Rising Shards

After appreciating Kalei’s pretty spacious game room, we got our sleeping bags unfurled and a quick layout of bean bag chairs and a couch for ideal seating. Lillia unpacked her own game console and began to set it up next to a spare TV Kalei brought in from a quick trip upstairs. Once she got the smaller TV down, Kalei went back upstairs again to wait for the pizza. I was tired just listening to her go up and down the stairs.

“Whyzis look so familiar?” Oka asked, gesturing to the game room as Lillia continued untangling and hooking up cords.

“We saw it in Kalei’s memory trial.” I said.

“Ohhhh, that’s right.” Oka said. “Wow, Kalei has pretty good architectural memory for it to pop up that exactly.”

“I remember seeing some of it in the background when I’ve played games on video chat.” Lillia said. “For instance, I know that back wall decently well.”

“How often do you guys play games together? I don’t really think about you being that close with Kalei, I guess.” Oka said.

Lillia shrugged. “I suppose among everyone here, the one I speak the least to is Zeta.”

“Well let’s change that tonight!” Oka said, leaping to her feet. “I’m so excited for this! I’m excited for a night away from the Kilanders, away from school, but with my friends! And girlfriend too! Zeta!” Oka sat back down and started shaking me. “This is our first sleepover as a couple!”

I shook her back a bit, not sure how to reciprocate the gesture.

“Oka, Zeta,” Lillia said, scooting towards us on her knees. “There’s something I’d like you two to try tonight.”

“I uhhhhhh—” I started, thinking of very different things before Lillia handed each of us a gaming controller. “It won’t be like the games I was told Roux forced you to play. I will be coaching you as well, and I promise to do my best to be personable and not aggressive until you’re skilled enough.”

“Oh man, did you actually convince them?” Kalei asked, a bundle of pizza in her arms as she rushed down the stairs.

“We didn’t agree to anything yet,” Oka said. “You know Zeta and I aren’t ‘skilled’ at ‘video games.’”

“These are different, they’re party games.” Kalei said, plopping the pizza down. “I promise I won’t be pushy, Lillia and I figured out a good lineup.”

“Do we wanna eat the pizza first before we greasen up your video game whatnots?” Oka asked.

“Ahhh,” Kalei said. “Hm. Good point. I’m starving too.”

Marshy was also excited about the pizza and circled us like we were fresh meat as Kalei divvied up the pizza boxes.

“Your puppy is so cute, Kalei.” Oka said, relishing in finally being able to pet Marshy for just a second as he rushed around trying to get pizza from us. “What a good doggy! Aren’t you? I tried to get Berin to get me a puppy, but he just took me to a dog park, which while fun, wasn’t the same as having one of my own.”

“Our apartment doesn’t let us have pets.” I said. I wondered what it would’ve been like to have a pet when I was younger. Maybe we could now that we had a new apartment. “Hey Kalei, did you still wanna do that whole talk thing?”

The whole reason Kalei wanted to have a sleepover was so she could discuss her crush on Nikki and her new awareness of herself. A lot had happened between her telling us her sleepover intentions and now, but I didn’t want to forget it.

“Later,” Kalei said, wolfing down like five whole slices of pizza faster than I could manage one. “Way later. Pizza now. Then game.”

After we all enjoyed some pizza and soda, the first game Kalei and Lillia had us play was a kart racer. It fortunately had baby easy controls so I kind of made it to like on average 25^th out of 32 on the races. Oka was a quick learner on this one and started beating even Kalei and Lillia.

“Oka, you’re really good at this!” I said as I drove into the side walls as she threw some kind of purple ooze attack that stopped all the other racers as she sped forward.

“I crave speed, apparently.” Oka said.

After beating us in the racing game three more times (well, beating Kalei and Lillia, I gave up and had some breadsticks during the last few races), we moved on to a party game.

“Plank Evanos’ Party Party 8?” Oka read the title off the cover.

“He had a game show or something, then got into being a mascot character for video games.” Kalei said. “He has like fifty catchphrases, one of the minigames is trying to name them all!”

This game was like a board game but with little minigames that we’d earn in game money and prizes with.

“Now I must warn you,” Lillia said. “This game is a true test of our friendship.”

“It’s just a dumb game, it can’t be that intense.” Oka said. “It’s got a weird guy wearing like twelve hats on the cover.”

“Don’t underestimate it.” Lillia said.

This game had even baby-easier controls, so I stood more of a chance. That said, as soon as the minigames started I lost almost immediately in embarrassing fashion, whether it was failing the ‘stand on a pole’ minigame, the ‘hotwire a car’ minigame, or the one where you had to force your character to eat a whole shoe.

“Oka, you know if Penteldtam marries Mantorvel, that guy’s gonna be your uncle.” Kalei said as one minigame started up where Oka’s character had to make a very delicate ice sculpture as the rest of our characters threw snowballs at her.

“Ah, shut up!” Oka said. She dropped her controller so she could cover her ears with her hands. “Why did you say that? Shut up! No!” Then she realized she’d been tricked and scrambled to pick up the gamepad again, but she’d already lost the minigame as her ice statue shattered. “That is so not fair!”

Kalei’s eyes widened as she spoke in a fake quiet-raspy-demon voice. “Everything’s fair in Plank Evanos’ Party Party 8.”

“Don’t do demon voice!” I said. “It’s scary!”

“What’s so scary about my demon voice?” Kalei said.

“Eeek!” I squealed as I scooted away from her to hide behind Oka.

As for the final rankings for the board game: Lillia came in first, Kalei second, Oka third, and me last. Each of our characters got rewarded with stuff like “fastest on the draw” or “most merciless.”

“Hey, I won something!” I said as my character moved to the center of the screen to finally receive a single trophy.

“Aww, Zeta,” Oka said as my “lost the most minigames” trophy appeared. “Awwww, honeyyyy.”

“I feel so defeated.” I said, hanging my head low.

“You tried your best.” Oka said. “Next time we play you’ll do better!”

The doorbell rang upstairs. Then again shortly after.

“Are you expecting someone else?” Lillia asked.

“No…?” Kalei said. The doorbell rang three more times in quick succession, to which Kalei stood up right away. “Be right back.” She muttered before running upstairs.