“Maybe. I don't think so.”
“I'm gonna have a look.”
“Don't you do it.”
I considered leading with the UMP but decided the barrel sticking out the front of the window was too much of a dead giveaway. It was not worth the risk, even if keeping the gun low meant it would take me an extra second or so to aim and shoot. I popped my head up to the window for a look.
The other duo, or half of it anyways, had planned on that. A few dozen bullets shredded the glass and cut my hair a little too short for my taste and I fell back onto the cold tile floor. I was ready to grab the bandages, but my health was fine. Guess it was a tough shot for them.
“Holy- are you still alive?” Goemon asked.
“Yep.”
“Where?”
I checked the compass. “North. 15-ish? I dunno. In the next building over. You can’t hear them?”
“My sound is jacked. It sounds like they’re right next to me.”
I stayed low and flat underneath the window to avoid losing my head. That did not stop the invaders from trying to take it off with another wave of rounds. The gunfire had some heft to it which led me to believe it probably belonged to an automatic rifle rather than an SMG. Probably they picked it up in that same building, just thirty seconds or so before I might have.
“That’s because they are right next to you,” I said.
“How hurt are you?” Goemon asked.
“I’m good, they missed me the first time and now I’m just hiding. I think they’re just trying to scare me.”
“How dare they try and take The Spot from us.”
“How dare they!”
The next flurry came in the form of words rather than bullets. “Come on out of there, we don’t bite.” The voice was soft and high. Years of experience should have told me it belonged to a siren, trying to lure me out of safety just so they could pump me full of lead. At the same time, the invitation just sounded so genuine. And what was PBR if not just a way to bring people together? Oh, right, it was a last man standing, fight to the death battle royale simulator.
“Looks like we got ourselves a Mexican standoff,” I cried out the window, my voice not resonating as deep as I would have liked.
“What are you doing?” Goemon whispered over the intercom.
“I mean, they already know I’m in here anyways. Might as well talk to them.”
After a moment, the spokesperson for their duo chimed in again. “No we don’t. We have you pinned down.”
“So,” I said.
“You have to have guns on us, too. Or else it doesn’t count as a standoff," she said.
“Oh really.”
“Yes, really.”
“Goemon, now!”
“What do you mean now?” Goemon said.
“I mean...shoot through the windows or something.”
Goemon always played it tactical. At least, it seemed tactical compared to my own tendency to want to get things done as quickly as possible. In reality I think he just had better survival instincts than I did. In this game, surviving was not simple, but your chances got a lot better if you had some cover and a lot worse if you did not.
This time anyway he listened to me, even if his delay messed up my dramatic timing by a few seconds. I heard the roar of the AK over more shattered glass. I waited until midway through the burst before I popped up and aimed the red dot sight through my window. I caught sight of one, really just a shoulder on the second floor, but by the time I fired it had disappeared behind the wall again. I asked Goemon if he hit them.
“Maybe once, but I didn’t have much of a shot. You?”
“Nope, they’re still up there though.”
“Oh they’re up there. And they know I’m here, now.”
“Alright,” I hollered out the window again. “Just throw your weapons out the window and we’ll let you go. As a sign of, you know, good faith.” They responded with silence, and then I could have sworn I heard something like an empty tin can dropping on the floor of their building. I gave it a second and asked again. “Well? What do you say?”
They sent their answer out the window. A care package shaped and colored like an olive, only about the size of a softball, traveled well past Goemon’s building and exploded right outside of mine. The wall protected me, but my ears were toast and all I could hear were church bells. No way they could have actually sent the grenade through my window, right? That was as close as they could get.
Another voice spoke up, the second girl in the duo. “Sorry about that,” she said. Her voice was like a mouse compared to the first. She sounded genuine, and her partner apparently did not like that.
“Dammit, Elly, how many times do I have to tell you not to apologize. She’s not sorry,” the presumed leader made it clear out the window again.
The one apparently known as Elly followed up with: “Right, I’m not sorry!”
“Little Town is ours! We always drop here.”
If Goemon and I were in the same room, we would have scoffed at each other. Come to think of it, I figured I should probably work on getting the band back together. We stood a much better chance in close proximity- if one of us got knocked, the other could play medic and pick him up before he bled out. On the other hand, I could sneak out around the back of the building and have my own backside covered. I might be able to get a better angle on the enemy duo. Goemon read at least half my mind and said: “What the heck is Little Town? This is The Spot.”
“Yeah, and The Spot belongs to us,” I agreed.
“The Spot? That’s a stupid name. Like I said before, we always drop here.”
“Well you didn’t drop here this time, or you’d be long gone,” I countered. “You haven’t even looted the whole place yet.”
“Well, Nails wanted to try something different,” Elly said.
“It doesn’t matter when we got here. What matters is Little Town is ours!” The girl named Nails affirmed.
I crawled across the dirt-slicked tile floor of my little building and pushed open the door. No doubt they heard it, but I knew they could not see me from that angle inside their building. Even if they did get wild enough to lean out the window, Goemon had me covered. I slithered around to the back of the one story and knew I was safe for the moment. Crawling had a couple of advantages, like being quieter than stomping around and opening up more opportunities for cover, but man it made for slow moving.
