Hello, fellow FanFiction readers. This is a one-shot fanfic that will be going against several other fanfics of this same account as a friendly writing spar between members of the Smoky Hill Anime Club. Hopefully, the other members of the club will not post a fic, resulting in this fic winning by default, meaning the author will get some sort of prize from the club leaders

The rules were to include five carefully selected words in the fic (family, past, money, illness, dark); these were rather simple rules.

For future references, the author of this fic will go by the alias Poison Cloud. Poison Cloud currently has no active FanFiction account, but has written FanFiction before.

Please do not send random spam or flames; you will be blocked shortly afterwards.

This fic has coarse stereotyping regarding gamers. Offense should not be taken; the text should amuse you if you look close enough. But those that are should not read this.

Disclaimer: The following idea and real life concepts do not belong to the author:

Negima

Best Buy

Playstation 3

The Net Idol's PS3

Damn idiots. . .

In a truly dark night that blazed with a coldest blizzard, where pelts of snow would crystallize against the surfaces they rammed into with a crackling sound, huddles of heavily coated humans shivered frivolously against a concrete building that spanned itself several meters high, their hands around their hypothermic bodies in a desperately futile attempt to retain what little heat was left.

Why did you dumbasses decide to show up at 10 two nights before?

They were not in a circle, for though that was most safe against nature's shivering breath, it was not most welcome. Instead the humans gathered in some sort of elongated snake like pattern. Clumps of them extruded themselves to gather information about the other people in line like a family of disease ridden prairie dogs; others chose to chuckle to themselves leaning themselves against the wall.

I think I'm not in the place to talk though. . .

These people were all chattering, all occupying themselves with the movement of their unnaturally blue mouths to forget about the obviously bitter conditions. They specifically talked of a holy contraption with extraordinary power from a place whose name was spread far and wide. They talked about their burning desire to obtain one of these machines and take it for their own. They also talked of how its scarcity would bolster its resale value, how they would fetch themselves hoards of money from someone foolish enough to buy such a thing at such an insanely inflated price. . .

… Since I'm in this line too.

They were all waiting for Best Buy to open to buy a Playstation 3.

Among the massive line stood a somewhat pale girl with long brown hair and round glasses, clinging to the insides of her massive green furry coat. She was of a somewhat fit complexion, though it was hard to tell since she overdressed in several layers. Her position in this rather clumpy loose line was about 52, which may have explained her rather grumpy disposition at the moment, along with her slight frown, her glaring face and her slightly twitching left eye. Her name was Chisame Hasegawa.

Damn it, hurry up! I have an internet world to conquer!

She decided to take the day off today from school as her uselessly idiotic ten year old English teacher Negi Springfield would have bored her. Who needed school when the most powerful gaming console to hit shelves since the X-Box 360 was about to make way into her home?

It made her cynically laugh inside, not from the intense graphic power of this new monster, oh no, but the money that would come from it! That's what motivated her to stand in this sickening line, where her chances of contracting some new strain of flu or other mutated illness quadrupled, where these miserable gaming freaks stood, all mostly guys on a miscellaneous fact. She knew that these were probably the same buffoons that in past years stood in similarly shaped lines at similarly shaped stores for similarly shaped video game systems. She also knew that these were also probably the same people that bowed down and drooled quite pathetically to her Net Idol personality, Chiu.

Yes, she almost forgot about how much money she was going to rip off the losers that would've gotten left out of the PS3 rush. She would sit at home on her webcam, and switch personalities from cranky ordinary student to insanely cute internet star Chiu. With her dyed pink hair wig and her excessively cute high toned voice, she would wave to the fans of her cutesy web blog in an adorable childish manner; they would nod back mindlessly.

She could see herself saying in that dinky webcam of hers, Hey, everybody this is Chiu! Today I stood in the cold to get myself a PS3! It was REALLY hard to get one since there were so many hentai bakas around, but I got one anyway! Except the problem is now I don't have enough money to pay for this month's bandwidth. . . so maybe Chiu's super cool fans can buy it off from her so Chiu can get enough money to keep her super cute website online

Of course, she had plenty of money for her bandwidth, but her half headed minions on the other side of the screen would cry tears of pity and fight against each other for the stupid thing, getting her massive revenue in the meantime. She expected some casualties, but as long as the money was going straight to her credit card, it didn't matter what happened to these sick ecchi buffoons.

