Kicked Around

"Oh Fuck!" Erik said out loud. Erik turned on his gaming console and put on his headset. He rushed into a party chat as he loaded up "Guns A-Blazing". "I'm sorry guys. I got held up!" Erik said quickly over the party chat.

"Can you ever make it on time?" username LordRats said.

"At least now we don't have to forfeit," username HeadCase said.

"K, get into the squadron in-game. We only have 5 minutes left, " username Roger_Dodger said.

The text on the screen said, "Kire has entered the squadron." Kire was Erik's username on the game network. Everyone called him "K" for short.

Erik joined his other companions: Roger_Dodger (Roge for short), LordRats (Rat for short), and HeadCase (Case for short). Together, they made up the team "Prodigy" on the multiplayer game "Guns A-Blazing". They were a four-person squadron that played in the amateur e-Sports division of "Guns A-Blazing (also called G.A.B. or gab for short).

GAB was Erik's favorite game. He was obsessed with it. Every day after school, he would come home and play for at least 2 hours. He was very skilled at the game now and knew every corner of every map.

GAB had different multiplayer game modes, but the preferred e-Sports game mode was "Seek and Destruct" which featured two sides: Offense and Defense. The objective of the game if you were on Offense was to plant a bomb at one of the two bomb sites located on the map. If you planted the bomb, it would explode in 60 seconds. Once the bomb exploded, the Offense won the round. If you played Defense, you tried to stop the Offense from planting the bomb. If the Offense planted the bomb, your objective was to defuse it before it exploded. The bomb took 7 seconds to defuse once a player on the Defense started to defuse it.

Each round lasted 2 minutes. You played until the time ran out, the objective was met or until all players on the opposing side were dead and the bomb was either not planted or defused. Typical e-Sports rules were to play a best of 7 rounds (the first team to win four rounds will win the match).

Every Sunday night, "Prodigy" played in a weekly E-Sports tournament. The tournament was a 16-team single elimination tournament, which means if you lost a game you were out. Winning the tournament moved up the team's global rank. Merely competing in the tournament helped with rankings as well, as long you didn't lose in the first round.

The full squadron joined the lobby with their first challengers of the night, "Underworld."

"These guys again?" Rat said. "How many times do we have to kick their ass before they just pack it up and go home?"

"Didn't we shut them out three weeks ago?" Case said.

"Yeah, but the last round was a clutch comeback," Roge said. "All you assholes got yourselves killed and left it up to me to take them all on 1 v 4, with the bomb planted."

"Oh yeah, how could I forget?" Rat said. "It was the single greatest moment of your life."

"Damn straight," Roge responded. "Just don't let them sneak up on you again K."

"Yeah, yeah," Erik said. "Just make sure your milk is warm enough for your victory drink old man." Case and Rat started laughing. They were still in High School. Roge was the oldest of the group in his mid-twenties, and the team razzed him about it whenever they had the chance.

"Thanks for that," Roge said. "Now, get ready. We are on defense first."

The timer sounded down in game: "Launching in, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1: Launch!!!!" As the players launched into the arena, Roge's voice came over the speakers.

"Alright, everyone stick to your routes... Flanks, keep us updated. K, take the lead; I'll cover you..."

"Roger, Roger..."

The first round started. Erik ran out front behind the first cover point. Roge followed to the second position. "Westwall check," Case said. "Eastwatch check," Rat said. Roge and Erik continued to cover each other until they made it to the middle of the map. Then, they split into two opposite directions. Erik ran towards bombsite A and Roge toward bombsite B.

"2 at Westwa.." Case said, but his comm died before he could complete his callout, indicating he was killed. "2 at .." Rat began to call out, but his comm died as well. "We're all alone K," Roge said. "Stay al... B!" Roge's comm went dead. Erik checked the scoreboard. Case managed to get a kill before he died but it was three on one against Erik. "The bomb has been planted," the game said over Erik's headset. Erik was at bomb site A, so he knew the bomb was at B. Erik started to make his way to B. 45 seconds remained as Erik cautiously stepped to the side entry to the hall of the bomb site. He could see the bomb, but there were five entrances to the room. This first opening was not covered, but Erik knew as soon as he entered, the firefight with the remaining three opponents would begin.

