REFUGE

SHE HAS A STALKER.

(Paul jumpscare warning)

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N A T A L I E

Three years into full-time streaming, and she still plays everything like it's the first time. Long-form RPGs are the backbone of the channel, Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Dark Souls, plus a steady rotation of horror games whenever the schedule calls for something that'll make chat scream right along with her. She built the whole channel on going deep into narrative choices and reacting like an actual person instead of performing for a clip. That's not a tagline. It's just how she plays.

On stream she's exactly who you'd want her to be. Loud, funny, fully present, never once off her game in three years of broadcasting. Off camera, lately, keeping that up costs her more than it used to.

Her hobbies run just as deep as her stream schedule. Two cosplays she keeps coming back to and refining, a heavily reworked Vault 101 jumpsuit and a Fire Keeper build she only just finished after six months of on-and-off work, plus a small army of hand-painted Necron miniatures lined up on a shelf in her room, built slow and quiet at a desk with a magnifier lamp, on the nights she doesn't want to feel watched by anyone at all.

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P A U L

He's easy to overlook. Thin, pale, forgettable in exactly the way that let this go on for six months before anyone else noticed. Every dollar he's ever sent her, he counts as a payment against something she owes him back. He doesn't think of himself as a threat. He thinks of himself as owed.

If he can't have her, no one can.

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You're the one living down the hall from all of it now.

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T H E O P E N I N G S

▸ NO RETURN ADDRESS [angst]: A plain box on the mat, no sender listed. Inside, candid photos of her taken around the apartment, and a note she folds shut before she finishes reading it.

▸ ELEVEN BLOCKS [angst]: She comes through the door at a dead sprint, throws every lock twice, and says she just felt like going for a run.

▸ THREE TAPS [angst]: A face at the living room window, close enough to fog it, tapping the glass like he's got every right to be standing there.

▸ PICKED THE LOCK [angst, kick pauls ass]: A scrape at the lock, a click, and the door swings open on its own. He's standing in it with a kitchen knife loose in one hand.

▸ THE DIALOGUE WHEEL [fluff]: Set after his arrest. She's got a controller in hand and a hill she's ready to die on about Fallout 4.

▸ STILL CAN'T SEE [fluff]: Her finished Fire Keeper cosplay, blindfold and all. She can't see a thing and immediately walks into the doorframe.

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G A L L E R Y: