Press Play - Ereri

Chapter 1

Ah, another day in the life of me. Load my disc of Grand Theft Auto V into my xBox 360, grab my controller, and press play. Simple, yet awesome. My dad hadn't woken up yet, as it was still relatively early in the morning, but the majority of my friends from high school were online. We all had the weirdest usernames. Mine, for example, was "Jaegerbombastic". Jean Kirschtein's was "Horseface", Marco Bodt's was "FreckledJesus", Mikasa Ackerman's was "Mikachu", and last but not least, Armin Arlert's was "He-Man2.0". See what I mean by weird? Yeah? Okay.

As soon as I had managed to put on my headset, they had sent me a party invite. Without even thinking, I accepted and loaded up my game.

"No, Roman, I don't want to fucking go bowling!" Jean screamed. He happened to be driving a new helicopter at the time, and the annoying cousin of the main character had to call him at this time, causing his helicopter to crash. Armin, Mikasa and I were in hysterics, and Marco desperately went into a private chat with Jean to try and calm him.

A bleep that was followed by a pop up notification that read, "Horseface has left the xBox Live party" told us that he had logged off. Marco, aka "FreckledJesus" joined the party again, and told us why Jean left the party.

"He didn't rage-quit," Marco explained, "it was his mom again."

Now, the case of Jean's Mother was well known within our circle of friends. She was a bit, well... Not exactly right in the head. Jean's dad had died a year back, and she was still really messed up about it. Basically, Jean would get into trouble with her for the slightest thing. This time, he'd apparently been to loud, she got angry as hell, and he had to leave the house until she calmed down.

"Eren, are you on that computer of yours again?" My dad yelled from upstairs. He didn't exactly understand modern technology - even though he used a lot of it in his work, as he was a doctor.

"Actually, dad, it's an xBox, but yeah. Be right back, guys." I spoke to my dad first, and then to my friends through my headset. Quickly, I muted it before he got down the stairs to the basement.

"Don't give me lip, Eren. You still live with me, and I can kick you out any time I want." His voice had a menacing tone in it, and I averted my eyes as he continued to chew me out about my video game 'addiction'. Honestly, I would call it a passion, but I didn't tell him this in fear of angering him even more.

"Anyway, I would appreciate it if you gave me a ride to work because my car broke yesterday, remember?" He asked, but it seemed like less of a question and more like a threat to me.

I gritted my teeth, and turned off my console without leaving the party. "Sure, dad." He smirked, knowing that he had won. If I didn't do what he asked, he would probably get angrier than usual, if that was even possible for him.

~☆~

Once I had dropped him off at the train station where he would catch the train to work, I smiled to myself. Usually when my dad left for work, he didn't return for a week or so, maybe even two. This would mean that I would have the house to myself for a while, and I wouldn't have him on my back constantly.

I decided to go back home and get back into the group chat with my squad (insert annoying white-girl post about "squad goals" here), but not a single one of them was online. I got into some races on GTA, and I wasn't doing too badly. There was this one guy though, and he kept beating me all the time. We were in a party, but none of us could be bothered to participate in actual human interaction while in an intense race, so we stayed relatively silent for the most of our gameplay session. Strangely, the guy who had been beating us felt the need to smash our cars with his own, which sucked. He was good. "HumanitysStrongest" was his gamertag, - It was disturbingly fitting for him.

One of the times he crashed into me, I screamed, "what the fuck are you doing? Oh my god, I'm so done." And then, simply, I rage quit. Now, I did find rage-quitters annoying, but I hat a legitimate reason to do what I did, as he was infuriating to do anything with.

I left my xBox on the dashboard, and checked my phone. Nothing much, just stalking the idiots who I used to go to school with. When I was in the middle of reading some girl's indirect status that was probably aimed at one of the other bitchy girls from school who wore foundation too dark, had awful eyebrows (seriously, even mine were better than some of the ones I saw at that place) that didn't match their hair color and flirted with anything, including me who honestly didn't give a shit about girls - I got distracted by my rant there, let's pretend that didn't happen - a notification popped up on my screen.

"HumanitysStrongest has sent you a friend request."

Seriously? I thought. This guy was thrashing me earlier, and now this?

Being the nice person I am, I accepted the request. Almost straight away, he sent me a party invite. Once again, I accepted it, half expecting him to be a pre-pubescent idiot, but in reality, he sounded like a rather sophisticated guy, around twenty years old, with a weird accent. French, maybe?

"Oi, brat, what's with the rage quit?"

Well then.

He would have sounded better if he wasn't calling me a brat, and if he wasn't so rude.

"Oi, pervert, what's with the creeping?" I mimicked his tone and his way of speaking, and he didn't sound at all pleased.

"Tch. You're just lucky I can't hit you through a console." The way the words just rolled off his tongue was amazing. It was only a slight accent, but it was prominent enough to be noticeable even if you didn't know him at all.

"Anyway, why are you in a party with me, exactly?" I asked, being a sassy little bastard as I knew I could do whatever I want, as it wasn't reality.

"Well, you seem interesting enough and it's a rare moment when you find someone on this service that isn't a complete dickhead, so I want to get to know you. That good enough, brat?"

My eyes grew slightly wider. This cocky little douchebag was creeping me out. I stayed silent.

"Well, you going to answer me or not? I'm Levi, I live in France. You?" This guy was insane.

"Eren, America." I could hear his frustration through my headset, and I smirked. This guy was actually kind of interesting.

"Fine, whatever. Get into a game with me?" He asked, missing out a couple of words in his sentences, either because he couldn't be bothered or because he didn't properly know how to phrase his thoughts in English.

"I guess I could do that for you, Levi." I smiled to myself like an idiot, and hosted a game for him to join.