1. What Friends?

"A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you." — Elbert Hubbard

"What do you mean I am kicked from Dawnfire?! We just won world's first race on Tomb, I was the last DPS alive who got us the kill, how are you going to kick me literally the next day?!"

Hearing his own shocked voice, Paul felt like the conversation he was having was a joke. Yesterday, he was on top of the world after a marathon raid in which the guild he was a part of, Dawnfire Forge, had managed to be the first in the world to clear it, live in front of almost half a million people. Now, less than 24 hours later, he has suddenly gone from hero to zero, waking up with his friends list dropping from triple digits to less than 10.

He was hearing his aggrieved voice, and the person on the other side of the phone was sighing.

"Have you seen what was leaked? Being associated with you is dragging our name through the mud, and Cyclic wants to get as much space from you as they can. I also received some complaints from the female players in the guild saying they were not comfortable playing with you anymore."

Hearing the guild leader's explanation, Paul was dumbfounded.

"Eric, are you trolling right now? The only thing that got leaked was that eight years ago, I carried a few girls through an undaunted run of pit to get to have a good time with one of them. Literally, like everyone who is at all good has done that kind of carry for a favor quid pro quo, it was also literally eight years ago, and that was my first time. They were all of an acceptable age and agreed; it was in a game anyway; this has never been a problem for anyone else. Are you really going to kick me for that?"

Paul was starting to get angry. He could understand Cyclic, the parent company that owns Dawnfire Forge, not wanting to be associated with any scandal, but at most, he would have to make an apology and a donation or something.

 "It might not be a big deal when everyone pretends it doesn't happen, but now that everyone knows it, it has become a problem. Sasha also never liked you, to begin with; now she has a reason to push you out and has gotten most of the other girls to agree. On top of all of that, you were on the lower end of the DPS logs during our Tomb push, so we are taking this opportunity to let you go. Your part of the sponsorship money from the stream will be deposited later today, but you will be fined for your behavior."

Hearing Eric, or Withered Bush, tell him to get lost; Paul wanted to punch a hole in the wall. He was by no means the best player in the guild, but trying to say he had low DPS was ridiculous; not only was he a single target DPS, but he also was playing damage Templar Knight, which, in exchange for slightly lower DPS, has good self-healing and multiple group buffs. Adding those things together, he said he had done more for the team than anyone else.

"Screw Sasha, all she does is pad stats with her flame storm ult and then ego anyone who has lower DPS; she also has done way worse things than anything I was exposed for or accused of. If I remember correctly, she used to run prog groups and then put loot on drops to the leader and then take everything and run; you know what, fine Eric, I will leave your shitty guild anyways."

"Well, there you go, Paul. We will put up a post in a few minutes announcing your departure, and then we can all be done with this. Also, keep any rumors you have heard about our members to yourself; I recommend you don't slander our officer."

Feeling like if he continued the conversation, he would really hurt himself, Paul hung up and instantly started looking through his messages.

The more he saw, the more chilly he felt. The more he scrolled on his phone, the more vulgar the private messages he received were. As someone who played Harbinger for a living, he was used to random people messaging him often, but today, his messages were flooded with hate and threats.

On his companion app, he clicked on the tab for friends list and was stunned to see that his 700-person friends list had dropped to 9 people. Looking at the names left, he was somewhat speechless; one of them was dead, and the other two had ended up in prison. Of the other six, four probably just hadn't woken up yet. That meant he probably only had two friends who were active players who were still his friends; of course, he wasn't actually friends with 700, but he was acquainted with all of them. 

Now he had two friends, or maybe he always only had two real friends.

While staring at his phone, Paul suddenly thought of that girl from 8 years ago. Sure, she was beautiful, but his experience with her was not good. Not only was the experience bad, but he also heard from multiple people after that she was humiliating him in a couple of mainly female groups, not to mention calling him names like a quick shot afterward.

While reliving the anger from that time, he saw that he got a message from one of his two remaining friends, a man named Silver Horny, on Harbinger .

>Hey man, I saw the news about you, thats wild. 

Seeing the message, Paul couldn't help but laugh self-deprecatingly.

He had known Silver for almost five years, and he was a very strange person. He didn't care about anything a person did when they weren't with him. He would be friends with a serial killer or predator as long as the person did not bring them into any trouble and was calm.

Replying quickly, he responded

-Yeah, man, it seems like someone is out for me this time. 

>Well, with this situation, PvP probably wouldn't be a good idea, so you wanna do some dailies later?

The response seemed so typical of Silver; they didn't care at all about any drama.

- Sure, man, I am a little busy now, but I should be on this afternoon to play.

After that, he saw the other person, who he suspected to be his other actual friend, come online on the companion app and start typing. 

This person's name was Holy Smoking Hot, and he was a guy who he had helped join a tier-one guild around a year beforehand and could be considered a pretty good friend.

> Hey man, it seems some people really want to ruin you.

-Yeah, idk who it is, but they are out for me.

>Yeah, in a few servers I'm in they are ripping you to shreds for no reason.

-Do you have any idea who started it?

>No but that guy Water is Wet in my PvP server is making it sound like he had some part in it.

Hearing the name Paul was surprised; out of anyone who really wanted to ruin his career, that person and he had very little interaction. 

 The only conflict they ever had was a few years back when neither of them had been professional and met in a semi-final for a dueling tournament, and he had somewhat embarrassed Water is Wet. At that point, he was only a streamer, and everyone clowned him for getting destroyed in a duel without hitting the enemy once, but the prize pole was like $2000 split between the top 3 people, and neither Paul nor he was going to win first. 

While trying to find any reason this guy would want to ruin his career years later, the doorbell to his apartment rang with a distinct ding.

As a high-end player in the biggest game in the world, he had a pretty big apartment, and it took him around 20 seconds to get to the door, still in shorts and a T-shirt.

After seeing who was at the door, he frowned before opening it.

On the other side of the door were two people in their thirties, a man and a woman dressed professionally.

"Hello, Mr. Stewart. We are from the Cyber Crimes Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigations here to ask you about matters related to a ring of sexually related crimes, including prostitution and fraud, in connection with the game you play, Harbinger; we would like to talk to you down at our offices."

Hearing what they said, Paul no longer felt surprised; now, there were feds at his door talking about some criminal ring, great.

Regaining his calm in a few seconds, he looked at the two agents.

"Absolutely, I am happy to help with anything I can. I will get changed and call my lawyer. I can meet you guys downstairs in the lobby in 20 minutes."

Hearing his response, he saw their smiles falter.

"Is there a need to call your lawyer for this? We aren't arresting you or anything."

Looking at them, he became somewhat weary of them; he got the feeling they were not interested in doing any good.

"I don't intend to offend you guys, but I don't intend to teach you guys a baking recipe, so I will be calling my lawyer. I also imagine you don't intend to ask questions about my crown molding. Please wait in the lobby downstairs, and I will meet you there in around 20 minutes."

Seeing his response, the duo left, and Paul let out a sigh before turning to go back to his room.

"This is going to be a very long day."