Survival Of The Fittest

(Reuben Walters continued from The Good in Everyone)

Reuben was uneasy being in a house this size. If it hadn't been for the occasional classmate he ran into in the halls, he'd almost feel like he was trespassing and someone would be throwing him off the premises any second now. How could anyone be comfortable with all this space? No matter how much you filled it, it would still be so very empty. To him, a small space full of content was worth more than a large space full of fluff.

No, that was rude to think. A home was a home, no matter what went into it. Reuben shook his head to chide himself, a gesture that may have seemed strange to anyone seeing him pass by.

He hadn't been wandering long when he found what he'd been seeking. A nice carpeted floor, leather chairs, and a comfy-looking sofa, all gathered around a wide HDTV. This was a living room, all right. Seemed empty. Unsurprising, judging by the pounding beat coming from the basement. Guess everyone would rather dance than play on...what was that? Reuben entered the room, trying to get a closer look at what appeared to be some kind of gaming console plugged into the TV, gray and rounded. Hadn't he seen something like this recently? He knelt down, noting the text etched into it:

Super Nintendo.

Oh right, his dad told him that Nintendo had released some throwback console last year. His dad was really excited about it and wanted to grab one right away, but there was some kind of supply issue. Figures that a rich girl like Forrest would have been able to grab one. To be honest though, it looked pretty old and worn for a brand new console. Pretty big too. Surprisingly so. Also, it had some kind of cartridge in it. He didn't recall seeing that in the promo pictures.

Well, as long as he was here...Flicking the power button, he grabbed a controller and flopped on the couch, laying his laptop bag on the floor in front of him. From Youtube videos he'd seen, he'd be dropped in some kind of main menu and there'd be a list of games to choose from, most likely none of which he'd played.

So why was he staring at a Konami logo? And Lucasarts? Zombies Ate My Neighbor? Reuben stared behind the TV to be sure, and yup, this console was using component cables. He was playing a bona-fide original SNES, back from the days when all you could play was whatever was in the console. Jeez, he hadn't had to worry about physical media since...wow, the Wii. That had to have been at least ten years ago...

The implication suddenly hit him: Forrest was a retro hipster for an era she didn't even live through, wasn't she? He never would have guessed just by looking at her. You think you know people, but they always do something to take you by surprise. He glanced back at the console. Sitting next to it was a case for a different game, something called NBA Jam. Between that and this oddly-titled game, he had a feeling that maybe, just maybe, this party would have something for him after all.

((Oh no it's Wyatt Carter))

"You go to a party, you retreat to an empty room and you fuckin' play video games?"

Wyatt Carter made his entrance at maximum volume, as was customary whenever he entered a new room at a party. Or at school, or at home or... whenever, really, there was very seldom an occasion where doing so wasn't appropriate. The list of exceptions could be summed up to two items: Church, and Nana's house. End of list. What was more, he had supplied to this room a very confused and very high Forrest Quin, slung over his shoulder like a sack of flour. Not the ideal position but somewhere between the front door and the living room she muttered something about 'having a great fall and cracking open' and this is where they stood now.

Some dudes liked to bring Xboxes to parties to play some CoD or Gears from time to time so like... sure, maybe if they were setting up something in this room, then good ol' Reuben might have had an actual arrangement going, and Wyatt would have had to step his previous statement back a little. But a moment of thought, or common sense really, reminded him Reuben got to the party AFTER him and wasn't carrying anything like a whole system on his back. So that was most likely Forrest's game he was playing, at a party where you're supposed to hang out and talk with people.

"Touchin' that shit without asking either. Eh, well fuck it, don't think she's sayin' much," he muttered after a second thought. "Here hold this," he blurted, making sure one arm was around Forrest's back before bucking her off his shoulder to drop her onto the couch. Looked cushioned enough that she could take a bump with no harm done unless she yacked all over the upholstery.

Not that he was all that interested, Wyatt turned to the TV to take a look at what Ruby decided to play instead of working on his sorely lacking social skills. Whatever it was, he wasn't familiar with it.

And then she was dumped on her couch.

((Forrest Quin continued from The Good In Everyone))


Alright then.

