It was her private Discord server.  Initially it was just for her gamer friends from highschool, however as time went on and everyone went off to college, she allowed access to the public.  She liked to share her gaming knowledge with those who wanted her help and concluded that her Discord server was more useful than a Reddit thread.  It was also a great place to find good competition. Every now and then a new visitor would stop by to challenge her or question her strategies.  Both were easily solved, they just had to play a match which she won every time.  She was a very good gamer and a very competitive one as well.

At first she only talked to gamers from her city.  Then it spread to the surrounding counties and finally the state.  After winning a few online tournaments her popularity spread nationally.  And then after a few YouTube reaction videos highlighted her talents, she became one of the de facto experts in her genre worldwide.  She never made or published videos, but after several gaming influencers spotted her talents and showcased her skills, the rest became history.  

Eventually she began to live stream her matches at the behest of her childhood friend.  He planned to become a professional streamer and thought that they would stay better connected if they both streamed.  He was right.  Even though they both played games in different genres, they did more together in their regular lives after they both live streamed.  They talked about streaming, equipment, tournaments, sponsors and even challenges in their personal love lives.  They had definitely grown closer together and never hesitated to contact one another in the middle of the night.  

Unfortunately things got a little bumpy between them after she made her first big sponsor for her live stream.  She gained her millionth subscriber soon afterwards and it triggered an explosive growth in her subs and sponsorships.  Soon she made enough money on her live stream to make living doing it full time, so she did.  She always did well in school and was working on her Computer Science PhD, but taking advantage of a highly rewarding opportunity in her youth was something her family encouraged.  The money she made from streaming easily curtailed the pursuit of her advanced degree.  Once her streaming career was over, she always thought she could go back to college and get her degree.  Luckily, her family was fine with her choice as long as she continued to practice her coding skills as well, just in case.

Somewhere along the way her childhood friend became jealous and that troubled their relationship.  His own professional streaming career was growing slowly and he became frustrated.  One day he took out his anger on her and her success.  He even threw in the gender card and that pissed her off to no end.  Though she was a woman, it did not mean that she was not a good gamer.  Sure she looked better than average, but it was her mastery of video games that grew her subscriber numbers and she was proud of it.  She was not a boob-tuber.  And when he said that her success was due to her gender it finally cracked their already fragile relationship.  

They did not contact each other again for nearly a year.  Until one day he called her and apologized.  He realized that he was at fault and that his own streaming failures drove him to say very stupid things to her.  He acknowledged that it was her skills and not her body that grew her subscriber base.  He missed his friend and asked for her forgiveness.  She eventually relented and forgave him, but only after he agreed to play against her in nineteen live matches in games of her choosing.  

She kicked his ass in every match that was live streamed to over five million viewers.  In an odd way their situation helped to grow her gaming stream to new heights.  Once she shared her reconciliation story on her Discord server, it blew up.  In the days prior to the start of the set of punishment matches versus her friend the number of her subscribers easily doubled.  Much of it was from the support from fellow women streamers and gamers who felt slighted by men who believed that a woman's good looks was the true cause of their subscriber growth, much more so than their skills.

Eventually she became known as the Redcapt due to the color of her hair and how she dominated matches in real time strategy games as well as empire building games like Civilization X.  Initially she was known as the Red Captain, since she had dominated several sci-fi based RTS games with just spaceships early in her gaming life.  However, it sounded too generic so she changed it to Redcapt, short for Red Captain.  Everyone came to know her by that name except for her beloved yet annoying childhood friend.  

She had reminisced about her life for only a few moments, but before she realized it, she had shed a few tears.  She missed him.  Luckily she was not live streaming right now, so her slight embarrassment was abated.  

She took a deep breath, focused her thoughts and continued to help a new visitor develop an initial strategy for an undisclosed new game.  He could not share the title as the game was still in closed beta. But he did share many other details of the game.  Though she had never played the game before, she was the Redcapt for a reason.  She was the Captain for this genre of games.  And just like a real sea captain, she was a little salty and everyone knew she ran the ship.

“We always have to run away, while they destroy our nest.  They have better equipment than us so our only hope to survive is to live in the desolate places on the plane.  Though there is an abundance of minerals, there are limited food resources.  And the enemy keeps creating new camps in those locations and chases us away.  My tribe doesn’t do well versus the enemies’ armor and ranged weapons.  The tribe is mostly capable of melee combat at the moment, but they are intelligent and do get smarter everyday.  I recently taught them some geometry.”

“You said that your tribe is composed of simple workers that can evolve into warriors if given the right resources and time to grow right?”

“Yes that is the case.”

