Early morning classes at the school were the same as always for Kyle, and he was anxious to get to lunch with everyone. Today’s meal was the nasty meatloaf, but he’d already wolfed down most of his meal before William finally plopped down a tray and sat across from him. Unusually, he was quiet and didn’t make a peep as he started to slowly eat his food.
“Are you sick, or something?” Kyle asked, a little worried. William wasn’t acting anything like the normal William.
“I…… Am…… Good…..” Slowly and deliberately, he drew out each word and paused between them. Something was definitely up with him!
Kyle squirmed when Jason and Darryl finally plopped down and sat their trays across from him. They too said nothing, and simply stared straight ahead at him with expectant, unblinking eyes.
“Is.. Is something wrong?” Damn if they weren’t starting to make him nervous! Kyle glanced left and right. The rest of the school lunchroom seemed to be the same as always, but his table was weird as heck, with a heavy atmosphere lingering around it. No one said a word, and Kyle’s nerves tingled even harder.
“Guys? Hello?” Slowly, he waved his hand in front of Darryl and Jason. “What’s up?”
Finally, it was Darryl who coughed and spoke first, while maintaining his unblinking glare. “We’re just giving you a chance to explain yourself to us.”
“Explain? Explain what?” Kyle asked confused.
“Explain why the hell some girl is pretending to be you, dammit!” Darryl thumped the table once with his first, and, as if that was a signal to let loose the bulls, everyone started talking at once.
“Yeah! Why! Why! Why!” William half hopped from where he was sitting. “They made me promise not to say anything until we could all find out together! I thought I was going to die! That was the hardest thing I’ve ever did. William, sit and don’t talk, I told myself, and then you talked to me and I had to talk and I thought I was going to explode!”
“Did you think we really wouldn’t notice?” Jason asked quietly.
“And why the hell does she have such a big ass wang waving it around all the time!” Darryl demanded to know.
“She’s got a wang!” William fell over backwards off the table, hit the ground and sat on his ass, and then was back up on his feet and back in his seat just a second later as if nothing had happened. “Wow! I wonder if she’ll let me see it!”
“Not her her her!” Darryl said, confusing the issue even more.
“Are you laughing? That’s a weird laugh! Her her her her her!” William tried to imitate it. “I think I like it. Her her her her her!!”
“Dammit! Not her, Sera. The her that’s her in the game. Him, her! Seran!”
“I got it,” William exclaimed. “Not her her, but her him is the her her you were talking about with the big wang! I bet she’ll let me see his if I ask nicely!”
“DAMMIT!! HUSH!!” Darryl slammed his tray against the table and the whole cafeteria got quiet as everyone stopped to stare at our table. Slowly, a teacher got up from where they were sitting at the front tables in the lunch room and walked over in our direction.
“Is everything OK here, gentlemen?” It was one of the male gym teachers who was standing and tapping his foot slightly up and down.
“Yeah, we’ll settle down,” they all agreed quietly together.
“Then I’ll let you off this time with just a warning. Next time will be detention. Got it?”
“Yes sir.” They all nodded to show they understood and the teacher slowly nodded in satisfaction to himself and walked back to the front table and sat down to talk with the other teacher’s once more.
“See what you did,” Darryl accused Kyle, staring at him directly.
“Me? What’d I do!” Kyle sounded shocked. “I didn’t say a thing! How can you blame it on me?”
“Look,” Darryl said, trying to stay calm, “Why is Seran claiming to be you? And why is Kylie claiming to be her? We waited all weekend without asking, wondering when you were going to come clean and tell us on your own, but we’re not waiting any longer. What the hell’s up?”
Sighing deeply, and waiting for everyone to calm down, Kyle finally shrugged. “Damned if I know. To be honest, I had no clue Sera was going to tell everyone she was me. I’d already told all you guys that I was elf with no name. How the heck could I play a burly human named Seran at the same time? Obviously, it wasn’t me!”
“Then why’s she pretending to be you?” Darryl asked.
“Really, I don’t know!”
William chimed in, “I bet it’s cause she’s ashamed of playing a guy. I bet lots of girls would be embarrassed playing a guy in a game.” Shrugging, he just laughed. “I don’t care. What I want to know is where’d she got a snake at! I haven’t found one in game anywhere to buy yet. I want one too!”
“What snake?” Darryl asked, sounding puzzled.
“The one you talked about in game. You said she had a huge snake! And that it was poisonous just to look at! I want one!” William was half hopping and half pouting. “It isn’t fair. She gets a snake, and all I get is a Heather to follow me around.”
“Yeah!” Darryl suddenly turned his glare over on William. “What’s up with that! Why the heck do you get to trudge around with a girl in game?”
“Cause I’m just special like that!” William stuck out his tongue and laughed. “What’s the big deal anyway. You’re with a girl too. Sera is right there with you!”
“Dude, She’s got a wang!” Darryl exclaimed. “A big ass, wiggle worm, wang! There ain’t no snake nowhere. It’s a one-eyed pee-shooter snake! A man-snake. And why the heck would I want to stand around and look at something like that?”
“I dunno.” William shrugged. “I guess cause you like looking at it and are trying to memorize it? It sounds like you can describe it pretty well already to me!”
Darryl sputtered mashed potatoes out his nose. “I do not!”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“Do it again! Do it again!” William bounced and laughed while Darryl was wiping off his face.
