Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

In the dim glow of the moonlight, nobody spots the cyborg assassin peeling herself off the back of a stone gargoyle’s head. She moves with the liquid grace of a stalking cat, her eyes, one human brown and the other an electric blue, scanning the damp street before her. In one smooth motion, she raises the scope of her sniper rifle to the blue eye and peers through it. There. Her heat sensor picks up a small figure scurrying behind a building. The assassin smiles. From the way the figure moves, it’s obvious that it’s a dwarf. Dwarves are armed with machine guns, so it’s in her best interests to eliminate this one before he spots her. Her finger caresses the trigger. Just one more step and the dwarf will be out of cover. She takes a breath to steady herself. The dwarf’s hat comes into view, followed by his head. She pulls the trigger just as a huge shield appears in front of the dwarf.

What? It takes a second for the assassin to realize what’s just happened. The shield is being held by a huge, hulking figure. A grinning giant of a man. The second it’s taken the assassin to reassess the situation costs her. Before she can react, the dwarf swings his machine gun over the giant’s shield and the world explodes. Machine guns are rarely accurate. But then, they don’t need to be.

“VICTORY” flashes onto my screen as the assassin, along with the stone gargoyle, tumbles down onto the street. Grinning, I tap my fingers against my keyboard with practiced ease.

Duuude!

Sourdawg:Yasss!

The robot assassin was the last of the enemy’s team. Both teams started out with five members each, and the robot assassin managed to pick off three of my team members within the first ten minutes of the round. When our second member was sniped three minutes in, I told Sourdawg, who has chosen to play the machine-gun-toting dwarf, that we needed to stay well away from the assassin so we could kill off her teammates before getting to her ourselves. He agreed—he always agrees—and the two of us did what we do best, with me playing as the gigantic tank.

Teamwork makes the dream work!

My grin widens. Sourdawg is such a dork, I swear. He’s always ready with these little clichés that should be cringey but, coming from him, are adorkable. Plus, he’s not wrong. Ever since we started teaming up, Sourdawg and I have held one of the highest ranks in the Southeast Asian section of Warfront Heroes.

Ooh, watch the replay. Look at my shield. Looook!

On the screen, the replay starts, showing my ridiculously muscled character crouching behind his lead shield as he crawls behind Sourdawg’s character. I was so careful to make sure that I was covered by the shield the entire time so that the assassin’s heat scans wouldn’t pick up my body heat.

You move very smoothly for such a big guy.

Dudebro10:Hey, big guys can be graceful too.

Dudebro10:Plus, I’ve been doing ballet since I was—

Oh shit. Delete, delete. Gah. I take a deep breath to recenter myself. What was I thinking? The well-earned victory must have gone to my head.

So anyway, you remember that sourdough starter I ordered weeks ago?

Dudebro10:The one made from vintage grapes peeled by anointed virgins under a full moon next to Lake Como?

Sourdawg:Okay, smartass. Plus, it’s not a full moon. It has to be under a waxing moon.

Dudebro10:I know you’re kidding, but I don’t actually know if you’re kidding.

Sourdawg:SIGH. Anyway. It arrived yesterday, and guess what?

Dudebro10: Does it taste like the tears of anointed virgins?

Sourdawg:What do the tears of anointed virgins taste like?

Dudebro10:Iono. Like unicorn breath.

Sourdawg:Okay, that’s not actually helpful. And it sounds gross. Anyway, no. I don’t know what it tastes like, because it was DOA.

Dudebro10:DOA?

Sourdawg:Dead on arrival.

Dudebro10:I know what DOA stands for. But what do you mean?

Sourdawg:Exactly that. It was dead by the time it arrived. Maybe it got too hot during shipment or something, but all I got was rancid goop.

Dudebro10:Oh nooo! RIP, unicorn breath starter.

Sourdawg:I was so bummed.

Dudebro10:I bet! You’ve been looking forward to that starter for months. Let me guess: You want to send them a strongly worded email.

Sourdawg:VERY strongly worded. I can’t do it alone.

Dudebro10:Of course not. The level of passive aggression we’re aiming for requires teamwork. Okay. Let’s see. “To Whom It May Concern…”

Sourdawg:“I would just like to flag—”

Dudebro10:“—as a matter of utmost importance—”

Sourdawg:“—the fact that my order was DOA and is very definitely not made of unicorn breath.”

Dudebro10:“I thought I’d bring this to your attention.”

Sourdawg:“Looking forward to your timely reply on this very serious matter.”

Dudebro10:“Regards, A Disappointed Customer.”

I lean back in my seat and review the email we’ve composed together.

One of our best works, I must say.

Sourdawg:I like how you managed to slip in “as a matter of utmost importance.” A true masterstroke.

