Callum loved arcades, there was no surprise to that. He liked the energy, and the lights and colors. He also liked the different drawing subjects that popped up everywhere, like the edgy teens, or the Street Fighter nuts. He liked watching the kids rush from machine to machine, and the exasperated employees as they tried to keep up with all of the people rushing to cash their hard earned tickets in.

          He was here for another reason though. He wasn't here to draw, he was here to hang out. It  had been Rayla's idea, she had lived in the countryside before she had moved here, and she'd never been to an arcade, and asked him to take her to one during the weekend.

          He almost choked on his sandwich, because it sounded suspiciously like a date. Everyone in the cafeteria thought the same, and listened in closer. Soren grinned at him almost like the Grinch, and got up to walk over and cockblock him as a joke. Claudia, being the nice person she was, pulled him back down on his ass with surprising strength

          "So Callum, do ye want tae hang out or no?", she had said. Everybody went back to what they were doing, because there was no gossip to talk about. Nobody was going out with anybody. He of course agreed, albeit a bit nervously. Nyx smirked at him from a couple tables down. That day, he ran home and screamed into his pillow. Ezran told him to shut up, and started playing Minecraft, and reminded Callum that he had homework to do.

          That Saturday he rolled out of his bed, and fell face first on the floor. He picked himself up off of the floor, and walked over to the bathroom. While brushing his teeth he looked up at the slightly dirty bathroom mirror. His hair was an absolute mess. It looked like something that Claudia had made in art class, and you didn't want to look like something Claudia made in art class. Jesus Christ she probably would have covered the whole room in paint if the teacher hadn't stopped her, according to Soren.

          Callum began brushing his hair, and then washed his face. He eventually got it to a point where it didn't look like a science experiment gone wrong. Next was picking out clothes. This presented a unique problem. He needed something different. The only problem was, all of his clothes looked exactly the same.

          He had 10 pairs of jeans, 10 of his blue jackets, and his one scarf that he used every day. Well, he didn't really have a choice, so instead of panicking and looking through his closet like a normal guy, he shrugged and tossed on the same clothes that he did every day.

          He went downstairs, and walked over to the fridge. Both Harrow and Ezran had their signature shit eating grin. The resemblance was uncanny. No, it was like scarily similar. He couldn't believe how much they looked alike. It was another painful reminder that he wasn't a true part of their happy family of 2. He wasn't really related. Hell, he didn't even know who his parents actually were.

"So Callum, what's this I hear about you going out with a girl?", Harrow inquired in an almost smug tone.

          Callum flinched for a second, and replied, groaning, "Harrow, it's just Rayla. We're just going to the arcade to hang out. She's never been to one, so I'm just going to show her the ropes. Is there any cereal left?"

"But she's a girl, and there's no adult supervision, and you are going alone. Sound suspiciously like a date big bro", Ezran commented.

"Ez, stop, we're just friends.", Callum replied.

"Oh, by the way, we're out of cereal," Harrow remarked, after looking at the counter, "So I made us all some bacon and eggs!"

"Thanks Harrow", Callum said back.

"I can't have my kid going hungry on his first Date," Harrow quipped.

          Callum let out another groan, and scooped a handful of eggs onto his plate. Then he grabbed 2 strips of bacon, and bit down on the crunchy meat. It tasted great, almost euphorically good. Harrow's cooking was as amazing as always. He tore into his food with a passion, devouring everything on his plate... and he choked on a piece of bacon. Ezran ran over and slapped his back really hard, and the bacon left his throat.

"Callum, slow down. Dying isn't a reliable way to get out of a date." Harrow said.

          He picked up his fork, and began eating again, albeit at a much slower pace, and soon finished up his breakfast. After a glass of milk, he felt ready to go. He gave a quick wave, put on his shoes and scarf, and walked out the door, closing it behind him. The arcade was ten minutes away from his house, so time wouldn't be too much of an issue, so he began his walk to the arcade. After a minute or two, he ran into Nyx, who had been tapping around on his phone, and she looked up from whatever she was doing.

"Oh, hi Callum! Sup", she said, and paused what she was doing

"Hi Nyx, what are you up to?" he replied.

"Ah, not much. I go on walks every day, and stop and see some nice places for a bit," She said.

"You were playing Pokemon Go weren't you?", he deadpanned. Nyx blushed like a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

"Y-yeah I am. So what? Got a problem with that?", she huffed.

"No, I don't have a problem with that, it's just that I play as well, and so do a couple other of our friends at school. Maybe we can all go on a raid some time?" Callum asked.

"Sure, I'm pretty high leveled though, so I can help anybody out to duo a 5 star raid", Nyx replied.

"H-how high is your level? I can't even do a 4 star by myself. I need Soren and Claudia to beat it, they can't solo a 4 star either. We need 2 of us for a 3 star", He replied

Nyx flinched, and once again looked like a kid caught taking cookies before dinner.

