Chapter 8: Chapter 8

On the desk, the Gameboy lay, tempting me like Indy's treasure. 

Absent-mindedly, I picked it up and flipped it to see what she was playing. Super Mario Land 2.

"That's a good one," I said aloud. "Only made for the original Gameboy. Girl's got taste."

I turned it on and quickly turned down the offensively-loud beeping, then began playing.

I was rusty, but my mind began to wonder about other things.

What sub-affinity would I choose? What would be the most useful? Could I charge my phone with electricity? Go camping with ease with my fire?

I stood up and, stretching my knees, walked around the counter to the bookshelf, hoping to find something to help me.

A Thousand and One Love Potions, I read off the counter. And some are sure to work! They should add to the end.

I checked out another. The Academy, I read, picking it up. It was arrogant to call it The Academy. Though it was the only one in this region, so maybe not.

Or was it? What did I know?

Either way, I picked it up and flipped to the front page.

 

The academy was founded in part by three wise headmasters of magic. Mitchel Sprite, Justice Strong, and Amber Glow. 

Sprite, a master of the faith, saw fit to install morals and virtue in all his students, young and old. 

Strong brought order, discipline, and a drive to succeed. 

Glow, the creative spark needed to let their imagination soar. 

Together they were the three pillars that made up the academy.

 

But what the book didn't say was that they were the inventors of magic. And what did Misty hint at? That the faith professor had done something to the other two?

"Pretty typical," I said to myself. "Evil church trope. It's been done a thousand times."

But it wasn't a real church. What was it she said? He was more like an educator/motivational speaker who stole ideas from our religions. 

I was slowly discovering that the magi weren't simply cringelords, but downright sinister. 

Well, the one up top, anyway. 

I put the book back, wondering about the ethics of using something invented by someone bad. 

I had a mobile phone, which wasn't exactly made ethically in those factories, so it maybe was best not to think of it like that.

An evil blacksmith can make a sword, but the person wielding it can be good, turning it toward other evil.

"This would be a lot simpler if it was like LOTR and not GOT," I said aloud. "But it is what it is."

And the question still remained. Why was I warded? Why didn't they want me to learn? 

Or, what didn't they want me to learn?

The key shunted in the look. In walked Misty in that beautiful outfit with the red gradient on the bottom of her long skirt.

"I like what you're wearing today," I said.

She looked up at me from under her wide-brimmed hat as she passed the bagel bag and coffee. 

"Thanks," she said, locking the door.

"There's a lot of stuff I want to ask you, but maybe we should save it for tonight."

She bit her bagel and said, "Mmm, yeah. We can talk about the specific stuff later, but we still don't have to sit in silence."

"Is there any—" I began to say.

But she snapped, "What's that beeping?" and stormed over to the desk. "My save file!" She picked up the Gameboy like it was a hurt child, tenderly making sure she didn't push any of the buttons. "You messed it up!"

I laughed. "Not at all. I didn't even push a button," I lied. "I was just curious."

"Well, be less curious with my stuff," she said.

"Fair enough."

She sat down on the stool where I had been sitting and noted my open laptop, seeing the prototype of her website.

I had found a kind of pseudo-vintage fashionable goth template for her, retaining stylistically what I thought she would like, with modern functionality.

"Oh," she said.

"Oh?" 

"Oh."

"Good or bad, oh?"

"It's much simpler," she said, giving no hint of her feelings.

"That's a good thing," I said. "People don't need to fight with your antique layout now. They can just see what they want and go for it."

I stared at Misty and she looked right back at me, squinting through her heavy eyeshadow. 

She closed the laptop lid and continued to eat her meal. I unwrapped mine and took a bite of the cream cheese salmon goodness. It was to die for.

"Awesome," I said, coming over to lean on the counter.

"You could say thank you," she said.

"You could say thank you," I retorted.

"For what?"

I looked at the laptop.

"That's an exchange of services. My thanks are what we'll get up to later."

We paused, and she looked at me for a little longer than necessary, her magnificent eyes reflecting purples and yellows. 

"So why do you hate the academy so much?" I asked. "I mean, apart from the crazy indoctrination stuff. They do that to everyone, so there must be another reason."

"Ask again later," she said robotically, looking away.

"You're so cryptic."

"An enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a bagel bag," she said. "You're not much better. I don't know anything about you."

"Oh, well...where do I start?"

"Hmm." She lifted her bagel and looked at me through the hole like a telescope. "Parents?" 

"Both passed. You?"

"Alive," she said bitterly, gnawing the bagel dramatically.

"You say it like it's a bad thing."

She laughed, then quickly hid it with another bagel bite. "What else? Do you have friends?"

I felt like I could be totally honest. What was she gonna do, give another mean comment?

"Honestly? Kind of," I said.

"Kind of?"

"You know, I got a bunch, but they're those kinds of friends, you know what I mean?"

"Not unless you tell me."

"Hmm. We played games together and went out drinking at college, but still, I'm not really close to them. I couldn't say any of them were close friends." Why am I sharing so much? I wondered and said, "It's my fault, really. I've always been an introvert, preferring reading, movies, solo games, stuff like that. People are draining."

"People are draining," she repeated. 

"What about you?"

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"Who needs friends? That's just sentimentality designed to hurt you in the long run."

A revealing truth bomb?

"Maybe you don't need friends," I lied, "but your brain does at least need some socialization, or it gets screwy."

"My brain is fine, thank you very much, and you don't even like your friends, so who are you to lecture?"

