Reggie had never been so frustratingly angry before. To learn that he was being blacklisted from a fraternity that he had the right to be in, to know that the object of his affections wasn't any closer to reciprocating those feelings, and to know his robot could likely not make the cut to get into the collegiate robotic championship all weighed his mind down until his thoughts were nothing but a whirlpool of darkness and loathing.

He was still consumed with them by the next day but had at least gotten to work on his robot after meeting with his father. That was one step closer to solving the latter problem.

He went back to the engineering building Sunday afternoon. No surprise, Shane Calhoun was also there fiddling around with his pathetic luxury gardening robot. Who needed such a thing? Was there even a demand for that kind of service?


Information was a commodity—the ability to gain knowledge and use it against your enemies or in your favor. Now that was worth something. Shane of course, didn't say anything to Reggie and vice versa; both young men were on chilly terms, especially now that the Mayor's election was so close and their fathers were toe-to-toe in the polls.

They had been classmates in the same grade, not close, but cordial enough in high school. Shane didn't exactly put himself out there but then again, Reggie wasn't the most social of lads either. He briefly looked at Shane, who was ignoring him and tightening up his robot chassis. Reggie still felt a pang of regret for snapping at Alanna the previous night and driving her away—to help Shane with his robot. Any robot engineer would be lucky to have Alanna's input and Shane had seemed most ungrateful.


Shane eventually left, docked his robot in its stand and Reggie took the rest of Sunday, well into the evening to finish programming his spybot to accept audio feed. He tested a recording, it sounded faint, so he cracked open the robot and adjusted the microphone to be near the bottom. Alanna had been right about the sound being clearer from that entry point, which just increased Reggie's regret about the whole situation.


Now it was Monday; he stayed in his apartment all day, playing Rush Hour and grinding out wins like it wasn't even a challenge. Every win would gain an amount of in-game credit he could use to purchase custom car parts and upgrade the racing vehicles he used. He hoped that Violet_Fire would return soon so he could show it off, and then if luck permitted, win a race against them again. They were the only one, it seemed, to be good enough to make a race interesting—because he never knew for sure if he'd win against them.



Then just like that, there was a *ping* and a chat box appeared in the corner of his screen.

Violet_Fire: Wanna race?

MegaZoom: k if ya wanna lose :P

Violet_Fire: Keep dreaming you N00b

Reggie smirked. They were just trying to shake him up before he began. He went to main screen and started up a co-op game. Violet_Fire immediately entered the instance and picked a classic car with a high-ranked engine they must have bought through in-game credits. Reggie's custom racing car was a sports car with an engine that had top speed stats. He had put together and, it was in his opinion, a perfect racing engine for this game.

Violet_Fire: When did you get this?!?!?!

MegaZoom: :D

He wondered if they would chicken out and withdraw but they stayed in the instance. Stubborn as usual.

Violet_Fire: lets race the valley map

MegaZoom: why, so you can make tighter turns and try to get past me?

Violet_Fire: I don't need tight turns to beat ur behiney

There was that word again. Alanna had said it the other night. What were the chances—the cosmic chances of her being his Rush hour rival all along?

MegaZoom: Wanna bet?

Violet_Fire: yeah ;P

That took him by surprise. He was only joking around but now he was intrigued...

MegaZoom: What do you want if you happen beat me? Not that it'll happen

The 'Violet_Fire is typing' notice seemed to last forever before their message was submitted.

Violet_Fire: I want ur custom car

That was untoward. You could trade cars in the game but Reggie's custom car was worth hundreds of hours of grinding and racing randoms. What would be worth the equivalent? He still wondered if Violet_Fire could have been Alanna Thackery, but was that information worth the potential loss of his custom car he had spent hundreds of in-game hours to get?

MegaZoom: If I win, how about you get on the voice chat channel and trash-talk me without hiding behind a wall of text?

Violet_Fire: Fine lets do this

Though Reggie immediately had a flick of nervousness hit his gut and dryness in his throat because on the off-chance Violet_Fire really was Alanna, she would surely recognize his voice! Would she think he was stalking her all this time? He had gone to some length to find out her class schedule but that was only recently when he realized how much he still liked her and it was handy to know where she'd be on campus so he could conveniently 'bump' into her. Evelyn Jane had done stuff like that in the past and he always thought it was dishonest but he could see the merit in it now.

