That evening, after dinner, Mark and Bliss hung out for the first time in a long time, sure they used to live feet from each other in that rusty trailer, but their relationship had been strained under the crushing poverty for years. Not that they ever were particularly close. Between the war and the prison and labor camps after them, he had seen her for less then a month total time in 10 years of her life before she was dropped in his lap. He didn’t particularly blame Lori. After getting married he saw her only a handful more times then he saw Bliss. She was basically abandoned thanks to the war, and their parents dying in the nuking of Los Angeles only increased her sense of abandonment.

He was only upset that she chose this new guy over her own daughter. Granted it gave him a chance to be a father, and he loved his little girl, so it turned out to have a silver lining, but he never forgave her for the pain he saw in Bliss’s eyes for years after being dumped in his lap. His little girl’s heart obviously was bleeding being abandoned by her mother with a guy who was essentially a stranger.

Worse, he couldn’t even give the young girl the love and care she needed. Their crushing poverty didn’t leave him any options to raise her properly. They couldn’t take vacations, they couldn’t take trips. He couldn’t take her to the beach or camping or to amusement parks. He could barely afford food and clothing, handmade gifts or purchased necessities was usually the best he could manage for Christmas. When she started menstruating, the added cost of sanitary pads nearly made them homeless, that was how tight GC was at the time. Overall if asked to name the greatest regret in his life it was not giving Bliss what she needed to have a happy and carefree childhood. So, this rare chance to just hang out with his little girl was absolutely treasured.

They didn’t do much, they played rummy, then watched a very old 2D movie Bliss wanted to watch called “The Notebook”, which of course was tragic enough to drag a tear or two out of Mark, however Bliss was made of sterner stuff, and simply made fun of her Dad for crying at that movie, much to both their amusement. After the movie ended, they talked a little bit about school, and her upcoming senior year, then he sent her to bed before turning in himself.

Mark welcomed the new day like he usually did. Quick and simple breakfast, 3-mile run, some forum reading. The new LM_STARS video hit like a bomb on the forums. The new video showed a young man arriving in Boston Harbor by way of a double mast sailing ship. He looked to be 12 or so years old and apparently an orphan. It was fall, and the trees were bare. The scene shifted to a brutal winter. He was living in a slum with a few other orphan children, huddled together to keep from dying. The camera shifted to show a slowly encroaching pack of wolves, obviously targeting the slum children living outside the wall. Some soldiers spotted the wolves and started to fight. The young ‘hero’ charged out of his shack, and seized a musket from a soldier who was killed by a wolf, as if an action hero from a movie, he ducked a leaping wolf, eviscerating it with a rusty knife as it flew past, it’s guts streaming behind it as it flew by, he then leapt up on top of a shack, and leveled the musket, shooting one wolf after another, his battle was a running one, where he’d shoot, then leap and dodge and make his way closer to the other soldiers, while reloading, and shoot again. Every shot seemingly killing a wolf. Eventually he’s in a circle with a handful of soldiers fighting off the ravenous pack of wolves. The wolves defeated, the men all congratulated the young man, and he gets brought inside the city to get food and warmth. Next, we see, the young man is a handsome adult, wearing a three-cornered hat a black coat and with a musket slung over his shoulder. He’s chummy with the guardsmen, and leaves the village with an Iroquois scout. The scene shifts to him in a tree aiming carefully at a bear, he pulls the trigger and you get an absurdly cinematic “bullet time” shot of the musket ball leaving the barrel, and following the ball straight into the bear’s eye. The scene fades to black and the LM_STARS logo.

-You’ve got to be kidding me, SERIOUSLY what game are these guys playing?!

-I started in Boston as an unclassed, and all I did was barely survive the winter outside the city walls. I was hiding during the wolf attack. I didn’t know you could just grab a gun like that?!

-Even if you grabbed the gun you would have been wolf food

-You guys know who he is? That’s HAWKEYE, from CoD. I met him in Boston yesterday.

-a CoD pvp champ in an MMO? Bullshit stop lying

-Seriously I ran a raid with him

-riiiiight

-It’s possible, I ran a raid with that Eztli in Tenochtitlan yesterday

-Come on guys, there is no way LM_STARS “A” team players will run a PUG, they probably have a whole team supporting each of their “A” team in leveling up.

