The screen flashed. Erik's hand came down, fumbling across all the buttons at once. The character on the screen fired once, in the wrong direction, and was promptly eaten by a bear.

GAME OVER flashed in front of Erik's eyes in malicious red letters and below them, in mocking yellow, WOULD YOU LIKE INSERT COIN FURTHER??! Erik was only stymied for a moment before his brain managed to sort out that the game was not actually asking to sodomize him with currency. Both hands were plunged into his jean pockets only to emerge with three pennies, a pink paper clip someone had left either as a bizarre tip or a perplexing insult, a bit of string, and a button that had fallen off his shirt on the way to class. He looked from the button to the coin slot on the arcade machine speculatively.

"I wouldn't try, Thor, that button is one thick bastard," came an annoyingly familiar voice from behind Erik.

"Hello, Ray," sighed Erik.

"Is that even really a button? I suppose you do need specially designed buttons for giant Viking fingers such as you possess but, well, that really does seem to be quite extreme. It's not as though you'll be trying to manipulate them with prehensile sausages," Ray said amiably and leaned past Erik, ruthlessly invading his roommate's personal space, to insert another coin in the slot.

Startled, it took Erik a second before his hand was once more around the joystick, his teeth grinding together as he tried to concentrate.

"Shouldn't you be in class, Thor?" asked Ray, moving to stand at Erik's side so he could actually see the screen clearly instead of craning his head around Erik or trying to develop x-ray vision.

Erik grunted. "Prof for Old Icelandic cancelled due to being too pissed off – or maybe just too pissed, I dunno – to teach. Gotta stick around for history on your crazy ancestors in forty minutes," he added, flicking a look at Ray for a fraction of a second, but his roommate looked uninterested. "What about you? Don't you have a class this morning?"

"Sociology of crime and delinquency. Arts 110," Ray confirmed.

"What time?" asked Erik as he managed to make his character unleash a spinning attack on the fox with the sword.

"I believe it started ten minutes ago," said Ray. His hands were in his pockets and he was rocking back on his heels, the picture of contentment.

Erik snorted and turned his full attention back to the game, just in time for a giant, sword-wielding carrot to fall out of the sky and crush his character.

"That's rather embarrassing," Ray observed on Erik's behalf. "Move, Thor," he ordered, bumping his shoulder against Erik's arm and shoving. "Your lack of skill at this game is becoming painful to watch," he said by way of explanation as Erik stumbled to the side and only kept himself from falling into a surly looking boy playing Pirate Pirate Revolution! next to them by grabbing the side of the machine.

While Erik swore and pulled himself upright, Ray stood in front of the game, his feet planted solidly and his hands still in his pockets, as the prompt to continue counted down to expiry. It was only when the option to continue disappeared, replaced by the announcement of NEW GAMING, that Ray put in a new coin and lazily turned his attention to the game. "Let me show you how this kind of thing is done, Thor my boy."

"Oh, please, please, can you take time from your busy schedule to teach me, oh master," said Erik in a droning voice as he rested himself against the arcade machine carefully. He craned his neck to watch the screen as Ray selected not the titular, default character Erik had been using, but a different one, further along, who corresponded to a mode referred to on screen as BUTT DEATH. "Now you're just showing off," he muttered. "You're going to die in ten seconds, you know."

"Well, I might be rusty," Ray admitted, "but seven times out of ten I could usually make it to the final level and defeat the cybertoad samurai with Butterfly. Can't remember how much money I was in the habit of going through, though, but that's not really the point, is it?"

"It is if you have to choose between continuing a game and having clean underwear."

"The wonders of modern technology, architecture, and plumbing have given you a miraculous device known as a sink, Thor. In desperate times, you and your pungent Viking undergarments could always become familiar with it. Good hygiene can be found in many ways, dear Sigurd," said Ray distantly. Butterfly hovered over a green-clad samurai with a deadly flower before dropping at the precise angle necessary to fell the floral foe.

Erik scowled at these persistent signs of Ray's failure to fail. "Show off," he muttered.

"No more so than you driving a vehicle without mishap," said Ray, tilting his head with consideration as Butterfly manoeuvred flawlessly around a swarm fo flying throwing stars, then must have thought better of his comparison, because he amended it. "Well, no more so than a normal human being riding a bicycle, at least."

"Thanks, asshole, for providing an explanation that both manages to insult me and simultaneously fails to explain anything at all. You have a special gift. Feel free to waste it as you see fit. Preferably somewhere I am not."

