The True Endgame

Bonekraka looks down at his tusks. He could only barely see them before, but now when he looks down, they"re easy to find. His lower lip is bulged out slightly to make s.p.a.ce for the tusks growing behind them.

"Eat crab?" Bonekraka asks, clearly not caring about the change.

Oleander shrugs. "I"ll get some wood! Hey," he looks at Serra, "want to come with me? We"ll let these two guys do the messy stuff while we have some quality girls" time!"

Serra looks up at Fenrir. She doesn"t look too excited about leaving him, but when Fenrir nods and says that the crab will be ready for when they get back, she heads off with Oleander.

"Yell if you need any help!" Fenrir shouts as Oleander and Serra walk off together. He"s now left on the beach with Bonekraka and two oversized crabs. "I guess we should just… snap all the legs off? We don"t have a pot to boil them in, plus I think these legs would be too big for that anyways, so just stick the legs over a fire and let them cook that way?"

"Tch. Not eat crab before? Let me show you how is done," Bonekraka says, flipping over his crab onto its back and getting to work. He keeps one foot down on its underside as he uses both of his hands to grab one leg at a time near where they connect to the body. With a good tug, each leg comes popping right off of the body. The one remaining claw gets torn off as well. With eight legs and two claws in a pile next to the crab"s body, Bonekraka has to crouch over the crab for this next part. He flips it over onto its front and digs his hands into the sh.e.l.l where the back two legs were removed and begins pulling upward.

He looks at Fenrir. "Come hold crab down. Put hands where mine but hold down," he commands.

Fenrir does as told, getting onto his knees and holding the crab down from the same spot where Bonekraka is pulling up. There"s a bit of a struggle, but Bonekraka manages to pull the top of the sh.e.l.l right off from the crab.

Yellow liquid sprays out and splashes onto Fenrir"s face. His ears twitch and his nose wrinkles from the scent and taste of it.

"No worries, is only ahh, what do you call it… is mustard," Bonekraka explains.

It definitely doesn"t taste like any mustard that Fenrir has ever tasted before. He raises an arm up to wipe it off of his face before looking at the revealed body of the crab. "Now, you hold here," Bonekraka points at the ridge opposite of him. With each man holding onto one side of the crab, Bonekraka gives the order to pull. The body is split into halves with little effort between the two of them.

Despite having gore disabled, Fenrir is able to see the innards of the crab in great detail. It might technically be gory, but this is no gorier than looking at a slab of raw steak. It"s just food. "Here is lump meat," Bonekraka points at the large chunks of white crab meat lining the insides of each half they split. With very little grace, he grabs onto one of the chunks and shoves it into his mouth.

Considering how insanely expensive crab has gotten in the past decade, to be able to just go and kill a crab in-game and then taste exactly how it would taste in real life is incredible. Most of their generation who has never tasted seafood before would get to try it out! Fenrir can"t even remember the last time he"s seen any seafood available in stores.

Fenrir copies Bonekraka, tearing a chunk of meat out and eating it raw. It tastes amazing! He doubts Oleander and Serra would be interested in eating raw crab, so he"ll leave the leg and claw meat to those two while he and Bonekraka indulge in the lump meat.

"Hey," Fenrir says between chewing chunks of crab, "you think any part of these crabs could be traded? Maybe we should – wait, I have an idea." He grabs the nearest claw and snaps it off from the rest of the leg at the carpus. With the claw removed from the leg, he digs his entire arm into it and begins pulling out all of the meat.

Of course, he doesn"t let any of this meat go to waste. He eats everything that he pulls out.

He realizes that he"s eating way more than he would normally be able to in reality. "You don"t think we can get fat from eating too much, can we?" he asks, though he already knows the answer.

"You will be fat dog, like corgi," Bonekraka answers.

Fenrir lowers his tail and frowns. He really wants to eat as much as he can, but he doesn"t want to become like a stumpy, chubby corgi. The rest of the meat gets tossed onto the pile of crab legs, and from there, it all gets shoveled down Bonekraka"s throat.

The claw is emptied of all its meat after a few minutes of digging and pulling. Fenrir places the stone spearhead, still tied to a fragment of stick, inside of the claw alongside his trusty rock and the stems that Oleander dropped before fighting. "It"s a good temporary bag, don"t you think? It"ll be a pain to carry around, but we"ll be able to carry more stuff now," he explains, holding the claw in his arms.
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Bonekraka looks like he doesn"t know whether to be impressed or not. Instead of worrying about that, he swallows down some more crab before heading over to the one that Fenrir killed. "Help prepare this one."

"Wait, your arm. It looked like it got hurt pretty bad during the fight. Is it alright? Sorry for not asking sooner." Fenrir says.

Bonekraka looks down at his arm and goes, "Ehh. Not hurt much now. Felt broke during fight, but now is better."

"Good, that means we"re not totally screwed without a healer. It was going to suck if you had to wait for somebody to heal it to be better. Hmm. I wonder if we get all of our health back from natural regeneration or not. What if there"s a status effect that poisons us or something like that?" Fenrir asks, trying to get Saya"s input, but she doesn"t reply. That means it"s something he"s going to have to learn on his own.

While Fenrir and Bonekraka finish preparing the second crab, Oleander and Serra collect bundles of sticks, dried leaves, and some dead gra.s.s.

"I"m going to let you know right now that he"s pretty dense. He can be a natural flirt sometimes, but unless you smack him in the face with your feelings, he"s not going to understand them," Oleander says to Serra whom freezes in place at his words.

"How – how can you tell? Am I… am I that obvious?" Serra asks, her voice quiet and cheeks red.

"Oh yeah, super obvious, plus I"m good at picking up on these things."

"I"ve… only known him for a few hours. Is – do you think it"s weird to like him already?"

"If there"s one thing I"ve learned about people while playing games, it"s that friendships and crushes can pop up super fast. One of our other friends met a girl and, in his words, fell in love with her within an hour of playing with her. They started dating the same day, met up offline after a few weeks, and got married a year later. That was a few years ago, and they"re still together now. Too bad they never play games with us anymore," Oleander pauses and smiles as he recalls fond memories. "I remember I knew I"d be good friends with Ryouta—ah! Sorry, don"t let him know I said his name. Uhh, anyways, I knew I"d be good friends with Fenny the moment we started talking. Sometimes you can just instantly click with somebody. I know a lot of people would be like, "oh no that"s not a real friendship or real love," or something stupid like that, but they just don"t understand how close you can really connect to people through games."

Serra takes a deep breath and smiles. His words cause a wave of relief to wash over her. "Thanks. I thought I was… being weird. Ah – umm, my voice. Is it… does it sound okay?" she asks.

"Sounds like a voice to me! Don"t worry, your secret is safe with me, and it won"t be so obvious if you talk more often. You"ll get used to it no time. How does it feel?"

Serra looks surprised at first, but smiles from how he"s handling it. "Thank you, and it feels weird but… it"s nice. I read about how a lot of people like – like me, are playing just to experience all of this."

"That doesn"t surprise me. People who are in wheelchairs can walk and people who live in the middle of a city can run through forests and explore, so yeah. Makes sense," Oleander says, looking up at the sky. "I"ve always wanted to see a sky that isn"t full of smog. Whether it"s something like your case or mine, we"re all experiencing new things here." He takes a huge, exaggerated breath. "It"s so nice to breath clean air! Anyways, you ready to head back?"

Serra nods her head, but when she remembers what Oleander just said about using talking more, she gives a proper answer. "Let"s go eat."