A dude with his friends at graduation.

Your name is Chase Wallin, and tonight you're at your high school graduation party.

You don't know whose house this is - it's huge, with vaulted ceilings! - but there's plenty of room for twenty people you know and twice again as many that you don't. There's a DJ, no adults (adults being those 21 years and older, everybody at this particular grad party is 18 years or older), and drinks (all legal, not everything can be perfect).

After cracking open another can of Dr. Pepper, you return to the corner where your friends are hanging out.

Your party count is five, altogether, and you're a motley group.

"Thanks, man," says Sullivan, taking the second can of Dr. Pepper that you offer him. "You always have my back."

Sullivan is a big, tall, athletic dude. You don't have much in common now, but when you've been playmates since you were young. You're practically brothers. (Friend #1)

"Don't know why your lazy ass can't go get a refill yourself," you say, loud enough to be heard over the music.

"Loyalty terminated," Sullivan replies, his face serious, but with a twinkle in his eye.

"I'll take the drink back then," you say, beckoning him to return the can of Dr. Pepper.

Sullivan slowly opens the can in front of your eyes and takes a sip, never letting eye contact lapse.

"God you two, get a room," says Pearl, another one of your friends, rolling her eyes.

"C'mon, it's a party. Don't be like that," you say.

"It's graduation day, I can be like however I want..." mutters Pearl, simmering as she sips her red solo cup.

Pearl has hair black as night and wears a surplus of dark eyeshadow and dark lipstick. Complementing the look, she also wears a pair of baggy black cargo pants and a black sweatshirt hoodie.

She's been your friend ever since you started high school. She and Sullivan don't get along at all. Whereas Pearl likes artsy manga and criminology and has a tempestuous disposition, Sullivan enjoys marvel movies, sunshine, and explosions, in that order. (Friend #2)

Another girl in a cute dress gloms onto Sullivan from behind - her skin is a deep black, and her dark hair is shorn short close to her scalp.

"Aw, don't tell me you and Pearl are at it again," she says, throwing all her weight onto Sullivan's broad shoulders.

That'd be Indigo, Sullivan's girlfriend. She's a cheerleader but spends most of her free time drawing and painting. The two had a rocky start, but this whole year they've been going steady (jocks and cheerleaders can work in real life too, you guess). (Friend #3)

You have some questions about if the two of them will stick together after high school, but neither Sullivan nor Indigo are keen to discuss the topic. But hey. It's none of your business.

Sullivan takes Indigo's weight, sliding a familiar hand around her waist and holding her close. "I can promise you one thing babe," he says. Then he points accusingly at Pearl. "She started it."

Pearl rolls her eyes. Indigo swats Sullivan's arm. "Be nice."

"This is nice. You should see me when I'm mean," jokes Sullivan.

You jump in. "It's true. I saw him be mean once, I forgot what happened after that, but I'm pretty sure it was bad."

"If you forgot what happened," asks Jane, looking up from her private conversation with your other friend Yutong, "then how do you know it was bad in the first place?"

Jane's way more into the outdoors and exercise even than Sullivan is (they're actually cousins). She loves skateboarding, snowboarding, and surfing -- anything that involves standing on an unstable piece of wood while going fast.

Jane has a ton of freckles and bright red hair on the orange side, styled in a messy pixie cut. Right now, she wears a tank top, gray beanie, and a pair of denim shorts - typical stuff for her, if on the dressy side. If you weren't at a party she'd be in sweat pants and a t-shirt. (Friend #4)

"Emotional memory is a hundred times more powerful than trivial factual recall," you boast, easily deflecting Jane's doubt.

"Yeah right," Jane doubts further.

Yutong, your token Chinese friend standing next to Jane, adjusts her glasses and clears her throat. "Actually it's true - maybe not a hundred times, he's exaggerating that, but we remember emotions a lot longer than details."

Yu's kind of a dork. A geek. A nerd. All those things. But she's super smart and easy to get along with (so long as you don't mind getting an earful of her encyclopedic knowledge from time to time). You and Pearl find her interesting. Sullivan and Jane tune out when her tangents get too boring. You don't know how Yu and Indigo get along, but they seem to be able to exist in the same conversation circle without canceling each other out, so that's a good thing.

Anyway, Yutong has a wide array of interests and can get into just about anything. She's a good wildcard when it comes time to split into groups. She's short, petite, and very normal. She has a blue streak in her dark hair to be cool, but her Nintendo shirt and plain jeans mark her as a casual at heart. (Friend #5)

You're about to launch into how powerful your brain is, but the second you open your mouth, you also shift a foot forward. Something crunches underfoot.

