00046. Side Story 001: Hello is this thing on?
Kurt and Kitty were able to film a short few minute video and upload it within a week of Ezekiel giving them their new equipment. It really should have been edited by Kitty, but she wasn’t talking to Kurt currently and all Kurt could really do is make a title card for it. So instead of just editing the video down and getting rid of part of it, he uploaded it all unedited.
The video was titled ‘Guten tag' and faded in from that title written in Comic Sans MS to a slightly messy bedroom covered in movie and band posters with no one in it. You could hear someone with an accented German voice ask, "Is it on?"
A female voice replied "Yes. It's recording your messy bedroom."
"OH!" The other voice replied before a teenage boy covered with a fine blue-colored fur appeared on the screen. He had on some khaki cargo shorts and a t-shirt with the Highlander logo that read, ‘There can be only one’. He has a curly mop of blue tinted black hair on his head which is cropped slightly shorter on the sides and shows off his pointed ears. His eyes are a striking yellow color with no visible pupils and as he smiled at the camera you could see his pronounced fang-like canine teeth on display. He raised his right hand to wave at the camera and the viewer could see that his hand only had three digits which included an opposable thumb. As he waved at the camera a tail could be seen sometimes behind him as it waved back and forth in sync with his hand as the boy said, “Guten tag, my name is Kurt Wagner and as you can see I am a mutant.”
Kurt paused for a moment before he said, “Actually I heard a new term recently and I think it sounds better than mutant. It was metahuman. I’m a metahuman.”
The boy put his arm down as he said, “I know a lot of people in the world misunderstand and fear metahumans. I think it's this misunderstanding and fear of metahumans that causes all of the hate we receive from people. So I wanted to show the world that while we may look different, we are just as human as you are. In fact, the only difference between us is a single gene in our D.N.A. as far as I know.”
He rubbed the back of his head as he gave a sheepish smile and said, “Well at least that’s what I was told by someone a lot smarter than me.”
He still had his sheepish smile as he looked a little past the camera to somewhere behind it as he said, “This is a lot harder than I thought it would be, Kitty.”
A female voice could be heard as she said, “You think? That’s why I said I didn’t wanna be on camera.”
Kurt’s smile turned a little mischievous as he said, “Really?”
The female's voice raised just a little as she said, “Don’t you dare.”
‘Bamf’ The boy disappeared in a cloud of smoke as another ‘Bamf’ was heard at almost the same time behind the camera somewhere. ‘Bamf’ and another ‘Bamf’ was heard as the boy appeared again with a teenage girl next to him, with his tail wrapped around her waist. It all happened in less than a second.
The girl was frozen like a deer in the headlights of a car as she looked at the camera. She was a few inches shorter than the boy and was wearing a Led Zeppelin band t-shirt and some faded jeans. Her brown hair was slightly curly and stopped at her shoulders. Her skin was pale white, like she doesn’t go out much. Her hazel colored eyes widened slightly as she looked at the camera. Before she smacked the smiling Kurt in the back of the head. As he reached up to rub his head, the girl phased out of his tail and ran through the camera. Once she was behind the camera again, she could be heard saying, “Do that again and I will hide your swords for a whole week!”
Kurt’s eyes went wide and his accent became heavier as he said, “Please don’t hide my swords again!”
“Then don’t put me on camera!”
Kurt looked a little sad as he said, “Okay, no more Kitty cam.” His voice was barely above a whisper as he finished, “This time.”
“What did you say?”
Kurt smiled as he said, “Nothing.”
Kurt looked back at the camera as he said, “So that was my best friend Kitty. We hang out a lot because we have the same classes, we also like a lot of the same movies.” He pointed at his shirt before he waved at the posters behind him.
He rubbed the back of his head again, as he said, “To be honest I didn’t really think this video through very much, so I am not really sure what else to do or say.”
As he finished talking someone could be heard yelling in a heavily accented Russian voice, “KURT! You better not run away!”
