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Xisuma was busy plugging in inputs for the TV that he had in his storage system for some reason. It was less than a week until Christmas, and since most of the folks on the server were going to be gone for the holidays, he'd invited them all over here to play some video games and chill for the evening.
"Hello," said Gem's voice from behind him. "I brought cookies!"
X startled, dropped the cables he was plugging into the TV, turned around to see Gem standing less than a foot behind him, and startled again.
"Sorry," said Gem apologetically. "I thought you heard me."
"I didn't," said X.
"I ran into Oli on the way," she said, turning around gracefully and setting the plate of cookies down on the floor. "He said that he was bringing Scott and Fwhip."
"Alright," said X, turning back to the monitor. "By the way, do you happen to have an AC-7.1 cable? I think I might have one somewhere in the electronics box, but I couldn't find it earlier."
"What?"
"Nevermind," said X. "I'll just use the Wii, then."
Finding the correct cables for the Wii (and also the Wii itself) was a Herculean task, and by the time X had finally found everything he needed, everyone Gem had mentioned as well as Ren, Doc, and Bdubs had also showed up. Oli brought his ukelele, and someone (X didn't catch who) had brought a crate of Wii games.
"Right!" said X, stepping back and clicking the "on" button on the remote. "Let's see here."
Nothing happened.
"Is it broken?" asked Oli, perking up.
"Well, I'd sure hope not," muttered Xisuma, waving it around while clicking insistently.
Doc snorted. "It's been in his cabinet for like, 20 years probably," he said. "It's allowed to be broken."
"You watch your mouth," said Xisuma without feeling. "Dang it."
"You can say fuck, king," called Oli. ("I legally can't," muttered X. Nobody heard him.) "Here. I'm a technical genius. Let me help." He swaggered up to the TV and put his hands on his hips, looking at it thoughtfully. He nodded once. "Well, it's got cables."
"For the love," sighed Fwhip, walking up and pushing him aside. "Here. Looks like all of the inputs are in the right places, but the power cord... Which one's the power cord again?"
"This one," said X, pointing to a dark blue braided cable hanging off of the back of the monitor.
"Right," said Fwhip, jiggling it around. "Hm, well, it looks like it's attached pretty good."
"How's it going?" called Doc from the other side of the room.
"Troubleshooting," replied Fwhip. "We're looking at the power cable."
"Oh, there's been issues with the power grid lately," said Doc, getting up with an effort and walking over to them. "That might be it."
"Do you ever wear shirts?" asked Oli.
"No," replied Doc. "They go against my beliefs. Uhh, cable looks good... oh," he said, busting out into laughter. "That has got to be the most ON-BRAND thing I've seen this week!"
"What's going on?" asked Scott curiously. Oli, bored, wandered back to where the rest of the group was sitting in a circle, grabbed a cookie, and strummed a few chords on his ukulele.
"It wasn't even plugged in," said Doc.
"Typical," sighed X.
"Don't worry, that's the easiest fix in the book," said Fwhip, grabbing the end and looking around for a power outlet. "Is there an outlet anywhere around here?"
"Uh," said X.
"Please tell me you have a power outlet in your base," said Doc.
"Maybe??"
"Oh my god."
"I came here to play Wii and have a good time and I am honestly feeling so attacked right now," said Scott. Bdubs just shrugged and produced an Uno card deck from his pocket. "Well, we should have enough here for everyone," he said.
"I'm not getting into a blood feud with anyone," said Gem. "I like everyone here."
"Eh, blood feud blood schmeud," said Ren. "Besides, it's just a game, right?"
"That's what they all say," said Oli darkly.
"Do you have like, a generator or anything?" asked Fwhip, pushing back his hair, clearly trying his best to stay polite. "Anything we could use?"
"I could call Jimmy," offered Scott.
"We are not calling Jimmy."
During this entire conversation, Doc had been opening and closing panels on his mechanical arm. "Guys, guys, no need to panic," he said, taking the other end of the power cord and inserting it into a port on his arm. "I've got it."
"Your arm is a battery pack?" asked Fwhip, sounding like a man who had just met God in His sweatpants at 3am at a Walmart.
"Eh," said Doc, pressing a button. "Technically, it runs on nuclear fission, some experimental tech that I put in a few years ago in case the apocalypse happened or whatever-"
"Nuclear fission?"
"Do you guys not have nuclear fission on Empires?"
"Okay, we're going!" said X. "'Please insert disc.' What did you guys bring?"
"Uhh, let's see," said Ren, shuffling through the crate. "There's Wii Sports, Just Dance 2015, Super Mario Kart, and Guitar Hero 3."
"Okay, vote," said Gem. "Show of hands. Who's for Wii Sports?"
Bdubs raised his hand.
"Just Dance?"
Scott, Ren, and Oli raised their hands. Xisuma shrugged and raised his as well.
