The spare room of Chase’s apartment had been transformed.
What used to be a guest room for boxes and dust bunnies was now the VIM Remote Uplink Station. Two desks, soundproofing foam on the walls, and lighting rigs that cost more than Amelia’s first car.
“Okay,” Amelia whispered, adjusting her headset. She felt ridiculous. She was wearing a yellow-and-black striped sweater she’d dug out of storage—a relic from the original ABeeWin days.
“You look great,” Chase, in a crisp button-down, sleeves rolled up, said.
“I look like a bumblebee who joined a hacker collective,” she muttered.
“You look like a Rule 63 interpretation of a cereal mascot,” Chase joked.
“Remember the rules. No real life. Just the show.”
He held up a fist. She bumped it.
“See you on the other side,” she said.
Turning to her monitor, the chat was already scrolling—a small test audience of VIM employees and kids from the Harrison Home.
OneHunchman: Is she supposed to be a female Buzz-Bee?
SuaveWay: Bee theme? Cute.
ZeekRrr: PLAY SOMETHING VIOLENT.
Amelia looked at the collection of videos available to her in the VIM Anime Collection, provided by Vincenzo. “VIM’s ‘content library’ was suspiciously complete,” she muttered to herself.
Amelia swallowed. “Hi everyone! I’m… ABeeWin. And today, for our first stream, I wanted to go back to my roots. We’re doing a classic ‘Let’s Watch’ of the anime that started it all for me: Dragon Ball Z.”
She clicked the file she’d downloaded earlier. It was labeled DBZ_SAIYAN_SAGA_HD_REMASTER_AB.
Noticing the ‘AB’ at the end, she thought to herself this must be a special version for her and her inaugural stream.
“I haven’t seen this since senior year of highschool,” she told the camera, smiling earnestly. “I remember it being so dramatic. The stakes, the screaming, the intensity. Let’s dive in.”
She hit play.
On screen, a space pod crashed into a farmer’s field. Raditz stepped out.
The farmer raised his shotgun.
“Protect me, gun!” the farmer shouted.
Amelia blinked. That… wasn’t the line she remembered.
Raditz flicked a bullet back at the farmer, killing him.
“Hey,” Raditz said. “No one shoots ‘The Raditz.’”
Amelia paused the video. Her brow furrowed. “Wait. I… maybe the dub is different than I recall? I remember it being more… Shakespearean?”
SS4Sephiroth: LMAO
SanicPhan: Is she watching Abridged?
MrKoalaT: SHE DOESN’T KNOW.
She hit play again. The scene cut to Piccolo.
“I’m a Green Namekian, and I’m here to do taxes and kill Goku. And I’m all out of taxes.”
Amelia’s mouth fell open. “Okay, I definitely don’t remember tax evasion being a plot point in the Saiyan Saga.”
She flustered, clicking around her desktop, accidentally minimizing the video and bringing up a photo of a frog wearing a sombrero.
“Oh god, sorry! ignore the Senior Hoppy!” She scrambled to fix it, knocking her microphone askew. “I just—I thought this was the Funimation dub! Why is Nappa asking Vegeta if they can stop for dairy Queen?”
TurdleFrts: THIS IS GOLD
SuaveWay: PRECIOUS
SolidShake: SHE’S SO CONFUSED
On screen, Yamcha was currently being blown up by a Saibaman.
“I do not know who this Yamcha is,” Nappa laughed, “but he sounds disappointing.”
Amelia stared at the screen, defeated by technology but charmed by the absurdity.
“Well,” she sighed, leaning into the mic with a helpless shrug. “I guess for Yamcha… that’s gotta sting.”
The chat exploded with bee emojis.
***Chase***
On the other side of the room, Chase was fighting a different battle.
He had booted up Overwatch 2.
JeenGreat: Dead game.
Vicious808: Bro playing a fossil.
Snurple: Play RIVALS.
“It’s not a dead game,” Chase argued, his voice smooth, the ‘SilverTongue’ persona fully engaged. “It’s a classic. It’s about team composition. It’s about strategy. You kids today just want to click heads; you don’t appreciate the symphony of a well-timed ultimate.”
He locked in Reinhardt. A giant man with a hammer. Honest work.
“Watch this,” Chase said. “I’m going to hold the frontline. I will be the shield.”
He marched his character forward.
Suddenly, a new character, a character alien to Chase, threw a glowing orb that disabled his shield, stunned him, set him on fire, and then made his character do a mandatory dance emote.
YOU HAVE BEEN ELIMINATED.
Chase stared at the screen.
“I was stunned,” he said calmly. “Through the shield.”
Snurple: Power creep lol.
Vicious808: Get the Battlepass, at least look good while losing.
Chase respawned. He walked out. He got hit by a sniper shot from the sky.
ELIMINATED.
Chase took his hands off the keyboard. He looked at the camera. The silence stretched for three seconds—dead air that felt heavy.
Then, he leaned in.
“You know,” Chase said, dropping an octave, becoming sharp and dangerous. “You’re right. This isn’t a game anymore. It’s a storefront disguised as entertainment.”
He minimized the game window and pulled up a notepad.
