Erik sat in front of the computer. There was an open can of beer slowly warming on the desk. The screen was displaying an old game that Dustin had slipped into Erik’s bag with his usual silence. Erik was caught up on all his reading, even the sixty page chapter in the Greek history text. He had handed in his first paper to the World Wars professor that morning and there wasn’t another paper due for at least three weeks. He had two weeks until his next quiz in genetics (and why had he registered for that class again?). There were no relatives threatening to invade his apartment. And, most importantly, Ray Fujimoto was at the bar meeting with a bunch of other law school hopefuls.

Peace. Blessed, dull, restful peace.

The beer can was half-empty and warm and Erik wasn’t even past the first part of his game when a solid hand came out of nowhere to rest on the top of his head. He yelped, spun around, the chair spinning, and banged his knee loudly on the end of the couch.

Ray grinned. “Twitchy, Thor. You should see a doctor about that.”

“Where the hell did you come from?” Erik gasped, rubbing at his throbbing temples. Good-bye relaxation, hello nervous breakdown at twenty.

“Bedroom window,” Ray answered calmly, bouncing on the edge of the couch.

Erik groaned. There were several ways he could imagine such a situation playing out, and none of them were good. He covered his eyes with a hand. If he couldn’t see it, maybe it would all go away and he could go back to relaxing with his game.

“Relax, Thor,” said Ray, persistently not vanishing into the ether. “I’m a –”

“– ninja,” Erik finished with him, saying the word in a resigned tone that was lost beneath Ray’s overwhelming, if tipsy, enthusiasm.

“Nothing could have happened. My reflexes are finely honed from years of training, you know.”

“Right. Explain that to anyone who had the misfortune to see you breaking into the apartment. Unless you’ve suddenly acquired the ability to turn invisible.” Reluctantly, Erik lowered his hand.

Ray was still there.

Damn.

“Don’t be stupid, Thor. Ninjas can’t make themselves invisible. It’s physically impossible.” Ray gave Erik’s head a gentle pat. “You watch too many movies, Sigurd. They rot your brain. It’s kind of worrying.”

Erik rolled his eyes toward the water-stained sealing and slowly turned his chair back toward the computer. “Right, silly me. What was I thinking?” He grasped at his beer and took a long drink. When he set it back down, a good deal lighter, he asked: “Aren’t you supposed to be at the bar with all your horrible lawyer-wannabe associates, leading them in drinking and singing raucous songs about money and exploiting people in times of hardship?”

Ray shrugged. “I got hungry.”

“They serve food at the bar.”

“But there’s cold pizza in the fridge, Thor. How could I choose bar food over congealed pizza?”

“You’re sick, you know that?”

Ray ignored Erik’s comment like he ignored everything negative that was ever said about him. “What’s up, man? I thought you’d be working, or out with Dust and Ash or someone.”

“Dustin was doing biochem lab work this afternoon,” Erik murmured, gliding the cursor across the screen and picking flowers that were garishly bright against the predominantly dark blue screen.

“He should just get a bed set up in one of the labs or something, save himself the walk.” Ray propped his chin on Erik’s head, grinning. “So, what are you doing?”

Erik jabbed Ray in the chest with his elbow. “Just playing an old game that Dustin and I used to play on his dad’s computer when we were kids. You know, nostalgia value. Relaxing.” He glared pointedly at Ray’s reflection in the computer screen, hoping his roommate would take the hint.

“It looks like crap,” Ray said frankly, rubbing his chest.

“It was made in the early nineties, man. It was state of the art back then.”

“It looks like crap now.”

“No one’s making you play it. Or look at it. Why don’t you just grab the pizza and go back to the bar?”

“Don’t wanna,” Ray said lazily, before suddenly shooting forward, bracing both hands on Erik’s shoulders and peering past him at the computer screen. “Thor,” he said, his voice suddenly intense and unusually serious, “is that a pirate?”

Erik tried to pry Ray’s fingers off his shoulder. “Um, sort of, yeah.”

“You’re playing a pirate game?”

“Yeah . . . Ray, let go, you’re going to leave dents, man.”

Reluctantly, Ray loosened his grip on Erik. “I thought we were friends, Thor,” he said, settling down on the arm of the couch.

“We are, man, totally,” Erik said wearily, rubbing his shoulders and trying to restore some sense of feeling to them.

“Then why are you playing a pirate game?”

“Could you stop saying pirate like that?”

“Answer the question, Thor.”

“I told you, Dustin and I loved it when we were little. It’s a good way to relax. It’s funny. What more do you want?”

“I don’t know . . . I just can’t believe that you, my friend, my roommate, would betray me like this. It’s . . . I expected better from you, Thor, I really did.”

Erik turned around to stare at his slumping, unhappy roommate. His eyebrows rose incredulously. “Dude, it’s just a game.”

“It’s part of the pirate propaganda, turning you against me . . .”

“Ray, man, you’re fucking nuts,” Erik said frankly.

“Don’t you understand, Thor? Surely there’s something in the stories your deranged Viking forefathers left you that talks about the ancient wars and rivalries between the ninjas and the pirates! Vikings were a subgroup of pirates, but I was willing to look beyond that when we met. I figured any Viking living in the middle of Canada probably wasn’t up for piracy. But this!” Ray pointed an accusing finger at the computer screen. “You’ve always been secretly on their side, haven’t you?”

Erik drummed his fingers impatiently on the back of the computer chair. “Would you like me to walk with you to the hospital, Ray? I think they have a nice room with padded walls they can put you in until you feel better, and maybe some pretty pills and a glass of water to help . . .”

“You don’t understand! The hatred between pirates and ninjas isn’t something that can just be forgotten. It’s a battle that must be fought daily. Not just physically, but in the hearts and minds of non-pirates and non-ninjas everywhere, even if they don’t realize it!”

Ray babbled on, incoherent aside from the occasional curse on all things piratical. Erik felt his eyes glaze over and quickly stood up before he fell asleep. He walked to the kitchen and Ray ranted on, suggesting that his only choice at the moment was throwing the now pirate-contaminated computer out the window. He opened the fridge while Ray continued detailing the pirate-ninja war. He grabbed the cold, rattling pizza box and the remains of a six-pack.

Ray appeared to be a few short breaths away from declaring war on every pirate-related thing in Saskatchewan and bolting out the door to stab every parrot he could find. Erik opened the pizza box, took out a slice, and rolled it up. When he went back to the computer, he shoved it in Ray’s mouth, effectively stopping the tirade. He dropped the box on the floor and put the beer in Ray’s lap, staring sternly into Ray’s surprised brown eyes.

“Ray. I was awake until three this morning writing about the effect of the first World War on the people of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. I am very tired, but I drank my weight in coffee so I wouldn’t fall asleep during today’s genetics lecture, so I can’t go to sleep now. I want to relax and have chosen to do so by playing an old, goofy game about a wannabe pirate. Now please, for the love of everything, just shut up and eat the pizza before I pitch you out the window.”

Carefully, Ray swallowed his pizza. “I weigh more than you. You probably couldn’t lift someone half my weight, let alone throw them out the window.”

“Shut. Up,” Erik growled, and turned back to the computer.

Ray shrugged. “Just trying to expand your horizons, man,” he said, and popped open the beer.