TOW all the tomb raiders

AN. Rated K+ Just to be on the safe side!

AN. Disclaimer: I do not own friends, wish I did.

AN. This story is based a year after Chandler and Monica bought that new house. Mainly Chandler, Phoebe and Joey will be featuring in this story, and so will Lara Croft. Not sure why.

Chandler was at home cradling his twins babies in his arms. Besides telling neurotic jokes to them all morning, he was thinking about how much he really needed coffee. Maybe that's what two years of being married to Monica just did to you, or maybe it was because he really missed his best friend and wanted to replace the word Joey with coffee.

It was a relief for Chandler that he had finally arranged that date at Central Perk. That's where he would meet coffee and maybe catch up on old times.

"I'm just pleased that for once we can make proper use of that 'Joey room'." Said Monica, "I was already having second thoughts about turning it into an extra room for the kids, where they can store all their junk...I mean toys." She noticed Chandler had been staring at her. "What? They're messy!"

Joey arrived late that morning. Chandler knew exactly why that was, because he had seen him outside Central Perk arguing with his cab driver.

"You can hardly expect me to stop outside every food interval in the city." The cab driver explained.

"Well you could've at least stopped at Subway!" Joey argued.

"I did. You bought a meatball marinara!"

"No, the other Subway!"

Having reluctantly paid the cab driver, Joey stormed into the coffee house. Chandler, who had been listening and in turn losing the will to live, realized that the argument had died down. "Could you be any more late?" He said to Joey, in a way only Chandler Bing could have said it. He smiled anyway as the two of them got seated. They gave eachother a brief pat on the shoulder. They probably would have hugged, if it weren't for Gunther staring at the two. Gunther then took under account that he wouldn't recieve a friendly greeting himself, so he hung his head and resumed to doing his duties behind the counter.

Joey took off his coat and hung it over the back of the couch. "So, how are things?" he asked.

"Well great actually, the twins just turned one, and Monica...well let's just say she's gotten to new levels of cleanliness!"

"That's great...I think." He took a sip of, what he assumed was his coffee. Chandler motioned for him not to, but it was too late. "ASPLUSHFF!" Said Joey as he spat out a mouthful of distastefully cold cappuccino.

"I think the sound you just made, makes what I'm about to say a little lacking-in-observation, but: Your coffee's gone cold"
Gunther saw light in the oportunity and quickly took the coffee away. "I'll save this for Ross!" He smirked.

After another ten minutes or so of talking, with new mugs of coffee at hand, Joey and Chandler were cut from conversation as someone sped into the coffee house to greet them. "Hey guys!" It was Phoebe, looking excited and very jumpy. "Hey guys, hey guys, hey guys!" She repeated, in a way that made Chandler want to interrupt,

"Phoebes, I know you've come a long way but, on this planet, we say the greeting...that's it!" Phoebe then produced a laugh which at first sounded serious, but then turned into a mock laugh that resembled Chandler's. She then proceeded to hugging her friends. Joey and Chandler didn't ask where Phoebe's husband Mike was, because they had already guessed he would be hand-cuffed to a water pipe somewhere.

"OK. Let's look under our seats!" Phoebe screamed so loud that Joey, for some reason because he was scared, screamed back.

"Uhh Phoebe, if your intention there was to make my ears hate me forever, there you have it!" Chandler gasped as he rubbed his frightened ears. Joey stared thoughtfully at Phoebe for a moment.

"Oh it's 'look under the seats and find something cool' time!" He yelled. It was surprising, Chandler thought, how quickly he had switched from being scared out of his mind, to being deleriously happy.

"Yeah I did that once and I found a gun inside! Oh, except I kind of had to put it back, becasue I got in trouble for it." Phoebe said. Chandler stared blankly, there was no way anyone could reduce him to scavenging inside an old seat cushion in the coffee house. Joey however already had his arm in one of the chairs, he was in up to his shoulder when he yelled, "I found something!" After tugging a little under the cushion, he pulled out a fist full of dollars. (no movie pun intended)

"Wow, you're so lucky!" Phoebe said excitedly, as she pulled her arm out of the couch Chandler was sitting on. He had understandably shifted over to a chair.

