Damn you Pet Battles.   Damn you to Hell.

The very idea of Pet Battles should be in violation of some kind of legislation.  I mean, you’re taking these cute little vanity pets and you make them fight each other to the death.  These little Butterflies and Pugs have spent entire expansions as eye candy, and now they’re expected to throw down like some kind of arena gladiator.  It’s like putting two kittens in a cage and making them duke it out.

I will end you!

… okay, maybe I don’t really want this outlawed.  I guess I just need to be saved from myself.  I mean, Pet Battles might not break any kind of real legal laws, but they do seem to oppose the very laws of time and space.  Specifically, time.  I’ve seen this phenomenon with my own eyes – you sit down to fire off “just a couple of Pet Battles”, and suddenly three hours have disappeared faster than Lindsay Lohan’s jail time.  What the what?  Where the good goddamn did that time go?

I managed to kick the vanity violence habit once.  But last week I just happened to come across a few websites (like this and this and this and this) that discussed Pet Battle teams.  One of them involved my favorite pet, the Clockwork Gnome (I call him Jeeves, naturally).  Reading the posts reminded me how much fun he was to use.  So much fun, in fact, that I decided to use him to powerlevel a couple of low level pets.  No biggie, right?  I’ll only use him for a little bit.  Just a couple of lousy pets.  Nothing excessive.

Sure.  Right.  The “Just the tip” mentality.  It NEVER works.

Leveling a couple of pets led to checking the Achievements for Pet Battles.  Once I saw I was actually close to completing a couple of them, I decided that I might as well finish those off, pick up a couple of easy achievement points and call it a day.  That led to trying to collect all the pets in the zone, which led to trying to get the achievement for number of unique pets caught (which awarded a Celestial Dragon).  THEN I decided that, since I now had a few high level pets, maybe I’d challenge the trainers and finish off the quests for trainer battles on Kalimdor.  After THAT, I might as well run over the trainers in the Eastern Kingdom too!

Next thing I knew, a week had disappeared.  Crops had been neglected.  The mailbox was full of unsold Auction House items. Dailies remained undone.  Cooldowns, unused.

I had to step away, despite the floating exclamation point dangling in front of my face that dared me to lay the smack down on the Outland trainers.  The pets went back into their Poke-balls, and I went back to my crops.

But not for long.

While flying around Pandaria, I decided to check out the Black Market Auction House.  I hadn’t been there in ages and wanted to see what was on sale.  Lo and behold, a few useless trinkets and a fistful of blood soaked invitations to the Brawler’s Guild.  I remembered the Auction House PVP battle I fought on my Alliance DK to try and get one of those when they first came out.  I won in the end, but it cost me.  So when I saw all these invites and no one bidding on them, I decided to throw a bid down and see if I could win one for my Horde DK.  I did, but when I tried to click it nothing happened.  That’s when I noticed the fine print on the invite – one invite was good for every character on the account.

Son of a bitch.

Well what the Hell, I thought to myself.  Since I can get in, I might as well pop into the Horde arena for the Brawler’s Guild.  It was right beside the Auction House I was using in Orgrimmar anyway, so it wasn’t putting me out at all.  The place looked violent, which is the kind of decor I can get behind.  It also looked pretty empty.  My Orc had better gear than my Alliance DK, and was specced to raise Hell.  Why not try a fight and see how it went?

I fought, and won.

Huzzah.

There, I thought as I dusted myself off.  I’ve fought in the Brawler’s Guild and justified paying for the Horde invite.  But before I left, I thought I’d just take a peek at the vendor to see what he was carrying.  I knew at the higher Brawler’s Guild ranks you could purchase heirloom items.  Curiosity prompted me to see how far I’d have to get if I wanted more heirlooms.

That’s when I saw it.  Saw Him.

Clock’em.  You glorious bastard you.

In Brawler’s Guild, Clock punches You.

He was available at Rank Four.  He wasn’t as good as my Clockwork Gnome, but he had spiked boxing gloves.  My Pet Battle jones started itching again.  To scratch that itch, I was going to have to step back into the Brawl’gar Arena and get punched in the face.  Hard and often.  Just to buy another damn Battle Pet.  This time, my Pet Battle addiction was going to be the death of me.

Repeatedly.