"I said no."
"But Nat..." Samantha Williams was a master of pouting, and unfortunately she knew it. Now she was wearing that sad face that had almost never failed to get her exactly what she wanted.
Nathaniel Rhodes felt his resolve start to crack, but still he protested. "You know video games aren't really my thing, and I'm not much into that high fantasy stuff, either. It's weird enough watching you guys use funny accents and talk about, I dunno, killing trolls when we're LARPing." He saw Samantha cringe at that description of their Live Action Role Playing, or LARPing, but he continued. "I just like the physical activity of it, something I wouldn't have when playing a video game. Of course hanging out with you guys is a decent bonus," he added quickly before a new frown could finish forming on her face. Honestly, the interests he shared with his closest friends were almost as numerous as his interests he didn't share with them. Even still, he wouldn't trade the time he spent with them for the world. Of course, he'd never admit that much out loud.
Samantha rolled her eyes as she turned away from him to walk up to the local game store and open the door. She gestured inside with a glare that dared him to protest again. "You really need to watch more TV. Melustrian Memoirs has so much advertising, you'd have to be... well... YOU to not know what devices it works on. You'll want the Kinetic Activity Gaming Experience. It lets your body still move around while you play, almost like you're LARPing. I've already tried it out some on another game and I know you'll love it, trust me."
"Huh? I thought virtual reality was all done while laying down?" Nathaniel stepped inside. If what she was saying was true, that would be wonderful. If he could, say, experience running through a green park in the middle of winter, yes please.
"Technology is advancing all the time! You need to pay more attention. If you have it set up for long enough, it's easy to forget you're not just right in the game, seriously! Come on, I'll buy it for you."
"Oh yeah? Well... alright then. I'll try it." Nathaniel tried to give as close to a genuine smile as he could muster. He felt uncomfortable when Samantha threw her money around like that. There's no way a device like she described would be cheap, and he could never shake the feeling that he owed her when this sort of thing happened. He couldn't offer to pay her back for it; she'd just say that him using it was payment enough, or something corny like that. And there was no way he'd dare try refusing the gift. It still made him shudder thinking back on the last time he saw someone try to do that.
They walked up to the counter together and Samantha rattled off their pre-order to the employee on duty, "Hello sir, I'd a Kinetic Activity Gaming Experience, and we'd both like to pre-order a copy of Melustrian Memoirs."
Once Samantha had finished giving the delivery instructions, Nathaniel brought up a point that confused him slightly. "Hey Sam, I thought most game companies used short, snappy names for their devices. What's with that Kinetic four word mess?"
"I don't know, maybe they just wanted to try something different. I mean, it's a pretty descriptive name, right?" With that, she flashed a smile at him.
*****
Thinking back on the events at the game store, Nathaniel stared daggers at the monstrous device that now took up a decent chunk of his bedroom. Samantha had tricked him. He knew that as soon as a large box marked "KAGE" in bold letters arrived at his door. She was right. It was a very descriptive name. The Kinetic Activity Gaming Experience was a plastic and metal monstrosity with a tread and more straps, braces, and suspension wires than he wanted to think about. Stepping into that thing would be like stepping into a cage for real, and there were few things in life he hated more than feeling trapped in a confined space. That's why he loved parkour: to him, it was an art of movement and possibility. This looked like neither. She knew that, which must have been why she intentionally used the full name of the device each time she said it.
Groaning and sighing and cursing, he hooked his phone up to the KAGE and pressed "Yes" when it asked him to sync contacts after a half second of loading. "Knowing how bad you are with technology," Samantha said a few days back during lunch, "you'll never figure out how to add us as friends in the game otherwise." He'd denied it at the time since his crush was watching, but he was pretty sure that she was right. That's part of the reason he'd declined at first when his friends asked him to play this game with them. Well, now he'd accepted this thing as a gift. He no longer had a choice if he didn't want to be rude.
He looked over at the clock. There were only 30 minutes left before the servers went live, and Samantha made him promise to be there right from the beginning. She said the other friends they'd been joining, his crush Sharon Smith and her brother Tobias, already planned to meet up as soon as they loaded into the game. If he didn't make it on time, who knows how long it would take him to catch up to them? He'd never played a game like this before and didn't want to drag them down. He pulled out the instructions and started cursing again. Too. Many. Straps.
10 minutes and 3 more times of reading the instructions later, and he was secure in the KAGE. Once he loaded up the game, he saw that character creation was already open. He spent 10 minutes adjusting and re-adjusting before realizing he'd probably never be happy with how it looked and realizing he needed to just stop and relax.
"Yes, I'm new at games, but I'll have my friends. There will be fighting right? I've had my share of sparring matches. I just need to focus on what I know... I can do this..."