SmackDown: MadMike's Revenge!

Round 1, Team 3: Angel - @jewel1307

Angel

by jewel1307

"I don't believe this shit," the man mumbled to his computer monitor. He took a sip of his extra-large Watty and grimaced in disgust. Picked a stray orange pube from his tongue. "They didn't even read my fuckin' story! The fuck is this comment supposed to mean, anyway!? 'Loved the way Pixy Dust rode Unicron LOL!' There wasn't any Pixy Dust or Unicron in my fucking story, nor was there anything remotely funny in it! What the hell are you LOLing at, you dumbass!?"

He rubbed his temples, leaving orange Cheetos dust behind. His head killed right now. Had been hurting a lot lately, but this took the cake. Nobody understood his beautiful writing. Their comments were irrelevant. It made him sick. Made him want to teach them all a lesson.

A grin worked its way across his pale face.

Yeah. Teach 'em all. A lesson.

The man brought up the profile of the latest imbecile to comment on his riveting story. Got a good look. Memorized the name and the face.

He went to his gun rack. Grabbed his finest and most powerful weapon. Locked it and loaded it.

The hunt was on.

Club Cafe beckoned him like a wasp to a sticky jam jar. Inside, swathes of young bodies gathered in tight groups around images of their idols. The man spat, disgusted by their open displays of lust and adulation, as if the youngsters considered the media moguls some sort of gods.

The air, heavy and hot, stank of hormonal teenagers. Their incessant chatter reverberated inside his aching head. He scanned the images blazoned around the club in search of similar to that which he saw on the imbecile's profile. With each passing hour he grew more and more agitated.

In a darkened corner, he spotted anime and Marvel fans. They fought valiantly against a tidal wave of Directioners who pushed and bumped, shoving the less popular fandom back into the nether regions. Helping was the furthest thing from his mind the moment he spotted a group of pubescents with LOL-face icons. His little troll was sure to be among them.

He entered the group and scanned the faces, finding more than he expected.

"Bloody trolls," he said as he listened to their conversation. A record of everything they said scrolled rapidly by, the text immortalised on the wall behind him.

Their chat ranged from stupid memes to light porn. What they considered good sex banter gave him a momentary chuckle before the pain in his head reminded him of his mission to find and give a lesson to the LOL-faced troll who dared to taint his doorstep with idiocy.

"Do any of you know AlexTheGreat?" he bellowed to be heard above the din. The words joined the others on the wall, AlexTheGreat highlighted in blue.

But before anyone could respond, the chat disappeared, replaced by the face of an angel. She was stern with the group, reminding him of his teacher – the one he had a major crush on way back in the days of his misspent youth. Just as suddenly as she appeared, she was gone again.

He ran into her numerous times as he cruised the club, at one point he even attempted to strike up conversation with her. She was like a whirlwind – always on the move and difficult to predict. He noticed a pattern developing though, and started searching for groups with similar themes to those she appeared in, and waited. And waited.

The LOL-face troll provided a distraction, turning up in one of the groups to boast about his latest comment conquests and show off the irate replies he'd received. It reminded him that he would be doing the community a service to rid the Wattyverse of the likes of him and his friends.

"Terminate them all!" He laughed with menace.

He withdrew a Source Scanner from his pocket and set about picking through the user's skeletal coding for the troll's IP address. Once located, he entered the mainframe database using his most prized weapon – a one-of-a-kind key decoder he himself designed and lovingly named the Ban Hammer – entered the IP and dispatched the troll instantly. A few friends joined him soon after.

He bathed in satisfaction.

With the sudden disappearance of AlexTheGreat and two of his mates, what remained of his LOL-friends began to panic and blame his Angel. They ran from the club screaming obscenities. He felt no remorse for his actions on the trolls, only regret for the abuse Angel received as a consequence.

He monitored the club relentlessly. Each time someone mentioned Angel in connection with the disappearances, he scanned their source and dispatched them too. Before long, people began to fear Angel. Her cheerful yet stern decorum became dejected as she too blamed herself for the loss of so many.

In an attempt to cheer her up, he called around to her profile to read and leave constructive comments on her stories. They were wonderful, and he found himself entranced by her characters and world building. She was so understandably popular that he didn't expect to receive acknowledgement, never mind have her read and offer tips on his own stories.

Her private message caught him unawares.

"Hi there! I just stopped by to thank you personally for all your support. It was just what I needed to lift my spirits after the horrid week I've had."

He smiled, his orange-stained lips spreading wide to reveal similarly stained teeth. "It was the least I could do after all the hassle you got in Club Cafe," he said.

"You saw that?"

"Yeah, and I'm sorry about that," he said in apology. "Those little trolls deserved it though, posting shitty comments on people's stories like that and bragging about it."

"I don't know what you mean. What comments?"

Caught off guard, he realised then what he'd said and struggled to come up with a feasible reason for knowing something he shouldn't. "I just read it somewhere. In the club."

"Can you show me where?"

"I..." He paused, again struggling to come up with a reply. "Club Cafe, but I don't remember where exactly. It was one of the group chats you shut down I think."

Angel didn't reply.

Two days later, as he followed her movements around Club Cafe, the Wattyverse vanished, replaced by a black void of endless nothingness. He thought he'd gone blind at first, but as his eyes adjusted, he noticed the URL bar floating above his head. The login gateway refused him entrance, no matter how many times he uttered his name and password.

Realising that he himself had been a victim of the Wattyverse's equivalent to the Ban Hammer, he swore and tried to use the key decoder to access the mainframe – without success.

"What the hell?" he swore, banging the device against his palm. Orange crumbs coating the device sprayed in an arc of cheesy-smelling dust. "Work you piece of shit!"

At that moment he received the email he'd been dreading.

"Permanently banned," it said. "Account terminated for behaviour contrary to Terms of Service."