It looked like Goemon might have taken a bodyshot, but my focus remained on the road. He leaned out the window, which was a good sign he was healthy enough to be undeterred. As he aimed, the SUV banked right and I followed. The enemy passenger fell back into his seat. I could still see his silhouette through the back window. It showed signs of a reload in progress.
“He’s reloading!” I yelled.
“I see that,” Goemon shouted back from outside the window. He fired off maybe a third of a clip. “Try and keep it steady.”
“I mean I’m trying,” I said. “This guy’s nuts.”
As I tried to maintain distance with the enemy duo, I looked ahead for orientation. We were rapidly running out of field to cover. The hit job would have to finish soon, before the chance disappeared for good.
Goemon stretched out the window again for another attempt. The Dosha held steady for long enough to offer him a clean shot. He took advantage, unloading the rest of the mag and blowing out the back right tire. A chunk of rubber flew in through the absent windshield. The SUV sunk towards the ground and lost a touch of speed but other than that plowed onward, unaffected.
I expected something between an instant explosion and a cartwheel of scrap metal, but it looked as though we mostly just caused an inconvenience and the enemy duo would be fully reloaded by now. Maybe if Goemon ended up with that extended mag he could have taken out two tires. Oh well.
A steep and roadless mountain lingered beyond the edge of the field. It was just a few seconds away. Even with the bum wheel, the engine of the SUV would carry it right up and over. The Dosha, damaged and puny, could never climb the slope.
“Let’s bail. He’s about to blow us away,” Goemon said as the other player prepared to fire.
“Time for the driver to drive,” I said.
“What-”
I squeezed out whatever juice remained in the lemon that was the Dosha and caught up to the SUV. I swerved right, preparing to execute the classic pit maneuver. Goemon fell back inside, both of us taking a shot or two to the vest. I ignored it. With any luck, a solid hit to the corner of the other vehicle would cause it to flip as a result of the blown tire.
“Hold on tight!” I called out. Of course, there was nothing for him to hold except for the AK and that would not help him anymore. The Dosha, still parallel to the SUV, closed the gap, leaving about a yard- or a meter I guess- of space between the two vehicles. The field disappeared behind us, the mountain maybe a second in front.
I jerked the wheel to the left, but the car failed to respond. Everything slowed down, which made it slightly easier to figure out what went wrong. I looked out the driver side window. Then, down. Ah, there was the problem. At least two wheels of the Dosha appeared to be off the ground. The side view mirror confirmed the suspicion. The whole car was airborne, thanks to a strategically placed bump in the road. The SUV sped off up the hill, leaving a cloud of dust behind.
They were the least of our worries now, and it was probably in our favor that the enemy duo did not rip the e-brake, hop out of the car and light us up right there. We would probably never see them again. We were probably about to die.
“Oh no,” Goemon said calmly.
No. It was not over. The driver had to drive. I cranked the wheels the other direction, fully prepared to correct the fishtail when the Dosha hit the ground. It smashed into the dirt, and it did not spin out, which was great. But, the momentum and the questionable physics of jumping vehicles in the game was enough to be a death sentence for the car. The little vehicle bounced, sideways, and flipped three or four times. It stopped eventually and the world was upside down.
The passenger seat lay empty. Goemon’s voice slipped in my ears between all of the ringing bells. All I knew was he was somewhere else, and he was alive. Fortunately, the Dosha boasted safety regulations requiring a whopping total of zero seat belts so that left nothing that needed to be cut to release me from my inverted aluminum prison. Good thing, too, because all I had for a knife was a frying pan, and that sounded like an awful game mechanic anyways.
“What the heck man,” Goemon shouted from the north, behind me. His voice was becoming more clear. I stumbled out the window of the Dosha and checked myself for any major leaks. Everything seemed fine, and health still sat at about a third full, which was better than two thirds empty.
Even though the ground tried to spiral away from me, I tested my feet to see if they worked. I stumbled a bit but managed to stay upright as I turned around and headed towards my teammate. He was downed, a short ways back towards the flat field, helpless to anyone who might be watching.
“Hurry up!” he shouted. It concerned him, clearly.
“It’s OK,” I replied. My voice sounded funny to my ears, even more so than normal. It was like I left the Listen function on my mic. “They drove away. We scared ‘em good.” Now that I said it I turned around to make sure it was true. No sign of the SUV, at least. Perhaps they parked it on the other side of the mountain with the idea of finishing the job on foot. Probably not. They wanted to get out of there. We did scare them. Even if they did intend to come back, it meant we had some time. No way they could land accurate shots from that far based on their prior shooting.
I reached Goemon in the clearing. He was crawling towards an enormous bale of hay, instinctively trying to hide from the other duo. Always better to be safe. He seemed a bit upset, but I had yet to figure out why. I figured the best thing for me to do was lighten the mood a little bit. I pulled out a first aid kit and started to heal myself.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me. Pick me up!” Goemon shouted.
“What good are we if we don’t have any health?” I asked, straight faced.
“Oh my- I’m going to die, jerk.”
I put the first aid kit away. “It was just a joke! I was just joshing around. You know, a goof.” I began picking him up. That made one knock for each of us.