"Now I can buy that game I always wanted." Joey jumped up and down in his seat. "YAY!"

"Joey, you found three dollars." Chandler deadpanned. Joey had to look for a moment at the dollars so he could count them.

"Yeah, and I also have seven dollars. So altogether thats..." Joey tried with difficulty to add seven and three.

An hour later, possibly how long it took for Joey to add seven aand three, Phoebe, Chandler and Joey were browsing the local HMV store for that game Joey wanted. Although they had to sweet talk Phoebe into joining them, because she said she hated the exploitation of horrific violence in games.

"I get a really bad vibe from them, you know. It's like, these games will one day destroy us so much that it will cause us to live inside our own imaganiations and turn our minds inside out like...mindless zombies!"

"Joey is the one buying the game," Chandler persued, "and seriouly, what mind?" After Phoebe was convinced, it was just a matter of trying to explain to Joey that an X Box game costs more that ten dollars, but that kind of seemed like trying to explain quantum physics to a three year old. So Chandler just made a deal with himself that he would pay for the rest of the game. Afterall, he thought, it can't be that much more.

"Thirty dollars!" Chandler errupted at the sight of the luminous price tag. Why did he have to make that deal with himself to pay for the rest of the stupid game? Then he sighed and turned the other cheek. "I'll pay for it Joe." He said, almost reluctantly. "But seriously, what do you want "Tomb Raider" for?"

"She's really hot!"

"Em, but Joey," Phoebe interrupted, "Do you even have an X Box?"

"Oh, nice Phoebe. Now I have to buy him one of those too!" Then Phoebe said something even more worrying.

"How is Monica going to react if you turn up at your home with an X Box and a Tomb Raider game?"

Another hour had passed and Chandler was back at home, influencing random jokes onto his baby twins. Monica was busying herself in the kitchen, by arranging some small jars of Cow&Gate alphabetically, in order of flavor, and then into chronological order, using the sell-by dates. She then decisively put them at the back of the highest cupboard, to stop Joey from eating them.
Joey was playing on the X Box in his "Joey room." Monica had allowed him to play in there, as long as he didn't keep shouting innapropriate "Hot girl" comments for the twins to hear. He had also been warned not to eat cheetos over the carpet. Chandler tucked the twins into bed and decided to go across the hall. He stopped for a second to notice a crudely painted sign which indicated it was the "Joey room". As he entered the room he was surprised to see Joey and Phoebe both thumbing away at some X Box controllers. "Hello children!" he added suitably. "Phoebes, I didn't realize you were here!"

"Oh, yeah" said Phoebe, not removing her eyes from the screen, "I climbed in through the window."

"Ooooo-kay!" Said Chandler.

"Oh, sorry Chandler," Added Joey, "it's just a two player. You can watch though."

"Yeah but you know," Phoebe said, "you probably suck anyway!" Chandler sat down next to them on the bed to observe the game.

"Wait a minute, how can this be a two player, there's only one character"
The two of them stopped playing for a moment and thought.

"Joey, this is plugged into your sock drawer!" Chandler said, as he jerked the plug out from under a pile of socks.

"But it told me to do that on the manual!" Joey whined.

"Socks and sockets are not the same thing, Joe!" Said Chandler.

"But that means, Phoebe's been playing all this time!"

"Well she would be, if her joystick weren't plugged into a soccer ball!" Chandler pulled Phoebe's controller plug out of the soccer ball.

"Phoebe! You ruined my soccer ball!" Joey yelled, as he watched the ball deflate from having its three socket-holes punched free. "Put it back in, I can't watch this!" Phoebe hastily put the plug back in the ball. Chandler couldn't help but to laugh at the situation.

