Chapter 1: Casual

As Hank marched onward with his comrades through the barren wasteland of a cold, desolate planet, he fought the urge to break from his squad and run like Hell. He'd told himself up to this point that he wouldn't get scared when the time came for him to see his first battle, and yet… here he was, his nerves threatening to get the better of him as his steps became unsteady. He felt horribly lopsided.

Though it was little comfort to him, no one seemed to notice that he was literally shaking in his boots. They were all fully focused on the upcoming attack on the zerg, a highly evolved alien race that each and every one of them wished he could be separated from by many, many light years. Today, however, avoiding them just wasn't an option. In the long run, they had no choice but to fight.

The soldiers came to a moderately steep incline that served as a narrow pass between two massive, sheer cliff walls that extended some distance in each direction. Their inability to see past the ridge at the top of the incline instilled dread into them, but, knowing they had no choice, they pressed on.

"Be on your guard," said the squad leader. "The map says the zerg are right up this—"

-He was interrupted by a horrible scuttling sound. Small but fast zerg creatures (zerglings, they were called) clambered over the ridge, coming at them with terrifying speed.

"Don't let them surround you!" the leader shouted as the men opened fire, killing as many zerglings as they could before the fiendish things closed in. Fortunately, they had been marching in a somewhat wide formation, so they now formed something of a wall, which kept any the zerglings from circling around behind them. A few got close enough to start chipping away at their armor, but these were picked off before any casualties occurred. The fear in Hank's heart began to lessen as they pushed up the ramp. Suddenly, behind him, he heard the familiar sound of low-power jetpacks carrying small, manned mechs (known as "SCVs") up the incline behind him. He had no idea what they were doing here, since SCVs were designed for noncombat purposes, but no one else objected to their presence, so he shrugged it off as he and the other soldiers moved out of their way to let them through, and then followed behind them.

Hank's stomach immediately began to churn as he beheld the sight past the top of the ridge. A large patch of flat ground was covered with some strange, writhing purple growth that began several yards in front of him. In its center was some sort of massive, organic bulge, like a parasitic growth on the land itself. Some vaguely stingray-shaped creatures glided around across the purple stuff. Just as he was wondering if his squad could take them, the SCVs charged forward, speeding towards the aliens as if to attack them.

"No… Hell no, they're not going to try and"—

-They did. Using tools that were intended for mining natural resources and building structures, the workers started attacking the zerg creatures, which, to Hank's great surprise, began to flee.

"Come on! Don't just sit back and watch!" Hank snapped out of his shocked state as one of his fellow soldiers urged him on. As they chased down the zerg, killing them one at a time, Hank realized just how useful it was to have the SCVs here. Some zerglings emerged from the main zerg—structure, or whatever it was, but they were quickly surrounded and killed as quickly as they had been born. Hank felt giddy with excitement as he realized that this meant sure victory. The zerg were supposed to be terrifying, but now that he was here, fighting them felt like nothing… it was easy, it was satisfying, it was—

"—OP!"

Without looking up from his computer screen, Jason replied, "Dude, you didn't scout at all. Don't complain about losing to something that you failed to scout."

Jason and his friend, Mark, were playing a game with each other on two computers in the same room. Mark's eleven-year-old brother, David, was watching them with curiosity. "What's 'OP' mean?" he asked them.

"It means it's a strategy he can with every time, even though it takes no skill," explained Mark. "He attacked with his workers, which you're not even supposed to do, but he still won because marines are the best units in the game. There was nothing I could do."

"Well," retorted Jason, "maybe you could have not engaged at the ramp like a noob."

"What's a noob?"

"Someone who doesn't know how to play."

The game was called Starcraft II, and Mark (along with most of his friends) had recently gotten it after learning how popular it was. Shortly after, he and Jason had taken to playing it every day after school.

"…Alright, man," said Jason, after Mark had declined to respond to his taunt. "I should probably go do homework. See you."

As he was on his way out, David asked, "Hey, Mark? Can I try playing?"

"Yeah, sure." He took off his headphones and got up from his chair, but kept his hand on the mouse as he did so, clicking through the menu screens. "Here, I'll put you against an easy AI and tell you what to do."

David diligently clicked wherever his brother instructed him to, gradually building up an army of marines. "You can build them by clicking on the button here," explained Mark, pointing to the lower-right corner of the screen, "but it's better if you just press 'a'." Figuring that if Mark said it was better, he should probably do it, David chose the second method. He quickly realized that many of the things you could do by clicking, you could do much faster with buttons on the keyboard—a few of which he found on his own before Mark even pointed them out.