All the money was planned out. The 2,000 dollar plus profit was going to be spent on upgrading her computer with an additional 2 GB RAM, a half terabyte of hard drive space, and a processor that could dish out at least 3.3 GHz. She would also have enough money to upgrade her photo studio where her cosplaying antics would take place. No more messing with lights and shading on Photoshop, she would just adjust her real lights right in her studio and with effective tactics, most of her editing would be a thing of the past (except maybe breast enhancement).

The time was almost there. The undiscovered Cyber Queen was wickedly smiling in her mind. Her face was more relieved, but also tensed up from all the cash about to roll in her mouth. The crowd was getting rowdy. The half dazed group of people was starting to become more agitated. As the humans looked both in front and behind themselves they realized that with this many people in line, a good majority of them weren't going to get the coveted product. All started conspiracy against one another. Hoarse whispers traveled between the edgy flock about its limited quantity.

And in anticipated moment, the man in the store uniform shakily walked towards the glass transparent doors. Silence followed. All of their greedy beady eyes were on that particular man. He was quite frightened, actually. A poorly made drinking bet from the other night resulted in his responsibility to let these wild animals into the delicate china shop of TVs, digital phones and of course, a total of 20 PS3 boxes.

20 fricking boxes?!

Or so Chiu overheard from other gamers in her vicinity. She panicked. With at least a hundred so people in the line, this was not good. Her body structure, physically equipped for the vigorously hard work of double clicking, probably was not a good body type in large, rebellious shopping lines. She was weak. And she damn well knew it.

The pale quivering man was about ready to faint. He knew he was going to get severely hurt by the rampage of a large seditious crowd ready to beat the hell out of each other over this processing monster. He knew that this was the time when all nerds, geeks and fans would unlock their true power in their utter desire for video games and he knew that they would punch, steal and magic cast their way in the ultimate quest for a Playstation 3. And yet he knew that things would turn out okay; that he fulfilled his sacred duties as a store clerk. He told himself if he would die today, it would be okay… yes, God would be waiting for him in heaven…

He unlocked the doors.

And thus… it started.

Time to go!

Chisame decided to rush in with her all. She had to go for it; she stood in line for a day next to stupid geeks and she wasn't about to waste all that time for nothing. She threw herself in the crowd, hoping her light weight attributes would give her some sort of speed powerup against some of the slower fat people that were trudging along.

Her feet moved fast. The background was a blur.

Rushing footsteps, people glaring at one another. It was a competition in who was the best. All the theories of Darwinism came into play.

Those that were weak were left behind. Those that were strong moved ahead.

She seemed to be ahead of the pack. She could hear it call out to her…

Buy…

me… it whispered.

Her greed propelled her forward.

The blurs of people on her sides disappeared. It looked like Chiu took the lead. All that money was hers for the taking.

And suddenly, one of her feet caught itself on the other.

The net idol's inertia kicked in.

Her body hurled forward, her feet behind her.

She successfully tripped over herself.

And she heard the words of the machine.

You…

fail…it hoarsely cried.

All hope was lost. She looked at that precious cardboard box one last time before falling to the ground and being trampled on by others with the same dream. The two thousand suddenly blew away in the wind. The processor, the RAM, the hours saved by new lights… it was no longer in her hands. And she cursed herself for it.

That day, she came back to her apartment. She spent about five hours longer on her new cosplay pictures editing the eye sore, the swollen lip and the bruises on her face from standing in line.

You may have your PS3, she thought to herself, but I still rule your inferior minds with my cuteness!!!

She laughed maliciously.

Then she cried.

End.

Did you catch any irony in the title, perchance?

In any event, this fanfic is dedicated to all the people that braved the perilous fronts of their local Best Buy, Gamestop, etc… and returned home empty handed (expect the rapist that escaped, I find that sad and disturbing). I wasn't in one of those lines but hopefully for those that did wait, it wasn't quite as bad as the situation above.

Moral of the story: When rushing in stores to buy limited quantity items, please take care as to not trip as there are at least 50 people rampaging behind you wanting the same thing.

Take care, be safe, and to be politically correct, happy holidays.

Poison Cloud