3 Friendship is not magic

On that Monday afternoon, Ryan groggily headed out of his classroom as usual after school.

"Can't wait to burn you all after I graduate," Ryan thought in a monotone voice as he eyed the thick folder of notes and textbooks in his arms wearily, "how is differentiation and integration supposed to prepare us for the working world again?"

"Ryan, Ryan! You look like a walking zombie as always!" Ryan felt someone put their arm around his shoulder and he grumpily slapped the arm off.

"I do feel dead on the inside," Ryan muttered, "unlike a certain somebody who should be dialing their energy down several notches."

"Ahahaha!" The blonde boy next to him started breaking into boisterous laughter in response as if Ryan had just cracked a joke, "thanks for the compliment!"

"You're welcome, Alex," Ryan replied sarcastically.

Just then, a familiar brunette started walking towards them with a smug but charming smile.

"Hey Chance. Do you know when Alex would ever stop acting as if he weren't on crack caffeine 24/7?" Ryan asked the brown haired boy.

"Nope, if that were to happen the earth is probably going to end, but that isn't important!" The brunette boy, Chance announced, as he proudly whipped out something metallic from his back pocket and dangled it right in Ryan's face. Ryan reflexively tilted his head back.

"Nice swimming googles, but you have to be an idiot to try and swim in the school hallways," Ryan said and Alex nodded in agreement.

"This is the latest VR glasses released this week, the BlackDynamo 3.7! With this, I can kickstart my career as a game streamer!" The brown haired boy ignored the comment and said slowly, yet he was unable to suppress his excitement.

"Y-you? A game streamer? With that face and your personality? Get real!" Alex quipped, snatching away the goggles from Chance to look at the device from various angles, "But if it were me, it'll be a whole other story, I'll have 10k fans, especially the girls, all over me in an instant."

As Ryan watched, he sighed to himself while the other two boys were talking animatedly, thinking, "If you keep up with this immature argument, the author might decide to edit the story to make us middle schoolers instead of high schoolers."

When Ryan turned back to try to mediate the other two boys' argument, they appeared to not only have reconciled, but were acting really buddy-buddy with each other as it had not occurred in the first place. The blonde and brunette boys smiled hopefully, the former boy with droopy wide eyes and a shaky nervous toothy smile that would be way better suited on an anime girl than a 17 year old teen; the latter with a sinister expression of perhaps a rapist or a corrupt politician.

At any rate, it seemed like behind Ryan's back, they came up with a plan. "No, they can't drag me into this, I need to make an excuse, NOW," Ryan thought and he swiftly turned to leave.

"Ryan let's go to my place-" Chance started, slapping his hand on Ryan's left shoulder.

"-To play VR MMO games," Alex held Ryan's right shoulder as he finished the sentence. A dark aura seemed to seep into the air around them- Truly this is the power of peer pressure.

"Heheh sorry, I forgot to tell you guys. I have a date with a girl today," Ryan quickly came up with an excuse.

Silence ensued. Ryan let out a polite smile. Hopefully I duped them, he thought to himself, as he took another step forward.

Two arms extended like a barricade to block his path. Ryan gulped.

"A girl? As your best friend, I know that you never dated a girl in 17 years," Alex said in a matter-of-fact voice.

"But that's my age," Ryan butted in.

"Exactly."

"Even in the one in a million chance you actually did manage to woo a girl, what's that saying again? Bros before hoes?" Chance pressed, and his silvery blue eyes narrowed.

—————————

"It's nice to see you two here again, Alex and Ryan. I hope my boy didn't cause too many problems for you both," Chance's mother, a beautiful woman with wavy styled hair, said kindly to the two boys.

"It's nice to see you again too, ma'am," Ryan greeted. Alex yelled back a cheerful response. Then the two headed into Chance's room.

It was hard for Ryan not to notice the interior of Chance's room, it was clearly designed by a professional- a black and blue themed room with modern furniture that should have cost a fortune. Automated closets and bookcase that you can extract whatever piece of clothing or book by tapping the icon on a touchscreen and the closets and bookcase organize themselves. The entire room was accented by neon blue lights that extend along the walls, along with mounted pictures which play a slideshow of black and white photographs of Chance as a child- his family photos, when he won in a debating competition and his scenic holiday trip with his uncle and aunt to Mars.

Despite how the room was meant to exude a certain sophisticated feel, it was still obviously a young man's room. A sweatshirt or two hang over the side of his bed. In a low cabinet, there was several series of printed comics. There are also pictures of band albums and pretty ladies in swimsuits plastered all over the wall haphazardly. And if you look under the cabinet you'll find magazines of...

You get the idea.

"Your room got renovated again. Are you kidding me," Alex said in surprise, his jaw almost hitting the floor.

"Have a seat," Chance said as he pulled up an app on his phone, and after that, the bed smoothly unfolded to form the shape of a small sofa while the side desk turned into a coffee table.

Chance then casually threw two pairs of VR headsets and electronic gloves to the two other guys. "Don't break them," he warned them. "Well you did just throw them," Ryan thought.

