JohnWillStab got off his chair and trudged through the sea of trash towards his front door.

“I should really go to the shop today… I might starve tomorrow…” he thought feeling his stomach grown loud enough to scare a few of the rats that scurried around his mess of a home.

Next to the door stood a coat rack with only one coat, a dull grey one with fluffy sleeves.

JohnWillStab reached for the coat and put It on.

He stepped out into the hallway where his door and the three doors belonging to his neighbours met.

Aside from a dirty rug placed over the bare concrete making up the floor, the place was undecorated.

He stepped forward, past the stairs and towards the main door.

When he opened it, he was met with a cold breeze from outside.

Over a concrete wall, he saw a few more homes as well as the distant apartment blocks.

The sun was still out, prompting the surprised look from one of his neighbours.

“You’re up already? What happened?!” they demanded fully serious.

JohnWillStab shook his head.

“I stayed up a little late playing a game, nothing’s on fire,” he assured the still suspicious neighbour.

John headed forward towards the metal gate leading onto the street.

“I’ll be heading to sleep as soon as I get some groceries…” he added.

As soon as he stepped onto the street he was met with burning cars, blood stains and at least three assaults on strangers.

“Ah… the outside! I hate it…”

He looked at all the chaos going on around him.

“It’s too bright…” he remarked.

JohnWillStab headed towards the only shop in this wreck of a town.

He turned down a dark alley.

His expression was still as tired as ever.

As soon as he stepped into the light he was met with a group of stereotypical-looking delinquents.

Either bald or with stupidly complicated haircuts.

Leather jackets and some sort of strange fear of covering up their chest with anything other than tattoos.

They held large bats and knives, a few kept guns in their pockets.

By all means, they looked intimidating.

“Yo…” JohnWillStab said stepping towards the familiar faces.

“JohnWillStab? Why are you out this early?” they asked uncertainly.

One of them stepped forwards, the fact his hair was volumetrically larger than the rest clearly meant he was the leader.

His face was painted with anger.

“Did someone break into your house again?!” demanded another glancing down to his nail-filled bat.

John shook his head.

“Nah… I’m just going to get some groceries…”

For whatever reason, all the detestable characters in this town like him.

Considering the fact they could all snap him like a twig, this was highly fortunate.

“Oh, you should get going then, before the shop closes,” another delinquent advised.

JohnWillStab glanced down at his wrist, he was shocked when he saw that he didn’t have a watch. “Shit, someone stole my watch!”

He looked up and nodded.

“Yeah, guess I’ll get going…”

As he walked past the group, he turned back to them.

“I take it you guys want the usual?” he asked with raised eyebrows.

They all nodded wordlessly with the same, serious expressions.

JohnWillStab headed towards the only shop in the town, the bright yellow light of the streetlights lit his way, not that it was dark enough to need streetlights.

After a few minutes he reached it.

The bell near the door rang as John stepped into the shabby-looking establishment.

Old, dusty shelves of food and household products filled the small shop.

JohnWillStab picked up a shopping basket from beside the door and headed further inside.

“JOHN!? WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?! WHY ARE YOU HERE THIS EARLY?!” demanded the shopkeeper.

He was a bald, well-build black man wearing a black grey tank top.

If not for John’s unexpected visit, he would have been glued to the small TV placed beside the cash register.

John breathed a sigh.

“Why do you all assume something’s wrong when I’m up a bit late…” he sighed.

JohnWillStab stepped towards one of the shelves that was always stocked in case he visited; it was filled with nothing but instant noodles.

The owner of the shop breathed a sigh.

“Don’t scare me like that, man…”

JohnWillStab pushed two-dozen instant noodles into his basket.

Next, he walked up to the booze shelf and picked out a white bottle of lemon liquor.

Lastly, he walked over to the cash register and picked up a handful of cheap collectable cards, the packaging was pink and coated in enough glitter to doom several carpets.

The man behind the till scanned the items and placed them into two plastic bags.

“That’ll be twenty-three unspecified currency.” The man said.

The man tossed a small plastic bottle of pills into John’s bag.

JohnWillStab glanced down to it and breathed a sigh.

“I don’t want your stupid vitamins…” he complained with a wry expression.

“Look, man… I have like ten customers in this town! I can’t have you dying on me!” the shop owner replied desperately.

John slumped his shoulders and accepted the forced sale which he would proceed to flush down the toilet.

“Can’t go carelessly extending my life expectancy…” he thought.

John pulled a card out of his wallet and ran it through small plastic device beside the cash register.

After an excessively loud beep from the card-reader, John placed the card back into his wallet.

“See you next week,” the shop owner said with a satisfied smile.

JohnWillStab was outside with his two bags of groceries.

Firstly, he returned to the delinquents and handed them the collectable cards much to their amusement.

They were embarrassed to go buy them, especially in bulk, so John offered to go get them instead, they were pretty cheap after all.

This arrangement has been going on for years now.

