OUT OF RANK

Part 1 :One

In a dark area.

In the distance, behind a wide layer of fog and impenetrable darkness, two beings communicated, whose age begins its countdown long before the creation of our world.

Do you think he is worthy? It is not like the others, but it is still too weak,” the creature asked and looked reproachfully towards the interlocutor.

- Yet! That's it! Still too weak, we need to give him a chance. Are you not interested in watching the developments?

***

It all started the day my father died. If I had been told then what would happen to our world in a month, I would have laughed in his face, and no one could have condemned me. But let's start in order. It was a typical Friday night, my friends and I were going to take a walk, go to a bar and have a few drinks.

It would seem that what could go wrong? I am a young guy, in my prime, just broke up with my girlfriend, I have two best friends, I have my whole life ahead of me. My father works in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and occupies an important position. He has very big plans for me, although it’s more correct to say, there were plans ...

8 hours before the crash.

I left the house and headed towards the city center to meet my friends. They were supposed to be waiting for me next to the new mall. It's almost four o'clock, we should hurry up, my friends promised to show me something very cool, I just can't miss it.

- Hello, Tom!

- Hello Pasha. Taking a deep breath, he extended his hand towards me.

- Did you call Lyokha? — I shook his hand. - Late again?

- Yes, he has some problems at work there, he said that he would be there within fifteen minutes.

"Okay, what did you want to show me?" Is it even worth it? I said and threw a mocking glance at my friend. "Or are you trying to fool me again?" I hope it's not like that time.

"No, no," Tyoma replied, embarrassed. Let's wait for Lyosha, and you'll see everything!

After twenty minutes of waiting, Lyosha appeared. He walked towards us from the center. Strange, because he lived in a completely different direction. In his hands, the guy carried a bundle. When he approached us, it became noticeable that he was alarmed by something.

“Hey, Lyokha, are you all right?” I asked.

“Yes, just let’s be a little quieter, we can’t attract much attention to ourselves, let’s get out of here as soon as possible,” Lyosha said with obvious apprehension in his voice.

Are you sure he's ready to see it? Tim explained.

“If nothing critical has happened to you, ha ha,” Lyokha neighed with all his might, “then it’s even more so with him.

For the next thirty minutes, we drove to the nearest bar called ESPB. The facility itself is not bad, but too noisy. The last time we were there, we almost got hit by the local gopota. It's good that I have ten years of boxing behind me, heh.

When we reached the bar, we sat down at the bar and ordered ourselves a liter of dark unfiltered beer. To be honest, I never liked beer, but in the company of these two idiots, it becomes sweeter, or something. While I was thinking about the drink and its tastes, Tyoma turned in my direction and asked:

- Pashka, tell me what happened to you and Katya? Were you all right? - Again, he is up to the old, I hoped to avoid this conversation today.

- I told you, they didn’t agree on the characters, she likes to have fun, and I like to read books, - When talking with Tyoma, it’s better not to go into details, otherwise she will fill you with questions, and then you won’t get away.

“What are you doing, but he told me that she cheated on you,” said Lyosha. Twenty-five again, why did I blurt that out to him last time? My father told me, if you don't want problems, keep your mouth shut. Oh, I just started to forget everything.

- Let's not talk about it, better tell us, you still managed to set a new record in that toy, how is it? I asked.

- Not in a toy, but in a new generation revolutionary game under the proud name "Allisization". Now the whole world is playing it, and no, I couldn’t ... - the guy answered very sadly.

Lyosha has always been a kind of maniac in terms of games. As long as I know him, and I know him, like Tyoma, from the first grade, he always played them. He especially loves RPG games. I learned about all the new products in this industry from him.

And just recently, some new product came out, according to Lyosha, it blew up all the tops and now ranks first in terms of the number of registrations. As far as I understood from his words, this is another RPG, but with a completely open world where there are absolutely no restrictions, the graphics are also at the highest level and are ahead of other games by several generations. At the same time, it is absolutely not demanding on a computer, and you can play it even on very old hardware. No one understood where it came from and who its creator was. Many believe that this is some kind of secret development, or maybe it was the aliens who decided to give us such a “gift”. But I don’t believe in this nonsense, I’m more inclined towards the secret development version, although when playing this game, you really can think about aliens.

“Pasha, look what a beauty is sitting,” Tyoma noticed and pointed towards a table in the far corner of the establishment. There was a beautiful girl at the table, she reminded me of my old friend from childhood, I don’t even remember her name ...

“Yes, it’s true, it’s very beautiful,” I summed up with a heavy sigh.

Don't think I'm not some freak sitting at home and unable to meet a girl. It's just that I've experienced the side effect of so-called "love" more than once. At first, you love each other, feel butterflies in your stomach and strive to be as close to your person as possible. But at a certain point, everything ends, and either it happens to you or to her, as you're lucky. And then along the knurled one: quarrels, partings, screams, and in the end, emptiness, absolute rejection and misunderstanding of what is happening. Ninety-nine percent of love stories end like this, which is why I don't want another relationship.

Most recently, I had a girlfriend, and, as you already understood, we broke up with her. My friends can build a bunch of theories about why this happened, but everything is trite and simple. Love is gone. Behind my thoughts, I did not notice how the bar became quite noisy.