-I didn’t see any team around Leo in Beijing. He seemed to be doing fine alone.

-The Lion is the best gamer in the world, don’t compare normal people to Leo.

-I’m still running fetch quests for my mom, is this game bugged?

Mark closed the forum post, then checked the Tenochtitlan forums on the EAB site. To his surprise the biggest thread going was a post about him.

LM_STARS EZTLI HELPING THE LITTLE FOLKS!!!!

Amused by the strange post title, Mark clicked the link, he couldn’t remember helping anyone recently so he was curious what this one was about.

“Guys get this. Eztli was running a BUS for low levels yesterday in a RAID dungeon he unlocked. Not kidding, before you post, read to the end. He got an as yet unknown lvl.70 raid and instead of running an LM_STARS only RAID, he posted for a PUG in the region chat. I got to get in on the ground floor. He was accepting players as low as level 50 for it. I play an unclassed Archer, totally can’t get anyone to party with because all the unclassed players seem to suck. Yet Eztli totally invited me to the PUG. He shared the loot drops fairly, I even got a gold rated bow! All my EQ is silver rated min now. We were running this on top difficulty. And after running the RAID 6 times with him I went from level 50 to level 65. 8 hours, 15 levels. I saw him go from level 67 to 75. He was still running the RAID with PUGs when I logged out. Check the link below I took photos to prove it. He even posed with me for one! I have a video of the raid too but I won’t post that. Dude is a total pro.”

-weird

-why would LM_STARS a-team run a bus?

-OP, what’s Eztli’s build?

-Seriously, you can’t just post this without talking about Eztli’s build.

-Guys, he has a serious debuff/buff skill it’s hard to believe. Totally was wrecking the mobs. He didn’t seem to need to cast much else, the few times he did, he used a single target blood spear, did some insane damage, but with all the AOE we had he barely bothered to cast it. Just used it to pull in more mobs into the AOE bombardment, frankly, he had the PUG so well organized it felt like we had 2 too many people running it, too easy. And this was a raid on top difficulty.

-That’s a pro I guess

-I’m having trouble believing the photos. How can a trash pug like that clear a 5-star raid? I know your tank in that 4th picture. He’s trash.

Mark closed out the thread with a frown then called up Leo.

Leo answered in half a minute. “What’s up Mark?”

“Seen the post in the Tenochtitlan forums about the RAID I was running yesterday?”

“Hang on.” Mark waited for a few minutes then Leo picked up again “Yeah I see it.”

“I do something wrong?”

“You’re afraid the Raid video will get out and we’ll lose some money, right? Stop thinking small, this isn’t 30 years ago. We already cut a guide for that raid using your video. We don’t charge for these low-level stuffs. Usually we do these with a backup team, not a PUG but that’s not your fault for not knowing. It only really matters when we get into the high and rare content. Then we’ll want an all LM_STARS team to avoid legal issues over selling the video, and even then, it’s really not important. Do you know what percentage of our income is from RAID videos? Less than 1 percent.”

“I have a support team?”

“Yep, each of us do. You haven’t met yours because you can fly, those guys were waiting to help you farm your levels and you flew right past them. Well, not a big deal, by the time the support team found out you were already farming Caimans and there wasn’t any point. They’ve mostly caught up with you though it took them a serious grind to do it. Holly is hunting with her support team. She’s upset that you’re over 10 levels higher than her by the way.”

“So, running PUGs is fine?”

“Sure, looks like positive press to me. Don’t worry about it. Just remember as you get more well known you got to remember everything you do will be filmed or recorded. Running PUGs are fine, just don’t screw one up, cause that will end up on the forums too. Same with looting. By the way, when are you going to log in today? Sent you a guild invite, you’re the only one who hasn’t logged in yet to accept.”

“Oh right, your level 100, you can start a guild at that level.”

“That’s right, git gud scrub. You need to gain 25 levels to catch up to me, so don’t feel complacent.”

“Git gud scrub? Dude, that’s so… old. Even when we were kids that was old. What’s next Shakespearean English?”

Mark hung up on Leo’s laugh, then logged into the game.