Chapter Text
It's 1:00am on a Wednesday night and the music hasn't stopped. How can they still be listening to this? It's literally some idiot screaming about hunting the devil, accompanied by loud blaring guitars. Every song is loud blaring guitars. Don't they know there are more instruments than loud blaring guitars? Even guitars have different distortions. You're pretty sure they’re using the same chord progression in every song as well. Wait… maybe they’re just playing the same song over and over? No, you're pretty sure they're different. Does it even matter at this point? Seriously, it's been like this every night for the past 3 days!!!
You're using headphones with your laptop, but you can still hear the metal music overpowering your own. It's impossible not to hear it when the survival game you're playing is mostly running ambient sound. You need to hear the music cues in this game, they're important. If you want to stay alive you need to know when an enemy's about to get the jump on you. You would have turned on your own music to drown out your neighbors if the game's sound wasn’t so necessary.
In retrospect, picking a tiny, cheap apartment in the middle of the city may have been a terrible idea, but you wanted to keep costs down. It’s not like you were poor or anything, you just... may have been a bit more obsessed with profit than you should have been. Besides, the location was perfect for your Friday night drinking.
You'd moved out of your current home over a month ago, right around the time when the monsters were finally allowed out of their little monster-only camp and into the city. Their gold-lined pockets combined with the influx of humans wanting to move in and either see or work with the new species had made housing prices in Ebott skyrocket.
You normally live in one of your rental properties while waiting for your own house to be built, but the money had been too good. You lived life like you were playing a video game, and life had given you a way to beat your previous score. So you took it. You probably would have made a similar profit if you'd waited the six months for your new property to finish, but the market value was at an all time high, and you just couldn’t give up the score.
Now, here you are. Stuck in a tiny apartment with most your possessions in storage and a neighbor who doesn’t understand the meaning of appropriate hours or good music. Three days of this are enough, perhaps you should go over there and do something about it!
The music suddenly switches off halfway through the song. Finally that idiot’s going to bed.
And then, something new starts. Instead of blaring guitars, it's a heroic song. Hey... actually… you know this song.
It’s the latest version of the ‘God of Warframe’ game’s theme song. Heh... at least they like something that isn’t completely stupid. Well... you have to admit the GoW games aren't exactly for smart people either.
Minutes later the telltale sounds of gunshots and mind numbing character lines pound through your walls. You haven’t played that game in a while. When you stopped a few months back, you'd already prestiged your character to maximum. At that point, shooting heads for a few hours each day quickly got old.
That's when you hear it. A low guttural growl just over the top of your neighbors blasting speakers.
“Fuck you, human, that's what'cha get for bein' a coward. In this world it's KILL OR BE KILLED.”
You were wondering what sort of person it was. Looks like they're male.
Maybe, you should go over there and punch him in his stupid neckbeard face. Use your powers to make him beg for forgiveness while licking your feet. You've already tried the human way of knocking on the wall, and asking him to be quiet. That ended with him ignoring you, and turning his music up louder. You even called in a complaint to the apartment manager. Sadly, you're pretty sure with the cost of the unit, and the type of tenants that lived here, the general rule was to let them do whatever they wanted.
Perhaps the manager had tried to talk to him and got scared away. He was a timid little guy. It made it easy for you to get a half year’s contract at a discounted price. Plus, your neighbor had an apartment against the far wall. It was only you who had to deal with his obnoxious behavior, so why should anyone else care. This was probably illegal anyway, but you weren’t big on making a fuss in the first place. You were the type that always dealt with things yourself.
“What the hell, Fuck!, where'ja come from?! Fuck you, ya little shit!” A low snarl seeps through the wall. Sounds like your neighbor isn't very good at video games. Or maybe only this game. He's been cursing out his opponents and teammates the entire match. You even heard him throw the control a few times. Maybe he always raged when he played?
You smirk. His crappy gamer's etiquette matches his crappy music: angry, stupid, and loud.