Kurt looked to the door of his room as he said, “Looks like he didn’t like my gift, and I made sure it was something he would cherish too.”
Kitty asked, “What do you mean? What did you do this time?”
Kurt glanced back at Kitty, a smirk plastered on his face as he said, “You remember how we were talking about how he should improve his clothing selection and wear something other than his boring jeans and plain white t-shirts?”
“You gave him some new clothes?”
Kurt’s smirk, turned into a mischievous grin as he said, “Well I did give him something… But…”
The stomping of heavy feet could be heard getting closer as someone said, “You ruined my favorite shirt!”
Kurt looked shocked as he asked Kitty, “How can he know which one is his favorite shirt if they all look the same?”
Kurt looked towards the door again as the footsteps were getting closer and said, “I gotta go Kitty! You deal with him, he won’t be as mad because he likes you!”
“Don’t ‘Bamf’ you… dare.”
You could hear Kitty let out a sigh as the footsteps got louder before a surprised voice asked, “Kitty? What are you doing in Kurt's room?”
Kitty turned the camera towards the door as she said, “We were filming a video, but Kurt took off when you said he ruined your favorite shirt.”
As the camera panned to the door, you could see more of Kurt’s room. On the wall next to the open door was a rack hanging on the wall with a bunch of different swords resting in it. Standing in the doorway was a tall, very muscular teen whose frame almost took up the whole doorway. His short cut black hair almost touched the top of the door frame as he stood inside it. He was wearing a pair of jeans and had a bright pink t-shirt on that looked like it was almost one size too small for him.
He looked around the room for a moment with his ice blue eyes, before he waved his hand at the shirt he was wearing as he said, “Da, look what he has done. All of my shirts look like this now.”
Kitty hummed before she said, “Honestly it looks pretty good on you.”
The teen blushed a little as he asked, “You think so?”
“Of course, Piotr. I always thought you would look better if you changed up your wardrobe some and added some color to it. Kurt was thinking the same thing, he just took it a little too far.”
Piotr lifted up his balled fist and his face went bright red as he said, “Da, he put this in with my t-shirts when I put them in the washer.” He opened his hand and resting in it was a pair of bright red lace panties.
After a few seconds of silence you could hear Kitty say, “Are those my…”
“KURT!!!” The video ended abruptly after that.
With the way Theo set up his platforms, everything was interlinked. So even if someone wanted to set up a fake account, it was always tied to a real person. Only he would be able to see who it really was on the back end of his servers. He wanted it like that, so while people could technically post, ‘anonymously’ if someone was a problem. They couldn’t just hide who they really are and Ezekiel could permanently ban them if needed. There were some workarounds for it if someone was crafty, but in the terms and conditions on sign up it was strictly forbidden to use another person's info to sign up. It was also forbidden to use false info. Anyone who was caught would be banned for life.
It was a lot of coding to do, but Theo had a program that figured out who was really behind the computer, setting up the account. If the person was not who they said they were, it wouldn’t activate their account and send an error saying it couldn’t process the information. If they didn’t, it would keep sending error messages until they gave up or put in their real information.
Since there was no real way to make fake accounts on any of his sites it made moderating everything really simple. He didn’t have to deal with fake accounts, spam bots or any other real bullshit. He also had a program that took care of most of the day to day work, but he would still check stuff out each day. Sooner or later he would have to hire some people to help him. Only because he was using two or three clones a day to do the work currently and those clones could be used for other more important things.
When Kurt made his account and uploaded his video, Theo’s clone was the first person to watch it. He ended up laughing so hard at the end that he fell out of his chair. When he calmed down he showed it to all of the other clones, before he approved the video and uploaded it to the front page as recommended. It took off from there and Kurt had over half a million views on the video and over fifty thousand followers within a day of the video being uploaded. It actually made him the number one most followed creator and would later on be considered the first viral video ever made.
