I <3 U

Forty feet beneath the streets of Junction City, far away from homework, ex-girlfriends, or judgmental families, three slayers plodded through sewer tunnels at the behest of a homeless woman. Partly because they had a sneaking suspicion that the raggedy old woman might be more than meets the eye, and they were on the cusp of a new rabbit hole to jump down. And partly because Bookworm was still about thirty levels behind the rest of the guild and taking them along on high level quests was the fastest way to bring them up to speed in time for the raid. 

Watching the sewage pool and slosh around her ankles, Archerella tried not to imagine the sludge seeping into her boots, squelching between her toes with every step. A few feet in front of her, Redline walked ahead, the light from his pistol’s flashlight slowly panning back and forth across the tunnel’s walls and ceiling, shining across the opaque waters in front of them. Bringing up the rear, Bookworm was barely paying attention, content to let the two seasoned players lead the way while she rummaged through her inventory. All of them were freshly coated in grayish brown mystery fluid, which clung to their legs, to the coattails of Redline’s duster, to the ends of Bookworm's scarf, and to the hem of Archerella’s skirt.  It was at once an attention to detail, a sign of the toll their traversal through their surroundings was taking, and an immersion breaker, since the sewage wasn’t nearly high enough to reach everywhere that it was now displayed on them, even factoring in splashing.

“God, what do you think this place would smell like?” Redline asked. 

“Why do you want to know?” Archerella asked, punctuating her words with a gag.

“I mean, I’m curious,” Redline said. “You always see people in movies or tv going through sewers, and they maybe react to the smell once and they're fine. I always wondered if you could actually do anything with that smell hanging around. My sister left dishes in the sink for a week once, and I think I actually died for a second when that hit me."

"My house has a new tiny occupant who hasn't figured out how toilets work," Bookworm chimed in. "Yesterday I caught a whiff of the trash can they toss used diapers in. Before I figured out where the smell was coming from I thought something had died in that room."

“No, you want to talk about death,” Archerella countered. “There was one concert I went to that I think had three portables for the whole thing, and I had to change in one. I went blind.”

“Ouch,” Redline winced. “I’ve had some bad public restrooms, but never that bad.”

“Lucky you,” Archerella retorted. "I’ve seen things I can’t unsee. Things that would make you question humanity, and beg for the sweet release of death.”

"How do you unsee something if you were blind when you saw it?" Bookworm asked, prompting a glare from Archerella. There was no button on the keyboard for "kick sewage at the new, smart ass party member," but if there was, Archerella would have mashed it. 

“…so where do you guys think this place sits on a scale of one to blinding porta potties?” Redline asked.

“What the fuck conversation are we even having right now?” Archerella groaned, the droop of her head audible in the sigh that bookended her words.

“One of absolute boredom,” Bookworm answered. 

Up ahead, Redline was searching their surroundings with a furrowed brow. For the fifth time, he checked the minimap in the top corner of his screen, as if checking it enough times would magically convince it to provide him with an actual objective marker, instead of the hazy “search the area” circle they were already fast approaching the border of. He looked around, cross referencing his surroundings with the black and green minimalist display. There was a fairly sizeable junction room up ahead in the tunnel, but even just eyeballing the distance Redline could tell they would be well outside the objective region before they entered the room. Wherever the monster they were looking for was, it wasn’t up ahead. And since they were in a straight tunnel, that meant they’d gone the wrong way. Again.

“Hold up,” Redline said with a sigh as he came to a stop. “We missed it.”

“What do you mean we missed it?” Archerella demanded.

“I mean we missed it. It’s not down this way,” Redline repeated, already opening up his full map to try and find a path back to the rest of the searchable area.

"So, are all quests in this game like this, or are you guys just under some kind of gypsy curse?" Bookworm asked.

"Honestly it's kind of hit and miss," Redline explained. "The game has a pretty good track record of giving good information overall, but it's kind of been dropping the ball lately. This expansion especially, the devs seem to think the 'open ended' means never putting down a single objective marker. It could be worse though. Archerella could be party leader."

"Hey!" Archerella protested, more to avoid Redline telling another person the story she knew he had in mind than because she disagreed with him. That only seemed to draw Bookworm's interest, as she now looked at Redline expectantly.

"What'd she do?" Bookworm asked, and a grin spread across Redline's face. Archerella was glaring daggers, but the gunslinger wasn't so easily deterred.

"Don't tell it,"Archerella warned.

