by Sam Maggs
12. Bring heroes together. Have a tea party with Lady Lynx, Dark Spider, and the Cowl. (16 points)
19. Find cosplayers in enough colors to make a double rainbow. (29 points)
7
Cat
Cat’s feet hurt and her back hurt and her eyes even hurt a little from staring at everything for so long, but honestly she’d also never felt better. She and Alex had managed to avoid Fi all morning, they had a plan in place to get Alex his Epic signature, and they were checking things off the Quest list like it was their homework assignment. GeekiCon? More like Crushed-It Con!
Alex would totally hate that. Which is why Cat kept it to herself. At least she thought she was hilarious.
Cat glanced back at Alex. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor again, flipping through pages of his sketchbook. The twins were safely hidden in a massive line for the Hexforce Legends VR challenge, having snuck in right as they were opening a new window for players. They’d only have to wait a few more minutes until they reached the front of the line, when they’d step up to one of thirty game stations and pop on a VR headset. Winning a Hexforce Legends match on the con floor was one of the more difficult Quest items, but Cat wasn’t worried; she’d been watching streamers play every day online for weeks before the con. She knew all the tricks. She was prepped. She was so totally ready.
“You know, like, a thousand people will have worn these headsets on their faces before us, right?” asked Alex, still not looking up from his sketchbook. “We’re probably going to catch lice. Or some weird rash.”
“Chill.” Cat waved him off. “That doesn’t happen.” She considered for a moment. “It probably doesn’t happen. I’m sure it definitely doesn’t happen. You just don’t want to play.”
“You’re right,” agreed Alex, closing his sketchbook. “VR makes my head hurt. It’s not made for people who already wear glasses.”
“You’re fine at 3-D movies.”
“I hate 3-D movies.”
“Okay, fair,” Cat conceded reluctantly. “Listen, it’s totally fine if you don’t want to play. I can handle this on my own. I’ve watched Normageddon play for over a hundred hours. I’m basically a master.”
“You’ve literally played this game three times before today,” Alex clarified.
First of all, how dare he. “Just you wait, Alessandro Gallo.” Cat stood up tall, spinning on one of her decoupaged feet. Her cape smacked the person in front of her in line, and she had to quickly apologize, yanking it back. “Oops. All I’m saying is”—Cat spread her arms wide in a victory pose—“I’m going to crush it.”
Alex just stared at her. “Cool.” He did not sound convinced.
Whatever, thought Cat determinedly. I’ve got this.
“Next in line, let’s go, let’s go,” a lime-shirted volunteer drawled, waving the next fifty in line forward to their stations. This was them! They were up!
“Let’s go, let’s go!” Cat repeated, hurriedly helping Alex to his feet and rushing over to the nearest open station. Alex took his spot next to her, carefully tucking his sketchbook back into his messenger bag.
Cat grabbed the headset from the small station in front of her—okay, yeah, there were definitely a million other people’s germs on here, but oh well—and slid it over her mass of curls. She took a peek at Alex next to her—he was doing the same thing. Good for him. Face your fears! Cat thought with an inner fist pump. She grabbed her mask with both hands and snapped it down over her eyes, the headphones coming to rest on her ears.
All at once, GeekiCon disappeared. Okay, it still smelled like GeekiCon for sure. But Cat could almost forget that. She’d been transported to an entirely different world. She was flying in a ship over a colorful desertscape, the ground passing by beneath her with alarming speed. Cat checked her team makeup—Alex and three random con-goers who had the stations next to them.
They could do this. They could do this.
Cat made the call to jump, and in first-person POV, she and her team of five leaped from the ship, launching themselves toward the ground with dizzying speed.
“Woooo!” Cat yelled as she soared through the air, before snapping her mouth shut. She’d forgotten there was probably a crowd of people watching her, seeing whatever she saw projected on a flat-screen above her station. Be cool, Cat. Be cool.
Cat’s avatar landed on the desert ground with a loud thud. As she started the wild scramble to find a weapon, she saw Alex’s character doing the same. He was doing such a great job despite his motion sickness. She was so happy for him, giving it a real go like this!
