Haru ceases onioning. "Well, Nightmare talks, but."

"...Yeah, no, I'm sort of tempted to try talking to one of the little ones but Nightmare..."

"And as far as I've heard - I've never been in it - it does this pretty purely in the capacity of 'sometimes people's nightmares have verbal content'."

The clock ticks out. They got... Three stars!!

"...Change of topic?"

"Uh - sure, what other games do you like that have multiplayer?"

"There's Factorio like I mentioned... Mario Party, some fighting games, some tactical strategy games that are, uh, versus-mode so I predict those won't appeal... Ooh, the portal 2 multiplayer levels might be really fun."

"I've heard great things about Portal. I'm not actually sure a versus game would be a problem on my end, I'd have to try it, but it could be on yours?"

"...I'm honsetly not sure? I'm getting sorta low on backlash again but, people playing games do it to have fun or to win, not to indulge me. If anything I'm worried you're not having fun in the kitchen game at all. We could try playing Chess. El classico vanilla versus-type game."

"Yeah, I think I'd rather play chess than more Kitchen Dungeons. Sorry, Overcooked."

"It's not for everyone."

He's being such a burden, pushing his preferred games on Haru. Shut up backlash. (He IS though. Backlash is not amenable to simply being told to shut up.)

Well, he can fix this by doing as told and finding some sort of online chess client instead.

"I don't really know... A lot about chess. So at least I won't effortlessly trounce you probably."

"I've never studied the game either, I just, like, know the rules."

"Equal match, then."

Oh, here's a dead simple free online chess client. He creates a game.

"Here, if you just open this website and type in this game code we'll match up I think?"

"...sorry, can you like read it to me, at this level I can do it if I stare at it long enough but it's faster if you spell it."

"Sure."

He reads off the URL, and then a string of eight numbers for the game code with very clear customer service diction.

Haru gets it typed in and joins the game. "Pawn to... d4."

"You're white? Okay. Uh... Knight to... I think that's C6?"

"Pawn to c3 I guess."

"Hmm... Pawn to h5. I think the best, most enduring games often have - dead simple rules that tons of complexity can fall out of."

"I hear good things about Go on this front." Haru makes a legal and sensible chess move. "But that one I don't even know the rules for."

"I've heard of it being basically Chinese chess... Unless I'm misremembering."

(The game can continue in the background.)

"The pieces are all the same, I know that."

Cricket comes in through the cat flap. "Who is that?" he asks Haru, looking Teddy up and down.

"This is Teddy and you are under particularly strict instructions to be nice while he is backlashed."

"Harrumph." Cricket hops onto Haru's lap to peer at the chess game.

"Um, hello."

...He resumes aggressive knight behavior??

"Do you think someone could point me at a dungeon without signing up for an agent per se? To see if I can... Help, at all."