KhadBanks.exe

Khadbanks.exe
It was a typical Friday evening, and I couldn’t wait to unwind with a great stream. I checked twitter, as usual, and saw something that made my eyes light up: Khad was about to stream! I poured a tall glass of Coke Zero® and settled in for a fun night. Maybe Khad would stream Sniper Elite? Or perhaps we’d continue our playthough of Rimworld? With Khadbanks, the possibilities were endless. I clicked over to hitbox.tv/khad, ready for a great time. When the stream popped up, though, things seemed a bit off.
	I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but something about Khad’s demeanor seemed off. He wasn’t his usual joking self. I brushed off my temporary paranoia; it was probably just the rum I put in my soda. I noticed that aside from me, there were five other people watching Khad’s stream. Wow! I thought to myself, That’s almost twice as many people as usual! I typed into the chat.
	“Sup everybody. What are we streaming tonight?” I asked. Several second passed with no reply. Then, Khad finally spoke up.
	“I downloaded an N64 emulator. Thanks to viewer xXThe_LivedXx for sending me a game called Smashbros.exe, which I’ll now be checking out in the stream.” Khad responded. He sounded monotone, not at all like the usual, silly Khad I had come to know and love. What was stranger was that he didn’t even look at the chat before he responded. Oh well I thought, He’ll probably cheer up as the night goes on. What a goober!
	The screen changed from Khad’s profile image to the game feed. The Smash Bros. intro cutscene played, and a wave of childhood nostalgia washed over me. This was going to be great! As Kirby and Mario squared off with one another, I braced myself for the classic sound of the announcer’s voice. However, I was a bit dismayed when he didn’t call out “SUPER SMAAAAASH BROTHERS.” There was only silence and the Smash Bros. logo with the flame background. For a second, I thought I briefly saw the title screen turn a deeper shade of red, with the number 666 in the background. Just as quickly, however, things returned to normal. I laughed to myself: I gotta lay off the rum!
	Khad advanced to the character select screen. My blood ran cold. All of the characters were unlocked! Not only that, but characters from other Smash Bros. titles were also available for selection. Something was very wrong here! Khad, still looking completely unphased, selected Mario and continued. The first match screen came up, just like I remembered it: Mario vs. Link.
	The two combatants entered the arena and squared off. It would usually be around this point where Khad would make a dick joke, or talk about farts, but he appeared stone-faced in the small facecam window at the top right of the screen.
	Khad lunged forward as Mario and scored a hit on Link. When the punch connected, however, something very strange happened. Hyper-realistic blood flew from Link’s mouth, sending him sprawling to the floor. The realistic way the blood spattering formed on the walls of Hyrule Castle was far beyond anything an N64 game was capable of rendering, even an emulation! I was horrified, but other viewers in the stream began cheering in the chat.
	“Kill him!” cried Bruteforce123
	“Fuck him up, Khad!” came a response from Dravenlocke
	I could hardly believe what I was seeing. Here, Khad was engaging in a brutal desecration of a childhood classic from the N64 era, and the other viewers were egging him on! In the facecam window, I saw Khad smirk. Mario walked up to Link and placed his boot on Link’s neck, and a fireball charged up in his hands. With a flash of fire, Link’s head was reduced to a cinder, leaving a hyper-realistically detailed, charred skull behind. As Khad advanced to the next stage, I noticed the viewer count had gone up. 18 viewers.
		The next stage held a new surprise. This time, instead of a Nintendo mascot character, Khad was squaring off against… David Cross? In the corner of the screen, I could see Khad’s demeanor become even more sinister. He seemed angry, angrier than when he got stuck on the stairs in Sniper Elite, angrier than I’ve ever seen him. He spoke for the first time since the start of the stream:
	“I don’t sound anything like you, you piece of shit!” Khad screamed into the microphone as he charged in as Mario, launching red fireballs. David Cross leapt out of the way of Khad’s projectiles before coming down hard with a knee-smash to the chest. This was peculiar, because that move was almost identical to Captain Falcon’s aireal smash in SSB: Melee, but smash moves hadn’t been in the Smash Brothers series previous to melee! Something was very odd here. Mario absorbed Cross’ attack, staggering backward under the weight of the blow. In the corner, Khad was visibly winded, as if he shared Mario’s pain.
	Recovering quickly, Khad engaged Mario’s up+B move. Mario flew upwards, connecting with David Cross’ chin. Another spray of hyper-realistic blood flew from David’s face as his entire lower jaw was knocked loose. In hideous, hyper-realistic rendering, Cross crawled from his assailant, leaving a trail of gore and viscera behind him. Again, the chat was braying for blood.
	“Kill that piece of shit Khad!” cried Bazzaminxer into the chat
	“Yes Khad. Kill him” came a message from a viewer I hadn’t recognized in Khad’s streams before. It was xXThe_LivedXx.
