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“And remember, you can enter and exit the vehicle by pressing [Z]!”
Kris, Susie, and Ralsei were in the middle of yet another adventure. The typical schtick, stop the King or Queen or TV producer or whatever, seal the dark fountain, save the world from destruction, so on and so forth. The dark world was densely forested, abuzz with various electronic bleeps and bloops emanating from an unknown point in the distance, filled with what looked like person-sized hamster mazes, and everything had the distinct and somewhat nasty smell of socks and pizza. Currently they were in the middle of some weird maze puzzle that Kris was clearly struggling with.
Susie had been paying more active attention to what her friends had been saying as of late (more specifically Ralsei, Kris didn’t talk much). Something that she had noticed was how Ralsei kept mentioning something? someone? called “Z”. It was honestly starting to nag at her. Today, she decided, she would confront him about it. It was weirding her out and she felt as though she deserved at least a bit of explanation.
“Hey Ralsei can we like, talk for a hot second? Alone?”
“Uhm…! Sure Susie, what do you want to talk about exactly?”
“Tell ya in a minute. Follow me.” As they began to walk off, Kris noticed them and raised a confused? Suspicious? Curious? Eyebrow at the two of them. “Don’t worry, dude. We’re gonna be back in a second,” Susie told them, “ Just need to talk about something.” This seemed to be enough explanation for them, they shrugged and went back to struggling with the puzzle.
They had now arrived at a small clearing, just out of earshot of Kris. “Alright, Susie,” Ralsei began, “what did you want to discuss?”
“Right, yeah,” Susie replied, “Who the fuck is ‘Z’???”
“I– What?!?”
“You keep saying things about some ‘Z’ that DON’T MAKE SENSE. Like the shit you just said about the weird fuckin rocket ship bumper car lookin thing! Who the fuck is ‘Z’!?”
“ I– I– You heard all that??” Ralsei’s face grew into an expression somewhere between surprise and worry.
“DUDE YOU WERE SAYING IT RIGHT OUT FUCKIN LOUD! How did you expect me NOT to? Now PLEASE answer the question dude.”
“Uhh! It's, uhm, because there's a little button on the bumper car, with a ‘Z’ on it! Yeah that’s why!”
“Well, ignoring how bad you are at lying, you are NOT fooling me with that. You’ve said this shit about fuckin stone boxes. WHO IS Z? WHAT IS Z? WHY IS Z???”
“I– I– You– I– I– I don’t– You weren’t–” He took a moment to breathe and compose himself. “Uh, it’s just like, uhm,” he tried to think of a tactful way to put it, “it’s just like an input…? You can press [Z] to do things like. Uhm. Interact…”
“Christ dude you sound like a fuckin Dragon Blazers NPC, can you…” she trailed off. A terrifying realization had dawned on her. “Ralsei, are we in a video game?”`
“What?!?” Susie gripped him by the collar and lifted him slightly in the air.
“RALSEI ARE WE IN A FUCKING VIDEOGAME????”
“UHH! UHM! UH! MAYBE!” Susie set him back down again. She slowly sank to the ground. “Susie? Are you okay?” She turned to look at Ralsei. She looked tired.
“… I fucking hate it here dude.”