Thwarting Bell

[Jethro Harker]

Jethro sat in the middle of Annabella's floor, idly chewing on a straw, still wearing his leather jacket and shoes. He would not have time to get comfortable in here. He had not been invited, he was almost never invited, he mostly did this because he did not have an Xbox 360 of his own to play. His funds where going to securing his own home in town for when he turned eighteen. Besides why would he want to buy such an expensive device when there was a perfectly serviceable one, free to use, for any man who knew which trees to climb.

Empty snack containers lay on the floor next to him, including one 'Mega Gulp' soda, where he had likely gotten the straw. He checked his watch. Bell usually did not get back for another couple of minutes, giving him plenty of time to finish the level, clean up and escape, hopefully with her none the wiser until she checked the achievements on his player profile.

He grinned to himself and made Issac Clark smash the face of a necromorph with a plasma cutter. He had checked, Bell had yet to beat Dead Space 2 and so the race was on. He grinned grimly as space zombies tried to swarm him on screen only to be beaten back hastily. He was by no means a mega-gamer but he was persistent and had a head for puzzles.

[Annabella Rae]

Bell was coming in from her early morning swim in the lake. She walked to her door with her hair dripping wet, she opened it, to see an uninvited site. "No! Hell to the no! Not this time!" She said. she dived to the x-box hitting the eject button. "You are not beating my game before me you jack ass!" She yelled out. She grabbed the game and jumped on to her bed holding it as far as possible.

This had happened before. It happened every time she got a new game. She had manage to beat a few games before him, but not that often. "Get your own games dude! And how do you keep getting in here!" She had been wondering that for a long time. She could always change the lock...but she never did. The fact was that Bell liked Jethro, he had the ability to put up with her, which was unique. So she would put up with these little battles, but not without a fight. She would never give up without a fight. So as she stood on her bed, holding the disk as far away as she could, she was smiling still.

[Jethro Harker]

Jethro laughed when she rushed into the room and ejected the disk. He had saved his game recently enough that he was not worried about losing his progress. He made no effort to explain himself or escape just yet. Bell was smiling, which meant it was unlikely that she would start throwing things anytime soon If she did start throwing things, well, he could always outrun her.

He gave her his best innocent smile. "You're back earlier than I thought you would be," he observed idly. "You realize, this isn't going to stop me, right? You have to leave this thing unguarded sometime." He stood up slowly and stretched as though he had every right to be here.

He would need to develop some kind of early warning system soon. Maybe he could get her roommates to betray her and let him know when she was coming. Another perspective was that he was putting far too much thought into this. Which, frankly, was nonsense. It was the small victories that counted the most.

[Annabella Rae]

Bell shrugged at his observations. “Some guy interrupted my swim. Any way I could just carry it on me. Or, heres a novel idea. You could ASK for my PERMISSION. Instead of braking into my room, which is kind of creepy by the way. And wouldn’t that save you some energy?” She said. Threw this whole little speech she didn’t let the hand holding the game didn’t drop. She wasn’t going to give him a chance to get it. “Come on, try it, ask. You can do it. I believe in you.” She said sarcasm dripping from her voice. Her arm was starting to hurt.

She was still trying to figure out the whole braking into her room. “YOU USED YOUR POWER SOME HOW DIDN’T YOU!” she said suddenly. “Thats how you got in! Thats not fair! How am I suppose to stop that!” She was sure she had gotten it. That must have been how it happened. Now how was she suppose to stop that! Use a plastic lock.

[Jethro Harker]

"What? Ask for permission? And give you the satisfaction of victory? What a silly concept," Jethro mused to himself as he picked up his trash and shut down the Xbox. "I like a challenge, Bell, it always makes the fruits of my labors taste that much sweeter. If I simply asked for permission, then there'd be no challenge in the matter. And no, I did not use my power, that would have been too easy as well." He said, his grin returning.

In truth he had used a roof access and a rope ladder. The side of the building near her room was obscured by a massive tree and second floor windows were rarely locked.

"So, are you going to stand up there like a scarecrow until I leave?" he asked, stepping to the side of her bed. To his credit, Jethro never messed with any of the stuff in her room apart from her Xbox and games and always picked up after himself. "Because you look quite silly."