Dudebro10:/bows. Thank you. I appreciate that. I thought “Looking forward to your timely reply” was a particularly nice touch.

Sourdawg:I thought it would put some pressure on them.

Dudebro10:It definitely will.

Sourdawg:Truly, the perfect email.

Dudebro10:You’re not sending it.

Sourdawg:Of course not.

I can’t help but snort at this. Then I realize that my cheeks hurt, because I’ve been grinning nonstop since our round ended.

You should send them something, though. Like, a real complaint. I mean, you don’t have to be a dick about it, but they should know that their product arrived dead.

Sourdawg:IDK, bro. Can’t I just order another batch and hope they do it right this time?

Aaand now my smile’s gone. Not because Sourdawg is such an adorkable pushover but because of the word “bro.” Every time he calls me “bro” or “man” or “dude,” it feels like a needle pricking into my skin and letting air out. Erm, blood? Okay, gross. All I’m saying is, it makes me feel deflated. And it makes me want to scream “I’m not a dude!” at him, which is stupid, because whose fault is it that Sourdawg thinks I’m a guy? Who was it that chose the most cis male–sounding name in the history of names?

/raises hand

In my defense, I didn’t do it for shits and giggles. And I definitely didn’t do it thinking I would form any meaningful friendships on, of all places, Warfront Heroes. Don’t get me wrong: as far as gameplay goes, it’s right up there with the best of them. The weapons are so creatively varied there’s no way anyone will get bored, and the character designs are the most diverse in the history of games. Plus, there are no overtly sexualized female characters with watermelon-sized boobs bouncing wildly as they run, which is saying something in the gaming world—a world dominated by very, very frustrated guys. (And I don’t mean frustrated as in “Gah, my coffee machine broke!” I mean the other kind of frustrated. The sexual kind, in case that wasn’t obvious.)

Despite all these progressive steps that the makers of Warfront Heroes have taken to be more inclusive, they still haven’t managed to win the last battle: harassment. Sure, a few of the more overt trolls have been banned. But in order to get banned, a player would have to make truly awful, abusive comments that count as threats. Anything less than that and all they get is a gentle reminder from a mod.

When I first started playing, I naively chose the name Doom&Bloom. Okay, maybe it was sort of a stupid name, but whatever, most people’s handles aren’t serious. There are people called Puffbug and LightningLord, so I was sure I’d blend right in.

Except the thing with Doom&Bloom was that the word “bloom” apparently marked me as a girl, and I was quickly inundated with messages from the other players. The messages ranged from “Girls can’t shoot. This is a REAL game, so fuck off and stick to your dolls” to the more succinct “Boob pic?” to actual rape threats. And that’s only in the game’s waiting room. Once a round began and the adrenaline started flying high, the abuse became so much worse. Most players interact with one another verbally. I have a headset, and the first few battles I played, I made the mistake of speaking to communicate with my team. As soon as they realized I was a girl, people I was grouped with reacted in one of the following ways:

“Great, we’re gonna fucking lose ’cuz the algorithm grouped us with a chick. Fuck it, I’m just gonna sit in the starting area and wait until we lose this round so I can join a new group.”

“You’re a girl? And you’re not playing a healer? Fuck you! Switch to a healer!”

“Ignore them. I really don’t mind girls playing this game. I think it’s hot when girls are into guns. How old are you?”

And sure, I can block people, which I do, liberally, but for once in my life, I wanted to be treated as just a team member. As a human. I just wanted to play the freaking game without having to click the Block or Mute buttons.

I stopped speaking into my microphone, communicating with my team via chat messages alone. But that didn’t stop my screen name from giving me away. Each time I was harassed, I reported the player to the moderators, who promised that they would look into the matter. But each week, when I checked the status of the players who had harassed me, I saw that they were still active. Nothing had happened to them. They’d likely been reprimanded and then left alone. And I noticed that the algorithm was starting to group me with the lower-ranked players. I was winning the majority of my games, so I knew I shouldn’t be ranked with the bronze-tier players, and yet here I was, moving down the tiers with each complaint I made. Maybe the company thought it was protecting me by tweaking my profile so I was less likely to encounter the people I reported, but at the end of the day, the result was still the same: I was being punished for reporting the harassment.

For a while, I considered quitting the game. There was so much resentment festering inside me, and I was also exhausted. Every time I logged on, my stomach clenched painfully, my shoulders rose to my ears, and my neck muscles went completely rigid. I wasn’t enjoying it anymore.

Then one night it hit me: I could be whoever the hell I wanted to be. Goodbye Doom&Bloom, hello Dudebro10.

