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“Would you like something to snack on before dinner, Marcy?” Mrs. Boonchuy’s voice called from the kitchen. “We’ve got some leftovers from the restaurant. I could heat them up for you!”
“Thank you but I’m good Mrs. B!” Marcy called back.
“Yeah, we’re good honey!” Her husband called back too.
She sighed. He was lucky he was such a lovable dork.
“I wasn’t talking to you!” she called back to him in a singsong voice.
Mrs. Boonchuy could hear the noises from the new game her husband was playing with Marcy all the way at the other end of the hallway. ‘Godhood: Original Misdeed II’ Or something like that. He’d been talking about that one in the restaurant a lot over the past couple of months. She had her ‘work out room’ to help her through what they’d been through over the last year, he’d dove deep into his video games.
He’d been so excited to show it to Marcy after she got back.
She chuckled to herself a little bit.
She was so glad he was getting that chance now.
---
“-And if you get the ‘Intense Lifting’ perk, you can open up a secret passage for us that’ll lead to some really good gear!” Mr. Boonchuy was rotating his Dwarf Mage in little circles near a suspicious looking rock in the cliff face they were walking past.
“There’s a dagger that does 90% extra backstab damage for your Rogue, and a tunic that will boost my Mage’s fire spells like CRAZY!” With that last word he mimicked an explosion noise and made a bursting gesture with his hands.
“That sounds so dope, it’ll really help us kick this boss's ass!” Marcy cheered, fists raised above her head. “Or uh, his butt. Sorry for cursing Mr. B.”
He laughed. “Don’t worry about it Marcy. With everything you’ve been through, I’d be swearing too.”
Anne’s voice called from up the stairs. “What?! Then why are you still on my case about it?”
“Because you’re my daughter!” He yelled back. “And anyway, did an evil newt put you in a fish-tank?!”
They could hear Anne sigh dramatically as Sasha laughed raucously from the top floor.
“No.”
They both broke out into chuckles.
“I’ve really missed geeking out about rpgs with people.” Marcy said. “I love Yunan and Olivia, but they don’t really ‘get’ them. Lady Olivia doesn’t have any interest in video games at all and Yunan only really likes the fighting ones.”
“Tell me about it!” Mr. Boonchuy laughed. “One time I was so desperate to talk to someone, anyone, about the new Baldoor’s Gateway game that I tried talking to Hop Pop about it. I got to watch his eyes glaze over in real time!”
That earned a full cackle from Marcy.
---
Video games had been a thing Marcy and Mr. Boonchuy had bonded over for as long as she could remember. She’d been playing them since she was really little and her big sister had introduced her.
Her own parents certainly didn’t share any of her passion for the hobby. Anne and Sasha would play games with her, but they couldn’t really keep up with her enthusiasm for them. After her sister moved away to college she’d lost her main outlet for her hobby. She was living life with so much to say about her games and no one to really listen to her ramble about them.
Then one day when the girls were still very little, Marcy and Sasha had been over at the Boonchuy household on Mr. Boonchuy’s day off. Anne and Sasha had run ahead of her into Anne’s room while Marcy slowly moped up the stairs. Her sister leaving hadn’t happened that long beforehand, and she was still in a bit of a funk. As Marcy went to catch up with them she was stopped in her tracks by a commotion coming from the home office.
“No no no, come on! Why does he keep using that attack?!” The voice was Mr. Boonchuy’s. “Ahh, I’m never gonna beat the boss like this!”
Slowly she peeked through the door. Her eyes widened when she saw the game he was playing.
“Are you playing Vagabondia Chronicles?” She almost yelled.
“Wauugh!” He practically jumped out of his chair.
After he spent a moment clutching his chest and catching his breath, he finally looked over at the door.
“Oh, it’s just you Marcy, you startled me.” He laughed a little bit. “Yeah I am. It’s not going very well though, I’m a little rusty. I haven’t had as much time to play games since Anne was born.”
She walked a little closer. He could tell she had a question she wanted to ask, but wasn’t quite sure if she should. He had a pretty good idea of what that was.
“Do you know the game? Would you mind helping me?” He asked in his gentlest voice.
She nodded excitedly.
“My sister used to let me play that game with her. I think you’re using your abilities all wrong!” She walked over to the little chair that Anne would use at the computer and he helped her pull it up to the desk. She climbed up onto it so that she could reach over the desk and point at things on the screen.