After a few minutes of watching David learn to make all the units, Mark announced, "Alright, I think you have enough guys to attack now. You want to send them here." He pointed to a dark area on the minimap, which, he had explained earlier, let you see all the places you could go without having to scroll.

David was caught by surprise, when, while on their way to the enemy base, his armies were attacked by a large group of zealots and stalkers. "What do I do? What do I do?" he asked frantically. Mark laughed.

"Don't worry," he said. "It's just protoss. You can kill them." Sure enough, David's troops fought off the computer's with no trouble, and continued to march into the protoss base and start destroying buildings. To David's shock, the computer sent him a chat message. It read "gg". A box appeared, prompting him to accept the enemy's surrender, which he did.

"There you go," said his brother proudly. "That was actually pretty good for your first game. As you get better, you can play against harder computers, but you should eventually play against other people, too, so you can get used to dealing with cheese."

"Cheese?"

"Yeah, like when they use cheap, no-skill strategies that let them win instantly. It's part of the game."

David still wasn't sure he understood the concept of "cheese", but he was determined to keep getting better at the game. "Can I try a harder computer now?" he asked. "That one was way too easy."

"Sure," replied Mark, "but you'll have to figure it out on your own. I think I have homework, too."

"Alright." David started another game, this time a harder difficulty setting. He couldn't quite remember everything he was supposed to do, and ended up losing. He decided that his luck might be better with a different race, so he selected "Protoss" and started a new game. All of the units were different, which of course made everything even more confusing, and he lost again. He groaned once in frustration, and then quit the game, deciding that Pokémon would provide a more enjoyable gaming experience.

The next day, however, he tried playing Starcraft II again, determined to beat the harder AIs. He experimented with every race, wanting to learn all of their strengths and weaknesses. As he moused through the zerg building list, trying to guess what each building was for, he heard his brother enter the door behind him.

"You really like that game, huh?"

"Yup. I can't win on hard though."

"Well, then play it on an easier difficulty."

"No. That's boring."

Mark watched his younger brother play for a while, impressed by how quickly he was learning. After two more games, David seemed to have developed a cursory knowledge of most of the game's units, and he was gradually becoming able to last longer against the computer. However, he seemed unaware of his own improvement.

"Why do I keep losing?" he asked, frustrated.

"You're getting there," Mark assured him. "Just make sure to keep spending your money, cause it doesn't do you any good just sitting there. Also, you should try expanding by building more bases."

And so, over the next few weeks, David would play Starcraft II every day after school: sometimes under his brother's supervision, sometimes by himself. He soon decided that zerg was his favorite race, if only because the units made funny noises, and the buildings just looked so squishy and fun. He dutifully followed Mark's instructions on the proper order in which to make buildings and units, (the "build order", he called it) performing better and better with each game until one day he finally achieved his goal.

"Mark! Come in here!"

"What is it?" asked Mark, approaching the computer.

"I did it! I won on hard!" Mark couldn't help but laugh at the sight his brother, who was giddy with excitement.

"Awesome! Y'know, maybe you should have your own account to play on. I have a spare one you could use."

And so, Mark logged into his second account, and wrote down the account information for David so he would be able to log in later. It was nice, he thought, that his brother was getting interested in the same game he liked.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, in a small room inside of a grey, unremarkable building, a group of uniformed men were seated in a few rows of chairs as the speaker at the front of the room used a baton to point to a photo of a young man projected on the screen beside him.

"This is Lee Young Ho, a Starcraft pro-gamer," he said in a language that wasn't English. "In the Starcraft community, he goes by the name 'Flash' and commands a great deal of respect—one might even say worship. " He pressed a button, changing the slide to a picture of Flash sitting at a computer, opposite another pro-gamer, surrounded by thousands of screaming fans.

"This," he explained, "is Flash at the OSL, the most-watched e-sports league in Korea. Normally, he travels with a substantial entourage, but he has recently announced that as a publicity stunt, he will be walking by himself to the next OSL, starting from his home."

"I would like to interrupt," said someone in the audience. "Of what is importance to us is a youth who is famous for playing computer games?"

"Because of the importance of e-sports in South Korea," explained the speaker, "he is one of their most beloved celebrities. What we have now, thanks to the absence of anyone guarding him, is an opportunity to send agents in to kidnap him and hold him hostage."

Once the assembly understood, they began to applaud. "A most brilliant plan," one of them commented.

And so it was that on that day, a plan was set in motion that would change the face of the Starcraft e-sports scene forever.