"What's that?" asks Jane, pointing.

Curious, you bend down and pick it up. It's a golden envelope. It has your name on the front - Chase Wallin - not in any handwriting you recognize, but that only heightens the mystery.

You turn it over. No return address, no stamp. Somebody at the party must've thrown this your way while you were distracted.

"Ooh, secret admirer," predicts Indigo, hugging Sullivan's arm.

Sullivan tut-tuts his girl. "Don't kid yourself, Chase is Ace. He knows nobody would ever touch him, he gave up on life and love long ago."

"Brutal," says Pearl, for a rare moment appreciative of Sullivan.

"What's inside?" asks Yu, leaning in to look at the envelope with you.

"Graduation cash?" guesses Jane.

"Not sure," you say, opening it up.

Inside the envelope is a single black card. It's cool to the touch. Metallic. It catches the light in weird ways. Silver lettering gleams legibly when you tilt it to the side.

Anything you want is now yours, whether physical or immaterial. All you have to do is claim ownership of it.

Instinctively, you know it's true. Understanding the fact is another matter. "What the...?"

"Anything you want is now yours, whether physical or immaterial," reads Yu, aloud for all your curious friends. "All you have to do is claim ownership of it."

The same impression of truthful acceptance sweeps over your friends.

"Anything you want? Damn," says Sullivan, impressed. "Guess statistics finally paid you back for your crappy life up to this point."

Jane is more practical. "So you could go waltz into a bank and claim all the money as yours?"

"It says he can claim anything physical or immaterial," Yutong points out, squinting again at the card and adjusting her glasses. "If Chase wanted to be rich, he could claim a lot more than some money in a bank. Technically, there'd be nothing stopping him from claiming the whole bank outright. Company, stock, everything."

Indigo furrows her brow. "Wouldn't that hurt the economy?"

Yu nods. "Oh yeah, it would be catastrophic if a whole bank and all its accounts suddenly stopped belonging to its customers and belonged to Chase instead," she foretells, ominously. "I don't think Chase would do something like that, at least not without letting people still use the money that used to be theirs. But at the end of the day, if he claimed it, it'd be his, so..."

Pearl clears her throat. "Excuse me, are we not going to ask how this even makes sense?" She spares an annoyed look at you and everyone else. "Is this magic or what? Are we in a simulation? Did someone make a wish on a genie lamp? Are we in a sleeping god's dream? Chase being able to claim literally anything he can think of feels pretty dumbly overpowered to me, not to mention unfair, especially if he claims something that belongs to someone else."

This is all too much for you. Your fingertips buzz with unknown potential. What they said is all true. You don't know how you know, but you do. If the card's not magic, it might as well be.

"Everybody stop talking," you say.

Everyone falls silent and looks to you, rather like how you'd expect everyone to quiet down at a birthday party when the guest of honor gets up to speak.

"Why aren't you all freaking out?" you ask your friends, bewildered. "Doesn't any of this seem weird to you guys?"

Yu opens her mouth to reply, but frowns and thinks it over instead.

"Of course it's weird," says Jane, indignant.

Sullivan offers only a casual shrug. "It's weird, but you're weird too, so it balances out."

Indigo smiles and taps your elbow. "I don't know about everyone else, but I'm happy for you. It's sort of like you have superpowers now, isn't it?"

Pearl sighs, resigning herself to the situation. "It's probably the card making things feel less weird than they are. If that piece of plastic can give you omnipotence, for sure it can **** our puny meat brains into compliance."

"That... actually makes sense," you say, eying the card one last time before tucking it into your pocket.

"So, back to the party?" asks Sullivan, seeming done with this whole interruption.

"I'd want to experiment first if I were Chase," Yutong says. "It does seem unlikely that the card was telling the truth."

"The fact we're all discussing this is evidence enough," argues Pearl.

"So long as we're not fighting," Indigo adds, making sure everyone's still on the same page.

Jane snorts and downs the rest of her cup of punch. "I'm not sitting around while Chase makes up his mind. I'm getting another drink," she says.

Jane walks off to the kitchen to make good on her promise.

Note: The official version of this branch (my part of it anyway) has it's own home now! Check it out here: https://chyoa.com/chapter/With-his-friends-at-a-graduation-party.1307872