[Annabella Rae]

Bell eyed him. Finally she made a dissuasion. “You touch my game and I’ll freeze you.” She said. She climbed off the bed and put the game in its case. She went over to a drawer where she kept her towels and started drying off her hair. “don’t you have anything better to do? Besides brake into my room I mean. You know you keep this up and people are going to start spreading rumors.” She said. The fact was one girl had already theorized the reason he broke into her room so often wasn’t for games. But that girl hatted Bell so she didn’t care really.

She looked at Jethro, “Out of curiosity, where the hell did you get that straw you are chewing on. You’re just full of secrets arn’t you?” Jethro was rather cool, he got her sense of humor, and he had done nothing yet to make her really want to beat the life out of him. He even put up with her insults of him when he started facing north.

[Jethro Harker]

"What? Scandalous rumors at the Hammel Institute? Oh my!" Jethro said, feigning melodramatic distress. He snorted and wandered around her room idly. "Let 'em, anyone that honestly believes rumors spread by teenagers ain't worth my time. Besides, what kind of paramour sneaks into his lover's room when she isn't there and in the middle of the day to boot? It's hard to have a tryst with just one person."

Jethro went to the window and looked out, "Besides, these are the co-ed dorms. You're just as likely to end up as the butt of a rumor involving escapades with one of your roommates. They certainly have twice the opportunities that I do."

People talked, its what they did. Humans were the chattiest primates and being a teenager seemed to exacerbate that condition. Jethro was too practically minded to really care what people said behind his back. He only really paid attention when it began to interfere with his life.

[Annabella Rae]

Bell laughed. “I was talking more about the rumors of you putting camera’s in my room to watch me sleep. Which sadly has lead to far to many twilight jokes.” She said. She hated when some one called her bella because of twilight. She hated being compared to a idiotic mary-sue of a charecter. Even so she was having a hard time not laughing at this idea. “I’ve got to say, I don’t approve of you putting cameras in my....I’m sorry I can’t even finish that sarcastic comment. Its just a stupid, stupid idea.” She said snickering. People really were idiots.

“I think that rumor was spred by one of your enemy’s not mine.” She said sitting down smiling at the whole idea. “People here really are idiots arn’t they?” she said, “If they really believe that, they must have brain damage of some kind.”

[Jethro Harker]

Jethro shrugged and said, "People are people, we all have our pass times. They spread rumors, you swim in the pond, I break into your room to play Xbox. They're all perfectly normal human activities." Just how Jethro managed to say that last part with a straight face was a mystery. He was not as misanthropic as Bell was but that did not mean he liked all parts of the human condition.

The major difference between Jethro and Bell, he had long ago decided, was that he liked to have some optimism about humanity. He was too pragmatic to gloss over the bad parts but he could still hope. That and she had certain bits that he did not.

"Besides, I don't have the money to install spy cameras in your room. If I had that kind of money I'd just buy an Xbox of my own. If you want, I could take care of the rumors mills for you. I'm sure they would benefit from having a nice, rational conversation with me." The way he said it, 'nice, rational conversation' could mean any number of things.

[Cole Kessler]

Cole walked out of his room to the main room. A commotion from somewhere in the dorm had rocked him from his slumber. He could hear yelling from his newest roommate's bedroom. He waltzed across the room, looking at his XBox 360. He laughed at the fact that everyone else had white or black consoles, or even the slim silver HALO: Reach edition, but his was a limited edition Resident Evil 5 Console. He had bought the bundle when RE5 was released back in 2009.

It seemed like a long walk, but he'd just taken it slowly. He had no reason to rush himself, he'd just woken up. His slender body leaned on her bedroom door frame, "Can we keep it down, Bell? Some of us didn't get to sleep 'til late this mornin'." He laughed, holding his head a bit from a slight headache. His shirtless body seemed to light up at the feel of fresh sunlight coming through Bell's window. He hadn't opened his window curtains yet, he didn't really feel like it.

He stood from the door frame and looked back and forth between Jethro and Bell. It was then he noticed what Bell had in her hand, "Bell, you still haven't beaten DS2? What the eff, girl?" Cole laughed as he turned around and grabbed his controller from the couch. He held the guide button until the lights flashed on the console. It booted up and started the run function for Reach. "Alright, lovebirds, get back in here, I need teammates for Team Swat."

