Red's dying.

He's dying and it's all Blue's fault.

He's on his back with a Gengar approximately five inches away from his face, way too eager to start throwing some really dark shit at him, and all he's able to do is scream at the top of his lungs and not use any of his six goddamn team members or anyone else around him because Blue is fucking useless and too caught up in fighting off a different hoard of Sableye—and since when did SABLEYES of all the damn things in this world team up with Ghosts? And instead of throwing this fucking demented shadow off of him, Red is too busy screaming bloody murder because "Goddammit Blue you had one mother fucking job and it's your fault for not teaching that damn Umbreon of yours any actual useful mos—"

The computer screen that Red is spewing saliva at suddenly blinks with a window alert telling him that his mic has been disconnected, meaning neither Blue nor any of the other guild members can hear his yelling. He just manages to hear "Bruh, it's just a game" from a way-too-calm Blue before he kicks out that cord too, and suddenly Red's mute and deaf in a guild raid.

Giving a very eloquent 'zdv;gr' in the chat as he slams his hands on the keyboard, Red throws his chair back and shoves the two audio cables into the outlets as fast as he can. One hand is still rapidly clicking the attack buttons for any of his returned party members, attempting to beat out the Mean Look that has his avatar locked into place, even though his mental clock says he still has a good ten seconds until he can move again (and five seconds until Gengar's signature Shadow Ball has recharged). He's greeted by a rather terrifying burst of static feedback when he realizes that he mixed up the mic and speaker ports, and it takes another excessive bout of swearing to fix his audio problem.

(By this time the five seconds have passed and all Red can do is watch in dismay as his own health bar rapidly drains. The guild support, Joy, is stuck healing Umbreon from the Sableyes, so the offensive point comprised of himself and Lance are in charge of themselves because Blue is a fuckin useless tank. (Not really, but Red is in one of his rare moments of pure rage and nothing is stopping him.))

By the time he's got his headphones fixed and is understanding sound again, Red's avatar is dead along with Blue's, Lance is maybe two steps away from falling into the pit of lava, and Joy is very carefully asking to teleport out of this lost cause of a mission.

A Dusknoir spawns, and that's all Joy needs to abandon ship and save some of the guild's treasury money on two revivals instead of four.

Red mutters a yes a bit too late, and resurrects back in the guild stronghold which is located in the middle of a giant mountain range. The overview map in the bottom right corner shows Mount Silver to the west and the beginnings of the Johto sector to the East.

Lance had been the mad man to stick base camp in the middle of nowhere, but the mountain range protects them from all sides except one, and they have the freedom to dig as far down as they want with little interference.

Said Guild Leader has been talking for the past five minutes about possible improvements, completely ignoring the small snippets of advice that Red's been throwing out in the dead silence.

Finally making it into the meeting hall, Red gets stared down by the three others in attendance for being late. His apology ignored, he sits down in the chair to the right of the Guild Leader, waiting silently for the rest of the meeting while stewing.

It's thirty minutes after Lance has logged out, just Blue and Red sitting together, when Blue drops into his inbox.

'Unmute urself'

He'd been muted ever since he accidentally disconnected his goddamn mic.


Thanks to my spurr of the moment beta, who said I should refer to them as "someone who likes food" if I mention them. Inspired from Marsh of Sleep's WOW AU for Soul Eater, Quantumn Entanglement. It hilarious.

Cross posted to my tumblr and archive under OFSA and Madnikki respectively.

I'm writing another Pokemon story on tumblr, canonical, and it'll be legitimately published here later.