Xaviers!

Katarina nervously walked down the dorm hallway, passing Jez's door for the fourth time.

Finally, shifting the pizza box around in her hands, she got up the nerve to knock.

Jez answered the door in her usual lazy-time attire; hair in a messy ponytail and body in a comfy hoodie. From her expression, she was definitely surprised to see Katarina on her doorstep.

"Oh! Uh, hi Katarina. I wasn't expecting you. I..." She looked down at the pizza box and paused.

"Hello, Jezabelle," Katarina said, smiling at her discombobulation.

"I..." she trailed off, looking down at the ground. "That is to day, my behavior..."

"...pizza?"

Jez managed to piece things together. She opened her door wide and invited the redhead inside. "Right, pizza. Come on in. I was actually working on a little surprise for you but, well, you surprised me instead."

"A surprise? For me? Jezabelle, you shouldn't have. I was extraordinarily rude to you the last we met, and my...friend Nika was apparently also, very rude to you. It is I who should be doing something for you," Katarina frowned as she stepped inside.

"I thought the pizza, after the last you wrote, would make for a good start to an apology?"

"It's... it's alright. I might've been coming on a little too strong or whatever, it's okay." She closed the door behind Katarina, her half of the dormroom a bit of a mess. The bed was unmade and there were some empty cardboard boxes and packing materials strewn about. "Nika must care about you very much, to be so protective of you. Apparently I'm a big bad American here to corrupt you." She teases, not letting on that she knows more than she says.

"Pizza is ALWAYS a good starting point." Jez brushed the boxes off of her bed and threw the duvet over to give a level surface for the time being. "Here, set it down and I'll finish up. You said you'd never really played any video games, and I couldn't find any good arcades nearby, so...." The blinds were closed and the light turned off-replaced with the eerie purple glow of a couple of blacklights. Her tablet was open and with a few taps started playing various noises in the background. "I thought I'd make your own private arcade, just for an afternoon."

"Nika thinks everything is out to corrupt me. That comes from my father, I'm afraid. To him, I must remain the pure, innocent golden girl, and all you western people with your hamburgers and flags are there to send me down into debauchery."

Katarina blinked at the sudden lighting change. "My goodness! You...you did all this for me?"

"Oh trust me, my brand of debauchery doesn't involve cheeseburgers. Unless you ask nicely." Jez was enjoying poking fun at herself and making her seem less tame than she actually was - something had given her a little more confidence lately.

"Well, kind of. A lot of this stuff I already had, just the black lights are new. I already had my fightstick, I just hadn't unpacked it 'cause I wasn't using it." She was already synching up the controls to her laptop, with a cable running to the tv she'd purchased from a second hand shop earlier in the year.

"How about I set you up with a game to try out, and while you're doing that I'll get some drinks and stuff and we can dig into that pizza while it's still hot?"

"It is still too much for just me. I thank you much," she smiled, scooting over on the bed to get to the fightstick. "I am going to enjoy this evening; and I hope you will, as well."

"...What, then, is your, erm, 'brand of debauchery'?"

"Too much? You hired personal chefs for me. This is nothing." Jez tapped on her laptop a couple of times before a very familiar to her (but unfamiliar to Katarina) game board came onto the screen. She was going to let the girl figure this one out on her own. She bent over and fished a couple of sodas out of the mini fridge, grabbing some paper plates and napkins from on top of it as well.

"You'll never know. You're too pure, I can't stomach the idea of corrupting you with my barbarous ways."

"I'm sure Nika can dig in and tell me, then. I have my ways," Katarina teased. "Eyes and ears everywhere.

Oh! He's moving!" she cried out, as Pac-Man started to go.

"She should be careful, she may not be ready for what she finds." Oooh, mysterious.

"Oh, yes! Your goal is to eat all of the little dots and avoid the ghosts. If you eat the big dot it'll give you a power up, and you can eat the ghosts too. But it only lasts a little while."

Katarina concentrated on the little man going through the maze, and was quickly in trouble in the lower left-hand corner.

"This is...decievingly difficult," she said, trying to get Pac-Man around a corner and smashing straight first into Blinky.

Jez hear the telltale electronic wail of a lost Pac. It was inevitable. It's not like she was an expert at the game herself. "But compelling, right? The frustration makes you want to succeed even more." She briefly crossed in front of the screen with plates and napkins and such, and opened the pizza box.

Pepperoni, green peppers, and plenty of extra cheese greeted Jez's prying eyes. Not bad for a dining hall pizza, if a little greasy.

"Are you any good at this one?" Katarina asked, doing a little better, briefly.

"I wouldn't call myself an expert, but I can try my hand at it. Don't worry, there are lots of games we can try tonight. But I'm saving the best one for last." Jez worked to get a couple of slices onto the plates so that she could bring them over and join Kat as she played.

Katarina half-scooted over to make room for Jez. They could both get at the fightstick if Jez scooted in tight.

