I Like Mbs And Owl House And Bugsnax

Unfortunately for Valentina Furi—and haven’t those words become familiar over the past few months? Thanks for that, Sapphire Dorm—there is no appreciable escape from this something, the monstrous machine before her, the metal monolith with a bright-as-the-sun screen, twin speakers at its sides blasting blue-pink neon and brassy ear-piercing pop directly into her nervous system. Which, BTW, is only nervous because the bass bursting out of the machine’s speakers would make anyone with a paper cut bleed out, and so not because of Rory’s little challenge, which really shouldn’t be considered a challenge; no, it’s more appropriately described as a flick on the forehead, a poke on the shoulder, a pain in the—

Where was she? Oh, yes, the quote-unquote revolutionary piece of technology Rory wishes to risk their social lives on. In front of the machine is a shiny chrome stage, divided into two sets of coloured arrows laid next to one another in crosses, which, and here she will give credit where it is due, is a design choice suitable for a game so intent on making one injure all involved extremities. Two children (drowning in what is likely the latest fashion of kindergarten couture, their shirts and shorts near-identical shades of vomit) are ‘dancing’ onstage, by which she means they are flailing and jumping in strange, jerky ways and the singular reason why she is not calling emergency services is her feeling that a phone as expensive as hers in a place as inexpensive as this would be a sight for the sore eyes of prospective robbers everywhere. All accounted for, it’s no wonder Unicorn Academy’s worst and dimmest thinks this dancing game, of all things, is an arcade’s supreme attraction, the impending deciding factor in Valentina’s inevitable love for all things arcade-related. Which, news flash, is a love she will feel exclusively in his dreams, a.k.a. her nightmares.

And don’t worry, universe, because you so clearly hate the idea of her enjoying summer for more than a month’s stopover in the Bahamas; there’s no way she could find this fine establishment’s fire exits if she tried. She’s been trapped in rings of fire, in crystalline ice constructs, in heart-to-hearts with a surrogate-bestie-seeking Ava, and nothing comes close to the level of claustrophobia she feels now, stuck in a fluorescent galaxy, a helpless thing to be flung around a pinball table. Does it not disgust you, that she's touched a pinball table now? To further illustrate, on her left: an alleyway of similarly garish cabinets, bearing chipped paint and smudged glass and the wrath of a Junior Olympian who has found their boxing bag a worthy sparring partner for whatever martial art she’s practicing now. On her right: her worst nightmare in the freckled flesh, just about bouncing in his tie-dye tank top at the thought of getting a turn on the dignity death trap.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise, that Rory had been lurking in the strip mall's shadows, awaiting a similarly aged companion to assault with threats of should he (and Isabel, who was a pleasant surprise—but, like, only because Rory was that much of an unpleasant one, duh) not be joined in their voyage to Time Waster Central, or whatever that ugly, flickering welcome sign had said. Valentina couldn’t bear to recount the memory of her ambush here. What would Auntie say, if she knew her favourite niece had forgotten all the self-defence tactics they’d gone over in case of an attempted mugging, an attempted murder, or an annoying classmate asking for a playdate?

(Something like I’m glad you’re having fun, Valentina. Or you know I don’t have a favourite niece, Valentina. Neither of those answers can help Valentina with an escape or her ego, though, so, yeah, she’s not letting Auntie know about any of this.)

There is one consolation, conjecture-built though it may be. It being her parents’ intention of stripping the mall and turning it into another base for the Furis’ business operations, obvs. It’s what she believes is the point of this insipid excursion, from what few details her family divulged before the limo screen rolled back up, anyway. Like, what else would they be doing? Eating together? Enjoying each other’s company? Oh, please.

“Please, please, please, pleasepleasepleaseplease.” She must admit, the sheer number of unique inflections Rory has managed to inflict upon the poor word is almost impressive. She’d never admit that to him, of course. Not if he offered up the keys to the kingdom, not if he promised never to put a whoopee cushion in Cinder’s stall again, not if he were begging on his knees—

Which he is, now, his skinny jeans rubbing against the sticky floor in a display of humility made totally impossible to enjoy by the stares they’re getting. She really needs to stop expecting the worst of her friends. Otherwise, they’ll keep exceeding expectations, and no inhabitant of Sapphire Dorm save her very own self is allowed to do that. “Val, come on. How many times do I need to tell you?” His hand plunges into his pocket. “I’ll pay!”

“Wow, thanks.” Like that tiny plastic token could make a dent in her savings account. She rolls her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose. These actions do not erase Rory’s flailing arms from her periphery, nor do they expunge the stench of greasy food or greasier children from her surroundings. This, she surmises, is her cosmic payment for aiding and abetting Mendoza’s crown star quest. “Still a hard, hard pass.”

