I’m waiting at the base I made with my best friend six years ago. I brought my HoloPad so I can record the little creature. A good two minutes after I arrived at our base, my friend crouched through the door.
“Wassup, Max!”
“Hey, Crystal!” You say, hugging her.
Yes, my best friend is a girl. Shut up.
“So, did you record anything about his ‘creature’ you found in the forbidden lands?”
“You don’t trust me!” I said.
“Dude, Max, it’s not like I don’t trust you, it’s that I’m slightly skeptical that you found out luminite is a living thing.” Crystal said, emphasizing the word “slightly” with her hands.
“I’m going to prove it.”
“I know. Try to prove it.”
“Shut up!”
Crystal and I laughed. When she laughed, her pristine gold hair bounced slightly, and she just seemed more beautiful that way.
“Alright, you wanna see that Luminite now?” You ask, one hundred percent expecting her to say yes.
“Alright, fine, Einstein. Prove to me this amazing discovery.” Again, she emphasized her words with her hands, wiggling next to her face, sort of like a “ta-daa” position.
“Follow me,” I say, waving her to follow me with my left hand.
Crystal and I creeped out of our fort, since we didn’t want to give it away. The entrance was pretty well hidden. Then we snuck out of the town and ventured towards the fence on the border. I went first, putting my right foot near the center of the fence, mantling it, and landing on the other side. Crystal was next.
“Crystal, why are you shaking?”
“Oh, I am? It must be cold.” A likely story. The temperature was lukewarm.
“Tell me the truth, Crystal.” You say.
“Fine. I’ve never been outside the boundary before, I’m not sure if we’ll be caught or not.” You couldn’t help notice that that rhymed.
“We won’t get caught. They only thing those idiots running the border care about is if you smuggle luminite.”
Crystal chuckled. “So they don’t care if you break a cardinal rule, but care if you smuggle a min—creature inside?”
“Exactly.”
More laughter.
“They are idiots,” Crystal says after half a minute of straight laughing.
Crystal and I continue venturing towards the ‘glitchy’ (it wasn’t actually glitched, I had just given it the name due to the erratic landscape and cave systems) forbidden lands, I was the first to mantle into the very cave where I found out that Luminite is a living being. Or at least a sort of fungi at the least.
The Luminite was right where I left it. I picked it up and showed it to Crystal. She didn’t seem convinced yet.
“Hold the Luminite.” You urge her, “It has a pulsing warmth to it as if it were a living being.”
She (reluctantly) grabbed the Luminite out of my hand and concentrated.
“Holy crap, it does have a pulsing warmth. How the hell has no one noticed this before?”
“No clue. Now look deep into the Luminite. If you look hard enough, you will see a pulsing light. And if you listen hard enough, you can hear a veeeeeery faint humming sound coming from it.” I say.
After about forty seconds, Crystal’s mouth went agape, and her eyes widened.
“I—I’m—I’m not going to tell anyone about this.” She said, flustering.
“I think we should go home now with that figured out, Crystal. Wanna grab a bite?”
“I’m not so sure I’m hungry, Max. I’ll grab breakfast with you tomorrow, I’m just gonna go to bed.”
“Alright, you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Just shocked.”
“Understandable,” I say. “I was completely flabbergasted when I found out about it.”
————————————
It’s been about four hours after Crystal and I arrived home, and I just got a text from her on my HoloPad.
“I lied. I can’t really get to sleep, you wanna play a game?”
“Sure. What do you wanna play?”
“How about some VR games? I’m really feeling up to immersing myself into the virtual world.”
“It’s on. Climbey?”
“You’re on, buster.”
I know that Crystal likes VR, and her favorite VR game is Climbey, one of the older ones. She loves it so much, in fact, that she’s practically a god at it. I love challenging her at her favorite games, mostly because sometimes I win and piss her off.
Right now, I want to win and piss her off. I’m feeling in the mood. I hop out of bed and walk over to my VR headset. I turn on my VR system, pull on the headset, and watch as it powers on.
“Welcome, Maxima1.”
I sift through my massive steam library and look for Climbey; It should be easy to find since it's in the c’s section.
Eventually, after a lot of sifting, I give up and sit on my computer to control+F my way to the game. Then, after way too much time finding a simple game, you launch it off of steam and join. You join in on the last server you were on, which is the server that Crystal is playing on as well.
“Took you long enough, Max.”
“This is embarrassing, but I couldn’t find it by looking in VR. I had to take off the headset and run a search command on my computer to find it.”
“How many games do you even have?”
“Probably like a hundred.”
“Holy crap! How do you even keep up with them?”
“I don’t,” I say, letting out a chuckle. “Anyway, what level you want to play?”
“How about ‘avalanche?’ It seems kinda fun and hard.”
“Ready to lose?”
“Shut up Max!”
I chuckle.
The level loads in, and you look around you to see where to start.
“Onyourmargesego!” You say.
“Hey!” Crystal says. “I wasn’t ready yet!” As I start to scale the virtual mountain.
She starts grabbing on to the holds and doing the typical throwing maneuvers.
“Tossing yourself a lot is pretty risky,” I say. “One wrong move, and you could go falling down the whole climb!”
“I know, Max. I’ve tried this maneuver so many times, I’m pretty sure I’ve mastered it!”
“Suit yourself, Crystal.”
You continue climbing up and reach the overhang part of the climb around a circular piece you have to go around. Just as you are about to make it past that part, you see Crystal’s character fling past that part.
You know what? Screw it. I’m going to fling myself too.
I grab one of the holds and stand on it. Then, I hold down both of the triggers and throw myself as far into the air as I can, right next to where Crystal is.
“Hey, Max! I thought you’d never show up!”
“Oh, shut it.”
I continue scaling my way up to the mountain, then I get ready to superfling myself. I grab onto one of the holds with both hands and fling myself into the wall. Then, the game freaks out and shoots me up to the level of the finish line. I land next to the flag and grab it.
“Wooo! I did it!” I yell, slightly exasperated.
“You actually beat me?” Crystal said incredulously.
“Yeah, I did. My time was 1 minute and 36.27 seconds.”
“My time was 1 minute and 40.32 seconds.”
“Holy crap, that was a close one.”
“Which one do you want to do now?”
“Eh, I’m not really sure. Which one do you want to do?”
“Let’s do the hardest one I know about.”
“Great. Which one is that?”
I wait a while, as she doesn’t give an answer. “Hello?”
“I'm searching through my saved custom levels! I have like 500 of them!”
“Sorry,” I say.
“Ah! This one! ‘Perilous Road!’”
“Sounds perilous.”
“That might be why the word ‘perilous’ is in the name. Wanna try it out?”
“Sure. I wanna see how terrible I will do on the hardest level you know of.”
“You never know until you try, right?”
“Let’s go.”
I play lots more of this game with Crystal until I start to feel like I can’t hold my eyes open anymore.
“Crystal, I’ve got to go to sleep now. My eyes can barely support their own weight.”
“Now that I think about it, I need some sleep too. Good night.”
“Good night.”
‘Cryst4lz has disconnected.’ The server said on the bottom left corner of the screen.
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