Gaming Club. Ugh. Nikki Tesla just hated thinking about the phrase. Games were for children, pointless diversions that awarded a button push with a burst of endorphins. What self-respecting woman of science would stoop to such a low as to play those things?
Thinking about the expulsion paper on Ms. Patrick's desk, Nikki guessed that self-respecting woman of science was her.
Ugh...fools....
She was particularly lead-footed the next day as she headed to the club location, hands deep in her pockets as she scowled at the floor. Unlike most clubs which had a classroom, the gaming club took over the student lounge on the South side of campus for a few hours a day, so it wasn't too hard for Nikki to get to, and when she did...well, it wasn't all that impressive.
There was a sizeable amount of students milling about the lounge. Some crowded around small televisions and the big flatscreen on the wall to play video games, others huddled around board games of varying degrees of complexity. In the back of the room, a demon-kid sat behind a cardboard screen, regaling a story of some kind to a handful of other students clutching sheets of paper and sacks full of dice. Nothing particularly stuck out, though Nikki did spot the swaying tail of Mohini, digging through a card that seemed to carry the club's board games. She almost went over to see if there was anything remotely interesting in the cart when...
"OH MY GOD, YOU GUYS SUCK ASS."
Nikki and half the club turned to look at the commotion surrounding the large screen near the center of the lounge, broadcasting the word FAILURE in bright red lettering. The shouter seemed to be a surly looking vampire with fangs bared in anger.
"Dude, you kept charging in to get kills without us," a zombie-like student on his right insisted.
"If you would have waited for us, you wouldn't have kept feeding the enemy team and cost us the game," a translucent girl on the left pointed out.
"Fuck you guys, you're just ass at this game. Stick to fucking iron, dipshits!" With that, the vampire chucked his controller at the ground and transformed into a bat, flying past Nikki's shoulder as the controller landed at her feet. Picking it up with a thumb and forefinger, Nikki trotted over to the group of students trying to play the game and looking miserable in the process.
"Here's your controller back," Nikki said, dropping the controller into a werewolf's lap before realizing something. "Hey, if that needs fixing I can do something with it, make sure it responds to your game here!"
The werewolf, looking confused, picked up the controller and tested a few buttons out. "Uh, no I think it's working fine. Got us back to the character select and everything."
"Well I'll take your word for it then..." Nikki huffed, looking at the screen with marked disinterest.
"Do you want to play with us?" the ghost girl asked kindly. "We need a fourth player for Fists And Fighters Online."
Nikki hemmed and hawed, her mind going back and forth between how much she really didn't like video games and how much she didn't want to get kicked out of the club. Eventually the latter won out.
"Fine," Nikki announced, plopping down next to the werewolf. Picking up the game case sitting on the shelf underneath the flat-screen, she took out the manual and started flicking through the book. "How do you play this game?"
"It's not too complicated, it's a bit like deathmatch but we lead little minions to destroy an enemy base in the meantime," the ghost girl explained. "You press this button to move around, and-"
"I think I got it," Nikki announced, cutting her off and tossing the manual away. "Who should I play? Any scientists in this game?"
"Well, there's Trixie the Mad, but she's like super hard to play," the zombie said.
"Works for me," Nikki stated, still in a deadpan tone, holding her controller at the ready. "Let's do this."
Warily, the other three began the match countdown while Nikki glowered at the screen. Deciding to force herself through this unpleasantness, she tried to look at this like a particularly difficult science experiment, intending to solve it. The four player avatars, Nikki's being a tiny pig-tail sporting scientist who periodical broke into maniacal laughter, spawned in a forested area at the head of a band of goons wielding spears and shields, marching along into the distance. Immediately, shots bounced off the zombie's player character, a burly looking guy made of metal.
"Of course they have Jeraz, he's so broken..." the ghost girl sighed. "Well, just brace for it I guess, and...hey, what are you doing?"
Nikki instead charged forward, her character in game brandishing a potion as she dodged left and right, counting off the shots and the timing of the bursts, calculating the perfect angle when the shooter reloaded. Then, at the right moment, Nikki threw down a potion and a magical wall sprung up, bouncing the bullets back just as enemy spearmen came into view, mowing down a slew of them in one shot.
