Mid-terms were coming. Only a single weekend stood between me and the first major milestone of my college career.

The way I figured, I had it pretty easy. An essay or two here, a forty question test on near high school level math there, and a five minute minimum speech for a public speaking class to tie it all up. First semester English majors had it made.

Vinyl was taking things a lot worse. One of her music classes was music history, and while she enjoyed it she had a hard time keeping up with all of the names for composers and periods.

"Its like your entire species has nothing better to do than name stuff, at least until you get back to the classical era. How did they keep all of the Waltzs and Symphonies straight?"

At least I wasn't wearing on her anymore. My nightmares had calmed down enough to where I got a decent night's sleep. Hell, I even had some pretty good days, most of them involving epic game sessions. It hadn't taken much to get Vinyl hooked, and now Fridays were officially game night. Sometimes it was just the two of us, but tonight was a planned four player tag team.

The game, Dungeon Defenders. It had taken a bit of work, but I'd convinced Vinyl to relax a bit. If she wanted to have a mental breakdown it could wait until Saturday. The other two members of our party were Mac and a German friend I'd met online who went by CockyMartins. The object of the game was simple; make use of the weapons and defenses at our disposal to protect an important object from waves of enemies.

Cocky played a mage, and as the guy who got us all hooked on the game he had seniority in both level and experience. His magic towers were the backbone of our defenses. Mac was a summoner, bringing crystal versions of our enemies to the field as defenses. His job was to save up and place ogres in front of lines of Cocky's towers acting as an offensive wall against suicide troops and heavy hitters.

Vinyl and I were a bit more offensive. I was a ranger, and ever since I'd found a mini-gun twice my size that fired nearly three hundred electricity charged rounds per minute I'd been referred to as a mobile turret by Cocky. Vinyl was a countess, a heavy direct melee class. While the rest of us held back hammering choke points and buffing defenses, she took the fight to the horde cutting down pesky mages who spawned even more creatures and warriors who vaulted our defenses.

Our dynamic had been tricky to solidify, but we were fast becoming unstoppable. The objective for the night was to play survival until the sun came up for Cocky who was six hours ahead of the rest of us. It's worth mentioning that the last time we tried this, a last minute, middle of the week session, Cocky had been up for just shy of thirty two hours for some reason. Mac decided to screw around with another class, the jester. Its biggest gimmick was moving defenses, but it was its other ability that had crashed the session, the ability to place a present on the map. The present would spawn a random defense wherever it was placed; the catch being there was a small chance of it spawning a monster. Mac, in his infinite wisdom, placed it right next to the crystal we were supposed to be protecting. It was wave twenty of survival, five shy of the goal.

The present spawned an elite ogre.

To my immense discredit, all I could do was laugh as Vinyl desperately sprinted across the map to try and stop the new foe. It wasn't enough. With three swings of its mighty club, the ogre shattered the crystal it had spawned next to and the match ended. I continued laughing as Cocky had as quiet a mental breakdown as he could manage seeing as it was early morning for him. Before long Vinyl was laughing too, even Cocky was giggling as he made Mac swear to never place another present, ever, before turning in.

The map loaded up and we all took our places. Build phase, Cocky gets all the mana. Period. Vinyl and I are on fetch duty, grabbing mana from chests and bringing it to where Cocky is working.

Mac's job is apparently to switch to his jester to get a rise out of Cocky.

"No Jon," Cocky said calmly, using Mac's real name. "Just... Just no." We shared a laugh and Mac swapped back to his summoner.

Once the mana was delivered I spent a few minutes running blindly around the map mentally planning shortcuts and generally getting the feel for it. My laptop tended to complain during heavier waves and it took a practiced hand to know where to look and when to jump when the display was lagging behind. Vinyl was doing the same, granted her much newer laptop ran better than mine so she was more killing time than anything.

"Ok, I've got everything locked down but bottom." Cocky said.

"Gotcha covered," Vinyl said.

"I'll pick off stragglers," I added, "but in three waves you'll need to get some stuff down here, because I'll have to take wyvern duty."

"Next wave, no problem. 'G'," Cocky replied. Pressing "G" started the countdown for the next wave, and once we'd all punched it the fight was on. It was a very short wave, the first few always were. Vinyl was effective enough that I could have set my laptop down and left the room but I preferred spraying electric death into the crowd. It was more fun.

Mac was on mana runs. The summoner was defenseless, in that it was the only class without a direct attack. It did have the ability to hover around the map though, which Mac used to grab every bit of mana he could.

The wave ended and more mana chests spawned. Vinyl and I gathered their spoils and delivered them to Cocky.

Things continued like that for the next hour, build, kill, mana, rinse, repeat. Like a well-oiled machine we set up and buffed our defenses to the point where we could all sit back and let Cocky's towers and Mac's minions do all the work, occasionally intervening when a mage stopped just out of reach or two elite ogres decided to spawn at the same time.

Bailey was the furthest thing from my mind.

Mac was my best friend. We'd known each other for nearly fifteen years. I could always count on him when I needed to unwind. We'd made the decision early on that there were just some things we were never going to discuss. The two big ones were politics and relationships, so Bailey never came up.

"Anyone doing anything fun for Halloween?" Cocky asked halfway through our third survival of the night.

"Haven't thought about it," I answered. "Gotta get through mid-terms first." Halloween was the week after.

"You coming home for it?" Mac asked. Mac and I were from the same town. He stayed local for school.

"Nah, a fourteen hour round trip isn't worth one night. We'll be up for thanksgiving though."

"We will?" Vinyl asked.

"Yeah, unless you have other plans of course."

"Not really, just haven't thought that far ahead."

"Cool, Mom really wants to meet you. I'll-"

"We just lost the right side," Mac interrupted, and the conversation dissolved into a flurry of panic and explicatives.