Erik decided to backup and try another entryway where there was a better line of sight. As soon as he turned around, a sniper's bullet met him in the chest, and the score screen appeared "0 - 1". "Nice one K," Case said as the comms of his other dead fellow teammates returned now that the round had ended. "I didn't see him," Erik responded.

The replay of the final kill was showing how the opponent had Erik in his cross-hairs of the sniper for several seconds before making the shot. "He was playing with you," Rat said. "Shake it off guys," Roge said. "Get ready for the next round."

The next round started, and the team took their spots. "4 going to B," Case said. Erik started firing at the opening, but again a sniper took him out. "Damnit!" Erik yelled at the TV. Erik watched as the rest of his team ran toward bombsite B as the bomb was being planted. First, Case was taken out. Next, Roge. It was four on 1. Rat took his time and saw one sniper looking at the entrance to bombsite B. Rat killed him with his sniper rifle. He continued forward and saw another sniper on the roof of a building. Rat quickscoped this 2nd sniper. As he was ejecting the cartridge from the chamber, another sniper from the other team took him out. The score screen reappeared "0 - 2".

"Inconceivable!" Rat yelled out.

"Oh, so close..." Case said condescendingly. "Hey, at least I got 2 of them," Rat responded. "You needed two more," Roge said as the video of the final kill started. "I can't take them all on myself," Rat said. "Pickup your game old man."

The screen displayed the message: "Switching sides," indicating that they would be playing Offense the next round.

"Alright, everyone rush B," Roge said. The match started, and Erik picked up the bomb. The entire team took one of the five entryways into bomb site B.

"Keep an eye out," Erik said. "I'm running up the middle."

"The odds of...," Case started.

"Never tell me the odds...," Erik said as he rushed to the bomb site. The 5th entryway contained the entire opposing team, which proceeded to gun down everyone on Erik's team all at once, starting with Erik.

"Inconceivable!" Rat yelled out again.

"Fuck!" Roger screamed as the score screen reappeared "0 - 3".

"Well that didn't go well," Case said. "Next time, don't go all Solo on us."

"Did you see any of them when we rushed in?" Rat said as the final kill video displayed.

"K, what the fuck is up with you tonight?" Roge yelled. "We're three rounds in and you still have a goose egg."

"I must be a little rusty," Erik said.

"You better get your ass to practice this week," Roge said sharply. "This is fucking bullshit." The screen changed over to start the next round.

"Same thing," Roge said. "Rush B." This time Erik planted the bomb then trenched himself in the corner of the lower level. Everyone was frustrated and tense. They weren't communicating with each other on the comms, but Erik could see the outcomes to the firefights scrolling on the lower part of the screen. Case killed one on the opposite team and then was killed. Next, Rat was killed. Roge managed to kill two, and then was killed. It was now 1 v 1 with the bomb planted.

"45 seconds left," Erik thought glancing at the time remaining. To the right of the bomb site was one of the five entryways. Erik saw movement. Crates were stacked in a line, and we're sliding on the ground towards the bomb site. Erik knew this tactic. He had used it before.

A player could use the crates as cover and then crawl to the bomb site. You can shoot through the crates, but you didn't know where exactly the enemy was, so you might hit them, you might not. Erik ran along the far side of the wall and then aimed down sights. Just then, a flashbang exploded blinding him. The blinding effect lasted for about 5 seconds. "It's a trap!" Erik thought to himself. Erik frantically looked around trying to see his opponent as the blinding effect was wearing off. Just then, another flashbang exploded, blinding him again. Before it wore off, Erik was shot down.

"WHAT THE FUCK K!" Erik heard over the speaker. 15 seconds remained when the opponent ran into the bomb site. With 3 seconds remaining, the bomb was defused. "0 - 4. YOU LOSE" displayed on the screen.

The final kill video played as Erik's teammates swore at him up and down. The game ended and pushed all the players back out into a game lobby.

"K, I need to talk to you now," Roge snarled. "I'll catch up with the rest of you later."

"Later guys," Case said. "Late," Rat said. Both left the lobby so only Erik and Roge remained.

"What the fuck was that?" Roge said. "You're our scorer. That's your job. You put points on the board. We went 0 and 4. Everyone had at least two kills overall, and you had nothing. You planted once and couldn't defend a 1v1. What the fuck man?"

"I'm sorry," Erik said. "I just moved to college this week and..."

