Nine Lives

Alright. Down to business. First of all, nintendosegasonyguy, your story 'Christmas Break' is my favorite story in this section… The main thing I find attractive about your story is how you see their reality, and how people can star in video games like a movie star. And it is annoying how you just dropped the story and moved on to something else far less interesting. Granted, younger years is an ok story, but not as good as your other. I have a very short and simple summary for how I feel about this.

FINISH IT BEFORE I HARVEST YOUR BRAIN.

Anyway… To clear up any confusion before the story begins… if you are even reading the bolded text, is that my VG cats universe will be slightly different than that of other fics.

If you are a Doctor Who fan, let me explain it like this. It is a parallel universe in which the humans went extinct before they could ever reach their full potential, and felines arose instead. They eventually evolved into a humanoid form, such as opposable thumbs, but still kept their feline features. Anything of man was forgotten besides skeletons discovered by archeologists.

Put simply, cats are sentient humanoids. Any other generic animal like dogs, birds, and several others remain as they would be. Obviously there are no more house cats however the cat looks at the tiger like we do when we look at apes. We think of them as our ancestors.

And for you who don't watch Doctor Who, humans are replaced by humanoid cats. The end. No explanation required. Maybe I shouldn't have rambled about it. I should've known you don't care and probably aren't even reading this.

Well this is 435 words wasted. Including this very sentence. And this one. And this one. And this one…

And so I salute you before throwing you into an ocean of my ramblings put into a story. By the way, this sentence is counted in the number above too. No really, count it yourself.

And now I am getting distracted. Anyway, the story. Whoopee.

And if you read all of that, you get a gold star for being a royal time waster. But that's why we're all here, aren't we? To waste time and distract ourselves from the inevitable fact that eventually we have to get jobs… And I'm distracted again… Grr… Here's the damn story. Leave me alone. And yes, I mean YOU Jacob! Your name probably isn't Jacob, but it's fun to fuck with all of the Jacobs of the world.

Leo Leonardo the 3rd. That's my name. Full name anyway, son of Leo Leonardo the 2nd, and Jillian Leonardo. Sounds so medieval, doesn't it? My dad was from Britain and my mom was born and raised in Canada. Dad immigrated to Canada and never lost his heavy British accent or culture. I'm glad I only inherited his fur color.

Mom died of cancer when I was 4 and dad has taken care of me ever since. I never went to preschool and I never made any friend at kindergarten. I never talked to anyone, never really cared. I was always that loner. That guy who never talks.

Dad tried his best, but we could never relate. Only one thing interested me back then.

Video games.

I got my hands on my first video game when I was 5, it was 1999, so the graphics weren't exactly great.

It was Croc: Legend of the Gobbos for Gameboy. It had me interested. Within three years I had my first 'rated M' game. BloodRayne. Some game where you're a vampire chick. It's about at that time was when I met Aeris.

I met Aeris when we were in 3rd grade. She has pink fur, which is remarkable. She didn't dye it or anything. It is incredibly rare to have pink fur, and was considered a genetic marvel by scientists back then. Because of this, she was picked on a lot. They called her pinkie and accused her of being a freak and going out with Barney the dinosaur. She had absolutely no friends.

I didn't befriend her because I pity her. I befriended her because she was like me.

Her parents died in a house fire, she only survived because her mother dropped her out a window to people to catch her below. She was saved by a ton of random strangers that probably don't even remember her.

Her mother and father were trapped in the fire, and they were killed when the celling collapsed on them. She was only 3 when this happened.

She was put in a foster home with a nice family, but she was still the outcast of the group. The family had children of their own. Her 'brothers' ended up bullying her to no end.

She couldn't escape, and had nothing. When this happened, she too took a liking to video games when one day, her older 'brother' invited her to play the PlayStation 2 with him.

From that day onward, whenever her brothers were occupied with something else, she would play video games. As a loner and an outcast to most people, she found that video games help.

I met here on September 23rd, 2002 when she approached me underneath a tree in recess. I was playing a Gameboy, and she wanted to try. We ended up becoming best friends within the next few days.

I ended up becoming sort of a comedian. I always ended up doing silly and stupid things to make her laugh. I never really grew out of that.

In middle school, Aeris kind of changed. She grew much more aggressive towards the people around her. Even me. I never changed much. I ended up becoming a class clown because of all the simply stupid things I did. I did them just to bring a smile upon Aeris's day. But she ended up calling me an idiot. But that didn't stop her from laughing.

Every weekend she would come to my house. Never would I come to her house because of her foster brothers.

At my house, it was just me and my dad, and my dad worked all day. So it was plainly me and Aeris almost all the time. We were like siblings. We fought like siblings. We played like siblings.

Our friendship never really changed. I was the teasing idiot and she was the aggressive girl. Even after we both went through puberty. And 'that time of the month' was never really fun with her.

Lifetime friends, as if we had anyone else. Around 2008, Aeris's foster parents divorced, and her foster mother took custody of her biological children. Aeris was forced to stay with the father.

She had a few boyfriends. None of which lasted long. For the prom, we were both alone, so we just hung out at my house.

I, however, have never had a girlfriend. I had maybe one or two friends besides Aeris, but I never talk to them anymore.

I live in Toronto, Canada. Home of the worst fucking street names on the planet.

I live on 438 Sumach Street.

Aeris lives nearby, on 12 Wellesley Avenue. Within walking distance. Directions are easy. Step out of house, left, left, right, left after two houses, and I'm there.

Aeris and I go to school at Pattison High School, all the way over at Englinton Avenue. 12 minute drive, hour long walk. We're both in Junior Year, but we're going to be seniors soon.

Yep. Life is just sweet and dandy. Summer near, new games, all the time in the world.

Despite a bumpy childhood, life was nice. Everything is fine.

Or so I thought…

Yep. A long prologue. Pasted together with fairly useless information, yet it will be easier to visualize and understand the characters. Shit I sound like my teacher…

Well next chapter something will actually happen, unlike this big sea of useless words. Onwards. Whoopee.