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A close call, that's what it had been. Parker woke up that morning to a rustling in his room. He glanced over to Jaimie's bed and saw that the boy was gone. Turning his head slightly, he found himself face-to-face with a redheaded freshman -- some freckled-face kid who was rummaging around in his messenger bag.

Parker barely had time to sit up before the kid was off, running toward the door with a familiar metal laptop in hand. Parker's laptop. A dark grunt bit from the back of his throat. The boy managed to fling the door open before Parker reached him, but he never made it out. The dark-haired boy moved faster than he had in months, snatching the younger kid's collar and yanking him to the ground. The laptop skittered across the ground, the disk drive separating and flying to the opposite wall. "Goddamnit, you idiot. Do you have any idea what you just did?"

A voice from just outside the door stopped Parker cold. "Do you have any idea what you have done, Mr. Dammit?" Parker didn't bother to correct the administrator. His laptop was broken, and he was sentenced to two weeks of cleaning the gutters. Typical. While normally the prospect of repairing his laptop would bring joy to Parker, this time it was not a particularly good feeling. The idiot kid had managed to break a part that Parker did not have -- and one that needed to be high quality. So the boy was forced to order it online. And to do that, he needed to go to an internet cafe.

It was a place he had been to many times. It was known for its fast speed, attracting many gamers. Parker liked to game, but he split his time on the internet between that, foruming, and blogging. He was certainly not as dedicated as most. Spotting an empty terminal, Parker picked through the sea of backpacks and head sets and warm bodies and slipped into a chair, placing his bag between his legs. The screen whirred to a start, and Parker went to work searching for a site -- and the best deal.

He had a paper to write, and his blog was in dire need of an update. Still, he was helpless until this part came. It looked like he would be spending a lot more time at this internet cafe than usual.

Click, click.

Clicking through a few windows, Parker typed in a familar address, zipping to the electronics site he preferred. They were very knowledgeable and reliable -- a bunch of technophiles who thought it an insult to defraud fellow techno-geeks. Over the years, Parker had sunk a sizable chunk of his income into their wares, and he had yet to regret it. It took him mere moments to find the piece he needed, which he added to his cart. Hm... as long as he was on the site, it wouldn't hurt to look into other gadgets, would it? His fingers flew over the keys, typing like a seasoned pro. He had worn his wrist brace that day, bought it after a friend of his (online, of course) developed a rather severe case of carpal tunnel. Parker had no intention of making it difficult to type; he wanted to be tapping away at keys for the rest of his life.

He reached over and un-did the velcro -- crich, crich -- before adjusting the tightness and resecuring it. So wrapped up in his shopping, Parker had barely noticed the girl beside him. That is, until she began to talk. To herself. Well, to the game -- but to herself. By the sounds of it, she was playing Soul Caliber. Parker didn't play it himself, but he was a part of a lot of online communities. He could name all of the top games even if he had only played a couple. The only game system Parker had ever been able to afford was a Nintendo DS, and it was stolen by someone at Hillworth three weeks after he got it. No one tried to steal his philosophy books so Parker found more solace there, choosing to buy those over the games he wished he could have instead.

Curiosity got the better of him, and Parker leaned toward the other girl, just slightly, so that he could watch what she was doing. Parker was the kind of kid who could watch someone else play a video game for hours on end. Sure, he liked playing himself, but the visuals of the created digital worlds were enough to keep his mind ticking away until drool began to dribble out one side of his mouth. He didn't spare a glance to the girl, but after a moment, it became pretty obvious that he was staring at her screen and completely ignoring his own.

Droooooool.

The girl was good. Parker had only played the game a few times (at this very cafe actually), and he'd never gotten the time to be good at it. A little button-mashing, a little slashy-slashy, but nothing as impressive as what the red-headed girl was whipping out at dizzying speeds. His eyes didn't reflect any amazement. He simply continued to watch, tight-lipped, one hand resting on the mouse to his right.

When she spoke, however, he snapped to attention. His eyes flickered over to her face. Oh. Right. He was staring. "Sorry," he muttered, straightening in his chair and staring into the monitor. It was an awkward moment -- one second he was utterly invested in what she was doing, and the next he was acting as if she wasn't even sitting beside him. Parker didn't answer her question. He assumed she wanted him to stop. So he did.

