Holy started up Twitch and clicked the button to start streaming. All of his mods were on board except for Excalibur, who had a test today for his welding course, and he was nervous. This was his first stream since re-awakening. He had gained a lot of followers overnight and was now pushing 500,000 subscribers, which was surprising for a lot of reasons. He was more than a little scared, honestly. He would have to get more mods. He had gained 20,000 overnight, and it wasn’t even confirmed which rank he was.

Slowly, people started filtering in, and he adjusted his headset. He really needed to get a mic. This was getting to be too much. He was working with a high end headset right now, but he really needed to do a mic setup.

“Morning,” he said with a yawn and took a sip of his boba milk tea he had picked up this morning. He probably needed an energy drink, because he wasn’t sleeping well lately. Ever since he had re-awakened, he dreamed of the altar.

Good morning, Holy! Rolled in, and he sat back in his chair and checked his other monitor. He didn’t play multiplayer games if he could help it. All of the games he streamed were single player, and he liked it that way. He hated FPS. Metroidvania and roguelikes were the way to go, in his opinion. He probably would have more followers if he streamed the FPS games, but he just didn’t want to.

“I’m going to be playing Blasphemous today,” he said, and a question popped up in chat.

You’re not going to talk about what happened?

He stared at the question for a long, long moment. Was he going to talk about it? He didn’t know. He didn’t really want to talk about it.

“We’ll see how I feel about it later,” he said, and started up the game. “We’re going to try to run the whole game today, so let’s see how it goes.”

Was it really bad? Someone asked, and his eyes went a little unfocused as he thought about laying in his own blood and piss on that altar. There was nothing holy about that.

“I wish I could say I never believed in God,” he said, casual, and there were a bunch of question marks that popped up. “Now, I wish I didn’t believe in God because the world might look a little better to me if I didn’t.”

He should have just died. He should have just died, but he thought about hellfire licking at him, and he couldn’t stand the thought. Nothing was more terrifying than that, and he thought what scared him was burning for all eternity. Short term pain he could take. Not… not that. He couldn’t take that.

The thing about undoing all of the evangelism was the fact that he had to look at the world and rectify the fact that he did believe in God, and he was struck in the face with the fact that God had never once loved them. If He did, the world wouldn’t be nearly as cruel. He had to face the fact that God had abandoned them and did not care about them. Holy was a worn out doll, tossed aside when God was finished playing with it. Sometimes, he thought about all the children that would be born after the Rapture, and how colossally unfair it was. The Bible made no mention of what would happen to them. Were they torn from their parents? Or were they left to face the end times alone?

He wished he had deconstructed his Christianity, but he believed in it more and more as time passed, and he was jaded and bitter as a result.

Bestie what the fuck are you talking about? Someone asked, and he smiled, a small, bitter smile.

“Never mind. Let’s play Blasphemous,” he said, and started up the game. He had already beaten it once, and now he just needed to beat it on stream. He was not looking forward to the first boss, the one with the candelabra. His fingers flew over the keys as he faced it, and he watched as the screen shook with every footstep. It was building up to the boss, and he was nervous. Something about the candelabra wielding boss was familiar, and he didn’t like it.

The boss leapt in the air and landed across from him, and he dodged the first hit with ease. The attack rolled out across the ground, and he leapt over it, and then it was on. Back and forth he went with the boss, hammering away at its health bar, and he tried to put the memory of the altar out of his mind. He struck back against it, feeling a rush of anxiety as he just barely missed leaping over the roll of the fire attack, and his health bar took the hit. He dodged under the monster as it leapt, and then he struck it again. The attack sequence was powerful, but it was slow enough that dodging was easy enough.

He slammed away at the boss, and thought about how sadistic this game design was. Seriously. Who the hell made your first encounter a fucking mini boss? No warm up, no fighting grunts, just a mini boss and you had to fight for your life to survive. It was a bit unfair.

