Rapid Click

Prologue - Chapter 0

I connected my headphones to my laptop and rushed to login into Glitch to watch my favorite streamer. I played with the strings of her hoodie as the stream loaded.

"What's going on y'all. Welcome back to the channel. Hope y'all are feeling lovely, cuz I know am! Drop an emoji with ya mood in the comments. For my A1, Day Ones. My Rya Guys and Girls, you know the emoji to use for the vibes! If this is your first time joining, welcome. What we do on this channel is play some Virtue, listen to some music, and have a little fun just kickin' it. A little bit about me, my name is Ryan, I compete for Outwit in the Virtue Pro League. I typically play the role of DPS in league play, but, I honestly love playing Virtue so much, I'll play any role, any character, honestly anywhere. Who knows maybe, we'll get some 5v5 in tonight. A little bit of housekeeping, this channel is all about respect. That means I only have two rules. Be kind and no racist stuff. If ya momma wouldn't like it, then keep it to ya self, ya feel me. And if she is down with the racist shit, well, get a new momma!"

Grabbing a bottle of water, I moved my mouse to open the comment section. My eyes lit up at the number of comments and viewers that were filling up the stream.

"Looks like we got a few subscribers here on the stream, what's going on ya'll! Thanks for coming back. I think to get the ball rolling, I'm gonna start off with a few 1v1 as a warm up before moving into some team play. If you want to join me in a game, make sure you drop your gamertag in the chat. As I do every stream, I'll be selecting a few people at random to play with me. Now, before y'all get upset, I am not selecting favorites. This will be completely at random... but, to increase your chance of getting selected, make sure you hit the subscribe button. I hate the shameless plug, but, a boy's gotta eat. Not only do you have a higher chance to play with/against me, but also subscribers get access to exclusive content, giveaways and more. Plus, you'll receive notifications of when I go live, so you won't miss a minute of the action."

I watched as the comment section started to go nuts as thousands of Gamertags began to flood the feed. For shits and giggles, I added her own handle.

You never know what could happen, right?

"Oh man, y'all are crushing it! Don't stop adding your Gamertags. I'm going to use the system to randomly select my first 1v1 shortly. But, before, I announce the winner, a quick message from today's sponsor. Today's stream is sponsored by Brittney Buys, the premier shop for new and used sneakers, apparel, and accessories. If you're looking for exclusive sneaker drops, dope artwork or even a cool community then look no further, Britney Buys is for you. Plus I got the hook-up for y'all. Any of my viewers that use my special code Ryan30 get 30% off their first purchase. That's right. 30% for the Rya Guys and Girls. So hit the link in the description and make sure you use the promo code Ryan30. And now time to announce our first winner."

I held my breath as the random selector was activated.

"And, here we go, my first opponent for 1v1 is........TristramLogjam. Congrats! I'm going to invite you to a 1v1. I hope you're on here and watching still cuz it's your time to shine."I sighed both a sigh of relief and one of disappointment at my username not being selected. As I waited for the match to start, I took another look at the comments. 

What a stupid ni$%e&I

 don't know why I even bother watching this channel

Someone roundhouse kick this ni&&*%I

'll do it, send this 🐒 where he belongs

Send him back to Africa lol

You said it, put that monkey on a boat 😭

A boat, you know they can't swim 😆

Similar comments by the dozen began flooding the feed and soon the entire feed was overrun with hate speech. I was shocked at what I was witnessing. I had heard of hate raids happening to streamers but I'd never been on a stream while it took place.

"Looks like some jerks in here decided to pick me as a target for some racist stuff. We don't need that here nor do we want it. We're all about good vibes here on the stream. Y'all may think it's funny, but, it's not. The moderators are going to be removing the users that are leaving these comments. For the rest of y'all, it's time for our first match. TristramLogjam prepare yourself."

My eyes dashed between the match that was taking place and the nasty comments that continued to roll in. I could barely keep up with the match commentary by Ryan. I keep thinking to myself, if that was me, what would I do? Would I just ignore it or would I shut the whole thing down? Although I tried to stop reading the comments, I couldn't help but keep scrolling. Some of this stuff was downright mean and vulgar. The completion of the match took my attention away from the comment section and back onto Ryan.

"What a good first match that was. Give it up for TristramLogjam, y'all."Checking the comment section again, I saw people sending TristramLogjam congrats and thumbs up on fighting a hard match. 

That match was cool

I couldn't imagine fighting against a ranker

I know right, there's only 500 players in the world that hold that title

Bump that, there's only 200 that have that title in all of North America!

Tristram did his thing doe, cuz lord knows how quick the match would be over if that was me 🤦‍♂️

Still, he's a ranker, he prolly was playin around with him

"Hopefully, y'all enjoyed that match as I did. Tristram, keep working on your skills. We're going to keep it moving right along. It's time to select another player."

I once again held my breath as the random selector was activated. Seconds felt like minutes as the widget sorted through the Gamertags in the chat.

A smirk crossed Ryan's face before announcing the winner. "And we've got another lucky winner, ThaShyTroll. Are you here in the chat?"

My heart sank as I released that was me. My Gamertag was pulled.

"I'm going to send you an invite to a 1v1. ThaShyTroll, I hope you're ready for this."My hands began to clam up as I realized I'd be going head-to-head with a ranker. Could I really do this? I knew it was just a game but, the thought of thousands of people watching me play...made me nervous. Since I hadn't yet confirmed that I was in the chat, I still had a chance to log off. No, that would be worse, right? Unsure of what to do, I loaded up Virtue on my desktop and went to my request section to find the invitation awaiting me.

My hands shook as I moved the mouse to accept or deny the invitation. It was just a game. I accepted the invite and was immediately taken to the match-loading area. To steel my nerves, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes doing my best to relax. I thought back to the daily training I'd be doing. I thought about the local tournaments that I'd been dominating for the last year and how well I did practicing with the local universities' Virtue teams. I could do this. A loud bang in my headphones shook me from my self-hype montage. I checked the stream footage and saw what looked like a SWAT team running into the room where Ryan was located.

"Uh, what's going on here?" Ryan shouted."Down on the ground!""Huh.""Down on the ground now!""Just wait a minute, I think there's been a mis-" Ryan said as he turned towards the officers."He's got a weapon! He's got a weapon!"

The next moment was one that changed my life forever. I along with 25,000 live viewers watched in horror as a barrage of bullets filled the screen.

I ripped my headphones off and ran downstairs screaming.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!"

Everything slowed down as I got to the bottom of the stairs and I saw my brother's lifeless body slumped over in the chair with the entire world watching.