After Tomas happily left SRG, Benton went back to his desk and rested his head on it. It didn't take long for Tempest, Moose, and Dog to find their way to his side. Dog closed the door to the office and the ladies grabbed the two seats in front of his desk. Dog moved to stand behind them, and all three had their arms crossed as they waited for him to talk.

The silence lasted ten minutes, before Benton finally broke and confessed, “I made him think I was best friends with Sunshine.”

All three of his employee's groaned.

“Dang it, Sun... He would have understood. He didn't even bat an eye when I told him I was Tempest.” Matty said with disappointment lacing her words.

“How the hell do you think you are going to get all twenty-two of us to refrain from calling you some derivative of Sunshine? How long do you think that will last? That was... monumentally stupid, dude. Like maybe the most idiotic thing you've done to date!” Sven pointed out with a look of disgust.

Andy held out her hands as if to calm the others down. “Now, don't knock a man when he's down guys. Look at him. Have you ever seen him look so pathetic?”

Benton winced at her idea of sticking up for him, but she continued talking before he could say anything, “We all know he has absolutely zero game. He's never even had a crush before. My baby boy is trying, yes he is, he just made some mistakes, like Mandy does with her potty training.” Andy reverted to her mom speak.

“Did you just compare me to a peed in pull up?” He asked, as Matty and Sven started laughing.

“Maybe. It doesn't matter, what I was trying to say, is that both mistakes need to be handled with encouragement, not by berating.” She waved his concern away, and sniffed in that way a mom does when she wants to encourage you and smack you at the same time.

“Don't we have a dungeon to hit tonight?” Tempest asked.

“We do, in... three hours. Zarn will be healing it. Sunny is supposed to be tanking it. The three of us, Vlad, and DemonShade signed up to dps it.” Sven replied.

Dps stood for damage per second, if a person wasn't a tank or a healer, they were in this category. Their main job was to keep their aggro down at the same time they attacked a target, killing it with their superior damaging capabilities. A tank's main job was being a meat shield. He or she was there to keep the attention of the target and soak up most of the damage. A tank did some okay dps, too, but nothing like those who's sole focus was damage.

“So, we're going to have to pull the others into a chat before they leave for the day. Will the two of you go do that? Vlad tends to leave early on Friday, and Shade will take some convincing, she hates lying.” Andy asked, then looked at Benton who had guilt plastered all over his face. “I'll stay here and talk to Mr. Pitiful.”

The two agreed, and after they left, Andy went over to Benton and pulled him up and into a hug. “Stupid boy, you're just setting yourself up for hurt.” She said as she held him tightly.

“Don't call me boy, I'm older than you.” He said, his voice muffled in her shoulder.

“Where love is concerned you're the littlest padawan, and I am the strongest of Jedi. You can't make this work on lies and half truths, sweetheart. You're going to have to tell him sooner rather than later, but we'll give you the rest of today and maybe part of this coming week. We all love you, Sunny. You're family and we don't want to see you fail.” She rocked him slightly from side to side as she spoke.

Andy had that momma thing down perfectly. Benton knew he'd just been chastised, but instead of feeling worse than he had, he felt like he had twenty two people at his back cheering him on. He soaked in her hug for a bit longer before saying, “You better let me go before your husband walks in and see's us.”

She simply laughed, “Everyone knows you're our gay little Sunshine, he'd probably just join in.”

“Andy!” Benton said, scandalized.

She just laughed harder and squished him tighter, before letting him go.

------------------------------

“You know, this would be easier if our healer was on voice chat with us.” Shade grumbled as she dodged three trash mobs. She slid in next to Sunny and disappeared, leaving the monsters to the tank, before reappearing on the other side of the room.

“Now, now, Demon, sheathe your claws. Sun is just a relationship noob. Just like gamer noobs, he deserves a chance to crash and burn a few times.” Vlad piped up, as he swooped in, and bit one of the trash mobs, taking a third of it's health. “Did you programmers change the dragolich's? They seem stronger than before.” Vlad sounded annoyed.

“We buffed their armor, but nerfed their health points. You have to hit them harder to get past the armor, but since they have less health it's only slightly more difficult to kill them.” Dog replied as he shot two arrows into the damaged dragolich, knocking it's health down another third.

Sunshine smacked the three monsters with his sword to keep their attention on him instead of his group. Tempest attacked all three trash mobs at the same time with her quick slice move. The damaged monster fell to the ground, dead, and Sunshine made a nuisance of himself with the other two slightly damaged mobs, to keep his aggro high.

Zarn: OOM

“Healer is out of mana, wrap it up guys.” Moose called out as she flung a health draining dot at the two mobs. Dot's did damage over time to the inflicted targets, she followed up with a chanted spell that ripped one of the monsters in half, killing it instantly.

Sunshine hit the last mob with a rapid succession of sword slashes to keep it from turning towards Moose, then Dog shot two more arrows at it. The dot ticked down and sucked out the last of the mob's hit points, and it keeled over to lie dead, next to it's brethren.

Sunshine: Not bad Zarn, that was five waves before you went OOM.

Zarn: You did a good job keeping the aggro, I only had to heal Shade once, and most of the mobs didn't use AOE's, so I could focus on you the rest of the time. It made it way easier.

“Hey, Dog, what happened to the area of effect using trash mobs in this area? Shouldn't there have been more than two?” Benton hadn't thought about it until Zarn said something. AOE's hit even hidden targets, there should have been more damage to the party.

“We just lucked out. The RNG gods were being kind. We could have ended up with all mage monsters instead of almost all fighter classed ones.” Dog replied.

“Still, if the random number generator leans too far to one side, the fights aren't going to be balanced. Will you have someone look at that on Monday?” He asked.

All the party members sat down and ate health restoring food regardless of whether or not they needed it, because they'd each get a special bonus stat for being sated.

“Sure, I'll put our healer on it, first thing.” There was a grin in Dog's voice.

Underdog: Congratulations, Zarn, you just figured out your first programming task for Monday.

Zarn: I did? O.O

Underdog: You did. You'll get to poke at the RNG gods and this area of the dungeon.

Zarn: Sweet! That's going to be so cool!

Dog laughed, “He thinks slogging through all that code is going to be cool. I'm so glad our department got him.”