You notice some new messages buzzing up from your chat client. Weird. You ignore them completely, pulling out the cd from the envelope, clicking it into place in your laptops thin and fragile disk tray. You consider briefly that this may break. Gently, you swirl it once for good measure before closing the tray. You haul open your chat window with CZ before waiting in a weird anticipation for this game. You check the clock again. 6:46.

ColossalArcanine began pestering CoolstoryZo

CA: where doing thsi bro

CA: Ware makning this HappEN

CZ: everyone has this beta, it's too perfect for it not to be perfect.

CA: im just going to download it now, if its the client awesome, if its the server weird, if its fake whatever.

CA: pretty much willing to do anything at this point

CA: except hitler

CZ: ...i don't understand how he's relevant.

CZ: but ok!

CA: Well if you think about it

CA: im basically becoming Hitler right now

CA: im about to partake in a game

CA: to relinquish the human race

CA: but I guess its okay because I'll recreate them again? If we win I guess were both god? I dont know

CA: Is hitler god?

CA: WHAT IF GOD WAS ONE OF US

CZ: we haven't even started the game and already i'm questioning your stability as the lead player...

As your computer whirs to action, you feel the rock of the ground quivering under you feet. Slowly, you gaze outwards and into your backyard, through the slender windows of your room. You notice the blood red color tear through the sky before settling somewhere on the distant horizon. You are half curious to check the weather forecast or watch the news downstairs- perhaps spend your last few moments of personal freedom doing something stupid and idiotic- or you could just spend it staring at your computer screen with a feeling akin to going head first down a flight of stairs coursing through you.

There is no clicking accept to the game engine. Slowly it consumes your computer screen. You hear your pester chum slink down, see all of your open fire fox tabs slowly wither away to nothing. You have no way to communicate at this point aside from your cellphone, which you quickly grab and toss into your slacker hoodie.

A large, daunting image of what appears to be a mathematical diagram appears on the screen. The ground shakes again, violently this time, jolting you and your laptop and the dozens of lap dogs to the floor with a unceremonious thud. You can't see out of your window from your tan carpeted floor, but you can see the ominous glare of fire against the sky. Apparently, the impact did not effect your computer or its disc reading capabilities, because sburb was loading perfectly clear on your monitor. Now you had to wait. You try to maneuver your cellphone from your pocket to tell Zo to start up her beta but you keep coming up with other, undesirable objects. First, hand fulls of spare crack change you made in tips. Essentially, its useless. No more than fifty cents in copper pennies. Next, you pull out a set of Christmas earrings, and finally, your phone. Even the pockets in this thing are over sized. Why couldn't you keep a purse like a normal teenage girl?

You find yourself putting both the Christmas earrings and boat load of pennies back into the pockets of your jacket before you stop to think about it. You guess you did it because of the dogs? You don't want to have to bring all of the dogs to the hospital because they were stupid enough to snort up whole pennies. You wouldn't put anything past them.

= CA: DON'T YOU HAVE WORK?

You jolt upwards, nearly hurling three shih tzus that'd taken refuge on your stomach to go hurling across your bedroom. Work. Work. You're now late. You are now late for Mary Smith's. Tardiness at Mary Smith's is never forgiven. Hell, forgetting a fork at Mary Smith's is never forgiven. You pray to each individual saint that this game will send you to your own world, in which there is no Mary Smith's. Somehow, you can hear the jokes already. The land of Coselaw and Fried Chicken...

Your phone begins to ring. There are a number of people who could be calling you. CZ, for one. It could also be SS, trying to figure out what time you were off work. Or it could be work calling. Instead of answering, you stare at the incoming call message and try to not feel as sick as you feel you are progressively becoming.

= ENOUGH WHINING ABOUT PART-TIME JOBS. BE THE OTHER BOY.

It appears as though you are near shoulder depth in snow. Although it sounds impressive, you are not of the highest stature. But you would greatly approve if we go with the snow being that high and it's really not just you being incredibly short.

There is a slight trail that has accumulated behind you from your fresh footprints. Alas, you have almost made it to the end of your painful 'driveway'. If you ever, ever, ever, EVER hear anyone complain about driveway sizes (let's get real here, who does except you) you will seriously lose your mind. You will just lose it. You think if anything was going to be the last straw, it would be townie people problems about fucking driveways.

You out stretch a quivering hand to rest on the red metal frame of your whimsical mailbox. Even that thing is tormenting you. Today is a bad day. It's officially decided. You determine that the only thing that can cheer you up is women. And sadly, all of those women would be back in your house, on your varied consoles. A house that is a 30 minute half trudge half waddle, back into the dark depths of a singing bass musical emporium. Excellent.