His fingers went back to the keys, clicking through a few screens. They had some gold plated gears about five centimeters across. The big ones were harder to find, and Parker was looking to steampunk his alarm clock, or maybe add it to his computer. He checked the price tag, and his brows pinched together, frustration seeping into his features.

Parker was reading the measurements and metal luster description, eyes peeling across the glowing screen, when Tate spoke again. He was a little surprised. She seemed so annoyed by his attention just moments ago. "What?" he said instinctively. Once his mind caught up with his ears, he added, "Oh, no. It's fine. I don't know much about Soul Calibur. I wouldn't be a good judge." As a scholar of logic, Parker never saw fit to pretend to know something when he did not. He was not the kind of person to feign understanding or familiarity. He was completely secure in himself in that way.

Again, the dark-haired teen believed that the conversation had ended, but when Tate spoke up once more, he turned to face her, mildly interested. His eyes darted from the gears on the screen back to the girl. "Have you ever purchased from that seller before? I only buy from people and companies that I can trust." It was true; Parker was the kind of person who cross-referenced a name a thousand times before he settled on giving them his consumership. The site he was currently on was a trusted friend, a place that had never steered him wrong. Once, they shorted him two feet of wire in a shipment. He reported it, and the next day, they had reshipped him his entire order with the proper amount, inviting him to keep the original shipment as an apology from them. Could this eBay seller be trusted? "I typically only purchase from quality-controlled people and organizations." His hand remained poised on the mouse, but he held his gaze on Tate, silently appraising her features, her posture, her general ambiance.

Pulling the mouse to the bottom left of the pad, Parker made a few more clicks, fingers tapping away on the keys. He pulled up eBay and searched for the seller she'd advertised. In all likelihood, he would probably stick with his usual site-of-choice; the boy liked to feel a bit of patronage flowing in his veins. Still, the girl had offered an alternative and so he had no problem searching it out. Pale eyes scanned the page. Hm, they were cheaper. A few more clicks and he was coasting through the reviews, reading each one with careful attention. Honestly, these reviewers were never detailed enough -- not ever. "It's great!" is not as useful as "It's great! But the luster is a bit less pristine than advertised."

His eyes dragged across the page, mouth a flat line. When the girl spoke, he took a moment before looking at her, eyes peeling little by little from the screen. "It is cheaper," he said, commenting on what she had originally said. Her question hung in the air, and Parker seemed to ponder it for a while. "My friend is the one who plays it regularly. I've just picked it up a few times, not enough to form a solid opinion either way. She swears by Soul of Taki. I think it has a lot to do with how much she likes Taki though." Parker shrugged, glancing back to her screen and then to his own.

After a moment, the weight of conversation seemed to hang over him. Hm. Perhaps he should say something? "If you are such a fanatic, why do you play it here? Don't you have your own console?" The girl didn't look terribly disadvantaged, and it seemed like everyone had a game console nowadays. (Except, of course, Parker.) He was surprised to see someone so dedicated playing in an internet cafe. Most of the internet gamers used the cafe to give them a stronger signal for MMORPGs, but to Parker's knowledge, it seemed like Tate was playing offline by herself. So why the cafe?

Switching his eyes between his own screen and Tate's in steady bursts, Parker tried to keep his focus primarily on his own computer screen full of gears and gadgets. It was difficult when the beauty of a technologically created interface was looming just at the corner of your field of vision. After a few moments, he gave up on his pretending and stared openly at what Tate was doing. She moved masterfully and with the precision of someone who had done this a thousand times and then some. Parker liked technology; video games were simply a particularly cool part of it. It was clear in moments that Tate was a world ahead of Parker in game skill, but the Hillworth teen chalked this up to her economic avantages.

"They market to sell games. Big breasts sell games," he said, pushing a strand of loose dark hair out of his face. Despite its length, Parker hated to wear it in a ponytail and very rarely did. The only time that he really bound it at all was when he was doing intensive hard labor at Hillworth, which was, of course, every day. Once the cut him loose, it was straight to the showers and the ponytail was immediately taken down. He looked ridiculous, really, with that mass of hair bobbing behind his head. No -- his intended look was the "hair in my face" style. Very classy.

