Chapter 22: Heroically Angry

Chapter 22: Heroically Angry

In a small college dorm room, one found in many colleges across the world, a man threw his VIS helmet at the wall in a rage. The machine crashed against the concrete wall and rebounded back onto the player's bed. Amazingly, the helmet sat intact with not a single crack on the exterior. The player in question grabbed the VIS again, this time setting it back down next to his computer.

"That fucking troll!" The man yelled. He jumped off his bed and over to the stream he had running. The stream had been set for a rather large delay, around a minute. The man felt it was appropriate since he wasn't interacting with anyone on stream. He watched the last bit of his fight with that stupid villain and fumed again as his character got shot with that purple laser.

Heroic, more commonly known as Matt, looked almost exactly like the stereotypical nerd found in old movies. His skin was an unhealthy pale white and his face still had a problematic case of acne. Resting on his face was a pair of almost comically large glasses. The lenses of said glasses shrunk his eyes down into his face, giving Matt a pinched sort of look.

In truth, Matt looked nowhere near as ugly as he sounded. The result of his complexion was a combination of poor nutrition and genetics. Pasty white ran in the family and none of them could keep a tan. The acne came from unhealthy cafeteria eating, a staple at almost any college. This was because copious amounts of grease was the only way to stomach the terrible food.

Matt's glasses were the result of genetics as well. Both his parents were terribly nearsighted and both had passed it onto Matt. He could have chosen to grab thinner lenses; as well as less blocky frames. However, Matt was also the stereotypical poor college student. After he broke his last pair of glasses the cheap frames and lenses were all he could afford.

The combination of Matt's poor condition led him to hold a complex against most people. He noticed the looks people tended to give him. That odd stare that said, "are you auditioning for a part in some play?" It was never anything major, but all the little actions added up over time.

It was why he put so much work into the Heroic persona. It was his dream to work in video games. Matt even went as far as to get his undergraduate in computer science even though math was the worst torture he could subject himself to. When Vert had announced their intention to hire high-level players, Matt saw it as his chance to get his foot in the door.

He didn't want to brag, but Matt was rather good at finding exploits in games. Of course, he hadn't expected the amount of hidden information present in World of Supers. Vert had no list of powers to choose from, so Matt couldn't look at numbers and make spreadsheets. Plus there were no tooltips on how things worked, only terrible tutorials. Instead, Matt had to go in blind.

Which led him to his current problem; that troll going by the name of Dr. Zlo was ruining his game. Players shouldn't be able to change the avatars of other players or steal important quest givers. A lot of people relied on getting quests to raise their reputation. Those playing heroes had to react to crimes after all.

As he watched his avatar die from the trains and log out, Matt changed the stream over to his webcam and overlay. A few of his watchers typed question marks in the chat, wondering why the player had shown himself.

"I'm so fucking pissed guys," Matt started. "That troll shouldn't be able to do stuff like that in game. What is Vert thinking?"

Matt's chat responded with the normal memes and emojis, eventually settling on a spam of the message, "maybe git gud?"

"Shut the fuck up," Matt growled. "You aren't the ones with a girl avatar."

Spams of, "yeah but she hot tho," ran through chat.

Matt's brow furrowed as he read the chat. He knew he shouldn't be feeding the trolls but he was still angry from the defeat. Plus chat was targeting his complex about his looks. Even though it was his virtual character the insults still stung. "I didn't make the character to have fuckin' tits jackasses. I'm not a fuckin' tranny."

It seemed more people were joining Matt's stream, typing away responses. One message caught his eye.

Knuckledragger24:

I bet you secretly like it.

"I do not, secretly like it, you fucktard. I didn't sign up to play a girl in the game so I shouldn't have to play as one."

The argument went like this for a while. The chat would tease and troll Matt while he would angrily lash out against them. Eventually, even Matt got tired of the constant arguing and switched over to his other point.Rêạd new chapters at novelhall.com

"Look enough about the avatar change, the big problem is that this guy took one of the main quest givers. How are we supposed to rank up in reputation if the one issuing quests is kidnapped?"

HipsterZombieUwU:

Just go out and PvP the villains

"It's not that simple dumbass. Heroes and villains have different playstyles. If you want more freedom with the game, go villain. Or pick the vigilante hero. Hero's in the guild have to do things a certain way or they get kicked out. The tradeoff is that you get a steady supply of reputation from patrol quests and such. So it's kinda a big deal when one of the major heroes can be kidnapped!"

More of the chat spammed messages of, git gud and other memes for a few seconds before some others started to agree with Matt's point.

HashPotato:

Superfan39526:

Woah

Dylan didn't know what to say. He'd started playing the character for fun. It wasn't like he expected any sort of major reaction.

xXxDemonSlayerxXx:

You should totally do an AMA or something

Superfan39526:

Nah

I don't really want to share stuff with people

xXxDemonSlayerxXx:

You don't have to share

Just go in as the character

Superfan39526:

No

I'd rather keep Dr. Zlo inside the game

xXxDemonSlayerxXx:

Kay fair

But you should definitely start recording or something

At least send me clips

You turning that dude into a chick was so funny

Superfan39526:

Yeah alright I'll look into it

xXxDemonSlayerxXx:

Sweet

Hey you wanna do a round of SBA2?

Superfan39526:

Yeah alright

Dylan switched his sound over to his headset and jumped online. He and John started up a game of Super Battle Arena 2 and spent the rest of the night mocking each other's terrible shots.