“This season just isn’t as good as last year.” John voiced. The four of them were lounging about in Aaron’s swanky luxury apartment above a bakery that got way too much of Lucy’s almost as swanky lawyer paychecks, on account of passing it by at least once a week when the group hung out after work or on weekends. She glanced sidelong at John, somewhat suspicious of his reasoning.
“I feel like the people are much more balanced this season. Less drama…” She started, but he interrupted with a grunt, putting down the beer he’d just taken a swig from.
“Last season there were a lot more hot chicks. It’s all about the drama anyways. This Me Too stuff is great, really, long time coming, but I’m not watching trash reality TV for balance.” Lucy rolled her eyes and inwardly cringed. How it was that she had ever been entangled with John she just couldn’t fathom. How she’d done it more than once was truly a mystery. Several times if she was honest. Yet somehow the jerk that was borderline abusive to women and objectified them openly based on ‘hotness’ was also an HR manager for a women run business. She wept for herself and women everywhere. At least Aaron and Alan hadn’t caught on to their secret flings, not in almost ten years of being friends. That would be another layer on the embarrassment shit-cake that was her romantic life.
Aaron just sighed and slipped the coaster back under John’s beer. Couldn’t ruin the mahogany table, the thing cost a fortune. Hand made right here in the USA by some of the most expensive craftsman around. Nothing more expensive than hand crafted work in one of the most expensive countries in the world with a culture that valued treating durable goods as single use, making them out of plastic that was slowly poisoning them and mutating their DNA, all made in foreign countries that were borderline enemies. Good ol’ USA. Not that he cared about that stuff… he just liked that it was expensive, like everything else in his apartment. Not to mention the apartment itself! Totally befitting a rising tech executive like himself.
The fourth member of the illustrious reality TV viewing crowd was the lackluster and ever unmotivated one that remained part of the group through their machinations alone. If they were honest, nobody could quite say why they always worked to keep Alan around, given that they had to basically drag him with them to do anything. Not that he wasn’t a decent companion when it came to gaming or chatting about interesting books, but the guy never seemed to have any spark beyond fleeting moments. Not to mention he was in a high paying field and managed to find the lowest demand and most boring work in it. What kind of engineer in the tech focused city did HVAC design work? Somehow he managed to spend almost all of his ‘work’ time playing games or reading books and still perform ‘adequately’.
There was a quiet betting pool among the friends as to whether or not Alan would be fired for not performing at work, but in the ten years since he’d graduated, he’d only held the one position. No promotions, raises that barely if at all matched with inflation, just kept keeping on. Hell, if Aaron was honest, he knew from the developer that the HVAC design for the multi-use space that this luxury apartment was part of had been designed by Alan’s firm. In the hot summer climate it was actually notably better than the other’s apartments and the utility bills surprisingly low. Maybe it was those little things that made them doubt that Alan really was such a non-achiever. He was practically the only HVAC engineer at the building engineering firm he worked at. It wasn’t a small firm either.
The show continued along with mostly John and Lucy’s comments, going back and forth and building up heat as the HR manager slash objectifier of women and the junior lawyer slash woman progressed towards their usual argument regarding the topic of treatment of women or men based on their sex appeal. Aaron frowned and changed to streaming a YouTube compilation video of funny tweets about cats, shifting the argument to his unapproved choice to turn off what they were watching. He smiled a little though, unnoticed by the arguing not-couple, when they sat down and eventually started laughing at the tweets.
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Lucy was still agitated, so she went downstairs to get some cheesecake while Aaron enlisted Alan to setup the latest game system with the justification that Alan was an engineer and it would take an engineer to understand how to plug all the damn electronics in. With a sigh of annoyance, Alan pulled the thing out of its new packaging and got it all setup. Lucy returned with cheesecake for three of them and pulled some fruit out of Aaron’s perpetually stocked pantry for John, who was always ‘watching his health’. After she washed and cut up the fruit like he was a kid, they sat down and watched Alan boot the system up.
“Wait, shit, I didn’t buy any games to play.” Aaron added in. Alan shrugged and tossed him one of the four controllers.
“Just setup an account, everything is downloaded now anyways. Maybe we should try this indie release game I read about. Apparently the graphics aren’t as awesome, but the gameplay for groups is supposed to be awesome. Sword and sorcery kind of thing.” That piqued Lucy’s interest and Aaron was pretty much game once Alan told him the game allowed you to buy up buildings and eventually whole towns, become royalty and rule fiefs, counties, entire kingdoms. John ate the apple and kiwi appreciatively. If someone had asked, he might have commented on how the kiwi reminded him of the slightly fuzzy, tart on the outside, sweet on the inside creature that was a woman… but nobody did ask, to the benefit of them all. Instead he was left with the warm feeling he got when Lucy remembered these little things about him without even asking.
They made their characters, John playing the sole female, citing that there had to be at least one ‘hot piece of ass’ in the group as they played. Lucy playing a male because she ‘wouldn’t play such an objectified character’. They made an eclectic, but effective, adventuring team. Aaron built their riches and managed the loot and general leadership. John handled the diplomatic mission elements with ease. Lucy found several ways to exploit some of the spells for easy wins in battle with almost no mana expenditure. Alan just… well, Alan somehow always managed to do the bare minimum and yet always just enough that nobody was too irritated.
Even in gaming he was just ‘adequate’.
“Ah, this is some kind of boss?” Lucy leaned forward and started mashing her spell combos on the now familiar controller. Aaron and John did their parts flawlessly, but it just wasn’t enough. They’d gone into an area too dangerous for their group and it was heading towards a total respawn, the first in the long weekend night of playing. “Shit, just as well, it’s probably like four in the morning already…” She trailed off as they somehow continued to survive. Each time one of them was about to fall, Alan barely intervened to distract the boss.
His character just barely avoided being smashed, barely did any damage, barely kept them alive, barely… well, barely did anything and yet it was just barely enough. Shaking their heads and smiling as they got back into it, the group built up a new rhythm. The boss was damned near unbeatable at their character levels. They literally destroyed most of their equipment just attacking it, burning through the durability of everything until one by one they fell, leaving Alan soloing it with the indestructible starter gear that all the others had since disposed of for inventory space.
Lucy went and made them all some tea and Aaron cursed and started polishing at a spot where John’s ice water had sat on the table, once again off the coaster. John just leaned back and watched the display of slow, repetitive chipping away at the boss health. For almost another half an hour they watched the HP bar creep down to nothing. The boss switched tactics and went for an area attack when…
“Holy shit Alan, you had that in your inventory the entire time? WTF man?” Alan smirked at John’s comment as the one time use epic spell scroll effect filled the screen with light effects and the sound effects blasted from the surround sound system. The boss went down. They’d gotten a ‘World’s First!’ achievement under their group name. Alan went to select ‘no’ on posting it to the global scoreboard, but Aaron snatched the controller from him and selected ‘yes’.
“No way in hell that isn’t getting up there after we spent almost a solid hour on that boss!” Three friends fistbumped their victory over Alan’s head, then proceeded to clean up after themselves. Hot herbal tea and more water was had, bathrooms were used. Nobody had work the next day, but John had downed a few too many beers followed by not enough hydration. They decided to crash there, with Lucy taking the spare bedroom with the futon and Alan and John crashing on the two couches. Goodnights and joking good mornings were said and they all fell asleep.