Absolute Cheater 1

Art by

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Araltys was a pretty boring place really; yeah, it was probably somewhat nonsensical to call an entire planet ‘boring’, but Araltys was a special case. The inhabitants weren’t entirely proportional to their planet; in fact, by the measure of most places, they were impossibly huge. So much so that, compared to them, their planet was only slightly larger than a decent sized town; with a little effort, an Araltian in good physical condition could actually run around their entire planet.

Of course, since their planet was- relatively- small, that meant there really wasn’t all that much to do over a long weekend.

Erika was a teenager, already something that was known to be restless and hard to hold the interest of, and she was faced with either: being bored, or actually doing her homework on a Saturday. And, as anyone familiar with the teenage mindset knows, the latter was about as likely as a cold day on your local star.

The jolteon blew a strand of hair out of her face as she stared at the ceiling over her bed; she made a note that some white was starting to show through, she’d need to dye her hair again soon. But, right now, it just wasn’t worth the effort needed. “Bored...”

Most teenagers would have been glad to be home alone, and she had been at first, but the lack of anything fun to do had quickly sucked away her happiness. Her sister, August, was over one of her friends’ house and her mother had gone to work not more than an hour ago; there was just nothing fun to do by herself.

Suddenly, her bed moved as something new put weight on it and Erika glanced down. Oh, right, her sister’s pet... whatever that was; it was vaguely canine, though only about the size of a paw, and part of it seemed almost reminiscent of some of the variants of Araltains. However, the strange, curved horn and stiff tail really put it as something unusual. They’d found the thing outside one day, and it had seemed to be friendly and housebroken; they’d tried to find the original owner, but no one had stepped up to claim him. So now, it belonged to August for as long as she felt like taking care of it.

“What do you want?” She didn’t exactly expect an answer from it, so she was mildly surprised when it actually jumped off the bed and padded over to her VR headset; even more so when he tried to drag it back to her. “You can’t be serious.” But it barked a few times, as if to say that it was, and went back to dragging.

Erika blinked a few times at this, before finally making the effort to sit up. “Okay, look; even if you can understand me- and I really don’t know if I believe you can- it’s not like you could even wear the headset. It’s like four times your si- wait, what are you wearing?” She blinked again, looking at the tiny creature in confusion. She could have sworn that there hadn’t been anything on it before, but now there was; the thing was wearing a shrunken version of a VR headset, complete with a cord that was the proper length and everything. The jolteon honestly stared for a good several minutes, trying to figure out: A) Where it had gotten the thing; and, B) When it had put it on.

Eventually, however, she just shook her head and grabbed the headset it was trying to drag. She was bored enough that she wasn’t going to think too hard on something like this; it was a source of entertainment, and that was good enough for her.

After several minutes of digging through the eternal mess of clothing, books and planetoids that was her room, Erika finally found her console and plugged in both headsets. She was going to be Player 1 though, that wasn’t going to change just for her sister’s pet.

“Okay...” Most of the stuff was voice controlled, made it easier to get things done quicker. “Two players, Time Limit: ten minutes... eh, Destruction Equals Growth mode too.” It was her favorite mode, and the little thing was wagging it’s tail enough that she was pretty sure it wouldn’t mind either. “Game Start.”



One load screen later, Erika was happily stomping around her home planet. The game gave you a decent size boost for it, about the size of some of the smaller buildings, and you just got bigger the more you managed to smash. And, even better, she had yet to see her sister’s pet anywhere; with any luck, he was so far behind her that she could take her time.

And then, right when she was about to knock over a pretty large building, the virtual world shook some; she didn’t actually feel it, since it wasn’t real, but the VR could produce some surprisingly realistic sensations. In this case, she actually did have a minor moment of disorientation similar to what one would expect from the ground shaking under them.

“What the!?” And then, again; then a third time. Each shake was more profound than the previous and the sounds they produced seemed to be getting closer. Then, when the latest impact produced a crunching sound not unlike what she had been hearing from her building smashes, she decided to look up for a change.

Towering over her, and blissfully smashing along with each step, was her sister’s pet!

Each massive paw came down on the virtual buildings and crushed them to rubble, the last one even managed to get a gravilift for a huge boost to the thing’s own score and send it rocketing up to greater heights yet.

“No way! How did you get so freaking big!?” The pet turned to her, honestly seeming to be smirking as it lifted its paw over the section of the city that she had been working on. “Oh... crap.” The paw slammed down on her in-game avatar and the score went shooting up almost as fast as it did.

PLAYER 2 WINS!