"I like one of them," I said, leaning a bit closer and grinning at her.

"Oh." She put her bagel on the table. "That is so cringy. How dare you."

I couldn't explain it, but something about getting verbally abused by Misty was so much fun. I just couldn't take it as hurtful, even when she said similar things to other people. Hell, nothing she said to others was as bad as what she said to me.

"You're right," I said, glancing over at her wonderfully tight blouse with the deep, circular open chest and awesome heart choker, "as soon as I'm done with this website; your Youtube channel; the flier; perhaps making this shop look less like a crack den, and as soon as you've helped me with you-know-what, I'll be out of your hair forever, and we'll never see each other again."

"Friends," she scoffed, ignoring what I had just said. "You can't be friends with someone you just met a few days ago."

"Sure you can! Did you never just show up at school and make a couple of quick pals on the first day 'cause everyone is in the same situation and didn't want to be alone?"

"No."

Oh.

Suddenly, I understood Misty a little more. 

I decided to change the subject. "So, you gotta tell me, what's up with your eyes?"

"Birth defect," she said bluntly and fast. "Finished your lunch?" 

She climbed off the stool. I tried to ignore her intoxicating perfume as she nudged past me. She unlocked the door, flinging the sign back to open.

"The website looks great," she said. "You were right."

I nodded, not going to rub her face in having to thank me.

I had basically finished my work for the day, though I didn't think I would be going anywhere until we had to leave. 

Misty had not banished me. The good thing about her was if she wanted me to leave, it would be the first thing she'd say.

"What got you into old video games, anyhow?" I asked, taking a huge bite of the bagel I had yet to finish. 

"Philosophical answer, or realist?" she asked.

"Both. Realist first."

"I just think it's badass, the stuff they could do with all their limitations. Not like the AAA games they put out now. They've got too many legos, and they don't know how to build creatively with them, so they just make the same old stock castle over and over again."

If Misty wasn't already hot as shit before, she had just become doubly so. 

Ten Out of Ten - Girl of the Year.

Nearly loses a point for the difficulty level, but fans of her love the challenge.

Possesses a deeply complex lore gamers are still yet to dive to the bottom of.

Has a great ass.

"But before," she continued, "the studios had to be creative, working within their limitations to come up with such crazy stuff. You barely see game studios do that kind of thing now. The only big studio doing interesting stuff are ones like—"

"FromSoftware." I interrupted, as she said it too.

"Exactly! They just get it!"

Sweet mother of Jesus.

"What about all those indie game companies," I asked, "making stuff with old sensibilities but modern quality-of-life improvements?"

She nodded. "They're awesome, but seeing pixel art on modern screens just bugs me. It has to be on an old CRT that mushes the pixels and makes it look all warm and smooth."

"Warm and smooth, aye?"

"Shut up!" But she smirked. 

"And what's the philosophical answer?" I asked.

She turned away, looking out the busy window, where I doubted she could see much of the street.

So I stared at her flawless pale shoulder blades as she said, "If you don't like the world you're in, you go and find something else, don't you? I know you probably think, 'Wow, she can do magic. What more could she want?' But it's just my life, and it's not that exciting, is it? The stuff in those cartridges, though, a thousand times better."

"I can relate to that," I said. "All my life, I worked boring jobs and wanted something else I thought I couldn't have, so I turned to games to fill the void."

Misty nodded.

And you, I thought, turned to games because you couldn't have, what? What did you want? Friends? Something else?

"We're all just filling the void," I said. "It doesn't matter what we use, and we're not bad for doing so."

"Who said I should feel bad?"

"No one. I'm just saying it's better than doing crack."

"Hmm." She walked over to the books and pushed in the ones I was sure I had put back neatly. No, she was pulling it out. The girl was anal as hell about her mess.

"What?" I asked.

"Sonic or Mario?"

"Oof. Great question."

She gave a cute grunt. "We are not having a moment," then suddenly, she snarled overly aggressively. "This isn't a blossoming friendship. This is a business partnership and nothing else."

Really, over Sonic or Mario? You asked the question.

And I had never suggested we were having a moment. 

So…she thought we were getting more familiar, and she wasn't happy about it? 

Or, she was doing that thing where she was mad about something but only snapped about it later during something unrelated. 

Bingo.

Was it the book being out of place? Or because she felt vulnerable about being so open? Or was it just me coming into her life and disturbing her peace?

She turned to me, and her nose twitched while her eyes stared unblinkingly at me, daring me to press the subject further.

"Alright," I said. "Keep your hat on."

"My hat is squarely on my head and squarely on fleek, as the kids say."

"Now who's cringy?"

"Shut up. Don't you have work to do?"

"I finished for the day," I said, challenging her.

"So...piss off then?" She put her hands on her hips.

I stared back at her in our, what, third stalemate of the day?

Call her bluff, I told myself. Do it.

I climbed off the stool and packed my laptop up, not looking at her as I said, "I'll text you the details for the website. You can log in and make any adjustments as you see fit."

Bag zipped up, I flung it over my shoulder and walked around the counter to the door.

I knew with certainty she was about to, at any second, tell me to stay and hang out with her until closing time.

I glanced back when I opened the door, where she still stood staring at me, hands on her hips and eyebrows raised.

"Yes?" she asked.

"Zelda," I replied. 

I opened the door and shut it behind me, catching one last glimpse of the spinner as it wavered.

I didn't get to see if it would fall.

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