"SOUL PLOT!" Ochako squealed and accepted the narrator's prompt.
"Mm, as much as I hate to say it, we probably won't have time to complete it," Minku clicked her tongue.
"Why not?" Ochako asked.
"Because look -" Minku opened their map of potential destinations, "We're at 24 SOUL. If you manage to give us more SOUL, or any of the rest of us do inadvertently, the game will end after this turn, because we'll have made it to the City of Vice."
"Well..." Ochako hummed to herself, "I still win. That's where I wanted to go in the first place! Let's head to that gothic manor over there in the meantime."
In that manor, they ran into two victorian specters, and Ochako grinned wide as she chose the option to have them teach Polly how to give moral lessens to old men.
"I did it!" she laughed, "We're going to the City of Vice!"
"There's still technically the rest of the turn..." Minku reminded her, "Shouto, what are you going to do?"
"Tell Tubular Eddie to give the gambling addicts a child to raise," said Shouto, "Then we will go to the World End Summit."
"Oh, what are you going to do at the summit?" asked Minku.
"I don't know yet," said Shouto, "But I feel with the way that this game has been going that it will be interesting."
It was interesting. He got evil versions of both Joy and Faith to turn against each-other with a single question.
"Let's go to the National Park," said Tenya. "It should be interesting. I think that maybe it will have some modicum of sanity compared to what we have been doing."
"Clearly haven't been playing this game long enough if you think that one of these locations is sane," said Minku. "Even if you think it will be sane, it will not be not in the long run, you are fooling yourself."
"Let me hope..." Tenya grumbled, although admittedly he did not actually sound in the slightest bit sure of himself here. Still, despite that, he took the group hiking - through some kind of theme park attraction.
What event.
"To the Big Potato~!" Minku hummed, "Where I am going to consume the INFINITE FRY!"
"Is that even possible?" Ochako asked, watching the event play out with morbid curiousity.
"No," Minku admitted, "But it's fun to try, isn't it?"
The City of Vice
"We made it!" Ochako threw her hands up with a cheer, "Woo-hoo!"
"And now we get to see how we each faired in the City of Vice," Minku grinned. "Tenya?"
"...I got left at the Rest Stop," he said, his face twiching, "And no-one even noticed."
"Well, you probably wouldn't have liked the City of Vice anyway," Ochako grinned evily at him, "It all works out, don't you think?"
Tenya sputtered in rage. "It's the principle of the matter!"
"I don't think that Nedzu has anything to do with it," Shouto deadpanned.
"He doesn't," Minku snorted, "But look, Shouto! Both you and I got the regular ending and had ourselves a nice time at the City of Vice!"
"Woo."
"What... did I get a special ending?" Ochako lit up as she clicked through her personal ending, "There's a bear in here? I got so drunk I can't remember what happened? This is so cool!"
"Ochako is the MVP!" Minku crowed, "All hail Ochako, Queen of the City of Vice!"