"I await it with baited breath, then," Katarina smiled as she ran Pac-Man down a blind corridor. "Oh, darn it all!"

Jez was getting more enjoyment out of watching Katarina's expressions and movements than watching the screen. It was a treat to see someone discovering the joy and challenge of her favorite hobby for the first time.

"If you get a game over or get tired of it, I'll try a little bit. And then maybe we can move on to somethin' else." Jez offered before taking a bite out of her slice of pizza.

"Alright, you're my guide through these uncharted waters," Katarina smiled. "I want to know all about it.

Especially why that...that jebeni red ghost keeps chasing me so tightly!" she exclaimed suddenly as she died again.

Jez chewed on her pizza for a bit, pushing Katarina's slice toward her on the paper plate. "I'm pretty sure the people who play this all the time know the ghosts' habits. But I do know a trick or two." She gently reached over and tried her hand at the fightstick. "Like these things on the side? They take you to the other side..." and indeed, the pac exited the left side of the screen only to enter from the right. "And if you want them to get closer before you eat the big power pellet, you can run against a wall..." She had the pac trying to move left against a solid wall as the ghosts approached, moving down to chomp a power-up pellet just before they would've gotten her, turning them blue and sending them fleeing.

"This thing, this was the first big quarter-eating game. Like when it was put in bars and stuff, people would put tons of money into it, it was addictive."

"Well, I can promise you, I'm good for it," Katarina smiled, her hands turning to solid gold.

She used the gold hand to pick up her slice of pizza, stretching out her bite with that weird dangley cheese thing that extra cheesy pizzas sometimes do.

"You can tell you've played this before. You're quite adept."

"Careful, that's how you start losing fingers.

"I had a version on my Gameboy growing up. It helped pass boring car rides." But even Jez wasn't a master at it, and despite wiggling and little eeps of surprise she still lost lives... eventually.

"What do you think? Ready for something else?"

"I'm pretty sure if you started trying to snap off fingers, Nika would reply with equal force," Katarina grinned. "Though maybe that is what you are into, no?"

"What else do you have?"

"Mm, not quite the kind of roughhousing I'm into." Jez joked, booting up a similar old game from one year later.

"Don't worry, we'll play some newer stuff soon, but I think the older ones always make for a good starting point."

Katarina's first attempt to defeat the evil monkey ended two girders up, with a failed jump over a barrel.

"This seems...slower, and yet also more difficult. I would have thought slower would give me more time, but no, the man jumps too slowly and strangely," Katarina frowned.

Jez couldn't help but grin. "And I can show you games that are way, way too fast. Sooner or later I'll find the type of game that speaks to you. There are tons of 'em. Strategy, puzzle, shooters, point and click adventures..." Oh this could take years.

"Which do you prefer? You can be two people sometimes; do you ever play with yourself?"

Jez snorted and covered her mouth at Katarina's question in her effort to stifle her laughter, her face flushed. It took her a moment to regain her composure.

"Ah ha ha, well I like shooters and puzzle games, and platformers and stuff. I'm not really good at strategy or turn-based games. But you know, I never really thought about it, but I could do one hell of a Portal 2 co-op speedrun...."

"Not so good at thinking ahead with the strategy? Two heads not better than one?" Katarina teased, reaching over Jez for another slice of pizza.

"It's just remember what units are strong against what, but weak against what, and movement speeds, and unit costs, and... I play games to have fun, not to do math."

"Makes sense to me," Katarina smiled. "I'm just teasing you, girl."

Jez blushed a little bit. "Sorry, I can get a little serious when I'm in the zone." Having taken over she was already well on her way to beating the game, which wasn't very long - but then again it was made to eat quarters in an arcade, not for 60+ hours at home.

"No, no, you do not need to apologize. I like seeing you passionate about things!" Katarina smiled. "It is a welcome change of pace."

Jez raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Do I usually come off as indifferent?"

"No,no, not from you, from my..."

A pause.

"From my friends, back home. It was a...private school. They were very..."

Another pause.

"Restrained. They certainly would not have come over for pizza and games."

"Yeah, that's what I figured. I mean, that you weren't talking about me. I was just teasing back." The victory tune was playing on screen as Jex finished the sixth level, before she let herself dig into her pizza again. "Sucks that they wouldn't come over though."

"Alright, so that was some of the old stuff. I think I can show you the main event now."

"I await with baited breath.

...That may be the green peppers."

Jez leaned in and took a deep breath near Katarina's lips, before standing up.

"Nope, it's cilantro." She tapped over to her laptop, booting up a game service client from her desktop and then selecting a title from her favorites. She grabbed a controller from her desk and sat back down on the bed, letting the opening cutscene play out.

Katarina watched the cutscene for a few minutes, before a flash of realization hit her.

"Oh! Oh oh oh!"

Jezabelle couldn't hide her grin, watching Katarina's face pretty much the entire time.

"I told you I was saving something special, didn't I?"