Cat shook her head. She was getting distracted and still had no weapon to speak of. As Cat opened barrel after barrel, she found nothing but health packs and weapon mods. But as she turned to run toward another building, she saw something flashy out of the corner of her eye on the ground. Someone else must have dropped their weapon! Waving her arms around IRL (she must look ridiculous but totally didn’t care), Cat scooped up the rainbow-tinted weapon and her avatar equipped it. Finally. She was ready. It was time …
… to hide.
Yep, that was her big, fancy tactic. Hide until everyone else had killed one another and then come out swinging in the final moments to deal a devastating blow to the other team. She’d watched the famous streamer Normageddon do it to great success a million times before. Some people might call it a dirty trick, but Cat didn’t care. Cat called it how to be a dang winner. Plus, only people who weren’t in the game could see what she was doing on the flat-screen over her head. Everyone she was actually competing against was safely ensconced in the world of the game. She had nothing to worry about.
Cat ran into the nearest building and crouched in a corner. She saw Alex burst into the small wooden shack and find his own corner to camp in. Their teammates, the random guys (or girls! Or neither! Don’t be accidentally gender normative, Cat, jeez), stood in the room just looking at them.
“Are we going, or what?” said one of the randoms over voice chat.
“We’re staying right here,” said Cat with far more confidence than she felt.
The other player paused. “Yeah, okay. I can get into that.” The other three players tucked themselves into the room’s remaining corners.
And time started to tick by. Ten other squads left. Then eight. Now seven. They had to quickly jet from shack to metal bunker to slightly larger shack to stay inside the ever-shrinking area of play. But they’d managed to successfully avoid seeing another person’s avatar for pushing thirteen whole minutes now. By Cat’s standards, this was a great success.
“We’re doing great!” Cat encouraged over voice chat. They’d slowly increased the quality of their weapons and gear over time, and they were looking truly poised to be winners.
“So long as we don’t choke the second we see another team,” said one of their randoms dryly.
“We won’t,” Alex piped up from beside Cat. She grinned. That was the spirit!
The area of play shrank one last time and their team made a run for it. Safely inside the big metal walls of a bunker, they settled in. Cat watched the team counter tick down to five teams. Four teams. Now three. And then … just one other team was left standing.
“This is it—” Cat was cut off by the sudden sounds of footsteps. She swung around, her arms flying through the air at her station. There, coming up the stairs! Her hands, already sweaty, gripped her controllers harder and pushed down the trigger buttons. She started firing wildly at the same moment that Alex and their teammates did.
“I’m hit!” Cat yelled as the opposing team got off a few shots at her. She focused and fired back, moving back and forth to make herself a more difficult target. She kept firing. “Got one down!”
“I’ve got— Ah no!” One of their randoms cursed. Cat didn’t blame them. They’d gotten downed and eliminated from the match. Another of their teammates took down two opponents before going down themselves in a fiery grenade inferno alongside their third random teammate. Now
it was just two on two. Cat and Alex versus two members from the final opposing team, with gear just as high-level as theirs.
This was going to be tough.
“I’m going to flank them!” Cat shouted to Alex, leaping over the walls of their once-safe bunker. Alex didn’t respond—he must have been concentrating hard. Cat decided she would keep quiet so as not to disturb his jam.
Cat ran around the outer wall of the settlement, keeping her ears open for the final two combatants. This was it—she was so close to that Quest item. She just needed to keep it together for a couple more minutes—
She was being shot at! Cat saw a bullet whiz past her avatar’s ear and she spun around so fast she almost got VR vertigo. Spraying bullets wildly, she somehow managed to down her opponent before she even had eyes on them—they must have already been low on health from an earlier fight.
“Yeah!” Cat yelled. “Alex, this is it; we’ve just got to take down one—”
Thwump. Cat’s character was caught by a sniper. She was dangerously low on health. “Sniper! Above!” she called out to her brother over the mic.