Adjusting in his chair, he leaned on the plastic arm of it, the seat squeaking as he shifted his weight. He didn't comment much on her choice of beating the game before she had the console. Parker knew plenty of gamers and had heard similar logic before. It had been his experience to best leave it alone. Instead, he focused on her upcoming ownership of the system. "You should be careful letting people know you have a PS3. The demographic of most petty thieves is teenage boy, and my school is full of people who would steal that from you in a heartbeat." In fact, just yesterday, he had seen two of his classmates fawning over their new PS3 -- no way they have purchased it themselves. By the morning, someone else had stolen it from them, and Parker had gotten beaten up for it. There was no real reason for the boys to suspect him of the crime, but Parker had stopped questioning why bad things always happened to him a long time ago. "With the recent crime spree, everyone needs to be more conscious of the back-biting nature of humanity. Of course, everyone should always be careful, but..." His voice trailed off, and he supplemented the end of the answer with a shrug.

As Tate grew more engrossed in her game, Parker did too, ignoring the images and prices on his screen. She was very good, he knew that much. One of his closest friends was a girl he knew from the internet. He imagined that she probably played very much with the same skill level as this girl. His eyes flickered briefly to her face, but he dismissed the thought almost instantly. No, it wasn't her. He could feel it.

Adjusting on the arm of the chair, it let out another squeak, and the gamer on the other side of Parker shot him a look, which he flatly ignored. If the man cared so much about privacy and silence, then he probably should have stayed home and checked his NeoPets account there. Returning his gaze to Tate's screen, Parker pictured her dressed as Lucretzia and executing the move with purple lightning at the thieves of her PS3. Of course, if someone really did steal her system, Tate would never get it back. No one ever did. Even if they caught the thieves, the stolen goods often became part of the evidence, tied up in the flawed justice system for years. By the time Tate got it back, PS4 would already be out.

He could have commented on all of that, but instead, he said, "People are innately selfish. It's all a part of survival. Any person would kill someone else if it meant greater happiness for themselves. The only reason some choose not to is because they fear the scrutiny of their peers. If you could kill someone to improve your life without anyone ever knowing, virtually all of humanity would do it." Parker tapped an idle finger on the smoothed edge of the mouse. "The PS3's of the world don't stand a chance." It was something like a joke (but not), and though Parker cracked a subtle smirk, it was evident that his feelings on the nature of humanity were said in total seriousness.

"A savior complex is still self-serving. It fulfills a need in that person to be the hero, to be selfless. They are selfish in their need to feel selfless," he said, rubbing at the nape of his neck. "But I understand what you are saying." He made no mention of the fact that her references were fictional, or that Mother Teresa had her own agenda too. Whether Tate was a fellow philosopher or not, Parker felt as though Tate and he might actually be on the same page, or at least in the same chapter. It was a nice change of pace. He usually only found people who saw things from his point of view in his internet communities where he could more or less search for them in the mass of posters. Granted, he didn't try particularly hard in the real world to get to know people. Tate was just a nice surprise.

Parker rubbed at his neck again. The long, black hair that typically hung about Parker's shoulders had inched a little bit beyond what he liked. When he was a kid, his mother always cut it, and to this day, he could not handle the idea of going to a shop to get it done. Nope, it looked like he had a date with some scissors that night. Contemplating how he might be able to hide out and cut his hair (without attracting any Hillworth friends who might want to give him a hair cut of their own design), Parker let his hands wander back to the keyboard. He logged on to his own YouTube account -- one that he used to post video mash-ups like his most recent that mixed a speech from Hitler with "Hit Me Baby One More Time" from Britney Spears -- and quickly found tkonstantin. "I'm Parker," he volunteered, but made no mention of what to call him. "Parker" would be just fine.

His finger rolled over the scroll key, flinging a blizzard of different videos past his blinking eyes. "You have a lot of these," he said, though he sounded neither impressed nor concerned. Everybody had hobbies. This was simply hers. It might not be as productive as a study of philosophy, but since everything was really just killing time until your inevitable death, it seemed just fine that Tate sought to dedicate her life to video games.