usxuk Sweetheart Week Day Seven: Secret Cupid
Title: Secret Cupid
Genre: Romance/(fail)Humor
Pairing(s): America/England, Random person->England
Word Count: 674
Rating/Warnings: PG/(Unintentional) advertising, bashing of some people's writing skills (no text or l33t!), fail!humor, processes that don't make sense (unless you already play).
Summary: Alfred roped him into this. He hated this site, a lot.
After being badgered into joining this Pokemon site-why he gave into it, Arthur never really knew-he found that he was bored. Completely and utterly bored.
Ironically, he joined on the day that had that huge multiplier (Alfred said something about interactions being four times higher), and he found that he was able to progress quickly-it was becoming quite annoying.
Click, check party, click, hatch eggs, adopt more eggs or Pokemon, and then go back to clicking. It wasn’t an amusing sport, but it kept his hands busy, and somewhat occupied him. It also helped that Alfred kept PMing him, letting themselves converse even if they were separated by the Atlantic Ocean.
One of the messages annoyed him, but amazed him-the site was created by one of his people (as the representation of the UK as a whole, he does assume that someone coming from “Britain” was his people).
Later on, he found the forum button, and was amused yet horrified by how people typed. He could not understand the “l33t” or the “text” talk used-he barely understood the use of the emoticons (and that only required clicking a face right above his post preview)-it didn’t help that “smiley face” spam was against the rules (but no one ever reads that-they just click the button, acting as if they read everything.)
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” was displayed as someone’s status, and then something about a Secret Cupid (he assumed that it was like the Secret Santa he hears Alfred complain about). Curious, he copies and pastes the link into the url bar, and it takes him to this “thread”, where, to his horror, a flowery background awaits him (though, from what Alfred was able to explain, it was a post background.)
“What is this,” England mumbled to himself. The flowery background was somewhat distracting, and he couldn’t help but to keep going forward, reading all the responses. The posts were mediocre at best-horrible grammar, horrible spelling, and he couldn’t believe the way they mangled the English language.
It didn’t take him long to use the back button, and he soon found himself replying to Alfred (he doesn’t use America as he didn’t know if anyone else reads the PM-no one is supposed to know about the existence of nations). He knew that replying would be bad (something, probably an instinct of his, told him so), but he replied anyways.
Before he knew it, Alfred (America) roped him into joining the Secret Cupid event (even if he didn’t want to), and he was required to click the button in the top right corner (“Subscribe to thread,” it said). Before he knew it, his little “0”, right next to the “Forum” button, always was “1”, even if he had clicked the link to the thread a few minutes ago.
Then it was time to gift their person. Him, being generous (and not really into the game), gave his person a Gracidea Seed, something he didn’t need (it might’ve also helped that he summoned Shaymin before.) He was also spammed by the person he gifted, who kept thanking him in the most unorthodox way-it ranged from PMs to posting in his journal thread (though why he had one, he didn’t know).
His Secret Cupid (the one he was supposed to receive something from) was none other than Alfred (of course.) He figured it out when he received a trade message, and saw that it was Alfred that wanted to trade with him.
Without thinking it through, he sent a Pokemon he picked up from the shelter (ironically one suited for the holiday-Teddibear). Later on, he would facepalm at his choice-not only did he send a “romantic” Pokemon-he sent one of the same heritage that he was receiving.
It didn’t help that Alfred wouldn’t let it go (his messages were spammed with “You wanted to say ‘I love you, too~’” or “Aw~ That’s so cute~”.)
Arthur regretted joining the site (especially since he couldn’t delete the account.)