Rainbow pranced in the door to her mansion and shut it behind her, stretching her back and wings on the way in. Today had been a brutally rough day at the weather factory and she was glad the worst was over. It's not every day that she wrongfully gets chewed out by her boss for something she obviously didn't do, but today was one of them. And the last couple days before that. He really could be a jerk, sometimes.
But, now that she was home, she could do what she enjoyed doing the most on days like today. She trotted over to her Apple computer and fired it up. She still didn't believe her farmer friend when she had sworn up and down so many times that she didn't have anything to do with the making of the things. Either way, it was an awesome piece of machinery and she loved playing around on it. As it booted up, she went into the kitchen and grabbed a Red Minotaur out of the fridge, popped it open and downed a quarter of it in a single gulp. She let out a powerful belch when she returned to her computer and sat down.
Grabbing onto the mouse, she double clicked on the little black circle with the yellow W on the left side of the screen. World of Warcraft. She had played the game for about four years now, the title catching her eye when she found it at the store. She checked out the box art and figured she'd give it a try, and did she ever get sucked in! She came to like bragging about how awesome she was at it to her friends after a while. Unfortunately for her, none of them cared.
The title screen came alive and she typed in her username and password. Once she was in, she selected her favorite, and coolest, character: Her level 85 burly, two-handed-axe-wielding, male orc warrior named, appropriately for her, Awesumator.
She remembered doing some excessive PvP in battlegrounds the other day. Rainbow loved PvP ever since she started playing and even created Awesumator on a PvP server. After Blizzard had introduced achievements a couple expansions ago, she had new challenges to overcome, aside from kicking the flanks of anypony who'd dare try and fight her out in the open, even if these challenges were sometimes mind-numbingly simple or repetitive.
But, one thing that caught her attention with the achievements was the titles you could get, and she knew of the one that she wanted to have that sounded more hardcore than any other one: 'The Bloodthirsty', and you got it by getting 250,000 honor kills. Considering how much she enjoyed ruining other ponies' days when she was out in the game world doing quests, she found it fitting. She needed it.
She said hello to her guildmates when she finally got into the game and immediately got to looking at her PvP statistics. When she saw how many honor kills she had, she squeed. 249,978. She knew what she was doing tonight! Even in a bad PvP match, as long as you didn't get stomped by a premade team or had fewer numbers than the enemy, one could easily get twenty-two honor kills. Heck, all you had to do was hit the enemy player once and watch them die before you did to get credit.
She told the game to queue her up for a random battleground. After a few minutes, the queue popped and she joined the match.
The loading screen for Arathi Basin appeared a second later. Sweet! Her favorite of the battlegrounds! The map wasn't huge, a lot of aggressiveness was needed to win, which she completely fond of, being an awesome warrior, and the objective was simple enough. They just had to control a majority of bases long enough to reach 1600 points before the other team. No sweat!
Rainbow looked over her teammates as they funneled in, doing the necessary preparations like forgetting to buff and not dropping a mage table. After about twenty seconds, the team was full and bouncing around in front the gate on their mounts like imbeciles.
Annoyed at the lack of buffs in the corner of her screen, she grumbled audibly. Rainbow played to win, and she wasn't going to let a bunch of idiots from other random servers she couldn't harass for acting like, well, idiots on an hourly basis get in the way of that.
'Buffs please', she typed.
'lol ur gonna die neway' was the only response she got.
She groaned loudly. It was going to be one of those games. Great.
She looked over the classes and found only a few out of the other fourteen that even had heal buttons. She always made it a point to see how many potential healers the team had, as having a few well-geared ones could easily make or break entire games.
She found two priests, two paladins, and one druid. Only one of the priests had gone down either of the healing trees, and his gear was average at best. In fact, most of the gear on these buffoons was not great. Rainbow never understood why it was so hard for some ponies. At this point, Blizzard practically handed you gear with minimal effort. Why could she do it and others couldn't? She sighed, suddenly not wanting to be a part of this group.
'Twenty-two honor kills,' she reminded herself. 'Twenty-two. You can do this, as long as you don't Leeroy Jenkins half the opposing team all day. Just play smart, Rainbow. It's all about the title!'
Before things began, she also went over the names on the other team on the game statistics page, just to see how many healers they could have as well as the other classes. Nothing spectacular so far, but then, it hit her. That name. She recognized it. Minifridge. She squinted hard as she stared at her screen. That annoying little pink pig-tailed girly girl gnome mage that constantly made a fool of her was here? Ugh! Perfect. Just perfect. It was bad enough that she'd run into Minifridge out in the world occasionally, being on the same server. Now, she was meeting her in battlegrounds too.
