“Zhan, I swear to god, if you don’t stop face-checking bushes I’m going to leave you dead.” Callie, a.k.a. ‘Wolf Girl’, is on a tear today and really quite cross with me. After the way yesterday went I can’t blame her. I haven’t said much today, so perhaps I’m over correcting, but I’m angry still, so I’ve been sticking to only necessary communications.

  “Yes ma’am.” She informs me that was the wrong response with a growl and throws a can at my head.

  Already out of my seat I kick her chair away from her desk and get in her face. “You want to get angry, be my guest, but if you want to throw shit, make a mess or be physical, get the fuck out.”

  “Ladies, we’re in a match.”

  “Yep.” I glare at Callie for an extra moment, grab her can throw it in the trash and wipe up the spill before going back to my computer. I see that we got sixth and are waiting for the match to resolve. Cool. I back out to the waiting room and step away again.

  A beef stick and a soda occupy me until the lobby forms again and I sit back down. It was our first bot 4 of the day, but we haven’t been first today either. We really need the points. Hamster and Callie are invested, but I really want this to be over.

  This game was fun until this week, but after our third place showing in 2v2, I really could care less about this set of matches. I’m also reconsidering my involvement in the Sniper’s team we just arranged.

  “I don’t know what personal issues you both are struggling with, but could you not involve them in our next two matches?”

  I sigh, “I’ll try Hamster.”

  “Try not to suck while you’re at it,” Callie bites.

  I take a deep breath and concentrate on my new mission of trying to set everything aside for the next hour.

  I yap a little more this match, encouraging farm and item collection, backing out of team fights that look close, and altogether playing defensive battle arena tactics. Callie is not feeling terribly passive, but after the third time she feeds, I don’t make it a priority to resurrect her. Ham and I duo the mid-game and just before the last major collapse of the arena zone, I pick her up for the last time. Resurrection is not allowed in the final zone.

  “We’ve got a passive team, an aggressive team and us left.”

  “Yes, their dps player likes to hang back and we are in an urban area. Operation gargoyle?”

  I cackle. It is the perfect time for that plan. They fixed us targeting appliances, but the terrain can be destroyed. Gargoyles are a part of the terrain, and can be moved with explosives.

  “I don’t know what that means,” Callie barks.

  “Try to group them up near the building Hamster is on top of.”

  “Great. I get to be bait, again.”

  All you’re good at this game is dying you twat, might as well be useful. I want to say that, but I’m behaving. Kind of.

  Despite being a grade ‘A’ asshole, Callie pulls members of both teams toward the building. Ham count’s down and then the gargoyle is arcing toward the ground. Sadly I’ll have to move to keep it in range, so this move is likely going to kill me. As a projectile, even terrain, I can re-direct it’s motion and increase it’s velocity, but the change in vector affects me like pool balls colliding.

  The gargoyle flies at the group like a bullet. Callie sees it and immediately uses her crowd control pull, bringing four enemies in line with the ballistic statue. The skill knocks me down and rolls me across the lot toward the building.

  “Use your dash!”

  I don’t think about why, I just do what he says and dash. I slow down considerably and skid to a stop before I splat. Lucky call Ham, but thanks to that, we have an easy time cleaning up the last opponents, gaining our lone first place of the day.

  “Good call, Hamster. We haven’t used that in a while.”

  “That was pretty cool. Does it work on anything on a ballistic trajectory?” Callie asks.

  “I think so? It has so far,” I reply.

  “Have you tried it on the jumping elite mobs?”

  My mind blanks for a moment, realizing I had never thought of that before. “Now that’s an idea. I have tried it on jumping and gliding enemy players, but never a mob. I could try that, or I could switch to that lightning lady.”

  “We could do two assault bruisers and a healer?” Callie adds.

  “Zhantsa has two characters she is best with. As do I. Anything outside of that is too risky for our final match.”

  I nod. “You got a dps bruiser in your pocket, wolf girl?”

  She shakes her head. “Support tank, ranged artillery, or dodge assassin.”

  “Bruiser and debuf healer.”

  “Explosives and a healing tank.”

  “On a scale of casual gamer to Hamster, how good are you at the assassin?”

  “You’re asking how good I am now?” I see fire and fight in her eyes at the question.

  I raise my hands to signal waiting. “Woah, I’ve never seen you play it. Chill.”

  “Fine. Like maybe an eight and a half.”

  I nod. “Well, we have about a minute to decide. We can run our last comp back, or we can assassin, heal tank, debuff Heal. It’s quirky, but viable I think.”