Next, JohnWillStab took a different route home, he walked past an old, abandoned home. It was missing several walls and the garden outside was severely overgrown.

He reached into one of his bags and held out the bottle of brandless lemon booze.

“I accept your offering!” remarked the voice of a woman casually sitting on a nearby tree.

John looked up and confirmed that there was, in fact, a thief sitting on one of the branches of the tree.

Not just a thief.

The thief.

John raised his eyebrows as he looked at the woman who was the very definition of confidence in that moment.

“Riiiiight…” John squinted.

“Two things before I hand the booze over…” he began.

The woman cocked her head.

“Yeah?”

“One… DID YOU TAKE MY CRISPS?!” he demanded, thinking back to his missing snack which was the catalyst for the disaster that was his last quest in the game.

She shook her head.

“I am absolutely insulted, as if I’d steal an open pack of snacks from you!”

JohnWillStab clenched his fist.

“SO, YOU KNOW IT WAS OPEN!”

“IT WAS A GUESS!” she replied.

JohnWillStab gritted his teeth.

“THIEF!” he exclaimed.

“THAT IS MY NAME, YES!” she replied with folded arms.

A few awkward seconds of complete silence passed.

“Seriously though, it wasn’t me,” she replied with a shrug and a neutral expression.

“Why are you so hung-up on it?” she asked.

John breathed a sigh.

“No reason…”

“I can’t tell her it’s because my search for snacks almost caused the death of an NPC…”

He looked down in contemplation.

“Shit… so it’s the rats…” he remarked.

He looked back up to the woman in the tree.

“And my second question… what the fuck are you doing in that tree?” he asked.

She smiled and shook her head.

“Oh, you poor, ignorant fool…”

“I have ascended, John!” she finally exclaimed with a boastful look.

John’s expression was something between sad and distrustful.

“Uh-huh…”

She slumped her shoulders.

“No, seriously, I got drunk and when I woke up, I somehow climbed up this tree…” she explained in one breath.

“Is she stuck there?” John thought.

“Aren’t you going to come down here?” he asked, he was still holding the bottle of booze.

The woman shrugged.

“Nah, I like it up here, it’s very… natural! Druidic almost!”

“…She is absolutely stuck up there…” he thought.

His expression unchanged, JohnWillStab turned to leave.

“…”

“I’ll get going…”

JohnWillStab was definitely not above leaving a friend stuck in a tree, especially when they are a main culprit for a stolen snack.

A name such as “The Thief” doesn’t come from nowhere, it’s by all means earned.

He placed the booze on the ground and began heading home.

“Maybe I should log in and do some levelling before I go to sleep?” he considered.

He heard comically-forced laugher coming from the woman behind him.

The Thief was staring at John with a look of pity.

“Now, now, JohnWillStab. Can you really afford to have one of your only friends be snatched-up and eaten by an eagle?” she asked with an ungodly smug look.

“YOU’RE NOT A FUCKING RODENT!” John called back.

“A pest, maybe, but not a rodent!”

He pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Fine! Do you have some sort of ladder or something around here?” he asked sounding audibly irate.

“Nope!” she replied almost immediately.

“HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO GET YOU OFF THE TREE THEN?!” John demanded.

“Well, I’d ask you to catch me but you’d probably break your arms…”

“DO YOU WANT ME TO LEAVE YOU THERE!?”

“That is expressly the opposite of what I want…” she explained.

After a few minutes JohnWillStab reluctantly went off to ask the delinquents for help, they proceeded to kick the tree down.

John knew for a fact at least one of them owned an axe.

After the whole ordeal, JohnWillStab thanked the delinquents and began making his way home, he was being followed by the now drinking Thief.

“Now that I think about it, why are you out so early? Did something happen?” asked the Thief, she wiped her mouth with her sleeve after taking a massive gulp from the bottle of lemon liquor.

“Do you want me to put up back onto that tree?” John threatened.

“I’m good,” she replied before drinking some more booze.

The two walked through the empty streets towards John’s home.

The borderline alcoholic known as “The Thief” was an old acquaintance of JohnWillStab.

She had dark brown hair and blue eyes.

She was always wearing some sort of hoodie, this time it was a dark grey one.

Aside from that she wore black sweatpants, business attire of a thief.

As they neared John’s home, JohnWillStab began to feel the negative effects of prolonged exposure to fresh air and movement, effects such as sweat and exhaustion.

“I’d invite you over but A; I’m going to sleep and B; I don’t trust you in my house.” He replied mid-yawn.

“Yeah, whatever, if I wanted to come into your house I could just pick your lock again,” she teased.

John breathed a sigh knowing she wasn’t joking.

After waving a quick goodbye, he headed into his house.

JohnWillStab stepped into his home and locked the door behind him.

He headed into the kitchen where he proceeded to loosely pack all the different verities of instant noodles into one cupboard.

JohnWillStab went into his room and collapsed onto his bed.

He passed out after a few seconds.