“I see them, I see them…,” Alex muttered back, much calmer than Cat felt.
“Get behind them; I’m going head-on!” Cat called out, racing up toward the highest building on the settlement, dodging shots from the sniper.
“Yep!” agreed Alex, sneaking up on their final opponent from the other direction.
“This is it!” Cat gritted her teeth as her avatar crested the final roofline. She and her enemy were face-to-face—this was the only thing standing in the way of a massive success for their Quest list. Cat opened fire and—
“I’m down! I’m down?!” she yelled in disbelief. The sniper had been amazingly accurate. Cat felt devastated. She’d been so close to victory. She could taste it. It was right there …
WINNER!
The bright letters flashed across Cat’s screen, shocking her out of her self-pity. What?
What?
“What?!” Cat shouted.
“I got them,” Alex said calmly. “I did it. I got them.”
“What?!” Cat repeated, sure she must be somehow simultaneously seeing and hearing incorrectly. “What?!”
“We won.” Alex sounded happy for the first time since the match began. “We won!”
Cat yanked off her headset. They won.
They won!
So … why did Cat feel … kind of bad? She’d been preparing for this moment for weeks. This was exactly what she wanted. She had a stranger tape their team’s victory dance—their randoms, it turned out, were three ladies who looked like they were probably Cat’s mom’s age. They exchanged social media information so they could all get Quest credit for the video, and Alex uploaded it to the app (while also getting reassurance from Cat that she still had their Hall M passes). It all happened so fast Cat could barely process it before they were shuffled out of the play area and back into the masses on the con floor.
They won.
Cat should be happy, right?
So … why was she definitely about to snap at her brother for no reason?
“I need to sit down,” Cat said abruptly, making her way to the nearest wall. She put her back against it and slid down to the floor, her head between her knees.
“Are you okay? Do you feel sick? That’s how I usually feel after VR,” Alex said sympathetically, sitting down next to his sister. He patted her knee awkwardly. Alex was never great with physical reassurances.
“I’m fine,” Cat said, sounding definitely not fine. “I’m fine!” Nope, not that time, either. She sighed. “I’m glad you won the game. Really.”
Alex frowned. “We won the game.”
“Right,” Cat said, forcing a smile onto her face. She shoved her growing feeling of disappointment and frustration down, reminding herself where she was. This was GeekiCon, and they’d just gotten another forty entire points for the Quest. She was totally and absolutely for sure fine. Definitely not upset with Alex at all for any reason. For sure not feeling the way she did whenever she so much as thought about Team Dangermaker. “We won. Go us!”
Alex was still frowning at her.
“No sitting on the con floor!” a harsh voice snapped, and both Cat and Alex snapped their heads up.
“Oh no,” Cat groaned. James M., the angry staffer from the Igor panel, was speedwalking directly toward them. Cat started to move to her feet but wasn’t fast enough—maybe the VR had messed with her balance a little bit. The light above them was blocked out by James M., the convention fluorescents bouncing off the top of his very shiny forehead.
“Hi again.” Cat plastered on her most charming smile. “I like your fanny pack.”
James M. would not be fooled by her false compliments. “You two.” He put his hands on his hips, where Cat saw a convention walkie-talkie hanging from his belt. Not good.
“Who two?” Alex asked innocently.
“Don’t move. I’m calling this in to security. Participants in the Quest will be banned from the convention grounds for life.” James M. reached for his radio.
Excuse me?! “Says who?!” Cat demanded, lurching to her feet. She had to hold on to the wall behind her to keep her balance. She came up to about James M.’s mid-chest—she definitely couldn’t take him in a fight. Cat knew the Quest wasn’t exactly endorsed by GeekiCon, but she’d never heard of anyone being banned for participating. Especially not forever!