"I'm gonna tell it," Redline retorted, before launching into one of his favorite stories. "So this was back in vanilla, I think. No expansions were out yet, so it was… three years ago? Back then, only the party leader could see the objectives, and they had to guide everyone else. I was just killing time online, when some noob with a sniper rifle asks if I can join her party and help her with a quest."

"Wait," Bookworm interrupted. They looked at Archerella, whose outfit was a cross between a champion archer and a superhero, and who slung a bow and arrow to the exclusion of every other weapon. "You used to use a sniper rifle?"

"They hadn't added bows to the game yet," Archerella muttered. 

"You made it work okay," Redline remembered, softening ever so briefly before continuing. "So, I figured, why not. She was at the point in the game where everything was fetch or kill quests, so I thought it'd be easy. Here's the thing about those quests though. They're only easy if you actually know how to get where you're going. And she did not. We circled the same building for ten minutes, because she swore that we were exactly where her map said we should be."

"Were you?" Bookworm asked.

"Yes," Archerella cut in.

"We were twelve stories below where we needed to be," Redline corrected. "We were circling the bottom floor of the building, but the objective was on the roof. And it took ten minutes of talking her through what was on her screen to figure it out, because someone didn't know how to read the elevation markers on the minimap. But that's not even the best part. Ask her why it took us so long to find the building in the first place."

"I'm muting you now," Archerella announced.

"Fine, I'll tell them," Redline said.

"I can't hear what you're saying, but I'm assuming it's bullshit," Archerella called out, louder than Redline would have ever tried to get away with in his own house.

"She didn't know how to open the world map," Redline told Bookworm, as Archerella marched onward, now oblivious to his voice.

"You didn't know how to open the map?" Bookworm asked Archerella. Having only muted Redline, Bookworm's question reached Archerella. Again she longed for a "kick sewage" button, but settled for unmuting Redline so she could hear him beg for forgiveness as she yelled, "Fuck you!"

Instead of cowering, Redline and Bookworm both just laughed, leaving the archer to brood and imagine the satisfaction she might get from reaching her hand through Redline's screen and slamming his head against his own keyboard.

“Where the fuck is this crocodile?” Archerella groaned in exasperation, hoping to change the subject

Archerella couldn't see Redline's smile through the two screens and two thousand miles that separated them, but his tired laugh bounced melodically in her ears. The way he could enjoy himself, at God knows what hour in the morning, after God knows how long walking in circles looking for a damn crocodile, left her conflicted over whether she wanted to be him or to beat the crap out of him. 

"Oh, you think this is funny?" Archerella snapped.

"Getting lost again? No," Redline clarified, still chuckling. "You're just hilarious when you're annoyed."

Archerella decided she'd very much like to beat the crap out of Redline. "I will shoot you."

"We're in the same party," Redline reminded as he started walking back the way they'd come. A few steps in, he started walking backwards again, keep his eyes on her as he sloshed onward. He imagined the barely contained fury in Archerella' eyes, the scowl and protruding lower lip that would make her look more cute than threatening. He could all but see her reaching her hands out to throttle him, and he couldn't stop smirking at the thought. Maybe it was a bad habit, intentionally getting under people's skin. 

But Archerella didn't get offended as Redline prodded her. Instead, she just drew her bow, nocked an arrow, and aimed dead on at his stupid, smug face. "Motherfucker, so help me, I will find a way to shoot you!"

She tried, triggering a clash between physics and game design as the arrow shot straight into Redline's left eye and lodged itself there, jutting out of his face like an off center unicorn horn. The sound design sold the impact beautifully, from the twang of the bowstring, the briefest rush of air as the arrow closed the distance, and the finally, wet impact sound as the arrow found its mark. And yet, Redline's health bar didn't so much as flicker. The gunslinger laughed, picking up his pace as he backpedaled in mock retreat, splashing through the sewage. Archerella pursued, harmlessly turning him into a pincushion as she yelled, "Fucking die!" An uncontained chortle filled both their ears as Bookworm watched the two clash.

Eventually, laughter died down to chuckles, colorful swearing subsided into mild grumbling, and splashing once again became a slow slosh. Archerella stowed her bow, her fury cooling. "I hate you," she grumbled.

"Sure you do," Redline retorted, sauntering ahead.

"Can I just say you guys are my favorite?" Bookworm interjected. 

Archerella was still formulating a response when her ears picked up a splash, just out of sync with their steps. She froze, drawing her bow once again. She stood stock still, ears perked as she waited. For a split second, she wondered if it was a glitch, or if she was hearing things. Next to her, Bookworm stopped in their tracks as well, wondering what was going on. Redline remained oblivious, and would have just left them both behind if he hadn't developed the habit of checking to make sure she was still following him every few feet years ago.

"Archerella?" he called out. When she didn't respond, he looked to Bookworm. "Is she still there?"

"I don't know. She just stopped moving," Bookworm reported.

"Uh, Archerella? Dogs climbing all over you again?" Redline asked.

"Both of you shut up," she whispered tersely.

Redline got halfway through a response before Archerella cut him off with a series of terse, annoyed noises that managed to confuse Redline back into silence. For a few seconds, they all stood motionless, calf deep in sewage, and Archerella listened. 

"Did you hear that?" she asked, though it was mostly to explain her own actions. Not actually expecting an answer from the others, and especially not expecting a yes, she didn't pay him much attention. Instead, she listened to everything else. To the sound of water drips echoing through the tunnel. The occasional, low, overhead rumble of something passing overhead in the world above. Meanwhile, with varying degrees of concern between the two of them, Redline and Bookworm just stood, watching and waiting. And waiting.

And waiting.

"Hear what?" Redline asked when his patience ran out.

His answer came in the form of an eruption of the sewage water behind him, and the sudden arrival of the lovechild of a crocodile and professional wrestler if it was raised by crossfit athletes and lifted refrigerators whenever it got bored. It towered heads above Redline, with broad shoulders that seemed to fill the tunnel. Its scaled hide was dark nearly to the point of black, broken up only by angry pink scars that criss crossed its chest and the side of its face. Massive, meaty hands ended in bloodstained claws, and jaws that could have enveloped Redline's entire head opened up to reveal teeth bigger than the bullets in his gun. 

At the top of the hunters' screens, the red health bar appeared above its head. In the split second before the beast was on him, Redline had two thoughts. The first was that there was absolutely no way something this big could have been hiding in calf deep water, and whatever spawn system had placed it here was arbitrary and unfair. The second, which he opted to vocalize, was, "Shit!"

The monster clamped its jaws onto Redline's shoulder, lifting him into the air and shaking him like a ragdoll in a single motion. He couldn't move. Every escape he had was disabled. Trying to aim was pointless, as the thrashing of the monster turned his view into the inside of a tumble dryer. Closest to him, Bookworm was panicking, swapping out weapon after weapon as they tried to decide on which one to attack with. Then, a two word war cry reminded him that he wasn't the only person in the tunnel who was good at this game.

"Drop it!" 

Archerella' shot hit the monster square in the jaw, and it released Redline as it let out a roar. In the same instant, the gunslinger went from chew toy to attack dog, leaping and rolling away to gain distance before coming up gun blazing. Every gunshot was accompanied by a chunk of red viscerally shaking and draining out of the bar above the monster's head. Off to the side, Bookworm finally decided on twin daggers, and ran forward. Backing up Redline's salvo, they slashed with both weapons. Damage numbers flashed across their screen, and they felt a swell of pride as they far exceeded what they'd been capable of only yesterday. But as they looked up at the monster's health bar, they realized they'd done comparatively little harm. Worse, they'd drawn aggro. It roared at them, stomping in their direction as they frantically backpedaled. Without prompting, Archerella nocked a second arrow, and let it fly, this time sending it straight into the water and, with uncanny aim, straight through the monster's foot. It's lumbering gait came to an abrupt halt as it caught on the arrow. It thrashed, and roared, but it stayed put, letting Bookworm scramble out of its reach to safety.

"Combo!" Redline called out, letting the years translate his intent.

Archerella nocked an arrow, and held it, waiting and charging her Heavy Draw skill as much as she could. With a spin and a flourish, Redline threw open his coat and activated his Sundering Shot skill. His stance adjusted, bit by bit. A shift in his back foot placement. A realignment of the shoulders. Then, too fast to animate, the shot. As soon as the bullet hit, the wound lit up, and Archerella loosed her arrow straight into it. The already massive damage from Heavy Draw was multiplied by the weakpoint created by Sundering Shot, and with the devastating combo, the roar's turned to gurgles, and the beast fell backward, sending up a small geyser of brackish water that came raining back down, along with experience, gold, and a "Mission Complete" message that could not have been more welcome. Celebrating for a different occasion was Bookworm, whose displayed level abruptly rose from sixty-eight to seventy-one as confetti shot out from them in time with a swirl of intoxicatingly bright pixels.

"Oh my God, I hope they never nerf that," Archerella laughed. It was an ecstatic, exhausted laugh, the kind that came right before collapsing in tired satisfaction.

"Yeah," Redline agreed absently as he opened his menu to wait for the next objective to load. Mission dialogue came, which he skipped. Followed by more dialogue, which he skipped. Followed by more dialogue, which he skimmed enough to get "escaped", "unexpected", "subjects", and "on their way" out of before he once again hit the skip button and was finally rewarded with a sign of progress in the form of another "Objectives Updated" message.

As the next message loaded, Redline replayed the fight in his mind, from Bookworm's simultaneously heroic and hilarious charge, to his own brief tenure as a teething ring, to the moments right before the surprise attack, which he only now realized had only been a surprise to him. "How did you hear that?" he asked.

"I play with headphones," Archerella explained. "You hear everything with these things. If you get low on health, you can even hear your heartbeat."

"Everytime I try to use headphones, my mom complains I can't hear her when she calls me."

"My parents never call me for anything," Archerella told him.

"Oh."

The words hung there for a second, threatening to turn into silence. Clearing her throat, Bookworm spoke up. "Well, thanks again for helping me level guys."

"You getting off already?" Redline asked.

"Dinnertime beckons," Bookworm explained. "And I should probably study for English Monday. God I hate Shakespeare."

"Don't you have a giant notebook of notes on Shakespeare?" Redline asked Archerella.

"You mean the Hell Binder? Yeah, I still have that from last year," Archerella said. To Bookworm, she added, "I also PDF'd it, if you want me to send it to you?" 

"That would be awesome," Bookworm said. "I told you guys that you're my favorite, right?"

"You may have mentioned it," Redline replied.

Echoing through Bookworm's microphone came the distant, indistinct sounds of a family member calling out, followed hastily by her own words. "Okay, I really gotta go. Send me those notes?"

"You know it," Archerella assured them.

With that, Bookworm opened their menu, and after making a few clicks, vanished, leaving only an automated message announcing her departure behind in the chat log. 

"Shakespeare," Redline mused. "The poor freshman."

"I've got them," Archerella said, grabbing a sticky note to scribble down a reminder for later. "So now what?"

For a second, Redline was stumped by the question. Their reason for being there, at least ostensibly, had just logged off to eat food and study Shakespeare. Their job was done, at least for the day. And while Redline stood there, contemplating where his services might be best put to use next, Eric was looking at the time and realizing he was on the verge of missing dinner. Two thousand miles away from him, at the same time that Archerella' was idly spinning an arrow between her fingers, Anna was staring at her own stack of chemistry homework. Eric's school had a home game tonight, which meant one of his parents was bound to ask why he didn't go. He'd have to come up with an excuse that didn't just involve admitting he was avoiding one person in particular. The more Anna stared at the stack of papers, the less she could think about anything other than what would happen if she got anything less than an A on the next quiz.

"I mean, getting late," Redline pointed out. "We could log off."

"Or?" Archerella prompted.

"Well, this quest did trigger a follow up," Redline noted, reading through his quest log and the new mission description it contained.

"What've we got?" Archerella asked, latching on.

"I think something about a science experiment gone wrong and more lizard men?" Redline said, half remembering the dialogue he'd skipped earlier. 

"I could do one more mission," Archerella said.

"Yeah," Redline agreed. "One more before we get off."

Two hours and eight missions later, Redline and Archerella were 3500 gold richer, down to the last dregs of their health bars, and officially up way past both of their bedtimes. The sewers were clear of lizardmen, and a mad scientist was safely behind bars. Mild fatigue had turned into a state of half awake delirium, as Redline put one final bullet into the body of the last crocodile monster, more out of spite than anything else.

"It's tomorrow," Redline groaned.

"It's been tomorrow where I am," Archerella retorted.

With a very loud yawn, Redline gave his revolver a final spin before shoving it back into the holster at his hip. He readjusted his coat, which was only spared being coated in blood and septic fluid by T rating of the game he was playing, and gave his minimap one final check to try and figure out how to get out of the sewers. Archerella stowed her bow on her back, alongside a quiver a much lighter than the one she'd worn when they'd first descended. From where she sat, she was barely keeping control of the birds' nest on her head with a hair tie, but so far as Redline could tell, her hair remained unmolested and as fresh from the salon as it had been at level one. To be fair, even with the game's T friendly splatters coating him, Redline maintained the roguish charm that seemed infused to his class's every movement.

