[Hey. This’ll piss off Dad if he finds out, but I’m ready to meet up. Breakfast tomorrow, 7:30. Stanley’s.]

It was happening.

[Sure. Be there or be square, loser.]

My reply was somewhat risky, but if he was still the Joey I knew, he’d find it funny. I sent off messages to Duri and Annette, hoping they’d see them and adjust their alarms accordingly. Annette and Duri were normally first and second out of bed when we stayed over at Duri’s, but if their sleep schedules had changed as much as mine since starting B&B, they could’ve been waking up at 3pm and sleeping at 8am, as far as I knew.

[Joey sent me a message, keen to meet up. Stanley’s tomorrow morn, 7:30. Not actually sure if y’all are invited, but just come,]

Annette replied with a thumbs up, and Duri’s icon said he’d read the message, but didn’t respond.

Huh.

I knew our meeting would be awkward enough already, and I really didn’t need Duri being snooty. He was of the opinion that Joey’s attitude toward them was only very partially attributable to his dad, and that it was primarily just one of our oldest friends turning into a dick.

With that, I tried my best to sleep. As usual, it wasn’t until I’d replayed about fifteen different scenarios in my head that I finally nodded off.

###

The alarm melded into my dream, the falsetto voice of my least favourite opera singer interrupting whatever I was thinking about. I slammed my hand into my Yurt, tapping away at every pixel on the screen except for the ones that would shut her off. I was normally accurate, but recent events had discombobulated me.

I had a bowl of cereal before leaving for Stanley’s. The breakfast menu there was almost as greasy as their dinner menu, with fifty types of butter to drown in and countless desserts and cakes that disguised themselves as breakfast by containing carrot or walnuts. I’d happily munch down on a hash brown, but I didn’t need the bucket of oil to go with it.

In a way, it felt like old times. Annette found me not long after I passed her block, and she sent me a photo of myself from behind. I checked my Yurt when it vibrated, whirling around in confusion.

“Is that seriously what I look like from behind?”

“Kind of. Your posture actually looks okay in that photo — you mightn’t like the side-profile so much.”

She pulled out her Yurt and aimed it at me while she walked alongside. I hid my chin and half my face in my jumper, then frowned at the camera.

“Better than normal, actually.”

I sneered at her, and we kept walking.

Duri and Joey were waiting for us outside Stanley’s Diner. They stood at least three meters apart, not speaking.

“Hey guys. How goes it?”

“Good.”

“Fine.”

Annette had lost her enthusiasm as well. We were a bundle of fun already.

“Alright, well, let’s at least eat something while the prisoner pleads his innocence.”

Duri chuckled, and Joey grimaced. We went inside and found a booth, each hiding behind our menus as though we didn’t know exactly what was on them, and exactly what we’d order.

“Soooo, last time we were all here together, I was in the dump. This time it looks like I’m the happiest of all of us. What’s the goss at the Fields? Any towns in ruin? Foreign invasions?”

Annette piped up, willing to contribute while the other two continued hiding.

“People are starting to adventure a lot further than they used to. Apparently if you go far enough, it’s not even Fields anymore. Just…Elthen.”

Joey lowered his laminated defence for a moment. “I’ve been there. Well, my team has. With me. It’s pretty cool, much better than the wet grass and the [Demon Sheep] taking you out at the knees.”

Duri chuckled, finally losing his glum attitude.

“[Demon Sheep]?” I asked. “Can’t say we’ve got them over at the Yard. It’s more…[Darthogs] and [Goblins].”

“[Darthogs]?” Joey cried. “What are they, pigs that run around shooting darts? That’s ridiculous!”

“Bro, you’re the one who mentioned [Demon Sheep]! How is that more normal than a [Darthog]? And no, they’re literally just very small, very angry boars.”

Somehow, I was on the losing side of the argument. I blamed it on my inferior numbers, but I was assured quite confidently by all members that the Yard was utterly messed up, and the Fields were the place to be.

