For Those About To Rock...

[∴ Anthony]

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People like Anthony - those who don't socialize with others, don't care about school, don't spend copious amounts of time staying fit, etc. - they tend to have a lot of time on their hands. This usually manifests itself in a proficiency in some other aspect of their life, since their time is free of other activities. Anthony was good at a lot of things, but his forte was definitely the video game.

He liked all sorts of video games, and was fantastic at most of them, but today, sitting in front of the flatscreen in the common room, it was "Guitar Hero: World Tour" that had caught his eye. Probably the closest to a social game as possible, but the drums were unmanned, the second guitar abandoned, and the mic lay on the couch beside him, completely useless to the mute boy. He didn't seemed to mind though, and played, very much alone, to his heart's content.

At this particular moment, he was in the middle of smashing what could be considered one of the games hardest songs, with relative ease. The ease with which he played Joe Satriani's "Satch Boogie" could have made him a Youtube celebrity, were he inclined to record himself playing it. However, this was not the case, and the Guitar Hero nerds of the world lived in ignorance of the Guitar God among men.

He had just taken a break on the main menu to shake out his hands when he noticed something odd; someone had just picked up another of the game's instruments and looked ready to play.

Anthony stared. There was no challenge, no question in his gaze, but the newest rocker in the room might assume there was, because why else would he be staring at them?

[Claude 'Stormy' Miranda]

Promise me to think of us, as a time so wonderful
Promise me to think of us, still bright, still colorful

Stormy let out a very slow breath, exhaling as if she were meditating. It was a habit of hers, like a ritual to do this everytime she completed a hack, program, disc or whatver was ordered. The file shown blue before turning black and saving to the untraceable little gadget of wire she had modified and plugged in herself. Once she had it safely tucked away she hacked a chatbox, an email, and sent a message to her latest client. She never used her own email or anything, and made sure they never responded to the messages she sent. She hit enter, closed down the computer and left. She had let her client know his program was complete and now she was on her way to relax. She wouldn't deliver for another day or so.

As she was walking down the hallway a familiar song came to her ears. She couldn't help but wander helplessly, as if in a trance, to the sound of "Satch Boogie". It was one of her favorite songs to listen to when she was little, mostly because of the lack of vocals and how incredibly intense the whole song was. She entered the room just as one of the students was finishing up the song and now seemed to be giving his hands a break. She'd only been in the Academy roughly two days, and had spent so much time in the lab she hadn't even unpacked her room, so she'd never seen him before.

Claude went through her list of rules in her head, and none of them said 'Never play Guitar Hero with a random kid'. So she'd try it out and who knew, maybe when she was done she'd create a new rule, or rock out to another awesome song. Now Claudine had never played Guitar Hero before, but she taught herself hot to play at least four different real musical instruments by the time she was thirteen, hacked almost everything with ease and programmed at least eighty different things on her own, how hard could fondeling a piece of plastic to form notes be?

As she picked up the second guitar and selected "Satch Boogie" again, went to Bass and chose her difficulty as hard, she looked to the other person. He was staring at her in silence. What he was doing she didn't really know, or really much care. Maybe he was silently challenging her, to see who was better at a little video game like this. Instead of returning a death glare or snarky comment she simply looked to her fingers, the colors on the keys, and then to the screen as she waited for him to begin.

[∴ Anthony]

Stormy was forced to wait for a moment before beginning, due to Anthony continuing to stare at her even after she had picked her instrument and difficulty. His face gave nothing about his thoughts away, but the fact that she had picked the same song again seemed to give him pause. Eventually, though, he flicked his own instrument to bass as well, and set his difficulty to expert, unknowingly giving off even more of an impression of a challenge.

In reality, he would simply have been bored playing the same song again, on the same instrument, and he didn't feel like moving to the drums. Even choosing expert, which might have looked like showing off, was an effort to stave off boredom; he generally considered Guitar Hero easy on expert on guitar, and bass, in his mind, was easier, mostly due to a lack of chords.

And then the game began, the initial silence punctuated by Anthony drumming his fingers across the frets while he waited for the song to start in earnest.

[Claude 'Stormy' Miranda]

Promise me to think of us, as a time so wonderful
Promise me to think of us, still bright, still colorful

Stormy never passed a second thought as to why this person continued to stare at her, even for just a few seconds. Just he selected his difficulty she seemed to recall that she had left Kavik in the kennel in her assigned dorm. That was going to be one upset husky. She looked down at her watch to see that he had been in there four roughly forty-five minutes, not too bad, he'd live, but she would still need to ge to him right away. Stormy's head came back up to look at the screen as she heard the music begin to play.

The first few notes, of course, she missed completely. But once her fingers and mind became coordinated enough to tell her what color pressed what key and the timing by which it was pressed she started to do better. As the song went on she payed more attention to listening to it than anything else, so she missed a few notes but she didn't really care; not like she was competing with the stranger or anything. At least it was a song she liked.

When it ended she was scored at about 90%, better than what she had thought. Well that wasn't so bad, this person made no attempt to talk to her and it wasn't really one of those awkward silences that forced some person into small talk. Looks like a new rule wasn't going to be created anytime soon. Remembering Kavik once more she pulled the plastic insturment off her shoulder and propped it up against the drum set and prepared to leave with out another word.

[∴ Anthony]

Anthony seemed to be largely bored with the song on this playthrough, the bass part apparently not getting his juices flowing. This perhaps had something to do with the long pauses in the action while the guitar took over the stage for a solo, though at these times Anthony occupied himself by ghost-playing the solos until the bass came back in.

When the song ended, he had missed only one note, caught off-guard by a streak of quick notes right after the deceptively easy intro. The upside of the ease with which he played was that he was able to analyze the play of his opponent. He might normally have not cared, but her clearly-new-to-the-game playing when the song started was distracting; the sound of notes being missed was not one he liked to hear. Her progression to decency was, however, the more interesting point. She was a quick learner.

As the song ended and his opponent prepared to leave, he directed a solemn nod toward her, much more than most would get out of him. Earning Anthony's respect was not an easy thing, if only because the ways it was possible to were as varied as his reaction to them.

He waited at the menu, perhaps for someone else to come play.

(sorry, but there's not much else I can do. the guy couldn't even talk yet back when I wrote this :P)