"Whoah!" the ghost girl said, awestruck. "I didn't know you could do that with her!"
"It's simple geometry, any monkey with a slide ruler could pull it off," Nikki announced. "Here, your character's shield bash can do the same thing, if you time it correctly."
"It CAN?" the werewolf said incredulously.
"Of course it can, haven't you read the manual? If you did then you'd know your bloodlust can temporarily buff the spearmen too, if you stand close enough."
And the game went along much like that, with Nikki coldly informing her teammates of all sorts of neat little tricks they could pull off, all the while leading the charge by throwing bombs and potion canisters around like confetti. Maybe it was because Nikki tried to put some semblance of mathematics and science into the equation, but midway through the match, she did get a tingle in the back of her head, the same sort of tingle she got from a particularly exciting discovery. It wasn't long before the enemy base was in sight; boosted by her teammate's bloodlust, Nikki's character quaffed a potion and transformed into a raging monster, smashing through the frontline to let her teammates pick off the weak assassin characters taking cover in the back. With the ghost girl's shield bash bouncing bullets into the last few enemy spears, the enemy base collapsed into tinder, and a cheerful voice announced VICTORY to the world.
A loud noise made Nikki dive under the table before she realized what it was; cheering. Unbeknownst to her, a huge crowd had gathered behind her to watch the match, suitably impressed by her performance.
"Wow, that was my best match ever!" the werewolf exclaimed happily. "Hey, who are you anyway?"
"Uh...Nikki Tesla."
"Nice to meet you!" the zombie said cheerily. "Hope you stick around for a while, you were great!"
"...thanks?" Nikki tried to extract herself from the situation, feeling deeply confused by the whole affair, until she backed into something cool and scaly. "Gah! Oh, it's you!"
Mohini grinned, blushing slightly as she smoothed out her shirt. "Sorry, I was just...wow, that was great! Was that your first time?"
"Yeah, it was," Nikki shrugged. "Not too difficult, really. Just needs an application of common sense."
"PLEASE tell me you're asking her!"
Nikki turned to see a selachian girl storming towards her, practically bouncing on the balls of her feet when she finally skidded to a stop. The human was suitably taken aback by this sharkey-looking girl, tall and muscular with battleship-gray skin, gray eyes, and a long thin shark tail exiting out the back of her shorts, all of it gray, with some white thrown in for good measure. It was no wonder she seemed to prefer neon colors according to her clothes and the streak in her long brown hair.
"I-I was about to!" Mohini insisted, squirming on the spot.
"Yeah Mo, you'd better!" The shark girl was joined by a skinny-looking demon, a tiefling as some humans liked to call them, horns curled like a rams on top of his black hair, solid amber eyes standing out sharply against his red skin, which in turn clashed horribly with his ratty jeans and plaid shirt. "Seriously, I've never seen a Trixie player that good before!"
"What are you talking about?" Nikki demanded. "And who are you people?"
"Well we're TRYING to be the Fists And Fighters Online E-Sport Team for Monster High," the demon guy explained.
"But we need a player four!" the shark girl concluded.
"O-only if you're interested!" Mohini said, blushing like crazy.
Nikki was rather taken aback at this offer, not being entirely sure what that even meant. An E-sports team? Isn't that like, a competitive thing? Not really her cup of tea, but thinking back to that game, and the rush of emotion it gave her...
No, that was NOT something a woman of SCIENCE would do! Never in a million years would she debase herself as to play...ugh!...video games! And she opened her mouth to say as much!
...just as Miss Patrick walked up to the four of them, like something straight out of Nikki's worst nightmares.
"Good news, Mohini," the mummy said. "I've spoken to the principle, and he's agreed to let you establish the team for this game if you can find a fourth player!" Miss Patrick then looked over at Nikki, trapped like a deer in headlights. "Oh, are you their fourth, Miss Tesla? That's very kind of you to offer, and I'm sure that it would look good on your record, hm?"
The super-genius scientist forced a smile on her face, feeling like she'd rather be swallowing every chemical in her lab kit right now.
"...where do I sign up?"
(Author's note: Leaving two free choices in case someone wants to do something with gaming club that doesn't involve this long intro)
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