Weaver had had the entire spring semester to decide that pretty much no one in any of his classes was anyone he wanted to commiserate with. He rarely spoke to them, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t hear them chattering away to each other, complaining about the difficulties of the coursework, arguing over grades they’d been presented, or lamenting about how long it took for professors to post responses to assignments. All they did was complain and act like what a chore class was.

If these people didn’t want to be here, they shouldn’t be here was all Weaver could think about the whole lot of them. These attitudes- He didn’t even want to be around them.

For the entire semester, he’d hunkered down in his seat and made absolutely no effort to learn any of their names. Maybe others in the Vanguard had successfully made human allies, but Weaver was entirely convinced that this place and these people weren’t for him. He was less skeptical of the area of studies he’d chosen, but not enough to go beyond typical expectations. He didn’t make a habit of befriending the professors, either, as some students seemed to do.

He almost wondered if maybe the Earth “University experience” wasn’t for him, either. But if not even this, then what? He had to do something while he was here.

So he’d opted to stick it out for just the summer. Maybe it would get better.

It was the first day of the summer semester, and Weaver had made the calculated choice to sit slightly off-center in the second row of the room: near enough that he wouldn’t miss anything the professor presented, but not in the first row, where eyes would be on him from every direction. He expected there would still be a small scattering of souls sitting behind him, but if everyone CCed to the welcome email was any indication, there were only about a dozen students in the class. Significantly less than anything he’d taken during the spring.

At around ten minutes before class started, a boisterous pair of boys settled into the front row, in seats directly in front of him. Weaver was initially annoyed (they’d made zero effort to not block his view of the board, and the classroom was comparatively small to many of the lessons he’d taken last year- no auditorium style seating for this one), but as one of the boys pulled out a laptop, and the bright notes of music assailed the room, Weaver craned his head around to peek at what was going on on screen.

“I’m so anxious. I’m so anxious,” The boy with the laptop said. “I’ve literally just been sitting on this screen for like two days. I know I’m gonna lose in this battle, and I just dunno how to move forward. Like- the amount of hours I’ve already put in? I’m gonna wipe here without some, like, really good luck.”

The pair leaned in close, and Weaver had to sit up a bit straighter to see over their heads.

“Who ya got?” The second boy asked.

“Umbreon, Gliscor, Arcanine, Milotic, Torterra, Raichu.”

“I mean, the Mars/Saturn battle is like a twelve-vee-twelve? Yeah, you’ll be lucky to lose just one.”

His interest was initially piqued at the names of two princesses in a difficult battle where things could be lost, but as Weaver tried to peek over their heads, all he heard was that strange music, and all he saw were pictures of random cartoon creatures on the screen (what was with this world and cartoon animals? Were the real ones not good enough?). He thought maybe they were senshi doing whatever mundane tasks they did as civilians, so Weaver leaned forward over his desk a bit. “Excuse me?” His voice was quiet, and only the second boy glanced back at him. “What is that?” Weaver asked, pointing to the screen.

The boy who’d turned around broke into a grin, and shifted to face Weaver a bit better. “Oh, it’s a ROM hack for a Pokemon game, a really hard one. Ethan’s trying not to lose his Nuzlocke,” he elbowed the other boy. “Not looking like good odds, though.”

“It’s… what?”

“A Nuzlocke? Like, there’s extra rules to make it even harder.”

Weaver glanced down to his ComTech, appearing as inconspicuous as a watch, and he blinked stupidly at it. There seemed to be no words in Velencian that matched what these guys were saying. It didn’t translate to anything he was familiar with. “What’s Pokemon?”

The second guy’s face immediately fell, and the first boy with the laptop glanced over his shoulder. “You never heard of Pokemon? Like, Pikachu?”

Weaver shook his head, and if he was confused, it didn’t compare to the strange expressions the pair of boys wore, suddenly looking at him like some kind of alien that they didn’t know how to contend with. They glanced to each other and back at him and at the computer and back to him again. “Are you, like, living under a rock or something?” The first boy, Ethan, demanded, only to snort at another elbowing from the second boy.

The second boy huffed softly and scooted his desk-chair closer to Weaver. “It’s a game, right? You play a kid who travels around collecting monsters and beating up other peoples’ monsters, and there’s like a thousand different ones now, and you ‘Gotta catch em all.’ But the game is for kids- like, pretty young kids, so some guy made different versions of the game to make it really hard, and you can play with extra rules to make it harder than that. It’s fun! Especially when you’ve been doing the regular versions for like twenty years, y’know?”

“So… It’s a game?” Weaver asked skeptically, squinting at the screen. He didn’t know why he said what came next, since he was interested in almost exactly none of Earth’s offerings, but he liked collecting bugs, and he liked seeing all the species on Earth, so… “Can I play?”

Ethan practically choked on air before Weaver could fully get the question out, snorting on a warbled laugh as he leaned an arm against his desk. “Doubt it!” He scoffed. “It’s too hard for you, if you’ve never even heard of the game. Go to GameStop and get the original cartridge, or get an emulator to play the regular version first. This one won't be any fun for you; you’ll lose too much.”

“Dude,” the second boy, name still unknown, hissed, giving Ethan a slightly less playful shove. “Don’t be like that, alright? It’s cool someone else wants to get into it. Hey, what’s your name?”

And then came the doubt. He didn’t think he was particularly interested in sharing much with this pair because he wasn’t interested in sharing much with anyone on this planet. They didn’t immediately seem like people he wanted to care about, regardless of what types of games they were playing. Especially that Ethan guy. Weaver didn’t want a friend like that. But second boy might be okay, maybe. He had answered Weaver’s questions and been decently nice about it. “...Weaver,” he answered after a moment.

“Cool, I’m Turner. I can send you the file for the game, if you want? I can get your email off the Professor’s welcome letter. You’ll probably have to get an emulator if you don’t already have one, and you’ll need the vanilla file for the game too. But I can help with anything like that! I’m always happy to share one of my great loves with other people.”

One of his 'great loves.' Seemed like a lot to say about some program some stranger had created, especially if it didn't do anything helpful for anyone besides just allow people to pretend like they were beating up digital monsters. It didn't seem like something that should be a 'great love' to anyone. But these were humans. Their minds were fragile and in need of frequent distraction. It was probably harmless.

“Yyyeah,” Weaver decided hesitantly. “Okay, I’d like that.”

Turner and Weaver both had their own laptops out at this point, in preparation for the starting lecture, and it was a matter of moments for the other boy to send him a file entitled Renegade Platinum to download the game. Honestly, it would probably turn into nothing. Weaver could hardly even fathom showing a huge interest in some time-wasting Earth hobby that would achieve literally nothing. …But he was already achieving nothing, anyway, so doing anything with his time was better than doing nothing with it.

Once the class was over, he'd have opportunity to see what was so great about it.

It wasn't until he was back at the Vanguard house later that afternoon, after he'd tended to his strawberries and the insects in his terrariums that he thought maybe, just for a moment, while he was alone and no one was watching, he could see what those two boys had been so excited about earlier.