	With grim determination, Khad strode forth and put David Cross out of his misery. Despite the archaic 3d models the game used, it was a horrid display. Mario reached out and gripped Cross’ upper jaw, and while uttering his classic “Woo hoo!” ripped David’s head from his shoulders. The viewer count swelled to 66. I could hardly believe what I was seeing. I quickly changed tabs to tweet about this nightmarish stream and saw a new trending topic pop up: David Cross. My morbid curiosity took over and I clicked the hyperlink. “Notable comedian David Cross found murdered.” I tried to shake it off, it was probably just a coincidence. I switched back over to Khad’s stream. He was dismembering Yoshi.
	This sick display went on for several more matches. Khad became notably angrier and angrier, delivering more and more extreme finishing blows against the colorful cast of Nintendo characters he faced. In the background of his facecam, Khad’s horrible-smelling greenscreen hung in the darkness of his room. The David Cross face that was usually superimposed over it looked haggard. David’s eyes were darker than usual, and a faint trace of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. Each time Khad eliminated a foe, the viewer count swelled. Every time an enemy begged for mercy, Kirby, Fox, Donkey Kong, Captain Falcon, the viewers would chime in with bloodthirsty comments. I noticed that xXThe_LivedXx continued to egg Khad on. Telling him to unleash his inner darkness. I was aghast.
	The next match was where things started to really get odd. The stage switched to WarioWare from Super Smash Brothers Brawl. But that should have been impossible! When Mario entered the stage, it became obvious that this was NOT WarioWare. Instead of lighthearted and funny drawings in the background, the arena was a hellish landscape. The other mascot characters hung from meathooks suspended from the ceiling, horribly detailed wounds covering their bodies. I looked at the bottom of the stream. The viewer count was 666.
	At the other end of the stage I expected to see Master Hand, and to get this whole sick nightmare over with. Instead what I saw shocked me to my core. Slowbeef entered the arena.
	“Finally!” Khad said with manic glee. “I’ve been waiting to fucking kill you, you Touhou loving fuck!” I couldn’t even believe my ears. Khad and Slowbeef were the best of friends, how could Khad be saying these horrible things?
	“I’m going to destroy you, and then I’ll be the greatest LPer on the internet!” Khad howled. The Stream chat threw their support in with him, calling out for Slowbeef’s blood. This was not the Khad that I knew and loved. Something dark had wormed its way into Khad’s heart, and I couldn’t help but think that maybe the game had something to do with it. If the characters that died in this game died in real life, then I couldn’t sit by and let Khad and Slowbeef kill each other!
	“Khad think about what you’re doing! Stop the stream!” I typed into the chat. Immediately, the massive number of viewers turned on me.
	“Don’t listen to this fool Khad, this is what you were born to do!” Said Tuuli
	“Shut the fuck up Glukeose, this needs to happen.” Posted Draz0000
	“Annihilate him Khad. Do it and take your place as the greatest LPer.” Came the inevitable response from xXThe_LivedXx. Except this time his username was different. I did a double take and my jaw hit the floor: His name said XXTHE_DEVILXX. That was it, this game was haunted for sure!
	Despite my best efforts, Khad and Slowbeef engaged with one another. Slowbeef turned himself into a magical little girl and began shooting magical spells at Khad, who did his best to duck and weave through the intricate bullet patterns. A few shots grazed Khad, and an explosion of hyper-realistic blood flew from his arm both in game and in real life. Khad gritted his teeth and powered through, launching his own fireballs at Slowbeef. A stray shot managed to knick the veteran LPer, whose concentration was broken for one critical moment as he flinched from the shot. That was all Khad needed. I cried out into the chat for Khad to stop, but it was too late. Mario ran forth past Slowbeef’s projectiles and used Mario’s down+B attack: the Mario tornado. Slowbeef was severely battered, sending blood and fragments of teeth flying across the stage. The chanting in the chat grew overwhelming as Slowbeef was torturously beating by Khad. Finally Khad secured ultimate victory: he stood over Slowbeef and did a vicious down-smash, crushing Beef’s head. Just like that, the benevolent King of Let’s Play was slain. Hyper-realistic blood coated the stage as Slowbeef’s lifeless body hit the ground. Khad gloated.
	“Finally I’ll get the recognition I deserve! No more streaming for twelve viewers! I’m the greatest! I’m the king! I’ve done it- Khad was cut short as a dark aura surrounded him. A fiendish laughter filled my headphones as Khad seemed to be overtaken by the dark mist. His eyes glowed red for a split second as Khad directly faced the facecam.
	“Thanks for watching the stream everyone. That’s all I’m going to do for tonight. Be sure to tune in next Friday… heh hehehe” He laughed wickedly as the stream feed shut off, leaving me and 665 other viewers alone. I shut the stream off in disgust as my phone lit up with a notification: Slowbeef had been found dead in his home. I sat in silence for a while before finally shutting my laptop and going to bed. When I entered my room I froze in terror.
	Sitting on my bed was my KhadBanks plushie. Blood was running from its eyes.
*The End*