“This is sadistic,” he said with a laugh, and then he dodged another hit and leapt over the rolling fire attack. “Seriously, a mini boss at the start of the game? The devs were laughing about that. I just know they were laughing.”

The mini boss’s health bar was low now, and he pressed the attack, killing him with a few slashes to the chest. It fell over with a boom, and he sat back and rolled out his neck.

“Okay, then,” he said and proceeded to the next room. Someone redeemed points to hydrate, and he picked up the big Stanley cup at his elbow and took a sip of it, the ice clinking in the metal cup. He cracked his knuckles, and then he got to work on the next sequence. The bandits on the road were easier to deal with, at the very least. He slashed and hacked his way through them, and then---

New subscribers started rolling in. He glanced at the chat, but he was literally in the middle of combat. None of them could speak until they subscribed and were subbed for ten minutes, but he was getting overloaded. There were hundreds of them, and he had no idea what was going on, and wouldn’t know for the next ten minutes.

Dude what?

Or he would find out now.

Holy wtf.

Brett Waymon is talking about you on the news.

Oh… Oh no.

LOLLLL YOU BETTER BRACE MY DUDE I DON’T THINK YOU’RE GONNA BE ABLE TO PLAY VIDDY GAMES TODAY LMFAO

WHAT THE FUCK DOES BRETT MEAN YOU’RE THE FIRST SSS RANK???

DUDE YOU’RE ALREADY TRENDING. THERE IS A PRESS STATEMENT ABOUT YOU.

HAS ANYONE CALLED YOU ABOUT THIS??

“Uhhh… I don’t know, I don’t answer calls from unsaved numbers,” Holy replied as he tried and failed to kill a mud man. Shit. What the hell was going on?

More and more followers were rolling in.

THE FIRST SSS RANK IS A TRANS GUY???? TRANS RIGHTS!!!!

WHAT EVEN HAPPENED IN THAT DUNGEON??? HOW DOES THIS KIND OF SHIT EVEN HAPPEN???

Oh, shit. Holy was about to have a very long day, wasn’t he? Donations from the new followers were rolling in, and he swallowed despite himself. This was terrifying, and it was almost time for an ad break. He had hundreds of people in here, and the chat was now moving at the speed of light. There was no way he could keep up with it. More people were coming in to watch the stream, and he killed another bogey. He was almost done with this level, and he needed to get past it quickly so the ad break could start.

“Okay, I’m just going to make a few things clear, because I can tell what questions are coming next. Yes, I’ve had a few offers to join a few more guilds,” Holy said and killed another bandit with a wheel. “I’m not going to make any decisions on which guild to go with until after my top surgery, and I’m not going to go in any dungeons until my top surgery is done, on the off chance I get hurt without a contracted healer. I have no idea how this is going to impact my streaming, but I’m going to try to keep up on it anyways. The chat is moving too fast, so can we slow mode it, mods?”

It was slow moded in an instant, and he nodded, satisfied, before he reached the end of the level and took a second to hydrate again, because a fuck ton of people had redeemed points to make him hydrate.

“I can’t really speak on what happened in that dungeon. I don’t fully understand it myself,” he admitted, and there were a bunch of questions that popped up. “I don’t really want to talk about it, honestly. It was scary and I won’t say I was happy as a D-rank, but I was content.”

He didn’t know what was coming, and if he explained what happened in the dungeon, he would have to speculate on what came next. He did not want to do that. He wanted to wait and see what would happen.

Questions continued to roll in, and he stiffened up as he got a notification that he was being raided. Over 500 people joined the chat, and the person raiding him was… YelloMello? He’d never heard of him. Wait. Wasn’t YelloMello that trans guy with the highest amount of subscribers among the out transmascs on Twitch? He got a notification that YelloMello was requesting to stream with him, and he clicked on the ‘yes’ button. A small screen popped up with YelloMello there, a young 20-something blonde guy, his hair in a curly mess, pulled back in a high ponytail, and Holy waved at him.

