"Oh, Law! Did you hear about that new VRMMO that just came out? That one called One Piece?" Ben excitedly asked. He was sitting across from Law at their table in the bar side of a barbecue wings joint, surrounded by too many people was too excited about sports. Law was regretting his decision to come here to eat with the only two people on campus who'd managed to somehow get under his skin and get him to, reluctantly, call them his friends. The beer was making it marginally more tolerable, but he was ready to go now that he'd finished his meal. He wasn't about to walk out of the two idiots in front of him, though.
Law shook his head after a moment of thought about any related news or whisperings he might have heard around campus as he took a sip of his drink. "I have not, nor do I care to."
"Oh, come on, Law! It's literally the best thing since sliced bread. You have to play it! You do play video games, right?" Scotch, who was sitting next to Ben, insisted. Law wondered how he ever even began to consider these two his friends and how that could have possibly come about. It had been almost two years now and it still baffled him to this day. He did suppose, however, that when someone brought you coffee every morning because they thought you looked like the walking dead, they tended to become your favorite person by default.
"Seeing how sliced bread is terrible, this tells me that this One Piece game of yours is total shit." Law knocked back the rest of his drink before setting the glass down on the table. He laced his fingers together and rested his chin on them with a smirk, feeling the buzz of alcohol coursing through his veins. One drink was hardly enough to get him tipsy, though, and with that finished it was down to the pair across from him to finish and he could get the hell out of here and away from these people.
"You know what I mean." Scotch huffed as their waitress stopped by and asked if there was anything they needed. Law asked for a water while his two friends passed. Scotch was the only one drinking, Ben having opted to only drink Soda that night as the pair's driver. Law knew himself well enough that he could drive just fine after a single beer.
"Please, Law, you have to play One Piece with us sometime!" Ben begged.
"Bennet. Scotch. You know I don't have time for video games. Midterms are coming up." Law reminded them.
"You don't study until three days before the tests! Don't lie to us." Ben accused.
"Yeah, but this is my last semester of college before I move back home to start my residency." Law reminded them.
"Jesus Christ. You just turned twenty-two. Slow the fuck down." Scotch scolded.
"You're five years too late for that advice" Law shrugged as the waitress arrived with his glass of water.
"Okay fine, so, about One Piece. Just hear me out." Ben began to implore, resting his forearms on the table as he leaned forward. "We've made it easy for you. We made you an account, we got you a headset, and we're going to give them to you so that you can play it once just to see what it's like at least and then we'll get off your back. If you don't like it we can return it."
Law figured he must have actually drunk too much because he was actually considering the offer. "So it's one of those fully immersive games, right?" he asked, taking a gulp of his water and trying to think of the last time he'd played a video game and if he'd ever played one of this kind before. He was sure that one of his classes touched on it because of it's medical advantages, but it was lost in the mountains of credit hours he's crammed into the last few years in order to finish school as fast as possible.
"Mmhm! But this one is multiplayer and you get to sail the seas and be a pirate, a marine, a bounty hunters, or whatever else you want to be." Scotch explained excitedly. "It's so cool!"
Law sighed in defeat. "Fine. We'll see. You both owe me drinks after midterms, though."
Ben and Scotch's eyes both lit up as they cheered, raising their hands to give each other a double high five.
"You're going to love it! We guarantee it!" Scotch assured him with a grin that was slowly becoming mischievous.
"What's with that smile? That's not a good smile. What are you not telling me?" Law asked, pressing his back against the back of his chair as he narrowed his eyes. he could never trust that smile.
"Oh nothing." Ben dismissed, serving only to feed Law's trepidation. Law narrowed his eyes at Scotch. He would always be the first to crack.
"Just wait till you see your username." Scotch hinted.
Ben smacked Scotch's arm as Law sat up straight, looking down at them even more suspiciously "What's my username? What did you do?"
Scotch peered over the rim of his glass and smirked "You'll see." And earned himself another warning smack from Ben.
"No, not 'You'll see' you're going to tell me right now." Law scowled.
"How about you just forget we said anything and we can all just move on with our lives because I'd rather not die today." Ben negotiated.
Law's brain immediately ran through the entire list of possible usernames that Ben and Scotch could have settled on, it was surprisingly short and Law was coming up empty "If you don't tell me I'll still kill you."
Ben pulled out his wallet without taking his eyes off of Law, fishing a twenty out of it and setting it on the table.
"Where are you going? Are you leaving? You better not be bailing." Law growled. "I will have my answers."
"See you later, Doctor Heart Stealer!" Scotch said in a rush, the two of them immediately jumping out of their seats and dashing for the door.
"Doc—NO YOU DID NOT." Law yelled after them, the bar going silent as he leapt out of his seat to chase after them, only to scramble for his wallet and return, throwing some money down on the table and running back out as he shoved his wallet back in his pocket. Law was pretty sure he left fifteen. That was more than enough. The waitress probably needed it.
Law left the bar side of the restaurant and then out the doors on the other side of the floor, chasing after the retreating forms of his so-called friends and ignoring everyone around them.
"Scotch! Get in the car! Get in the car! He's coming!" Ben yelled frantically, as Law burst outside. Ben pulled at the driver side door, realized it was locked, unlocked the car, and then climbed inside, slamming the door shut behind him. Scotch immediately followed suit. The car doors locked once more with a tell tale click as Law crashed into the back of the silver sedan, resting both his hands on the trunk and glaring daggers into his definately-not-friends-anymore's eyes through the rear view mirror.
"You get out of this car right now." Law demanded. He couldn't believe these two. How could they? How the fuck could they? He never should have told them about it. More importantly, however, he never should have written that fucking song.
"Don't get out! He's going to kill us!" Scotch practically screamed, loud enough for Law to hear him from outside the car, as Ben fumbled with the car keys.
"Damn right I am." Law snarled. "I may not have my scalpel on me but I sure as hell can strangle you with my scarf."
The car started successfully and then Ben's window cracked open. Law didn't move from his spot, barricading them into their parking spot. He began to unwrap the scarf from around his neck. A scarf he was wearing despite the fact that it was late spring.
"You'll be a pirate, though, and you can be a doctor pirate and maybe, I donno, actually steal people's hearts? You'd enjoy that, right?" Ben tentatively suggested, looking at Law over the back of his seat, head angled towards his cracked window so that Law could hear what he was saying.
"Good save." Scotch whispered loudly.
Law paused at the suggestion, halting halfway through unwrapping the scarf obscuring the white patches of skin on his neck. "So turn Doctor Heart Stealer from something with romantic connotations into something terrifying?" Law mused, morbidly, liking where this was going "You can do that in this game of yours?"
"Law's got that crazy look in his eyes again." Scotch whispered "I don't think this was a good idea anymore."
"Shh!" Ben hushed before opening his window further. He risked poking his head out the window to get a clearer view of Law "Well… I don't know… there's probably a way. The game's not very graphic like that, but there might be an ability that lets you do it cleanly." He offered.
"Yeah. There's lots of those." Scotch agreed "Maybe you'll get lucky."
Law mulled that over in his mind, letting his scarf rest around his neck once more. "Alright. I can roll with that. Doctor Heart Stealer, the Surgeon of Death. Let's just hope for your sake that I can get this… ability you mentioned."