"I'm... level 40", she mumbled

"Holy JESUS CHRIST. How much time do you have on your hands? Is this what you do outside of school?", He yelled out of shock,

"I play on the way to school, on the way home, and spend my free time running around town," she replied.

"Woah, you play a lot!", he said back

"Yeah, I have too much time on my hands", she said

          Callum looked at the time. He needed to get to the arcade a bit early to buy some tokens. He raised his eyebrows, and said his farewells. After a couple of minutes, he got there, with a couple of minutes, so he went inside, sat down at one of the tables, and left his stuff there.

          He wasn't worried about time, Rayla lived 20 minutes away from this place, so he did have a bit of time left. After buying a good amount of tokens, he sat down at a table, and watched the entrance. Eventually, 10 minutes passed, then 15 minutes. Now he was starting to get worried, and the worst thoughts were beginning to surface in his head.

         What if she had just ditched him? What if she didn't want to come, and thought he was being annoying? His eyebrows furrowed in worry, and his sketches started to look sharper. The comfy feel in them started to disappear. His brain flitted from different subjects around the room, not noticing that he was attaching different parts of different scenes together, creating a chimera of angry faces and arcade cabinets.

          He was jolted out of his stupor when he heard somebody enter. It was Rayla, he hadn't been ditched! She looked like a mix between confused and excited. He waved at her, and she walked over to him. Callum got up, smoothly shoving notebook and pencils back into his bag.

"Ugh, Runaan wouldn't let me leave. Ethari convinced him to let me go, but it took like another hour of complainin' and naggin'," she groaned.

          Callum gave a soft smile and said, "Well what's important is that you're here now, and I can kick your ass in some arcade games." The 2 friends walked toward the arcade machines, passing by a couple of kids. He stopped at a shooting game. Rayla's eyes lit up. She had tried out Call of Duty at his house, and obliterated him. She had talent, and was willing to use it. He stepped up and put a couple tokens in.

          He was okay at Time Crisis 4, but not the best. Rayla however picked it up quickly. She grabbed the plastic gun, and rained down bullets in a streamlined fashion, taking down enemies left and right, even going as far as killing some of the guys on his side. The second something appeared, she had blasted it to bits. Needless to say, he didn't score too high. Rayla, smirked at him.

"Callum, why're ye so slow? Better work harder if ye wanna catch up tae me!" she said.

"Oh come on, this is your first time at an arcade, how are you so good at this?" he replied

"Maybe it's just that I'm better 'n you?", she shot back.

"If it's talent, then how about I show you a bit of mine?" he replied.

          Callum walked them over to a pair of Dance Dance Revolution Extreme cabinets. Maybe it was a bad idea? He wasn't sure. She had taken a big fall a week or two earlier. She said she was fine now, and Rayla was never stubborn when dealing with injuries, so she had to be fine right? (She was indeed not fine and still needed two more weeks of recovery) Rayla looked at him in shock. She began laughing, tears falling from her face. He smiled at that, and started stretching. He didn't want to pull a muscle while kicking Rayla's ass. He handed her the required credits, and they both started up the machines.

          He looked over at her, and grinned, challenging her. Rayla was taken aback by his confidence, and picked a song, sliding it over to the highest difficulty

         "So Rayla, you see those 4 arrows on the floor? You step on them when the arrow coming down the screen touches the hollow one. I think you can figure out how to select a song. The more accurate you are, the more points you get. There's a leaderboard that shows who has the highest score on the machine you're on," He said.

          Rayla looked at the leaderboards for the different songs, scrolling through them. She didn't quite get how impressive the scores were at the moment, but after a song or 2, she'd see how insane some of these levels are. She didn't recognize any of the song names, but she definitely saw the different difficulty levels. It was odd that there were multiple difficulty levels for one song, but she shrugged and continued scrolling, looking at the top scorers.

"Who's CDS? They're amazing at this! Loch holy shet, Callum dae ye see thes bloke aroond th' arcade?" she exclaimed.

          Callum smirked, she didn't know that he was CDS. It was a nickname that had quite the history behind it. Most of the machines in the arcade had his nickname somewhere on the leaderboard. When you come here 3 out of 7 days of the week, you tend to get good at things. It stood for Callum's Difficulty Setting.

          He set a high bar for everybody trying to steal a top spot. Only a couple people had beaten him in other games, but he always watched them while they challenged his title, then stole their moves and did them better, beating their brand new high score. They both stepped onto their respective machines, and they both entered their nicknames. Her's was RAY, and she looked over at him. He entered CDS, and her face paled.

          The employees at the counter laughed, watching the events unfold. Jeffrey, one of the Street Fighter nerds turned and laughed, seeing Rayla's face blanch in recognition and fear. She was dead. Holy crap Twinkle Toes could actually dance. The song was about to start. He wasn't trying to brag, but Paranoia Survivor Max was one of his best songs.