Ryan quickly put on the headset over his head and heard the gears turn as the headset readjusts to fit perfectly on his head, then he slipped on the gloves over his fingers. Ryan snapped his fingers, and in the next instant, the headset switched on and his vision was filled with the selection screen. There were images of various games to select: fighting games, card collecting, platforming and much to his amusement, a maid café dating sim.

"The game is already pre-installed in the headset, so go right ahead to the main menu. We're playing FantasyFable today. Clear your voices because we're going to be recorded," Ryan could hear Chance's voice clearly within his own headset.

"Recorded?" Ryan asked, worried.

"There are microphones embedded in our headsets and his glasses. We're going to stream FantasyFable together as a trio, blind (means without playing the game or knowing its contents)! And get famous!" Alex chirped.

As Ryan moved his hand to select the familiar cover image of FantasyFable, he paused.

"Don't expect me to come up with any good reactions," Ryan said carefully, "this is probably just an overhyped game. I wouldn't get my hopes up."

"Sure you can do your thing. If you don't like your recording we can always edit it out later. Are you guys at the FantasyFable main menu yet?" Alex asked expectantly.

Chance made a grunt of affirmation and Ryan quickly pressed the cover image to arrive at the main menu of FantasyFable.

It showed a cloudy sky and a green terrain in the background with a team of posing adventurers- a girl in a mage dress and large wooden magician's staff with a green gem encrusted in the end, a man with a full beard in pirate gear, a woman gladiator warrior who you would not want to mess with and a sharp-dressed male who was duo wielding golden shotguns. In the Centre was the title of the game, FantasyFable in red fancy font. The music was calm and soothing.

"I'm there," Ryan said.

"Great in three seconds I'll start the recording. 3, 2, 1!" At that, Chance shifted into a more energetic tone, "What is up, world? We're a up and coming game streaming group known as... uhh we don't have a name yet but I'm Chance!"

"I'm Alex!" The blonde boy added.

There was a slight pause of expectation before Ryan gave in. "I am Ryan here," he said without much enthusiasm.

"Right! So we're going to start by playing the famous FantasyFable game! We three never touched the game, or even saw the promotional video!" Alex cut in cheerfully.

"Uh, there is one dude here who plays as a top hero right here!" Ryan thought while sweating buckets.

"Let's start the game!" As Alex shouted that, all three of them started a new game.

The game began with a 4 minute long introduction of the hero guild which was formed to slay evil demons and monsters who started threatening the peace of the world. The other two boys were getting excited over the gameplay mechanics shown and the hyper realistic visuals while Ryan had already chose to skip the introduction.

"Right, the video's over, let's get right into the action!" Alex announced.

Unexpectedly, the boys were met with a scene of a mother giving birth in a hospital room with a doctor. She was viewed from the side and wore a long gown to make it not explicit. In the Centre was a text box with a tutorial for a quick time event for the important action of... being born.

"That wasn't what I meant by action!!!" Alex yelled, "why can't we start off as an adventurer already?!"

"According to the Internet, it's to make this game more like real life," Chance said as he opened up a separate screen to check an article online.

"Anyway, screw this useless minigame! Where can I skip this?" Alex said angrily as he started ramming the buttons appearing in the screen.

"Eheh!" A weird baby giggle sounded.

Suddenly a baby flew out from the lady like a bullet, smashing its tiny head onto the edge of the doorframe. From that animation, the baby then slinked down slowly with a comical dulululu sound effect.

Alex could only blink repeatedly. Eh? Was that supposed to happen? He thought.

In the next second, the sound of triumphant trumpets sounded as text appeared on the screen.

"System: Congratulations! You hit your head when you were born! You have lost 100 intelligence points! You gained the title: 'Born an Idiot'. Click here to share your fail-, ahem, achievement with your friends."

...

"Cr*p!!!" Alex cussed, slamming his gloved hands onto the table.

Meanwhile, Chance was trying not to snigger at his friend. "Don't break the gloves! Anyway thanks Alex for giving us all an example of what NOT to do. I'll just have to tap slowly."

At that, Chance started to tap the buttons slowly, leaving a several second intervals between taps. After a while, the mother started to look very bored and started to use her phone to browse cat videos. About a minute after that, the doctor raised both arms up in defeat and left the room.

This doctor is pretty irresponsible, Chance thought as he continued. After that, even the game music slowed by three times.

Finally the head of the baby appeared and the baby fell out unceremoniously.

Once again, triumphant trumpets sounded as text appeared on the screen:

"Congratulations! You took too long to be born. You have lost 100 Speed points. You received the title: "Born a Lazy Bum". Click here to sh- oh wait you are too lazy to even click on this link right? Forget I asked."

...

"Sh*t!" Chance yelled as he threw his gloves across the room.

"What happened to 'Don't break the gloves'?" Ryan thought.

"What about you, Ryan?" Alex asked quizzically as Chance continued to freak out.

"I had a normal birth. Did either of you read the tutorial just now?"

Both boys fell silent.