"Beep Beep Beep Beep"

"Beep Beep Beep Beep"

You roll over just to stare at your alarm clock, trying to force your eyes open. The clock reads 4:30 in big red lettering. You know that you should have gotten an early night instead of playing hearthstone until the early hours of the morning. The late night grind for top 500 didn't really outweigh the three hours of sleep you had.

You try to roll back towards the wall after turning your alarm clock off, the bleeping still going on inside your head. Why were you getting up this early anyway? It isn't like you have a job or have to go to university anymore.

As you roll something catches the corner of your eye in the shadowy depths of your apartment, a stack of CDs. Now you remember, today was finally the day you got to meet Lucio!

You sit up, dangling your legs off the edge of the bed, rubbing the sleep out of your eyes. You reach for the familiar cord that hangs from the ceiling near your bed. You find the cord in the darkness, tugging it only creates an intense, blinding light. It takes a few minutes for your eyes to adjust before you can see clearly again.

Your apartment wasn't exactly... huge to put it nicely. Just enough space for your single bed, a small wardrobe, a desk which had your laptop resting on top of it and a small surface that acted as a makeshift kitchen. It was just big enough to house a microwave and a hotplate with a small pantry and fridge underneath. You couldn't exactly call it living in luxury but it was yours and it beat being homeless. At least the Wi-Fi was good and the neighbours were... interesting.

Next to your desk stood a tower of masterpieces, the complete works of Lucio Correia dos Santos. More commonly known as Lucio. You plucked a lucky few from the tower, being careful as to not knock it over and threw them in the front zip of your backpack.

Every wall of your apartment was covered from top to bottom in posters and stickers all about Lucio. You removed the crusty Blu-tac from your most prized ones, rolled them up and tied them in string. They joined the CDs in the backpack. You hope Lucio doesn't mind singing all of this merchandise for you! You probably should have something to eat before heading for a wash, you open the small pantry to reveal a shelf full of Lucio-oh's. You had brought out the store trying to collect all of the limited edition badges, you were still two short but you had nowhere else to store food, so for now, you were living off of these. At least they had a picture of Lucio on the front.

You grabbed a towel from the rack and ran to the communal showers on the floor beneath yours. Numbani wasn't the easiest place to live, but it made a nice change from the same-old of the American Midwest. Luckily the showers were empty.

"Well, it makes sense" you thought to yourself, after all, no sane person would be up at this god-forsaken hour. It only took about 15 minutes to dry yourself and throw some jeans on along with your favourite Lucio shirt and hoodie.

Today was going to be the best day ever!

You grabbed some shoes, your keys, your phone and your wallet and your backpack. You slung the backpack over your shoulder, locked the door behind you and walked to the bus stop. It took about five minutes to talk to the nearest bus stop.

"Oh..."

You thought to yourself, because it turns out, the buses don't start for another hour. By that time the queue would be far too long. You had to be their early, you had to meet him.

"Oh well"

Thankfully ma and pa were still sending you money over for university which you may or may not have dropped out of a few months ago but they.... didn't need to know that for now. So, luckily it shouldn't be too much of an issue to just call up a taxi. You call up the taxi and they say they'll send a car out within the next 15 minutes.

"Not too bad" You reply.

Half an hour later a car arrives for you. You throw your bag in the empty seat, buckle up your seat belt and type the address of the record store into the cars control panel. About 10 minutes later you arrive outside the record shop. There is another five or so hours before the meet and greet is set to start, so there shouldn't be too many people. You should easily get to see him.

"Plenty of time."

You opened the door to reveal a swarm of people. The line stretched from the record store, past the supermarket, past the bank and through the park, you couldn't even see the end of the line. There was no way you were giving up this shot though, so you picked up your backpack and trudged what felt like miles to the end of the line.

There were groups of people singing, dancing, playing soccer, whatever you could think of. Mostly people just slept though. In sleeping bags, in camping chairs, in tents... most people just slept on the floor though.

Once you had completed your pilgrimage to the end of the queue you just... sat there. Far too nervous to speak to anybody or do anything. You pull your phone out of your pocket to play some hearthstone and listen to music. Of course, tonight was the one night you forgot to charge your phone. 15% wasn't going to last you a long time, so there went that idea. All you could do was... wait.

The seconds turned to minutes, the minutes turned to hours. Long, long hours.

At some point you must have fell asleep resting against a guard rail. You found yourself being awoken by screams. It must have been tens of thousands of people each letting out a bloodcurdling scream in unison

The doors had opened.

One by one people of all shapes, age, religion, culture, height and colour shuffled in to meet Lucio. You managed to take roughly one step every... five minutes or so. It was going to take a very, very long time but it was going to be worth it to meet him. You shuffled forward step by step for what seemed like an eternity. It felt like seasons flew by. Maybe you missed Christmas? At this point you had lost track of time.

You look ahead at the snake of people, you can finally see him! In person! There was still about 50 people and a two hours wait ahead of you but now it started to feel real. You had been in this queue for about ten hours. Your feet hurt to high heaven and you think you might have sunstroke, but at least the weather was nice.

Only two people stood between you and Lucio. You were so close. You could hear the conversation they were having. It was about D.va or something, you weren't paying much attention. Lucio was laughing and joking away as he always does, he's such a pure soul.

He turned to look at you and smiled at you, it wasn't much, it only lasted for a second but you felt like screaming and passing out. Fortunately for you neither happened. Five more minutes passed, you are next in line. The person that was in front of you is now exiting the record store, its now finally your chance. You walk forward towards the big glass doors.

You are stopped by an outstretched arm, it is one of Lucio's bodyguards. He stood about six foot tall He is dressed surprisingly casually. A blonde ponytail sat between the shaved sides of his blonde hair. He had dark grey jeans on and a light grey sweatshirt, damn, he was so lucky. That's the new line of Lucio merch, maybe they're selling it inside!

"I'm sorry sir" He calls out. His voice bellowing into your very soul. "Mr. Lucio isn't seeing anybody else today, he's done." You look through the glass doors to see Lucio starting to pack up his things, you figured he would have someone else do that job for him.

"No" You call out. Trying to push your way past the guard but there was no way you would be able to. There was no way that you and Lucio would meet like this but you had to. You just had to.

Your head spun into a web of thoughts and plans.

"Maybe I can go to his next city?"

"Maybe I can write him a letter?"

"Maybe I can... damn it I need to meet him now" You think to yourself.

A plan starts to form in your head. The goody two-shoes always came to help when somebody was in danger. His face was always on the news or in the paper for saving cats from trees or helping other animals. You even saw articles about him chasing down criminals and helping the police catch the bad guy. The guy was a hero.

Tears streamed down your face as you pulled your hood up. You walked to the large, ancient building, up what felt like a million steps and opened the humongous glass doors.

"EVERYBODY DOWN" You yell at the top of your lungs.

"THIS IS A FUCKING ROBBERY, ANYBODY MOVE AND ILL BLOW YOUR FUCKING HEAD OFF"

You would meet him. You had to.

~*~

Written by Aaron