She hadn’t resisted because that would have been effort so she had just allowed the good doctor to carry her wherever he desired. Safe, no. Easy, yes. One downside was that he hadn’t stopped off in the kitchen because he was a savage. That meant she was without a drink. She wasn’t a fan of that. But the couch was comfy and she didn’t feel like moving in the current moment.

She was present. She was always present but active? Less so.

Her presence in the present notwithstanding she was alone in her living room with two guys. One of whom she had no memory of and the other who had delivered her to the couch. The living room itself was surprisingly empty. She’d have assumed it would have been bangin’ but it appeared not.

That meant it was just the three of them, a Super Nintendo and...that was it. She didn’t even have alcohol to drink.

As the 16-bit sounds of Zombies Ate My Neighbours began to emerge from the TV she began to consider her choices. She could go find the alcohol, explore to find other things that were happening, go to the basement or stay on the couch. All of them but one involved moving so it looked like she was staying on the couch.

“I can hear you.” She grumbled as she rolled onto her side more to get a better look.

Reuben hadn't gotten far into the game before Wyatt arrived. There were the aforementioned zombies and they were chasing the aforementioned neighbors, who it seemed he had to collect before the zombies got them. A task made more difficult by the fact that they seemed to spawn at random, giving the whole experience a degree of unfairness which he simply chalked up to it being an older game. Regardless of his minor quibbles, he was truly engrossed within the experience, losing track of the world around him.

Which is why Wyatt's entrance provoked the same reflexive response it had the first time, except he had a soft couch behind him and not a hard desk.

Reuben froze in place, leaving the game on pause. His eyes followed Wyatt as he entered. He was chiding him for playing video games at a party, for touching Forrest's console without asking, as if he actually cared about any of that. No, he was just chiding Reuben because he knew that he, once again, had a temporary moral high ground. Reuben would find it amusing if Wyatt couldn't snap him in two.

Speaking of Forrest, the hulking behemoth had her over his shoulder and just set her down on the couch like she was some stage prop. Reuben adjusted his position on the couch so she'd have more room, and noted that she seemed...out of it. Was she okay? She was talking, so Reuben assumed she was, but she was more or less down for the count. That must have been some pretty dank weed she was under.

So why was Wyatt here, of all places? Had he been trying to find someplace private and just discovered Reuben here, or had he seen an opportunity to harass someone and just jumped right in on the spur of the moment? Reuben decided that before he surrendered his position, he was going to make an effort to salvage it. Find some common ground.

"Carter," he said, choosing his words very carefully, "i-if you want me to leave, I'll leave. I just saw this thing I never played before and I...you know, I figured I'd try it out. You ever played on a SNES before? There's one more controller if...if you're interested." That was it, get the focus over to Wyatt. Calm the situation down. Assuming that Wyatt didn't go back on the offensive.

Wyatt looked at Reuben like he'd just asked him to pursue a liberal arts major. No, he was NOT interested. He wasn't even interested in games in his own spare time; there weren't enough hours in the day between the waste of time that was high school, practice whenever one of his sports was in season, workouts whenever it wasn't, dinner... he got that some people had time for games, and he just wasn't one of those people. But it was another thing entirely to go to a party, already a huge chunk of time allocated to hanging out and just having fun with other people - key, WITH OTHER PEOPLE, and then to waste it being the same fucking nerd you could be at home.

"Hard pass, but you have fun with that." He'd already wasted enough time directing two whole sentences Reuben's way, but sunk-cost fallacy demanded a third. "But make yourself useful and keep an eye on her, huh?" Forrest didn't look like she was going anywhere any time soon. Neither was Reuben, Wyatt figured. With his duty of putting the high hostess somewhere safe being fulfilled, the next course of action was likely grabbing a drink and trying to find the people actually being social.

Naturally on his way out, Wyatt was sure to flick the purple button on the system labeled 'reset'.

((Wyatt Carter continued elsewhere at the party))

And then she was left alone with the guy who had just wandered into her house to play her SNES. She wasn't sure what was happening elsewhere in her house but she was sure it was probably more exciting than her current situation. Unfortunately, she was also currently in a position where moving represented too much effort. It wouldn't have been worth it. Not unless there was some tangible reward she would have gotten.

