Story Collection

Streets Of Rage

I can't do this without him. But I also can't do this with him annoying me when I'm playing my game.

________________________________

"Behind you..." he said.

"Told you..." he teased me.

"You'll get killed. Your energy is almost finished."

"Shut up, Ash. I'm gonna do it." I said without turning my face to look at him.

Ash is my best friend and we've known each other since kindergarten. He usually comes over to my place to study and play video games. People at school ship us because of how close we are, and we do play along. Right now, I was very absorbed in my game. It's called Streets of Rage 2. It's actually a two-player game. I was playing solo mode, but we can also play 1-on-1. Ash is sitting behind me on my bed, I am on my floor, staring at the screen, trying my best not to get killed by the enemies that are coming from everywhere to attack me and Ash is not shutting up.

"Give me that. You'll lose." he suddenly came from behind me and snatched the controller from my hands.

"Hey. I'm not done yet." I turned to face him and tried getting my controller back. He stood up whilst controlling my character in the game and I was still trying to get the controller back.

"Hey, give it back." I kept struggling to get the controller from him but this time he stood straight up and held the controller above him. Of course, I couldn't get that now because he is taller than me.

I heard some ping from the game and both of us got alert. I turned to see that my character had finally been beaten to death and this time I had no option to respawn or continue because I had used it all up before.

"What did you do?" I said with frustration, "It took me so long to get to that stage."

"Not my fault. Your energy was pretty low, and you used up all respawn options before." he said placing back the controller in my hand. He acted like he didn't do anything, and it was all my fault.

"Hey, I could have done it if you wouldn't have interfered." I was getting pissed now.

"You just don't know how to play, that's all. I'm better than you." He said in his usual teasing manner.

"What?" I scoffed, "Wanna do a 1-on-1 with me?"

"Why not." He leaned in closer to my face, "I'll make sure to prove my statement correct."

I quickly picked up the second controller and handed it to Ash, which he took with a smirk on his face.

"Let's see who gets more points, shall we?" I said returning his smirk.

"Why not."

We both sat on the floor with our back resting against my bed and selected our characters. I chose Blaze. Ash chose Axel.

Suddenly I felt something odd. The screen began to glow much brightly, and my moderately lit room was now glowing like a light source.

"What the-?" I was confused and so was Ash.

But soon after, everything got really dark....

I opened my eyes and found myself in an alley. I was lying on my back and my head was hurting. I sat up and held my head.

"Who are you?" Someone said from behind and I turned to see.

"Axel?!?!" I exclaimed in question.

"Blaze?" He questioned softly in confusion.

 I couldn't believe my eyes and I kept rubbing them to look at the man in front of me again and again, but it was the same Axel from the game, every time.