Anyway, Dave is a really good writer. Like, really good. His essay got published in the newspaper once; it was pretty cool. So he's a good guy to play with. Always very creative. Not like Zahid, that idiot.
"You go through the door, then?"
"Yeah," a couple people replied at once. They always do that; I hate it. But you can't make them raise their hands. I'm not their teacher, right?
So, this particular night we came together to play Alternity. This is a really cool game, it's a lot like Dungeons and Dragons but in the future or the present. We just finished up a two-year game of Dungeons and Dragons, so we were all sick of it. This was a nice change of pace.
"So, you're in a hallway, you know it because you used to work here and all. It branches left and right. You know Director Headly's office is down to the left."
"Then we are heading that way," Tony said. A couple sips of Dr. Pepper later they were standing outside his office. It was a nice corner office, because he is the director of the FBI and all. It's actually a double office type thing. There's a big glass window and a door, and just inside the door is a real small waiting room and a secretary's desk. She's not there though; it's Memorial Day. Behind the secretary's desk is another door, and that went into Headley's office.
"Oh, and there's an American flag in the corner of the office."
"I spit on it! Action Jack Stone blames America for this set up!" Tony said. Chuckles.
"We don't know if it was a setup," Dave said.
"Is Headley's door locked?" asked Logan. His character, James "Shadowy Death" Steel was the group spy. See, he spent the Vietnam era doing secret missions in North Vietnam for the CIA, and when he came back he got laid off because the job market was real bad. So now he works for the FBI. He's great at picking locks, and he says that he can shoot a fly with a pistol at 100 paces. But he missed the last time he tried.
"Nope, you waltz in. Headley is sitting behind his desk, and there's a very mean looking weapon sitting on the desk. He's sorta stroking it like a kitten or something. 'Welcome home guys!' he says, 'I can't give you your last paychecks you know, unless you want it in stock options and lead!' He grabs the gun and fires it."
"Holy crap, I dive off to the side!" Dave screamed. He had good ideas all the time.
"Too late, you take a chest full of it. You have a bulletproof vest on, right?"
"Yes! Dear God, yes!"
Dave always said Dear God when he was real shocked, angry, surprised, happy, enraged, annoyed, or tired. He always threw his arms up when he says it, and all the flab flops around. Hypnotic, really.
Ok, so now I had to roll some dice. That's the best part of the game. I have 4-sided dice, 6-sided dice, 8-sided dice, 10-sided dice, 12-sided dice, 20-sided dice, and 30-sided dice. Those are just the regular ones, though. My friend Greg has a 100-sided dice. He moved a couple years ago, but he was the coolest kid ever. All of us used to be in awe of that thing. It's like a ball the size of my fist. He was so cool.
So, this time I got to roll my 12-sided dice, and subtract 3 from Dave's body armor.
Tumble. 6. Minus 3 is 3.
"You take 3 mortal damage Dave. It just grazed your left side."
"Thank god!" He said. "I'm gonna get behind cover and return fire!"
"Hey guys, Pizza is here!" It was my mom from upstairs. She only talked to us to give us food. She's really cool though, sometimes when we play at other people's houses they don’t give us pizza, we have to pay for it. Then you get Taco Bell. The Grande Meal is like ten bucks for ten tacos, so it’s a good deal on a tight budget. But mom pays for the pizza, so it's all good.
"Ok guys, let's take a break and eat." I said. We always break when food comes, because you don't want to get your dice all greasy.
We all went upstairs, and as we did something occurred to me. People are always classifying other people, like jocks and nerds and stuff, but that doesn't matter. I mean, it does, because I don't hang out with meathead jocks, but it doesn't matter that they are jocks or nerds or whatever. We are just friends. See, some people think that we are real dorks for playing this game, but it's so much fun just to hang out like this. Lots of people don’t do that. It's like, friends are the best thing ever. You can just hang out and screw around with them. They don't care what you do with your time, or anything like that. They just want to be your friend and hang out. That's really cool.
"So," Zahid said, "I was thinking we should all goto a convention this year. It would be fun."
"God," Logan said, "You are such a nerd. Only losers go to those".
Yep. My friends. What a cool bunch of guys.