Arcade's Dungeon

Hunter Hero 21: System Failure

When I woke up the next morning, it was to yellow light and chirping birds. It wasn't a bleary wakeup or a harsh one. It was the most mellow I'd had in a while, where my eyes simply opened and my body slowly turned on as if to give me something graceful in life before I couldn't experience things like that anymore.

     I got up. Sitting up slowly, looking around my room at the strange way the colors were cast as if it was a new world and not the same thing I saw at eight AM on the weekends, the only difference being that it was a weekday that time.

     Something was banging on the roof. It made my ears twitch little by little, and a metal creaking made me turn my head. It wasn't a noise filtering through walls. A window must've been open for me to hear it so crisply.

     "...Dad." I swung my legs out of bed when I recognized the noise and pulled my door open, marching straight for the cracked glass door to the porch and straight out to the lawn. Looking up, seeing the man on the roof. All I could do was stare in awe for a few moments, him in his usual construction dad getup, hat and all, water bottles in the gutter.

     And it took him a few moments of scraping the gutters out - as if there was so much more piled up from the last weekend we cleaned, with the neighbor's big trees all being over a dozen feet away - before he noticed me. "Cade," he called out, dripping sweat already. It wasn't even that hot yet. "Do you think you could get me a water bottle? I ran out."

     My brows went up. Psycho man. Shaking my head, I went for one of the few he'd left on the porch table and threw it up, watching the familiar sight of him pulling his gloves off to crack open the thin plastic lid and guzzle it. "I have no words."

     "Huh?" he called out from above. I just shook my head as he added that water bottle to his empty collection. "Listen, I'm going to be done soon, and then I want to go to the hardware store and get some new supplies. Get dressed so we can go."

     It annoyed me that the man medically disqualified from those kinds of activities was trying to drag me into his mess, but I went and got dressed anyway. Once he got into work mode on the house, there was no stopping him.

     And I got to have a very fun morning being driven around from one Lowes to the next Home Depot, to the next obscure little shack by a Subway with the worst food health rating I'd ever seen when I elected we stop and get lunch, hey Dad we've been doing this for a while, until he finally parked us back at home and I could go hide before he dragged me off to something else.

     Buzzing on my bottom before I could even sink into my chair told me that the world wasn't done with me just yet.

     "Who-what?" I blinked, looking at the one straight-faced picture I'd managed to get of the girl in all the time I knew her. "Savannah, what on Earth are you calling me for during class?"

     "We're watching System Failure tonight."

     I popped up in my chair. "What?"

     I looked at the date and time on my phone to make sure I was right about my initial question. It was indeed class time, and it was indeed a school time.

     "Savannah-"

     "I'm sorry for making you watch Just and Cruel."

     I sighed. "Look, we've already been over this. It was a good movie, and worth the money-"

     "Tonight, your house. My house. Whatever. You bring your laptop, I get the snacks, and-"

     "Savannah."