Chapter Two: Video Game War
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the canon characters. They belong to TNT and any other respective owners of the franchise. Special shout-out to Writer of Gotham who reviewed last chapter!
Another activity that all siblings love to do with one another is play games with each other. Whether these games are played outdoors or inside, almost all games between siblings either end up a challenge or result in hysterical laughing as they joke about either the game itself or the consequences it inflicted. Most siblings these days love to play video games with one another, and Jake and Ezekiel, while not brothers by blood, fit this same sibling stereotype. Almost every Friday night after a busy week of missions and magic, Jake and Ezekiel rush upstairs with two pizzas into the Library's theatre room in order to get their game on with the gaming consoles they set up about a month after the Library returned to its full and former glory. This Friday is no different, save for Ezekiel and Jake have gotten cheesy bites to go along with their pizza and drinks for the night. Tonight is Ezekiel's time to pick the game first, and he crashes down into his red beanbag chair with a large grin on his face. Jake begins to think he is most definitely in for it, knowing Ezekiel tends to pick games that the cowboy is not the best at.
"And what, pray tell, is tonight's choice that has you smilin' bigger than a cat who ate a canary, Jones?" Jake inquires, reaching over and grabbing a new slice of pepperoni pizza from the box nearest him.
"Oh, you know…" Ezekiel trails off, quickly selecting his profile on the Xbox as the main one where Jacob can't see the name of the game just yet. "Just one of our usual fighting games that is no way unfair towards either one of us," the thief smirks, turning in the opposite direction from Jake where the cowboy and oldest LIT cannot see him smirking.
"You picked it again, didn't you?" Jake asks, mild annoyance in his voice as he powers up his Xbox controller to get ready to play whatever game Ezekiel has picked this time.
"I have no idea what you could be implying, mate," Ezekiel scoffs, trying to play innocent as the title screen loads on the giant TV in the Library's theatre.
"Yep! I called it!" Jake groans, rolling his blue eyes at the screen as he notices the game is one he absolutely hates playing with Ezekiel almost every time the young Australian thief picks the game. "Injustice: Gods Among Us. Yep, the usual suspect," the art historian continues, grabbing a cheesy bite and putting it in his mouth.
"Well, I see no distinct advantage that I have over you in this game than in any other game. I mean, I just have nimble fingers is all, mate," Ezekiel laughs, taking a piece of his double pepperoni and extra cheese pizza and taking a huge bite before setting it back into the box.
"Mm-hmm. Keep tellin' yourself that."
"Well, I can't help it you don't know how to play the game, Stone!"
With that, Ezekiel hits the multiplayer option, and the two men begin to pick their characters for the fighting they are about to involve themselves in.
Jake ends up choosing Green Arrow as his character; Ezekiel, meanwhile, chooses the Joker, one of his favorite villains of all times.
"Wakey-wakey!" Ezekiel shouts along with Joker as he uses his special power on the game to blow up Jake's version of Green Arrow.
"Why do you always insist on pickin' these long-legged characters that also have either ropes, guns, or frost powers?" Jake complains, frustration evident on his face as he loses for the tenth time in a row that night alone.
His record is quite embarrassing for the cowboy who has grown up fighting and watching superheroes battle villains. With that in mind, Jacob does not believe that he should have a battle record of 60 wins to 135 losses with almost all of those fights being against Ezekiel. Occasionally, Flynn will play against the two male LITs, but the Head Librarian usually loses to both Ezekiel and Jacob, only winning a slim percentage of the time with Superman or Batman. Ezekiel's record, meanwhile, is an impressive 169 wins to 26 losses, a truly spectacular feat.
"Uh, none of the characters have just any distinct advantages, mate," Ezekiel argues against this point, sighing as Jake goes to the choose a new fighter option. "Again, I have nimbler fingers than you and can just roll with hitting buttons every second of the fight. Not my fault you can't also do that during our battle with the lame characters you end up picking," the Australian thief laughs, selecting the Joker once again while Jake decides on Aquaman, one of his favorite characters to play as.
"Oh, whatever! You were raised in the technology era with controllers at your fingertips once you made enough money on your own or stole one to play," Jake begins to defend his own failures and shortcomings in the game they are playing. "Second, you're used to playin' with electronics since you hack all the technology and alarms at museums, houses, military bases, and who knows what else," the cowboy continues, only for Ezekiel to laugh and wave a hand at that statement.
"Says a sore loser," Ezekiel continues to laugh, a sly grin on his face as he dodges Jake's super move that he used to try and wipe the young thief out of the round quickly.
About one and a half hours later, the Injustice battle is over, with Jake losing 58 out of the 60 battles he and Ezekiel fought against one another, and then the art historian refuses to play the superhero and villain game any longer. So, Ezekiel goes back to the Xbox home before ejecting the disk and allowing Jacob to choose the next game they are going to battle in. He didn't expect Jake to pick the game the cowboy ends up slipping into the disk tray for the second game of the night.
Plants Vs. Zombies starts to play on-screen, and this time, Jake and Ezekiel must work together in order to save their garden and house from the zombies that are trying to break in.
"Put a peashooter on the third row, Stone!" Ezekiel shouts over the chaos of a massive zombie wave that is starting to come along in the garden.
"Got it! Now, put a Wall-Nut in front of the frozen peashooter to save our best plant to defeat the zombie horde!" Jake calls back to his best friend, setting down the peashooter in order to help them defeat the swarm of zombies beginning to form on the third row.
"I gotcha covered, mate! Can you put a cherry on the row down there near the football players and pole vaulters?" the Australian thief asks in desperation, noticing how the zombies in that row are starting to eat through their main plant defenses.
