"That," says Tony, "sounds like an awesome plan."

"I know, right, I am brilliant. Uh, can you spot me the quarters, I think Bella is ninety-nine point five convinced I'm not -" Giles impression! - "evil in some way, but conjuring arcade tokens is probably counterfeiting and would not help with that thing."

"I will absolutely spot you the quarters," he laughs.

"You're the best. So how's tricks?"

"Meh," he shrugs. "The usual. Still working on improvements to the arc reactor."

"Fun stuff. Hey Jarvis, can you find where an arcade is around here, because I fail totally at knowing that thing."

"Happily," he says. "Do I assume you will be driving, or would you prefer to teleport?"

"Going with Tony, so, sign me up for shiny car," says Soph, winking at Tony.

Tony giggles.

Jarvis lists several arcades in driving range.

"Awesomesauce. Do any of those have skeeball? Who'm I kidding, every arcade that exists has skeeball - okay, which ones have DDR?"

This narrows the choices down to two!

"Aaaand which one has the better pinball selection?"

We have a winner!

Hooray! Soph traipses to the garage.

"You know it."

"Viper it is."

Soph hops into the red car's passenger seat. "So apparently I can torch now, you don't have to be extra extra careful driving me."

He giggles.

"Bella says I can decide whether to tell Mom and Dad that I'm only recently real. That's how she said it, 'only recently real'."

"Yeah, that's one way to put it, I guess."

"I kinda don't think I will. Not soon anyway. My friends neither. I like having pockets of normalcy."

"Must be nice."

"Are you gonna be legally alive again any time soon? Take your company back and stuff?"

"Who even knows," says Tony. "It just seems like such a hassle, you know?"

"Yeah, but, like, if you get pulled over or something right now what are you even going to do? Being dead seems like a hassle too."

"...That is a good point," Tony admits. "And here's the arcade!"

"Arcades don't card!" agrees Soph brightly, and she skips out of the car.

Tony follows, giggling.

Soph wants to play DDR first. She is really good at it. "After this you can beat me at something with cars in it," she says.

"You're so nice to me," laughs Tony.

"I am super nice!" she says, polishing off the last steps of "Butterfly" on hard mode and striking a victory pose.

"And really good at DDR!"

"Yeah, I conjured up a home set when - well, I mean, I remember - I mean in the closet at home there's - yes. I am really good at DDR."

"Gotcha," he says. "Time to find a racing game for me to kick your ass at?"

"Yeah, pick something cool."

Soph loses gracefully, where "gracefully" means "while punching him playfully in the shoulder", and heads for skeeball. She's pretty good at skeeball.

Tony is half decent at skeeball! They shall play skeeball.

Then it is pinball time, that being how they chose this place!

Pinball time is one of the best times there is!

Soph is not very good at pinball! But they have a lot of quarters.

They do. They have many, many quarters. A practically endless supply.

Soph's attention span runs out before their quarters do. She blows all her tickets on plastic bangles and earrings to add to her jewelry collection.

Tony grins.

"Let's get, like, burgers or something - or no, let's go back to whichever Jarvis has a better TV and conjure burgers and stuff, I can mint now, it's awesome, she didn't hook it into my torching yet because I guess she's not totally sure but I can still do it - and watch James Bond define spy movies."

"Deal!" says Tony.

Into the car they go.

And off they zoom.

And once they are flopped somewhat cuddlishly onto the sofa Soph wishes up a nice spread of suitably greasy fast food - burgers and fries and nuggets and soda and milkshakes, mmm.

"You know people used to say my dad looked like Pierce Brosnan?" says Tony.

"I don't remember ever hearing that."

"He used to get it all the time. Especially when he got older."

"When Bella finishes what all she's got planned and Jane comes back she's going to start waking up all the dead people. What do you think you'll do about your parents?"

"I guess they could just - I dunno, do you think they'll come back or just hang out Downside? Most people have to hang out Downside or it'll be ridiculously crowded here."

"Maybe Dad'll come take the company back," he snorts.

"Is there gonna be, like, a huge fight over it at that point because everyone will know that you can be dead-and-not-dead, or...?"

"Nah, I'd let him have it."

"Probably easiest that way."

"Bella's thinking about forking and she's not totally sure her fork will want to merge after. And I don't like thinking about what would happen if she didn't."

"...aww, man," says Tony. He hugs her.

"Like, I don't see either one of them going, 'you can have it, I don't care' about the world," Soph sighs, snuggling up.

"That would pretty well suck," he says, cuddling her.

Snuggle. "You're cuddly," she sighs, and she eats a fry.

"I am! I'm very cuddly. And I'm stealing your fries." He noms one.

"Thief!" giggles Soph. "Nah, you can have all the fries you want."

"You are most welcome, gracious gentlemanly sir."

He sporfles.

She sips her milkshake. She does not slurp; talking over the movie is one thing but slurping over it quite another.

Milkshake! Snuggles! Movie!

Tony does not seem to have any trouble dividing his attention between Movie, Dinner, and Cuddles.

And only Movie and Cuddles are left. Hooray for those things!

So is Tony! Also, more cuddles.

Yep. Uninterrupted cuddles.

Mmhmm. Cuddly ones.