Kyle was laughing and putting on his shoes when Darryl burst into his house, shaking. “DUDE! You almost got us killed! You sent us to some crazy biker’s house, or something!” Panting, he was trying to catch his breath. “Dude, that’s not cool!”
“It’s not a big deal,” Kyle assured him. “It’s just some idiot junkie that used to hit on Sera’s mom. I’ll go take care of him.”
“He’ll kill you!” William hopped excitedly. “That’ll be something to see! I’ll come watch, but as soon as you’re dead, I’m out of there. He’ll have to catch me to kill me, and I don’t plan on being anyone’s supper!”
“Me either,” Kyle said while grabbing up his helmet. “I’ll just go beat some sense into him.” Striding confidently past Darryl, Kyle opened the door and boldly walked outside while the other three boys trailed a little ways behind. Glancing back and seeing he was being followed, Kyle smirked real big and dashed across the yawn and jumped the hedge.
“Old man, I’m coming to kick your ass!” He yelled as he rounded the corner of the house. The others glanced at each other a little nervously, uncertain what to do. William was the first to shrug, running to lead the way. “Wait one me! I got to see this,” he yelled.
Darryl just glanced over at Jason, and the both of them sheepishly shrugged at each other. Taking their time, they slowly worked their way through the gate William had left swinging open. Grimacing, imagining a scene of bloodshed around the corner, they instead found Kyle standing at the sliding door and waiting on them. Waving for them to hurry up, he half yelled, “Come on! I’m letting all the heat out!”
Jason hesitated, and turned to look at Darryl, who just shrugged at him. After reaching a mental consensus, they both hurried and eased into the house. Kyle confidently strode in as if he owned the place, and slid the door shut behind him.
“WHO DA HELL DAT? YOU PEPPER TOMMYS BEST NOT BE BACK!”
A gruff male’s voice echoed from one of the deeper rooms in the house, and all three boys turned to stare at Kyle, who only shrugged his shoulders and then yelled back. “Shut it, old man! We’re here to ravish the women upstairs. Don’t get in my way!”
“SAVE ME SOME,” came the gruff voice back.
Half laughing, Kyle casually walked on into the house and up a set of stairs. The others followed, looking left and right at everything they passed. The downstairs was a mess, with scattered pages and sheets of paper everywhere. It looked like a tornado had ran wildly through a library and simply covered everything in a mad frenzy of strewn leaflets. Ignoring it all, as if it wasn’t even there, Kyle continued up the steps and they were forced to follow. It really did look as if it might be the den of a crazy drug addict!
Getting at the top of the stairs, Kyle unhesitantly led the way down the hall and to the door on the far left. “If you’re naked in there, I’m going to ravish you,” he boldly declared. “And if you’re not naked, I’m going to make you that way, and then ravish you!”
“O, puhleeze!” Heather’s voice was as dismissive as ever, but Sera was giggling lightly as they walked in. “We’re not naked, so you can’t ravish us,” she said while twirling in a light yellow sundress that went down to about her knees. “Well, Heather might be,” she admitted and pointed over to the bed where Heather laid on her stomach, covered in the blankets. Only her head and arms were visible as she was reading a book when they walked in. “You’ll just have to check for yourselves,” Sera continued mischievously.
“Then I shall!” Kyle boldly declared while tugging the covers back and off into the floor.
“Hey!” Heather looked back and glared daggers at him. Instead of being naked like Sera had claimed so boldly, she was instead wearing a pair of plain black sweatpants and sweatshirt. “Jerkface,” she declared as she eased up and flicked her hair behind her shoulders with a flick of her head. “And things were so nice here before you all showed up,” she snorted.
“Wow!” Jason gave a slight exclamation of wonder and Heather wrinkled her nose in disgust.
“Just keep your eyes to yourself,” she demanded.
“Not you,” Jason said flatly. “Is that an actual V-RIG server?” Ignoring Heather as if she wasn’t even there, he waddled around her and knelt down at the base of the window, as if he was worshipping at an altar. “It is! It really is,” he declared exuberantly. “That’s a custom X99 model!”
“Oh wow!” William’s eyes lit up in surprise and he rushed over to look as well. “It really is! That’s so awesome!”
Heather looked flabbergasted and blinked a few times in surprise. Suddenly she grabbed up a white helmet and slid it on her head, before she climbed up on the bed and slid all the way across it to the far side. “Well, are you idiots going to stand there all day, or are we going to get this game started?” She asked.
“They might want a drink or something first,” Sera offered helpfully.
“They can just do without. I’ve waited his long, I want to do some research and increase my magic sometime today,” Heather said.
