Three minutes remained on the PK timer. Rowan's blue health bar stretched across eighty percent of the screen, a crushing, undeniable lead.
In Rowan's chat, her regular middle-class sponsors were steadily dropping fifty-dollar gifts.
Rowan winked at her camera, blowing kisses. "Thank you so much, daddies!" she squealed, throwing a smug, sideways glance at Chelsi's side of the screen.
Chelsi's red bar was pitifully small. A few new fans were tapping the screen to send free hearts and one-cent glow sticks.
Chelsi kept her head bowed. Her fingers twisted the fabric of her white t-shirt into tight knots. Her stomach churned violently as her brain desperately tried to figure out how she was going to survive a three-minute sexy dance without dying of shame.
Rowan was already celebrating. She reached over and blasted a heavy, provocative club track through her speakers.
Suddenly, a default grey avatar appeared in Chelsi's chat box. It had absolutely no VIP badges.
Millet: Noisy.
Before anyone could process the single word, a deafening, earth-shaking digital roar blasted through the audio feed of both streams.
Ten massive, golden virtual dragons-the second most expensive gift on the platform-burst from the bottom of Chelsi's screen. They spiraled upward, their golden scales flashing blindly.
System: Millet has gifted 10 Golden Dragons! ($10,000.00)
The ten-thousand-dollar nuke hit the health bar. Chelsi's red bar shot forward like a bullet, instantly obliterating Rowan's lead and pushing the blue bar into the corner.
Rowan's provocative club music abruptly stopped as her hand slipped off her mouse. Her jaw unhinged. Her eyes bulged out, staring at the screen in pure shock.
Chelsi physically jumped in her chair. She threw her head up, staring at the name Millet. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. Her lungs forgot how to breathe.
Before the chat could even react to the mystery billionaire, a familiar streak of golden lightning flashed across the screen.
Channel Moderator AlphaRoach was online. And he was not happy about losing his spot as the top dog.
AlphaRoach didn't say a word. He simply dropped five Interstellar Black Holes.
System: AlphaRoach has gifted 5 Interstellar Black Holes! ($10,000.00)
The red bar extended even further.
In his Manhattan penthouse, Kamron glared at the iPad screen. He saw AlphaRoach's name and let out a vicious sneer.
"Old man," Kamron muttered, his jaw clenched tight. "You want to fight me for her?"
Kamron's fingers turned into a blur. He violently tapped the iPad screen.
Twenty more Golden Dragons roared into existence.
The two billionaires locked into a brutal, silent war. AlphaRoach threw Black Holes. Millet answered with swarms of Dragons. They completely ignored Rowan's existence.
The sheer volume of top-tier animations overloaded the platform's servers. Both video feeds began to drop frames, turning into heavily pixelated mosaics of flashing gold and purple light.
Rowan sat paralyzed in her chair. Her blue bar was completely invisible, crushed under hundreds of thousands of dollars in points. Her sponsors had gone dead silent, absolutely terrified to step into this war zone.
Because of the global gift broadcasts, Chelsi's viewer count shattered the 100,000 mark. The chat was moving so fast it looked like a solid white blur.
Chelsi leaned into the microphone, her voice frantic. "Millet! AlphaRoach! Stop! Please, that's enough! Stop spending your money!"
Kamron couldn't hear her over the sound of his own ego. He kept tapping until his bank's fraud department finally triggered the daily limit on his Black Card. He finished the war with one final Luxury Yacht.
The timer hit zero.
The massive VICTORY banner exploded on Chelsi's screen, glowing brighter than ever. She had won by a margin of several hundred times.
Rowan slumped back in her chair. Her perfectly styled hair looked slightly messy. She knew she had just been humiliated in front of a hundred thousand people.
A single line of text cut through Chelsi's chat box.
Millet: The penalty. Now. Stop wasting everyone's time.
Chelsi blinked. She stared at the aggressive, arrogant tone of Millet's message. A strange, prickling sensation ran down her spine. The way he spoke felt incredibly, weirdly familiar.
