February 14, 2013 at 8 PM, Fort Worth, TX: Preston

"And we'll see y'all next time." Silence. Just silence.

"Uh... Are we done now? Do I cut it there?"

"Yes, you crazy bird. You cut it there. What'd you think we were gonna do? Another three videos?" Choco laughs nervously and I hear him clicking furiously on his end of the Skype call. I save the recording and drag it to the middle of the desktop on my left screen to edit and cut up into three different uploads while I eat dinner. Which should be here any time now. Or twenty minutes ago. Where the frick's the pizza guy? "So how's it feel to be a YouTuber?"

"It's uh... Pretty stressful. Half of my equipment doesn't work yet. I think it might need batteries." I facepalm and he laughs when he hears the sound of the smack. "When you talked me into doing this, the first thing I thought of was how everyone thought the world was going to end in 2012... I thought I was the disaster the Mayans predicted."

"The whole thing's a disaster, yeah, but it's not that bad. You'll get it figured out eventually. Maybe."

"You have so much confidence in me," he chortles and I hear his phone vibrate quietly on the desk by his keyboard.

"Got a hot date there?"

"Something like that."

"Some Buffalo Wild Wings with the crazy red sauce?" He laughs and I hear the phone bump his desk as he sets it back down and goes back to clicking. Must be doing some recon for the Bacca or something, the way he's goin' at it like that. You'd think he was on eBay trying to win the first can of Fresca ever filled with all that insane clicking.

"I'd say she was more sweet than spicy. You know how I said I was going to AnimeCon a couple of weeks ago? Well..."

"Whaddaya know? The Chocobo found himself a chick for Valentine's Day. How 'bout that?" He makes that nervous laugh again and I bet his face's all kinds of fire engine red right now. Must be some girl if he's gonna spaz out this hard. "So who is she?"

"She's a really small YouTuber. She does singing, voice acting, that kind of thing. She's pretty good. A little on the cuckoo side..." He pauses for dramatic effect and I catch myself rolling my eyes even though he can't see me.

"And you say my bird jokes are lame. You're gonna give me a nose bleed from all the cute. I'm gonna catch you later and go find out where my freakin' food is. Food is the real hot date right now."

"Probably a good idea. I have to call the bae back before she starts binge watching Bleach and eating chocolate without me. Ciao for now." I can't help but laugh at the idea of Choco finding someone as nerdy, quirky, and pop-obsessed as him. Imagine two Chocobos bookin' it after me on Black Ops, running support and crapping on everyone's heads for easy points. I don't think the servers could handle it. I don't the world could handle it.

I pull out my phone and check and see if the pizza delivery guy called me or something about my missing food. Nope. Nada. Nothin'. This freakin' sucks. I ordered it like an hour ago and the place's right down the street and it's still not here. Hannah isn't even home yet or she'd've texted me. Good thing I'm not into the whole Valentine's Day thing or it'd be pretty depressing, being all alone tonight. Maybe that's why my food's so late. I push back from the desk and look around at the empty walls with nails and screws sticking out every now and then. It looks so empty in here it's almost spooky, kinda like Rob's place last summer with furniture but like, nothing else. There're two gigantic piles of cardboard boxes pushed into the corners in the living room where most of my junk's ended up and there's a landfill of big black trash sacks thrown over behind the front door so I'll stop ignoring 'em and start taking 'em to the big trash cans by the covered parking. I still don't wanna do it. It's gonna take like twenty minutes. I stare at it for a couple seconds before I turn around and go back to the kitchen to start packing again. I'll deal with the trash when I'm done finding more. I wrap up all the cheap orange and red and white plates in newspapers and go back to stacking them in a new box. I'm not gonna be using anything but take-out boxes and paper plates for the next week and a half, so I might as well get this over with. I never realized how much crap I had until I had to pack it up again. It's definitely more than I moved in here with.

A lot's changed since I moved outta Mom and Dad's house. That Woofless guy I couldn't stand is one of my best friends now, I started working with the BenjandBac full-time, I picked up a Chocobo, and I finally found a girlfriend. Things are nothing like they were even just a year ago, and I bet I can say the same thing in another year with Mitch's new recording group thing he's doing. He wanted to do something kinda like Crafted with a bunch of people who record Minecraft together, except he had to have the magical number six. It's nice for teams, yeah, but how're you gonna rope six people together to be online at the same time all the time, especially when everyone's in different time zones? Him and the Bac were in it from the beginning, then they tried to give Rob a job and roped him into doing it, then he pestered me to join him until I gave in, then Mitch found Vik and eventually talked him into doing Minecraft full-time on top of his other full-time channel. And that's where the problems started. He wanted Nooch to join but it went against some weird frickin' philosophical principle of his, something about him not wanting to do YouTube for anyone but himself and how commercializing it and merching it up took all the fun out of it. But who needs him, anyways? The BenjandBac were the only ones torn up about him not wanting to join but it's fine by me. The only thing he woulda done was annoy the frick outta me and leech off my subs. Then I tried to get Choco to join but they said his channel wasn't big enough, plus the dumb bird almost had a heart attack when I brought it up to him. He said he wasn't ready and everyone else said the same thing, so he was out. Kenny doesn't play Minecraft seriously so I couldn't ask him. Jerome couldn't get the Mudflapper to switch sides and flippity flap his way in. Vik couldn't get any of his English buddies to join in and learn how to Minecraft and I coulda swore I heard JJ laughing about it all the way down here in Texas. With no one else to ask, the game was on. And it turns out I had the name on my list all along.