“What are you doing?” Goemon asked.
“I’m flanking. Don’t worry. Just hold them in there.”
“Oh, great idea. This should go well.”
I crawled along the back of the building to the half broken wall that ran near the side of it. The wall would become the linchpin of my flanking strategy, a solid (enough) fortification from which I could launch my attack. I tried to reassure Goemon. “Don't worry, they don't even know I'm here.”
Of course, he had good enough reason to doubt my plan. More than one round had ended prematurely thanks to my general refusal to accept the concept of patience. I often ran out guns blazing without even telling Goemon what my plan was at all. Usually it was because I lacked one. In this case, he would have to be happy with the fact that I let him know beforehand.
I peered through the red dot sight and saw one of them through the second floor window, facing towards Goemon. This gave me plenty of time to line up the first shot. I held my breath to cut the shakes out and, when I was satisfied with the results, fired my best attempt at a controlled burst. The first bullet sent my target’s helmet flying. The recoil control of the UMP was spectacular and it did most of the work for me, so I landed the next couple of shots as well.
“I shot her helmet off,” I yelled.
“Is she knocked?”
“No!” Elly yelled right back, brandishing her rifle out the window before she drilled a few holes in both the wall I stood behind and myself. Her gun was louder, bigger, and more powerful. Even though I scored the headshot the both of us were probab
ly equally injured. I ducked behind the wall again and hoped they had no more grenades to hurl. In the meantime, I threw my own. Of course, I forgot to pull the pin so it didn’t help the situation much.
“I’m in big trouble,” I said to Goemon, “but I’m still standing. Well, technically sitting, but I’m not knocked. And as you heard, she ain’t either.”
“I thought you got a headshot.”
“I did! Her helmet flew right off. I don’t know how this game works. Maybe it’s the UMP, you have to shoot them like ten times or something.”
Either Elly or Nails interrupted our conversation with a few more bullets. A couple chipped away at the wall and the rest of them kicked up the dirt in front of me. I was fortunate that they missed, but they succeeded in making clear my immediate situation. My health bar was low, and I figured I could only take a couple of more rounds before I got knocked. The girls were probably healing up nice and good in there, but I gave Goemon all of my bandages.
“You got any health?” I asked him.
“Uh...I got a first aid kit,” he said.
“I could probably sneak back around, get inside your building, if you cover the front.”
“We should probably go.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean look where the Circle is gonna end up. The Blue is going to kill you.”
I watched another orb fly out the window. This time, I was fairly certain my time in PBR was over, and I was a moment away from a frag grenade exploding me straight out of the game, out of the cyber cafe, and into Super Mario World. Instead, it went off with just a flash and a whimper. I saw the great white light, but not because I was dead. I was just blind, and they had thrown a stun grenade rather than one of the explosive variety. Now, my entire world was nothing but white.
I took the news in stride. “Well, I’ll never see again for the rest of my life.”
Goemon was not concerned about my newfound lack of vision. “They’re definitely running out the back. The Blue is coming in.”
“Well, you could, you know, go after them. Or you could be a true friend and heal me up before I burn to death.”
5
Boundaries
Goemon wanted to go after the duo. We both knew that without the need for him to say anything. There was more than just winning the match in Project Battle Royale. Goemon judged his success by how high the number of kills was on the scoreboard at the end of the round. Whether he wanted to save me out of the kindness of his heart or simply because he did not want me to hassle him like a haunting ghost in spectator mode for the rest of the match did not really matter. He came to get me like a best friend would.
“We should have had them,” Goemon said.
“Hey, I got a headshot. Softened them up. I figured maybe you could do the rest.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said with extra drama just to prove that the apology was fake.
“Don’t worry. They have to make it to The Circle just like we do. And it’s far, so we’ll both be headed that direction.”
“Yeah, we’ll probably see them. Here. Hurry up, we gotta go. ”
He tossed me a First Aid Kit- a heal good enough to refill 80 percent of your health in just a few seconds. In order to get back to full health, I would need to pound a couple of energy drinks, down a bottle of painkillers, or luck out on an adrenaline syringe. While I patched myself up, I watched the perimeter of the great cloudy wall we called the Blue march forward. The size of it, essentially the entirety of the map from our current perspective always made me doubt its speed. Only when you ran from the Blue did you get a real idea of how quick it moved.
I did not need the map to tell me we were in the wrong spot. The Blue Wall did a fine job of that. It enveloped us the moment I finished healing. Correction: it enveloped me, because Goemon had already taken off, sprinting in the opposite direction of the moving deathtrap. While inside the Blue, everything got hazy and just a little distorted, not unlike real life at 3:30 AM after a fourth can of Surge. Also similar to real life was the excruciating pain that resulted from merely existing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Being in the Blue was not a pleasant experience, and it only got worse as the round progressed. This being the first phase, the pain was only slightly worse than a throbbing headache or the embarrassment of going to the homecoming dance without a date.
My life bar flashed, too, as if I needed more of a reminder that I was getting hurt and I needed to move. I took off running after Goemon and decided to look at my map instead of the scenery. The Circle could have picked a worse spot- it was southeast, but landlocked. If we moved quick we could make it before The BWOD ground our health bars to dust.
“The Spot never has a car when we need one,” Goemon said. He was right, of course. Every time we ended up at the center of the great Circle a car would be there waiting, useless. If we needed to skip town and head across the map, the game always planned ahead and removed all forms of nearby motorized transportation first.
“I don’t know why you’re complaining. I’m the one burning alive back here,” I said as I chased after him. He only had a second or two on me but it was enough to keep him out of the encroaching wall of Blue.
“Just be glad I didn’t leave you behind. You see any cars?”
“I see a motor... rock.”
“A motor rock. Just what we need. Whatever, we’ll make it without.”
It took a few minutes of sprinting, but I managed to catch and break through the barrier of the Blue Wall. What passed for air was sweeter on the outside, and my vision returned to normal again. But, I could not stop to enjoy it with the threat still nipping at my heels. “At least you can outrun the first one,” I said between strides.
“The real question is, where is that duo? They had to head this way. I definitely don’t want to get shot in the back.” Goemon always thought about the next threat, the unseen one. I preferred to focus on the one right in front of us, or in this case the one right behind us. For the moment that meant the moving Wall of Death. In its pursuit, it emitted a low, oscillating hum like an industrial box fan and I found it impossible to ignore.
“You hear that?” he asked.
“The sound of our imminent death? Yeah, and it’s driving me crazy. I hate the Blue, it’s the worst way to die.”
“No, not that. Listen!”
There were always too many sounds going on in PBR. It seemed like listening skills mattered just as much, if not more, than eagle eye vision. I tried to focus on whatever Goemon referred to over the noise of our shoes stomping through the grass and the Blue droning on behind us. I caught the hint of it, a soft vibration from far off. It was getting louder and no longer just a distant whisper.
“Car?” I asked.
“Too high pitched, definitely a motorcycle. We should hide, I don’t really want to get caught in a drive by,” Goemon said.
“Or, we could take the motorcycle by force, and catch everyone else in a series of drive-bys of our own.”
“Genius.”
The motorcycle screamed like a demon as it crested the hill. Fortunately Goemon and I lurked outside of any collision course with the cycle. It made our chances of getting run over much worse, but also did the same for our chances of actually landing any shots. It was hard enough to shoot someone moving at a light trot thanks to lag and the janky PBR game engine. Put your target on a motorcycle and it becomes virtually impossible to hit the shot with any consistency.
This never stopped me from trying. All the running had bought Goemon and I a few seconds before the Blue caught up to us, so I turned and aimed through the red dot sight. I tracked the bike as it cruised past us, long enough for Goemon to take notice.
“Don’t shoot! They didn’t see us.”
I was unconvinced. “Exactly. It’s the girls from The Spot. I can tell by the matching purple jackets. Plus, one of them is missing a helmet.”
“So? We’ll get them later.”
I decided not to answer him. I let loo
se with the UMP and watched the bullets tear into the tree trunks behind the motorcycle. The bike swerved. I could tell the maneuver was not the result of my own accuracy, judging by how far behind my bullets landed. The noise of the gunshots and the accompanying surprise must have been enough to drum up some fear, causing the evasive maneuver.
“Are you insane!” Goemon yelled.
“How did they not flip,” I said, searching for some justification as to why I gave away our position. They got lucky. It would have been an instant death if they crashed at that speed. I would never receive credit for it, but that wouldn’t stop us from grabbing the loot and the bike to boot.
“Did you hit them?”
“Well, not exactly.”
I scoped in on the motorcycle again. It was hopelessly out of range. I had as much chance hitting it now as I did finishing school at the top of my class. The girl on the back of the bike, Elly, looked back. I would have been happy with just her smile. Unfortunately, she combined it with a gesture featuring one of her fingers. Although, who knows, they were pretty far away so it is possible she was just giving a flirtatious wave.
I watched the bike, and the only woman who ever truly loved me, disappear out of view. It was our first fight! We would remember that day forever, and laugh, and reminisce...if I ever saw her again. I could have sat there and contemplated for the rest of the night, only the game had different plans for me already.
The worst case scenario might have simply been getting run over by the motorcycle. It was as embarrassing a way to go as PBR had to offer. We dodged that one, so I figured being the optimist I would think of the second worst case scenario. Here’s what I came up with: I blew my shot, alerted anyone in the tri-county area to our presence, and then a duo would set up shop in a town just inside the perimeter of the Circle, exactly where we were headed, guns trained on us long before we ever got the chance to see them.
Turns out I was half right. Someone did hear my pitiful assassination attempt. Fresh bullets flew at us, from where, I could not be sure. “Well, I hope it was worth it,” Goemon said.
“I had the shot! I had to take it. And by it, I mean half a clip.”
Project Battle Royale: A Gamelit Survival Book Page 3