"Looks like that one wins," said Gem.
"You didn't even ask about Super Mario!" said Fwhip, scandalized. "I wanted to play Mario Kart!"
"We can play that one next," said X. "Alright, I have 3 remotes. Come and get them."
Unsurprisingly to anyone who knew Scott at all, he beat them all solidly in all of the songs they played, difficulty be damned. At the end of the third song, Doc snatched the remote from Ren and attached it to his biological arm, power cord still attached to the mechanical one.
"Dude," said Ren. "There's no way-"
"I do what I want and I want to dance to Rasputin," said Doc.
X, who was sitting along the back playing a casual game of Uno with Fwhip, looked up. "Doc, you're playing? Make sure the cable doesn't get disconnected."
"It'll be fine," said Doc, waving his arm around. Fwhip winced, but the connection didn't waver.
"Ooh, this one's only two players," said Oli. "Scott, you've dominated the game so far-" Scott snickered at this, but Doc gave him a withering glare and he shut up immediately "-so can we have a chance please?"
"Yeah, sure," said Scott, taking a mint chocolate chip cookie from the pile, which was deteriorating at an alarming rate, and watched with interest.
"You versus me, little German boy," said Oli, waving his remote around like a lightsaber.
"Yeah, sure," said Doc.
Bizarrely enough, Doc actually held up incredibly well the first half of the song. Oli, naturally, was having the time of his life, but as the second half of the song kicked in, soon they had to do some spins and Doc just could not keep up.
"Pause it," he said. "Can you pause this real quick?"
"No, I don't think we can," said Oli. "I mean-"
"The pause button is A," said Scott.
Doc pressed A.
"Aw," grumbled Oli. "I was on a roll. Well, sorry your cable was holding you up, king, but if you want to try Mario Kart-"
"No, we're not stopping," said Doc. "I paused the game, I didn't leave it. Hold my remote." He handed the remote to Oli, fiddled with some clasps on his mechanical arm, and detached it.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," said Oli as Doc set the arm down and reached out expectantly for the remote he was holding. "Hold up. Did you just remove your whole damn arm?"
"Yeah," said Doc. "It's not a big deal. I can put it back on later."
"You people scare me," said Fwhip.
"Have any of you never seen a prosthetic arm before?" asked Doc, deadpan. "Come on. They have got to have prosthetics on Empires."
"I mean, I know a guy who does, but-" started Scott.
"Shouldn't be a problem, then," said Doc, snatching the remote and unpausing the game. "Come on."
(Doc ended up winning the match. The Hermits were not surprised.)
"Okay, next game-" said Gem.
"Mario Kart," said Fwhip, walking up and inserting the disk.
"Mario Kart," agreed Ren.
"Mario Kart!" cheered Xisuma.
Gem sighed, but nodded. Mario Kart it was.
"Right," said X 15 minutes later, wheeling his remote around at half the speed of sound. "Ren, I swear if you keep hitting me with these bananas-"
"All in the game, my dude," said Ren, serenely blowing past everyone. Bdubs, who also had a remote, somehow was driving backwards and hitting every single pothole in the map.
"Take that," he crowed, deploying a plethora of blue shells just as X passed by.
"You are a danger to yourself and everyone else playing this game," declared Fwhip.
"I am not! I am a master of my craft!" said Bdubs, crashing into a wall.
X said nothing, just let out a bone-weary sigh as he got hit by yet another degenerative effect.
"Okay, well, I'm curious," said Oli, snatching someone's remote and exiting the game to the dissapointment and anger of everyone. "Guitar Hero, huh? What's that?"
"Give me my remote back, bard boy, or I'll dent your hat right through your head!" yelled Bdubs, trying (and failing) to get his remote out of the reach of Oli.
"No."
"Give me!"
"No."
"Please?"
"No."
"Please?"
"No."
"Please."
"If you don't shut up, I'm punting you to the next universe over."
"Hey," said Xisuma. "Give that back to him."
"Not until you tell me what Guitar Hero is," said Oli. Bdubs knocked him over and they grappled, reaching for the remote until Gem snatched it, hung it on one of her horns, and climbed a few paces up a nearby wall.
"Can any of you people just act normal for five minutes?" asked Doc, whose arm was still powering the TV.
"You are a half mechanical goat man and you somehow brought the fuckin' Ender Dragon to the Overworld," said Oli, pointing at him, one hand still on top of Bdubs' face.
"Language," warned Xisuma. Nobody listened.
"Says the man who literally kept me awake for two weeks because he was singing about pork chops!" added Fwhip.
"You fed me nothing else! It was barely enough!"
"Didn't Pearl come over one time and say that was a human rights violation?" added Scott.
"You stay out of this one, gayboy."
"Hey," said Ren. "Human rights affect everyone, man. Don't slutshame people."
