Chapter 1

Detective Maria Montez looked over her casefile in disbelief. She tapped her co-worker, Officer Hill, on the shoulder.
“Hey, Hill,” she said, “do they really think kids are selling drugs through video-games?”
He shrugged. “That’s what the chief says. Setting up deals in online lobbies, you know?” He shook his head. “Back when my pa was working this beat they just made the deals on the street corners.”
She sighed. “It’s a crazy world out there.”
“Hey,” he said, sucking the last of the powdered sugar off his fingers, “Speaking of crazy, you given any more thought to that date?”
She rolled her eyes. Guys had been fawning over her since she lost her baby fat in college. She was slim and curvy, with an ass that filled out her jeans without sagging or looking fat. “I’m sorry, Hill, I don’t date co-workers.”
He shrugged. “That’s alright.” He patted her shoulder as he stood from his desk. “Good luck with Wizard Wars 2.”

That night, Montez sat in her bed and booted up the gaming laptop the precinct had bought her. She’d never played many video games before (she’d been more interested in sports and school-work as a kid) and up to this point, her only experience had been watching her brothers play Mario, and the brief obsession she’d had with Candy Crush while recovering from a stab wound. The Chief had said she was only assigning this case to her because they were short-staffed, but Montez suspected it was a punishment for not bringing anything to the department pot-luck.
She sighed as she made her character, a busty gnome named Googis, and signed in to a local server.

She woke up the next morning with cheeto dust on her fingers and the laptop on the bed next to her. On the screen, Googis was standing in the cave of the ancient Blue Dragon Mistinkoles. Montez smiled at the memory of Googis and Mistinkoles’s riddle competition, which he had given her a prize for winning. The prize was a shiny new breast-plate that provided +3 defense and made Googis’s tits look amazing.
Montez had had some trouble with the game at first, stumbling through the tutorial missions like a baby taking its first steps. However, once she’d fought a few goblins, she felt she was beginning to understand the appeal of the game. The vast world of Wizard Wars 2 was full of surprises to be found and mysteries to be uncovered. Plus, she couldn’t deny the endorphin rush she got every time Googis leveled up or found a powerful magic item. She smiled. Maybe this case wouldn’t be so bad after all.

A month later, the case was solved. Montez successfully infiltrated and rounded up the teens who were setting up drug deals in the Caves of Monkerock. They’d been let off relatively easily. One got juvie, the others had to pay a few fines, and a strongly-worded email had been sent to Wizardware Games, telling them to update their moderation policy. By all accounts, that should have been the end of it. But Montez was not done with the game.
The Caves of Monkerock were a high-level area, and even when she’d found out that’s where the deals were taking place, she’d had to grind and level up for a long time just to get in there. She’d pulled many all-nighters and had devoted countless hours to slaying ogres, finding treasure, and rescuing peasants from war-lords. Her regular trips to the gym were replaced with trips to the laptop, and her healthy meals were replaced with chicken nuggets, mountain dew, and doritos to give her the gaming energy she needed. Now, she’d altered her lifestyle so thoroughly that she didn’t want to give up the game. The world of Wizard Wars 2 was too important to her.
The night the case officially closed, she was celebrating with a large pizza, a liter of Pepsi, and a trip to the Dungeons of the Mad Wizard. She knew she was slobbing out a little bit, and knew that a month ago she would have been horrified by the enormity of the meal, but after a month of indulging and eating junk, she felt she deserved a last hurrah. She’d been sampling all the delivery pizza places she could find over the last few weeks, and had found there was nothing that paired better with Wizard Wars 2 than a slice of Papa Antonio’s. It didn’t hurt that Papa Antonio’s was also the cheapest option, and she could get a lot more bang for her buck.
Googis had just solved the Mad Riddle-master’s first puzzle when she got a text from the chief. She tore her eyes from the screen and picked up her phone. The text read: ‘Good luck on finishing the case, Montez! Just so you know, a reporter wants to set up an interview with you for an article on online crime. I told her that you’re free tomorrow.’
At first, Montez was overjoyed by this news. She’d never been interviewed before! It was a major step forward for her career! Then her heart sank, as she realized that if she wanted to look professional, she’d have to wear something other than the sweatpants and baggy t-shirts she’d been living in for the past month. She knew she’d put on a little weight since starting the case, you couldn’t eat as much pizza as she’d been eating and stay skinny, but she’d thought that, now that the case was closed, she’d have time to work it off before she needed to confront her old outfits. Apparently, that was not the case.