Irritating Encounters

[alex]

Alex wasn’t someone that you would find at school when the final bell was rung, but he had been in the middle of an assignment that required a computer and he didn’t feel like using the one at home. In truth, Alex was avoiding his cousin who had been trying to set him up on a date with one of her friends, which was not something that appealed to him on any level. The girl wasn’t ugly, but she did have the tendency to giggle like a hyena which was definitely something that made Alex want to rip his ears out.

His mind was sort of focused on the work that he was doing, but it began to wander on to a video game that was flashing on the side bar so he clicked on it. An hour went by before Alex realized that he had gotten sidetracked, which irritated him to no end. “At least I know what my paper is going to be about: the corruptive effects of video games on the teenage mind.” Of course, Alex still needed to write the paper which would have been easier said than done at this point. He had thought of the perfect idea, but Alex lacked the energy to actually write it.

“I wonder if I will get into trouble if I take a nap right here.” Since there was no one to answer, Alex pushed the keyboard aside and laid his head down. If he were lucky, then no one would come along to wake, but his luck was probably nonexistent since he had been moved to Japan by his parents for his benefit. His eyes closed for only a second before he heard the door to the computer lab open, so he attempted to look up to see who had just entered. “I wasn’t sleeping.”

[haruka]

Another day at school, another day of running around and trying to find some time to herself. The attention she was getting from the other kids who claimed to be her friends merely because she was good at sports was really starting to get to her. It hadn't been this bad in Kyoto, because at least there she did have some real friends to wind down with and actually have a good laugh. Here in Odaiba, however, she hadn't yet found anyone that was chill enough to just hang out with - someone who didn't care about her abilities in sports.

In the end, she turned a corner and slid into the first room she spotted, shutting the door quickly before her stalkers could realize where she'd gone. They hadn't gone yet, but she heard a voice from within the room somewhere profess that he wasn't sleeping. Though the urge to laugh at him was strong, she bit her tongue so as to not alert the unwanted attention that was just outside of the door.

Once they were gone, she let out a sigh and turned to actually look at where she had ended up. Apparently it was the computer room, which meant that she could stay here for a while and keep herself busy for a while. Now that she was in the clear, she could relax a bit. If this kid was talking about not being asleep, chances were that he was pretty close.

So Haruka decided to take a seat at one of the computers and turned it on. She hadn't tested the computers in the computer lab yet on whether they had games blocked or not, so she figured that now would be the best time. While her favorite games were MMO's, she knew that she would ned to have the software downloaded in order to play them here, and she didn't want to leave a trail. Instead, she decided to go to a site that had a flash player based game that would sound like she was typing when she was actually playing. It was a bit difficult to play the game without sound at first, but she eventually started to get the hang of it through sight only.

[alex]

There had been no response to his statement about not being asleep, so Alex naturally thought that he was either mistaken about someone coming into the room or they didn’t care that he was in there. He started to drift back into sleep, which was something that he enjoyed about this school. Not many people tried to irritate a guy who was sleeping out of fear of having their head bit off in the middle of the process. Of course, there was one problem sleeping in a computer lab, and that was the simple fact that when someone turned on a computer it made some specific noises.

It wasn’t that Alex couldn’t sleep knowing that someone else was in the room as he did that all the time during class, but he did need to know who exactly it was in order to accurately address them if it ever came to the point that he needed to tell them to be quiet. The likelihood that they would actually disturb him was not high, but one should never assume things when one was at school. Of course, he now needed to get out of his seat to walk over to where this person was sitting to see who he or she was.

Alex rose up from his chair and looked around until he spotted the girl that had entered the room, and it appeared that she was doing something on the computer. He debated for a moment on whether or not it would be rude to interrupt whatever it was that she was doing, but Alex shrugged the thought off as he proceeded to walk over to her to ‘introduce’ himself to her. A yawn escaped his lips about halfway to her, which he was sure that she had heard since she didn’t appear to be death.

As he got to the computer that she was at, Alex could clearly make out the game that she was playing on it, and he sort of smiled for a moment. “What game is this? I haven’t seen it before.” Okay, it wasn’t really an introduction, but it was a lot better than his normal opening statements.

[haruka]

Haruka was so focused on her game that she didn't even notice when the boy got up and walked over to see what she was doing. It wasn't until he asked her what game she was playing that she gave any sort of reaction. In fact, she was so focused on the game that she didn't miss a beat when he asked, even though he had caught her off guard. Such was the focus of the hardcore gamer Makise Haruka. She never let anything distract her from her videogames, and even though she knew that she should be studying at the moment, she simply couldn't resist the urge for some online games.

Since she had been mostly through the song, she was able to quickly finish it and get her high score before lazily putting her hands behind her head and leaning back in her chair. "This game, my friend, is FFR." she stated matter-of-factly with the biggest grin she could muster, residual pride from her accomplishment of a high score still eminent on her face. However, she was also nice enough to go on and actually explain the game to the boy who had just asked.

"FFR is the short term name for it though - it's called Flash Flash Revolution. So it's like DDR, but online and with the arrows on a keyboard instead." was her initial explanation. However, she didn't feel that just explaining what it was would be an understatement. "The fact that it's online and has it's own website means that you have to register, and that means you can continue to accumulate points and get your personal score higher. You can also receive tokens based on performance and achievements, play against other members, and they even put in this new lottery thing where you pay so many credits to take a guess at how many songs will be played daily. The winner gets the pot, so the more people that guess, the more the reward. I don't quite have enough credits to do that just yet, but that game's for the high rollers - the ones who have been members so long that they've got nothing else to do with their credits but spend 'em."

"Would you like to give it a try?

[/color] she asked him. "I can give you the link and you can just play as a guest without making an account. If you like it enough you can sign up and play from any computer to keep your score climbing."[/size][/blockquote]

[alex]

For a second, Alex thought that the girl was ignoring his question, but then he remembered how he got when he was playing a game. At least, how his brother described him each time he was trying to tell Alex that dinner was ready, but Alex couldn’t say that it was what actually happened since there was no physical evidence. One of these days, Alex was going to set up a camera in his room just to see what he was like when people came to tell him something. It wouldn’t change how he acted, but it would be nice for him to know that people were making something up about him.

“FFR?” It was definitely not a game that had come up on his radar, but that mainly had to do with the fact that it was one of those easy games that just required fast reflexes. Alex was going to ask her to explain the acronym to him, when she just began doing just that. If it was an associate to the game Dance Dance Revolution, then Alex had a feeling that he was not going to like it since that game required one to jump around like an idiot on a square platform while watching a screen that displayed random colors that could entertain a five year old that lacked intelligence.

At the point that Alex thought that the girl was done talking, he started to turn to leave, but then she began to explain the purpose of the website for the game. He had to restrain his mouth in order to keep from telling her that he really didn’t care about the game anymore as that would have been a bad thing to do. Bits and pieces of information from her long rant on the features of the site stuck to his brain, but it wasn’t interesting enough to keep him from yawning at some point in the words. If he was lucky, then she would write the yawn as a sign that he was just tired instead of bored.

“Thanks for the offer, but those types of games are not my cup of tea,” Alex said as he began thinking of what games were his cup of tea. He did enjoy first person shooters as they required him to keep an eye on multiple icons on the screen as well as having excellent graphics. Then there were the online strategy games that just looked entertaining because of the figures on the screen. His personal favorite was the Bloons Tower Defense, which was sort of like a game of chess that required excellent planning on his part to eliminate the balloons in an efficient manner. “My name is Alex.”