Rainbow dragged a hoof down her face in aggravation. Her main goal was still honor kills, but now, she had a target. Now that she was in a battleground with.. well, questionable help.. Minifridge was going down if it was the last thing Rainbow did!
The game started. She and a few others headed to the blacksmith in the center of the map. After a quick battle, deliciously accentuated by her first defeat of the little runt that grated her so, they were victorious. Unfortunately, the other groups got slaughtered at the mine and lumber mill. Even though she had some of the best gear among her team, her party members dashed off and left her alone to defend the flag. Celestia almighty, did she hate defending.
After a pair of wandering idiots showed up to check on her, Rainbow mounted up and left. Her thirst for digital blood needed to be satiated. She figured she'd check on the mine. No reason not to try and win on the way to twenty-two honor kills, after all. She looked down at the flag below from her motorcycle mount. It only had two defenders, a warlock and a shadow priest. She should be able to handle them, as their gear didn't look too great, even from such a distance.
Suddenly, she heard a squeal come from her speakers. She had been turned into a pig! She spun her camera around, and there she was. Minifridge! Rainbow gritted her teeth so hard, it was a miracle none of them broke.
Four more cutesy mage copies appeared, as well as her water elemental, the gnome having used her cooldowns. Rainbow watched her pop a few self-buffs and unload a flurry of frostbolts at her. Once the first attack hit, breaking the polymorph spell, she charged at the little hoofball as hard as the game would allow her, only to be frozen in place after one swing of her axe popped her ice barrier.
'Trinket!' she thought. 'Gotta trinket out of.. of course.'
It was on cooldown. When was it not?
Wait, she could still fear her, and it'd get the mirror images off her for a few seconds, too! She let out a mighty roar and the copies, as well as the original, went scurrying about. 'Eat it, Minifridge!', she thought. Awesumator came unfrozen and slowly crept toward her enemy, still affected by the frostbolt's chill.
Despite a quick hamstring to cripple the runt, the gnome frost nova'ed Awesumator back in place and blinked away after the fear broke. Wonderful. She was a sitting duck again. The copies had stopped running around aimlessly and resumed pelting her with frostbolts. The water elemental never stopped. After only about ten seconds, she was already half dead. Damn mages. Damn frost mages!
After becoming unstuck.. again.. she switched stances and charged in. Again. Rainbow threw on a confident smirk as she watched Minifridge wind up another frostbolt.
"Nowhere to go now, shorty!"
Except she forgot about the water elemental's ability to freeze somepony in place from a distance. And that's precisely what happened. Again. Minifridge's frostbolt hit the orc square in the face at point blank range as the elemental's frost nova landed, followed instantly by an ice lance, removing a sizable chunk of the health bar.
'Do they really need so many ways to freeze you in place?!' Rainbow screamed in her head.
The mirror images faded away and now it was just the two of them. Well, Minifridge was still at full health and Awesumator was at 10%. The mage jumped around mockingly as Rainbow tried and tried to chase after her, to no avail. The water elemental hit her with a few more frostbolts and the orc fell over dead. Before Rainbow hit the 'release' button, she took a second to glare at her mortal enemy. The gnome walked up to Awesumator's head, face in the dirt, and sat down. And stood. And sat again. Over and over.
Rainbow felt the heat rising to her face. Her eye twitched. Her head throbbed. That little.. ugh! Every single time! Celestia, how much she hated her!
She finally hit the 'release' button, not wanting to watch anymore of Minifridge's arrogance. Her ghost appeared at the blacksmith graveyard, eight seconds until resurrection.
'Oh jeez, what's wrong with me?' Rainbow thought, facehoofing. 'I have my shield and a one-hander. Why didn't I reflect a couple things? Stupid...'
Once Awesumator was up again, she hopped on her motorcycle and sped off. But, she was still irritated by the mage. The title was slowly taking a back seat to her personal vendetta. From a distance, she watched the little midget eat one of the terribly geared warlocks Rainbow had on her team alive. But, he left her with a few DoTs, and she was at low health. Awesumator was only a few seconds away, and it didn't appear just yet that the game let Minifridge drop combat. When Rainbow got close, she switched to her sword and board and charged in.
Predictably, Minifridge, who was at 14% health after all the warlock's spells faded away, frost nova'ed the warrior in place. The mage didn't run away though. Why would she? She just destroyed Rainbow's orc and took no damage in the process. She put on her ice barrier and started winding up a frostbolt when a little white shield popped up over Awesumator's head. Suddenly, the mage stopped casting.