So instead she got to watch the two have a pointless conversation before one left. To compound that they spoke about her like she wasn't even there. She was ninety percent sure she had spoken but they had either ignored it or she hadn't actually said anything...which granted there was a good chance of.

Wait.

No that wasn't important, probably.

Still, she did wonder where the party was. It was kinda lame that she had just been discarded in a practically empty room. More than lame actually. She pulled a face.

"You're not much of a party animal huh?"

Reuben heaved a protracted and exaggerated sigh as the SNES went through its title screens all over again. What was his deal? Wyatt was well within his rights to say no, of course. Nobody was forcing him to stay. But why did he have to go and reset the console too?

Reuben just didn’t get him. What sort of person would be able to casually mess with someone and not even blink an eye? Was he a sociopath, or perhaps just a man so used to getting his way that it didn’t even matter if other people were inconvenienced? Someone with an ego that size was frightening to Reuben, because where was the limit? If Wyatt found him offensive one day, would he just snap his neck without even trying?

He realized that he’d been leaving the game on the title screen. As he was about to hit start, Forrest asked him a very reasonable question and he set the controller down. He knew that if he got started again he’d tune her out entirely, and that was rude.

“No, I don’t suppose I am much for parties,” he replied. No need to mention that this was his first time ever being invited to one. “I’m sorry. This is probably really boring.”

He was surprised that Wyatt had dumped her in this empty room to begin with. All the excitement was happening elsewhere. Maybe this was just another bit of casual Wyatt-ism. Abandoning her in a room with a hopeless loser. She seemed kind of uncomfortable actually. Maybe it’d be polite to ask.

“Uh, say, uh...” he said, struggling to find the words. “Are you, uh...going to be okay? You need something?”

((Abel Zelenovic continued from Dare You Enter My Magical Realm?))

Abel was at a loss. He checked the bathrooms, he checked the kitchen, he even checked the foyer place thing. Nothing. It was like a towel goblin ransacked Forrest's whole house in his quest for all the world's linens. His last idea was looking for the laundry machine room place, maybe. Otherwise his last brain cell was completely out of ideas.

Just one problem, though: where the hell would the laundry room be? Abel sure didn't know, and the alcohol didn't help his abysmal critical thinking skills. So he took to what he knew worked best and aimlessly stumbled around this huge ass maze of a house.

In part of his adventure he passed by what looked like another living room kinda thing occupied by some dude and some other dude with rainbow hair. Abel kept going down the hall before slowly coming to a stop.

Rainbow hair. Looked dead. That was probably Forrest.

Abel doubled back to the living room and confirmed his suspicions. Sweet, just the girl who would probably know where to procure a towel in this trying time. The other dude was Reuben the mascot guy. Nice kid if maybe a little awkward, but that was okay.

"Hey, yo, yizzity-yo, Forrest. I-" He paused, his face flushing even more red from interrupting whatever was going on than it already had from just the alcohol. "I ain't, uh... heh, sorry. Towels. Be where they?"

The mascot asked if she needed anything. That was cute. She trawled through the scrapyard of her mind, assessing her wants and needs. There were many options for her replies, so she picked the one she preferred.

“No, I’m good.” Her hand scratched at the shaved portion of her head. “Probably need more alcohol.” She mumbled.

That was when Abel arrived asking her about towels. The question meant that someone had spilled something and gotten wet, which was funny to her. Classic drunk people. They were the clumsiest people in the world. You weren’t properly drinking until someone dropped/knocked/kicked/nudged/hit a drink over, either deliberately or accidentally.

Forrest laughed a little as she pushed herself up into a sitting position, hands and arms slipping because she was fucked.

“Yo, yo bro, whoops, they’ll be-shit-woah there we go.” She adjusted and leant over the back of the sofa. “They’ll be through a door on the right.”

It was at that moment a smaller, younger girl with her brown hair styled in a bob timidly entered the room, looking for all the world like she expected the big bad seniors to eat her for intruding.

“Uh, hi...is Forrest in here?”

