Black Water ↠ Stiles Stilinski [Teen Wolf, Vol. One]

Seeing Red

Charlie instinctively swung around and found a mutant creature hurling itself at her, glowing red shield up. Like all the other ones, the grunt stood oddly, knees bent backwards like a bird's. With one quick shot to that bend in the leg, Charlie's player brought it to the ground, the shield skittering uselessly to the side. Now exposed, one more shot to the head finished it off.

"Double tap. Nice. Ooh, I'm gonna go after that helicopter."

The offer of thanks on Charlie's lips as a swarm of grunts suddenly set upon her. Donald had split off in a different direction just in time to avoid them. He was as easily distracted by shiny objects as Lydia, those objects just happened to come in different forms. Lydia went after jewelry while he was generally more partial to fictional futuristic aircraft. And to-scale sized lightsabers. While he made his unconscious escape, the grunts came at Charlie in waves, crashing in from all possible directions and crowding her into a corner. All exits were blocked. Her player's back stayed firmly pressed against a wall, its gun firing off round after round with minimal effect. The spectre of imminent CGI death hovered not too far off in the corner of the screen. "Oh shit," she swore, wincing heavily and her thumbs slammed down on the keys. "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. I'm so gonna die."

"And anyway," Donald continued, oblivious to her plight, "that's not my point. I mean like...the Matrix is basically one giant video game, right? Like everything you see in it is all false imagery. It's all coded. So did video games get that same amount of insane detail? Or does that code contain slightly crappier code. And if so, were the coders ashamed of that crappier code?"

Charlie's hands tightened around the controller, trying to keep it steady as her hands began to sweat. Her sticky, popcorn-covered fingers were giving her no advantage. Plus the salt worked its way into an old papercut between her index and middle finger, making it sting. The grunts were piling up around her. Her aim might be good, but the dwindling ammo reserves she had left spelled disaster regardless. Yup, she was going to die. "The guys who coded the Matrix were all dead, Donald," she said through teeth clenched in concentration. "I don't think they care about sub-premium coding in fake video games. That's all self-sustaining bullshit created and maintained by the A.I."

"Okay, fair point," Donald conceded. "But like....what about gradual technological development? Did that happen at all? Or were the people going to live in 1999 until the end of time, never questioning why further technological progress wasn't made? Imagine an eternity of having Windows Vista. How fucking terrifying is that?"

"You saw the next two movies in that franchise, man," Charlie grumbled. "Do you really think they put that much thought into the world-building? I mean these are the same guys who looked at an awesome intro movie and said, 'You know what this franchise could use? Some pasty computer generated vampires with dreadlocks.' Don't look for logic where there's none to be found. That, my friend, fries your brain."

Firing one final shot, Charlie took out one last grunt before she was left without ammunition. She sighed in defeat and allowed the controller to fall from her hands, rolling to the side. Not five seconds later, the red screen of death began flashing before her eyes. "Aaaaand, I'm dead. This round is up to you now buddy."

"No worries, I got you," Donald replied in a chipper tone. "I've almost got this helicopter and I'm about to start blowing shit up. Yippee ki-yay, motherfuckers!"

Charlie brought her legs up, curling her feet beneath her, and watched Donald play through the rest of the round. Seeing him play was like watching a form of abstract performance art. He kept a running commentary composed of aggressively humming the Mission Impossible theme song, making random explosion noises, mumbling 'pew, pew, pew' under his breath, and, above all else, trash-talking various animated characters. But despite all the antics, if actual wars could be won with a PS3, he would be the one to call. Strategy, skill, once he was in the zone it was almost a beautiful thing to behold. Graceful, even. He practiced way too much. Honestly, the dude kind of needed to get a life. But then again she didn't exactly have room to comment on that front.