The Cyclones are ready and waiting at the spawn point a good ten minutes before the boss is set to arrive.

It was a different story when the concept of world bosses for tournament qualifying points was first conceived and we had to rely on second-hand information for spawn points and times, but now we have each of them down pat. Jax even has an app on his phone that he programmed specifically to sound an alarm when we're one hour out from a spawn, and all the times are listed on a big calendar in the main room of the house.

We've had plenty of time to prepare. Blake and I spent a few hours earlier doing some retro content that still has strict tanking requirements. Our damage dealers have been tightening their rotations, getting every last number they can out of their highly optimized builds. And because one of our healers is out sick, we all pulled together to get the backup's gear up to snuff so we wouldn't have any issues with this boss.

We don't technically need these points. We're well ahead of every other team, and there's no way we won't qualify for the tournament that's being held in a month. But this is our last chance to prove we're the most dominant force in Estalia Online. If we ever slack off, we give others an excuse to rise up and take our place. Worse than that, we let down our fans--and ourselves.

It's kind of like the present-day New England Patriots, or the LA Lakers. Yeah, both teams have won a lot of championships, and there are always going to be people out there rooting for the underdog, frothing at the mouth to see that upset. But the Patriots and the Lakers don't suddenly go easy on their training regimen just because they've won a few rings. Every year they come out swinging, wanting that championship as much as the most driven fan favorite.

There's even a poster in the main room that exemplifies that idea. It's just a dark, textured landscape-style strip with the words "Be Better Than Your Best" in big, bold letters. Coach Singh had it made after our first full season, and it's surrounded by team pictures and portraits of everybody's individual families and the people who are important to them.

It's a reminder of why we're doing this, and that those words don't just apply to our gaming careers.

"Is everyone ready?" I hear Coach Singh ask behind me, even though she knows the answer. "Finn, I need you to make the pull as soon as it spawns. We don't know who might decide to show up at the last minute."

"We're ready," I tell her. "Everybody's buffed, Gabe's had a refresher on the fight. We're good to go."

She claps me on the shoulder, then walks around the formation to check on the others. Even here at the house where no one can see her, Coach Singh is dressed in the team polo with the little cyclone embroidered on the front. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail and fed through the strap of a ballcap that sports the word "cyclones" in big, blocky text.

I asked her once why she always wore her tournament getup at qualifying fights. She jokingly said it's the most comfortable thing she owns, and that it's also her way of suiting up. Plus, we've had local reporters wander in and we sometimes stream with face cam on, which catches her in the background.

"Have to push the sponsorships somehow," she'd said with a small smirk, and I hadn't been able to argue that.

"Five minutes until spawn," Jax says, holding up his phone. "Somebody gonna start the stream?"

"Almost got it set up," Rosa answers. "They keep changing shit on the back-end. I had to redo all of our overlay components."

Rosa is the reason our website and every aspect of our social media looks as snazzy as they do. She's a web and graphic designer; works freelance when she can spare the time for it. Jax is--not surprising anyone--an app programmer. My co-tank, Blake, has a degree in architecture. Gabe is taking online classes to prepare for an eventual post-grad game design program at Full Sail. Everybody on the team has a side hustle--a passion outside of gaming. I think it's one of the things that makes us so successful. We each bring skills and professionalism from different areas of our lives.

I'm one of the few whose eggs are all placed firmly in the internet basket, and my work's not so much lucrative as it is informational and hopefully inspirational, but I love what I do. I love talking to young people who identify as queer and helping them navigate a space that hasn't been that receptive to us.

It's what motivates me to be the best leader I can for the team, and why my ass is in the chair and my brain is focused on the task at hand no matter what we're doing.

"DPS, make sure you have your pre-potions ready to go," I tell my teammates.

"You think this is amateur hour up in here, Finn? I've had my finger on the key for the last five minutes," Aidan says jokingly.

That gets everybody to laugh, which helps clear away any of the pre-raid jitters. Coach Singh and I have worked hard to cultivate a positive environment where personalities complement each other instead of clashing, and I'm proud of what we've achieved. It makes it so even the most tense, high-stakes moments still feel a little like sitting around the coffee table, playing a board game with family.

Our stations are even arranged in a way that makes it seem more like a LAN party than anything else. While everybody has their own machines upstairs for practice and streaming, our "battle stations" consist of a bunch of IKEA desks arranged in a square, with two big monitors, a keyboard, and a mouse on each, along with everybody's personal flair.

"Two-minute warning," Jax calls out.

I close my eyes, getting ready to do a little pre-raid meditation. Just some deep breathing and clearing my mind. This fight is demanding on the tanks, and one slip-up on my part could cause us to fail.

Before I even get into my second full breath, I hear Rosa's agitated groan a few desks down. "Are you serious? Are these guys going to show up at every world boss?"