When I logged on for the first time as Dudebro10, my shoulders were rigid, my hand clutching my mouse as usual. I kept expecting someone to shout “IMPOSTER” at me. And then mods would swoop in like Valkyries and, I don’t know, hit me with the ban hammer. But nothing like that happened. People just went “Hey” or “ ’sup?” before launching into a discussion on strategy. Nobody asked me to play a healer. I chose my character, a warrior tank, and nobody told me that girls can’t play tanks.

Nobody said, “Why’re we following a chick around?” Nobody asked why I was going west instead of east. Everybody just followed my cue. It was only when the round ended that I realized my cheeks were wet. I’d been crying as I played, and it was as though the tears were part of a thawing. My shoulders were relaxed, my neck muscles no longer hurt, and my jaw wasn’t clenched as per usual. I was…enjoying myself.

Overnight, I went from fielding dozens of shitty messages every day to invisible. Just another dude.

That was a year ago. Over time, I joined a guild, and being part of a team brought Warfront Heroes to a whole new level of enjoyment. After playing a few rounds, the team and I would hang around and chat. I told them that I couldn’t do voice chat because my parents would kill me if they knew how late I was staying up, and they accepted it, no questions asked. They probably thought I was a twelve-year-old kid instead of seventeen.

The later it got, the more players logged off, and soon, it was just me and one other teammate left online: Sourdawg. Our chat flowed so seamlessly that I didn’t realize it was just the two of us left. And when I did, I didn’t mind. Sourdawg was great to talk to. We chatted for ages about the game—our stats and how to improve them, the various weapons we preferred, and so on. When I logged on the next day and saw the green light next to his name, a glow of happiness warmed my chest. It brightened when my computer booped with a message from him. That night, we played and chatted for four hours straight. I could barely stay awake in school the next day, but it was totally worth it. And we’ve been chatting every day ever since.

I never planned to make a real friend on Warfront Heroes. I just wanted to play in peace. I never meant to deceive—I mean, of course I knew I was deceiving, but I thought it would just be me logging on, playing a few rounds peacefully, without being harassed, and then logging off for the night. No harm done. I never expected to befriend someone like Sourdawg, and even after we started chatting with each other, I never expected to be so close to him. We’re, like, properly friends now, which is freaking weird, and we share stuff about each other outside of Warfront Heroes. Well, I share under the guise of Dudebro10, which sucks, because it feels really slimy doing that. Here’s what I know about Sourdawg:

He’s 17 and he lives in Singapore.

He has some kind of obsession with sourdough, hence his screen name.

His dream is to get into the CIA—the Culinary Institute of America, that is, not the other CIA.

He’s maybe the only decent guy on WH. One time, we were grouped with a player whose screen name was, and I kid you not, SexyLexxi. I winced when I saw it. Sure enough, the other guys started heckling her as soon as the chat opened, but Sourdawg said, “STFU, guys,” and they did. Why couldn’t the algorithm have teamed me up with him when I was Doom&Bloom, damn it?

He’s got seven different kinds of sourdough starters. Have I mentioned his obsession with sourdough?

He’s a swimmer. He recently competed in the national swim meet and came in second. He was bummed about not getting gold, but he is honestly more bummed about the dead sourdough starter. Oh my gosh, I can’t believe there are already six things on this list. I could go on for ages, but I’m going to stop here because it’s starting to feel kind of weird.

Given that I know so much about Sourdawg, it might seem weird that I don’t know his actual name, but I’ve never dared to ask, because what if he asked what my real name is? Then I’d have to dig myself deeper into my lie and tell him that my name is Bob or Tom or whatever, which feels even slimier. The closer we get, the guiltier I feel. It’s a good thing that Sourdawg lives in Singapore and I live all the way in Jakarta. We’ve got a whole sea separating us, so at least I can be confident that we’ll likely never bump into each other in real life.

My computer dings.

Another round?

Dudebro10: Gah, I’d love to, but I should probably get to bed. And you should too, isn’t it super late over there?

Sourdawg:Okaaay, Uncle.

I bite my lip, smiling again as I imagine Sourdawg saying “Okay, Uncle” in that typical Singaporean way. Then that stab of guilt again. He should be calling you Auntie, not Uncle. I shake it off and type back.

Sorry, it’s just my first day at school tomorrow.

Sourdawg:Got it. Go get your beauty sleep. Later!

Dudebro10:G’night!

The moment I log off, all the joy that usually comes with chatting with Sourdawg dissipates. First day of my stuffy, super-traditional, elite private school tomorrow. Ugh. I still can’t believe that Mami and Papi did this to me. But I shan’t despair, for I am the Fabulous and Marvelous Kiki Siregar. The other students at Xingfa School aren’t even going to know what hit them.