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Number fifteen on his list of Things That Can Keep Him Out of Penny's Way was to chill at a place with free Wifi. With her being a librarian, hanging at the library was out of the question. This left him with only a few options:

He could go home (where his mother would no doubt harass him into doing homework, of all things).

He could go to McDonald's (where he'd have to endure the screams and hollers of young children in the adjacent ball pit located next to the dining area).

He could suffer under the pretentious aura that surrounded Panera and loiter there (which meant suffering under pretentious servers and fellow loiterers).

With his limited choices, he opted for Death By Pretention and found himself huddled at one of the tables with the semi-comfortable chairs, his notebook in his lap and a half-eaten cookie on the plate in front of him.

His notebook had a scribbled out list on it, Alrik doing his best to jot down thoughts as they came to him. He'd have much preferred to making a list on the computer, but didn't want to chance having that list compromised by anyone - Negaverse stuff had to be super secret, which meant resorting to doodling chickenscratch on paper like the 1700s or something.

Atop the list was his title - Ways To Get Energy. At least, that's what it looked like to him, though to others it may as well be Egyptian hieroglyphics. He was determined to come up with a fantastic idea to impress his superiors - sister included - and redeem his prior failure with a mess of amazing ideas.

He just had to come up with them, first.

He'd heard the voice calling out for some stranger's name, Alrik's eyes rolling at the fact that it meant yet another smarmy young couple had decided to grace Panera with their presence. They'd probably be climbing all over each other, shoving humus and carrot sticks in each other's mouths as they talked about how hard it was to save the world, one plastic overpriced water bottle at a time.

Couples were gross.

He kept jotting down words with his pencil, up until the point when he sensed someone nearing his table. By then, however, it was far too late. The high-strung girl had already leaned down and was wrapping her arms around him, sending confused signals firing throughout his poor, teenage brain as her entire upper body was squeezing itself up against his shoulder and head.

Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.

His eyes had widened significantly, akin to deer staring into the headlights of a car. He'd almost forgotten about his Negaverse list, lanky fingers suddenly moving to crumple the blue-lined paper into a hasty ball...not that she'd have been able to read his horrific writing, anyways. The ball was clutched into his fist as he dared to shoot straight up out of his chair.

Cheeks now flushing a crimson red, he turned towards the young woman who had been clearly chattering towards him - who was she? Was he supposed to know her???

"H-Hi?"

Smooth moves, exlax, he thought bitterly to himself as he adjusted his weight onto the other foot, his free hand moving up to run nervously through his messy hair.

He placed his notebook down on the table, then quickly flipped it over so that she couldn't see the hard imprints of his chickenscratch across the blank top page. This pushed the plate inches to the side, the half-eaten cookie forgotten as his wide eyes remained focused on the girl sitting in front of him. The girl who had taken it upon herself to sit with him, despite having made a clearly grievous error of mistaking him for someone else who was clearly blonde, tall and apt to sitting alone in a Panera.

Fingers began to automatically fidget with the edge of the notebook paper, creasing and straightening out the corner as he listened to her chatter. Whoever this Khaleel was, he certainly made an impression on her.

"Or maybe Khaleel is my doppleganger?"

The words slipped out without a second thought, his cheeks resuming their flush as he tried to attempt a smile. It turned out to be more of an awkward half-slit across his face, but he was trying, right? That's what boys did when they were trying to be smooth: attempt to smile a smile that wasn't quite a smile?

Talking to women was clearly more work than he realized.

"I'm Alrik." His chest puffed out, pride evident in his own name. After all, it was pretty magnificent and non-American. Surely Olga was proud of her European heritage as well? She was already leagues above other women, for having a name that wasn't Sally or Susan or Abigail...which made him all the more nervous to be talking with someone equally as cool as he thought of himself to be. "It's German."

"I-I'm eighteen."

Leaving out the fact that he'd just turned eighteen, Alrik found the age to be a respectable number. On second thought, he probably should have lied to this stranger and told her twenty-two or something a lot higher - he didn't know who this other guy was, but he was already irritated at the thought of him being someone else's doppelganger and not the other way around!