“Screw you Will.” Darryl flipped a forkful of potatoes over at him. “The real question is what we’re going to do about she-he and he-her. Are we just supposed to pretend we don’t know any better? It’s odd as heck to be playing with a guy, when you know he’s the girl sitting ten feet away from you. Especially when she’s crazy!”
“I dunno,” William shrugged. “I thought it sounded funny. If I’d been there, I would’ve joined her in beating up rocks. Who cares about dying? If it’s funny, it’s worth dying, and I think it’d be funny. Hi rock! Bye rock! I’m back rock! You killed me rock! Why o rock, why? Hi! Bye! I’m gonna pee on you rock! It’s just funny!”
“Funny my ass,” Darryl snorted. “She.. He… IT’s just crazy. I watched for an hour as SHIT tossed SHITself against the rocks over and over and just kept dying. It’s just nuts!”
“Hey!” Kyle finally banged his fist down on the table. “That’s Sera and not some SHIT. Don’t talk about her like that. Seran is a him, Sera is a her, and you don’t need to be so damn insulting and sound like a dumbass bigot!”
“Cool it! Cool it!” Darryl held up his hands apologetically. “Before we all end up in the principal’s office. It’s all good!”
“No.” Kyle glared daggers. “It’s not all good. You were being a complete and utter jackass. You’re better than that Darryl.”
“Yeah.” Jason spoke up softly. “It’s a girl playing a guy in a game. It’s no big deal. Talk to her as a girl, and her character as a guy, and don’t be an ass about it. There’s enough hate in the world already for anyone different. Trust me.”
Finally, Darryl just hung his head. “Sorry. Sorry. He might not be a SHIT…
“Darryl!” Kyle warned.
“… might not be what I was saying. But I still stand by the fact that she’s completely crazy. One time after another after another, she died. What the hell is up with that? And you still haven’t told me if we’re supposed to keep pretending we don’t know any better!”
“Just let her have her fun. I’m certain it’ll come out in game soon,” Kyle replied. “As for the dying over and over, she uncovered an achievement. A hundred deaths in ten minutes or something gives you a reward where you only suffer half the normal penalty for death. A thousand deaths gives a larger reduction. Since he’s level one, Seran doesn’t have anything to lose except his clothes, and he lost those in his first death. So he spent all weekend spamming deaths to take the achievement all the way up. It’s at like a ninety percent reduction to penalties and experience lost for him now.”
“Oh wow! That sounds like a huge advantage. I wonder if anyone can get that advantage, or if it’s just for wildmen humans?” William rushed to say.
“No idea,” Kyle answered. “It’s not something which I can test. I started with a quest which tells me not to die. I get an experience bonus for the longer I go in game without death, and I’ve been playing for five or six days now. I don’t want to have that reset from a bonus to a penalty. When I die, I get an increased penalty to offset that increased bonus, I guess. I’m not going to test it out.”
William shook his head from side to side frantically. “Me either! For one thing, I’d lose all my treasures I’d collected, and they’re much more valuable than experience! And then I’d go to some graveyard and Heather wouldn’t be there, and I’d have to find her again, and that’d be mean! What type of guy would I be to abandon a girl and leave her all alone in the sewers somewhere, where bandits could get her and do all the things I want to do but am too afraid that I might get neutered in real life since she’s right there to her!”
Jason interrupted him and told William, “Breathe William. Breathe. I wouldn’t do it either. There’s no easy way to die at the forge, and I can’t drink myself to death at the tavern. I’m a dwarf. No way for me to try it, really.”
“Don’t look at me!” Darryl exclaimed. “I watched it. It’s C. R. A. Z. Y. Crazy!” He spelled out each letter to emphasize them. “Besides, with my luck, it’d be one of those things that only humans can get or something. Or maybe wildmen humans in specific. You have to be a wild man to toss yourself to death a thousand times in a row!”
It was at that point, that the bell went off and everyone started to get up to empty their trays in the cafeteria.
“Wait a moment guys!” Kyle waved for them to sit back down. “I got another quest I want to talk to you all about. It’s the The Marriage Retribution Quest, and it’s something which I need everyone to help me with.”
“Sure! Count on me,” William volunteered.
“Yeah. Me an Jason will help too,” Darryl agreed and Jason nodded. “But I can’t be late for class. Email me the details, or call me later. K?”
“Just hold up a moment!” Kyle dug the papers he’d gotten from the priest earlier that morning out of his pack. “Jason, I need you to scan these in and get them photoshop ready.” Handing the papers over, Jason took them and nodded while tucking them into his own pack without even looking to see what they were.
“And William, you need to run into the Courthouse after school and get us a few different copies of some marriage certificates on file. Look for some recent ones. Tell whoever helps you that it’s for a school project or something. That works.”
“Sure! I’m on it!” William saluted, grabbed his tray, ran and emptied it, and then ran out of the lunchroom.
“And Darryl, your part will come tomorrow. I hope William waits until after school to go. I did say that, didn’t I?”
“Why not say that sooner!” Darryl snorted. “I could’ve been out of here already. Just tell me what you need tomorrow, and I’ll help with it. K?”
“Thanks guys.” Kyle finally picked up his own tray and went to empty it. “Revenge is the greatest quest of all!”