Robots and Cyborgs Play The Game Of Life

“Pillar, pillar. Left, fuck, argh, Noooo… Rapunzel, how are you getting stunlocked… argh. BOF BOF BOF. FUCK IT.” Rapunzel winced as Elsa screamed into her headset. Elsa had been excited at first, seeing the rogue-druid combo as an easy win for their arena rating, but Rapunzel was disappointingly terrible at PvP it seemed.

 

“Argh, no, wait… you made me download too many new addons. It’s messing up my timers… is it… this?” Rapunzel said, her fingers tying themselves in knots as she tried to keep up with Elsa’s whirlwind of a Death Knight.

 

“Nevermind! Just keep yourself up!”

 

Rapunzel’s screen looked like a terrible whirl of green, purple, and blue as Elsa’s attacks made mincemeat of the druid. Now that the death knight wasn’t worrying about actively keep Rapunzel’s paladin alive, Elsa was carrying the team as the rogue started to panic and blow cooldown after cooldown uselessly on Elsa’s armored avatar.

 

“RAPUNZEL, HAMMER, HAMMER, HAMMER!” Elsa screeched in her ear again, and Rapunzel barely pressed the attack key in time just as the rogue tried to use his vanish attack. Rapunzel breathed a sigh of relief as Elsa brutally murdered the other player, slumping down in her seat as the win screen popped up on her computer.

 

“Elsa, I don’t think I can run arenas with you. This is way too much stress.” Rapunzel sighed, switching her blood elf’s arena gear back to her roleplay dresses.

 

“Huh? I thought you did great.” Elsa replied, zoning in next to Rapunzel in her mismatched clown outfit. The pieces of armor on the orc assaulted Rapunzel’s eyes, but Elsa was a no-nonsense technical player that didn’t even bother transmogging her gear. All Elsa ever cared about was the best in slot armor, after all.

 

Things had been strange between the two girls after their heart to heart. Rapunzel was glad that she finally had someone to share all her nerdy hobbies with, and was even happier that Elsa was finally opening up to her after so many years. But Elsa just took everything too seriously. Rapunzel’s still felt a little embarrassed when she tried to get Elsa to do a raid finder Siege of Orgrimmar with her. An hour later and three very forced interviews and applications, Rapunzel was now apparently part of their server’s premier raiding guilds all because Elsa “didn’t want to be related to a scrub”.

 

“Wanna do Winter Veil stuff with me, Elsa?” Rapunzel said, noticing all the other players decked out in red and green Santa outfits.

 

“What? Those are a waste of time. I need to do ladder matches anyway.” Elsa said, and Rapunzel saw the death knight fade away while Elsa’s friend tag switched from Warcraft to Starcraft icons.

 

Rapunzel shrugged, then started clicking through the quests. It didn’t take long for the sounds of Protoss units and buildings completing to start coming from her headphones.

 

 “He’s a fucking /b/tard.”

 

Rapunzel had to make sure that she wasn’t imagining things. She could count the number of times Elsa started a conversation with me on one hand. And that number would be zero.

 

“Who’s a /b/tard?”  Rapunzel asked with a little bit of apprehension. The biggest thing that would make Elsa talk would be 4chan, but Rapunzel still wasn’t sure about Elsa’s crazy attitude shift whenever she did go into full robot mode.

 

“Kristoff. He said ‘inawoods’ yesterday. I know he did.” Elsa almost growled. The sounds of dying Terran marines immediately followed as Rapunzel processed what Elsa was saying.

 

This was interesting.

 

“You noticed that?” Rapunzel said, clicking through caves of yetis as she went on with her questing.

 

“Yeah. There’ve been other things too. He said ‘your face when’ to Anna when she ate some jalapenos yesterday.” More screaming marines and the sounds of exploding tanks.

 

“Elsa, that’s something that people actually say. You’re kinda tinfoiling here.” Rapunzel said, trying to calm her down.

 

“Rapunzel, he was saying ‘potatoes’ the other day, too! POTATO!” Elsa grumbled. Rapunzel had to stifle a laugh.

 

The sound of more dying terrans and finally the victory music played in Rapunzel’s ear.

 

“Anna really likes him, doesn’t she?”

 

Rapunzel didn’t say anything as the silence hung in the air.

 

“Elsa…” she tried to find something, anything to say.

 

A minute passed, and Rapunzel saw Elsa’s blizzard status turn grey and offline.

 

“Damnit, Rapunzel…” she said softly to herself.

 

She drew her legs up to her chest and let out a tired sigh.