Another *ping* interrupted his thoughts, Violet_Fire was impatient to begin and told him to start the game already. So he did.

He selected the valley map, which had its race track through tunnels, across rivers, and had especially tight turns. It wasn't his favorite but he'd won races on it before. The trick was to drift on the corners and his custom car had a sweet drift, fine-tuned to withstand the sharp curves of the road.

The screen counted down 3...2...1 and Reggie slammed the up arrow on his keyboard, dragging his mouse to the left. His car peeled out and was hair ahead of Violet_Fire's. The first bend was a corner but not the sharpest and he drifted around it with ease. Annoyingly, so did Violet_Fire.

His heart sank a bit as they passed him and took the fork in the road that was a shortcut on the map, but had more perilous obstacles. He didn't ever take the shortcut because of them. So he relied on his speed-tacular engine to make up the time as he made up the distance.

He came up behind Violet Fire's car and gave them a bump of warning, but not enough to send them off road into a crash. He managed to get ahead after passing the start line. They had two more laps to go.

He maintained first place all throughout the second lap but then in the third the tides changed when Violet_Fire spun out and took his vehicle down as well—right down the side of a cliff into a burning blaze. All momentum was lost and it was a scramble to get the cars on track and at top speed again. That dirty move put them back into the last check point 1.5 miles earlier and Reggie couldn't lose! He just couldn't! He was tired of losing all the time! He didn't want to be a loser.

So instead of taking the safe path, he was desperate enough to try the shortcut to make up the lost distance and time. He was already behind so he took a calculated risk to see if it would pay off. He avoided getting stuck on a collapsed bridge and drove through a waterfall, and finally a dark tunnel with no light until he turned a corner. In the past, he sometimes ran his cars into the tunnel walls when he took that map shortcut. Finally, the light at the end of the tunnel appeared and he hit his booster. His sports car nearly flew out of the shortcut's track and landed in front of Violet_Fire, who must have thought their win was inevitable since he was so far behind and therefore didn't bother taking the shortcut for the last lap.

He nearly flipped his keyboard in excitement after zooming across the finish line a hair in first place. He'd get to keep his custom car, and talk to his biggest racing nemesis voice-to-voice. To find out if they were who he suspected they were. He quickly typed into the chat box.

MegaZoom: Come listen to my victory song, I'm on the RH05 channel.

He flipped his headset microphone to 'on' and had to swallow a few lumps in his throat. It was just a race in a video game but his adrenaline was high. A second later Violet_Fire's avatar popped up in the voice chat—it was of a purple flaming heart. Plumbbobs, what was he going to say?

"H...h..hi there," he stuttered out but lowered the register of his voice significantly.

"Your victory song sucks and I want a rematch," came the clear voice of Violet_Fire. Definitely female, definitely familiar, and his heart seemed to stop beating and all the saliva in his mouth dried up entirely.

"Sore loser much?" he finally asked. It had seemed like minutes between when she spoke but in reality was only a few seconds. He would never speak in this way to Alanna face-to-face but it would just make her suspicious if his online persona suddenly started being super nice for no reason.

"I thought crashing into you would have pushed you far enough behind, and I never would have thought you'd take the shortcut on the valley map."

Reggie laughed, "I knew you wouldn't. I outplayed you."

"Anyway, I got on chat like you wanted. What now? Want me to trash-talk you like you asked?"


"I didn't ask you to trash-talk me! I just figured it'd be interesting to hear you do it with your voice."

It was kind of surreal, to hear her talk so candidly. It made him wonder how calculated her words were on a regular basis; he'd always assumed her kind words were the norm but she was really quite brash behind the mask of anonymity.

"So, you're a girl..."

"How observant of you," she snapped back before he could get to his point.

"No, I knew when you first talked but I'm wondering if I could ask your advice on something?"

She made a long sound that gave off the impression she was apprehensive or even inconvenienced, "Suuuuure."

"What is your idea of a perfect date?"

"Why, who are you asking?" she teased.

If she only knew.

