The Only Way

It was loser's week at the Dorm, which meant, I had to, as Dork Advisor For Gummi Betta Cherry Pie, check out the video game side of campus.

I ran out of my dorm and got to a place called The Corner, where the room broke into a small hallway which broke into a large room with variuos lounge chairs, a black couch and television sets.

It was then, that I encountered a couple of people, who seemed perfectly normal at first because they were sitting on the black couch and weren't wearing glasses. One had a Game system controller in hand, the new PSQ (Play Syndrome Q) with a game on the screen, which I, being of frank mind and alcoholic-driven nature, had never heard of. They knew me.

I didn't know them but one of their names was, Plightofdanger XX. Mostly, people called him Ray.

"Hey, Ray," I said because that's how most people start a conversation in a college.

I t should be more complicated like "Say, my scholarly friend, would you mind a decent paliver? Oh, aye, I have heard the fifteenth stock on the Dow Jones plunging."

"Shh," Ray said. He had the controller and was looking intently at a plasma screen television, which I noticed was dead center like five feet from them. One of them was slouching; Ray was like a junky with a twitch, stunned by the television.

"What is this game?" I asked. Seventy or eighty bright colors burst out of the thing in rapid succession like the world had exploded inside a rainbow. Then, a heavy gray and white smoke cleared and there stood a heavily armed woman, who met the description of fully clothed only because the bullets strapped across her chest in a belt were covering her. "Wow," I said, "What's that?"

"It's an RPG," the one who was not Ray said.

"Oh, right," I said but added, "Like a shooting game or something?"

"Oh, no," he said, "This is way more challenging. You have to use your mind to solve the puzzles of an RPG."

"Must be tricky," I said, "How many buttons do you push?"

"Just one," said Rigoberto, who was the other guy, now that I saw the on-screen main characters name. It was a woman named Rigoberto. She didn't seem as appealing, then.

"Just one, eh? Sounds all intellectual, all that one-button pushing and such. What's the name of it?"

"Great Warrior Princess Sima and her Pet chimp Loco," said Ray, who could apparently talk and play at the same time.

"Still, it seems boring if you're just pushing one button," I noted.

"Well, that's because you never heard of the rumors about Level 10-AB, where if you pass through the dungeon of lava and beat the earless Hitman from Simbabway, you get the option of beating it again in super B button mode," said Rigoberto, who I had just removed from my Normal Person List.

"What's that mean?"

They laughed at me. "It means you get to use the B button," said Ray.

"What about the A button?"

For some reason, this distracted them both.

"The point of the game is to beat it, so you can use th B button, why would you want to go back to using the A button?" asked the brilliant Rigoberto.

"What's this B button got some girl's perfume on it?"

"No," said Ray, "But it's easier to use because it's closer to the wrist."

Then, a friend of mine whose name I actually knew passed by and said, "Oh, hey, it's the warrior princess, cool game."

I grabbed him by the wrist in a manly way and told him, "What the hell are they saying only A and B buttons."

He laughed for a minute, then said, "Those two are all RPG freaks. Anyway, they're going to be pissed when they find out about the option to Set it to B button mode."

"You mean they don't have to go through five days of playing the game to get to use the B button?"

"Like I said," he said, "They're going to be pissed, what part of pissed isn't getting through? If it's the pee part, you'll have to give me a minute to regenate. Rogetardo, a soda!"

"It's Rigoberto, a--@3le!"

I guess going along with it was the only way. By the way, no one got pissed on in this story.