"We all know your situation," Roge said. "Rats was grounded for a week, but he still snuck on after his parents went to bed to get in some practice. And Case sprained his wrist doing God only knows what, but he's still playing at the same level. You go missing for a week, and now you're the worst player on the team. I can't have that out of our lead point scorer. You've got to get better."

"I'll get better," Erik said.

"Yes you will, or you're out," Roge said. "Starting this week, you'll be on every Wednesday for tournament practice. You won't be late anymore for Sunday tournaments. If you don't show up, you're off the team. I'm not going to put up with this shit."

"OK, calm do.." Erik said.

"I'll see you Wednesday," Roge said and abruptly exited the lobby.

Chapter 11

"Fuck," Erik said to himself.

"How the fuck did I get so bad at this," he thought. "This is fucking crazy..." GAB was one of Erik's best stress relievers. And now, it caused him even more stress than what he was already feeling.

Erik felt horrible. He felt like his day couldn't get any shittier. He needed a "pick-me-up," so he walked over to his computer and immersed himself in Lara's new videos. Before he knew it, he was sitting naked on his chair masturbating furiously. After five orgasms infused with moments of staring at his phone while typing in messages to Lara and then deleting them without sending, which then led to fits of anger where he would throw things and cry, Erik was now exhausted. Erik rolled into his bed and fell asleep.

The next morning, Erik slowly awoke, showered, and went to class. He sat in class, completely zoned out. He would stare at the front of the class, or into his book, completely drained of all emotion and rational thought. Erik looked like he was a shell of himself. Class ended and Erik resumed his day on autopilot, letting his routine take over and dictate all of his actions. Erik rode the bus back to the dorms, and then he walked to his room.

Erik sat down at his computer and saw even more material uploaded to Lara's website. Erik perked up and became excited. He began watching the new content. Again, Erik shed himself of his clothing and began masturbating. Each time he came, he would be filled with thoughts of deep emotion for Lara, resembling love and lust. After seven times, Erik felt like he couldn't do this anymore and put his clothes back on. Erik checked his phone like he had every 5 minutes since he left Lara's the day before. No response from Lara. Erik still had 2 hours before class, so he took a nap.

Erik woke up and walked to the bus stop for his next class. Again, Erik's mind was focused on Lara. He couldn't think of anything else. Erik sat through class and let his routine take him over again so that he didn't need to think. On cruise control, he sat through class until it ended, rode the bus back to the dorm, and headed to the cafeteria for dinner. Erik took the food up to his room, avoiding as many people as he could. He drowned himself in crappy cafeteria food, Lara's porn, and video games. He was alone and unhappy.

This continued all week long. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were all the same. Erik ran through the exact same routine, avoiding as many people as he could to sit in his room and wallow in his own self-pity. As time went on, Erik became even more numb to the world. Every day, he waited for a response from Lara and every day that went by without one was another day he spent lusting over her alter ego, Lola the pornstar.

The only deviation to his zombified routine was his Wednesday night practice with "Prodigy". Roge introduced "Dragonstone", "Drags" for short. Roge said that this was his cousin and he'll be joining the team as an alternate.

"Drags just got GAB for his birthday," Roge said. "He's another COD defector, but he's played on teams in several other FPS games."

"Well, welcome to the gift of gab," Case said. This was a common cheezy expression that was used whenever someone discovered the game for the first time.

"Drags will watch this practice," Roge said. "He's going to need to learn the game and the team," Roge said. "Today, we start with our last epic failure on Sunday. I'll roll the video and stop it for comments."

Each time Roge stopped the video, it was to point out something that Erik did wrong. The practice lasted 2 hours when it usually would only last 30 minutes. After a usual 30 minute practice, the team would "hit the pubs" which meant that they would play regular multiplayer matches with random people. As a team playing randoms, they would always dominate. That's where Erik felt like a god amongst ants.

To Erik, GAB was the best first-person shooter game on the market. They had ported it to all the major platforms that supported the requirements and the development studio for the game set up a major E-Sports contingent for competitive multiplayer gameplay. In high school, Erik spent a significant portion of his spare time playing GAB and becoming very skilled at the game. Playing GAB was one of the things that Erik enjoyed most. And playing with his fellow teammates made the game even more fun

But, after 2 hours of being told what he did wrong on Sunday, Erik felt even worse than he did before he started playing. He logged off after practice and decided he needed to restore himself. He logged on to Lara's website and watched her "Dirty talk" video. This video featured a man who held a camera and stayed silent as Lara "talked dirty" to him while giving the man a blowjob. Eventually, the man was standing still while Lara backed into him and jumped up and down on his cock. She would yell things at him like "Fuck me harder!", and "Oh this fucking cock feels so fucking good". She continued talking dirty until she eventually stopped fucking him, went to her knees and continued talking dirty while the man came all over her face. At this point, Erik came all over himself. Erik cleaned himself up, closed his laptop lid and went to bed.

