Barks and Bytes - A Sonic Boom Story

Chapter 4 - A Childhood Bully

After the "double-date" with the abrupt ending, my friends and I were playing my game together again. This time, though, I went first, playing as Horns the Owl, until Sticks was next, in which I taught her how to play as Bonnie Bones considering how she never played with electronics before.

"So what does this button do?" The badger asked, pointing at the X button.

"Press the X button, and you'll perform a special attack," I replied. "In this case, Bonnie will throw her boomerang that will gather hard-to-reach items."

Sticks obeyed and fulfilled the said task. "Now I am wondering if those characters are absolutely being mind-controlled by this strange contraption I am holding! But why don't they move without us?"

"That's the point of video games. You control to win."

"Maybe we can go out, and find those warriors who we will teach how to move by themselves."

My eyes narrowed. "Oh, brother."

After playtime, I was simply using my laptop to look up my latest e-mails. Most of them were pretty much praises for my game, but the very latest one, entitled "I am back, fox boy!" appeared to be suspicious, and not in a very good way. I read it anyway, and it turned out that it was like a death threat:

"Found you at last. Remember me, Miles Prowler? At school, I used to be the most glorious of them all until you found a way to take everything from me. First, I'll make the world wide web a living nightmare for you. Then, worse things in real life will happen to you soon. Sincerely, the creator of Fastor."

While the letter was a little vague, my heart already started pounding like a bass drum. Who was the "creator of Fastor" sending me this potentially threatening letter? It was likely that I've forgotten about someone and something long ago...

On the following day, I tried to get my mind off the letter by simply chatting with Zooey on my computer. You know what they say, "ignorance is bliss," well, most of the time.

"Hello, Tails! How have you been?" She typed.

"Fine, thank you," I typed back.

This time, she asked for a second date, in which she was to decide the next place. "On our last meeting, you picked our place, which was The Secret Splendor Smokewood. Perhaps we can plan another date for sometime later? This time, however, it's my turn to choose where we want to go."

"What place would you like to go to?"

"Not sure yet, but it'll come to me." Her response ended with a winking emoticon.

"Take as much time as you need, Zooey!" I replied with a smiley face.

Right after the online conversation, suddenly came back the creator of "Fastor," sending me another message, more detailed than the first:

"I'm back again, Fox Boy! Just to let you know, I'll be able to hack into your account on Talk-a-Lot in the next six hours. You know why I'm doing this? Because malformed freaks like you don't deserve to have friends or especially a girlfriend, even if you work hard! Either you're equal, or you're not, but don't take it from me, look at yourself at the mirror. Those two tails of yours have always look so ugly. First phase currently in progress."

Call me "Fox Boy," would you? Now that I thought about it, that familiar insult brought back a glimpse of a traumatic memory bounced back before my eyes. I won't tell you the name or reveal the bully's past actions towards me right now, but I can say that the childhood enemy had done terrible things to me, beyond typical harassment. Anyway, out of considerable anger, I wanted to reply back with some nasty words. Unfortunately, when I clicked on the reply box, this was when I realized that the bully "blocked" me from saying anything in return. If anything, though, I had to be on the lookout for any upcoming damage to my virtual property.