Momentarily you consider just walking and keeping walking. PAP occasionally will get to your head like that.

= OPEN THE MAILBOX!

You open the mailbox to determine if there is anything of value inside. It's hard to tell what you're feeling because of your densely padded winter wear, so you squat down to a strange angle of an even lower latitude than you already are and try to peek inside. All that is in your joke of a mailbox is a single, blank envelope. Intriguing.

You take it out delicately. Its contents are a mystery, therefore you must treat it as though it could shatter at the slightest of a touch. You are unsure if you should open it here. A word of advice from one of your favorite hand held games comes to mind : You can't ride your bike in here! There is a time and place for everything!

You will admit that the second part was the only part that was necessary for the quote. You just are a bit of a jokester so you had to add the last part in. That and because the reference wouldn't make sense without it. Carefully, you take the envelope and place in in the breast pocket of your parka before tightening up the zippers and numerous pulley contraptions that proclaim to keep snow out. Obviously these people didn't do experiments in PAP. Snow still got everywhere.

You pull out your cell phone once you hear the distinctive chirp of your wonderful girlfriends ring tone. It's from an anime that you say you watch but you really don't. Brownie points, bro, brownies.

DarkNeko began pestering SilverStreak

DN: ...so... oVo ... ivebeenthinkingaboutusreally hard... and um ... ijustreallyloveuokayuaresocu teandhandsomeoh wow -very much blushes atm-

SS: I love you too baby

SS: For some reason Madi convinced me to go to my mailbox so I'm stuck out here for a while baby. 3

SS: I got some weird envelope. Don't know whats inside.

DN: Yesss! I got one too! So SUGOI!~~~~*~*~* (-`u`)-

SS: Dude, seriously?

SS: You're not kidding, right?

DN: Of course sempai why would i kid to you -blushes like crazy-

DN: -touches cheeks-

DN: -they are very hot with thoughts of u-

SS: *cuddles you tenderly*

SS: *kisses you*

SS: Wait

SS: This envelope, what's in it Syd? 3

DN: -licks ur face-

DN: Idk...~~~~*~*~* :3

SS: Syd. Seriously. Whats in the envelope.

DN: Look inside it yourself DinguS c:

SS: Has Madi got you saying that too

SS: Why does Madi make everyone say that

SS: Can this not be a thing please

You start to trudge your way back as you text, caught between role playing some kind of strange mix of furry smut and anime fluff and arguing about how no one should call you Dingus ever. Why Dingus? Why? Out of all the things that could have been pinned on you, Dingus? What does Dingus even mean, really?

You conclude that you will research this once you enter your house. You are curious to open you package, especially since Sydney will not tell you what contents it holds. You could, perhaps, open it. But what if it were to blow away by a sudden gust? What if it was something that could only be opened once? What if it were a love letter from your truely beloved? Oh, you would settle for either. Therefore, you would treat it as such.

Did you ever mention you had a tendency to get your hopes up?

= BE GR

You are now GR, and you are very confused about this whole beta business. As much as you would like to believe your girlfriend, you are left to deal with the small little fact that she's pretty much bats shit insane at the best of times and just because she wholeheartedly believes something does most definitely not mean it's the truth. This tip about the beta is coming from the same girl who spent an entire day arguing with you about whether Russia is a continent, and who genuinely thinks that there is an invisible map on the back of the Declaration of Independence. You decide to seek council from your wisest friend.

He doesn't actually harbor any large amounts of wisdom, but he is the best option you have. Admittedly it's not that difficult of a feat, seeing as you have all of two friends, but it couldn't hurt to get a second opinion. Did Zoee say that you couldn't tell anyone? You don't think she did. Even so, the world is ending anyway, so it's not like anyone would be around to rat you out.

= PESTER KK

gallowsRope began pestering krazyKerrang

GR: Hey man.

GR: I need some advice.

GR: Seriously, i need advice so badly that i'm asking you.

GR: Okay whatever, just get back to me when you're done watching your girlfriend make out with sam.

gallowsRope stopped pestering krazyKerrang

Even though your friend is most likely not actually watching his girlfriend make out with Sam (although you really wouldn't put it past any of those three), you are getting anxious and impatient, and when you get anxious and/or impatient you can be a little bit of a bitch.

To take your mind off the potentially impending apocalypse, you decide to figure out what to prototype your sprite with just in case shit is legit. Unfortunately, this only serves to remind you of said potential impending apocalypse, as well as just how uncreative you really are.

