GUESS WHO SHOWED UP—VAPORIZER!!! YES. PRAISE. Omg, he is everything. I even got a picture with him!!!!!!!!! His cheek grazed my cheek, you guys. SKIN ON SKIN! I AM DEAD!
I also snagged a pic of him with his train wreck of a girlfriend, Bridgette. God, seriously. Look at her, giving death eyes to our beautiful Vaporizer like a black widow getting ready to devour her mate. I will NEVER understand what he sees in that wench. He could do soooooo much better! Everything about that girl bothers me. Like why can’t she just stop existing already. Would it be soooo bad if she got swept up in one of those recent attacks and couldn’t be saved? Lolololol
@VaporLover29
omg u r so bad. But agreed!
@NeverCeaseNeverSour
Matt loses 3 hotness points for dating her. +10 if he dropped her off the Hancock
@invisiblegirlfriend
I bet she kicks puppies
@hot4heroes
Bridgette literally doesn’t care about WarNats AT ALL! If she did, she’d join the community and share her precious insider details. Instead she hoards them all for herself. Bitch.
@SillyMouseTrap
maybe she has an incurable disease and he dates her out of pity? Seems like something he’d do. Can’t think of any other logical explanation.
@futureWarriorQueen
her face burns a hole in my heart
@WNlyfer
HATE HER!
WHEN I REACH THE BOTTOM OF THE SLIDE, I crumple into a giant blue floor pillow, the strap of my bag tangling around my neck. Joy leans over me, hands on her bare knees, head cocked to an annoyingly condescending degree. “You all right there, killer?”
“Fine. I’m fine,” I groan, though it takes me a ridiculous amount of effort to pull myself up off the landing cushion. We’re standing in a cramped underground room—no bigger than an elevator shaft—dimly lit by a single blue bulb above. A silver door with a screen and panel of buttons stands before us, just waiting to reveal my dream world behind it.
“We’re still about a half mile from headquarters,” Joy says. “This entrance is one of the farthest ones out from the loop, so we’ll need to walk for a bit. Hopefully you’ll have some time to compose yourself.” She scans my trembling body judgmentally, and I clench every possible muscle to appear like I’m in control, though it’s not easy, because my heart feels like it’s full of rocket fuel. Joy places her palm on the screen, and after a red light reads her fingerprints, she taps in a key code on the buttons below. As the door slides open, she looks back at me and says, “Now, don’t faint or anything, okay?”
I hold my breath, ready to take in everything before me. What do these underground tunnels actually look like? WarNats have theorized everything you could imagine, dreaming up moving walkways and integrated robot assistants and booby-trapped paths like something out of Indiana Jones. In reality, I’m greeted with a plain concrete hallway, but I still pull out my grail diary to write down every detail of what I’m witnessing, from the length of my slide down here (thirty-three seconds) to the paint color on the walls (baby blue). I mastered the art of writing while walking during a Girl Scout scavenger hunt in fourth grade, during which I found all twenty-six nature items in record time.
“What’s that?” Joy asks, peering down at my furious scribbling as we make our way.
I clutch my diary to my chest, face burning up again. “Nothing.”
“Oh, it’s definitely something.” With zero effort, she snatches it from my hands, flipping through years of hand-written notes, drawings, and diagrams. She chokes on a laugh, like she can’t believe what she’s seeing. “Holy…”
“Careful!” I plead, grasping for my most prized possession, but her super strength easily keeps me at bay.
“This is…”
“Amazing?” I suggest defiantly. “Incredibly comprehensive?”
“I was gonna say ridiculous, but you’re not wrong about the comprehensive part.”
Huh? What’s ridiculous about writing down every single detail of something you love? Isn’t that called having a hobby?
Joy lands on my section about Blue Streak, which is not hard to do since it’s probably more than a third of the book. “Whoa,” she breathes, her face dropping its mocking expression. She looks at me with a sudden sadness I can’t quite place. “You’re, like, really into this guy.”
“Of course I am—he’s the best,” I insist, snagging back my diary. “Besides, everyone has a favorite.”
“I don’t.” Joy shrugs without a care. “I didn’t even really pay attention to Warrior Nation until like two months ago.”
This throws a dagger in my heart, and I’m stopped in my tracks. “I’m sorry…what?”