Ray actually sighed. "Dear, paranoid Thor, always seeing the worst in things –"

"Can't imagine why –"

"Do try and keep up, Thor, even if it is painful in the brain area. What I'm trying to say through careful and brilliant use of metaphor is that if you spent as much time as humanly possible playing this game for almost an entire year after it was first released, you'd be damn good at it, too. Or at the very least, tolerably proficient." As if to prove his point, Ray made Butterfly dance around the level boss at such speed that the hulking geisha bumblebee exploded in confusion and fire, allowing Ray, and Butterfly, to progress to the next level.

"Point one," said Erik, beginning to tick off the list on his fingers, "this game wasn't here a week ago, let alone a year ago. Point two, you don't spend that much time in the Cove. If you did, it would cut into your trying to destroy the universe through annoyance time."

"Point three," Ray added helpfully, "was it really necessary to make a list if you only have two points to make?"

Erik made a face at the side of Ray's head.

"I played it when it first came out, when I was living in Tokyo. There was an arcade with it on my way home from school. Well, it wasn't so much on the way as it was a detour off the approved path that consumed the good part of an hour. That was part of the charm, I think. It wasn't the game itself, certainly. It's not actually that good or even much of a diversion once you've figured out its tricks. Hardly anyone besides me was ever playing it, although I guess it's always possible that it may have acquired some sort of cult status. I can't imagine why anyone would bother importing it otherwise. Unless it's simply become such an anti-draw that it's cheaper to send to Canada than a letter. Probably the latter. It didn't have any kind of sign that it could be a cult hit when I was there. I only ever bothered playing it because I just knew it would be the sort of thing to make his blood boil if he ever found out –"

"For fuck's sake, would you shut up, Ray?" Erik interrupted impatiently when it became apparent that if Ray were left to his own devices, he was unlikely to ever stop.

"You did ask for an explanation," Ray observed with fury-inducing calm.

"I meant a real explanation," said Erik. "Not more of your usual elaborate bullshit."

"Who says I'm lying?"

"Logic. Deductive reasoning."

"Dustin?"

"Shut up. I'm not saying I doubt the whole you being foreign thing; it's clear enough that you're no Canadian. Maybe you've even been to Japan and I suppose it's possible that you have relatives there. I mean, people can have relatives all over the damn place. But the financial irresponsibility and the whole stupid ninja thing and 'Oh, yes, I used to live in Tokyo' just all adds up to way, way too much. I mean, there's stretching the truth and bragging and all that, and I guess no one can fault you for that. Well, they can, but a bit of exaggeration probably can't hurt anyone that much. But you just go above and beyond, man. I don't know why you're bothering to keep going at it, eh? You keep going like this, I'm going to have to start listening to Dustin and seriously look into getting you to a mental health counsellor or something, I dunno ..." Erik sighed and massaged his forehead with a finger.

Ray said nothing for a stretch of time which was truly impressive for Ray, allowing silence to reign. Although, as they were standing in the midst of the Cove, it was less silence and more a collection of noises which merged into a single, incomprehensible composite sound that was half the atmosphere of the arcade and half incidental distraction. A dozen different conversations, the sound effects and music from several dozen different games, one person hyperventilating on the DDR machine ...

"Tokyo sucked, anyway," Ray said abruptly, his voice forming something like intelligent words above the sound of atmosphere. "I wouldn't live there again if you paid me. Given a choice, I'd be happy not to set foot on Japanese soil ever again."

Erik blinked.

"Just for reference, Thor," said Ray, a trifle coolly.

"Then why –?"

"Now, Thor," said Ray in a scolding voice, shaking his head and closing his eyes, while Butterfly continued across the screen with ease identical to that displayed when Ray was paying full and careful attention to the game, "what kind of ninja would I be if I explained everything to you?"

Erik's mouth moved soundlessly as he tried to express some kind of answer, only to find his mind jammed completely by a dozen different questions and impulses, including one which involved the very perilous course of action that would be hitting Ray for being an idiot.

Abruptly, Ray laughed. "Damned if I know! Some kind of question answering, puzzle constructing ninja, I suppose. Maybe one that's a robot. Or a cyborg. That would be rather interesting, I suspect. But I'm not that kind of ninja." He clapped a hand on Erik's shoulder, chuckling softly. "Nice try though, Thor. Good attempt, for a Viking. We'll get you operating on civilized standards yet, just you wait." Still shaking his head and as amused as he had been cold seconds earlier, Ray released Erik's shoulders and walked away.

"Ray, your game!" Erik managed to yell as he watched Butterfly plummet to a gory demise. It wasn't what he wanted to yell. It wasn't what mattered. But it was all he could get out. Ray could have that effect on him.

The response Erik managed to hear over the sounds of the Cove was perfectly Ray, too: "No point now. It's gotten boring again!"