Suddenly a smile spreads across your face… Actually… you wonder how good this guy really is?
There's a trick you could pull that lets you find local players on the game's server and join their session anonymously. It's really easy, actually. Turning your console on, you start up the game. Luckily this game was featured in cross play so you could play it across multiple platforms. That was nice, because now you didn't need to purchase it again. You listen to his music for a moment more. You're pretty sure he's using the console version; throwing a keyboard and mouse across the room doesn't sound like that.
You log in and load your character from the cloud, listening the entire time to make sure your neighbor's still playing. Then, you navigate the menus and search for local players. The only named player on the network shows up as RadSkull86, lvl 16…
You burst out laughing. Seriously... RadSkull86... that’s his name. Has he been using the same gamertag all his life? People don’t even use the word Rad anymore. Does he think he's tough by putting ‘skull’ in his name?
Heh heh... This's gonna be sooooo much fun.
You feel the pleasure of what you are about to do build even as you think about it.
You memorize the mixed jumble of numbers for his server id and back out of the search menu. You start a new character and name it “RadBrad86.” You may as well mess with him a little while you’re at it, and creating a new account prevents anyone else from recognizing you online. Using his room address, you join his session. If you join him directly from the search menu, it'll notify him someone local is joining. Doing it this way keeps things anonymous.
You start to load in and immediately smile.
“....perfect.” You mutter wickedly. There's an empty spot on the enemy team.
Waiting for the game to load, you plug in your gaming headphones and pop them on.
That's when the fun begins...
You're a little rusty from having spent so long away from the game. It takes you the whole first match to get accustomed to the slow, clunky feeling of analog aiming after using a mouse all this time. Once you’ve fiddled with the sensitivity settings a bit, your natural rhythm picks up, and your kill-to-death ratio begins to rise. That's when you strike. He's using the same sniper class from the previous match and utilizing the same hold out points. You've played this level a bunch and you know how to deal with these types of scumbag campers.
You break off from your team and chuck a flash bang through his window. Then you charge inside while he's distracted and stab him with your phase knife.
"Shit! The hell, team?! Fuckin’ let this guy get past ya!" Your neighbor growls through the wall.
You smirk as you pull back and wait for him to respawn. This time he chooses a different holdout, one more protected by his team. You force a distraction, and break into the room he's in, stabbing him in the back once again with a phase knife. Sadly you get swarmed a few seconds later, but you don't care. It isn't about winning. It's about killing RadSkull.
"What the fuck! Again with this shit!" He yells again, getting louder.
You manage to catch him setting up a sniper point in the previous spot, and shoot him down before he gets there. Your team is actually doing really well this round; the enemy's getting pushed against the spawns. You grab a few kills as you wait, internally counting down his respawn timer. It should be longer now that he's died a bunch without getting any kills himself. He respawns and runs exactly where you expect him to go. You get him mere seconds into his new life.
“FUUUUCK, the hell is this?! How's this asshole keep finding me? GET OFF MY ASS! YA SHITTY LITTLE…... FUCK!”
The match ends with your team completely dominating the other. The next match starts, and you sprint at the enemy team's main sniper point as fast as you can. You find him on his way there and get into a shootout. Too bad for him, you've wasted waaaay too much of your life playing video games. He's dead before he can even get a hit on you. Even better, you manage to stay alive behind enemy lines, collecting a four man kill before you get back to safety.
You wait a good solid minute before searching him out again. Maybe letting him feel like he wasn't being hunted would make his next death sweeter. This time he's waiting for you, facing the entryway. You pull off a miracle as you backtrack with no health. On your way out, you manage to throw an explosive into his room.
"How the hell didn't I get'im!" He screams. You keep your breath held, afraid that your laughter will give you away.
"Fuckin’ shit, this game is bullshit!"
His screams of anger only fuel you to play harder.
“I’m gonna dunk ya so hard…….. FUCK!”
You catch him as he runs into a building, trying to set up camp, and stab him in the back with your phase knife.