  “That sounds fun. I get to be the carry for once.”

  I groan at the attitude, but I promised Hamster that I’d try—it’s so hard.

  Ham’s items are full defense, and mine are hybrid damage and heal, while Callie wisely picks hybrid damage and defense. A rookie to this idea would have gone full attack, but she knows that she has to live long enough for the healing to work. Good girl.

  The first few team fights are embarrassing for us, as we have not dialed in the tactic and we haven’t leveled up all of our skills. Luckily, with two healers, either Hamster or I survive to revive the other two. Our mid-game is still sloppy, but we’re surviving and killing stragglers.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  When the map collapses to the second to last area, the wheels start to fall off. Two of the five remaining teams are heading inward behind us, and the other two beside us are collapsing from two separate directions with us in the middle. Callie surges into one of the teams behind us, wounding them in an attempt to get the team behind them to attack them instead of us. I sneak closer to heal her as she dives in and debuff the group, when one of the side teams starts targeting me. I debuff them too and Hamster surges that team while healing me.

  Callie retreats to us to join Hamster, but the fourth team joins the fray and starts wailing on her. I toss out more debuffs and have to use my ultimate to keep both Hamster and Callie up through the split. When she rejoins us, I’m so focused on their health bars that I forget to reposition and get focused by two whole teams and get splatted.

  “Retreat and hide.” Hamster calls as he stuns the group trying to follow them, allowing Callie to retreat while Hamster gets slowed and eventually killed.

  It’s still possible to resurrect us, but the point is too close to the edge of the area for her to make it in time without being interrupted by the final area collapse. She’s on her own.

  Down to two teams and Callie, they duke it out instead of looking for her. When both teams are low, she appears and starts wailing on the low players, looking like she’s going to pull off a crazy hero moment. Then the last tank standing uses his ultimate, a reflecting bulwark. Callie ends up killing herself on it, but not before taking down the last member of the third team.

  “Damn. That was close.” I say.

  “It was fucking bullshit! That’s what that was!” Callie shouts and makes to throw stuff, but I warn her off it.

  “It is unfortunate we got that sixth place. We would have won if we’d placed higher.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that Ham,” Callie says, sounding sincere.

  “Same. Second is not bad though. We still get money.”

  “Oh, no. You miss my meaning. We are relegated to tie breaks. I do not remember what they entail.”

  Huh, a tie break? I never would have thought that with a sixth we even had a chance, but we did get a lot of second and third places. With nothing to do but wait, Hamster pulls up the caster feed on one window, and a game of auto chess in the other. Man, this dude never quits gaming.

  “In an exciting turn of events, Gigavibe’s first tournament has ended in a tie in placement points.”

  “That’s right, John, teams Calamity Jones and The Ham-stars are now waiting on the organizers to tabulate the tiebreak to determine the winner.”

  “I for one am rooting for the Joneses. Darth Hamster has enough championships.”

  “Well I don’t you poorly quaffed canary!” I shout at the monitor and the man wearing yellow that is rooting against us.

  “Two gamer girls on the same team? I can’t root against them,” says the fashionable and lovely brunette. “And it seems that the results are in, let’s look at the tabulation.”

  “The first tie break is number of firsts minus the number of eighths. Which they tied at each a plus one.”

  “The second tie break is a team kill and kills combined score where team eliminations are weighed double. As you can see, Calamity Jones eliminated more teams, but The Ham-stars had an overwhelming number of kills, handing them the victory.”

  “Fuck YEAH!” Callie shouts, bounces around hugs Hamster and kisses me. Fucking what?! I glare at her and shove her away before I can pat the best gamer in the world on the shoulder.

  “That makes what, three games you are the current world champion in? Great work Hamster.”

  “You do not seem excited like a champion. It is four, though.”

  I laugh. “This wasn’t my project, so mostly I’m just glad we got paid for the work we put in.”

  “I’m a Champion! BAHAHAHAHA!” Callie, what the hell?

  “I remember when I won my first Raidcraft PVP championship. I think I was that excited. Do you ever get that excited.”

  “No. Nor do I get as angry as either of you.”

  “Yeah . . . sorry again about yesterday. That’s about as mad as I’ve ever seen you, and I don’t want to be the cause of that again.”

  “I hope for that as well. This is two for you this season, correct?”

  “Yeah, and goddess is that weird to say. My first was four years ago? I top four a lot but rarely win. Made plenty of cash doing it though, enough to game full time while I worked to get on Orion Black. Getting a spot on your team was my championship this season. Getting to know you, the legendary gamer, was pretty cool too.”

