Crack Attack: A Collection of One-Shots and Other Disturbing Shit

Casual Noochonomics

"What's up, friendo?" Jerome yawns as he stretches his arms up out of the frame on Skype. He looks like he just rolled out of bed at 12:30 on a Thursday afternoon. Must be nice to have someone else do half of your work for you, huh? A liter of chocolate milk would do wonders for him, even more than a pot of coffee. It's a shame that no one ever listens to me.

"Nothing much. Just getting ready to stream. I was wondering if you were up for taking on the medium dungeon on your side today. I'll help you out, for one of the loot chests."

"I mean, sounds good, I guess. Hell knows I need gear now. Stupid ass zombie walkin' into lava with all my diamond armor on," he mumbles as he logs onto the H3M server. I get up just long enough to grab the bottle of water on the table to the right of my computer setup, but it takes just one second too long. He turns his head to look at me and his dark eyes widen in horror when he does a double-take. He saw too much. "Dammit, Nooch. You can't be naked on camera!"

"Why not? I've been sitting here for ten hours like this without a single problem. I don't plan on getting up again anytime soon, so who's going to know besides you and me?"

"That's already one person who doesn't need to know! Put some goddamn pants on, dude!"

"Why do you think it's called 'streaming'?"

"It's not that kinda stream, Mat. This is Minecraft, not fuckin' Omegle. Keep it under the desk." He facepalms and I can see the gears turning in his head while he tries to decide whether or not doing the dungeon with me would be worth the loot. TheDungeonM always wins out. He finally sighs and joins the server, knowing that he can either go along with it, or he can go die in a dark, dingy corner all by himself and lose the rest of his gear to flaming zombies. With a little luck, he'll die while we're in there and I can make it out with the loot chests and everything he brings with him, all according to plan. But I won't tell him that. "Alright, fine. No funny shit, though. You try anything and I'll call Brandon in on your ass, you hear me?"

"Crystal clear, General."

"I mean it, dude. You won't even get near that bridge."

"I know."

"I'm watchin' you, Nooch. I don't trust you."

"I love you, too, man." I can't hold the grin back anymore and he squints at me with his beady little eyes. That beautiful face just makes me want to screw with him even more. I wait until he turns back to the game to find decent armor to use and I carefully reach down under the desk and grab the wrinkled clothes from last night, pulling the shorts up bit by bit while I sprint-jump across the blue bridge to Spawn. I'm going to have to watch his perspective later to get the footage for the GIF.

"I'll meet you at the bridge and we'll head over together in case someone else gets their lazy butt on on time." He's recording this – Jerome never censors himself unless there's a camera nearby. He must not be livestreaming because he didn't do an intro. He legit doesn't trust me. And here I thought we were friends! Does he think I'd flash two livestreams at once? Come on now! "Wait... Do you know where it is?"

"Do you know where it is?"

"Do you know where it is?"

"Do you know where it is?"

"Dangit, Mat. I'm not gonna show you where the dungeon is if you don't know where it is." He's got me there, but there's only one way to handle this: casual Noochonomics.

"I have the coords written down right here, so I'm going either way. The question is: are you coming with me?" I'm crouched just past the trigger line on the red bridge, zoomed in on his name tag in their base and waiting for him to start running toward the dungeon. I only have one shot at this, and I'm not going to lose Mom's spaghetti over a medium-tier dungeon. I did riskier stuff down in the mines with full-diamond armor and the team's only Fortune pickaxe.