There are three kinds of people in this world.

The ones who make the most of their talent are the ones we call geniuses.

Then there are those who find their talents but waste them. While they are good at what they do, they will never be the best.

Then, there are the unfortunate ones. The ones who can't find their talents, or whose talents just aren't valued.

But, at its core, Victoria believes, the world is fair. Everyone has something they are talented at. But just because you have a talent at determining the age of urine by its scent, it doesn't mean that you will ever notice or society would place any value in it.

But, at its core, the world is fair.

But despite this being her belief, she would never utter it out loud. While the world is fair, society isn't. They arbitrarily put you into a category and judge you based on that. And if someone who is called a genius were to make such a claim? At best they would be called arrogant.

In general, those with the genius status have to be careful with what they say or do, lest they get shunned by society.

But to Victoria, that doesn't matter. After all, geniuses are the ones she respects, and she worked hard to be one of them. She worked harder than anyone else since she almost fell into the third category.

It began when she was young. Back then, she admired artists, wanted to earn money by drawing pictures, wanted to be the best. But no matter how much work she put in, there was always that one boy who was just as good as her, despite not even trying.

It took her a while to accept it, but soon, she moved on. And not much later, she got into sports. But no matter how hard she tried, there were always those better than her.

Next, she tried music, then academics, and finally even videogames. But always, the pattern repeated itself.

Despite that, she never lost her will and continued on. After all, she had found her talent for a while already. She had realized it when she quickly caught up with those with talent, and afterward never fell behind again. Her talent lied in learning itself.

And ever since that realization, she had made her decision. If she couldn't be the best at any one thing, she wanted to be the second-best at everything.

Several years later on a Friday afternoon, one of the few times where she allows herself to relax.

"Down, down-right, right, B.", she mumbles as she presses the buttons on her controller and her character on the screen throws a fireball.

Before she even finishes, Daniel's fingers fly over his gamepad in a blur, positioning his character, crouching, and blocking her attack. Then, he catapults her into the air before her animation finishes, waits until she is a single pixel away from hitting the ground, before he grabs her out of the air for a shoulder-throw, stunning her. Then he proceeds to pummel the last ten percent of her character's health out of it.

Just as Victoria things she can survive this with a single percent of her life left, Daniel finishes his combo in the last frame of her stun state with an attack that deals just enough damage to finish her off, but whose cooldown gets Victoria severely punished every time she tries to use it.

"Argh! I almost had you!", Victoria complains loudly.

"You think.", Daniel states, giving her his best "are you serious?" look.

"Tsk. Arrogant little shit. I had you down to five percent! I had still eight!"

"Because I gave you the first move for free. And then you made a mistake."

"Where!? I didn't make any fucking mistakes!"

"If you didn't make any mistakes, Vicky, you wouldn't have lost. Let's be honest, your timing sucks."

It was infuriating. Victoria was better than Daniel at almost everything. But only almost. She could never win against him at videogames. She knew, for a fact, that her timing didn't suck, she could after all win against everyone else. But somehow, for some reason, she always lost against Daniel. And she just could never figure out why.

But it didn't matter in the end. Friday afternoons, her gaming sessions with Daniel are her weekly relaxation after all. While that didn't mean she wasn't working hard, trying her best to be to win, it did mean, that this was a place where she would allow herself to lose.

Victoria couldn't clearly remember anymore how it had happened but despite all stereotypes, Victoria Bright, genius and campus goddess, and Daniel Watson, overweight gaming nerd, had been best friends for a long time. It was probably because Daniel was of the rare breed who still worked hard to improve themselves despite having talent, denying Victoria any chance to win against him, thus earning her respect.

Of course, it isn't like he is Victoria's only friend. You could say, the only people she wasn't on good terms with were those she never met. But he was definitely the only person she would ever show her flaws. He was the only one who knew Vicky, the slightly irritable girl that spews insults and curses when things don't go her way. And he knew that too, not taking any offense at that. Rather the opposite, he had long since developed a slightly sadistic streak, enjoying it tremendously to drive his friend mad.

"Come on, you lost, you're on snack duty."

"I'm always on snack duty. And choose a different game, I don't have the nerve for fighting games right now.", she complains.

"Yes, yes, little miss Kaktus."

"What?", Victoria looks at him, uncomprehendingly lifting a single eyebrow.

"Cause you are prickly.", Daniel explains, clearly proud of himself.

