Rodney runs his character closer to mine, tossing a bunch of rifle ammo at my feet.
“Okay, bet.”
“Stay behind me, babe. I’ll protect you,” I tell him, picking up the ammo and adding it to the stack I already had. We move through the town we’re in, picking off anyone else we run across.
SnowsOffspring(vip): You’re flirting! Right in front of my salad??
JumpingNinja: No way!! I thought I recognized your voice from Rodney’s stream!
CJforMayor(mod): Stream hopping is kinda cringe normally but I’m willing to make an exception. Who’s Rodney?
DesperateDanny(vip): I wanna know so bad he sounds like such a disaster LOL
MatchMaker001: Does that other guy kinda sound like the CringeFailKing??
JumpingNinja: That’s BlueStreamer and RodKneeonComs!
SnowsOffspring(vip): No fucking way
“Hey!” I say, looking over at chat. “Language! Yeah, I see you. Don’t think you can hide in chat like that.”
Normally, I don’t catch little things like that. Even with my chat on a special mode that makes everything come through slower, it’s still a shit ton of messages. My viewer count usually sits around fourteen thousand and when I’m streaming in an actual tournament, it can get all the way up to forty thousand.On those days, I don’t even try to read chat. It’s way too overwhelming.
Blue and Rodney. I’ve seen them a little bit. I’ve watched a few of Blue’s streams, especially when he’s doing one of his huge charity events. I think I’ve even played against Rodney a time or two during tournaments. This is the first time we’ve ever interacted though.
“I really don’t want people jumping between streams but if you guys wanna go give Blue and Rodney some love and follows, that’s totally fine. Just don’t be annoying, okay?”
I know I have a bigger following than Rodney but Blue, I’m pretty sure, is a bigger streamer than both of us. They seem like cool dudes, so I have no issue sending some of my followers over there. Now, if they jumped in and were assholes to me, they’d get absolutely no shout-outs. We don’t platform assholes in this house.
I shoot another player. Looking at the top of my screen, I see we’re down to the final ten. Sure, I’ve been carrying these two but that’s okay. I kind of expected it since I’m playing on my smurf account, or the account I use when I’m not on my main account. This way, I’m not automatically put into ranked matches and I can hide my username so that viewers are less likely to jump into matches and try to target me.
“This way,” I say in game, leading Blue and Rodney into a warehouse. “So I hear we might know each other.”
“Wait, what? I think I would remember a voice like yours.”
I chuckle softly. “My chat seems to know you two.”
The person I assume is Blue says, “Chatters are such tattle tales!”
“They are,” I agree, “but in thisonecase I don’t seem to mind. I have to find my hypeman after this, after all.”
“Oh god,” Rodney says and it makes me snort. My chest does a funny little flip at the sound of his voice, sounding so endearingly embarrassed by everything that’s happened.
The door behind us opens and I turn around, caught off guard. Gunshots ring through, the two of us shooting at the same time. Blue is out of the game, leaving only eight people left including Rodney and I.
“I guess it’s just the two of us,” Rodney says, looting Blue’s body. “Oh, he had more ammo for you! And a flash grenade. And more soda than a guy could ever need. Why does he have so much soda on him? What the heck?”
“He knew he couldn’t bathe in the blood of his enemies so he decided warm soda was gonna have to do. Don’t step on his dreams, man.”
“Great,” Rodney grumbles. “Your voice is hot. Your gameplay is hot.Andyou’re funny? This is not fair.”
I clear my throat. “Did you mean to say that out loud?”
Instead of answering, I just hear the man start screaming through his mic. I laugh my ass off, so much so that I almost miss when the map starts to shrink again, pushing the remaining players closer together.
We sprint out of the warehouse and I angle myself to dart towards the treeline, hoping the others don’t have the same idea as me.
“Dodge and weave,” I call out.
