It was a disgustingly warm autumn day, which was seasonably normal for Arizona. For his entire life, Alex had been living in the hell city of Phoenix with his father. There was one point where he could remember a woman being present, but that was another story. As for his father, the man was usually busy running business-like errands and doing business-like things for his business-esque job, but Alex didn’t complain. That was just the way the cookie crumbled.

The air was wet with humidity when he opened the front door. Almost immediately, he closed it again. There was no way he was going outside to check the mail, even if the raised, red flag was tempting. He was expecting a delivery. A game, as a matter of fact. It was called SBURB, and he and some of his online friends were supposed to be playing it together. His best friend and next door neighbor, Rich, was playing it as well.

In fact, the thought of Rich gave him an idea. Instead of trudging all the way out in the heat to see if the game had come himself, he could just ask his friend if his own copy had come. He quickly dashed back up the staircase to his bedroom, successfully avoiding an encounter with his father.



That concluded that Rich’s copy wasn’t there yet, Alex supposed. That also meant it wasn’t coming today, considering the mail had already been delivered. Maybe his other friend had received her copy already, but talking to her made his heart do weird, uncomfortable flops. He hovered over her handle in his contacts and debated with himself about contacting her, when a slip of the finger clicked on her name against his will.

Oh, shit. That meant she could see he’d started a conversation with her. Panicking, he switched back to the conversation with Rich.



Right. Just say hi. What’s so hard about that? he thought sarcastically to himself, opening the other conversation.



Ouch. This was not going well.



Asking how she was; that was a thing Alex felt like he could do. It didn’t have any kind of other implications or undertones. Not that there needed to be any.



Realizing that he’d completely forgotten about Rich, Alex switched back to his other conversation to check up on him.



Awesome! Alex thought. Now that both of their copies of the game was in, he could work on making sure everyone else had their copy. Then would come actually playing the game. The hype was so real.



That was probably the worst and most awkward sendoff Alex had ever felt leave his mind. That was the most awful to ever say goodbye to anyone that he’d ever had a crush on. He felt like he wanted to just crawl under his desk and never come out; to never speak to her ever again. Of course, he was sure she understood, so he wouldn’t do any of that.

The most important thing was retrieving the mail without having to suffer the consequence of being forced to listen to one of his dad’s long rambles. They usually made no sense and made Alex incredibly uncomfortable. Because of that, he did what he could to avoid encountering his father in the hallways.

Peeking out of his bedroom door, the coast seemed pretty clear, captain. He snuck out on tiptoes, heading for the staircase. Much like himself, his father was a very minimalistic person -- there wasn’t much decor. Sometimes it made the place seem boring and ready to be sold. Sometimes, it was comforting.

As Alex neared the bottom of the staircase, crouched low, he saw his father sitting on the living room couch. Damn it! It looked like he was absorbed in the newspaper, so maybe there wouldn’t be an encounter.

Carefully, Alex pressed himself against the wall and started half-crawling to the front door. The television drowned out the creaking floorboards underneath his feet. His father stirred and made a weird face. Alex held his breath. There was a long moment of silence before the man let out a violent sneeze and seemed to return to reading the newspaper.

Close one.

He dashed out of the house and out to the mailbox. The heat was already making him sweat. Having lived there his entire life, one would think he was used to it by now, but he was not. The mailbox felt like it was a good mile from his front door, even though it was, in reality, only a few feet. But it was a fruitful journey. Opening the mailbox revealed his copy of SBURB amongst a pile of bills and junkmail!

Without further interference, he ran back into the house and up to his bedroom.

The day was incessantly rainy. Abbi was sick of staring out her window just to see rain pouring.

Abbi stood up from her desk chair and looked out the window, rain pouring as hard as it could. With nothing but a sweatshirt on, she gazed over at the bee "hives" and they were all covered with blankets and sheets.

Sigh.

Abbi's awful father took all of her blankets and sheets in the house to cover some bees. What the hell, dad. She felt betrayed, and then went to sit back down only to get a pester from Alex, to which she quickly went offline out of fear to talk to him. Which was totally not like her, she was often way too open with this boy. She quickly came back online and then they spoke.



