"Hey, Daisy?" came a gravelly voice over the headset. Our mumble channel had been mostly silent up until that point, save for the constant clack-clack-clack of Anders spamming his keybinding for Flash Heal because he still hadn't gotten around to buying himself a headset. This was a particularly intense encounter, and everybody had their noses to their screens, concentrating on mechanics. Or maybe that was just me. One doesn't simply gain the title of Champion if one has a blasé attitude towards the game.

Needless to say, my focus was totally disrupted, and in my startled state, my knee jerked up and hit the underside of my desk.

"Andraste's hairy nipples," I shouted to no-one. I pushed my chair away from the desk, and began nursing my rapidly bruising knee, totally ignorant of the fact that we were engaging a tier boss.
"Yes, Varric?" came the reply in a girlish lilt, totally unaware of my turmoil.

"Fire isn't a haste buff," followed by a deep chuckle.

"Oh, thank you, Varric. I hadn't noticed. I was wondering why my health was going down so quickly without even being in blood presence."

Anders mumbled something about blood presence not even being the correct presence for her specialisation. Fenris grumbled about how it's not like Merrill being in the correct presence would have made much of a difference as he was the one carrying the team's DPS. Both Varric and Sebastian grunted their offense at Fenris' statement.

Despite the cacophony that the mumble channel had become, one voice sounded out over the rest.
"Hawke," came the brusque tone of Aveline, our main tank, "Maker's breath, Hawke, will you taunt the boss?"

I hastened to shuffle back towards my gaming rig as Aveline's health was rapidly declining. When I moved my cursor over her portrait and saw how many DoT stacks were on her, it hardly surprised me that Anders was having difficulty keeping her up. I was just too slow to aggro the boss away from her, and Aveline died. Well, her character anyway. I'm pretty sure that I was the one who would die in actuality as Aveline murdered me over her exorbitant repair fees.

"A nug's ass could tank better than you, Hawke," Anders groused. "My battle rez is still on cool down, so it's a wipe."

Everyone let out a sigh simultaneously, and I hesitantly pressed my finger to the push-to-talk button.

"Sorry, folks, but I was taken hostage by a gang of bank robbers and the cops gave chase. We got away... but I caused a crash. When I came to, I'd lost my memory. An ex-con picked me up, mistook me for a fugitive, and shipped me to Istanbul. There I met some Afghan raiders who took me to steal some Russian warheads. But our truck hit a mine in Tajikistan. I survived, took to the hills, and became a Mujaheddin to eat borscht all my life in a hat like a tea cozy."

Varric wolf-whistled at my attempted platitudes, but I could tell that Aveline wasn't impressed.

"Hawke," she began, "I don't know why you insisted on tanking when I said that Donnic couldn't make it. We could have picked one up when we picked up the other guy."

"He has a name, you know. Not everyone is a woman-shaped battering ram," Isabela pestered.

"What's with your name anyway? Are you Spanish or something?" Anders inquired.

Spanish? What kind of deranged assumption was that? On what premise was it based on? I hovered my cursor over the strange ranger's corpse and saw that his name was Aragon, and it all clicked into place.

"Ah, no. It's… it's actually a lore name. It's Elvish for something or the other," came the response from a strangely familiar voice.

"See, that's a cool name. Everyone else has much more well-thought out names than I do. Kirkwallchamp is utterly childish and lame," I interjected, attempting to defend the honour of this stranger whom I had only just met.

"Okay, Junior, I don't know how you managed to emulate Hawke's voice so well, but leave it alone. Your sister can besmirch her own good name without your involvement," Varric chuckled.

I snorted, "Hardy har har, funny man. Let's see how you laugh when I steal into your house in the dead of night and wax the pelt of chest hair that you're so fond of."

I didn't even need to be on video chat to see him cringe, I could hear it in Varric's voice when he next spoke over mumble.

"Okay, okay. Easy, Hawke. I know you're just grumpy because we wiped on the encounter. We'll try again, kill the nug muncher, and then call it quits for the night so that you can get to bed on time."

"Hawke, your corpse is too far out of range for me to rez without aggroing the boss so you're gonna have to walk back," Anders interrupted.

I sighed. Today was not my day.

"It's okay, Hawke, was it? I can stealth around to where you are and then use my jumper cables on you," came the dulcet tones of Aragon.

"Oh, would you? My hero," I sighed wistfully.

The second attempt at the encounter passed without much incident. Many expletives were shared, but without incident.

"Alright kids, I don't know about you, but that encounter nearly made my chest hair go grey from the stress. How about we call it quits?" Varric suggested.

"I think I'm with Varric, I'm on patrol duty tomorrow so I can't nap while pretending to do paperwork," was Aveline's response.

"Eh, I think I'll stay on for a little longer. I haven't done any of my dailies yet today, and after work I could use a breather," I muttered, half to myself.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Hawke! If I had known I wouldn't have done them myself so I could do them with you. Well, I suppose that I could still help you, but there wouldn't be much purpose to it," came Merrill's helpful addition.

"I myself haven't completed them yet either, perhaps we could do them together?"

"Well aren't you useful? A pocket rezzer and then offering to help with my dailies? I think I might keep you," I said in response to Aragon's offer.

I had lost track of the time by when we had completed all of our dailies. There was an easy camaraderie that formed between Aragon and I. We exchanged quips and interesting tidbits of lore, and suddenly the gruelling experience of "collect 20 nug hearts" and "kill 10 genlocks, 8 hurlocks and 1 ogre" wasn't so depressing.

