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”
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 InvisibleDeath’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
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
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
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
CLAUDIA
I could hear Reese in his bedroom, yelling “NOO!” and “I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS!”
Then Xander quit.
METAWORLD CHAT LOG
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
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
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
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.…”
Then he started to cry a little.
It was awful. This was supposed to be my moment of triumph. I’d won The War!
Except I didn’t feel triumphant at all. I felt disgusting.
I went to the cabinet and got out a box of toaster pastries. There was only one left.
“Hey, Reese,” I said. “Do you want the last toaster pastry?”
And he snuffled and said, “No. You can have it.”
“I think it’s yours, though,” I said.
“That’s okay,” he said. “You can have it anyway.”
That made me feel even worse.
Because even though my brother can be incredibly annoying, he is basically a good person. And even though making him miserable was perfectly fair considering what he and Xander had done to me, that didn’t mean it was right.
Instead of eating the toaster pastry, I went to my room and messaged Akash:
CLAUDIA AND AKASH (ClickChat Direct Messenger)
AKASH
The truth is, I was ALWAYS going to put everything back the way it was.
CLAUDIA
Seriously?
AKASH
Of course! I am a fair god. And the players on my server are my children. Even the punks.
So when I made you impossible to kill, I also programmed it so in 48 hours, anything you’d killed or burned down would automatically restore.
CLAUDIA
WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME THAT? I wouldn’t have had to spend all that time feeling awful!
AKASH
But you NEEDED to feel awful. So you could see for yourself that mindless destruction and revenge don’t solve anything. And your brother and that idiot Xander had to learn to appreciate what they’ve got, even if it’s just on a server. And that karma exists for them—so when they mess with somebody online, they’ll get messed with right back.
Basically, all three of you needed to learn a whole buttload of life lessons.
CLAUDIA
I guess you’re right.… You’re very wise, you know that?
AKASH
Well, I AM god. Ed. Note: not literally. Just on Planet Amigo.
CLAUDIA
Good point.
I definitely learned my lesson. The War made me psycho in a way I’m not proud of.
I am NEVER going to war with anybody again. Unless they completely deserve it.
And even then, I’ll assemble a coalition first (either through the United Nations, or the people who sit at my lunch table, or whatever) so I have allies who can check my behavior and make sure I don’t get psycho.
This was a very important lesson. And I’d like to point out that I learned it EVEN BEFORE the whole situation blew up in my face in a spectacularly horrible way.