          They both hit start, and the chaos began. Callum's legs began firing on all cylinders, shooting back and forth like a rifle with blinding amounts of precision and speed. His eyes focused like camera lenses, picking up minute changes in positioning and recording every arrow like a computer.

          5 seconds in Rayla felt her legs twist up, and she tripped, falling down, her leg twisting like a pretzel. A loud crunch echoed throughout the room.. Callum's eyes widened, and he paused the game, rushing over, and tried to help her up. Rayla swatted his hand away, and tried to pull herself up using the handlebars on the side. Her face contorted in pain, and she slumped back down, letting out a string of curses that caused several parents to cover their children's ears.

"Mah feckin leg is broken", she shouted.

          Callum almost laughed. It was so stupidly implausible. He didn't understand how it happened, nor could he  comprehend how in the world that had happened. Rayla looked up at him and glared at him.  His mind stopped short, and then it hit him. The teen on the Terminator machine next to them and called 911.

"Oh crap, Rayla! Sorry, I just blanked for a second. I was thin-"

"Shut yer crease and help me up!", she shouted. 

          In 20 minutes, the ambulance arrived, and they asked the surrounding people for clarifying details, and then used her phone to contact her parents, and 5 minutes later, Runaan came screeching into the parking lot. The paramedics waved him over, but he ran past them and came to a stop in front of Callum. He leaned closer, and spoke. His words dripped with murderous intent.

"What did you do to her? What did you do?".

          Runaan leaned even closer, and grabbed his shirt. Ethari, ever the lifesaver, huffing and puffing, came from behind, and picked up Runaan with one hand, slinging him over his shoulder. Runaan let out something akin to a hiss, and tried to wriggle out of his grip, but gave up after a bit. Ethari let out a sigh and said,

"So what actually happened?"

Callum stuttered, and he stammered out a sentence.

"We were playing Dance Dance Revo-"

Runaan's eyebrows raised, and he interrupted,

"You were dancing with her? I told you Ethari he's trying to get his filthy human hands on her!"

Runaan tried to wiggle out once more, and gave up after a few more tries. Callum resumed his nervous explanation.

"We were playing Dance Dance Revolution and it went bad after like 5 seconds. She twisted up  her legs and fell."

          Ethari nodded, and walked over to the paramedics, who were now lifting Rayla into the ambulance. The doors of the emergency vehicle shut, and it drove off, turning on the siren. Callum watched as the elven couple got back into the car, driving after the ambulance. His shoulders slumped down, and he let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. He took out his phone, and called Harrow.

"Hey, Harrow, can you pick me up and drive me to the hospital?"

"The hospital! What happened? Did you injure her to escape?" he said.

"Harrow, don't joke now. She broke her leg," Callum said. His voice cracking, and he began to sob.

He could feel Harrow's eyebrows furrow through the phone.

"Alright, I'll head over. You're still at the arcade right?"

"Yeah. I am." he replied.

          Harrow rolled in five minutes later, and Ezran was sitting in the back seat. Callum leaped into the car, and slammed the door shut, and off they went. On the ride there, it was tense. Even Ezran, who joked all the time, was silent. Harrow opened his mouth to say something, but stopped short. Callum got out, running to the entrance. Inside, there was a lady at the front desk, filling out paperwork, and Callum ran up, the receptionist jumped a little as he slammed his hands down on the desk, and then politely asked about any patients that had come through recently.

          She was able to point him in the right direction, and soon, the 3 were standing next to Runaan and Ethari. It was understandably awkward, because Runaan kept glaring at him in the most obvious way in existence. Ethari kept trying to pull his attention away from him, but Runaan's head kept turning back. Callum tried not to make eye contact. As he sat in the chair, he was slowly lulled to sleep by the humming of the hospital equipment around him.

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 2

I wanted to finish it now, but holy crap this is a lot longer than I anticipated. I don't want too long of a chapter. It makes you read bits and pieces here and there, instead of appreciating it all. This way, I can post this and you all can have something to read while I keep writing the next bit. It'll probably be a two parter, or more. Thank you for waiting so patiently for this probably mediocre story. I'm sorry for letting everybody down. I'm sure several of my followers unfollowed, fearing that I would never finish these works. But I assure you. All of my books will be updated eventually. One way or another. I can't leave people disappointed. It isn't in my nature to deprive people of satisfaction, which I myself lack to the highest degree possible. I got angry at myself when I considered saying goodbye, and putting this account to rest. That isn't me. My account will continue as long as it possibly can. And that probably is until the end of my life. I cannot and will not delete this account, because deleting this account takes something from others who enjoy my works. I'm not content to disappear. I don't want to be forgotten.