"Wait a minute," Chandler pointed out, "If no one's really been using any electricity for this game, then how come Lara is still running around in there?" The three of them stared at the screen and searchd for the cable connection to the wall. The games console itself had atleast been plugged in correctly.

"Maybe it's a preview." Joey said. Everybody shrugged, assuming it was a rediculously long prieview. Chandler plugged Phoebe's controler into an actual socket, "Watch guys, this is a socket. It lives on the wall. It's not a sock. It's got nothing to do with soccer"
Then Joey saw a big red button on the X Box. "Hey, what does it say about this in the manual?" he said, pointing at the flashing object.
Phoebe picked up the manual, "It says, 'Do not push it!' "

"Oops!" Said Joey, shamefully looking at the floor.

"What do you mean "oops!" " Said Chandler.

"I sort of...pushed it!"

"We're inside the game"
"Your powers of observation astonish me, Joe."

It hapened so fast that the author didn't even take the time to add a description of how they got there.

Joey, Chandler and Phoebe were standing in what appeared to be a virtual landscape of jungle terrain and the ruins of some ancient architechture. There was some strange, atmospheric music playing all around them.
Suddenly a huge, beastly creature leaped in front of them. It made everybody scream as it clawed and snapped at them and exposing its mighty jaws. Then about ten shots rang out from behind them, hitting the beast and causing it to howl. Then it plumeted to the ground and faded away. The friends, who appeared to be unharmed, uncovered their shocked faces and turned around. Lara Croft blew the smoke from her pistols and stared. "I hate wolves." She withdrew the pistols amidst a long period of silence.

"How you doin'?" Yes that was Joey. Lara chose not to dignify that with an answer.

"Oh my god," said Phoebe, "we really have ended up living inside our own imaginations! No wait, if this is my imagination, then where's Princess Peach?"

"Could easily be my imagination!" Joey said as he looked Lara up and down.

"Stop staring at me." Lara scolded at Joey, "And what are you all, relic hunters or trophy hunters?" She looked at the others. "I assume because you almost let that wolf devour you, that you're not familiar with the art of tomb raiding"
Chandler twisted his fingers together anxiously. "Er, could you get us a cab out of this world of virtual reality, please?" He said. Lara stared for a moment and bit her lip and released it as she thought. Then she sighed as she looked at the three friends,

"If you are dumb enough to believe that you can get a cab in the middle of a jungle in Peru, " She shifted her weight to her other leg. "then you might as well just jump off that cliff over there because the ravine is filled with apricot flavored jelly."

"Really?" Joey said as he ran for the nearby cliff. Chandler and Phoebe quickly grabbed him before he could plummet to his certain death. They then peered over the edge to confirm their beliefs of what was a deep and seemingly bottomless ravine. Phoebe and Chandler then looked at Joey in a way which meant "Now do you still want to jump?" Lara had on the most confused facial expression that her artificial intelligence could conjure. "Oh my god" and for a moment there she sounded like Janice, "I was going to say: I'm not taking you with me, you would only slow me down; but it seems there's less planning involved in getting rid of you dead-weights than I thought."

"Wait!" Phoebe exclaimed, "You have to tell us how to get out!"

"And not by means of apricot flavored jelly!" Chandler remarked. "...which by, you obviously meant 'jello'." Then Lara shuffled her feet around as the patience began to burn out in her emotion bank. She was thinking of devious ways in which she could use the three of them to get hold of the hidden relics for her. "OK I can get you out of trouble for the time being, providing I can use you to help me finish this level quicker."

"Well, seems like that's the best choice we have." Chandler approved. Phoebe nodded.

"Does any part of this level include a giant cotton candy cloud?" Joey asked eagerly.

"That's Yoshi's story you moron." Replied Lara, "But if you're so eager to keep asking me pointless random questions, you might as well just ask me why I don't just throw you in the lake and use you as harpoon target practice."

"What's a harpoon?"