“Where are they?” Goemon asked.
“Long gone.”
“That’s good, I guess.” He stood up and brushed himself off before we both started first aid. “What exactly happened?”
“I hit a bump, I guess.”
“A bump.”
“Well it doesn’t take much, you know that.”
“It’s a miracle we’re still alive at all.”
“That’s the spirit. This is the Round of Destiny.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I think it’s true.”
“You’ll jinx it.”
“We've been getting pretty lucky so far. I think it can continue,” I said. Somebody had to be optimistic around here. Sometimes, a round of PBR came down to just flat out luck. Actually, they more often came down to being unlucky. You find a gun or you don’t, you find a car or you don’t. Helmet, armor, you end up outside the Circle or in it. Forget being lucky. The absence of unluckiness was enough to get the W.
As soon as I finished my sentiment, the Dosha exploded. I fell backwards from the shock. Good thing we got out of there. The combination of the battle damage and its inverted state must have pushed it over the edge.
“I’m going to miss that ol’ girl,” I said longingly.
“No you won’t. That thing was a piece,” Goemon laughed.
“How dare you.”
“What’s the plan now?”
“Aside from revenge?”
“Revenge is probably good enough.”
The car chase was not a complete exercise in futility. We did not get our kill, and we lost our car. Also, Goemon broke a hip. But we did make it several kilometers in the right direction. The Blue would not threaten us for the immediate future at least.
“Maybe they’ll be on the other side of that hill, in that town,” Goemon said.
“I mean we got nothing better to do. Besides, we will have the advantage on the hilltop.”
It was a rare round in which both of us had a sniper rifle. I wanted to put them to use, even if I was a terrible shot at a distance.
Those guys in the SUV kind of sucked anyways. If they were better than halfway decent we would be dead.
We began the arduous climb up the hill. It did not require ropes and hooks or anything, but the incline prevented us from using full foot speed. A plateau at the top of the hill obscured our vision of the top. It was possible that the enemy duo could be sitting up there waiting for us, but I think I knew them well enough at this point to say they were scared babies who would be taking refuge in the town at the bottom of the hill. I knew their type, too terrified to engage in a real duel like a gentleman. Always on the run, hoping to let everyone else kill each other until it came down to the end. Just in case my instincts were wrong, which was never, we moved from tree to tree as we trekked up the hill, using the trunks as cover.
“You hear that?” I asked.
“No.”
“Listen.”
“Is that the SUV?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
But the roar was too loud at the distance it came from to be a car. This was a different vehicle, one that we could not drive but could get just as much benefit from. This was The Drop plane, and it was headed in our direction. How not unlucky.
“Hey, when one door closes, another opens,” I said.
13
The Drop
Ah, The Drop. The forbidden fruit. Just like the classic story in the Bible where the snake offers Eve a mystery box with an M249 heavy machine gun and she takes it but the snake’s magical monkey paw curls a finger and her duo partner Adam gets gunned down as a result. Only this was no fairy tale.
This was real life. Technically it was virtual life but this was just as important and way better anyways. The stakes remained the same. The Drop represented the highest risk and the highest reward. The crate itself contained (hopefully) the best weapons in the round, but sometimes the cost of admission was early termination.
A cargo plane, not unlike the one all the competitors rode in on at the start of the match, soared in across some predetermined flight path. You could hear it and see it from far and wide. Only this plane carried something infinitely better than trash-talking scrubs. If you happen to be in a lucky spot when the bay doors open, then you’ve got a solid chance at becoming the proud owner of some serious firepower. Of course, when the plane drops the payload from five thousand feet up, the crate is attached to several deployed parachutes to ensure safe descent. It takes a couple of minutes for The Drop to touch down. While it’s in the sky, anyone that hears the commotion need only look up to determine the location of the aforementioned treasure chest.
From there, it’s not just a race to the landing site to stake claim. You also have to fight off whoever else has their eyes on the loot. Aside from the initial landing at the start of the round, The Drop is often one of the most heavily contested parts of the game. That also made it pretty fun.
To be fair, securing the loot from The Drop did not guarantee a win of the round. Sometimes you struck out on getting anything good, rendering all the work of getting to the thing frustrating and pointless. Most of the time, though, the weapon or weapons inside would lead to a significant advantage for the rest of the game. It was less of an autoaim hack and more the equivalent of the Super Mario fire flower.
“We gotta go get it,” I said.
“Hm,” Goemon replied. It always took a bit of coaxing. The Drop had led to our demise probably more times than it had done otherwise. But the loot! The adventure!
“Come on. Come on. Come onnn.”
“We can at least scope it out.”
“Alright! That’s what I’m talking about.”
“At the top of the hill.”
“Of course!”
“And if it looks sketchy we bail out.”
“That seems perfectly reasonable.”
“I mean it, I’m not getting killed over some loot dream.”
“Hey, me neither. Let’s get up there then.”
We abandoned the strategy of sneaking from tree to tree. If anyone had been waiting to ambush us at the top of the slope, they would have seen The Drop, too. If anyone saw The Drop from that close, they would have been unable to resist the chance to be first to make contact.