Suddenly, Rory laughs. Valentina does not. Another rule of perfectly manicured thumb: if Rory Carmichael’s happy, everyone in a hundred-mile vicinity is about to be made seriously unhappy. This rule is proven right when, wiping a tear from his eye, Rory gasps, “Oh my god. Oh my god! All that time I spent teaching her how to boogie, and the great Valentina Furi’s still worse at footwork than her horsie.”

“Cinder sets an unfairly high bar for everyone,” Valentina hisses. Like Rory has any right to talk about Cinder, to remind her of Cinder.

(Cinder, without any intelligent company on an island so many miles away. Cinder, without anybody but Paracelsus and Pollyanna to make him tea. Cinder, still having a better summer than his rider, most likely.)

“Okay, fine.” Rory smiles. Valentina does not. “You’re worse than River.”

Valentina pulls Rory to his feet (or close enough to it) and leaves him to trip up to the stage. Valentina pushes the kid on the right off his place on the arrows and leaves him to look over her shoulder for his score. “Put the stupid coin in.”

Rory scoffs, his hand pausing just before it puts the stupid coin in the appropriate slot. “I will have you know that this coin was hand-pressed by the lifelongingly-prenticed artisans at the school of David and Buster’s—”

Valentina slams his hand against the slot, and smirks when the screen flashes to a menu. “I know your parents love when you stay out all day. However, I have a family who cares about me and a chauffeur who gets paid per hour, so hurry up.”

Rory, scrolling through the song list with zero urgency, explains his terms: “Best of three. No cheating. I pick the song.”

Few things get past Valentina. How she could possibly cheat at a game that’s five parts stepping on enormous arrows and five parts luck is, apparently, one of those few things. And, yes, that estimate is based on the fact Rory enjoys winning, and Valentina is doubtful any of her dorm-mates sans Isabel could win anything without Lady Fortune borrowing Lady Justice’s blindfold. Besides, you wouldn’t question that if you were privy to his wild, wild guesses at Unicorn Academy Trivia Night. Which reminds Valentina; she has a question for him. “And are you planning on picking it this century?”

Rory presses a finger to her mouth before she can ammend or this millennium, shushing her so loudly it’s really hard to see the point of shushing her in the first place. Great, now she has to drink bleach and reapply her lip combo. “And thank you for being so patient. But seriously. Be more patient. I need complete and utter silence to foc—aha!"

He slams a fist on the selection button, then cracks his knuckles, then pops his neck, then shakes his head, then trills his tongue, and you know what? Valentina thinks she’s stumbled on some seriously weird pre-Dance Dance Revolution ritual, the gross, childish likes of which she would not like to ennoble with any further narration. “Been playing this one since I ‘twas but a babe.”

Valentina, reasonably doubtful Rory has undergone any growth since (ugh, perish the thought) being but a babe, replies, evenly, “Sure you have.”

He grabs an invisible microphone and asks, as pompous as any porcelain-toothed game show host, “Are you ready for the most mind-blowingly fun time of your life?”

“If getting my mind blown means I don’t have to hear you talk anymore, absolutely.”

Valentina almost misses the song’s opening chord, but steps on the right arrow seconds before it flies off the screen. One thing’s for sure: this isn’t the song those kids were trying to bomb their ears with. In fact, this song’s less the explosive electro party hit she thought Rory Throws A Year-Wide Party When He Gets A D+ Carmichael had been raised on and more a simple, sweet little melody being plunked out on a keyboard. The pattern on the screen is easy to follow: front, left, right, left, right, back, rinse, repeat, die of boredom. It’s too easy to follow, really. (What, does Rory think she can only handle baby steps?)

Valentina follows the pattern again, frowning as the song’s percussion grows and shrinks, guitar teasing her with a couple faster notes and then disappearing into the buzzing bassline. This so-called choreography' seems a lot better suited for Layla and her straight-as-a-ruler way of order. Sure, she likes rules, but she likes breaking them as much as anyone, when she has a reason. She thinks about stepping off the stage and forcing the kid she shoved off it back on. How bad a break would that be, in Rory’s trust? (What if Rory does think that?)

Valentina squints at the screen as the same sets of arrows glide through it, as Rory grunts and whoops like they’re and not stuck in a glorified jazz square. Did she break this thing’s wiring with her heels? (What if Rory thinks that she’s going to be just as bad at dancing as she was before the Fairy Moon Ball because he isn’t going to help her remember to relax her joints or unhinge her jaw or whatever and she definitely isn’t going to be getting the falsely reassuring applause she’s come to expect from her legacy ladies from this crowd if she messes up?)