Zoee said prototype with something harmless first, right? You start to wonder if there is really anything that is fully harmless. Just how harmless does this thing have to be? You mentally start reviewing objects that you might consider to be harmless, only to systematically reject every single one because you are just too damn paranoid for your own good.

Maybe a t-shirt? Well if you reaaaaaally wanted to, you could strangle somebody with a t-shirt. Or smother someone. Or hang yourself, if you were really determined. Does hanging yourself really count as a danger here? It's better to be safe than sorry. You could use something small, like an orange. No, someone could throw an orange at your head like your childhood friend did once, and even a kid throwing it hurt. A dangerous person could throw it hard enough to give you a concussion. Just how much strength do these sprites have? Are they danger here? Like little evil Navis?

All this thinking is doing you more harm than good. You decide to just use a pillow like Zo suggested, and trust that she knows how to negate any danger that these evil Navi sprites could possibly cause. You probably wouldn't have been able to think of anything good anway. The best option you came up with on your own was an orange. Could you be any more of an idiot? The world may never know.

= BE DUFFY AGAIN

You try to be Duffy again, but fail. You are stuck being this idiot. Who even IS this guy?

= SERIOUSY, WHO IS HE?

You name is Mike Everett and you are kind of a loser, you guess. You mostly spend your time playing any video games you can get your hands on and reading extremely complex and convoluted fantasy novels. You often like to brag about how you won a medal at a track and field race four years ago but you are actually a terrible athlete now. You spend most of your time on the computer, and you use two monitors, which automatically makes you kind of a douchebag. You don't care. Who will be laughing when you can play the game while reading the game faqs walkthrough AT THE SAME TIME? Not them, that's for sure.

You have a total of two friends, only one of whom is relevant in the slightest. You also have Zoee, who is pretty much a friend, girlfriend, babysitter, mother, teacher and maid all wrapped into one slightly neurotic and emotionally unstable package. You have a job that is supposed to be selling WalMart brand electronics to noobs, but mostly involves hiding out in the stock room and playing kirby games on your Nintendo DS. Usually you eat at least one bacon grill cheese sandwich a day.

Yeah, you guess you could say your life as you know it is pretty damn good. Well, except when it's going to end because of some shitty webcomic with a really weird fanbase.

Oh look, KK responded to your pestering while you were doing your introduction spiel. He was never one for timing.

= RESPOND TO KK

krazyKerrang started pestering gallowsRope

KK: HEY, not cool!

KK: why would she want Sam when she could have this sexy stud?

KK: never mind dont answer that please!

KK: damnit, are you not replying now because I weirded you out?

KK: no homo, man

KK: not a homo in sight

KK: except maybe you?

KK: it's ok man, I support you no matter what

KK: File transfer of " 3" cancelled.

GR: Ha ha, that has to be the wittiest thing i have ever heard.

GR: Except i'm being sarcastic.

GR: That wasn't actually very witty.

KK: yeah, I'm a little bit off my game today

KK: my swag stock is slowly draining

KK: I have reached less than 5% swag

KK: I didn't turn my swag off before I went to bed last night

KK: woke up covered in bitches

KK: not a bad morning but I didn't have any time left to recharge

GR: With great swag comes great responsibility.

KK: it certaintly does, my friend

GR: Okay, so i have a situation right now.

GR: It's going to sound retarded, but just keep in mind that it is not actually me who told me this.

KK: in english please?

GR: So i was talking to zoee earlier...

KK: ohhhhh

KK: now it makes sense

KK: well

KK: i guess as much sense as anything else she says

GR: No you haven't even heard it yet.

GR: So she was telling me about this game that's going to end the world.

GR: And normally i'd just dismiss it as one of her weird things against video games.

GR: But I actually got the game in the mail today.

GR: No markings, not even a proper package. Just this game that apparently ends the world.

KK: ok now I know you're trolling because I got a game in the mail

KK: ooOOOOh huge coincidence! wow!

KK: my little naieve mind is eating up every once of this!

KK: so who put you up to this? madi?

KK: this is SO a thing madi and zoee would do

KK: you can tell me

GR: No, i'm just telling you what zo told me.

GR: I'm not that much of a douche.

KK: welllllllLLllLlLLL

GR: Hey, you're not much better. :(

GR: Yeah i was pretty sure it was kind of ridiculous.

GR: Thanks man, i was just being paranoid again.

gallowsRope stopped pestering krazyKerrang