"Dude you are so fucking bad at this," laughed Oliver brightly as he revived Jace for a second time that round. Derrick laughed quietly to himself as he focused on gunning down the Collector troopers swarming around his friends.

"Jesus Jason how long has it been since you played?" Hannah's curious voice rang in Derrick's ear as he looked over to see his friends Asari Huntress gunning down Collectors beside his Quarian engineer.

"Well unlike all you fucking honor students my dumbass has practice every day along with my classes," Jason retorted indignantly as his N7 Destroyer launched a missile to wipeout a possessed praetorian, "It's not easy playing college football, being a average student, and being a diligent gamer. We can't all be like Derrick and be born fucking mathematical prodigies who just ace all their classes with the bare minimum of efforts."

Derrick snorted into his mike as he took the head off another collector, "I'm sorry but don't you play at Stanford?"

"Yeah, last time I checked people still think that anyone who goes to MIT is still smarter than anyone who goes to Stanford," Oliver noted dryly as he backed up Derrick in pushing back another wave of troopers.

"Whatever, there are twelve year olds here who are just as smart as me if not smarter," said Derrick quickly as he heard Jason make an offended noise through his mike.

This was one of the few times a month they could all get together and hang out even if it was over their X-box live accounts. Ever since they'd moved away to their respective colleges the friends had been falling more and more out of touch. And for Derrick that was a problem. It wasn't a problem for Jason and his being on a nationally ranked football team and all. And it wasn't a problem for the overly talkative Oliver at Penn State as he was the most social of them all. And lastly it wasn't an issue for Hannah as she was a gorgeous poli sci student at Harvard and having been the class president at their highschool for all four of their years was no stranger to making new friends. Derrick on the other hand was damn near socially retarded.

It wasn't that he was actually handicapped or anything he was just…awkward. At 5"11 with brown eyes and brown hair he was your average white nerd. Although thanks to Jason who had forced him to work out with him and Oliver he wasn't the beanstalk he knew he'd be without his friends near insane physical workout regiment. Thanks to that he was adequately in shape toned with a flat stomach, but nowhere near the muscle structure of Oliver and Jason. No he was more lanky than muscled. However, it had never been his appearance that had been the problem since he could usually give 0 fucks what someone thought of his appearance as long as he approved it.

No Derrick suffered from social anxiety. He'd be uncomfortable and awkward around strangers where moments ago he'd been perfectly fine talking to one of his friends. The anxiety had gotten better by the end of high school, but was still an issue now in College where his friends were spread out across the country.

Making new friends had been hell so far so every gaming session he could get in with his old friends was in its own way cathartic. With the four of them he could just be himself. He didn't have to pretend to be some sort of boy genius as many would describe him. He could speak without overthinking things or worrying about saying something weird.

It was a freedom he'd thought he'd find at MIT, but had been surprised to find the opposite. The famous school was amazing but COMPETITIVE. Nearly every person he met was out for themselves. Sure the curriculum was incredible and his classes delightfully challenging, but Derrick had been hoping to find a place where he'd finally be able to be comfortable and be himself. And a room full of intellectuals as smart as or smarter than him turned out not to be it. Nope, he'd found petty idea stealing and classroom politics at his new school. So he'd done what he did before he met Oliver, Jason, and Hannah. He hid.

Not literally, he just didn't go out in public that much and this semester had been somewhat of a hermit. His reclusive behavior was mostly why he'd been able to completely level up every playable multiplayer character in Mass effect 3. If that was bad enough he even knew each of the character by name as well as all of their abilities. Derrick sighed as he helped revive Jason again, he really needed to try harder to make more friends. Being a recluse was not as fun as he'd thought it would be.

"Um is anyone else seeing this," Hannah's confused voice said bringing Derrick out of his self reflective thoughts.

Derrick began to fight his way past a trio of praetorians to get to her, but Oliver arrived first, "What is it Han-…the fuck?" Derrick ran up a second later to see his friends aiming out at a huge black hole just hanging there. They were playing on the Firebase Dagger map with it's ever present blinding sandstorm. And last time Derrick had checked there was no black hole floating just outside the base.

"Um is this like some sort of event I don't know about?" asked Jason as he ran up to the trio. A thought occurred to Derrick a second after he had spoken.

"Where are all the Collectors?" Derrick wondered aloud as he looked around at the now empty base. When he looked back at the black hole he could begin to see that a red light had begin to faintly show through the darkness. It looked…familiar. BWAAAAMMM!

The huge blast of bass made Derrick jump in his seat before the screen before him flashed a blinding white light. As he shielded his eyes he realized that the light wasn't just coming from the television it was literally beginning to fill the room. In a matter of seconds he couldn't see the floor of his room. In a few more he could only see himself and the controller in his hands. Then the light began to spread up his hands sending the strangest sensation through him. The light wasn't painful so at first he didn't react, but when he noticed his skin beginning to peel and come off in flakes he tried to scream, only to find that his face had begun to peel as well and as he looked on in mute terror at his hands skin give away from beneath the skin came a blue glow.

Derrick became very woozy at the premise of his skin literally peeling off him, but he struggled not to faint. After all what would happen if he did? Was he dying? Were these his last strange moments alive? And had he really been killed off by a copy of Mass Effect 3? And what the hell was happening to his fingers?

His hands were now made nearly entirely of glowing blue light. As he watched the glowing digits his middle and pointer fingers suddenly snapped tightly together followed a second later by the ring and pinky fingers. Slowly he watched, petrified in half fascination/ half terror, as they merged together to form thicker stronger fingers. Next his thumbs began to thicken and grow as he looked at them change. In under thirty seconds his fingers had changed.

And that wasn't all that was changing, he felt his entire body begin to be altered as his shins seemed to bend backwards in the wrong direction as his toes seemed to fuse together into two longer thicker toes with a strange third toe on the mid outside of the foot. Derrick fought to stay awake, but at the sight of his toes turning from five to three his world began to rock precariously. Knowing he was only moments away from fainting he prayed to god and who ever else would listen for mercy. To his surprise a voice laughed in his mind.

Mercy? This is no punishment Derrick Freeman, this is a gift. Derrick could only blink in surprise at the answer before the sensory overload finally took it's toll and he fell into unconsciousness. And so Derrick Freeman passed from his world into a new one. One more fraught with danger and excitement than he could ever imagine.

Vigil by Jack Wall