All things considered, Allen had spent far more boring afternoons in his life.  As it turned out, after the impromptu jam in the kitchen, Roxy was tired of finding ways to make humiliating jokes at his expense and resorted to something they could participate in equally.

            Or, at least as equal as the young witch was willing to make it.  Her favorite video game system was stored in a shoe box under a pile of jeans in her closet, not touched since she left for college, and she’d apparently been feeling an itch for it ever since.

            “I can’t believe you never took this out to play it while I was gone at school,” she commented as she unpacked the controllers onto the carpet in her bedroom while Allen looked on from a plush green pillow she’d conjured for him.

            “As if you’d have let me use it if I asked.”

            “Yeah, that’s true,” she agreed.  She gave a twist of her fingers in midair and the proper cords secured themselves telekinetically into the TV’s ports.  “By the way, just for future reference, there’s a hex around my closet that-”

            “…activates if anyone tries to open it without saying the password.  I know,” Allen grumbled.  “It took Mom like fifteen freaking minutes to erase your fancy magic bubble that popped up around me.”

            Startled, Roxy dropped the controller she was holding and snorted with laughter.  “Oh.  Well, that’ll teach you to try and take stuff out of my closet.  What were you doing in here, anyway?”

            “Mom was trying to mix up some elixir-thing for Grandma and wanted me to grab some box of dark-whatever-twigs that you keep stored in there,” he said, crossing his arms with disdain.

            “Oh, relax, the bubble doesn’t hurt you at all.  It’s just real tough to get off.  I’m surprised Mom did it so fast.  I spent all last summer learning how to make it that strong.  You can’t even use magic once you’re inside,” Roxy explained proudly.

            “That’s great.  Real great.  Maybe use it on people that aren’t just trying to do their chores next time, though, hmm?” Allen said, lying back on the pillow and staring up at the ceiling high above.

            “Hey, next time Mom needs something out of there, you get to tell her to find it herself!  I’m getting you out of your chores,” Roxy said haughtily, turning back to the TV and switching the game system on after inserting a disk.  “You’re welcome.”

            “Thanks, I guess.”

            “Shut up with your whining and get ready to play Zolermandia,” Roxy ordered, swiping her hand through the air so that a controller was levitated onto Allen’s pillow.

            “You know I hate this one,” he groaned.  “This is like bottom-of-the-barrel fantasy RPG.”

            “You’re just saying that because you suck at it,” she taunted, sticking her long tongue out and blowing a raspberry that managed to fling a few flecks of spittle onto Allen’s face.  She was already scrolling through the introductory menus of the game.  “Are you going to sign in with that controller, or what?”

            “How do you expect me to play like this?” he responded, puts his hands on the buttons of the enormous plastic contraption like it was the command center of some futuristic hyperspace vehicle.  As he was still only eight inches in height, it required some maneuvering to hit everything he would need to play.

            “Darn well is how.  I’m not letting you screw up my stats because you’re so painfully untalented at everything fun.”

            “Okay, well, unless you want digital trolls eating us in the middle of a quest because I can’t reach the R-button, then you might want to give me some inches back.  Or all of them, even.”

            “Fine, fine,” Roxy sighed.  She snapped her fingers, whispering the incantation under her breath, until Allen had swelled in size just enough that he could access all the buttons on the controller without pulling a muscle.

            Of course, he still wasn’t particularly big, and looked more like a teddy bear size than one of Roxy’s childhood dolls.

            “What is this?  You gave me back like four inches.  That’s nothing,” Allen complained, slapping at the back of his palms.

            “Excuse you, but you’re eighteen inches right now, and you’re lucky to get that,” Roxy snapped as she started up her game file.  “Believe me, the second we’re done playing this, you’re going right back down to fun size.”

            “I guess I should be happy I’m tall enough to look up and see you geeking out over outdated graphics,” he said, lugging the bulk of the controller onto his lap.

            “Don’t push your luck,” Roxy murmured, half-smiling.  “If I find a use for you shorter, then that’s where you’re spending your weekend, so don’t give me any ideas.”

            “Wouldn’t even know how to,” Allen retorted quietly as their respective characters appeared onscreen.  Roxy didn’t bother to answer, as she’d already become engrossed in looting some treasure chests in the immediate starting area of the game.

            The next hour was spent in near-silence, save for the dramatic fantasy music and occasion metallic foley as Roxy slashed enemies and Allen followed obediently behind, mostly sticking to the corners every time they’d enter a new fortress or cave.

            “You know, you could be trying to convince me to keep you this size more often by actually contributing something to this quest,” Roxy said as she took down the last enemy in the area.  “Right now, I’m figuring I might as well let you wrestle with the controller at eight inches, because you’d be just as much help.”

            “It’s not my fault you played this every waking moment that one summer,” Allen said.  “My guy will get clobbered by most of these people.  Especially that last thing you killed.  See, I’m already almost dead from those archers you missed when we came in.  I don’t even remember which button is the shield.”

            “You don’t have a shield, you have a deflector pulse, you nerd,” Roxy grumbled.

            “Oh, right, I’m the nerd.  You with your deflector-whatevers…”

            “Hey, it’s not easy remembering how some of this stuff works,” she defended.  “Especially with how much of it they get wrong.”

            “Get wrong.  Of course,” Allen said with a roll of his eyes, having literally forgotten in the middle of their discourse that much of the game’s fantastical world was, in some way, a reality.

            “Yeah, it’s like nobody at this dumb production company is a witch or warlock.  Or at least nobody that gets to make creative decisions.  This is just sloppy.”

            “Maybe they think their game world is more interesting than the real world,” Allen said snidely, knowing it would get a reaction.