There was this weird, string-bean of a guy with an English accent I met back at PAX when I was using Choco as free labor. He geeked the freak out and spent five minutes redoing his hair in his phone when he got a selfie with me and Rob, and I heard he somehow geeked out even harder when he met Mitch and the Bacca. Rob got his gamer tag for CoD and the three of us wasted a bunch of hours talking about YouTube channels and games and life and epicness and it turns out he just started a more-than-PG gaming channel with Minecraft and Pokemon and crap. Turns out he was just what Mitch was looking for. And now I have half the team as allies, and Vik's just out on his own little cloud of earl grey tea smoke making bad puns and doing whatever else he does when he isn't recording videos. Mitch and Jerome can have Nooch and all the awesome sauce they want – it's gonna hurt like hell if they try to screw with me now that I'm catching up to them in subs. Even if things go bad, I can just ride it out on Mitch's hype train for a year or so and cash out and walk away twice as big as I am now. With his and Rob's crazy plans, the Bacca's bloodstained virtual axe of doom, Vik's hardcore epic try-hardness, and Lachlan's meme-worthy bantering about, looks like it's gonna be a pretty good year. Instead of having my main channel and my Minecraft channel, it might end up being my main channel and my CoD channel. Never thought I'd be saying something like that.

The doorbell rings and I almost drop the coffee mug I'm wrapping. I slide it across the counter and stumble over the minefield of boxes while I fish around in my pockets for the twenty I just put in there like an hour and a half ago. I can already taste the three meat, pineapple-y deliciousness and it's on the other side of the door.

"Fudging finally. It's like he was looking for Rob's igloo," I mutter to myself as I unfold the bill and check through the peep hole. I put on a big smile like I'm a busboy and open the door, hoping I don't look too annoyed. This guy looks like he just busted outta death row and killed the real pizza guy with just a container of marinara sauce. "How's it goin'? You can keep the change." He just looks at me and I slowly shut the door, hoping he goes away on his own. I just paid twenty bucks for one really late, really cold pizza. This sucks.

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February 14, 2013 at 11 PM, Montreal, Quebec: Rob

Mat is already talking and holding something up in front of the camera before I can even put my headphones on to hear what he's saying. You would think that after all of the years he has spent gaming with other people, he would know that just because Skype beeps doesn't mean that the other person has answered the call yet. I slide the headphones on and turn on the microphone, carefully releasing the puff of cigarette smoke through my nose inside of the front of my hoodie where it will get distilled and won't set off the fire alarms. There is never an hour of peace when you work with professional gamers.

"What? I couldn't hear-"

"I said, I got the letter. It was in the mail today." I have never seen a nervous Nooch before, and I hope I never have to see another one. It's like watching the court jester break down into hysterical tears; it's unnerving, almost unnatural. It seems strange to think that even the comic relief needs relief every once in a while.

"Are you going to open it?"

"No, I was just going to burn it. Of course I'm going to open it! I just want to savor the sweet taste of hope for a few more seconds." I just look at him, telling him to stop stalling and get it over with already. The letter isn't even for me and I can't stand the anticipation. There is so much riding on this one piece of paper, for me and especially for him. Either way, opening the envelope is just the beginning of an immense list of chores that we need to do. He tucks his unruly hair behind his ear for undoubtedly the hundredth time today and flexes his bony fingers like a genuine gaming aficionado. He looks up at me, down at the letter in his hands, and back up at me with a trace of his usual smirk. "All righty then. Here goes." He hastily tears the flap of the envelope off, lining up the tiny shreds of paper in front of his keyboard like a dog ripping a food wrapper apart for the sake of the thrill. He slips the paper out and lays it flat on the desk, still folded up, looking down at it with wide eyes.

"Bro. Are we going to do this sometime this year?"

"We have to do something first. Do you still have that shitty vodka that almost made Jerome yuke on the wall?" I nod and he points off screen, gesturing for me to go get it. I have work to do after this, regardless of the outcome, but I will humor him this time – I think he needs it. I jump up on my knees on the countertop in my kitchen and fish the bottle off of the top of the cabinet, not bothering to grab a glass on the way back to my office. No one else appreciates the taste of aged cheapskate like I do; no one will miss it. I skid in my chair so that I roll back in front of the computer screen and he has a miniature bottle of Fireball that he may or may not have paid for. He dramatically twists the top off and raises it like a wine glass up in the air, the bottleneck between his fingers and his head held high in a lofty pose. "I would like to make a toast tonight. One that isn't made enough. One that goes out to the people who really, seriously deserve it, and who need to finally catch a break. A toast – to the scum of the earth, to the losers, the nothings, the plebians, the proletariat! A toast, I say, to the ones they said would never go anywhere!"

"Cheers, man." I swing the bottom of the bottle toward the webcam, and he clinks his against the side of his computer monitor. We each take a drink, and when I put the bottle down, I could swear I saw the beginning of tears in Mat's eyes. This single piece of paper could make or break everything he has been working so hard to build up for the past three years. "Now, enough rambling and bullshitting. What did they say?" He puts his little bottle of whiskey down and grabs the letter, an awkward, heartfelt grin on his face. He looks like he is about to lose it.

"I don't know if I can do this."

"You already did the hard part, and the hardest part starts five minutes from now. This is the easiest thing in the world. All you have to do is look at it before it self-destructs."

"Let's go, boys." He unfolds the paper haltingly, squinting his eyes and scrunching his nose as if the letter is emitting a blinding light. He opens one eye, then the other, then he slowly turns his head forward and scans the letter. Nervousness melts into confusion, confusion melts into astonishment, and astonishment melts into the shittiest grin I have ever seen. He looks up at the camera, and he looks like an absolute madman. "Three, two, one. Greetings from the land of Canada. My name is Nooch, and welcome... to another season of IRL UHC. I'm in, boyos!"

"GG, man. G-fucking-G."

"Yeah! Woot!"