A Ride You Won't Forget (A Dreamnoblade Fic)

Chapter Four: A Sort of Date

Dave completely popped off on PAC-MAN; memorising the patterns and splitting the map into quarters for more clearance. He ate a power up when three ghosts were in the same quadrant as his character and ate them, leaving only one to chase him. He had only a few dots to get to, all on the left side of the map.

"Man, you're good," Clay said from beside him, watching his character rush around the respawned ghosts, "How are you so good?"

"I'm good at memorising patterns."

"Patterns?"

"Wilbur completely wrecked me in this game when I was younger, my pride and ego couldn't handle the loss," Dave began as he ate another power up, "In revenge, I played the game nearly every day after school, I think it was two weeks after my grind I realised that the ghosts have a certain pattern that they apply to. Using that to my advantage, I completely wrecked Wilbur. What good days."

"I feel sorry for the man then," Clay said with a small chuckle, "He was playing against a complete psychopath."

Dave finished the game, "I never said I wasn't."

"I never thought that I would encounter such a god, hope you send me to heaven and not to hell," Clay smirked at him.

"Oh, darling, there's no getting out of hell when I'm around," Dave crouched down and collected the tickets from the dispenser, "Any game you wanna play?"

"I was thinking basketball, maybe," Clay said.

"Wow, such an athlete."

"Oh shut up."

They navigated through the crowd, waiting in line behind the basketball game.

"It's already so late; don't arcades close at this time?"

"Not this one," Dave tailed behind him, "This arcade is owned by Hypixel, meaning that it closes when it wants to close, even on Christmas eve and Christmas."

"Hypixel owns a lot of establishments, huh," Clay put a coin in to the slot, starting the basketball game with Dave by his side.

"Hypixel gets what he can gets," Dave threw a ball, it made it in.

"You know him personally?"

"... No."

"Right..."

Clay threw two balls at the same time, both getting a satisfying goal in the hoop. He was always known as the athletic type in his friend group. He actually did American Football growing up under the supervision of his father.

"Wow, who knew people nowadays are actually sporty," Dave threw a ball, it bounced and made it in.

"I was kinda forced into football because my Dad did it when he was young," Clay threw another ball, time ticking from sixty seconds, "He wanted me to follow his footsteps, that's why I'm here at San Francisco in the first place. Stanford is a pretty hard college to go into."

"Oh, you're going to Stanford too?"

Clay nodded.

"My other friends are going too," Clay accounted.

"Imagine having friends, couldn't be me," Dave threw the last shot and it barely made it in.

"Isn't the guys at the Café your friends?"

"Nope, unfortunately, they are my brothers."

"You guys don't look the same and obviously the accents, not to be rude or anything," Clay awkwardly said.

"Oh, Philza's our Dad. He brought Wilbur and Tommy to San Francisco when I was 12," Dave explained, "I was at the orphanage at the time, apparently my biological dad was a big drug addict who travelled his way to death and I guess mom died when she had me."