“You should be using that one!” She said excitedly, touching one of the icons on the screen.
“You’re the boss!” He replied, doing a little salute that made her giggle.
They played the game together for a little while, and even managed to beat the boss he’d been stuck on before Anne and Sasha came in looking for Marcy and took her back to Anne’s room.
“Thanks for letting me play your game with you!” She chirped as she ran off with the other girls.
It was subtle but Mr. Boonchuy noticed more of a spring in her step as she left. He figured she must’ve been feeling down without anyone to talk to about her games. He could certainly relate. Growing up he hadn’t really had anyone to talk to about video games either.
It might’ve just been his paternal instincts, but he decided then and there that he would continue to engage with Marcy about video games. They’d talk about the video games they liked, strategies they could use in them, and when Marcy, Anne, and Sasha were playing video games he’d always ask if he could join (even if the answer from Anne was usually a resounding no).
With the amount of time Marcy spent at the Boonchuy household, they quickly built up a solid rapport over their mutual love of the hobby. They mostly liked the same kinds of games, but with slight differences in genre preference. Marcy was more into jrpgs while Mr. Boonchuy was usually more of a crpg guy. She liked high intensity RTS games, and he preferred the calmer tone of turn-based strategy, and so on.
Really, their slight differences in taste only strengthened their gamer bond. It meant that one of them always had something new they were enthusiastic about to show the other, or talk about until the cows came home. Or at least until Anne pulled Marcy upstairs to her room. Sometimes until Mrs. Boonchuy pulled her husband to the kitchen so they could cook or clean together. When he was driving the girls around town, he was frequently the subject of Anne’s complaints that he was ‘distracting her friend with his nerdy dad stuff.’ It rarely stopped him and Marcy from sharing the latest news about the upcoming games from their favorite studios, or the dumbfounding changes X, Y, or Z made in their latest patch.
Anne often expressed a dramatic embarrassment over the fact that Marcy thought her dad was cool, but one year she and her mother had gotten both of them matching novelty gaming t-shirts for Christmas. Marcy was super excited and he was too. He thought it was a really sweet gesture. Anne thought it was less sweet when he went out and got her a matching gamer shirt too. He didn’t care. She wore it sometimes anyways.
Mr. Boonchuy had grown to view Marcy as something akin to another daughter. You don’t spend that much time with your daughter’s best friends without learning to care about them to some degree, and in the end he was just happy that they both finally had someone to really dive into their shared interest with.
---
Mrs. Boonchuy had called Anne and Sasha down to the kitchen to help her set the table and prepare dinner. There had been some slight complaining from the two teens that they were being asked to help out but Marcy and Mr. Boonchuy got to keep playing their game.
“They’ve both clearly missed nerding out.” She said matter-of-factly. “And besides, you two weren’t even doing anything, and five people working in this kitchen is too crowded.”
"To be honest, I don't actually mind helping out, Mrs. Boonchuy." Sasha said. "Felicia Sundew back in wartwood showed me some cool table-setting-slash-martial-arts techniques I've been waiting for a chance to show off."
"Sure sweetie, just don't set the table too violently. We'll need to use it again for breakfast." Mrs. Boonchuy laughed.
"You got it, chief." Sasha replied, doing a little salute in her best impression of toad military discipline.
“Oooh, so responsible and disciplined, you’d be lucky to bring one like this home someday Anne.” Mrs. Boonchuy laughed, privately laughing her ass off at the way Anne and Sasha both tensed up, faces flustered.
“Moooom.” Anne complained in a too-sarcastic-to-really-be-sarcastic voice, trying to play off her embarrassment.
“What? I’m just saying.”
Mrs. Boonchuy would be the first to admit, Sasha hadn’t always been a good influence on Anne. But the girl in front of her was almost unrecognizable from the one who’d disappeared back then. The three of them were all different, sure but Sasha especially had clearly changed for the better. She was proud, in a strange way. Sasha wasn’t her daughter, but she had always reminded her a little bit of herself in her younger days. She still did now of course, but in a more positive way. Headstrong and full of fire, but less prone to steamrolling the people she cared about. She was glad the girl seemed happier with who she was now.
They all worked mostly in silence for a while, save for Anne’s humming and the occasional shouts and cheers heard from the living room.
Then suddenly, they heard a yell followed by a loud crash.
“Marcy, are you alright?” Mr. Boonchuy’s voice sounded from down the hallway.