“Yeah, well, we can’t all be born with a forty-carat diamond in our hands, huh? Some of us have to earn our keep.”

That pushed Duri over the edge, and I happily ordered two hash browns from the waiter-bot while he berated me about all the hours he ‘worked’ at Garlic Garters, and how his parents did this and that so blah blah blah.

“Shut it, Duri,” Annette decided. “I’ve got some better news. Joey, did you know that Ollie has a girlfriend? Tell ‘im, Ollie.”

Oooh, rough timing.

“Ah. Yeah, about that.”

“Uh-oh.”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Uh-oh indeed. This is gunna sound weird without context, but I kind of maybe stabbed her in the neck after she told me her dad was really sick and she needed money to save him.”

A mother in the booth behind Annette and Joey turned around to glare daggers at me, and Joey spat out his first sip of lemonade.

“Holy crap, Ollie! That is literally one of the worst sentences I’ve ever heard in my life. You’ve gotta at least try to explain,” he demanded.

“Yeah bro, it was like, not that long ago that you mentioned her at Garters. Weren’t you all chummy back then?”

I’d wanted to tell them the story in different circumstances, and not use humour to get myself through it. But it came out that way, and the genie wasn’t going back in the bottle.

“It turned out she was working with the Asterians — the bad guys if you haven’t been keeping up with things — and they were going to pay her some amount of krad if they won. The one-on-one was against her, and I couldn’t bring myself to sacrifice the town. It’s cold, I know. Kind of regret it.”

“That is metal, dude. Hard-fucking-core.”

“Yep. I’m gunna work something out though, trust me.”

Annette merely nodded, no doubt waiting to talk me out of another hare-brained scheme when it arose.

Our food came out, and I was glad I wasn’t paying for everyone this time round. It looked like Joey and Duri were competing to see who could beat the other to Type 2 diabetes. There were muffins, bacon, scrambled eggs and about two cups of Stanley’s Sizzling Special Sauce for them to wade through. Annette had her usual plate of hash browns and aioli, and I snacked on my miserably smaller portion.

“So Joey, how’s your…uh, experience been? What’s it like being in a raid team? Are you the leader or the water-boy?”

“Water-boy,” Duri said.

Joey took a breath and stuttered through a few words, as though he’d had something prepared but it didn’t fit the conversation.

“Well…I guess…Yeah. Not the water-boy, that’s for sure. It’s…cool, but, yeah, it’s cool.”

“Great. It’s cool. Dope. Let’s pack up and go home then, eh?”

“Fuck offff,” he laughed. “You guys are looking at me like every word I say is a step through a paddock of land mines. Are we good?”

Annette made a ha! noise into her hash brown, and Duri just raised his eyebrows.

“I mean, you blew us off, man. I don’t want to re-live it, but shit wasn’t cool. I’m not even in the Fields and it hurt.”

“You made me cry,” Annette mumbled. “I’m not a crier, ever. You and Duri are the ones that take tissues to the cinema.”

He had the decorum to put down the hunk of oily bacon he was about to devour and wipe his hands on a napkin.

“I’m sorry. I really, really am. There’s no excuse, so I won’t bother, but it was a huge fuck up. I know that.”

“Correct,” she mumbled.

“But guys, my dad will kill me if I stop with this team, and the raids, and all this other stuff. He’s not the most accepting bloke, and when he found out all his buddies had sons and daughters in our year, he just went for it. It’s a second-generation team, and they’ve got big plans for us. They’re already in talks with some powerful guilds. I can’t just walk away.”

My view of his father had deteriorated over the weekend, falling well past the point of no return. It hadn’t started off very high, but now whenever I thought about the break-in, I pictured him climbing our ladder, breaking the window and pushing over Mom’s Pod. To hear about his cult of B&B buddies didn’t help his standing.

Duri was busy digging into a muffin, but he stopped himself as Joey finished.

