After finishing our overpriced-but-delicious breakfast, Aria declared that we weren't heading home just yet. "We can't waste a perfectly good day in Avalon!" she said with a grin that told me I wasn't getting a vote in the matter.
And so began the whirlwind sibling tour of the capital.
First stop: a sprawling arcade that somehow combined cutting-edge virtual reality games with old-school classics. Aria insisted on challenging me to a few rounds of BattleZone Chronicles, a competitive VR shooter. I'll admit, her skills were better than I expected, and she took great joy in repeatedly sniping me from ridiculous angles.
"You're too predictable!" she taunted, her voice coming through the comms as her avatar did a victory dance over my virtual corpse.
"You've played this game before!" I shot back, ducking behind cover in the real world as though it might save me.
"Not my fault you're bad," she quipped, capping it off with a well-timed rocket launcher shot that ended our match.