Alcohol, eh? A request both unsurprising and drop-dead simple. Just finding his way to this part of the house, Reuben had passed by folks with coolers, tables laid out with bottles of beer, and so on and so forth. It was probably easier to locate alcohol around here than water.

A part of him questioned whether Forrest should be drinking at the same time as she was high as a kite, but he’d never heard of any health risks involved. If she wanted to drink, it was her house. None of his business what she did with her spare time.

With a shrug and a mumbled affirmation, he set the controller down and rose from the couch when Abel came in for towels. Someone must have puked on a rug or something. Forrest seemed to have it covered though.

That’s when the brown-haired girl entered the room, asking timidly where Forrest was. Reuben had never heard anything about her having a little sister, but it was always possible. He’d never really heard much about Forrest’s family at all, other than that she’d been adopted. And that’s not something you bring up in casual conversation.

And so, with no real reason not to, he just pointed a thumb over to the figure on the couch. “I’ll be right back,” he said to Forrest, and gestured over to Abel. “Let’s, uh...see if we can find those towels.”

He didn’t know what the girl wanted with Forrest, but whatever it was, he and Abel didn’t need to be a part of it.

Ah, so that's where the towels were hiding. "Sweet," Abel said. "Thanks. It-"

He felt a presence behind him. He looked over to see a meek looking little girl, and Abel stepped aside to let her in the room. She asked where Forrest was, and Abel smiled and tried to point in the general direction of the couch she was on at the same time Reuben did.

She was a real cutie. He never heard of Forrest having a sister or even any siblings for that matter. Must've been nice having a younger one; Abel would never wish for the misfortune of having two older sisters and the psychological warfare that came with it on anyone else. Not that that didn't come with perks of its own, but still.

Reuben offered to help look for the towels, which... yeah, that was probably a good call; the six or so drinks in Abel right now didn't really help with his natural oafishness. "Thanks, man," Abel said as Reuben led him out the room, leaving the two girls alone to talk about whatever needs talking about.

Who had let this literal child into the party?

That was Forrest's first thought upon seeing the girl, because man, she was small. Had she been that small once? Probably. It was weird that the girl didn't know who she was. Forrest assumed her hair gave her away in any setting. There was no way she was going to be blending into the undergrowth, that was for sure. It was expensive to maintain as well, the dye job did not come cheap. She was getting sidetracked though.

She lazily raised a hand in a half-wave and gave the girl a lopsided smile.

"Yo."

The girl carefully stepped further into the room and looked at Forrest, which gave Forrest a chance to look at her.

"So are you like twelve...thirteen?"

The girl pursed her lips in annoyance at the question. It actually just ended up cute looking because she was tiny.

"I'm a junior."

"High?"

"Year."

"Oh...rip."

Her original assessment had been just a little bit off then, there were a couple of years difference in their ages at most. Whoops. That made sense though Forrest supposed. They would have had to fire Claude if he had allowed a thirteen-year-old to get into the party.

Forrest shuffled and changed her position as she draped herself over the back of the couch.

"So anyway, whatup?"

The girl moved some hair that hanging over one eye out of the way before she spoke, her annoyance seeming to pass.

"Umm, some guy, Alton I think? Told me that he's put something in the back of a cabinet in the kitchen for you."

One of Forrest's eyebrows went up.

"What did he put in there? I hope it's not a head or I'll be very upset."

The girl shook her head and scratched behind an ear.

"I think he said it was absinthe?"

Forrest imagined that if her eyes could have actually lit up the girl would have been blinded.

Meanwhile, not too many rooms away, a brave and noble quest had finally reached its end. Reuben and Abel were unfamiliar with this house, but between the two of them, they were able to rub enough brain cells together in order to locate what Abel was seeking. The towels, like everything else in this house, filled Reuben with an indescribable envy. Colorful, soft, sinfully fluffy, as fresh and spotless as if they'd been removed from the laundry just a few minutes before. He had a hard time believing these towels were real, and if he didn't know the kind of money Forrest's parents were pulling in, he'd almost believe that he was dreaming a dream of the unattainable.