“Hi, YelloMello,” he said, and YelloMello waved.

“You can call me Yello,” he said, and Holy shot him a smile.

“Call me Holy, then,” he said.

“We just got the notification and decided to raid your chat, hope you don’t mind,” Yello said, and more people streamed into the chat. Holy’s subscriber count was ticking up and up, and Holy was a little freaked out.

“That’s fine by me!” Holy said, and Yello smiled at him.

“What are you playing in here?” he asked, and Holy flushed.

“Uhhh… Blasphemous,” he replied, and Yello nodded a few times.

“Is it good? I don’t really play indie games…”

“It’s good, yeah! It’s a little sadistic, but…”

“Sadistic? How so?”

A flood of comments came in the chat.

You have to fight a boss right away.

“Yeah, what chat’s saying,” Holy said, and Yello looked over at his second monitor.

“Oh, wow, that is pretty sadistic,” he said with a laugh, and then he nervously tapped his fingers on the keyboard. “I just came in here because I wanted to ask… What’s it like being trans and a hunter?”

Oh, wow, very personal question. Holy paused, trying to think about it, and how did he answer that?

“Well, you’re mostly surrounded by cis men that just don’t get it. There’s a few cis women, too, but it’s… it’s lonely,” he said, and Yello was quiet. “It’s really lonely. The only people I end up associating with are other hunters, and I don’t, like, have time for anything else. I’m missing out on my community, and I just…”

He fell silent, and then he realized what decision he was going to make.

He was going to choose Morningstar, wasn’t he?

….

Luc sat back in the Twitch chat stream. His fingers rapped on the desk, and a slow smile spread over his face.

He had him, hook, line, and sinker. Holy Walker was going to choose the Morningstar Guild, and he was going to win.

It was gratifying. Holy’s own self imposed isolation from his own community had played right into Luc’s hands. He was going to be in Morningstar Guild, and Luc was going to have complete control over him. He just had to play his cards right.

Holy looked a little… discontent. There was an expression on his face that was similar to melancholy, though that wasn’t a strong enough word for it. He looked lonely, yes. Like he was just now realizing how empty his life had become. He had isolated himself from his community, and Luc was going to be like a fresh breath of air compared to where he came from. Holy was now realizing with his power that something needed to change. And Luc could facilitate that change.

He should take him to Pride, he thought idly. Yes, he would take him to Pride. He probably had never gone. Likely had never even been to a gay bar. Well, he was twenty, so. Luc needed to figure out when his birthday was. He needed to figure out a lot---

The chat was becoming flooded with replies, and he squinted. The ten minute timer had gone up for the new people to comment, and Luc’s hands hesitated over his laptop before he took in the mass harassment campaign going on.

A trans SSS-rank? This has to be fake lol.

Why would the world even WANT a tranny for the first SSS-rank?

Prove you’re SSS rank.

“Hey, mods, can we get---” Holy started to say, and the comments were swiftly deleted as one user after another was banned. “Thanks.”

The comments continued to flow in, and Luc thought to  type something, but he would stay quiet for now. He had anticipated that something like this would happen, and he didn’t want to reveal to Holy that he was the one watching. It was all boring garden variety transphobia, nothing really to get upset about, and Luc sat back and watched it happen. Yello said something Luc didn’t catch, and Holy lit up.

“Yeah! We should totally stream together sometime!” he said, and that had Luc dialing in. Holy looked so blissfully happy to be invited to stream with another trans person, and Luc’s gut twisted.

“Okay, join the discord and add me as a friend, and we can set something up,” Yello said, and Luc frowned. Was Yello making a move on him, or did he just want to be friends? Objectively, Holy’s audience with the whole world watching him now would set Yello up nicely, but…

Luc rapped his fingers on the table.

He didn’t like that. He didn’t like that at all.

Ah, what was he stressing about? They were probably both bottoms. It was fine.