Chapter Text
See you in December!" Avery waved goodbye to Jamie, watching their car drive away from the complex. His keycaed unlocked the glass doors and summoned the elevator for him, not feeling like clambering up the stairs today.
Flicking the lights on, Avery returned to an empty apartment, his new laptop under his arm. He plopped the keys on the side and settled on the sofa, carefully setting the laptop down on the coffee table.
Figuring his roommates wouldn't be back for a while, Avery found the remote and turned on the TV. A long-running soap opera’s theme tune began playing, probably something Evan was watching. Eh, good enough for white noise. Avery rifled through the chest of drawers for a mouse, connecting it to the laptop and booting it up.
The login screen greeting him was rather strange, nothing like the old Dell family computer. Avery suppossed that was to be expected, considering he missed what the seller said about the brand. It was rather plain, being a white screen with the options to either log into "d3rlord3" or to create a new login. Avery chose the second option, noting to check it out later. If it required a password, well. Darrell would probably get a kick out of it.
It took some time to load, but as a few notes of music began to play, memories came flooding back. Playing video games as a dumb middle schooler, beating them for the first time, his days on the Lifeboat server, trying out different games on new servers, that server with his school friends that only lasted a week. This wasn't the desktop, this was a Minecraft launcher. Wow, the battery life on this thing must be insane if it had been like this for so long.
Despite it being a new account, there was a preloaded world dated to a few months back. Passing it off as a bug, he decided to load the world, the (seed having loaded before).
Avery spawned in a plains biome, surrounded by the sky and a cow in the distance beside an oak tree. Looks like the last player hadn't done much with it.
Messing around in creative mode, Avery found much delight in the new updates. He'd definitely been playing other games for a while; the last update he remembered was with frogs and chests inside boats. Now there were more mobs, more wood variants, wolf armour! How much it had changed, yet still being the same game he remembered. Still no emerald armour, to his disappointment.
"Where'd you get that?"
Stood in the doorway was a guy with skunk hair and piercings, speaking in a rough voice. Avery yelped, startled by Darrell’s return, who smirked as he closed the door.
"No, seriously, where'd the laptop come from? Thought you were getting one off Facebook marketplace?" Darrell strolled behind the sofa, leaning over to stare at the laptop. Judging by his smirk falling, this was either one hell of a bargain- or Avery was scammed.
"I did!" Avery chirped, clicking the far right corner of the screen to reveal a messy desktop with an ugly yellow background. He turned his head to face Darrell.
"...Strange ThinkPad." Darrell frowned, tapping the screen. It responded to his touch, opening one of the desktop's programs. Avery had no idea what Darrell had been expecting, but he kept smiling regardless. Darrell's expression hardly shifted.
"So?" Avery mentioned casually, his smile not faltering. Darrell only grimaced
"How much money did you spend on this?" Darrell questioned apprehensively.
"Just 30 quid. It's used." Avery grinned. At that, Darrell's eyes nearly popped out of his head.
"Only thirty? Either the seller's an idiot, or it's cursed." Definitely a bargain.
Avery shrugged. "Dunno, picked it up from a storage container."
"They had anything else in there?" Darrell shifted his weight, folding his arms on the sofa's back.
"Nope. Cursed or not, it'll do for now.” Avery noticed that Deltarune's chapter select screen had opened, with a yellow asterisk beside Chapter 1. The old owner had taste, but seriously should have played the rest of the chapters.
"Shame, could've made some money if they had anything else to sell,” Darrell sighed, pushing himself off the sofa and turning on his heel. “Well, I take it you don't need my help with setting up, then."
As Darrell made towards the kitchen, Avery was reminded of his very recent success with making a second account on his laptop. Shutting down the launcher, he yelled after Darrell.
"Come back!-
Recording cut off unexpectedly. Try again?