But he was glad he had the upper hand and she didn't know who he really was.

"There's this girl I like and was going to ask her out but I haven't been on a date for years."

The last date he went on was with Alanna actually, and it was perfect. Could he capture that magic twice?

There was nothing but silence, and for a moment he dreaded that she recognized him by his voice but after a few moments, her voice rang through with a suggestion—"Take her stargazing."

"Stargazing?"

"Yeah, like cuddling under the stars or something. I know it's pretty nerdy and all but I'm just kind of fascinated about the galaxy, are we the only ones out here? You know? I had a telescope when I was little, but my sister kept hogging it and we'd fight over it."

It was even more evident that the person he was talking to was Alanna with that fact. He knew she had a sister, and her sister was kind of unpleasant and snide from what he remembered. He could feel for poor little Alanna being bullied away from her telescope. Her suggestion and anecdote only made her more adorable.

"Hey, it's okay. I mean we do play a lot of video games so that makes us nerdy anyway, right?" he tried to reassure her.

"Speak for yourself, video games are the new cool!"

He laughed as did she and he felt more at ease, like he was talking to her normally as if they were chemistry partners in high school again. Well, all besides his lowered voice, which he had been careful to maintain the deeper tone when he spoke as not to arouse her suspicion.

"How long have you been playing Rush Hour? You're pretty damn good," Reggie noted. He decided he could swing some flattery to her without it being too obvious.

"I started about a year ago. My brother gave me a link to download the free trial and it got me kind of hooked on it."

Reggie recalled that Alanna had a brother as well.

"How did you get into it?" she asked in turn.

"I saw it was a recommended play in a gaming magazine and so went out and bought a copy. I've been playing since I started university."

"What university?"

"Sim State. You?"

"I didn't say I went to uni."

He inwardly cursed for giving away info that he knew more about her than she knew he would know.

"But do you?" He asked, covering over his blunder, "I mean, you sound like you could be a student."

"I do and I am."

"Where?"

"I think...I've given enough personal info for one day. Good luck on your date and let's race again soon, Zoom," she said then added, "That is, if you want to lose!"

With that, she disconnected and he wasn't even offended by her last needling comment.

How could it be that a girl he thought was perfect had somehow become even more so? What was more perfect than perfection? Divinity? Was Alanna Thackery, in fact, a goddess?

He stood to stretch his legs because he'd been sitting for a while at his computer. The lightness he felt at winning, and knowing that the girl of his dreams was his one and only gaming rival made him feel as though he could lift off the ground at any moment—happy enough to fly if he could. He only took a few steps back until he felt the bed frame behind his knees and fell onto his mattress with a sense of satisfaction. Something, something had gone his way for once.


His imagination ran wild thinking of what other games she could have played, the fierce spark in her eyes as she raced, the determined smile between her lips when she was focused on winning. He fantasized about this side of Alanna he'd never seen—the competitive, sassy, unapologetically candid version of her.

Picturing her, in all her perfection behind closed eyelids—it made him smile and hope that his plan to ask her out would work. He could plan her idea of a perfect date and then she'd have no reason not to fall for him.


A different *ping* sound suddenly went off—a faint little note of sound coming out of his headphones which he had taken off before standing up. It was a chat box on a tab he'd left open on a web browser. He sat up, and curiously went to check it out.

The web page was sitting on the student profile site—a place he often visited to see if Alanna had added any new pictures or updates he could use as conversation fodder the next time he saw her. She hadn't messaged him though. It was, to his very ultimate surprise—Marshall Cosgrove.

Marshall Cosgrove: Hey u there?

He considered not answering, but only briefly. His curiosity got the better of him.

Reginald Orbinson: Yeah why? What do you want?

Marshall Cosgrove: Meet me at the coffee shop on the east edge of campus.

Reggie felt himself frown. Why would the Hoh Fruhm President suddenly be interested in meeting with Reggie when the day before he had made it clear that Reggie was never going to be allowed in?

Reginald Orbinson: Why would I?

Marshall Cosgrove: Cuz I have a proposition that could get you in.

He didn't have to specify as to what Reggie could get 'in' to and Reggie felt like his luck was on a roll that evening. If he got into Hoh Fruhm, everything would be right in the world.