It might not seem like much, but the whole site overall was still small with a little over three million users which might login once a week. Out of those users only about ten percent of them have uploaded at least one video. There were a few who have posted ten or more videos and had a few thousand followers. But Kurt was the first real star of the platform and the comment section of his video was just out of hand.
GreatJake: This has to be staged.
OscarJJ: That is some pretty cool editing, I wonder how they pulled it off.
KimK: The second boy was a hunk. Is he single?
AlexF: He kinda looked like a blue demon. His tail was awesome, I wish I had one.
GregH: My man really stole her underwear… I bow to your recklessness.
KimK: Reply-GregH- That was gross, who would steal a girl's underwear.
Ben10: Reply-GregH-KimK- A blue guy who can teleport apparently.
GregH: Reply-Ben10- LOL, Pretty much.
TimT: Comic Sans MS for the font really?
Those were written in the first few minutes of the video going public and it went on for thousands more. A good portion of people thought the video was staged, some thought it wasn’t. Some thought he was a metahuman, some thought it was special effects. The main thing everyone agreed on was that the video was hilarious even if it was staged.
Only one person didn’t find the video funny, but it took them over a week to even find out about it. Kitty was still pissed off at Kurt, so she didn’t watch the video after he uploaded it. When she was finally over it, she watched the video…
It had been a week since Kurt and talked to Kitty, she was still pissed at him for putting her underwear in Piotr’s laundry. He was upset since his best friend wasn’t talking to him, so he had uploaded the video and never checked it afterwards. He was currently laying on his bed reading his favorite book The Three Musketeers. When he suddenly felt something was off so he sat up and looked around. When he didn’t find anything wrong he went to lay back down, but right as he did he heard Kitty yell, “KURT!”
Kurt dropped his book on his bed as he jumped out of it and landed on the ceiling of his room as he looked in the direction the yell came from. He wasn’t sure what he did, but Kitty didn’t sound happy. He was trying to think of what he might have done as she came running into the room through the wall. She looked absolutely livid as she looked up at him crouched on the ceiling.
Kurt looked afraid as he said, “I didn’t do anything I swear.”
“You didn’t do anything? You didn’t do anything!”
Kitty pointed at him as she yelled, “You uploaded that video!”
Kurt tilted his head slightly as he said, “Umm, Ya, that Ezekiel guy said we had two weeks to upload it.”
“You didn’t edit it!”
Kurt looked slightly ashamed as he said, “I didn’t know how, you were supposed to do it for me.”
“Over a million people have seen the video!”
Kurt actually fell off the ceiling in shock, his reflexes kicked in and he flipped over to land on his feet but he was still in shock as he asked, “A million people watched it?”
She glared at him as she asked, her voice was low and promised violence, “You didn’t know that over a million people have seen my underwear because of you?”
Kurt swallowed, his mouth was incredibly dry all of the sudden as he said, “Now that you mention it… No?”
Kitty reached back and grabbed one of Kurt’s training sword’s off the wall. As she unsheathed it Kurt said with concern, “Kitty, I don’t really wanna spar right now.”
“Good, I wasn’t planning to spar.” Kitty rushed forward as she said, “I am gonna beat some sense into you.”
Kurt teleported out of the way and to the door. Kitty turned around and said, “If you run, it will just be worse.”
Kurt opened the door and ran out of it as Kitty charged at him again. As he made it into the hallway, she just phased through the wall and was next to him within a moment. Before she could swing at him, he teleported down the hall a little to keep out of range.
It was kinda normal to see Kitty chasing after Kurt for one reason or another, but Kurt yelling out, “I am sorry, I didn’t think a million people would see your underwear!” Made everyone who heard it pause and try to figure out what he was talking about. It wasn’t long before someone found the video he uploaded and told everyone else in the mansion about it. Needless to say, Kurt, Kitty and Piotr became more famous inside and outside the mansion after that event.