Looking at the others, Kyle shrugged and slid his helmet on. Clicking the camera button up top gave him a 3-D view of his surroundings, while the headset inside made certain the noise level stayed comfortable. “Where we all going to sit,” he asked Sera, a little confused. Her room wasn’t the largest after all, and she’d never had much company over, so there was only the bed and the chair at the vanity table to really sit in.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Just make yourselves at home guys. The range on the sat-signal is pretty good.” Sera shrugged slightly and then went over and picked up a pink helmet from where it lay against the wall. Two black ones, and a blue one remained behind, waiting to be used when she walked back over to everyone else. “Honestly, the range might even be far enough you could’ve logged in from Kyle’s house. It’s not too far away after all.”
“Yeah, but where’s the fun in that?” William declared, before he suddenly hopped up and down. “Waitaminute!” Suddenly he squirmed past everyone and was dashing recklessly down the steps. “I left my helmet outside when I threw it, when that biker attacked us! I’ll be right back!”
“Biker?” Sera asked, curiously.
“Your father,” Kyle answered. Looking around, there wasn’t any really good place to sit, so help hopped up on the bed and slid over close to Heather.
“Get away from me, you pervert!” She elbowed him lightly in the ribs and Kyle grunted a bit from the impact.
“Just shut up and deal with it,” he snapped back. “Pervert!”
Heather was silent for a few moments and then simply snorted. “Whatever,” she dismissed derisively. “Just keep your hands to yourself.”
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever, right back at you.” Kyle answered. “Now, question is, how the heck are we going to find each other in game?”
“O, puhleeze!” Heather groaned.
“Puhleeze yourself,” Kyle snapped back, starting to get annoyed at her. “It’s an honest question!”
Sighing like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders, Heather told him, “All you have to do is make everyone a friend on your system.”
“Hold up a second,” Sera exclaimed, while hopping up and taking up the rest of the room on the bed as she stretched out beside Kyle. “Walk me through this as well.”
William could be heard storming back up the steps, as Kyle asked, “Didn’t you guys do this last night, when Heather slept over?”
“Nope.” Sera giggled. “I made Heather wait so we could all log in together and play!”
“I’m back,” William exclaimed as he ran into the room carrying his helmet. “Oh wow! Kyle’s got all the girls!”
“Just shut up and log in,” Heather demanded. “Kyle don’t have shit.”
“I hope not!” William laughed. “If he did, it’d stink!”
Sera laughed lightly and repeated for William, “Just find a spot and make yourselves at home anywhere.”
Jason had already sat down in the chair at the vanity table, and Darryl just glanced over at William and shrugged. After a moment, they both sat down in the floor and leaned back against the wall. “It’s more fun when you’re all together,” William declared.
“Oh shut it!” Heather declared once more. “As I was trying to tell you, Sera, simply add me as a friend.”
“Well, how do I do that?”
“Once you’re at your OS screen; it should basically look like whatever you’re looking at, when the camera is active, concentrate on your ID number,” Heather told her, a lot more softly than she’d been speaking earlier.
“Umm… 12DX-76VB-009T-MX99 is what’s floating on a screen, which almost seems to be sitting on the bed now,” Sera informed her.
“Good,” Heather praised her. “See, it’s not hard. Now, all the jerkfaces have to do is concentrate on adding that number to their friends list.”
“You should’ve mentioned something like that earlier,” Kyle grumbled. “What was it again, Sera?”
“12DX-76VB-009T-MX99,” she replied with some excitement creeping into her voice. “Now, what’s everyone else’s?”
After a few moments of exchanging their different ID numbers, Heather went on to finish explaining. “Now, whenever you log into a game, it should offer to automatically connect you to any of your friends who are in game. You can either agree, or deny, for each person, if you want. All it does is let you see a small snapshot of their character, and send chat back and forth to them – you just concentrate if you want to send it to one person in specific or your whole friend list; a lot of people mess up and say embarrassing things starting out, so watch yourself,” she warned.
“Once you’re in game, you can talk back and forth, send party invites, and see each other on your map and such things,” Heather continued. “If, of course, Winter’s Tale has the same basic set up as all the other VR interfaces I’ve worked with.”
“Yeppers! It’s the same,” William confirmed. “That’s how I friended my little brother in game already. And making friends in game is easy! You just go up, tell someone, ‘Hi, I’m Insert Character Name Here, let’s be friends!’, and then they say, ‘Sure!’ and they’re added to your friend list. In game only though,” William clarified.
“All you jerkfaces understand?” Heather asked. When no one said anything, she clicked the button on the top of her helmet off, and said, “Log In, Winter’s Tale.”
A few moments later, they all were saying, “Log In, Winter’s Tale”, and turning off their cameras.