Upon the abrupt ending of that chat, she stood grinning. That boy made her heart jump in so many ways, there was absolutely no way that she could be prepared to see him in real life, because they would have to be video chatting to coordinate all this.
Their friend group was sizable, sizable enough for codependent Abbi.
Alex, Rich, Lyra, and Abbi frequently talked.

To play with Alex, she’d need to actually get the disks. So she stood and snuck down the stairs and into the living room, attempting to avoid a strife with her sperm donor.
She made her way out onto the porch and sprinted through the grass, rain pelting her as she ran past all the artificial bee hives and to the mailbox. On her way back, she tripped and her sweatshirt flew up. Flustered, she got up as fast as possible and ran into her room.

She pestered Alex.



Stunned, Abbi continued on and set her disks her laptop’s keyboard, just for a bit of course. She realized that she’d probably have to shower because she was covered in mud, and it had spread to unsavory places, so she went to her bathroom and cleansed herself.

It was a day like any other in this sleepy suburb of Phoenix, although slightly different in the best of ways; that is, there was no school. This meant two important things for Rich: one, he didn’t have to face his numerous bullies and risk getting his ass handed to him, and two, he was now free to do much more important tasks than schoolwork. He ran a Facebook page dedicated to old-fashioned but still very dank memes, and with thirty-three likes (and steadily growing), any spare moment to maintain his personal meme garden was a blessing.

In the middle of captioning a lolcat, however, his Pesterchum dinged softly and notified him that he was being messaged. After hurriedly finishing the very old-style content, Rich opened the chat client and was pleased to see that his best friend and neighbor Alex was pestering him, although he would never admit that. His voice got him called gay enough without him being sentimental about people. Not that Alex knew about his school situation. Best it stayed that way.



Rich blinked slowly at his computer. He’d forgotten that he’d even had that thing ordered, and frankly, it didn’t seem like a terribly remarkable game–– apart from its promise that players would be able to control their friends’ houses. Much of his reason for agreeing to play was, in fact, curiosity.



The “okay” meme very obviously implied hesitant agreement to do something. It was like a contract, and since Rich had signed it by using the meme, he had no choice but to rise from his desk and slip down the stairs and outside. The flag on the side of the mailbox was down, however, which he only realized after he’d stepped into the horrifyingly hot outside environment and felt the sun sucking the life force out of him. Disappointed, he hurried back inside.

Alex was being terribly weird about talking to their mutual internet friend, Abbi. What was so difficult about it, he wondered? She was just like most other people. In fact, she was better, because even though she could be mean sometimes, Rich could tell that she didn’t talk to him solely to belittle him.

Or maybe she did.

It was hard to tell these things.

Alex was taking awhile to respond. Rich made a couple of half-hearted memes about Communism before their (abridged) conversation resumed.



It was a terrifying prospect to ask his aunt if she’d seen a small package labelled SBURB. She was not a woman who even liked cartoon violence––not even Spyro the Dragon. Somehow the thought of not getting his hands on that game (not Spyro, SBURB) was worse.



Rich cracked his knuckles and stood one more time from his desk chair. Time to do this. He skittered down the stairs and arrived in the kitchen, where, alas, the perfect, mint-condition copy of SBURB lay on the counter amid boring, adult-looking envelopes. Where was Aunty?

Just grab it before she sees you.

He’d clutched the smooth, plastic box when her shrill voice made him jump.

“Richie, is that the new game the kids are playing these days?”

Lie. Lie. Lie.

“Um, well, yeah, but––it’s––for school?”

“For school?”

“Yeah. Yeah. It’s, like, an educational thing…”

“What’s it educating you about?” She sounded doubtful.

“I dunno, I uh, I think it’s about how––how the Universe formed,” Rich spluttered out the first thing that popped into his head, “like, the Big Bang or something.”

“What’s it rated?”

“E. For everyone. Haha.”

Rich felt like all the tension he’d built up through his life was released when his aunt gave an approving smile and said, “Alright, Richie, but tell me what you learn, okay?”

“Okay,” he squeaked.

No sooner had he sat down and briefly celebrated his deceptive victory with Alex, when another Pesterchum notification popped up.



What.

To.

Heck.

Ahhh, Austin Texas in the fall. Only slightly cooler than Austin in the spring, and unlike Austin summer the entire world is not wet and on fire at the same time. But hey, even if its mid-fall and 80 degrees out side. It’s still a lovely early afternoon. Shockingly quite given the time of day, And you know what, that was okay with Lyra Marshal.