“Then setup camp in a rocky canyon or forest-like place where you can turn the terrain into your advantage.  If they out range you, fight in places where their ranged weapons are restricted.  And most of the combat will end up as melee.  Remember, your immediate goal is to buy time for your tribe to get the resources needed to upgrade a few of your worker units into warriors.  But when choosing a site for your base, keep in mind the number of easily obtainable resources, the defensibility and paths for escape.  Remember this basic mantra for selecting a good base site, one path in, two paths out.”

“Great strat. Thanks.  Finding a suitable location for the tribe is new to me.  I usually play solo games like AHBR, so I’m still getting used to this genre.  Plus, I’m always worried about making the wrong choices for them.  My tribemates might not be the most intelligent people, but I am their leader.”

“I know you told me that you don’t like wasting your resources like the lives of your tribemates, but sometimes in order to win sacrifices are necessary.  Even though a wise vulcan once said, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.  That does not apply to you.   You are their leader and your survival is the most important factor in determining the eventual winner.  If you die the game is over.  I’m positive if your tribe existed in real life, they would find truth in my words.”

“Yeah your right.  I was just trying to be extra careful.  But if we all die in the end, the current way I do things would be moot.  I need to win.  I need to win for us.”

Alicia felt good.  She had indeed provided useful advice and the visitor listened to her.

“And as for offensive strategies, I think Zerg Rush might work for you.  You said your tribe has a higher reproductive rate than the enemy.  So you can grow your forces much faster than them.  Your advantage is to overwhelm the enemy as soon as possible.  Especially if they set up a newly established remote base and even if they use ranged weapons.  Your weak tribe can win with numbers.  Additionally your tribe is composed of evolver-like beings who can change their base statistics by consuming the genetic material from another creature.  Given time, that adaptability will give you an edge over other units who evolve slowly or players who can not adapt their technology trees to keep up.“

“Ara’teri!  So that’s how you do it. That was so dumb of me, why do you always make me feel like a noob?”

That phrase was very reminiscent to her as she recalled the face of her childhood friend.  Her friend who would always use it when they played games against each other.  Especially when she won using a new strategy.

She quickly responded unintentionally.

“You sound just like an old friend of mine.  He would always say that when I kicked his ass, which I did often.  Ha Ha Ha.” 

It was a long time since she had a good laugh.  Just thinking of him and laughing made her cry in happiness.  She missed him, but she was not sure if it was actually due to missing his presence or just the fact that she missed kicking his ass in a bunch of games.

There was a long pause on the Discord server before the next response came.

In the slightly dark and quiet room filled with anime figurines and posters, Redcapt was eating snacks by her computer terminal answering questions about video games.  Suddenly, a private message appeared on her server from the visitor.

> @Snoopi2012 Why do you pee when you laugh too hard?

Alicia sprayed her juice all over her keyboard and monitor after she read that line.  Only one person in the world had ever said that to her and he was dead.  He died in a freak accident playing a sensory game that he wanted to stream.  It was her childhood friend and she treated him like a member of her own family.  

This troll had somehow hacked his way into her private life, so there had to be consequences.  Even if it was the last thing she would ever do, she would make this troll pay.  She quickly fired up her elite hacker botnet of supercomputers that spanned the globe and started a subroutine to find the source. 

Nobody messes with my personal life.  Oh you will pay!   You wanted a war, then you will get it!  I don’t care who you are.  I will punish you!

She decided to commence a war with this Internet troll.  Public humiliation was the best way to deal with these types of people.  She would expose his real identity.  This troll obviously did not realize who he was dealing with.  This jerk had even masqueraded as a gamer who needed help to get on her good side.

Then along came the last straw.  It was a short video clip of a small red haired girl seemingly laughing.  The video quality seemed poor since the girl looked like a hologram.  The acting was poor as well, the girl had no talent for it.  But it worked for what the ten second video clip conveyed.  

The girl pointed her finger and was laughing uncontrollably at a little green goblin boy.  Then she wet herself.  Next the little goblin lost its composure and fell down laughing.  Then the little girl started to cry.  The little boy got off the ground and stood up.  He pointed a finger at her and continued to laugh at her.  Suddenly, the girl raged and ran to the little green goblin and kicked him square in the nuts.  The little green goblin grabbed its family jewels and fell to the ground while it agonized in pain.  

After a few moments the goblin got up, bowed,  gave a thumbs up sign and smiled towards the camera.  The video ended with the goblin giving the I’ll call you later gesture.

This scene was a perfect reenactment of the secret that she only shared with her childhood friend.  And this troll had somehow gotten a hold of this secret and brashly teased her with it.

Then she noticed the hashtag tied to the video clip and it made her lose any bit of sanity she had left.  

#gotgreened ?

Alicia slammed her keyboard and went ballistic! 

“You bastard, I will find you!”