"We should go to bed," Redline admitted.

"Is that an invitation?"

Redline's world came screeching to a halt as the words came through his computer's speakers, and he took a second to compose himself and remember what words were and how to use them to communicate.

"What?"

"I am tired, leave me alone," Archerella said.

Sitting in her bed, Archerella could feel the red rushing into her face. She hadn't even thought about the words before they came out. It was weird, and creepy, and childish, and even as a joke it was a million times worse because she'd just said it to someone she had never met. At his desk, two thousand miles away, Redline very slowly tried to figure out how to apply his very limited knowledge of flirting to interactions with a girl he had at once never met and known for years.

"You're so tired… you're flirting with me?" Redline asked.

"...yes?" Archerella's voice cracked, partially from embarrassment, partially from the fact that it was nearly four am and she'd been doing way too much screaming for the last few hours.

The world paused, as Redline very, very carefully considered his next words. He felt a familiar choice set down in front of him, one he'd ignored more than once for more than one reason. Maybe it was the years and levels between them. Maybe he'd actually taken that cruel, angry, "grow a pair" that had been tossed at him years ago more to heart than he'd realized. Maybe he was tired of feeling lonely. Or maybe he was just tired. 

Whatever it was, this time, Redline pulled open the emote menu, and clicked "Love." As Archerella watched, debating whether or not she should just cut power to her laptop then and there, Redline put one hand on his hip, and flicked a finger gun in her direction with the other as a heart icon appeared above his head, and his voice came through. "Maybe we should stay up late more often, then."

It was a corny line on top of a goofy, pre-animated gesture and it was the grand summation of all the courage Redline had struggled to build back up for himself after he'd had it torn down and stolen from him. It was a display on a screen in response to clicks and keystrokes, and yet for what it felt like to both of them, they may as well have been in that sewer. They may as well have been those tall, heroic, always perfect looking versions of themselves, and Redline may as well have swept Archerella legs out from underneath her and planted a kiss flush against her lips. For a moment, Archerella let the fantasy carry her, before all at once a new, angry voice came through Redline's microphone.

"Are you still awake?"

"Mom!"

"Are you up playing games right now?"

"I was just talking with a friend!"

Archerella stood there, pulled out of the fantasy but still dazed as, very suddenly, Redline disappeared, and the messages came across her screen all at once that Redline had left the party, and logged out. 

Anna went to bed that night, wondering what any of this meant, or if it would mean anything, or if either of them would even remember this by the time they got up. She laid awake in bed, imagining what that kiss might have felt like, if it had happened, if it had been real. And just before she drifted off to sleep, her laptop bleeped an alert that she had gotten a private message.

Sorry. Mom decided to lay down the law.

Anna felt her stomach twist into a few different knots as she got the message. It was so casual. So soon after what had felt like a complete upheaval of the ground they stood on. For a terrifying second, she thought she might have briefly dozed off and dreamt the entire exchange. She was working off of a delirious auto pilot as she typed out a reply.

No sweat. You're not in trouble are you?

She wanted to write more. She wanted to ask if what had just happened had really just happened. She wanted to know if he'd really said what she thought he'd said. She wanted to admit she loved that stupid map story. To tell him how nice it was to spend time with someone whose worst criticism of her was that she couldn't read a map. She wanted to tell him how stupid his ex was for throwing away someone as funny and genuine and bold and creative. How lucky any girl would be to have been in her shoes. How lucky she wanted to be.

Instead, she just sat in bed, and waited for his reply. Her nerves were failing her. Whether their flirtation was real, it made the most sense to chalk it up to a lack of sleep and pretend it wasn't.

Just a strong talking to. You getting on tomorrow?

Anna breathed in and out, steadying herself.

Yeah.

Back to normal. Just two friends playing a game together. There was nothing else going on. Or so she told herself, until she read his final reply of the night.

Great. It's a date.

This was something I wrote back in college for a Creative Writing class. It’s a fun, cute little story, based on the real-life tale of how I met my wife, and I felt like sharing it. Feels nice to have something besides Outsiders in the Web Originals listing every so often.

Shoutout to Bookworm, one of the first people to ever ship the two of us together.