Anne and Sasha sprung into action with a speed that Mrs. Boonchuy would’ve found unsettling if she hadn’t witnessed so much of it during her daughter’s fight against that big newt guy and his robot goons. Her own reaction wasn’t much slower and she followed them as they both shot down the hallway, Anne skidding to a halt in front of the entryway to the living room, and Sasha nearly crashing straight into her.
Marcy was laying on the ground, the coffee table flipped over near her feet, as Mr. Boonchuy rushed to help her to her feet. As he helped her up, they both laughed a little.
It didn’t take Anne or Sasha long to figure out exactly what had just happened. Marcy must’ve been excited enough to climb onto the coffee table and strike one of her victory poses, and the table must’ve flipped over with her on top of it, flinging her to the floor (along with the table and everything on it). They’d seen this happen before.
“Yeah, I’m fine Mr. B.” Marcy said with a slight wince as he put a hand on the center of her back to help her up.
He noticed, a slightly guilty look appearing on his face. “Oops, sorry Marcy.”
“Really, it’s not your fault dude. The strange evil amphibian bio-tech that uh, they put in my torso is just a little sensitive sometimes. But it’s keeping my blood pumping, so that’s pretty cool I guess.” Then she muttered under her breath, quiet enough she must’ve not expected anyone to hear. “Just wish it didn’t make me feel like such a weirdo though.”
Mr Boonchuy frowned at that.
“Hey, listen to me. You’re not a weirdo Marcy. And your torso isn’t evil.” He said, before pausing in consideration for a moment. “Would you call Jax Gearbit from Ultra Fantasy Fighters XVII a weirdo?”
She paused for a moment.
“No.” She said quietly, pointedly looking at the floor. “But it’s a totally different situation.”
“Is it though? Let’s look at the facts. Jax was an outsider, who never felt like he fit in, and was on a dangerous adventure with his friends. He was being manipulated by the evil warlord Dark Kylak, and when he realised what was going on he put himself in danger and got seriously hurt in order to save them.” Mr. Boonchuy stated like it was some sort of given that everyone knew that.
“Of course, everyone knows that.” Marcy replied meekly, still not looking up from the ground.
“Buuut, that wasn’t it for Jax was it? Dark Kylak healed him using ancient machinery and tried to force him to do evil right? But did that work?”
“No.”
“Of course not, Jax rebelled and fought against Dark Kylak’s brain-hold spell, and ended up making amends with his friends and uniting with them to totally kick Dark Kylak’s evil ass, right?! And why was he able to do that?” Mr. Boonchuy was getting really into it now.
It was honestly a wonder how close the events of this game apparently were to what Marcy had been through.
“Because…” Marcy started slow, deep in thought before quickly picking up speed. “Because in the end it didn’t matter what parts he was made of, because what mattered is that he had a good heart and wanted to make things right!”
She wasn’t looking at the floor anymore, in fact she was looking straight at Mr. Boonchuy, gesturing wildly with a big grin on her face.
“Exactly! If you wouldn’t be a jerk to Jax about what he went through, why be a jerk to yourself about what you went through?” He beamed at her and patted her on the shoulder. “Now let’s fix this table.”
To Mrs. Boonchuy, Anne, and Sasha, whatever had just happened was slightly incomprehensible. But clearly Mr. Boonchuy’s pep talk had gotten through to Marcy in some way because they were both grinning and laughing, working together to right the capsized coffee table and restore it’s scattered clutter to its proper places. Mr. Boonchuy noticed their presence at one point and gave them all a thumbs up with a grin. His wife shot him back a warm, fond smile.
The three of them continued to stand in the foyer for a little while, watching Mr. Boonchuy and Marcy get right back into their game, before they all headed back towards the kitchen. As they all got back into what they had been working on, Anne paused for a moment.
“It’s funny mom.” She said, absent-mindedly. “How did we both fall in love with such nerds?”
Then Anne was mortified. An inside thought had just managed to spill out of her big dumb mouth. She covered her face with her hands the moment she realized what she’d just said, to try and hide the fact that she was blushing incredibly deeply.
Sasha could barely stop herself from giggling.
“I know, right?” Mrs. Boonchuy replied, staring affectionately back towards the hallway.
You could see the exact moment her daughter’s words fully sank in.
“Wait what?”
Sasha couldn’t help it. She started laughing so hard she had to take a long sit-down.