The Tapper Twins Go to War (With Each Other)
Page 9
CLICKCHAT COMMENTS ON PUBLIC WALL OF “AMIGOGOD”
XIzKillinIt IF U HAV BEEN GRIEFED BY “INVISIBLEDEATH” POST HERE
SKRONKMONSTER He kills people on deathmatches by being invisible!!! It is cheating
XIzKillinIt Plus he stole 5000 goldz from my account it was definately him.
numbah_tehn OMG he’s killed me invisiby in deathmatches a bunch of times
bryce_thompson I think he has bn making my computer crash
killrkickr I had goldz stolen from my account to
nightstaker InvisibleDeath hacked my Itunes!!! My dad had 2 change r creditcard no
i_m_ batman_4realz I am InvisibleDeath
numbah_tehn shut up James no u arent
bryce_thompson I bet ID is one of the Finish kids
SKRONKMONSTER I think he is Finnish too
Wenzamura I think my castle got rampaged by ID last week when I was logged off
shabado02 think ID has been hacking me too—my acct is v laggy
i_m_ batman_4realz InvisibleDeath made me poop my pants
numbah_tehn shut up James
killrkickr ID is bad news we should call the cops on him
XIzKillinIt EVRYBODY TELL AKASH HE NEEDZ 2 BAN THIS GRIEFER!!!
CLAUDIA
Reese got so hysterical about InvisibleDeath that he even infected my parents.
MOM AND DAD (text messages)
(MOM) Reese says Finnish hackers may
have put malware on our home
network. You should change all
your passwords
(DAD) WHAT???
I don’t really understand it either
Do I seriously have to worry
about this?
Hard to tell. Think so
I miss the good old days when
people just got mugged on
the subway
AKASH
The whole thing was insanely irritating. I had, like, two tests and a five-page essay due by Friday, plus my prep class for the SHSAT, plus play rehearsals. So I was totally stressed, and suddenly I had these stupid sixth graders messaging me every five minutes to tell me I had to ban InvisibleDeath for, like, destroying their lives. And when I ignored them online, they started hassling me in the hallways at school.
It was like a plague of idiots in soccer jerseys.
CLAUDIA
I’m sorry. It’s my fault they all freaked out on you.
AKASH
I guess so. But you weren’t the one I was mad at. It was them.
Mostly because it was the principle of the thing. Like, I built that whole planet! They’ve been playing on it for free since January, not a single one of them has ever even, like, thanked me for it—and then suddenly, they start ordering me around like I’m their slave!
And some of them had SERIOUSLY bad attitudes. Your brother was just kind of, like, whatever. Low-grade annoying. But that Xander punk kept going [EXTREMELY STUPID PERSON VOICE], “Yo, AK-Fiddy-Seven, you gots to lock dat ish down!”
Who even talks like that?
And he wasn’t even saying it right. “Fiddy-Seven” is “FIFTY-seven.” But it’s an AK-FORTY-seven.
What an idiot. Is it true his ancestors were on the Mayflower?
CLAUDIA
I think so.
AKASH
Wow. That is just sad. America’s really gone downhill in the last 400 years.
And he kept whining about how somebody stole 5,000 goldz from his account! Which is totally impossible. And it’s not even real money! Hello? I invented it! IT’S WORTHLESS!
The last straw was when Xander started texting me at eleven o’clock at night. I got so mad, I was like, “I should just blow up Planet Amigo.”
That’s when I decided to stop being a fair god and start being a vengeful god.
CLAUDIA
Akash got so mad at Reese and Xander that he told me to do what I’d wanted from the beginning—which was to destroy everything they owned on Planet Amigo.
At first, I wasn’t sure if I was up for it. Killing them in the deathmatches hadn’t been nearly as satisfying as I’d expected, and I still couldn’t figure out why.
But I thought about it for a while, and I decided the problem was that the deathmatches weren’t real enough. Every time I’d killed Reese and Xander, they’d just respawned back in their giant castles. They didn’t even lose any goldz. Other than their paranoid freakout over InvisibleDeath, once they logged off, it was like nothing had ever happened.
Meanwhile, I was still feeling so much leftover trauma from the “Vest Song” horror show that I was convinced it’d take me years of therapy to get over it.
So I figured the only way to guarantee justice had been served was to COMPLETELY ANNIHILATE Reese and Xander—to kill all their soldiers, burn down their castles, and leave them with nothing but bitter tears to show for the hundreds of hours they’d spent building their stupid little Amigo empires.
I realize that sounds a little psycho. But the thing is, after you’ve been in a war for a while, it messes with your head. If you’re not careful, you can wind up convincing yourself that something totally psycho is not just normal, but actually a smart thing to do.