Boulders and trees dotted the plateau at the top of the hill. They would do nicely to provide cover from either side of the embankment. Elevation should be an advantage. However, utilizing it often came down to whether we could actually land our shots at a distance.
We both crouched low upon approaching the opposite crest of the plateau. From there, we got a clear view of the small “town” at the foot of the hill. It was about the size of The Spot- just a few houses, only one of them two stories. An asphalt road ran through the town and off to who knows where. The SUV sat parked in the middle of it. The SUV Duo made no effort to hide the vehicle, or their intentions. Couple of amateurs, those guys.
Just off the base of the hill on the street, a set of four deflated parachutes laid sprawled out in the clearing. In the center of them stood a Dosha-size wooden shipping crate. The rest of the area looked empty.
“Why haven’t they gotten it yet?” I asked.
“I don’t know. They left their car running, right there,” Goemon replied.
“Weird. Maybe they’re waiting to see who else goes after it.”
“That’s what we’re doing.”
“Ah, man, you don’t want to go get it? It’s right there.”
“Not yet.”
“Alright, alright.”
“We have sniper rifles, remember. We should probably use them.”
The allure of The Drop was hard to resist, especially at that distance. But I had to resist or pay the price. Someone else needed to test the waters first. You do not want to embarrass yourself as the first person on the dance floor, after all.
I peered through the scope for a closer look. An 8x magnification would have been great in that situation, but the 3x scope proved markedly better than the naked eye. Goemon joined in with his own rifle, though he laid flat on the ground for maximum stability and stealth.
“Left side,” Goemon said.
I shifted the sight to the left of the crate and saw a helmet with a full face mask. It was a level three, freshly pulled out of The Drop by one of the guys from the SUV duo. Then, as soon as the helmet had popped into view, it disappeared back behind the crate. They were using The Drop itself for cover against us- or they just got lucky and ended up on the proper side.
“They’re both behind there, I think,” he continued.
“Sonofa- they’re getting the loot.”
“They are.”
“You shoot ‘em, you can take him out.”
“Not with that helmet.”
“Well you shoot him first and I’ll finish ‘em off.”
“What about the other guy?”
“Can’t worry about that now.”
“OK, sure.”
“I wonder what gun they got.”
“Hopefully nothing good.”
“No, hopefully it was super good and we can kill them and take it and then we’ll have something super good.”
“Yeah unless they kill us first.”
“Dangit man, we can’t worry about that now!”
“I think someone else is coming.”
A high-pitched whir bounced off the hills, rapidly gaining volume. Instinct removed my finger from its place on the trigger. Goemon’s wait-and-see strategy became the priority. The player with the level three helmet heard the engine, too. He spun around in a circle, even looking in our general direction, but not long enough to spot us. He could not pin down the source, probably due to echo.
They would solve the mystery in a moment as a motorcycle roared into view from around the hill. It was a second duo, come for The Drop. This made three total duos including ourselves, all forming a triangle with the sought-after prize in the center. Our location atop the mountain placed us somewhere between the other two. The middle of a firefight was not the place to be, but we w
ere far enough back to stay out of view. Besides, we had the crucial tactical advantage of being undetected.
“Another duo,” Goemon said.
We had no reason to shoot at that point. It was better to let the rest of them duke it out. We could mop up the survivors afterwards. At least that was what conventional wisdom would have you believe. But I’m pretty sure if Sun Tzu got to choose between playing god and deciding who lived and who died or just playing it safe he would take the former. This was the Coliseum and I was the Roman emperor! Thumbs up! Thumbs down!
“Now, to sit down and watch the truth of battle or decide the victor myself with a well-placed shot from the Mini, gimping a duo, leaving them ripe for the picking as-”
“Whoa man,” Goemon said.
“Oh. Right. Sorry. Who you got?” I asked.
“Hm. Well, let’s see here.”
The motorcycle, a street model with an attached sidecar, screeched to a halt behind a boulder big enough to provide cover. The two players hopped out and crouched, out of the line of fire. They had a sort of calm togetherness about them, displayed by a lack of movements. Park bike, get out, hide, no hesitation, no excess. The outfits did not hurt, either. Underneath the armor- level two helmets and vests by the look of it- the duo sported identical tracksuits, primarily gold with purple stripes running down the side. It was not camo, but man it looked professional. Maybe Goemon and I needed to invest some credits into matching gear.
Meanwhile, the SUV Duo rolled around to the outside of the crate. They did not exude serenity, instead poking their heads up and around the cover of their crate. They had the weapons to get the job done, though.
“Looks like the bikers got a couple ARs. M4, kitted. Nice. I don’t even know what the other one is,” Goemon said.
I took the opportunity to scope in on the SUV Duo. “Well, the other guys have one level three helmet for sure and maybe a couple level three vests. And...oh boy.”
“What?” Goemon asked.
“Looks like there was a Para in the Drop.”
The rapid pops of gunfire commenced. The initial volley came from Biker Duo behind the rock, probably trying to take advantage of the other team peeking out all over the place.
Project Battle Royale: A Gamelit Survival Book Page 8