Collection Perfection | Nerd Shit

"Are you sure you wanna learn more about my collection?" Slade asked, scratching at his head slightly as Noa followed behind him. "Of course I do! I love hearing about the things you like, and I haven't gotten to see your toy collection yet!" The pride male scoffed slightly, blushing a little in embarrassment. "They're not toys- they're collectible merchandise... okay, maybe they are toys but they're high-quality toys!" The taller of the two just giggled, lightly leaning over to kiss Slade on the cheek as he opened the door to his collection room. "I know they are sweet boy, I was just being a little silly. Now you tell me about your collection."

To start off the little tour, Slade pulled out a small box that held six figurines of bun forms. Four of the figurines wore identical outfits with different markings on their faces, one of them wore a similar cloak but in black with a lot more details, and had bandages over their face, and the final one had no cloak at all, instead having a blue tunic of some sort. "So this is my set of figurines of the six buns that make up the Black Mage Guild in the early game, all of them are custom-made because they're not popular enough for the developers to make them into official merchandise. Each one of these was at least 200 carats each, a little bit more for Susubuni and Susubusi.

 He picked up the one in a black cloak. "Susubuni's is because his costume is the most complex and he's actually not as popular in the fandom in comparison to some of the other brothers despite being your main mentor from levels one to fifty." He then picked up the one in a blue tunic. "Susubusi was also pretty expensive because they had to model his hair and couldn't use the same cloak base for his outfit. That's partially because in the story, Susubusi isn't actually a black mage because he doesn't have the magical abilities..." Slade continued on for a second about the game, and Noa just watched him. He hadn't really cared much about the lore when he played with Slade, mostly enjoying the combat and hearing Slade speak about the complexities that he could care less about. He understood enough, though- especially with his beloved boyfriend helping him along the plotline. 

He gently put the figurines back in the box, closing it once more and placing it up on the shelf. That shelf specifically seemed to have all sorts of Black Mage centric collectibles, from pins to laminated prints to figurines of various NPCs and Enemies related to the questline. Noa could even spot a custom doll of Slade's main player character on the shelf, complete with a giant hat and a giant staff.

They reached another set of shelves that had a different assortment of toys, these ones mostly being plushies of various NPCs, with highly complex 3d maps of various rooms of dungeons on the shelves below. Even with Noa's limited knowledge, he could spot that they were modular, meant to click together and make a giant map using various rooms. However, Slade didn't reach for any of them, instead standing on his toes in order to grab one of the plushies. The plushie was a furdin stood up on two legs, sporting giant eyes and a small silver crown on their head.

"This one is a plushie of Furdin Sith, one of the primary NPCs from the second series of raids that you unlock, and also an NPC from the previous Final Heresy games, though he's typically an enemy in past entries. Technically we could have unlocked the raid series he comes from for your main character before, but I didn't think you'd be too interested especially after you told me you really didn't like doing the Crystalline Palace Raids. But yeah, about Furdin Sith, lot of people kind of hate him because he looks weird and doesn't look like he fits in along with the other members of the cast, along with the fact that it's a talking Furdin on two legs and some people think that's weird when it's not a beast tribe, but I think he's neat, actually. Or maybe I think that just because I've run Bun Scaith too much, since he's chilling out there a lot in order to give you motivation or... something." He grumbled.

When he saw the slight confusion on Noa's face, he elaborated. "Bun Scaith is the last raid of the Shadow of Mycock raid series- and it's called that because Mycock is the name of the ancient city, it has nothing to do with any character's genitals!" He huffed a bit at that last bit, and his boyfriend couldn't help but giggle. "Anyways." 

Slade then moved to pick up a set of small plushies attached to strings, obviously meant to be hung on a phone or something similar. "This is the keychain set inspired by the 'canonical' jobs for the first expansion Hellsward, the second expansion if you count the base game as a technical expansion, which I don't. There's the Dragon Knight, the Abyssal Warrior, the Card Duelist, and the Bombsmith." He pointed at the four dolls as he said their names.