It was downright chilly outside, and Reggie could feel himself shivering in his jacket even. There weren't any crickets chirping which had been a constant for the past two seasons. The night felt kind of lonely as he made his way to the edge of campus. He was to meet Marshall Cosgrove at the same coffee shop where they had seen each other the day before. Reggie headed toward the entrance, eager to get out of the cold but a voice stopped him.

"Orbinson."

He halted and looked to the right to see Cosgrove backed up against one of the decorative fences that contained a tree with his arms crossed. The front of the coffee shop was a charmingly landscaped area that he didn't mind sitting in between classes when the weather was nice.

"Cosgrove," he nodded and approached, waiting to hear what Marshall had to say, "Why the change of heart?"


Marshall merely glowered, as if he didn't want to be offering Reggie a way in but he had no other choice, "To put it plainly, I need you to get some information on someone—I can't use any of the guys at Hoh Fruhm because we are all being watched rather closely after today."

"Why, what happened today?"

Whatever it was that was bothering Marshall, seemed to explode as he threw his arms out, "We got raided! The police showed up on an anonymous tip that illegal substances were being used at our parties. They found the pills, and now the charter is in jeopardy—Hoh Fruhm is on probation!"


"But not double-secret probation?" Reggie asked with a smirk. Marshall wasn't amused by the reference and he slumped back against the fence.

"I'm sure I know who tipped the police off; the guy that left the frat a week ago, and the entire Greek Society like he was better than us. I want you to get some dirt on him. I'll use it to ruin him. If he thinks he can just walk away and then drag us through the mud afterward then he has another thing coming. If you get this information on him then I will let you join the vacancy he left behind."

Reggie felt himself shiver but wasn't sure if it was because of the cold or the absolute hatred and determination in Marshall's voice. Reggie's cleared his throat, he didn't know who this person was yet but it was in the realm of possibility that it would be impossible to deliver what Marshall wanted, "What if I can't find any dirt on him?"

Marshall let out a scornful laugh, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree as far as the Calhouns are concerned. Nick's dad is one of the slimiest sons of bitches I've ever seen and you can probably agree since he's running against yours in the election. So help me get dirt on Nick—he'll go down like he should, and you get into the frat you've been wanting to all these years. It's a win-win."

Nicholas Calhoun. Now there was a name that Reggie hadn't heard for a long time. Reggie didn't have to think long about the offer, because unbeknownst to Marshall, Nick and Reggie weren't on friendly terms anyway. He had no emotional conflict in trying to cause Nick any embarrassment or hurt that Marshall would have him suffer. It wasn't like Nick Calhoun ever considered how much his words would affect young Reggie—getting every kid in school to laugh at him on a weekly basis when they were children.


But as much Reggie wouldn't mind digging up dirt on Nick, he wanted more than what Marshall was offering for it.

"If I can get you the information you want to bury Nick, I want a position in the frat—vice president."

Marshall nearly growled in response, "I can't guarantee that. Those positions are voted on by the members every semester..."

Reggie whirled around, a knowing frown plastered on his face, "The Calhouns aren't the only slimy son of a bitches in Kashmire—your father orchestrated the entire election between my father and Elm Calhoun all because he couldn't obtain some land. You haven't been fraternity president all these years because of your popularity, so don't stand there and tell me you can't rig your own house elections."


Marshall's livid expression let up slightly at being called out, it was most likely the truth too. He seemed to mull over Reggie's demand. Reggie wasn't naïve, he knew Marshall would try to find a way to screw him over once he got what he wanted, especially now that he'd demanded a place of rank within Hoh Fruhm. He half expected Marshall to withdraw the offer but to his surprise, the blond straightened up and nodded.

"Okay, I'll see what I can move around—but only if you get what I want—Nick Calhoun to pay for what he's done."

"Shake on it," Reggie demanded and Marshall lifted his arm, extending his hand with a slight hesitance. Reggie took it in a firm grasp and they shook. It was a good thing Marshall came to him for this task—Cosgrove likely banked on Reggie's desperation to join the Greek society as a sure way to obtain what he needed but Reggie could do one better. He had a spybot and that made all the difference between failure and victory.