Magic Madness™️

Chapter One: Prologue (The Beginning)

WORD COUNT: 1,834
Author's note: Please spam me with comments! I thrive on feedback :)

"Hey, guys!"
"I'm Eli."
"And I'm Alex."
"And we are the Control Freaks and today we will be playing a game called 'Magic Madness'," Eli announced proudly. The YouTube channel he shared with Alex, Control Freaks (a play on words about video game remotes and their love for online gaming; a clever pun on Alex's part), had gained popularity recently. They were both rather thrilled to have gained over 300 subscribers in the last month. They had started this channel together when they were in sixth grade, but it only surpassed 7 subscribers as of very recently: the beginning of junior year of high school.

"To those of you new to this channel, we basically just play video games and make dumb commentary about how stupid most of them are," Alex said with a small laugh. It was the truth, what could he say?
"Yeah, you'll probably be hearing a lot of commentary today. This 'Magic Madness' game has bad reviews from pretty much everyone that's played it, other than the Lord Of The Rings, Dungeons And Dragons, Super-Nerds. I don't really like anything to do with magic, but Alex saw this game at a used game store for like two bucks and decided it would be funny to try out," Eli explained, "So yeah. We're gonna be playing that today. Alex, would you do the honors of reading the back of the game so that the viewers and I can get a little taste of how boring this is going to be?"
Alex took the game case and read the back of it aloud after an obnoxious, dramatic throat-clearing.

"'You're lost in the wizarding realm! You're stuck there in the midst of chaos, in a world with evil reign. The Wizard Joan™ will guide you through the Magic Madness™ that seems to have spread throughout the land. Be careful, though; this game can bring danger, should the wrong hands possess it! Will you help to stop the Magic Madness™?'" he read in his best-worst narrator voice.
"God, that sounds terrible," Eli chuckled, "Who thinks of this crap?"
"No idea," Alex replied without really thinking about the question, turning on the console and placing the game in the slot.
A purple galaxy loading screen faded into existence. Eli pressed all of the buttons on his controller in false hope that it might speed the loading up.
"Stop that, you're gonna break it again," Alex sniggered, slapping Eli's hand lightly with a mutter of "idiot."
"I'm not an idiot! You're just a dipsh-"
"Ah-ah-ah, language. We're recording," Alex joked.
"Since when can I not say what I want on camera? That's never been a rule-"
"Idiot."
"Dipsh-"
"Shhhhhhh!"
"Remind me why I agreed to this again?" Eli asked in an irritated tone, shoving Alex's shoulder.
"I don't know, you tell me," Alex replied, elbowing Eli's arm.
"Nobody's even gonna watch this," Eli told him.
"People will watch anything, long as it's got an interesting thumbnail. Us playing a dumb wizarding game is quality entertainment now," Alex said matter-of-factly.
"We're editing that out, right?" Eli laughed, though he only got a smile and shrug in return. Both boys turned their attention to the screen just as the loading bar had filled all the way. The screen faded to a blackout.

A heavily pixelated man with vibrant purple eyes appeared, pixel by pixel, in at the bottom left corner of the screen. Despite the man's blurry-ish state, however, his stare looked genuinely bored and so unexplainably human-like that it made Eli uncomfortable. He re-adjusted his sitting position, and he noticed Alex's slight shifting as well.
"This is so dumb," Eli mumbled, practically radiating discomfort, "Is he just gonna sit there in the corner or can we start the actual game?" Just then, a speech bubble appeared next to the purple-eyed man in a box, the text showing up quickly with a typical video game font as purple-eyed man opened his mouth.

"Hello. My name is Joan and I need your help," it said. The man's mouth moved as the words appeared, but there was no sound. Alex read that bit of text out loud for the camera and pressed 'Next'.