[Annabella Rae]

Bell rolled her eyes at cole. “I’ve been busy if you haven’t notice. I’ll beat it eventually.” She said. She put her game down in the game stack she had, next to it was several selves of movies, some of them good, a lot of them were just awesomely bad, things like Tommy weasue’s THE ROOM, and BIRD-DEMIC. She joined cole on the couch. She grabbed on of the controllers. She did like Coles X-box, but she preferred hers. She had gotten one of those skin it things with a pick of her brother and her. The two of them had the same red hair, and the same eyes, but it was easy to see that he was different. But it didn’t matter, she loved her brother, so much that she had once hit some one in the head with a ball of solid ice for making fun of him for having down syndrome. It was a sensitive topic for her.

She looked at Jethro, “You coming?” She asked. She had learned the difference between her and Jethro was that he did have more faith in humanity then her, but she couldn’t help it that Jethro’s faith hadn’t been destroyed...yet.

[Jethro Harker]

"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming you pushy wench," Jethro replied, trailing after her. He averted his eyes from her movie collection, most were bad enough to make him want to flee the room. Exactly how Bell could stand those atrocities was beyond him. There was no way he would let most of those into his room, much less near his collection of movies. The very thought of having Bird-Demic any where near his copy of The Maltese Falcon or Seven Samurai seemed close to sacrilege. It would be like playing Metallica in the Notre Dame.

Of course, knowing Bell, she might get a kick out of playing Metallica in the Notre Dame.

Moving past Bell he plunked down beside Cole and grabbed a controller. As he pushed the guide button and signed into his account on this Xbox he said, "How you been Cole? Still scrawny and shirtless as ever I see."

Cole had always struck him as a solid guy. Sure they moved in mostly different social circles and Jethro seemed to like sleep a lot more than Cole but he had yet to find any irredeemable flaw in his fellow student.

[Cole Kessler]

Busy? She didn't know the meaning of the word. Cole had not slept for more than five hours a night for the past week. Between working, school, training, and making time for his friends and girlfriend he didn't have any time for sleep. And when he did have time to sleep, something always interrupted him. Yet, he still made an effort to annihilate a new game as soon as it had come out.

As the guide come up for Jethro to recover his account, the boy spoke to Cole, "I'm shirtless and as awesome as ever, Jethro." Cole took the lead and signed them into Matchmaking. The server raced to find some opponents for the three of them to take on. Finally MATCH FOUND popped up on the screen. The three of them and one other versus another team of four. Theme of the day was SWAT Magnums. The most appealing map of choice for Cole? Countdown.

He looked at the two people sitting next to him, "I'll take lead, Jethro take level 2, Bell," Cole smiled, "Just try not to die too much and take the lower lift level." He said with a laugh. Cole's focus shifted as he heard a voice from the surround sound speaker, "SWAT" The familiar beeps of the first spawn countdowns filled his ears and he erased everything from his mind save for the two teammates sitting beside him.

[Annabella Rae]

Try not to die! Try not to die! The arrogance of that statement! Bell was the queen of this game, she spent summers doing nothing but playing this game. She wondered weather to go AWAL and kill cole instead. But she hated loosing even more then she hated being talked down to. She decided instead to just beat the crap out of the other team. As she shot the people on the other team she chanced a side glance at how the others were doing. As the people fell as she shot. She remembered the first time she played this game. It was a year ago, and at a party. She was a little tipsy when she began to play. It had taken her a while to get the hang, but eventually she got it, and fell in love. Deep, ever lasting love. The graphics, the storyline, the game play. It was everything she loved in video games. “Try not to die my ass.” she said with a smirk. “Jethro, just be glad you don’t live with him. I’m question if he owns a shirt sometimes.” She said. Her smirk never left her face.

[Jethro Harker]

"It is a fair question. Cole? Do you actually own any shirts? I'm sure I've got a few spares that will fit you." Jethro moved slowly through the second level. He was something of a non-traditional player. Without motion trackers or shields, you could not dart in and out of combat without some risk. The result was a more tactical game, and it Jethro's opinion a more vicious one.

To date, his favorite tactic was stalking people with the pistol, most preferred the DMR to the pistol in SWAT but Jethro enjoyed it more. Even without spawning with it immediately, he still would have favored it. He tossed a grenade around a corner then ducked behind a wall. The offended parties came rushing around to try to find him. He was waiting with the pistol at head level. A second later, the game announced, "Double Kill," but Jethro was already on the move.