Plus, god Ed. Note: (Amigo god, NOT real God) told me to do it. So I figured it must be okay.
CHAPTER 14
THE THURSDAY NIGHT MASSACRE
CLAUDIA
First, Akash fixed it so InvisibleDeath was impossible to kill. Then he gave me 1,000 firebombs and a shotgun with unlimited ammunition.
I asked for lasers I could shoot out of my eyes, but he still wouldn’t go for it.
AKASH
I don’t know why you were so hung up on lasers. Everybody else on Planet Amigo just has swords and arrows, so the firebombs and the shotgun were more than enough to achieve tactical dominance.
CLAUDIA
Whatever. I wanted to make sure Reese and Xander were both online to see me wipe them out, so I created an InvisibleDeath ClickChat account and went looking for them on AmigoGod’s wall:
CLICKCHAT COMMENTS ON PUBLIC WALL OF “AMIGOGOD”
XIzKillinIt yo AK-57 wut up wit InvisibleDeath? Did u ban him??
InvisibleDeath Did someone mention my name?
XIzKillinIt OMG U R DEAD!!!
InvisibleDeath Summon the one you call “Skronkmonster.” I have a proposition for you.
XIzKillinIt hang on I texted him hes coming
XIzKillinIt And u better give back my 5000 goldz or I will get cops involved
SKRONKMONSTER Im here. WHO R U???
InvisibleDeath I am Death, come to deliver my final judgment. How does 8pm tonight sound?
SKRONKMONSTER What do u mean?
InvisibleDeath Meet me in front of Skronkmonster’s Planet Amigo castle at 8pm. Bring all your soldiers.
SKRONKMONSTER first tell us who u r
XIzKillinIt first give me my 5000 goldz back
InvisibleDeath Xander, please shut up about your 5000 goldz. I did not take it.
XIzKillinIt HOW DO U NO MY NAME????
InvisibleDeath I know everything. Plus it’s on your home page, idiot. Are you going to meet me tonight or not?
XIzKillinIt WE CANT FIGHT U BC U CHEAT
InvisibleDeath how do I cheat?
XIzKillinIt U R INVISIBLE DUUUUH
InvisibleDeath I will cast aside my cloak of invisibility and show myself to you at 8pm tonight in front of Skronkmonster’s castle. BE THERE.
SKRONKMONSTER 8pm ur time or ours?
InvisibleDeath What do you mean?
SKRONKMONSTER arent u in Finland
InvisibleDeath No. 8pm NYC time
SKRONKMONSTER ok
REESE
After InvisibleDeath challenged us on ClickChat, me and Xander went into total war mode. We spent all the goldz we had buying more soldiers and upgrading their weapons, so by eight o’clock, we had almost 600 soldiers with plate armor and platinum swords.
Then we waited outside my castle to kick Inv
isibleDeath’s butt.
CLAUDIA
MetaWorld has a gazillion options for avatars, so it took me a while to decide what InvisibleDeath should look like. Eventually, I went with a little girl in blond pigtails, a blue dress with yellow polka dots, and big dark eyes that made me look like a Japanese cartoon character.
I looked totally cute. I was so tiny my shotgun was twice as big as me.
It seemed like the best way to go, because I figured the more teensy and harmless I looked, the more devastating it’d be for Reese and Xander when my cute little girl slaughtered their armies and burned down their castles.
Here’s how they reacted when I showed up a couple minutes after 8:00. Their army was so big it looked like a forest of heads behind them:
METAWORLD CHAT LOG
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InvisibleDeath killed XIzKillinIt.
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InvisibleDeath killed Skronkmonster.
CLAUDIA
Shooting them that first time turned out to be almost as satisfying as the first deathmatch kill. But I didn’t have much time to enjoy it, because right after I shot Reese and Xander, their corpses dissolved, and while they were respawning back in their castles, their whole army attacked me at once.
Seeing all 600 or whatever soldiers draw their swords at the same time actually looked really cool, although it scared me so much my heart started to thump.
Then they all ran at me, and I had to start shooting.
It got crazy fast. My whole monitor filled up with soldiers. They kept hacking at me with their swords, but Akash had made me invincible, so it didn’t do any damage. And they were so close I didn’t even have to aim—all I had to do was keep pressing “F” to fire and “R” to reload.
Little red pixels of blood were flying everywhere, and the corpses started piling up so high that I had to move backwards to make room for more.
I think I must have been hitting the fire and reload buttons too hard or something, because pretty quickly, my forearms started to hurt.
Every ten seconds or so, the chat log ran a tally of how many soldiers I’d just killed. I was up to about 100 by the time Reese and Xander came back.
