Zoey hung upside down from a metal bar. Her legs were placed over the bar as she rose herself up using nothing but her abdominal muscles. Sweat dripped down her bare midriff as she held her mobile phone in a horizontal position playing a game on it. Going up and down repeatedly on the bar despite gaming. Zoey was currently laning with a very toxic individual in a very popular MOBA game. Zoey smirked as she ‘accidentally’ used her ultimate skill on herself instead of her teammate. It would have given him a huge increase in health, attack, speed, and defense, but instead, it went all to her, and he died. He didn’t die with dignity or maturity. Oh no, he wasn’t that type of individual.
“I hope your family gets gangbanged by a flock of dolphins, Sydney” Zoey’s character was named Sydney.
“I misclicked, sorry.” Zoey learned something about gamers who get irrationally upset over video games.
They absolutely hate it when the people that have done wrong to them in some way don’t respond back with the same level of toxicity. So, while Zoey’s response was completely normal for a simple mistake, her teammate, Leo, did not respond as a normal person would. A normal person would forgive her and tell her just to make sure she doesn’t do it again or something. Leo, on the other hand…
“Im going to misclick my penis into your mother’s anus and give you a sibling you fucknugget.” Leo responded.
“I do better next time. :)” Zoey smiled deviously as she completed 1,000 sit-ups.
Zoey’s words may sound innocent and sweet, but she was planning to do something far more sinister. Her entire purpose wasn’t to win this game at all! She was enjoying baiting a reaction out of these toxic losers for her own personal satisfaction! Zoey didn’t know if she was a freak or something, but it serenaded her soul having these people freak out over video games. Death threats, rape threats, genocide threats, racial threats, sexist threats, there was no limit to the things that they wouldn’t say for inconveniencing them in a virtual game. Something that literally doesn’t matter at all!
When Zoey and Leo got caught up in another team fight, Leo was running low on health. She just so happened to ‘misclick’ once again as he was running toward her for health, and Zoey couldn’t contain herself and absolutely lost it as a message popped up in global chat.
[Ally: Leo has disconnected.]
Zoey fell from her bar and laughed till she was wheezing for air. The enemy team soon killed Sydney since Zoey was too busy laughing to focus on the game. Zoey closed out the game when she finally managed to catch her breath. Her chest slowly rose and fell as she looked up at the ceiling of the cell.
“Am I going crazy?” She asked herself.
‘I think we’re still good. That was some pretty funny shit.’ Inner Zoey disagreed.
“Well, I’m glad I can rely on the second voice in my head to tell me I’m not going crazy.” Zoey wasn’t being sarcastic at all.
‘It's the same voice, you stupid bitch. Think of your voice as one half and my voice as the other half.’ Inner Zoey replied back.
“How does someone have two voices?” Zoey mocked.
‘We really are a dumb bitch… You fucking idiot, I'm not talking about an actual voice! It was just a comparison.’ Inner Zoey explained.
“I knew that…” Zoey had to save some of her pride.
‘...’ Inner Zoey just sighed. ‘We need to get back to school. I think we’re losing brain cells being in here for so long.’
“Never thought I’d hear myself wanting to go back to school.” Zoey chuckled.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Zoey sensed something suddenly appearing outside of her cell. She leaned her head back and saw some bald guy. Where did he come from? Zoey didn’t hear the sound of the door opening, and it wasn’t anywhere near the time for her meal.
“Who are---” Zoey’s question stopped in her throat.
“AGH!!!” The bald guy was being electrocuted by magji traps placed all around the outside of her cell.
Zoey watched as multiple wisps of mahna smashed through the door leading out of her cell. She turned over in confusion as the guy continued to be electrocuted. It turns out there were traps in this room! Why did they activate for this guy but not that justice guy before? He tried to use magji, but nothing happened to him. Is this guy not a part of The Council?
They locked eyes, and just when multiple magjistars burst through the wrecked door. He teleported away. Zoey looked up at the magjistars who looked at her like she did something wrong. She glared at them, daring them to make a fuss.
“It wasn’t me.” She told them.
The magjistars readied spells to fire at her despite her just laying on the floor of her cell with the snake cuffs still sapping her mahna to the point where she couldn’t perform even the simplest spells. They began inspecting the traps in the room while throwing ugly gazes at her. Maybe they forgot how scary she was after not entering her room for so long. Maybe they thought since Ari could come in and out so easily, then she was just a big fucking pushover or something. Zoey dared these motherfuckers to start some shit. Come up real close to these fucking bars and see what happens.
Eventually, nothing came to pass. Zoey and the guards just glared at each other while they had some magji engineers or something fix the traps. She didn’t know their official job titles, so she just called them magji engineers. It was her first time seeing them. Maybe they didn’t go out on cases to fight daemons.
Zoey guessed it made sense. A secret city of magjistars couldn’t have every single one of them be fighters. There had to be people who made food, clothes, and provided other services. Magji couldn’t do everything, could it? Sadly her knowledge of how the magji world functioned was sorely lacking. She exclusively dealt with daemons and how to hurt them. Although, she kind of wanted to change that, too, since she knew that daemons weren’t irredeemable. Zoey planned to see if she could return those daemons she turned into magji shards and turn them into good people. If not, she’ll just make some daemonic tools out of them.
After the guards fixed the traps in her room, they left. After them was another guest that Zoey wasn’t expecting to see. A fairie came into her room, but this fairie wasn’t Ari. Ari had long, straight blue hair. This fairie had long straight flame-like hair. They held her meal and looked down on Zoey from above.
“Here, criminal.” They dropped the bowl filled with mysterious sludge disguised as porridge on the ground.
The bowl shattered as the white gruel went splattering on the floor. Zoey silently measured the distance between herself and the fairie flying outside of her cell. It was her first experience meeting a fairie treating her badly. She didn’t know how to feel about this when she knew that fairies were essentially brainwashed slaves. This bitch of a fairie outside of her cell was only doing what she was taught. What she thought was right.
“Oops, sorry. Guess you’ll have to go hungry today.” They laughed.
“Where is Ari?” Zoey asked.
“Ari? That failure told you their name?” They clicked their tongue. “It’s none of your business, inmate. She’s getting what she deserves.” They then flew out of the room.
Leaving Zoey to feel slightly bad for putting thoughts into Ari’s head. She didn’t feel bad for helping another sentient being realize they have free will. It just felt bad to hear that Ari was being punished for realizing this in a society or culture that didn’t want them to realize that. ‘Makes you wanna tear down the magji world, doesn’t it?’ Inner Zoey whispered in the back of their head.
“Not now.” Zoey shook her head. “We have to deal with the daemon attack first, then The Council, and after that, we can see about making some changes in the magji community. Although, I’m getting a little sick of the magji world…” This culture wasn’t one she had an interest in anymore.
In fact, Zoey didn’t know if she ever had any interest in the magji world or its culture. From the beginning, all she cared about was protecting herself. Then that changed to learning magji to get stronger to defeat daemons to raise her skills. It was after that things started to get complicated for some reason. Maybe things would be easier if she split from the OM and just went out hunting daemons on her solo dolo. It’d be harder to find daemons without anyone pointing her to them, but Zoey was sure Prometheus could figure out something to help her. No stupid political drama that involves others wanting to lock her up, control, or kill her. No accidentally befriending sociopathic magji assassins. No cases to be set up as traps to get her killed or injured. No one to backstab and try and get her killed while on cases.
Actually, this was sounding better and better in her head…