At her first question, his ego was already self-inflating itself to a dangerous level. If she recognized it to be German, it meant she was another European, one who clearly understood the significance and honor it was to come from such a wonderful nation.

At her second question, his pride began to dip - not because of her question, but because his mind was still fighting to come up with an answer to her first. And then the third question hit - then the fourth.

Alrik Rey frowned suddenly.

"I..."





"I go to Romano's. With my sister. But I mean, she doesn't go to Romano's, she just works there. I go there. I mean, I'm a student there."

Words were hard.

Shaking his head, he finally simply reached out and broke off a piece of his cookie, his fingers playing with the crumbs as he lifted it up to his mouth. "Yes. I'm German - she is too. We both came over here as children, with our parents."

Popping the piece into his mouth, he crunched on the sweet morsel as he focused on regaining his composure. Maybe he should approach the situation like the men did in his sister's smut fictions? Well, with the less-smutty parts, of course. He had a feeling Panera (or Olga, for that matter) wouldn't appreciate it otherwise.

Nothing could have prepared him for her last sentence.

"Men look sharp in uniform."

The crumbled chocolate cookie found itself lodged deep in his throat as his attempt to swallow was suddenly halted by the shock and surprise of her comment. He let out a struggled wheeze as one hand slammed itself down on the table, the other moving to his chest to give the space between his collarbones a hearty smack. Green eyes refused to look over towards the woman across from him, choosing instead to stare down at the remains on the plate, the pieces of cookies that hadn't tried to kill him.

He was going to die and he could already see it on tomorrow's headlines, ironically probably written by his own sister:

Teenage Boy, Dies of Embarrassment in Local Panera.

He could see her rise from the table in his peripheral vision. It was probably best that she ran away - he didn't blame her. This was probably in the top five of his most embarrassing moments, so there wasn't a need to skyrocket it into his top three by having her stick around for the inevitable scene he was causing in the small shop.

As he felt her arms wrapping around his abdomen, he practically lurched forward. She must have sensed what he was doing, because she locked her arms and thrust backwards, sending him wheezing and hacking back downwards as she moved to make the same motion a second time. Okay, this was definitely in the top three moments now.

He felt the crumble dislodge itself and he swallowed, the gritty cookie remains tumbling downwards through his gullet as he reached for his soda cup and took a long, much-needed gulp.

Eyes closed, he prayed that when he opened them again that he'd be back in his chair, in the midst of writing out his plans for energy stealing and that the entire store wasn't staring at him as he stood next to a cute but puzzling woman who had just given him the hug of life.

He opened his eyes.

He closed them again.

He hadn't prayed hard enough.

"T-Thank you," Alrik found himself mumbling quietly as he practically melted back into his chair, doing his best to avoid the gaze of the curious onlookers. "I don't know what happened there..."

One hand moved up to scratch the back of his head anxiously as eyes fell to the plate in front of him. He was too ashamed to look at her - what kind of suave move was that?

At least her next question was safe. He was quick to answer, almost automatically. "Video games."

Alrik had learned from the past not to jump straight into his favorite genres. Most people - girls especially - never seemed to know what RPGs or FPSs or even MMOs were. Most that said they liked video games were too caught up with playing stupid things like Hello Kitty Island Adventures or Candy Crush and the like. None of them really knew how to play a proper video game.

"And you?" Daring to look up from the plate, his eyes met hers once again.

Fatal Frame?

He blinked, looking stupefied (or rather, slightly moreso than he'd already been looking). Alrik hadn't been expecting that sort of answer from the other girl, but talking about the horror game was all the push he needed to send him into normalcy. Like a switch being flipped, he suddenly turned from being the awkward, gangly boy that he'd been only moments earlier to full on geek.

"Oh man, Broken Neck Woman had me about jumping out of my seat!"

His eyes were wide, the excitement evident. "I've been trying to conquer Five Nights at Freddy's on hard mode right now, but I can't seem to catch Foxy in time before he jumps me."

Poor Olga had unknowingly released the beast and there was no way of putting it back into its cage.

"What other games do you play? Have you tried Slender: The Eight Pages? It's really simple, quality wise, but effective when it comes to the jump scares!"