I couldn’t see them, because my screen was full of soldiers and pixel blood. But they started going nuts on the chat:
METAWORLD CHAT LOG
InvisibleDeath killed 21 Skronkmonster NPCs.
InvisibleDeath killed 14 XIzKillinIt NPCs.
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InvisibleDeath killed 17 Skronkmonster NPCs.
InvisibleDeath killed 24 XIzKillinIt NPCs.
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InvisibleDeath killed 32 Skronkmonster NPCs.
CLAUDIA
A few seconds later, I heard Reese through the bedroom wall, yelling back and forth with Xander on FaceTime. Xander’s plan must have been to circle around and attack me from behind.
Which was brilliant.
(I’m being sarcastic. All I had to do was turn around to kill them.)
METAWORLD CHAT LOG
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InvisibleDeath killed XIzKillinIt.
InvisibleDeath killed Skronkmonster.
CLAUDIA
By now, my wrist was seriously cramping up from hitting the buttons over and over again, and I started to worry that if I had to shoot all 600 soldiers, I was going to get carpal tunnel syndrome and be crippled for life.
Fortunately, just then I remembered I had firebombs. I started chucking them at the soldiers, and that took it to a WHOLE other level.
METAWORLD CHAT LOG
InvisibleDeath killed 42 Skronkmonster NPCs.
InvisibleDeath killed 31 XIzKillinIt NPCs.
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InvisibleDeath killed 37 Skronkmonster NPCs.
InvisibleDeath killed 54 XIzKillinIt NPCs.
CLAUDIA
I could hear Reese in his bedroom, yelling “NOO!” and “I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS!”
Then Xander quit.
METAWORLD CHAT LOG
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InvisibleDeath killed 26 Skronkmonster NPCs.
InvisibleDeath killed 31 XIzKillinIt NPCs.
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XIzKillinIt has logged off.
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InvisibleDeath killed 53 Skronkmonster NPCs.
REESE
Sometimes, it’s not that cool being Xander’s friend. This was one of those times.
I was totally skronked Ed. Note: not a real word (but probably means “very sad”) that he quit on me like that.
CLAUDIA
Xander must have quit FaceTime, too, because I heard Reese yell “XANDER?” a few times, like he couldn’t figure out where he went.
Then he stopped yelling and started moaning—loud, wailing moans, like a dying cow.
To be honest, it was kind of upsetting. By now, Reese’s soldiers were all dead, so I started lobbing firebombs at his castle.
METAWORLD CHAT LOG
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CLAUDIA
At this point, Reese’s begging and moaning was starting to get to me. I didn’t even want to taunt him anymore.
So I shot his avatar to put him out of his misery.
METAWORLD CHAT LOG
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InvisibleDeath killed Skronkmonster.
CLAUDIA
After that, he didn’t come back. But his castle was so big that it took another couple of dozen firebombs to burn it down.
I could still hear Reese moaning in the next room. Then Mom (who was home early that night) must have gone in to see what was wrong, because the moaning stopped, and I started to hear muffled voices. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, partly because I had to keep banging on the “T” button to throw the firebombs. But I could tell Reese was upset, and Mom was trying to cheer him up.
By now, I felt totally gross. It turns out killing a few hundred soldiers, even if they’re totally fake and look like Legos—and even if it’s totally justifiable revenge—is even less emotionally fun than shooting somebody’s avatar seventeen times in a deathmatch.
Burning down a giant castle feels kind of horrible, too. Especially when it’s your twin brother’s castle, and he won’t quit moaning about it in the next room.
And it’s making practically your whole arm cramp up, so it’s
physically painful on top of everything else.
But I am not the kind of person who quits a job without finishing it. I kept lobbing firebombs until I got the message:
METAWORLD CHAT LOG
InvisibleDeath burned down Skronkmonster’s castle.
CLAUDIA
The muffled talking in the next bedroom had stopped by then. It was so quiet I could hear the traffic whoosh by on West End Avenue.
I sat there for a while, staring at the screen. All the soldiers’ corpses and blood had dissolved. There was nothing left of Reese’s Planet Amigo empire except the scorched hole where his castle used to be.
The more I stared at it, the more disgusting I felt.
So I went to the kitchen to get a toaster pastry. Because when I am feeling down, a toaster pastry usually helps.
Reese and Mom were sitting at the kitchen table. Reese had this incredibly sad look on his face, like he’d just finished crying. Mom was rubbing his back and saying, “Well, sweetie, isn’t that just what happens in video games?”
And in this tiny, trembly voice, Reese said, “You don’t understand. I worked SO HARD on it! And it’s GONE. ’Cause he CHEATED.…”