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

Seeing Red

Disclaimer: 'Teen Wolf' isn't mine. Shocking, right? But it's true. If there are any similarities in content or dialogue, it has probably originated with the show.

Chapter 5 – Seeing Red

Sunday nights always possessed a feeling of 'in-betweenness' that Charlie found vaguely unsettling. By that point her homework had all been finished, dinner cooked, and the comforting embrace of elastic waistband pajama pants had long since been accepted. No room left in the weekend to accomplish anything truly awesome or noteworthy, no remaining obligations to fulfill. Charlie was left to revel in her last few hours of freedom while simultaneously despairing at the knowledge that her alarm for the next morning was set for 7:30 a.m., contemplating what fresh hell high school would bring her next. It gave a sensation of paralysis. And this Sunday night in particular was more off-putting than most, what with the inevitability of a post-party reunion with Stiles and Scott, whose carnival of bizarre shit had plagued her mind for the last three days.

"I wonder what video games would have been like in 'The Matrix'."

Donald's words snapped Charlie's mind back to the task at hand. The spotty wifi in the house interrupted the audio connection, making all the phrases come out of her headset broken and staticky. Paired with the desolate, CGI landscape that stretched across her monitor, it gave the the game she and Donald were playing a strange sense of authenticity. The image before her was varying degrees of tan, from pixelated desert dunes to the blocky buildings to the absurdly flat cliff faces. The only interruptions to the color scheme were the dull green of intermittent palm trees, the glowing shields of enemy combatants, and the jet black gun in her player's hand.

They had been at the game for about an hour now. The popcorn filling the wide bowl wedged between her thigh and sofa cushion had long since disappeared, save for that one rogue kernel that always managed to lodge itself in her gum. Charlie's controller was alarmingly sticky in her hands, to the point that her player's reflexes had slowed significantly. Jump, swivel, shoot, run. All functions ran on a delay. Plus her Spartan laser had been dropped at some unknown location, leaving her woefully ill-equipped. 

Charlie and Donald were well-practiced enough that Halo 3 usually took about two hours to run through in its entirety if they were paying attention, but this night found them stuck on the second level. Charlie would have been embarrassed had she been she fully aware of her performance, but her focus was as drained as her supply of ammunition. A freaking mud wasp could kill her at this point. Which meant that she and Donald had moved past the point of actual investment in the game and lapsed into a combination of semi-coherent shower thoughts and a half-hearted effort to not die.

"What do you mean what were video games like in The Matrix?" Charlie asked, maneuvering her player up a set of stairs, Donald's player following close behind. She stayed close to the wall and ducked beneath a window, keeping out of the range of any rogue bullets. The two of them had made nominal progress—her still clearing the buildings of enemy grunts while he attempted to get his hands on a helicopter. "They were probably like this but shittier," she said through a wide yawn. "That movie came out in 1999. People still owned tamagotchis in 1999."

"Don't knock tamagotchis," Donald grumbled into the headset. "Taking care of mine gave me the confidence to babysit Jade."

"What were you doing with a tamagotchi in the 2000s?" Charlie scoffed. "Also, That was the bar you set for yourself for childcare? Thank God Jade's still alive."

"Alive and treasurer of her middle school student council back in New York, so clearly I'm doing something right," Donald sniped. "Shit, you got a bogie on your left! Watch your back!"