His hand went back to gently hold the doll with spiked armor and a large lance with multiple spikes on the side of it. The character's large ears fell out of the mask, but were tied up behind it. "Technically the Dragon Knight wasn't from this expansion like the other jobs, but the job quests always had a sort of connection to the main portion of the expansion." He then moved to another one, A succubun with a lot less armor, instead wearing a tank top and jean-like pants, holding some sort of bomb-tossing machine. "None of these are my main class, but I did try out the Bombsmith for the expansion because my Black Mage was already over-leveled and I liked the concept of throwing explosives at enemies."

He then focused on the largest-looking plush of the group, a heavily armored succubun with the colors of black and red throughout. This one's ears looked damaged as part of the design, and on their back they had a sword larger than the body. "And then the Abyssal Warrior is the most popular of the set because, unfortunately, it's one of the only jobs that actually has decent writing for their storyline. Even though I HATE tanking, I picked it up just for the lore." Noa pointed to the doll with the little stack of cards, smiling brightly. This plushie was wearing a dress with small charms made out of plastic, their ears were curled and the hair that was shown was made of a long and sparkly material. "Oh, that's the one I like to play!" Noa cheered to himself, proud that he recognized it among the others. Slade nodded, finding a smile appearing on his face as well. "Yeah, Card Duelist is pretty good, I'm glad you still like it even though it's pretty deceptive in the name. I mean, the name duelist kind of implies that you'd be fighting people, but it's actually a healing job. At the very least the card part isn't a scam. I'm not a healer, but I can respect that the card mechanic is really impressive... even if they only have six cards total."

The pink succubun hummed slightly. "Do you have any more that's inspired by the Card Duelist?" That seemed to activate something in Slade, the male's smile going wide as he gently put the plushies back on the shelf. "Oh, I sure do. You're going to fucking love this, c'mere." He pulled Noa towards another shelf. This shelf clearly was primarily not toys, instead being vinyl records and CDs of various game music, with one exception. 

Slade gently handed a large bit of colored styrofoam to Noa, who looked it over. There were multiple circles connected to each other, decorated with sparkles and extremely complex filigree embellishments. There were even small false gemstones put into the foam. As he pushed at it lightly, the circles spun around slowly, making it obvious that every circle outside of the outermost one could spin around on a singular axis. Noa's eyes brightened when he realized what it was. "Slade, is this a Card Duelist Sphere?" His boyfriend nodded, pulling out something else, a small deck of cards. The implication of what was in the card deck was enough to make Noa's eyes brighten. "Slade, you're joking!" Noa gasped, watching as the other bun pulled out one of the cards from the deck. It was an almost perfect replica of one of the cards that the Duelist used in the game, and Noa could even recognize it. "How much was this!?" 

"Well, technically it cost 500 carats between materials and assistance from others in order to make the sphere, and then the cards were commissioned art, I can't exactly pinpoint how much those commissions were, but it doesn't really matter because this thing is fucking awesome!" When Slade looked up, Noa was staring at him, eyes sparkling. Slade blushed further, not knowing what Noa was thinking, but watching as his partner put the replica down on the shelf, and lightly picked the cards out of Slade's hand to do the same with them. "Noa?"

Slade's eyes went wide as he felt Noa slam him against the wall- thankfully one without any shelves, kissing him aggressively. When they separated, Slade just made a confused little noise. "You're really hot when you're excited about things. I've been admiring you this whole time, but with how much you were smiling and getting so excited. And the fact that you made that thing just because you were so passionate-" He let out a shaky exhale. "It's really sexy how much of a nerd you are, and I couldn't keep myself from kissing you any longer." Noa confessed. Slade looked a bit shocked, but definitely wasn't opposed to anything that was going on. "I mean, if the sphere was enough to make you kiss me like that, I'm curious to wonder what you'll do once you know I've made replicas of weapons for... every job in the game." He laughed nervously, watching as Noa's eyes stared at him even more intensely. "Slade, if you had any plans, they're canceled now." Noa stated bluntly, before he once again pressed his lips up to Slade and started to kiss the sense out of him. Slade couldn't help but laugh a little in the kiss, partially in surprise that his boyfriend was making out with him surrounded by various shelves of toys inspired by a video game. 

Sometimes being a fucking nerd had its perks, he supposed.