(Enemy RadSkull86 has been killed by RadBrad86)
WUMP.
Sounds like he threw the controller. A moment later his loud game music shuts off. Heh... he lasted maybe two rounds with you, and he didn’t even try to change rooms. Somebody's got some major rage issues!
A distant door slam signifies he's probably done for tonight and going to sleep. Finally some peace and quiet.
You get up from the couch and stretch. Making your way to the kitchen, to grab a glass of water. You read the clock above your stove. You still have a few hours until you need to be asleep. Hopping back over the couch with your glass, you open the work file on your laptop and break out one of your projects.
Along with your ownership of multiple properties including condos and a variety of differently priced houses, you work part time from home as a software developer. When you live as long as you have, certain skills pile up. You got into renting houses and buying new ones with the passive income a few years back. When computers became a thing, you got interested in that as well. It was fascinating watching society grow from bumbling, barely educated farmers, to the speedy, always connected and always communicating world of today. You weren’t one to let the extra years you gained from your sickness go to waste.
You work for a company designing home mapping software. You use imagery taken from satellites and drones at different angles to create 3d models of houses and structures. These models are then used to estimate home insurance costs based on the roof and walls of the structure. Later your company planned to use the tool alongside google maps to allow people to view actual 3d maps of their own homes and buildings. It was really cool, even if it was slightly invasive.
You like having a job that keeps you on your toes, forcing you to stay updated with the newest developmental tools of the industry. You aren’t one for working long hours, and you're glad you have the skill set to keep a job that lets you work from home. It's nice having people appreciate you. It's a marked improvement to how you were treated in the old days.
If you want to keep the job however, you need to be able to stay focused long enough to get your work done. Your neighbor really isn’t helping with that, at all. Luckily for you, he's gone to bed earlier than usual. Not wanting to waste any of that time, your fingers flash across the keyboard as you began checking newly added lines of code. It's already gone through QA but you still have a few things to add that'll help keep the system running light.
With the fixes and additions for this project done, you start the remote compiler and check the clock. Well that was faster than you thought it’d be. You have a whole extra hour before your preferred bedtime, so you decide to start up your previous game.
You stand and stretch again, trying to refresh yourself. Your body doesn’t need you to take care of it, but you like to anyway. You smile, remembering the time you tried one of those deep sleeps your people do for 2 whole years. Your body didn’t move at all then and it was alright. Your problem was waking up and missing everything that had happened while you were asleep. It bothered you so much, you decided to never do it again.
You go for another glass of water, re-using the same cup as you fill it in the sink. When you shut off the tap, you hear the strangest sound. A low whimpering just barely audible over the static of the air conditioner.
Seriously…. That guy better not be doing something gross! Why can't he just shut up and sleep quietly like a regular person? You really don’t want to imagine what actions were causing those sounds. Personal time in thin walled apartments needs to be kept strictly quiet.
You walk back to your spot on the couch and unpause the game. Survival games are one of your new favorites, and you immediately appreciate the lack of blasting music coming from next door. The game’s natural ambiance is nice; it makes the entire experience more enjoyable.
As you continue playing, you become aware of loud panting, groaning, and moaning sounds in the next apartment.
“That's it!” You pause your game and throw off your headphones in disgust. Marching over to the hallway, you take a breath.
“Really! I've been listening to ten solid minutes of your nasty groaning. What are you doing, YOU SICK FREAK?!" You scream at the wall.
The wall responds with a low shriek, followed by a crash. Did he fall off the bed? A moment later, there’s a knock on the wall, and then… Silence.
“STAY ASLEEP AND NEVER WAKE UP!” You screech.
You wait for a reply, anything, but nothing happens. He hasn’t said a word to you in the past, why would he now? At least you were able to mess with him earlier. That felt pretty good actually.
You spend the rest of the night in silence, finally saving your game at the crack of dawn and going to bed.
At least he isn't loud in the mornings…..