"I've almost got it..." said Twistey as she delicately lowered the final card onto her house of cards.
"Surprise!" exclaimed Willis, tickling Twistey and causing the house of cards to fall.
"Nooo! I spent like ten minutes on that!" yelled Twistey as she swatted him on the arm.
"Hehehe, I'm so evil. Anyway, are you ready to go? The others are waiting."
"Oh I suppose. Why did I agree to this again?"
"Because dodgeball is fun! Besides, the Sues and Stus are only simulations, and considerably weakened ones at that."
"So where are we playing it? You never really told me."
"Well, the Sunflower Official had a Sue themed sports arena built in Headquarters with the latest and greatest simulation technology, in order to trick agents into using their free time in training. But the agents became so overworked that it's never been used, so we'll be the only ones there."
"Huh. Well, let's get it over with." Twistey said as she walked with Willis out into the hall where Moons and Iximaz were waiting, arm in arm.
"Woohoo let's do this! The simulation room is 5 minutes of walking thataway!" said Iximaz.
"Race you there!" yelled Willis as he took off running, his cross country training coming in handy again.
"Well he can have fun with that." said Moons as she walked around the corner and drove a golf cart, borrowed from the arena, around the corner. Everyone boarded it and easily passed Willis.
"Wait, come back! That's not fair!" cried Willis, breaking into a sprint in a vain effort to catch up to them.
"HAHAHA FASTER!" yelled Twistey in a maniacal voice, tauntingly waving at the receding figure of Willis.
Willis managed to reach the room after a couple of minutes, in a sweaty mess, while the others comfortably lounged in the waiting room.
"Oh, look who showed up! I guess we can finally start." said Moons, punching in the code to start the dodgeball simulation.
"Wait, let me catch my breath!" panted Willis, but to no avail. The floor fell from beneath their feet, dropping them into a huge room with padded walls, two huge piles of dodgeballs, a dividing line, and a horde of twenty Sues and Stus.
The Sues and Stus roared and charged toward their pile of dodgeballs, but the four friends took a while to get their head in the game.
"Oh crap crap crap crap! I've gotta hide!" screamed Twistey. She tried to run, but Willis grabbed her hand and dragged her towards the balls.
"Come on, this is the fun part!" Willis grabbed a pair of dodgeballs and forced one into Twistey's hands.
"Now throw the dang thing! They disappear on a hit, but it takes 5 for us to get knocked out!"
"AAHH NO! I don't want to get knocked out! That'd hurt!" screamed Twistey, right as a ball bounced off of her head.
"Snrk that's one hit. And it's not literally getting knocked out." said Willis. They both looked over at the other team to see one of the Stus triumphantly yelling and doing a Fortnite dance.
"That one's mine!" snarled Twistey as she threw her ball at the Stu, causing him to blink out of existence. Satisfied that Twistey would fight, Willis looked for an opponent. And there he was. A buff elf. He looked like Dwayne Johnson with pointy ears, and much paler.
"ELVES AREN'T SUPPOSED TO BE BUFF!" screamed Willis. The violation of nature turned toward him with a sadistic grin.
"Y'know, he's right! We should get rid of this impostor! He's such a fake, he's not cool like us!" murmured some of the Sues and Stus. Five of them turned toward the buff elf, quickly wiping the smirk off his face. It took just 3 seconds for them to finish him off, but it gave Willis the breather he needed. He glanced over to see that Twistey had finished her opponent and had gotten another couple down too.
"OWOOOOOO!" Iximaz howled at the ceiling as he transformed into his wolf form, which must have been from Headquarters's temporal strangeness causing a spontaneous full moon. He started bounding after the balls, wanting to play fetch, but soon suffered his fifth hit. With that, a hatch opened in the floor beneath him and he vanished from sight.
"Nooo!" yelled Moons, and everybody redoubled their efforts. They soon finished off the rest of their not very skilled opponents, but they each had no more than a couple of hits left.