My eyes fly open, and a wave of irritation washes over me because I already know what I'm going to see. It's not just the Cyclones waiting patiently for the spawn anymore. Another team of twelve is crowding in around us, their familiar guild tag getting under my skin in a way few things do.

Right in the middle of it all, their ringleader's half-giant avatar is waving at me. And all I can see is the smirking face of Ryker Winthrop.

That Trekkie-named motherfucker is pretty much the definitive answer to the question "what happens when you mix arrogance with raw, magnetic sex appeal?"

At least, that's the first question that comes to my mind. My teammates probably aren't thinking about those soft lips pulled into a smirk, those light eyes smoldering, designer clothes hugging tight to his muscular form, hair styled in that purposefully lazy way that makes me want to get a good handful and just tug.

No, everybody else on the team is probably just thinking about the fact that Ryker is a massive dick. Honestly, that's all I should be thinking about, too. For the past year, he and his team have personally targeted the Cyclones. They show up to every qualifying event--usually late--and scoop up second place points without even trying. They sit in on our Twitch chat, just begging the mods to ban them while they watch what we're doing so they know exactly when we're going to move.

And Ryker? I'm pretty sure Ryker has some sort of personal vendetta against me in particular. He comments on every video I post, tags me on Instagram at least once a day, and stirs up enough drama that YouTubers have made videos speculating on what would happen if we ever met in person.

I know he's just trying to show me up. Every time I post a pic from the gym, a half hour later he's got his own up. Shirtless, of course, or wearing a sleeveless muscle shirt that shows everything anyway. He posted one this morning that had me staring at the screen in a stupor for ten minutes straight, legitimately wondering what his post-workout skin would taste like if I ran my tongue over his abs.

It's the same with everything game-related. He plays the same role as me and is constantly contradicting my style and the best way to max out my stats. When I have a few rare hours to stream something that isn't Estalia Online--just for fun, usually--he's in my chat, wanting to make it competitive.

He's a Grade A asshole, but god damn, I wouldn't mind taking a good, meaty bite. So long as I didn't have to talk to him or see his stupid smirking face, I'd probably let him fuck me senseless for hours on end.

I didn't start off having these thoughts, but around four months into our rivalry, I swear Ryker's tone changed. There was more innuendo in what he said, and everything he's posted and tagged me in has been specifically engineered to make me instantly hard.

I know I'm probably projecting--a side effect of having gone without a good fuck for so long. But it's hard not to think that when, even now, the first message he sends me is:

He's talking about my avatar, and yeah, he's not wrong. This armor has a weirdly noticeable bulge to it. I kinda like it, so I haven't bothered to overwrite the look. Now I'm thinking that was a huge mistake.

I want to say something clever. Something like "maybe if you spent less time staring at virtual dicks, you'd actually show up on time." But Ryker's the kind of asshole who'd screenshot anything I say and sell it to the highest bidding site.

Instead I just give him a response I wouldn't mind seeing posted on the internet:

I have my avatar point far into the distance for good measure. I know it's going to end up screenshotted and posted somewhere before the night is through, but I don't care.

"Thirty seconds, my dudes," Jax calls out, and I pull my mind away from the image of Ryker with his thighs spread, dick in hand.

Probably small anyway, I tell myself under my breath. Guys like Ryker always talk a way bigger game than they have any right to.

As I get ready for the pull, casting my self-buffs so my paladin can get threat immediately, I see one more message pop up in my personal chat box.

Deep down, I know he's just fucking with me. But there's some primal, lust-crazed part of my brain that latches onto the idea of Ryker Winthrop fantasizing about me while he comes--while he's recording himself doing it.

I can feel my blood heat as it rushes southward, and my dick stiffens in my pants, making it uncomfortable to sit here. But sit I do, in a daze that makes me completely oblivious to everything else.

Until I hear Coach Singh call my name.

"Finn, take the pull!"

The dragon form of Lunarius fills my screen, and still all I can think about is Ryker, naked and hard. I work off muscle memory at first, throwing out a taunt to get the dragon's attention.

But muscle memory isn't enough. Not with advanced mechanics. I completely space on the debuff he's applying as he swipes at me relentlessly, and the edges of my screen turn red as my health plummets.

"Let me take him, Finn!" Blake yells. I realize after the fact that I was taunting the boss back when my co-tank tried to get him off of me, getting more and more stacks of that devastating effect that's causing my healers to work overtime trying to keep me up.

Things go downhill fast from there.

Our backup healer doesn't have enough mana to heal me, and I die within seconds of Blake getting the dragon's attention. With no one there to take it off of him, his debuff stacks too high and he's the next to go.

Everything implodes after that, and I sit there and watch as one by one, my whole team is wiped out--and Ryker's team goes in for the kill.

All because of me.