  “Oh, Darla, you have to let me say this.” The monitor chimes in again, John looking nearly as excited as Callie. No, maybe half, but still excited.

  “Go for it John.”

  “We polled the teams and the numbers, and the tournament MVP is a rising name in the community: Zhantsa!”

  “HAH! Take that wolf girl!” Callie briefly considers throwing a chair at me, before storming out of the room. I watch the feed some more, our highlight reel looking a lot more impressive than it felt, and the closing shot is the decimation of Operation Gargoyle.

  “Now they have to patch that.”

  Hamster nods. “I am writing their team to re-design the character rather than limit the environment and other characters via environment changes.”

  “Do the development teams ever respond?”

  He nods. “Most of the time. They don’t always use my advice, but almost everyone takes my calls.”

  He delivers that with such clean expectation that I have to wonder if this man’s brain was born or made. This guy is one in a billion.

  “Alright, I’m going to head out. Practice outside of FoF is going to be on hold for a few weeks while I dive back into Alaris Eternum.”

  He nods. “Is that flexible?”

  I shrug. “Don’t know. I’ll be figuring that out this period.”

  He nods and then waves. Not a man to chat idly, that’s for sure. Time to go see if Callie is pouting in the other room.

  I walk out to find her lying on the floor watching something on a phone-sized screen.

  “I thought you would have logged by now.”

  She sits up and props up on an arm. “I wanted to talk to you, but I also needed to calm down.”

  “If this is still about yesterday, I really am sorry.”

  “Kind of. It’s a ‘never meet your heroes’ kind of situation. I admire what you’ve done, but realizing that you’re a regular person was kind of a let down? Finding out that you’re basically Jenna but my size and Mexican wasn’t my favorite either.”

  Aren’t you basically in love with Jenna? Why would . . . oh. The kiss makes more sense now. So does the anger.

  “Are we going to be able to work together on Sniper’s?”

  She groans. “I hate that people look to you and Jenna for leadership on that game when I’m literally ranked higher than you both. Combined.”

  “Yeah, I have no advice for that. People should not listen to me on games that I casual. I just mess around and figure out stupid things to mess with people.”

  “And yet, your gimmicks win games.” She flops back down to the floor. “Hamster is one thing, he’s just an alien wearing a human body. You seem relatable, but you just know how to do this stuff, don’t you?”

  I shrug. “I’m lucky my neurotic tendencies are beneficial. I’ll do something cool by accident and then drill it until I can do it on purpose. That’s fun for me. Foot helmet for example. That’s a bug I found because running without armor makes you faster. There’s another bug that if you keybind armor removal of different pieces to different keys and then press three of them at the same time, it gets confused and removes all armor. But the bug drops the helmet as knocking helmets off in game is a feature.”

  “Gods, you are a gamer. A degenerate like my friends’ parents warn about.”

  “You betcha. Speaking of, I gotta head home to prepare to degen the new game that Orion’s developing.”

  “How do you have time for that? Four tournament games, plus a full immersion beta?”

  Oh, wow. She looked me up. Uh, weird, but cute? I’m sticking with cute instead of creepy. “Despite how unsettling you knowing that is, I’m a permanent resident. I don’t live in the real.”

  “Voluntary?”

  “Yes and no. Dissonance got me. Worst case on record. So I’m here until they figure it out, but truth be told, I don’t want to leave. I love Alaris, and my life in ATC London is great.”

  “Kay, as long as you’re good. I kind of hate you, but I’m not above raging on politicians for woman in distress.”

  “Wow, Callie. I didn’t know you felt so strongly. Anyway, thanks for pulling out a second in that last match. See you never.”

  I walk out while she screams at me for being a bitch. Classic teen behavior. I didn’t think she was twenty anyway. I message Jenna about Callie and ask about her crush behavior. Hamster warned that there was a delay, but this is not crucial, so I hope that I don’t interrupt their intimate moments again.

  Thinking about them being sexy is more than I can handle though. Woof. Selena needs Lucy to want to sex me right away. It won’t be tonight, but once she moves in, I’m hoping it’s at the end of my next Alaris period.

  My girlfriend is in jammies and sleepily waiting for me on the couch in my top floor suite when I get home. What a cutie. I cover her in smooches and get the skinship I am looking for. She grumbles and mumbles, so I lead her to bed, tuck her in and then scramble to brush my teeth and strip to my undies before joining my cozy bae.