She tied her long, black hair back into a ponytail. “I need to make sure I can see what’s happening here.” Her name was Star and she was playing a video game competitively. Star was a little stressed about the situation. “I have to get there,” she thought. There was no reasoning as to why she took this so seriously, it was probably just apart of her competitive nature. However, it was more than that to her. When Star got older she wanted to join the official team for this video game so, climbing wasn’t a joke to her. She hadn’t made it big yet. At the time, Star was a sophomore in high school hoping to beat the system of going through college by finding a job through video games.

The game she was playing was Overwatch and there were many ranks that she had to surpass to be recognized. Going from lowest to highest, the ranks were bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond, masters, grandmasters, then top 500. Star wanted to get to diamond before she tried to make her bug debut. She was currently gold, trying to get to platinum. This game was the last game before she was promoted to platinum and if she lost, she would have to play a few more games and try again.

Overwatch has many different types of game modes but, this round was a capture the point kind of game. Her team had to get past the enemy team, kill them, and capture the point that they were defending. They were given two points and five minutes to capture the points. Star’s team had already defended. The enemy team was able to get one point but not the other so, if her team got both points her team would win. Her team captured the first point with ease halfway in, so Star was feeling pretty good. She thought, “If we got that point that fast, this second point should be a piece of cake!” She was wrong. There were many pushes to get to that second point but, nothing worked. All of a sudden it was the last 30 seconds before the next round started. She didn’t want the game to drag on, she wanted to win right now to increase her chances of climbing to the next rank. On the last push, Star was able to do the unthinkable. She was able to kill four members of the enemy team with her character’s ultimate ability. Her character’s ultimate is a big explosion that immediately kills almost any character. Star was able to bypass the enemy’s shield with her character’s dash move and send the explosion in that direction. Star was shocked, and so were her teammates. They cheered her on and thanked her for winning them the game. And with that, she was able to secure her path to platinum to get a little closer to her goal.