Full Combo

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"An arcade? Come on, you can't be serious." 
"I absolutely am."
"Myriam, look at them!" The older of the two soldiers turned over his shoulder, glancing backwards at their junior counterparts sitting stiff as a board a few rows back. "They stick out like sore thumbs in civvy gear - you really think these two are the type for bowling and claw machines?"
"They're certainly not the type for a night out on the town either, I'll tell you that. You don't remember the Fireteam Moonlight guys talking about that time they tried to bring one of these Threes out on a drink? It was one of their instructors, young as these guys - and she just spent the night sat in the corner or gazing out at the street, really weirded them out." 
Myriam paused, letting out a sigh, before continuing.
"I'll tell you that however they grew up, they certainly didn't have a chance to do something this normal as kids. You can see it from a mile away, Henry." 
"Sure, but-"
"And you can't tell me you don't want to see how Paul handles bumper cars. Not after that last 'hog ride."
Henry offered no reply to that one.
-----
"Go on." Myriam had scarcely allowed the group of children ahead of them to move away with their string of tickets before she gestured towards the battered rhythm game console. "Give it a go. See how you do." 
Sylvie reluctantly stepped onto the metal pad, coloured squares beneath her faded by age and by the scratched, toughened plastic covering them. It felt awkward to keep her feet planted in the middle of the platform; it felt overly formal, like being held at attention. She'd seen the children before her play, but the idea of matching steps with the flashing colourful prompts on-screen seemed fruitless, without a real point to it. 
Then Myriam tapped sharply at the panel in front of her and gave her a wink - the screen in front of her lit up - and she set to work. 
The first half-minute of the song seemed little more than a warm-up, wispy vocals over a slowly building instrumental with an almost mundane sequence of steps back and forth between each side of the pad. Sylvie's first reluctant steps were met with almost disappointed-looking "OK" prompts on-screen, but as the song hit its chorus and the pace of the program picked up, these were quickly replaced by a flurry of "Great!" and "Super!" stickers flashing up. Her feet were practically moving on their own, a robotic, dispassionate rhythm entirely at odds with the music and images flashing up on the screen. The electronic beats would probably drive a regular player forward, excite them to keep going, but to Sylvie it was little more than a mundane plod. By the time she was really in gear and enjoying it, the machine was already counting up her score.
"Almost perfect, huh? How about that?" Myriam's voice came from behind the machine's console, and she appeared to one side almost a moment later. 
"It would have been, if it wasn't for-"
"-those first few in the beginning, yeah? Everyone trips a little when starting out, don't worry about it." Her words were modest, but Myriam was practically beaming at the score flashing up on Sylvie and Paul's screens. 
"You want another go?" The two of them nodded in unison, and Myriam ducked back to one side, scrolling through the list of songs before arriving at one that lit her face up with a wicked grin. "See how you do with this one."
The screen lit up - the tinny onboard voice counted down again. Three, two, one, go. And so she went.
Sylvie's first impressions of the second program - of its stripped back, minimalist sound at a decidedly sedate pace - were nothing if not underwhelmed. For a few long moments she simply didn't understand why Myriam seemed to have made such a big deal of it - to herself, if not to Sylvie and Paul atop the machines. Sure, it was starting to build, but nothing remotely warranting the almost comically exaggerated warnings popping up on-screen as it swelled up. Red exclamation marks, warning triangles - there was even a nuclear trefoil in there somewhere. But it-
-and it dropped.
All of a sudden their feet came to life. The song's pace shot through the roof, the prompts on-screen scrolling upwards almost too fast to comprehend. But Sylvie's movements were a blur too, the machine-gun rattle of boots against plastic jumping into gear without a moment's pause. She was dimly aware of the looks of awe she was receiving from one side, but she barely even knew how she was doing it either. 
But it was exhilarating. Frenzied electronic drums blurred with flashing lights before her into a pattern that seemed to have her legs moving on her own, yet it was conscious, hard effort to keep pace with the sheer speed of the program. Adrenaline surged, time seemed to slow, and yet she still had to fight to keep pace.
She wasn't the only one fighting. Sylvie could see Paul with a quick glance to one side as the music let up momentarily; his eyebrows furrowed in determination at this game, his brow glossy with sweat. So, she had a fight on her hands.
And a fight it was. Wild flurries of tapping gave her little time to do anything but focus on her own progress, but brief breakdowns found themselves as ceasefires between her and her partner, a moment to recover - although she imagined the children before would struggle even in these "downtime" sections. Seconds of stripped-down synths and syrupy melodies teased a build-up she drew her breath for; false drops were feints daring her to go all-in. But she could do this. She could see it through. She could push through the one final round, a burst of percussion and chopped-up synthetic vocals that all of a sudden faded to that same innocent, disarming intro the song had opened with. 
Soon that taped out, slowed, fell away to silence.
Complete, dead silence.
And in that moment, the spell was broken. The entire arcade erupted into a roar; almost the whole place had been brought to a standstill, watching enraptured as the two Spartans had danced almost too fast to see, much less keep up with. Myriam had a grin broad enough to reach Luna; she looked beyond proud at the score on the two screens in front of them. 
And speaking of the score, she turned back to the display in front of her. Ninety-eight percent; just a handful of steps missed - and almost certainly from the second she had taken to look across at the other machine.Paul, for his part, was sitting at a full hundred - and she had less than a second before he made it fully known to her. 
"Oooh, good job. I mean, close to perfect, but not quite-"
"Oh, leave it, it's my second time at this thing."
"It's my second time too, and I-"
"You went out of your way to win on a dancing game!"
"You're goddamn right I did."
"Yeah, see how much that says about-"
-----
Myriam and Henry glanced at each other as the other two stepped off the machine. 
"You owe me twenty - you know that, right?"
"Super-superhuman difficulty my ass." 
"Aw, come on. It was fun to see." 
He smiled. "Yeah, you're right. You think they'll be at this all night?"
"Probably." Myriam shrugged in return. "It's the most human I've seen them being for months, they can have this." 
Henry nodded, following the others as they strode out onto the mall concourse - backpedalling a little to grab a sign from the side and hang it on the battered, dented machine. 
OUT OF SERVICE