"Oh, we can all agree that I'm a slut," said Scott, dismissing it. "I don't care."
"I do not like where this conversation is going," said Doc.
"Yeah," said Gem, nimbly stepping out of reach of Oli, who was still trying to jump and reach the remote. "If you guys can't be nice, I'm calling Joe. He'll HotGuy your asses."
"Language," said Xisuma. Again, nobody heard.
"Well," said Scott with a smirk, "if it's going up my ass-"
"Oh come on, I can do that without a bow," said Oli, turning around. Fwhip just groaned.
"PEOPLE," said X.
"Actually, I'm a creeper and Ren's part goat-"
"You mean part dog?"
"Yeah, that."
X stood up to his full height and folded his arms, which usually would have worked on a room full of Hermits, but Scott just raised an eyebrow right back at him. He sighed.
"We were playing Mario Kart," he said.
"And then Oli exited the game, and now we're in the middle of this mess," said Fwhip.
"Fantastic summary," said X. "Can we get back to what we were doing now?"
"Well, actually," said Ren, "I was kind of in the mood to go home after I had a cookie or two. I might just chill and talk with Doc."
"So people want to go home now," said X with a sigh. "Right."
"No, no, I want Gem to give me my remote back and then I want to know what Guitar Hero is," said Oli.
"Gem, please get off of my wall and give Oli his remote back," said X.
Gem sighed and handed it back over. Oli bonked her gently over the head with it once.
"I'd be willing to stay and watch," said Fwhip with a shrug. Everyone else in the room muttered assent.
"He should play against X," said Bdubs.
"Oh, well, maybe not," said X hurriedly. "I think he should learn to play at his own level-"
"No, no," said Doc. "Let the ukelele man go up against Xisuma at Guitar Hero." Ren hid a smirk behind one hand.
X looked at Oli helplessly, who shrugged and plopped over crosslegged. Fwhip found a guitar controller and tossed it over. Scott, who didn't quite understand the tragedy about to unfold, watched with interest from the back of the room while munching on a cookie.
"Alright," said X, picking the controller up and showing it to Oli. "Basically, you have to hit the buttons in time to when they appear on the screen. This down here is the strum bar, and if you don't strum fast enough or too fast, you'll lose points. This one is an open note, they don't show up often, and this one is.. actually, I don't know what it's called, but it shows up as a purple line and you'll know it when you see it."
"Is this a rhythm game like Osu?" asked Oli, taking the guitar and weighing it in his hands skeptically. "It feels flimsy."
"No idea what that is," said X with a shrug. "And besides, it's just a video game. This one has lasted me years, though."
"That's a damn achievement right there," muttered Doc to Ren and Gem, who nodded solemnly. Xisuma either didn't hear or pretended to not hear.
It was very quiet in the room as Xisuma inserted the disk into its slot on the Wii, opened the game, and gestured to Oli.
"What's all the silence for? Did I pass gas?" asked Oli, trying to crack a joke. Nobody responded.
"Rough crowd," he muttered. Xisuma shrugged apologetically.
"Right, we'll start you off with an easy one," said X, selecting a song from the menu.
"Love the graphics," said Oli with a snicker. "Very polygonal."
"This game's from 2009, it's allowed to look crappy," said X.
"Oh shit, really?"
"Yeah. Also, language."
"Okay, old man. Jeesh. Oh, this is hard!"
Oli was tapping anxiously on the guitar, but hitting most of the notes to his credit. Xisuma sat next to him and nodded approvingly. The rest of the room was silent, except for when Ren (who was allergic to oneshots) occasionally sneezed or swore under his breath.
"Not bad for a first go," said X after the song had ended.
"I got five stars, I'm surprised I got all of those," said Oli.
"The maximum is seven."
"Oh."
"Genuinely, don't worry about it," said X. "Now, would you like to play another, or...?"
"What's the hardest song on here?" asked Oli immediately.
"What? Oh, well, I assume that would be Through the Fire and Flames, but it's over seven minutes long," said X, scratching the back of his head. Behind him, Doc chuckled.
"Here it comes," he whispered to Ren and Gem.
"Walked right into it!" whispered Ren with glee.
"Oh, the poor boy," said Gem, shaking her head. "At least X is being polite about it."
"Could I try and play it?" asked Oli.
"I wouldn't recommend it," said Xisuma with a wince that nobody could see under his helmet.
"Could you play it?"
"Well," said X, trying very hard to not outright turn him down but trying to spare him the embarrassment, "I mean, I could in theory, I'm not really sure how it'd go-"
"Go on then," said Oli with a smirk, sitting back and crossing his arms. "Give it your best shot."
("No way," whispered Ren to Doc. "No freakin' way."
"What's going on?" whispered Scott, annoyed that people were whispering about something without him and who'd scooted over to watch.
