"It's a wipe guys, just wrap up."

At the command of the voice from the headset, Justin relaxed from his tense position, smashing a bunch of keys together on the keyboard as he ran his character into yet another fiery demise. Tenth attempt, still wiping. He didn't need the raid leader to call a thirty minute break as he finally turned an external light source other than his computer on, and scratched his back, giving a giant yawn to the sole occupant of his room: himself.

The wooden chair scraped backwards, pushing aside juice cartons, discarded plastics, strange collectible toys, wrappers, and even old Mcdonald's bags. A couple of crunches as he moved for the door, one sock dragging against the ground, picking up pepsi-cola and ketchup stains from the floorboards.

This was it then. Five minutes of peace until his raid leader called him back, and life continued on. Everything was a game, this bizarre alternate reality which some people liked to call the real world dwarfed by clearly more important matters. Fighting dragons. Killing enemy raids. Vying for equipment. He flushed the toilet, watching it swirl, tumble-

- how long was it until server reset again?

The door swung open and-

"JUSTIN! CAN YOU GET GROCERIES FOR TONIGHT?"

His mom, ruining everything. Grumble, mom aggro, the worst kind. Ten minutes later, he was out the door, apparently some groceries stores were still open at ten pm. Another ten minutes later, still grumbling all sorts of unfairness clauses to himself, he had in one hand two cartons of milk, a dozen eggs, and a stalk of celery. He hated walking in the dark, the shadows were much less manageable under the pretense that he was powerful. Its okay, just keep on walking forward, straight lines and-

- Who the heck was that in front of him? "Ummmmmm", Justin began, unsure of why they were just standing there. Totally not creepy, probably some neighbourhood n00b.

Said person simply walked off, one hand still texting away on their cell. Giving them the strangest look, Justin, aka, the self-proclaimed paladin handed in their quest items to The Mom, managing to drop temporary aggro for now as he headed back upstairs.

"Back." He called into his microphone, before attempting to flick the inner brain switch back to cheerful, "So you missed me? Anyone need a buff from yours truly?"

"What took you so long?" A voice on the other end. A guild buddy. A faceless name, he preferred those now. "Did you get lost again or wait, did you see some evil shadows outside again?"

It was too bad they couldn't see him smirk. "Yeah, all of the shadows. I just put on my pally bubble and-"

"Okay okay, enough chatter now, break time is over. I'm going to explain boss mechanics again, for those who weren't paying attention, heals weren't strong enough last round..."

Justin spaced out as he listened to the raid leader talk, simply staring into the screen. Wouldn't it be so easy if everything was-

- His phone buzzed. He raised an eyebrow at the singular text. 'You have been invited. Respond to RVSP.'

Was this a spam text? Or wait, invited to what, wait, what if it was in response to the beta testing form he had filled out a few days ago? One quick response later all in caps, Justin turned back to the keyboard. "We ready to go then, are we fighting stuff or something?"

A sigh from his headset. "If you can't tell Justin, we're waiting on you."