I also learned a lot about the person behind Aragon. His mother died when he was young and he was raised with some distant, estranged relatives before moving away when he was able to. He rarely visited them anymore though, because they always tried to force responsibilities on him that he didn't want.

I suppose he also learned a lot about me. Despite my general social ineptitude, I managed to talk to him about how my father had died of lung cancer a few years ago, how my brother was a bit of a tosser but I still loved him and my sister to bits, and how I disapproved of my mother's new boyfriend Quentin.

It wasn't until he casually asked about my love life that I transformed back into Captain Socially Awkward.

"No, I uhh. No. The last time that I had anyone was my girlfriend Athenril, and she was about a year ago now."

There was silence for a long time before he replied with a simple "oh."

"Yeah, speaking of 'oh', oh Maker's breath, is that the time? I need to hit the hay. I promised my mother that I'd help fix her internet tomorrow… or, well, uh, later today." It was a lie. A bald, shamefaced lie. But he didn't know that.
"Oh, sure. Hey, uh. It was nice… meeting you?"

"Yeah, it was great. Uh, you're great. At DPS I mean. You're more than welcome to join our raid team permanently. I know that Varric's the raid leader and all, but I'm the guild leader so I guess I supersede him in terms of authority?" My voice got progressively higher and higher in pitched and all but cracked on the last few words.

"I'd… like that. Would you add me to your friends list so that you can keep me posted about raids?"

"Of course! Actually, better yet, the guild has a Mybook page. If you wanted to add me on it, I could invite you to the group and that way it would be easier to stay in contact."

The following silence was deafening. Did I come on too strong? Shit. I think that sounded like I was hitting on him. Actually, I think that I was hitting on him, in a crazy, roundabout sort of way. Shit, shit, shit. I'm pretty sure that a bronto's tail would have more social grace than me.

"I, uh. I don't normally add anyone that I don't actually know-"

"No worries!" I cut in, trying to save face.

"-but I think that I can make an exception for you."

Oh. Oh. Well, tickle me pink and call me Andraste.

"Sure-" My voice definitely did crack on that. "My Mybook url is the same as my character name, actually. Super original, I know, but it should make me easy to find. My profile picture is, uh, a stick figure with a sword decapitating an incongruently detailed dragon."

"Okay. Well, sleep well. I'm sure we'll chat again soon."

"Sure." Sure? Sure? Since when was my normally extensive vocabulary so limited? I quickly logged out of the game, and out of mumble, and briefly alt-tabbed to Mybook to double check to see if Aragon had sent me a friend request before crawling into bed and crying myself to sleep over my infinite awkwardness.

I was momentarily confused when the name that came up on my new contact request was Strider, not Aragon. Then the sovereign dropped. Shit, shit, Shit.

I hesitantly accepted, then went to go creep his page. Surely it's not the same Strider that I met earlier? How could it be? Sure, Strider isn't a very… common name, but the world couldn't be that small. Could it?

None of his profile pictures were actually of him, just album covers from bands that I think were death metal, and there were no photos that he was tagged in to confirm or deny. Somehow he must have known that I was on his page, because a message window from him popped up.

Strider: What happened to bed?

Marian: I am in bed, I lied. Just on my phone. I'll add you to the guild page and then actually go to sleep.

Strider: Okay.

Hey, I realised that there aren't any pictures of me on here. I don't tend to log on that often. IT's not an issue, is it?

Marian: No, no. Not at all! I mean, I didn't add you for personal reasons. It's not like it matters if you're attractive or not.

Andraste's frilly underwear, Marian. Just… stop talking before you permanently chase him off.

Strider: Here I was, ready to take a terrible bathroom "selfie" for you. ;)

Oh. Oh my. I had to begin fanning myself because I swear that the temperature just raised a few degrees in my room.

Marian: A little you show me yours, I show you mine? :P

Strider: Yeah, something like that.

Marian: As long as you don't mind waiting a few hours. I need my beauty sleep.

Strider: I doubt that. You're always beautiful.

Never before had I been so grateful for an online instant messaging medium. I probably could have kept half of Canada warm over winter with the heat from my blushing cheeks.

Strider: Hello?

Did you finally go to bed, then?

Well, goodnight. It was nice meeting you again today.

Again? He couldn't have meant… could he? No, he probably just meant first on World of Thedas and then on Mybook. Right?

I dropped my head on my keyboard and groaned.

Marian: akjbjkbjwebjewj3wwewefi3i394994443 4341h3tuh34ihtgjdkskj3293

Strider: huh?

Marian: Oh, I uh, hit my funny bone. Not very humorous, is it?

I'll send you that group invitation before I forget. Again. So you don't think that I added you under false pretences or anything.

And I did. And then I immediately shut down my computer, and crawled into bed to hide underneath my blankets. Ugh.

I truly am a hopeless cause. I don't think that even all of Wicked Grace could ever hope to achieve anything through Operation: Hard in Hightown. Their idealistic pursuit was sadly misguided. It was my destiny to have 27 cats and live off of microwavable meals. My destiny.

My destiny also included never logging on to Mybook, World of Thedas, or catching my bus ever again. I think I still had a bicycle at my mother's house. Maybe I could start riding that around instead.

But what would I do with all of my spare time? I thought to myself, and groaned. I guess I would just have to suck it up.