“Let’s talk about that,” he said. “Let’s talk about the ‘Live Service’ model. Because it’s not just games, is it? It’s everything. It’s your heated seats in your car. It’s your printer ink. It’s the idea that you can never finish anything, you can only subscribe to it.”
He was rolling now. The frustration of the last few weeks – the EVAPS commercial, the billing freeze, the loss of hours for Amelia – channeled into a blistering critique of a video game.
“They took a perfectly balanced ecosystem,” Chase ranted, gesturing with a pen, “and they broke it on purpose so they could sell you a way to be comfortable in the mess they made. They don’t want you to have fun. They want you miserable and pay them for the experience.”
Vicious808: PREACH
Mild-Eww12: Based.
Snurple: He’s cooking.
Chase looked at the camera, eyes blazing. “And we let them. We thank them for the content while they dismantle the mechanics.”
He turned his exaggerated exasperation, away then back to the camera, “They don’t sell you a game anymore. They now give slavery while calling it a game.”
Two hours later, the light on the camera turned off.
Chase slumped in his chair, exhaling a breath he felt like he’d been holding since Tuesday.
“We survived,” he said.
Amelia came around from her side of the room. She looked exhausted, her hair messy from the headset. “I watched a parody for ninety minutes, Chase. I analyzed the geopolitical implications of Mr. Popo. I accidentally showed the internet my pet frog from high school.”
Chase chuckled, standing up and stretching. “You were great. I heard you laughing. That’s what matters.”
“And you?” Amelia asked. “I heard shouting.”
“I may have indicted the entire software industry for crimes against leisure time,” Chase admitted.
He walked over and offered her a hand. She took it, letting him pull her up.
“Bed?” she asked.
“Bed,” he agreed.
They stumbled out of the studio, shedding the personas as they went. Amelia pulled off the yellow-and-black sweater, leaving it on the hallway chair. Chase unbuttoned the crisp collar of the “SilverTongue” shirt, rolling his shoulders to pop the tension loose.
In the bathroom, the lights were harsh. They stood side-by-side at the double sink brushing their teeth in silence.
Amelia spat and rinsed, wiping her mouth. She looked at Chase in the mirror.
“Does this feel familiar to you?” she asked quietly.
Chase paused, toothbrush mid-air. “Brushing teeth? I try to do it twice a day.”
“No,” she said, turning to lean against the counter. “The performing. The high. The crash.” She crossed her arms. “It feels like AnimeVerse. Junior year.”
Chase winced. “Please. I had successfully repressed the Homelander Incident until just now.”
“You were so lost in the sauce, Chase,” she said, half-smiling, though her eyes were serious. “Remember? You spent three days strutting around because some girl dressed as Karin Kanzuki got way into character and dragged you along with her. You adopted that… swagger.”
“We were supposed to have a bit. You were supposed to be StormFRONT, not in full black-face as Ororo Munroe. Besides, she was a fellow Street Fighter Alpha 3 fan.”
“It was an honest mistake,” Amelia corrected. “And I spent the whole weekend playing ‘Mrs. Wright’ because the hotel clerk made a mistake when I told him it was a failed couple’s costume. I didn’t even try to correct him.”
Chase rinsed his mouth and set the brush down. “I remember. You played ‘Mrs. Wright’ so well that when you threw that drink in my face in the lobby, half the con thought it was scripted.”
“It wasn’t scripted,” Amelia said softy. “I was really hurt. You were flirting some Karin cosplayer. You were ignoring me. I felt like… like I was losing you to a character.”
She looked up at him, the vulnerability from that day surfacing again.
“When the camera light went off, I felt… empty. Like my skin was still online. We’re putting on masks again. What if we get lost in them?”
Chase dried his face with a towel, taking his time. He remembered the sting of the vodka soda in his eyes, but more clearly, he remembered the conversation afterward in the quiet corner of the convention center. He remembered telling her that if they were actually married, he wouldn’t be flirting out in the open… He’d just be hiding it better. It was ‘Homelander’. A Cynical, defensive thing to say.
He looked ahead, regret churning in his mind, “I remember you crying in the hallway, Ames. And me choosing some bit instead of choosing you.”
He turned to her.
“It’s different this time,” Chase said, hoping it was true.
“How?” Amelia said, with a twinge in her eyes.
“Because at AnimeVerse, we were performing because we wanted to be other people. You wanted to be a wife. I wanted to be a Superman knock-off.” He stepped closer, crowding her space in the gentle way she liked. “But tonight? I didn’t want to be SilverTongue. I just wanted to finish the job so I could come back to this.”
He reached out, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
“I’m not Homelander, Ames. And you’re not playing Mrs. Wright anymore.”
Amelia searched his face. “No?”
“This isn’t a bit.” Chase said. “It’s more of an audition for both of us to become Mr. and Mrs. Wright.”
She let out a long breath, the tension finally leaving her shoulders. She leaned into his touch. “Okay. Good. Because I really don’t have the energy to throw a drink at you tonight.”
“From my recently cleaned face, thank you.”
They turned off the lights and moved into the bedroom and curled into each other under the duvet, the only place in the world that felt peaceful.