"He thinks X is bad at this game, but X is really, really good at this game," Doc whispered back. "Like, really good. X is a metal guitarist, so it makes sense, but still. Nobody challenges X to play Guitar Hero. He's really humble so he never plays in front of anyone else, but since Oli doesn't know and he doesn't want to be rude to him..."
"Ohhh," breathed Scott.
"Yeah," replied Gem. "I almost feel bad for him."
"Don't be," replied Scott. "Oli's an idiot.")
"Alright, then," sighed X, scrolling to the song and hitting play. "Don't expect anything, though."
What followed was 7 minutes of flawless Guitar Hero gameplay.
Through the Fire and Flames is a fast song and a complex, a difficult song and a daunting. Xisuma breezed through it with the ease of an old master being challenged to perform this, his most practiced of miracles. To Oli, that first minute seemed a decade long.
The Hermits, who had witnessed this stunningly terrifying and awesome feat of skill before, simply sat back and chatted amiably with one another, occasionally cheering X on. Scott had a huge grin on his face that even the worst tragedy surely could not erase at this point in time, and Fwhip nodded appreciatively, occasionally letting out a soft "whoa."
By the second chorus, Oli was facedown on the floor.
"You're killing it, dude," said Doc, walking up to X and sitting next to him. "When's the last time you played this?"
"Uhh," said X, not missing a beat (in the game). "Two years ago, maybe? I've been busy. I've not had a lot of time to practice."
"Doc mentioned you were a metal guitarist," piped up Fwhip from the back.
"Oh, yeah, just as a hobby. I'm a huge metalhead."
"Huh. Either way, this is seriously amazing. I'm almost glad Oli asked you to play this now." Scott's grin grew three sizes, and from his spot on the ground, Oli offered a singular long groan of uttermost suffering.
"Everybody shut up," said Gem, who genuinely enjoyed the song and had listened to it regularly for a while. "The solo's coming up."
Oli prayed futiley that Xisuma would fuck up the solo horribly and completely ruin the run. Unfortunately for everybody but him, though, X did not do so, and indeed hit all of the notes flawlessly.
The song ended, Oli's doom was solidified, and on the screen, the words "FULL COMBO" appeared.
"What does that mean?" asked Fwhip.
"It means he hit every single note in the entire song," answered Doc.
"Oh."
"Yeah."
"Well, looks like I've still got it," said X awkwardly, putting down his remote. "Oli, are you alright?"
"Don't talk to me," said Oli. "Just don't talk to me."
"I'm sorry I embarrassed you," said X. "If you'd like to practice yourself, I can ask whoever brought the games to lend you the disc-"
"Stop being nice about it," wailed Oli. "Normally when I lose at things people are mean to me! I don't know how to handle this!"
X looked at the Hermits helplessly, who just shrugged, and Scott, who also shrugged, and finally to Fwhip, who was too busy eating a cookie to notice.
"Oh! I just remembered!" said Gem suddenly. "I brought a second box of cookies because I knew everyone would eat these so quickly! Hold on, they're in the other room, let me go get them."
All was quiet as her footsteps echoed away, stopped and then came back as she came with another box.
Oli sat up, scooted towards the box as soon as it was on the ground, and, grabbing an entire row, shoved three into his mouth.
"Dude," said Ren.
"It's how he copes with things," said Scott. "Just watch."
Oli said nothing, just nibbled grumpily on a cookie as X turned off the TV and walked back to the group sitting on the floor around the cookie box.
The rest of the conversation past that point was centered around the holidays and where everyone was going to be staying. In the middle of Ren talking about where he was going to be staying with his brother Jono ("You'd really like him, X! He's a musician too!"), Oli suddenly picked up his ukelele, retreated into a far corner, and started doing a warbly rendition of Toto's Africa.
"Is this what he does when he gets sugar?" asked Gem with concern.
"Yeah," responded Scott.
"Grian does that too," said X. "Just with more zoomies and less ukelele."
"Well, either way," said Doc, nudging a Ren who was curled up on the floor, "I think I'd better head home. I'm getting with Grian, Scar, and Cub for a New Years' celebration, and it's gonna be lit."
"Ooh, can I come?" asked Scott excitedly.
"They specifically told me to not let you follow me."
"It's not like I'm going to be the only stripper there," said Scott grumpily. "Fine."
"Could you uh, elaborate on that?" asked Fwhip.
"No," said everyone at once, including Scott.
"Well, anyways, happy holidays!" said Gem, getting up and taking the remaining cookies with her. "See you all after Christmas!"
"Bye!"
Everyone else filed off after that, Oli dissapeared somewhere into the ether, and as X went back upstairs to double check and make sure all of his farms were turned off, he couldn't help but think to himself with a smile that it had been a nice time.
He just hoped that everyone else had a nice Christmas too.