Con Quest!

7. Get a voice actor to record a dramatic retelling of your Quest adventure. (54 points)

12. Bring heroes together. Have a tea party with Lady Lynx, Dark Spider, and the Cowl. (16 points)

19. Find cosplayers in enough colors to make a double rainbow. (29 points)

7

Cat

Cat’s feet hurt and her back hurt and her eyes even hurt a little from staring at everything for so long, but honestly she’d also never felt better. She and Alex had managed to avoid Fi all morning, they had a plan in place to get Alex his Epic signature, and they were checking things off the Quest list like it was their homework assignment. GeekiCon? More like Crushed-It Con!

Alex would totally hate that. Which is why Cat kept it to herself. At least she thought she was hilarious.

Cat glanced back at Alex. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor again, flipping through pages of his sketchbook. The twins were safely hidden in a massive line for the Hexforce Legends VR challenge, having snuck in right as they were opening a new window for players. They’d only have to wait a few more minutes until they reached the front of the line, when they’d step up to one of thirty game stations and pop on a VR headset. Winning a Hexforce Legends match on the con floor was one of the more difficult Quest items, but Cat wasn’t worried; she’d been watching streamers play every day online for weeks before the con. She knew all the tricks. She was prepped. She was so totally ready.

“You know, like, a thousand people will have worn these headsets on their faces before us, right?” asked Alex, still not looking up from his sketchbook. “We’re probably going to catch lice. Or some weird rash.”

“Chill.” Cat waved him off. “That doesn’t happen.” She considered for a moment. “It probably doesn’t happen. I’m sure it definitely doesn’t happen. You just don’t want to play.”

“You’re right,” agreed Alex, closing his sketchbook. “VR makes my head hurt. It’s not made for people who already wear glasses.”

“You’re fine at 3-D movies.”

“I hate 3-D movies.”

“Okay, fair,” Cat conceded reluctantly. “Listen, it’s totally fine if you don’t want to play. I can handle this on my own. I’ve watched Normageddon play for over a hundred hours. I’m basically a master.”

“You’ve literally played this game three times before today,” Alex clarified.

First of all, how dare he. “Just you wait, Alessandro Gallo.” Cat stood up tall, spinning on one of her decoupaged feet. Her cape smacked the person in front of her in line, and she had to quickly apologize, yanking it back. “Oops. All I’m saying is”—Cat spread her arms wide in a victory pose—“I’m going to crush it.”

Alex just stared at her. “Cool.” He did not sound convinced.

Whatever, thought Cat determinedly. I’ve got this.

“Next in line, let’s go, let’s go,” a lime-shirted volunteer drawled, waving the next fifty in line forward to their stations. This was them! They were up!

“Let’s go, let’s go!” Cat repeated, hurriedly helping Alex to his feet and rushing over to the nearest open station. Alex took his spot next to her, carefully tucking his sketchbook back into his messenger bag.

Cat grabbed the headset from the small station in front of her—okay, yeah, there were definitely a million other people’s germs on here, but oh well—and slid it over her mass of curls. She took a peek at Alex next to her—he was doing the same thing. Good for him. Face your fears! Cat thought with an inner fist pump. She grabbed her mask with both hands and snapped it down over her eyes, the headphones coming to rest on her ears.

All at once, GeekiCon disappeared. Okay, it still smelled like GeekiCon for sure. But Cat could almost forget that. She’d been transported to an entirely different world. She was flying in a ship over a colorful desertscape, the ground passing by beneath her with alarming speed. Cat checked her team makeup—Alex and three random con-goers who had the stations next to them.

They could do this. They could do this.

Cat made the call to jump, and in first-person POV, she and her team of five leaped from the ship, launching themselves toward the ground with dizzying speed.

“Woooo!” Cat yelled as she soared through the air, before snapping her mouth shut. She’d forgotten there was probably a crowd of people watching her, seeing whatever she saw projected on a flat-screen above her station. Be cool, Cat. Be cool.

Cat’s avatar landed on the desert ground with a loud thud. As she started the wild scramble to find a weapon, she saw Alex’s character doing the same. He was doing such a great job despite his motion sickness. She was so happy for him, giving it a real go like this!

Cat shook her head. She was getting distracted and still had no weapon to speak of. As Cat opened barrel after barrel, she found nothing but health packs and weapon mods. But as she turned to run toward another building, she saw something flashy out of the corner of her eye on the ground. Someone else must have dropped their weapon! Waving her arms around IRL (she must look ridiculous but totally didn’t care), Cat scooped up the rainbow-tinted weapon and her avatar equipped it. Finally. She was ready. It was time …

… to hide.

Yep, that was her big, fancy tactic. Hide until everyone else had killed one another and then come out swinging in the final moments to deal a devastating blow to the other team. She’d watched the famous streamer Normageddon do it to great success a million times before. Some people might call it a dirty trick, but Cat didn’t care. Cat called it how to be a dang winner. Plus, only people who weren’t in the game could see what she was doing on the flat-screen over her head. Everyone she was actually competing against was safely ensconced in the world of the game. She had nothing to worry about.

Cat ran into the nearest building and crouched in a corner. She saw Alex burst into the small wooden shack and find his own corner to camp in. Their teammates, the random guys (or girls! Or neither! Don’t be accidentally gender normative, Cat, jeez), stood in the room just looking at them.