The Buzz Debuff

The party settled into easy warmth once the initial shock wore off, with Colm still visibly moved as the crew gathered around the laden table and food and drink began disappearing at a respectable pace.

Bram, loading a plate with more enthusiasm than the food itself probably warranted, paused halfway through a bite and glanced around at the assembled crew.

"...Reminder, everyone," he said, still chewing. "This doesn't actually fill you up in real life. I learned that the hard way during the railway celebration. Ate an entire in-game feast, felt completely satisfied, logged out, and remembered about four hours later that my actual stomach had received nothing whatsoever."

"...That sounds deeply unpleasant," Colm said, already reaching for a second helping despite the warning.

"It was. Please, everyone, actually eat something real once you log out tonight. I don't want anyone discovering that lesson at two in the morning the way I did."

Nettle, already making generous use of the drinks on the table, grinned. "Speaking of lessons, has anyone ever explained the alcohol mechanics to Colm?"

Colm glanced up. "...There are mechanics?"

"Oh, it's very different from real drinking," Arista said, accepting a glass herself. "You get a status effect called Buzz. Movement gets harder to coordinate, and past a certain point you start seeing double, but your mind stays clear no matter how much you drink."

"...So it's purely physical," Colm said, immediately working through the implications. "No cognitive impairment at all."

"None," Claire confirmed. "It's basically a coordination debuff. You could still recite complex calculations perfectly while stumbling because your character's movement input has gone fuzzy."

Colm considered that for a moment, smiling as he accepted a drink of his own. "...That's a very strange design choice."

"Probably for the best," Bram said. "Imagine trying to run a game where players actually lost judgment along with coordination. That sounds like a nightmare for the developers to manage responsibly."

Petrov took a measured sip from his own glass. "It also means people can enjoy the effect without becoming incapable of making sensible decisions. The worst consequence is usually walking into furniture."

As if summoned by the subject, Nettle, several drinks ahead of everyone else by that point, attempted to cross the meadow toward the dessert table and drifted a few degrees off her intended path. She corrected with exaggerated concentration, straightened herself, and continued as though nothing unusual had happened.

"...I am fine," she announced without prompting. "Perfectly coherent. Just experiencing some minor input lag."

"That's the debuff talking," Bram called after her.

"I am aware it's the debuff," Nettle replied, using the careful diction of someone whose balance had begun losing arguments with her intentions. "I am simply describing it accurately."

Colm laughed and took a cautious sip from his own glass.

[Status Effect: Buzz — Applied]

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

[Coordination: -15%]

A moment later he stood to test it, shifting his weight experimentally and finding his usual precision just slightly wrong. Nothing dramatic had changed, but there was a faint wobble he had to correct for consciously, as though his body were responding a fraction differently from what he expected.

"...This is strange," he said, amused. "I feel perfectly clear-headed. My legs simply refuse to cooperate."

"Welcome to game-logic drinking," Arista said, raising her glass toward him. "Perfectly lucid, slightly clumsy, and very entertaining for everyone watching."

Colm raised his own glass in return, still correcting for the faint wobble, surrounded by lantern light and garlands made from his early charts. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he felt unmistakably celebrated.

"...Happy birthday to me, apparently," he said with a grin, and took another careful sip.

By the time the evening had properly settled in, most of the crew had accumulated enough of the Buzz effect to make simple movement far more interesting than it had any right to be. The meadow filled with laughter, interrupted every so often by an undignified stumble or somebody stopping mid-step to reconsider where their feet had decided to go.

Bram, whose coordination had deteriorated considerably more than his confidence, squared up against Petrov near the open stretch of meadow. Both men swayed with the focused concentration of people whose minds remained perfectly functional while their legs had stopped honoring instructions with any reliability.

"...I propose a race," Bram announced, far too solemnly for someone who was having visible difficulty standing still.

"I accept," Petrov said, checking his status readout with exaggerated care. "Coordination is at negative forty-five percent. This should be scientifically interesting."

"For science," Bram agreed.

They lined up at an invisible starting point while the rest of the crew gathered to watch, Colm among them, still faintly wobbling and grinning wider than anyone had seen him grin in recent memory.

"Ready," Claire called, already struggling not to laugh. "Set—"

"GO!" Bram shouted several seconds early and lurched forward with far more enthusiasm than actual forward momentum.

Petrov, caught off guard, stumbled into motion a beat later. The two of them began weaving across the meadow with immense concentration, both fully aware of what they wanted their bodies to do and apparently unable to convince those bodies to participate.

Bram aimed for a straight line and drifted steadily sideways until he collided gently with one of the decorated lantern posts. He caught himself against it, regained what remained of his dignity, and looked back toward the others as though he had arrived exactly where intended.

"...I have arrived," he announced. "First place."

"That was not the finish line," Petrov called from several meters away. He had drifted in the opposite direction and was now suspiciously close to the dessert table instead of anything resembling forward progress.

"I'm redefining the finish line," Bram said. "Executive decision."

The crew dissolved into laughter. Nettle nearly folded in half, while Claire had to wipe tears from the corners of her eyes.

Colm laughed harder than he had in years. The quiet ache of the past few days, the suspicion that he had somehow upset everyone without realizing it, had vanished completely beneath the ridiculous sight of two grown men attempting to race while fully lucid and only marginally capable of controlling their own feet.

"...This is the best birthday I think I've ever had," he said, mostly to himself.

Arista, standing close enough to hear him, glanced over with a small smile. "Good. You deserved a proper one."

Petrov, having finally reoriented himself toward something closer to the original racing line, made one last determined push forward with both arms stretched slightly for balance.

"...I believe," he announced with painstaking clarity, "that I have won."

"You went in the wrong direction for half the race," Bram pointed out.

"The race had no defined direction," Petrov replied. "I simply completed my own version of it first."

"That's not how racing works."

"It is tonight."

That set everyone off again, warm laughter carrying across the lantern-lit meadow beneath garlands made from old charts that had once been nothing more than Colm's careful, private work.

He sat back and watched them for a while, still smiling. The food, the decorations, the map case and even the survey flight had all been wonderful, but what stayed with him most was something simpler: everyone had chosen to be there because they wanted to celebrate him.

"...Thank you," he said again, quietly enough that he wasn't sure anyone heard him. "All of you."