            “Bull.  Shit,” Roxy spat with feigned shock.  “I think the real world would blow their minds if they tried to make an actual game out of it.”

            “Okay, so what’s something they got wrong?” Allen said.  His knowledge of witchcraft and sorcery was obviously infinitely more extensive than the average human, who didn’t even know of its existence, but the teen still wasn’t privy to everything.  Often times, that was just how he liked it, except when his curiosity was piqued.

            “Well, in here, you don’t even have to crossover through any other realms to see the other races, they’re all just kind of… chilling out together,” she explained.

            “Ah.  Right,” Allen said.  He supposed this was to his benefit.  Running into a troll or that minotaur-hybrid thing his parents were off stopping in New Zealand probably wouldn’t end well without any kind of magical aptitude.  He’d still had vivid nightmares up to the age of ten of Roxy explaining the appearance of one of the Others to him.  Even today, her grotesque descriptions were enough to make him shudder.  “What else?”

            “Um… well, they make it seem like you can only do, like, four things with magic before you need to eat bread or something else stupid,” Roxy said condescendingly.

            “I assumed that was just to help balance the classes.”

            “Uh-huh.  Or they’re just calling us fat.”

            “So is that all, then?”

            “No way.  Like, look at these giants!” Roxy said as her game character dashed into an underground cavern, where three enormous and goiter-faced humanoids were already advancing.  “By the way, get out your freaking sword and help me.”

            “I think you’re on your own here.  If I get stepped on just once right now, I’m dead.  You didn’t even give me any healing things after I got hit with those arrows.”

            “I’ll heal you when you deserve it,” Roxy said as she engaged the club-swinging giants.  “And anyway, they designed them like gross gorillas in this game, but the real ones just look like… really, really tall people.  It’s probably good none of the real ones have access to video games, because they’d probably want to boycott this one.”

            “I’ll bet,” Allen said honestly, finally trying to attack a giant and getting swatted aside immediately.

            “Not all of them are real polite, I guess, but still,” Roxy wheedled.  “They deserve better.”

            “You’re still sore about that one time, aren’t you?” he snickered.  “What was her name again?  Elisara?"

            “Hey, I was like seven, so I could barely do anything to protect myself yet, and that girl just grabbed me by the ankle and started dangling me like forty feet over the ground!” the witch mumbled.  “And she started laughing and twirling her fingers through my hair, like some kind of-”

            “-personal doll?” Allen droned.

            “Shut up, this is different.  You’re having fun, so you don’t count,” Roxy answered without missing a beat.  “But anyway, she did that for like five minutes straight, just holding me upside down and letting all the blood rush to my head, before my parents and hers came back in from that land treaty or something they were signing and made her put me down.”

            “Give her some credit.  She was only like six years old and as big as an oak tree,” Allen shrugged.  “It probably wasn’t even that high for her.”  Though he was too young to recall the event himself, he’d heard this story recounted numerous times, usually with his parents cackling uproariously at the recollection, while Roxy groused with embarrassment in the corner.

            “Yeah, but then she just laid me right back on her foot, which I might add, is always bare because the giants don’t wear shoes unless they’re just… weird, so it was all covered in mud and… ugh!” Roxy said.  With a final magic attack onscreen, she cast down the last of the giant enemies in the game.

            “Wow, that must’ve been so terrible for you, I can’t even imagine,” Allen deadpanned with the knowledge and experience of someone who had lived through this nearly-precise scenario innumerable times.

            “Again, shut up, you don’t count,” Roxy snapped as she led the way out of the digital cavern, having scooped up all the reward points and leaving none for Allen.  She added smugly: “Luckily, I was a pretty tough kid. I told her off pretty good after that, and she let me alone.”

            “Oh, really?” Allen snarked as his game character followed Roxy’s out of the tunnel.  “Because the way Mom always tells it, you started bawling as soon as she put you down, and then Elisara started crying too because she thought she hurt you, and then she picked you back up and held you like a baby and combed your hair until you stopped.”

            “Well, Mom doesn’t know everything!” the young witch fired back, clearly caught in her lie, and shrugged.  “Whatever.  The point is, most of ‘em are pretty okay.”

            “Except for Elisara.”

            “Except for Elisara,” Roxy repeated back sarcastically, then jolted, her attention returned to the screen.  “Hey, check it out!” she gasped excitedly as her game character opened a large treasure chest tucked discreetly behind the corner of a statue.

            “What, even more XP for you to gloat about?”

            “Nope.  No, this is… something way better,” Roxy promised as her character pulled a comically large purple bottle from the metal containment unit and proceeded to chug its liquid contents.

            “Hey, I’m the one who needed more health!  You barely have a scratch from that giant fight,” Allen complained.

            “It’s not a health potion, nerd,” she said with a grin.  Suddenly, a green aura emanated around her character, and in a flash the digital female warrior was expanding, up and out, higher and further, until she’d grown to a size at least five times the scale of Allen’s avatar.

            “Oh, bullshit,” Allen moaned, releasing his grip on the controller and flopping back onto the pillow to gaze at the ceiling again.  “I literally give up now.”

            “Cool, because I wasn’t planning on letting your guy walk now, anyway,” Roxy teased, tapping a few buttons on her controller so that her character leaned over and scooped up the weakened form of Allen’s inexperienced soldier into her digitized arms and pulled him in close.  “So I guess there is at least one thing the designers basically got right about reality.”

            Happily, the witch tilted her control stick so that her overpowered being bounded forward over the graphically represented hill with Allen’s character helplessly trapped in her embrace.  “All right, now where was that other side quest we were gonna do?”