Normally by this point in the afternoon, the bottom floor of their home, a bar called the ‘the hungry burro’ was already beginning to bump with life and music. But it was closed for the time being for renovations and upgrades. A year ago it became the the premier gay bars in the city they had been rolling in the dough. It also earned them the street name “the eating ass”. Lyra enjoyed the benefits of her Uncle’s business well enough, the great musical acts and general shinanagins were often sights to behold. But this past week of silence had been nice. It gave her some time to peacefully indulge in some of her unfinished fashion projects. So hard to find good cute loli looking fashion stuff in this hipster town, so she had to make them herself or else spend way to much to import it. To be she kind of sucks at it.

If only today wasn’t the day Uncle was upgrading the gosh darn router!!! On the day everyone was going to get and play that crazy new game! Lyra stared at her functionally worthless CPU, the two disks of Sburb lying next to it. Lyra is a girl of adorable clothing but of action as well! She hated that she couldn’t already be online and getting into all kinds of videogame tomfoolery with her pals. She hadn’t been online most of the day thanks to uncle working on setting up some of the electronic equipment. she should probably use her phone to check in. She didn’t mind wasting precious, limited data on her friends. But whoooo. Well, if you only have so much data to use, may as well go for maximum quality with your bestest best buddy.

Lyra was always in a great mood after a chat with Abbi. Though landsakes she wish that girl would just stop fawning all over her crush and just act on it already. Still, it was good to know her friends weren’t all gaming with out her yet.
Oh, wait a minute, she was getting a message from some stranger…

The troll really managed to get Lyra’s ire to high levels. Lyra never took well to the sort that like to pick on others. If she had been remotely within the city limits of Rich’s home town there would be a heck of an extensive trail of broken bullies in her wake. Or any of her friends, to be honest, though rich’s bully problem seemed to be the most acute. Shoot, just thinking about that made Lyra even more worked up! She desperately wanted to go a few rounds on her faithful punching bag, but it was afternoon and her pet bat was still sound asleep. She’d hate to disturb the little critter’s rest, when it so rarely got the chance to sleep soundly in when the bar was actually open.

Only one thing to do, sneak downstairs and hook the wifi back up. Knowing her scatter brain uncle he probably got half way through what should have been a relatively quick and simple process and then got distracted by a different more time consuming task. It was he way. Why did she have to sneak? Weeeeell, Uncle was probably now ‘Druncle’ status. Druncle being “Drunk Uncle”. And while he was a sweet sort inebriated or no, when he gets a few drinks in his blood he has a tendency to run his mouth. If she got caught she’d be likely caught in a rambling chat loop for god knows how long.

Using her quickest of youth moves and carefullest of youngster tricks Abbie makes her way down to the bar level of their home. No sign to Drunkle yet. Though you saw the countless half-finished bar-renovation projects along the way. The biggest offender of ‘I started it but then I decided to start something else’ was a rather outrageous one. A giant freaking horned armadillo statue sitting in the middle of the bars dance floor. It was supposed to be a back ground piece of the new musical act stage (which of course was also only half done being remade ). But the dang thing was the size of like, TWO hummers! It barely fit in the dang building! She was still not entirely sure how Uncle got it in here to begin with, it was way bigger than any of their doors.

She begged her uncle not to get that damn thing. If she hadn’t spent most of the budget on that they could have had real contractors out here the Eating Ass….er, you mean the Hungry Burro would be already open for business again. At this rate, it wasn’t going to be open again till next spring!

she sigh at sight of the absolutely gaudy item, southern as hell she may be but even she had a limit. She hopped behind the bar where much of the more delicate electronics were kept inside of cabinet and found it a mess of wires and various machines. She sighed and began to sort through them till she found the half set up wifi router. “seriously” she mumbled to herself as she plugged int a few more wires “you were literally like two steps from done here Uncle.” As she the router began to boot up she was about to stand up when suddenly she heard the tell-tale sound of a slightly slurred queen song.
HELL! Uncle was in the room. No way out without risking familial strife. A sober uncle you had a chance against…but drunkle was a whole different can of worms

Well, looks like lyra is stuck here for now. May as well be some other luckless kid.