Chapter Text
Dan shoved his keyboard away from him on the desk as the blue “DEFEAT” floated serenely over the mountain background on his monitor. The other player was ranked significantly better than him, but the loss still stung. The screen in front of him shifted to the post-match stats page, and he watched his S+ rating slide back down to a S. Ugh.
As he reached for his mouse to return to the lobby, a message popped up in the bottom left corner of the screen.
AMAZINGPHIL Good game! You’re really good!
Dan didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone use an apostrophe in a chat message before, let alone proper capitalization.
DANISNOTONFIRE thanks
DANISNOTONFIRE you were better lol
AMAZINGPHIL You’ll get there, just keep at it!
Dan started to type out a self-deprecating reply, but the stranger left the room before he could finish. Not surprising, most people didn’t stick around to chat. Curious, he clicked on the other player’s profile. This guy was really good. His rating was U — three levels higher than Dan’s — and he was ranked 19th in his country. Which was also the UK. That’s nice. Dan thought idly to himself. Wait, why do I care? He shook his head and closed the tab.
Dan didn’t play another match against AMAZINGPHIL for weeks — which was not unexpected, the odds of being matched with any given player were astronomically low, and with Dan’s new and worse rating he wasn’t exactly “a player of similar skill” — but for some reason he hadn’t been able to shake him from his mind. He’d even gone back and watched the replay of their match — to try and improve his strategy, of course.
Phil (surely his name was Phil) really was an incredible player. During the match Dan had been too focused on not dying to look over at the other board, but watching the replay it was obvious he never had a shot at winning. The tetrominos flew across the screen, scarcely appearing at the top of the board before they were locked in place. His stack stayed low enough that it was easy for him to clear the garbage Dan sent him, but high enough to bombard him with T-spins and quad combos. It was truly beautiful to watch.
When he finally saw AMAZINGPHIL pop up on the pre-match screen again, he brushed aside his jolt of excitement as interest in a talented player.
He lost again. Brutally. It certainly didn’t help that he kept glancing over at the other board to see what Phil was doing, but for some reason he just couldn’t look away. When the match ended he paused on the end screen for a moment, waiting to see if Phil would send him another message.
AMAZINGPHIL Good game! You’re really good!
Dan felt a pang of disappointment. I guess he just sends that after every match. He wasn’t sure why this bothered him. There was nothing special about their last match — or this one, for that matter. Whatever.
DANISNOTONFIRE thanks, gg
Phil disconnected. Dan stared at the screen for a moment. Fuck it. Moving fast enough that he couldn’t change his mind, he opened Phil’s profile and clicked the “Friend” button. Scarcely a second later two notifications popped up in the corner of his screen: AMAZINGPHIL had added him as a friend and sent him a new chat message.
AMAZINGPHIL Hi!
Dan let out a shaky breath and rolled his chair back from his desk. He hadn’t really expected Phil to respond, and that was so fast. This was a bad idea. What was he even going to say to this guy? “Hi we played a match a while ago and I haven’t stopped thinking about it”? With a groan, he closed the tab and got up to go make dinner.
Dan didn’t think about Tetra League or Phil for the rest of the night. He didn’t. He made his stir fry and ate it by himself in front of the TV, like he did every night. This had been his routine for a while now. Come home from class, play Tetris until he got sick of it, eat, watch TV until his brain turned off, then sleep and repeat. He knew this wasn’t the “real university experience”, but he couldn’t really bring himself to care. Classes were boring and too big to really get to know anyone, and the parties that sprang up around campus weren’t really his scene. He’d rather just stay home and watch an anime.
It was around 3am when he finally gave in. He’d been tossing and turning in bed for hours, and just couldn’t shake the nagging corner of his mind that seemed to be physically drawing him back towards his computer. Back towards that unanswered message. Ugh.
DANISNOTONFIRE hey
He couldn’t think of a single other thing to say. At least it was probably the middle of the night for Phil too, so he had a while to come up with—
AMAZINGPHIL He speaks!
Fuck.
AMAZINGPHIL I was about to write you off as a misclick.
Okay. He could do this. He was a regular human who understood how words and conversations worked. Maybe he still had a chance of steering into a plausibly normal Tetr.io interaction.
DANISNOTONFIRE haha no
DANISNOTONFIRE i was actually wondering if you could give me some strategy tips
DANISNOTONFIRE given that you’ve absolutely obliterated me twice now lmao
Was that a weird thing to remember? It’d been over a month since that first match, and it’s not like he could name a single person he’d played against since.
AMAZINGPHIL Oh for sure! Most of it is just practice though. I have too much free time :P
AMAZINGPHIL My go-to advice is to focus on setting up T-spins, but as I recall you’re already pretty good at that.
Dan was pretty good at that, but he was shocked Phil had noticed, let alone remembered.
DANISNOTONFIRE yeah, i think i just have trouble balancing upstacking and downstacking
DANISNOTONFIRE hard to get any spins in when your board is all garbage
AMAZINGPHIL Hmm, yeah that’s tricky.
DANISNOTONFIRE yeah
Phil didn’t reply, but the green dot by his profile picture told Dan he was still online. Shit, was that the wrong thing to say somehow? After several agonizing minutes, another message appeared.
AMAZINGPHIL I have a sort of weird idea.
That’s a bit ominous.
AMAZINGPHIL Do you have Discord? I was thinking we could do a VC so I could watch you play and give you tips.
AMAZINGPHIL Unless that’s weird, sorry.
If Dan was being honest it was a little weird, but he didn’t particularly care. Phil didn’t seem like an internet creep, and even if he was it wasn’t like he was asking for his home address or anything.
DANISNOTONFIRE yeah for sure, im danisnotonfire there too
AMAZINGPHIL Great!
A Discord notification appeared in the bottom corner of Dan’s screen. amazing_phil had sent him a friend request, which he quickly accepted. Dan squinted at his profile picture, which appeared to be a blurry picture of a lion. Or a lion plushie? It was hard to tell.
amazing_phil
Hi again!
danisnotonfire
hello there
amazing_phil
Wait, is it super late where you are? My job is mostly freelance so I sometimes forget when normal people are awake lol.
danisnotonfire
yeah but it’s fine
all my classes tomorrow are boring anyway
amazing_phil
No, no, I don’t want to keep you up.
Are you busy tomorrow night? Maybe around 10PM (GMT)? There are usually some good players on then.
We need a worthy opponent for you so my primo advice doesn’t go to waste.
10PM felt like a very long time from now, but Phil was right. It was super late. Dan had class in — he glanced at the clock — fuck. Five hours.
danisnotonfire
yeah sure, i should be around
amazing_phil
It’s a date! See you at 10 ;P
Dan didn’t know why that made his heart flutter. Must be the sleep deprivation, he thought as he crawled back into bed.