Of the many thought flying through your mind one strikes you suddenly. You lost. You, Alex Baker, Yoshiyo100, the third best player of Medieval Warfare in the whole world, had been defeated by the tricks of the Dynamite Duos. You lay down on the ground because you know there is no hope. You’re in a corridor six feet wide and outnumbered ten to one-hundred. After what seems an eternity you see the two words of death appear on your computer screen. Game over.

You wake up in your guild’s kitchen, but you don’t care. You lost. It had never happened before. Questions cross your mind like why now? You begin to cry. You’re crying harder than you did when your dog died. You’re crying harder than you were when your grandfather died. You’re crying all because you virtually died on Medieval Warfare. You turn off your computer and cry yourself to sleep.

Your dream that night involves the same situation you were in in Medieval Warfare the past evening. Except, instead of a party of royal guards you find the throne room and you jump for joy.

“Yes we won,” your dream avatar cries.

“No!” you wake up sweating. You know that your mind is just trying to trick you. How were you going to face everyone tomorrow? First you get put in detention for playing in school, then you lose in the attack against the Dynamite Duos, and now you’re actually sleeping! Slowly a plan forms in your mind, a plan that just might pull everything off. Then, after making sure everything was set you go to sleep peacefully.

“Alex, you look horrible?” your mother wakes you up with her sharp remark.

“Ugh, I don’t feel good either,” you reply, faking it all.

“I’ll be out doing errands but you can stay home today,” she tells you in a soothing voice.

“But mom, I really want to go to school,” you try not really hard to convince her.

“No, you stay home and get some rest, I’ll check on you when I get home,”

“When’s that going to be?”

“Oh, I don’t know Alex, around one or two.”

“Okay, bye mom, have fun.”

“Bye, get well!”

You wait for the garage door to open and close then you leap to your computer and start it up.

The familiar game screen pops up with the character evaluation, messaging box, item screen, and status bars. You log in.

Username: Yoshiyo100

Password: *****************

Again you’re in your guild’s kitchen. You wake up to find no one around you. Well duh! You think. They’re all at school. You move your armor bodied avatar with your keyboard’s directional keys and walk around the giant castle home of the butterfly’s guild. The Butterfly Guild consisted of all your classroom’s students and the students of the surrounding classrooms. You were a small guild, maybe only ninety-four kids; which was small considering that guilds could be up to 250 members. The widgets on the main screen inform you of the time and your location. It’s 9:32 and your walking away from the Butterfly’s Guild Castle and towards the Dynamite Duos Fortress. Your red Shrianeer armor glistens in the morning sun. Suddenly, a message appears on your game screen: “The hot sun is making you thirsty; you must drink two quarts of water or find shade in the next five minutes.” A red timer appears on your screen counting down the time until you die of thirst. You sigh. Medieval Warfare was a survival game, you had to eat and drink regularly. You check your drink supply, five glasses of water, some beer, three cups of tea, and three packets of hot cocoa. You take out two glasses of water and drink; the timer then disappeared. Then you continue on your plight. Your objective was to make up for yesterday’s failure. Since no one was in the castle it would be easy to get in the throne room and dominate the entire fortress. The plan was flawless. As you head up through the grounds of the fortress carelessly.

All of a sudden you hear an alarm go off, guards start charging in from all sides. You smile, unlike royal guards these were a simple kill. With a combination of keystrokes you swing your Nicrododeer sword, the third best weapon in the game, around and into your enemies’ bodies.

Soon they were defeated. You continue up the fortress’ front entrance and it’s as you’re doing this a thought drives into your mind this place is probably loaded with guards, better be careful.

It was as you were walking up the front walk that a completely random thought crosses your mind: Wow, without anyone with me this is the most boring game I’ve ever played. You attempt to push the thought away. It couldn’t be true. But, it keeps coming back like a boomerang. Wow, without anyone with me this is the most boring game I’ve ever played. No! You’ve been obsessed for almost a year now! You were not going to quit, you were not going to stop, you couldn’t, and it wasn’t thinkable, you were at the top of your game. No, you were obsessed and you were going to stay obsessed. Even if everyone else quit you would be there. Still, the though kept coming back again and again.

After ten minutes of this mental conversation/argument you get mad and turn off your computer. There, I’m not playing, now what do I do?