- Dont touch me! A girl's scream came from a far corner. Turning around sharply, I saw how three guys, who looked like real “gopniks”, were digging into the very girl that the guys and I had paid attention to.

"Hey you morons, get off her!" I shouted at the guys, and they immediately turned their attention to me.

- Pasha, why? Tim said in fear. “We could have done without it, we still have things to do.

“Things can wait,” I replied and moved towards the “gopniks”. No, I'm not a hero, and it hurts me too to get in the face just like the rest, although I got used to it in my life. But I believe that mental pain hits us much harder than physical pain. And at this particular moment, I simply have to help this girl. After all, if I step back and just leave, I will reproach myself for this for a very long time. Yes, and I do not like it when the weaker sex is offended.

- Are you brave? Get out of here while still intact! - one of the guys shouted, apparently, he is their leader. Well then, let's start with you.

The most greyhound jumped out at me first. Looking at his clumsy attempts to hit me, I chuckled. And they told me to "blame"? While intact? Well, well, let's see.

Dodging another swing, I sharply hit him exactly in the liver, which caused the guy to bend in half and successfully passed out. Great, there's the first one. Then it's up to the small, moved closer to the second, dodged a couple of blows. Wow, that's better, at least this one is trying. But it won't help him. I easily parried his first blow, after another one and moved away. Apparently realizing that he couldn’t hit me with his hands, the guy decided to use his legs. Hmm, where do they find you like that.

Catching the moment and grabbing his leg, I tightly pressed it to me. With a sharp movement, he pushed the poor fellow closer and at the same moment hit him right in the jug. Well, that's over with, so, where, in fact, is the third one? Looking around, I noticed that the guy did not find anything better than to run away. That's right, as one great coward said, "The eyes are afraid, the legs are doing," heh.

Realizing that no one else threatened me, I decided to approach the girl and find out how she was. Bypassing the “bodies” lying on the floor, I headed towards the table. As I approached, I realized that the girl had disappeared. At first there was an assumption that she hid under the table from fright, but I was mistaken. And where can you be, girl? Okay, it doesn't really matter, although I still hoped for some kind of gratitude, maybe even a kiss, huh. Well, yes, I was dreaming about something. I'll go back to the guys, and we'll move towards my house, something we're already late.

Passing by the "gopniks", I noticed that they began to slowly come to their senses. Great, they will live, otherwise I would have been worried about the first boy, he was too frail. I hope this will serve as a good lesson for them and they will no longer touch the girls.

Approaching the guys, I saw that they had already finished drinking both their own and mine (!) beer. Totally not surprised. I decided not to speak out about this and just called my friends home:

“Guys, let’s go, there’s nothing for us to do here,” I summed up and, picking up my jacket, headed towards the exit.

- Hey, Pasha, what are you doing? Let's order one more, shall we? Tim objected. Here's an impudent fellow, well, no, that's definitely enough adventure for today.

- Come on, stop drinking, Lyosha is already barely on his feet, how much have you drunk in general ?! - I was just shocked when he managed to get drunk so much? We were only there for half an hour.

The road to the house took us more than an hour, because we had to lead a drunken friend and literally drag him away from passers-by. I would never have thought that Lyosha would get so drunk. It is rather the privilege of the Darkness. As far as I can remember, as soon as the weekend comes, he sets himself two goals: to get drunk so well and glue some girl together. With the first goal, he copes with a bang every time, but with the second, eternal difficulties. Although I'm not surprised by this. I can't imagine a girl capable of falling for his drunken face.

Closer to home, the guys managed to sober up a bit. This fact made me happy, the main thing is that they do not pollute my apartment. Today my father is returning from a business trip, and if he sees such a sight, I can’t even imagine what will happen ...

Climbing up to the apartment was no less difficult, even with more or less sober friends. The elevator, unfortunately, broke down, and I live on the ninth floor. Cursing everyone and spitting out, as it seemed to me, the remnants of our lungs, we nevertheless reached the front door.

- Pasha, remember, I once told you that you have a beautiful view from the window and living on the ninth floor is cool? Forget what I said,” Tyoma said through gritted teeth.

- Open faster! I’m going to the toilet right now, ”Lyosha blurted out almost screaming. Looking at him, I realized that he was not joking, and frantically began to look for the keys. Phew, thank God they're there. For a second I was afraid that I could drop them during the fight, but nothing happened.

When I opened the front door, I hoped to hear my mother's dissatisfied exclamation about the fact that I had come too late again. But this did not happen, and the light in the apartment was turned off. Very strange, usually at this time she is already at home. Probably got delayed at work again.

This doesn't happen very often, but it does happen. After all, she works as a nurse in the city hospital, and you never know what might happen. Especially considering how much lately people began to afford, which significantly increased the number of patients in hospitals.

I turned on the light in the hallway and noticed that everything in the apartment remained the same as it was before I left. So, my mother still stayed at work. Okay, we need to go and cook something to eat, because we didn’t have time to eat at the bar. Having taken off his shoes, he told the guys about it and went to the kitchen.