“Says me, as of right now.” James M. unclipped his radio and pointed it in Cat’s face. “I’m sick of all you … you Questers and Vigilante League fangirls and fake geeks who’ve never so much as picked up a comic book in their life.” As James M. continued, his face got redder and redder. Spit gathered in the corners of his mouth, right on top of his tiny beard. “GeekiCon used to be about real fans who loved comics. Nerds never used to be cool. Kids like you are ruining this convention, and—”
“Welp, would you look at the time? Gotta go, byeeeee!” Cat talked over James M. so fast and so loud that he didn’t notice until too late that Cat had grabbed her brother’s hand and was diving under the older man’s outstretched arm.
Cat scanned the con quickly and came up with a plan. “Floating sheep! See you there in ten! Split! Split!” Cat dropped her brother’s hand and bolted to the right. She’d meet up with her brother at the giant floating sheep balloon, advertising some new animated series, toward the end of the hall in ten minutes. James M. had no hope of catching them now—not when they were so fast and definitely not when there were two of them running in different directions!
Cat looked behind her just once as she escaped (dangerous, considering the speed at which she was moving meant she had to dodge a human every half second). Alex was already nowhere to be seen. Perfect. James M. was talking furiously into his walkie-talkie, looking around in frustration.
Cat’s eyes met James M.’s for just one moment before she disappeared into the crowd around her. She winked. Hexforce Legends champion, indeed.
13. Collect the contact information of three new friends. (18 points)
15. Beat someone at Hexforce Legends on the convention floor. Create and capture your own victory dance. (22 points)
8
Alex
Alex bent over with his hands on his knees, desperately trying to catch his breath. A giant inflatable sheep hung over his head ominously. This was why Fi was the athlete and not Alex. He just didn’t have it in him. Who would ever want to run for fun, anyway? To Alex, it seemed completely counterintuitive.
“You made it!” Alex looked up, still wheezing, to see Cat appear in front of him, deposited there by the crowd perpetually in motion around them. Cat’s hair was even frizzier than usual now, and she’d managed to tear her cape. A few of the comics on her shoes had started to peel away. Still, Alex was happy to see her—especially since the incident with James M. had apparently made Cat forget that she was angry at him for winning that Hexforce Legends match. Playing had made Alex almost throw up
in his headset. But he was still proud of himself for it, even if Cat had been a bit angry. Plus, they got their Quest points. They might beat Team Dangermaker. That’s what it was all about in the end.
Right?
“I made it,” Alex responded, standing upright. “Barely.”
“Yeah, that was a close one,” Cat agreed, pulling out her phone. “What was that guy even talking about, anyway?” She started to mimic the way James M. talked, all grumpy and sputtering. “I’m a real fan and you’re all fake fans and Vigilante League sucks unless you’ve read all the comics from the start and only I get to say who’s a real fan, and—”
“He absolutely is the worst.” Alex cut his sister off. She could keep going like that all day, he knew. “But he can also kick us out of here. Forever.” Alex felt his hands fidgeting the way they did sometimes when he got particularly anxious. “We should be more careful.”
Cat rolled her eyes but couldn’t say that he was wrong. “Yeah, yeah. I guess you’re right. We can be more careful.” She held up her phone to Alex. “In the meantime, I think I’ve found our next Quest item.”
Now that was something Alex could concentrate on that didn’t make him as nervous as lifelong expulsion from nerd heaven. “Really?”
“Really.” Cat grinned. “Look behind you.”
Alex turned around, one hand on his messenger bag. There, in the middle of their aisle, were three Vigilante League cosplayers, kindly taking photos with any fans who asked. “Number nine!”
“‘Convince three Vigilante League cosplayers to sing “Eye of the Tiger” with you,’” Cat quoted from the app on her phone. “Thirty-seven points!”
“But how—?” Alex began to wonder aloud, before his sister pushed past him.
“Just back me up.”
Alex shook his head. Cat could be so confident. Even though Alex was grateful she was around to handle otherwise awkward social situations like this one, it didn’t make Cat any less annoying in the way she went about it. Sure, the less Alex had to talk to strangers, the better. But he thought there had to be a way for Cat to go about these things without being so … what was the word he got right on that spelling test last week?… domineering. Two e’s, one n. Nailed it.