'Here comes the ice lance,' Rainbow thought.
To Rainbow's surprise, the next spell she watched Minifridge cast was polymorph. The gnome squeed and turned herself into a pig.
'Why the hay would she do that?'
The pegasus' eyes widened in horror as she figured out the gnome's devious plot, watching her nearly nonexistent health bar quickly fill itself up.
"No! Aaaagh!" she yelled and slammed a hoof on the desk, sending a few keys flying off the keyboard. "Trinket! Trinket!"
She saw it was ready and used it, freeing herself. A split second before she could stop her hoof from pushing the button, however, she saw one second left on the frost nova's duration in the corner. She slammed her eyes shut and growled at her own stupidity.
She switched back to her two-handed axe after running up to the pink porker. The shield apparently was going to be useless too. Fantastic. With a swing of Awesumator's weapon, the gnome returned to her normal form and vanished from sight. Rainbow spun her camera around and saw no sign of the infuriating pipsqueak. The midget was just toying with her now.
Suddenly, a frostbolt hit the orc from behind. Turning around, Rainbow spotted the bane of her existence. Despite being several yards away, she was suddenly frozen in place again.
'Freakin' water elemental! Go away!'
Minifridge cast Deep Freeze, turning Awesumator into an ice cube. With a couple more frostbolts paired with instant-cast ice lances, his full health pool exploded, leaving him at 37% after a couple big critical hits. After getting free, and moving at a snail's pace toward her hated enemy, Rainbow caught up with Minifridge and took a desperate swing, promptly before dropping dead again at the gnome's feet.
'Minifridge is rolling on the floor laughing at you.'
'Minifridge is rolling on the floor laughing at you.'
'Minifridge is rolling on the floor laughing at you.'
Rainbow thought she was going to pop a blood vessel.
"She was at 14% health! 14%! Horseapples!" she screamed, abusing her desk again and popping out a few more keys. With a groan, she leaned down found all the stray letters and numbers on the floor, setting them back into place. After repairing her keyboard, she released to the graveyard.
'No more Mrs. Nice Pony,' Rainbow said in her mind.
She grouped up with two others to attack the mine after resurrecting. As the fighting went on, her companions and the enemy priest fell. It came down to her warrior against the warlock. An easy victory, finally! Even though she was at half health, two more good hits and the warlock was dead, and she could claim the mine! Then, she appeared. Again. After the warlock fell, Minifridge popped her cooldowns and obliterated Awesumator. Again.
It was a never ending, agonizing cycle for Rainbow. Ride around looking to do something that could result in eventually taking the lead. Run into Minifridge. Die horribly.
Charge, frozen, dead, release. Charge, frozen, dead, release.
Rainbow wore the most aggravated scowl a pony could imagine. She sat in the blacksmith graveyard and opened up the statistics page while she waited to get back into the fight. Three kills, nine deaths, five honor kills. Five? She had to have more than that! With a sigh, she closed the page and watched the resurrection timer count down.
5...4...3...2...1.......
The timer disappeared, but the game took a few extra seconds to respond, leaving her still dead with no time remaining.
The Alliance trumpet sounded. 'Minifridge has assaulted the blacksmith.'
"Oh, come on!"
Awesumator's ghost appeared in the farm's graveyard, now being the only one the team had left. Rainbow watched the resurrection beams appear on her screen, indicating that other dead players just returned to life, and a familiar red box clicked into existence.
'30 seconds until resurrection.'
She just stared emotionlessly at the words that tormented her. If it wasn't so pricey, she likely would have punched a hole through the monitor. As the timer expired and she returned to the game, she didn't move from the graveyard. A frostbolt hit her character from the right a few seconds later. She looked and saw the dastardly mage once more.
Rainbow muttered with a snort, "Nope. Forget it. This isn't worth it," and hit alt-f4. She stomped away from the computer, yelling about how broken various classes were.
Awesumator stood there, unmoving. Minifridge winded up another frostbolt, only for it to cancel itself out when the warrior disappeared.
"Aw, my little target dummy left. I must have hurt his feelings. Though, I hope I didn't hurt them too bad."
An annoyed bunny tapped his feet on the wood floor and stared at his owner.
"I'll make you something to eat after this game, Angel. You know how much I like pwnying noobs," Fluttershy said with a giggle. Her attention turned back to the screen. "Hm, what's this? A rogue named Pikurpocketzlol running around out of stealth. On foot. Hehe! Come to momma!"