Wait, what the hell is she saying? Rory and think don’t even belong in the same paragraph, let alone the same sentence. What matters is that she is Valentina Furi. Maybe that doesn’t mean anything to the drooling patrons of the adjacent driving simulators and (one thousand per cent rigged) claw cranes, but that just means she has a chance to make her name synonymous with winning all over again.

Maybe, just maybe, this will be fun.

Valentina listens to the music, tuning into the electric passage and blocking out everything else: her thoughts on dancing, on failing, on the fact this machine's probably covered in candy residue. When the arrows on the screen finally start to speed up, she finds the music thrums and pulses. It comes alive, and so does she. (There’s a high-pitched beep, in the background, that Valentina can’t help but bob her head to, bang placement be damned.)

Valentina slides, shuffles, hops, dances. And she gets it, again, that dancing doesn’t have to be a strict list of limb positions, graded on spine-to-toe alignment, when it can be a thrilling journey from this arrow to that one and she can do whatever she wants in between. That it can be enjoyed, savoured, anything but stressed over. And it’s thanks to Rory, again. Oh, she has to beat him now. Otherwise she won’t get to say she only enjoyed and savoured the whole thing because she was good at it from the start. (The beeping gets louder, quicker, and it feels as good as the cheers she heard from the Fairy Moon Ball crowd, the way it makes her want to go faster, to see her blurry white score on the side go all the way up to ten digits.)

Valentina grins. Or maybe she just notices that she’s grinning, as Rory almost kicks himself in the shin trying to twist around in time for another drop of the beat, yelping and laughing. It hurts, almost, to smile so wide and for so long, but the hurt is a good kind, the kind that reminds her there’s more to her body and the world than the blaring music and her buzzing veins. She’s just spent so much of summer being waited on hand and foot, and other hand and other foot—you should get this by now, the Furis are rich—she almost forgot what a rush comes from this kind of action. The wind in her hair, the wheezes of a peer struggling to keep up with her—well, none of it’s objectionable. Maybe some would consider some of it fun. (The beeping gets louder, quicker, and Valentina hears voices, now, clearly, clamoring! She thinks they’re cheering for her; she loves to think they’re cheering for her.)

They’re coming up on the last minute when Rory talks again, and for some mysterious reason, Valentina doesn’t mind the sound too much. “Now this is fun, right? Tell me one thing that’s funner! You know I’m right, Val; I know you know I’m right!”

“It is fun, embarrassing you,” she calls out over the music. “Usually you do it all by yourself.”

Last thirty seconds. Soon, Rory’s going to be eating his every word about her footwork, and Isabel’s going to be—

Running straight at them? “Dudes, we gotta go.”

Valentina blinks. “What did you do?”

Isabel waves a… plastic mallet around her head? Oh, yeah, Isabel waves the hammer around her head like it’s a flare about to fly in her face, and all of a sudden the beeping’s too loud and too quick for it to fit with the directions of the dance, and there is no way Valentina still has to deal with her classmates’ penchant for property destruction outside of school when they don’t even have their inadequately trained unicorns to blame. No. Way. “Not my fault I’m too strong for the strongman game! Look, I was just hitting the big thing in the middle with the stick of the hammer instead of the head, ‘cause this jerk behind me was all no way a girl can hit it hard enough to make the bell ring, only I hit it, like, a little too hard and now—”

Okay, yes way. That’s her dormitory for you, always finding ways. It’s a miracle. It’s a curse. A growl rips from Valentina’s throat. “Are you for real?” She glances at what’s left of this strongman game—a narrow red tower bent in half, steeped in sparks and ash—before weighing her options. Get her hair ruined by the sewage water in this building’s sprinklers or get her pride ruined by Rory saying she ditched their dance-off? Ugh, these lose-lose deals are so last year. “I’m about to win.”

“You blind, bro? I’m about to win.”

“We are gonna take the worst shower of all time if you don’t move!” Isabel whips around to check on the strongman game’s smoldering corpse. Surprise, surprise, it’s still burning up a whole three seconds after she last checked. “Yep, I’m outta here. You guys wanna take the heat for this—” she tosses the mallet onto the stage “—s’all good with me.”

And so Valentina allows Isabel to escort her out with a hand hold only slightly rougher than previously imagined sensibly expected. And so Valentina has resigned herself to the robbery of victory in battle, but not to the loss of Rory’s war on her honour. And no, Valentina is not being dramatic. She’s going to get her rematch before summer ends, and if that means sacrificing one-sixteenth of her daily allowance to the unicorn gods in a concerted effort to ensure Layla isn’t doing anything stupid enough to warrant the end of summer (or the end of the world), so be it.