“This isn’t what pisses me off the most, but I just don’t understand why you ditched Annette and I for the others. Like, Annette is the hardest worker out of all of us, and my track-record isn’t too bad either, so why not invite us? What’s to lose?”

Joey squirmed a bit in his seat. He shouldn’t have sat in his usual corner — we were boxing him in like an interrogation.

“There’s nothing to lose, but it wasn’t up to me. There was no ‘invitation’ or anything — I rocked up on the day and Dad told me where to go so I went there. Lo and behold, there’s seven or eight other graduates going, ‘Joey? Peter’s son?’, and off we went.”

“So your dad just hates us.”

I had to interrupt, because Duri was going way overboard. This was supposed to be less about naming names and instead about rekindling more than a decade of friendship.

“Alllright, lay off the poor bloke. The grease on your bacon is gunna solidify soon and you’ll realise just how terrible that shit is for you.”

Joey and Duri eyed off each other, then their rapidly cooling breakfasts. Fortunately, their food won the battle.

Inviting Duri and Annette might’ve been a mistake. It was no coincidence that Joey’s father was paying more attention to me now that I’d made the front page, but I got the feeling that Joey had more to say than just inviting me to whatever his fancy raid team was called.

I’d work that out another time — it was better to just enjoy the four of us being back together.

“I suppose we better go to Major Pods, just for old times’ sake?”

###

We shopped around for a while, but our Pod setups were all new enough that they didn’t require any touch ups or additional decoration.

To be fair, I’d never even started decorating my Pod, but its natural beauty and the ‘Todd & Podd’ logo on the side spoke for themselves. Unless it got tipped over by a maniac burglar, I’d have her for a longggg time.

At the VIP section, a security guard dressed in black sunglasses, a black turtleneck, black suit and black shoes held out an arm to stop us from entering. With our attempt thwarted, I turned away, content to look at things somewhat within my price range.

“Hey, wait a sec,” Joey said. “You know who this is? It’s The Underdog. Ollie Matanor. Check the newspapers man, he’s the guy.” He pointed at me, all dressed up in my Sunday-worst.

The guard looked me over and frowned at my outfit.

“The Underdog, huh? Well, your clothes certainly match the name. Don’t think so though, carry on.”

Joey pouted and I marched forward to grab him by the collar.

“Why don’t you just announce it to the world, huh? Let everyone know where I l—”

“OLIVER MATANOR!” boomed a deep voice from across the store. A man with a belly that put Dale’s to shame waddled over, his massive palms outstretched like he was going to hug me. He wore as much purple as the security guard wore black, and he capped it all off with a top hat that he weaved around the hanging lightbulbs.

“Hello?” I squawked, backing away and placing Joey in front of me. “How can I help you?”

“OLLIE! CAN I CALL YOU OLLIE?”

Now that he was next to me, I had to block my ears from his mighty voice. He noticed me do so, and immediately his face softened as he reached out to place a hand on my shoulder.

“Oh, sorry! My apologies, Oliver and friends. I’m struggling a bit with my hearing, recently. Deaf in the left, and half in the right the doctor says. My apologies.”

He went around the circle, shaking hands and asking names.

“Duri? Lovely to meet you Duri. Annette? Beautiful name, ‘twas my grandmother’s. And Joeyyy, can’t go wrong there.”

I checked the guard, noting he stood with his head bowed, inspecting his shoes rather closely. It was clear that this man was someone, but who he was still had to be discovered. He waved us back to the VIP room, wagging a finger at the security guard.

“If Ollie Matanor and his friends aren’t VIPs, who is? Let’s see what we can do for you guys, huh?”

We stepped through the curtain, ushered in by our portly guide. The room was dark, with dotted lights guiding us along a walkway while ultra-advanced Pods were presented to us on spinning belts. For a Pod fanatic, this was luxury.

Perhaps being famous had some perks after all.