"Urgh!", she throws her hands in the air and rolls her eyes in annoyance.

Daniel looks longingly at his friend's back as she leaves the room, before making a resigned sigh. He has had a crush on his childhood friend for the longest time. Well, that wasn't that unusual. Every boy in their school has had a crush on Victoria at least once before realizing they had no chance. But where everyone else was in love with Victoria, the gorgeous girl with a perfect personality who was perfect at everything, he had fallen in love with Vicky, the abrasive girl with messy hair and bags under her eyes who rocks overlarge T-shirts and shorts and has the most glorious backside he has ever seen.

Of course, he didn't fall in love with her because of her good looks... Not only because of her good looks but because she accepted him for who he was. She had always been one of the very few people who treated him as their equal and had never demanded anything from him. Especially, she had never asked him to play with handicaps. Whenever he played videogames with his other friends, they always demanded that he played with handicaps so that they may have a chance at winning too.

Of course, those weren't the only reasons he was in love with her. But he knew that he wasn't good enough for Victoria. She deserved someone better than a guy whose only redeeming quality was his talent at videogames.

When he hears the girl's footsteps in the hallway, he quickly shrugs those thoughts off and acts like he has been trying to choose a new game all the time.

As Victoria enters the room, she decides to act like she didn't notice anything. Neither that Daniel scrambled only when she was almost back already, nor that he was constantly throwing her glances out of the corner of his eyes.

In her opinion, boys ogling at her body was something to be proud of. It was proof that the time she spent on her body was time well spent. Well, as long as they did it when they thought she wouldn't notice. Outright staring is just impolite.

But Victoria knew, Daniels glances were just a bit different than those of the other boys. He knew who she was, who she really was, not only her public face. To him, she knew, she was more than just the girl that every boy wants to date. And she had made her decision long ago. If he ever asked her out, she would accept.

Really, there was no reason why she shouldn't. They got along perfectly and she liked spending time with him. And even if they got into an argument, they always made up shortly after. Hell, she even knew that he could be quite good looking if he put the work into it. Of course, that wasn't all she cared about, but if a girl could choose between a nice boyfriend and a nice and good looking boyfriend, who wouldn't choose the second option?

If they ever started to date, she was determined to drag him to the gym at least once a week.

Really, they were already as close to a couple as they could be without actually being one. The only reason they weren't? That would be Daniel's missing self-confidence. It really was a troublesome problem. While Victoria was the one who wanted to do something about it the most, she was also the one who could do the least about it.

At first, she had tried to him directly. That there is no reason for him to not be self-confident. Sadly, as the target of his affection, she quickly noticed that he thought she was only taking pity on him. When she tried the next time, she decidedly told him that she was, in fact, not pitying him, though she could tell that he didn't believe her.

Since then, she had tried all kinds of more subtle methods, but sadly, none of them seem to work.

Of course, there was also still her last-ditch method, but that bore just too much of a risk of ruining both Daniel and their relationship. What that method is? It's Victoria asking out Daniel.

The reason she never asked him out wasn't because of some stupid pride. It was because she just knew him too well. Of course, if she were to ask him out, he would happily accept. But he would always think that he wasn't good enough for her.

Of course, he would try hard to improve himself, but that was exactly the problem. Victoria knew him well enough to know that he would try too hard to be healthy, for both his body and his mind.

With a silent sigh of resignation, Victoria puts the tray with the snacks on the floor and throws her body on the bed.

Just as she shuffles her body into a comfortable position, the ground rumbles and shakes.

"What the he..."

"Earthquake! Get under the table!", Victoria quickly interrupts him.

"This is London goddamnit! We don't have earthquakes!", Daniel exclaims as he scrambles for his desk.

"Get on your knees and cover your head and neck with your hands. Actually, there was one in 1580.", Victoria calmly explains.

"How do you even know that!? That was literally hundreds of years ago!", Daniel askes exasperatedly.

"Good thing I checked out earthquake protocols anyway, isn't it?"

You have been chosen as participants for the 13th wave, please stay on standby.

"What the..."

"Nope, not an earthquake. I'm thirteenth, what's your wave?", now it was Daniels turn to know what's going on.

"Same. Do you have any idea what's going on?"

"Well, have you ever read LitRPG's?"

"Are you serious?"

"Do you have a better idea?"

"...Aliens?"

Then, everything went black.