"Yay, we did it! But what happens now?" exclaimed Twistey. And then the floor fell from beneath them, dropping them into a sleek plastic slide that somehow deposited them back down into the simulation waiting room. Iximaz, still a wolf, jumped up from where he had been laying and bounded over to Moons.
"Oh who's a good wolfy! We won!" gushed Moons, affectionately ruffling Iximaz's fur.
"Woof woof!" Iximaz barked excitedly as he leaned against Moons's leg.
"We won! That was so much fun!" cried Twistey, flinging herself into Willis's arms and giving him a kiss.
"We did! I knew you'd have fun!" said Willis as he happily embraced Twistey.
"Well, I'm exhausted. Let's go relax." said Moons. They all climbed back into the golf cart, including Willis this time, and headed off for a relaxing evening.
"Excuse me, may I take this seat?"
Willis looked up to see a tall man (very tall, even compared to Willis himself) with black hair looming over him. "Er," he said, quite reasonably. He shook himself, looking down at the chair. "My g- my partner's sitting there," he said. "Sorry."
"It's no problem; I will stand." The tall man executed a slight bow, and his hair shifted to show off the leaflike tips of his ears. "I am Agent Huinesoron of DOGA, and I have a- what's that delightful phrase? Ah - a 'bone to pick' with you."
Willis scooted his chair back a little, eyes wide. "Is, is this a shipping thing?" he asked. "Because Twistey and I, we-"
"No, no," the elf - he was clearly an elf - assured him. "But then again... yes." Agent Huinesoron folded his arms and fixed Willis with a Look. "It has come to my attention that you have asserted that elves 'aren't supposed' to be buff."
"Er?!" Of all the things Willis had thought he might hear, that hadn't even been on the list. "But - I mean - you're not, right?" He looked up at Agent Huinesoron, who did indeed meet the usual profile of a slender, graceful elf. "You're not!"
"I am not," Agent Huinesoron agreed. "And personally, I agree with you that it's not a particularly good look for us." He smiled - not the kind of cruel grin Willis had been fearing, but a genuine fond smile at some memory. "I mean, if Legolas was all muscle-bound - can you imagine? Ew."
"Er?" Willis winced: he really needed to stop sounding like someone with the least interesting catchphrase in history. "Then what's the problem?"
"The problem is that my preferences don't really enter into it," Agent Huinesoron said. "We fought in a war, you know, against hordes of Orcs unnumberable by mortal Man. With yeni of training behind them, you'd best believe our warriors had more muscles than they knew what to do with."
Willis clamped down on another er, but that left him with nothing else to say. He stared at the elf, thinking frantically, but was saved by an arm snaking around him from behind, and a kiss planted on the top of his head.
"Hey, handsome," Twistey said, swinging down into her seat and smiling at Willis before shooting a glance at Agent Huinesoron. "You making new friends?"
"I'm not really sure." Willis reached across the table and took Twistey's hand, clinging to it like a lifeline. "I'm not sure what's going on."
The elf reached up to tug one of his braids and shrugged. "I've said what I needed to," he said, then winced slightly. "And, ah, I hope I didn't... intimidate you?"
"A little," Willis admitted, then had to smile at the sheer guilt that flickered across Agent Huinesoron's face. "But not much," he said. "I'm just a bit on edge."
"Aren't we all?" Twistey murmured, squeezing his hand reassuringly. "So you're leaving, then? Only we've got food on the way."
"Er," and Willis couldn't contain his chuckle as the elf used his apparent catchphrase, "yes. I'm sorry for... yes." With another slight bow, Agent Huinesoron turned and hurried away.
Twistey huffed a sigh of relief and turned her attention to Willis. "Well. What was that all about?"
Willis shook his head slowly. "Twistey, I don't think you'd believe me if I told you..."
And then Twistey sent a fireball at Agent hS's back. "One does not simply intimidate my boyfriend," she called after him. "I know much better than you do what that does to him."