Jake does as he was asked, and soon enough, five zombies are piles of ash on the screen that soon get blown away by the virtual wind. Just the animation alone is enough to make Ezekiel and Jake bust out laughing so hard until their sides begin to hurt.
"Oh my gosh! I think that gets funnier every time we play this game!" Ezekiel laughs, pausing the game as tears come out of his eyes due to how hard he is laughing over the overly hysterical animation that is present in the game.
"Yeah, man! I just think that the animators didn't mean for it to be as gut-bustin' as it is, but it's pretty funny to see them in a pile of ash just because of a cherry!" Jacob agrees, his sides heaving as he laughs at the overall humor of the game.
Now, the game is rated for people over ten, but that doesn't mean that two grown men like Jake and Ezekiel can't enjoy the game as they work together to defeat zombies, something that both Ezekiel and Jacob have always wanted to do now that they know magical and supernatural forces actually exist. Jenkins one time walked in on the two best friends playing Plants Vs. Zombies, and to say the caretaker was surprised by their choice of a game is a complete understatement. The famous Knight of the Round Table was thoroughly shocked and somewhat appalled at the game the two new Librarians chose to play on their off time. For one, Jenkins saw the "rather juvenile animation", as the caretaker called it, and he instantly wondered why the two men would be playing a game aimed at children. Secondly, the zombies were kind of freaking Jenkins out the longer he looked at their beady eyes and rather grey complexion as Jake and Ezekiel proceeded to battle zombies with plants of all things. However, the two best friends love playing the garden warfare game as one of their stress relievers after a busy and stressful week out in the field with the magical threats and even scientific threats such as the time loop in DARPA.
Later on in the night, Ezekiel and Jake break out some bags of popcorn and eat other snacks while playing other games such as Kinetic Sports, WWE Wrestle Mania, and even Fable III as they continue their video game war and even continue to play more co-op games such as is the case with Fable III. Eventually, both men start to yawn, and they may tease one another about the fact that the other is getting tired at such an early time in the night. However, in actuality, it is around one in the morning, and only Eve and Flynn are still awake because they just got back from a mission in Japan that required their absolute attention due to the entire island being at stake due to a current problem with the dragon feud acting up once more. The Head Librarian and his beautiful Guardian head into the theatre room, having learned from Jenkins that the two LITs did not ever leave from the room after he had checked in on them around midnight with a fresh supply of popcorn and drinks for the two men. So, Eve and Flynn head into the room and see the Xbox on its home screen and then subsequently find the two grown men crashed in the sleeping bag, drool spilling out of Jake's mouth and a snore or two coming out of Ezekiel's mouth as he kicks his foot in his sleep. Ezekiel had his hands wrapped around his red bean-bag chair like a pillow, and Jake mostly is laid back on the blue bean-bag like it is a chair someone would fall asleep in on a long car ride or on a plane.
"Video game night?" Flynn inquires in a rather loud whisper as he and Eve come into the theatre to pick up some of the trash and empty food boxes and bowls that the two LITs left on the floor.
"Most likely," Eve whispers in an actual whisper as she goes over to the Library theatre's cabinet to bring out some of the spare blankets that they keep in there for when the whole Library team and family comes together to watch movies in the room. "The boys tend to have one every Friday night as a stress reliever while Cassandra does word-search puzzles or Sudoku in her room," the blonde Guardian explains to her Librarian fiancé, draping a green blanket over Ezekiel in the process.
"And they didn't invite me?" Flynn questions in fake shock as he opens his mouth in the way he does when he wants to either act like he is shocked or when he is actually shocked.
"Flynn," Eve warns through gritted teeth as Ezekiel begins to stir in his sleep.
It's hard enough getting the young thief to fall asleep now after the time loop, let alone how long it takes him to keep him asleep. Not to mention, Ezekiel took almost four months to start playing video games again, a fact which told the others that he did actually remember all of the time loops and all the deaths in said loops.
"If you wake up Ezekiel or Jacob, I will not go to Rome with you next week like you want me to. Plus, not to mention, I may even give you the silent treatment because you know how hard it is for Ezekiel to fall asleep now because of the time loop," Eve continues, the stern tone still in her voice as she moves to cover Jake with a blanket and actually give him some support for his neck where he is not just completely sore in the morning for their mission to Chile.
"Heard and processed," Flynn smiles, happy to see the maternal side of Eve that he only hopes can become a reality in the future.
He wants to have children with his darling Guardian in the future once they are married in a few months' time.
"It really is sweet how much you act like their mother, Eve," Flynn compliments, coming up behind his fiancée and pressing a soft kiss to her head and then moving down to press one more to her neck.
"Well, they make it easy on me. They act enough like brothers that it's not hard to imagine them always growing up together" Eve happily sighs, leaning into Flynn's touch and pressing a kiss, soft and slow onto his lips.
Author's Note: And there is my Jake and Ezekiel contribution for the third day of the shipathon week! Another special shout-out to Writer of Gotham who has been so nice in her reviews and support of my Librarians stories! For all of you who may have read my previous stories for the shipathon, I must apologize to you for not posting for quite a few days. I am in the middle of trying to write those stories now. I will try my hardest to get it up if I can before my senior year in high school starts in less than a week! Thanks for your understanding! Anyway, I may take some days of from the shipathon, such as when school starts back in a week. My school work comes back, and I have another fandom week I am participating in during the last week of September. However, I will always try to catch back up. Well, that's about all I have to say other than I hoped everyone enjoyed this one-shot and reviews are always appreciated! Oh, and in case it wasn't obvious, Jake and Ezekiel are my BrOTP of the Librarians series! All right, that's all I have to say for now. Have a good morning, afternoon, or night!