By the end of the week, he would see Lara everywhere. Anywhere he went, everyone looked like Lara. Erik's hallucinations drove his psychosis into a deeper obsession where he would write letters to Lara in class and then, in Erik's mind, he would act out reading the letter to her in person. Except, it was the same letter that Erik wrote and rewrote over and over again, never feeling like the words came out correctly. He almost had the entire message memorized, and each revision offered no new substance. Yet, to Erik, he still didn't feel like it was "good enough."

Then finally, on Friday evening when Erik was in the cafeteria, he saw Bret sitting at a table right outside of the food line. He looked at Bret and Bret looked back. Their eyes locked, but neither of them made any indication of acknowledgment of the other. And then, Erik walked over to where Bret was sitting. Erik stopped at the table, both of them still looking at each other.

"Can I sit here?" Erik asked.

"If you want," Bret responded.

Erik sat down. Bret was the first person that Erik had spoken to, in real life, throughout the past five days, and it was also the last person before Erik avoided everyone. Erik remembered how their last conversation ended and felt bad that he stormed off like he did. And now, he felt like he needed someone to talk to.

"I'm sorry," Erik said.

"For what?" Bret asked.

"For last weekend," Erik said. "I've been... Kinda fucked in the head. And I'm not sure what to do."

"Don't worry about," Bret said. "We all have shit going on."

Erik couldn't take it anymore. He needed another opinion about his situation with Lara. "If I tell him, he's going to want to see her website... and everything," Erik thought. "Fuck it, who else am I going to talk to about it?"

"I need to tell you some things, but I don't want Steve to know," Erik said with a serious tone.

"Are you gay?" Bret asked. "Is this your way of coming out to your friends, over cheap pizza in a cafeteria? It's OK man, I always kinda knew. We support you, we hope the best for you..."

"Asshole," Erik stopped him. "I need help about a girl."

"Go on," Bret said.

"That website I've been building," Erik continued. "It's for this girl I've kind of been seeing."

"Kind of been seeing?" Bret asked. "Sounds special. Have you kinda been fucking?"

"Yeah," Erik said quickly and softly.

"Oh," Bret said intrigued. "Now I get it. Keep going..."

Erik told Bret the whole story, how he met Lara, building the website, how she acts whenever things get intimate. Everything. The conversation continued from the cafeteria up to Erik's room. At the end, Bret had lots of questions for Erik.

"OK," Bret started excitedly. "This is the best fucking story I've ever heard. I need to see this website you created, like right fucking now."

Erik loaded the website into a web browser and logged in.

"Wait," Bret said. "You didn't fuck this girl on camera did you?"

"No," Erik responded.

"Oh good," Bret said. "I'm not sure I'm ready to see your dick yet, and I don't want to have that awkward conversation about boundaries. Whew... Dodged a bullet there. OK, so quick question. Have you fucked her in the ass?"

"What?" Erik asked confused.

"Because I've always wondered if you fuck a porn star in the ass, it probably just feels like a pussy cause of all the guys that have stretched that shit out before you."

Erik stared at Bret. "Are you going to help me or not?" Erik asked.

"I am helping you," Bret said.

"No, you're not," Erik asked. "You're fucking with me." Erik was getting angry.

"Alright look, if she's good at fake fucking, then she's a good actress," Bret continued. "That will tell you if she's fucking with you or not."

"What?" Erik said. "What the fuck does that even mean?."

"If she's good at playing up for the cameras," Bret started, "then she is totally playing you too. If not, then maybe you have a chance at something with her."

In some strange way, Erik saw the logic in Bret's crude wisdom.

Erik started a video on his laptop.

"God bless the internet," Bret said under his breath. Erik shot Bret a look of disdain. Bret looked back at Erik and said, "You know, just... in general..." Bret and Erik looked back at the screen and continued watching the video.