Bro in Pink Polo
The nerd WhoaWowPowWow tells his tale of triumph over the ultimate alpha male.
Imagine me bringing Molly Mayhem around to the gaming life. Not just any chick. This is Molly Mayhem we’re talking about, gentlemen. So I’m keeping it classy. Before she gets to see any of my Astrobloc skills in the flesh, I have to take her down to the local arcade to make sure she meets the basic requirements. She knows which fighting games are legit. She doesn’t fall for playing games on ticket-spitting machines. She’s cute enough to meet my standards. The boys think she’s alright. So I think she’s alright.
Then, imagine this, right at half past five on a Thursday afternoon, word on the phones is that Billy Beenak is coming for revenge. On who? On me. Just hours earlier, he passed her a note in class. But she didn’t get much of a chance to read it, because I then passed her one of my best anime drawings. From there, he didn’t have a chance. But I guess he figures he can redeem himself by showing up on my home turf. Right as one of the noobs by the door tries to alert us, he comes plowing through, swings the door so hard that it cut-n-pastes the poor noob to the floor. For a minute Billy Beenak and I leer at each other, like a couple of Pokémon trying to lower each other’s defenses. He’s tall, good looking, strong. I’ll admit it—I would lose to him in a game of Ping-Pong, or even hacky sack. But here on my turf, I’m not at all worried. He’s a total chump. I know it not just by the fact that he styles his blond hair in such a suave way, or because he’s wearing a pink polo, but because he’s wearing a necklace with some emblem hanging off it, symbolizing his devotion to a religion that isn’t gaming. There’s some level of respect for him though, as he was choosing to be in the presence of other arcade gamers. And he is the younger brother of Bill Beenak, whose name still sits atop many of the scoreboards of the less important games around here.
So I say to him, “Name the game.”
He gets a bit more respect for naming a decent game: Mortal Kombat Trilogy. But that’s the end of where he earns his respect. He doesn’t even know the Liu Kang mirror match is the only viable meta. Instead he picks Reptile. The stage loads up. He’s already twitching the control stick around like a nervous wreck, and he takes no note of my finger gently resting on the low-kick button. Fight! I unleash the bicycle kick upon his poor, unsuspecting soul—full damage. He recoils his head, like he just woke up to the realization that he’s out of his element, his health is cut in half, and he’s forgotten every single one of his combos, while I’m dash–dash–low kicking him into infinity. The crowd behind us erupts at first, but toward the end of the fight, the whole scene gets so brutal that they start to fall silent. Billy B is weak in the knees, about to fall on the floor in sync with his dead character. Finish him.
I grab him by his wrist before he falls and say, “Sorry, kid, but you have to watch your own demise.”
Now you’re probably wondering which Fatality I go with. Surely the dragon chomp, right?
No. I just saunter up to his dazed character and perform a single uppercut. No fatality. No fancy combo. Just a clean uppercut to finish him, because he’s not worth the extra effort. The crowd almost can’t stomach it.
I turn to Billy B and calmly tell him, “GG.”
He’s got so much sweat dripping from his face that he’s about to short out the machine, which we’ve seen happen before. He pleads with me, “Let me get a rematch—please!”
It’s too cute for me not to smile. But I keep it real. “No re.”
With that, he collapses in real life.
We go to the poor noob, still laid out by the door, pick him up, and dust him off. Molly Mayhem is waiting at the ticket counter, still eager to talk with me, post pics with me on her Insta and whatnot, still wanting to ask me about my rank in Astrobloc. I forgot this whole ordeal, to some extent, was about her. On the surface it was. Deep down we all know it was about the sanctity of the game. They say e-sports was partially saved that day. With Billy B laid to waste, he never dared to return with his legions of Chads, never was able to challenge our noobs to the hoops, Skee-Ball, air hockey, and other games that we never touched. Had he come with those challenges to our noobs, they would have lost the way of the pro gamer. An entire e-sports generation would have been lost. No need to thank me, boys. These random Chads are an E-Z clap for me.
See you in the galaxies.