Well, if they were going to be used to clean up puke, their pristine beauty would be remedied in short order. Almost seemed like a waste, but if Forrest was willing to lend them out for this purpose, he supposed that it was fine. Worse came to worst, her parents could just buy a dozen new ones, custom-made by some fashion towel designer in France.

Fashion towel designer...Was that even a thing?

He peeked at his phone.

Huh.

"Well, uh...see you then," he said to Abel with a limp wave as he went off on his own.

(Abel Zelenovic continued in Dare You Enter My Magical Realm. Permission from Jilly)

Much as he'd love to stare into space and go off on tangents, he had his own mission. As it so happened, he'd passed a room along the way that had a table with a few different liquors on them, one of which didn't look opened up. As he backtracked to it, it looked like it was laid out for the party, with some of those red plastic cups piled next to the bottles, or laid on their side, or rattling across the floor. Some folks had no tact.

He glanced at the unopened one. Just a twist-top bottle, thank goodness. No clue about the brand's quality. All he knew was Budweiser, and this wasn't Budweiser, just some company called Bearded Iris Brewing. The important thing was that this one had the highest chance that someone hadn't just drunk right out of the bottle, and that was enough for him.

One bottle in hand, one cup in the other, he made his way back to the living room, walking back in the door just in time to hear something about "absinthe", some other alcoholic beverage he'd never had the pleasure of trying. Kind of a weird thing for them to be talking about, but considering the nature of this place, alcohol was probably a frequent topic of discussion.

"Hey...Sorry to interrupt. Found you some..." he read the bottle, "Chief of Chiefs. Whatever that is." There was an end table next to the couch, so he just laid the cup and the bottle down, within reach of Forrest if she flopped over in its general direction. He paused for a moment, wondering if he should maybe open it or pour it out for her or something. What would her sister(?) say to that? He didn't want to make Forrest uncomfortable or have her think that he was taking advantage of her, so he just stepped away from the drink, his hands in his pockets, saying absolutely nothing.

Yes, this was much less awkward.

Forrest flopped over in the alcohols general direction and reaching out with two hands from her stationary position grabbed both the bottle—which had a cool purple design—and cup. After her arms retracted she began pouring the beer out and holy shit it was cloudy. She had no idea what Chief of Chief's was, but she was about to find out. Raising the cup to her lips she took a long drink of the beer, which tasted really good actually, way better than whatever the death mix she had made was although that probably wasn't hard now she thought about it.

"Thanks my man." She said raising the cup in a makeshift salute.

Then she turned her attention back to mysterious junior girl™.

"So just to confirm there is a bottle of absinthe hiding in my kitchen?"

The girls' eyes darted to the side as she let out a forceful sigh.

"Yes."

Her expression then changed to surprise as Forrest shoved the bottle and cup into her hands.

"That's for you mysterious drink delivery human, my way of saying thank you," Forrest said as she stepped off the couch with all the elegance of a dying swan. "Don't say I'm not a generous host."

"My name's Michelle." The girl replied as she looked between the two items that she appeared to have been bequeathed.

Meanwhile, Forrest had already started making her way towards the kitchen with wobbly steps.

"Let's go find that alcohol."

Okay, not a sister, apparently, which only made this whole thing even odder. Had someone else brought their little sister to the party or had she somehow snuck by that Claude guy at the front door? And what's worse, Forrest was just handing off a beer to this girl who didn't even look like she was 18. The same beer he had just brought for Forrest because Forrest asked him to get it for Forrest, but no, apparently Forrest caught wind of a better beverage so Forrest was actually getting up on her own two Forrest-y feet to get it, when Forrest could have probably done that in the first place so that Reuben wouldn't have needed to go get it for Forrest and then have his contribution promptly shafted by Forrest because Forrest wasn't satisfied with what Forrest had freaking received.

Not that Reuben was bitter or anything.

Well whatever, she could go off with her newfound friend. Maybe he could actually make some headway in this game of hers while she was gone. Between the two of them, they could probably find this absinthe without needing him there.

Sit down. Get comfortable. Grab controller. Start. Pick the weird kid with the 3D glasses. Play. It occurred to him that he still hadn't asked for the wi-fi password. Maybe if she came back, he could casually bring it up if she wasn't busy drinking.