Jimmy looked over, squinting at the options. “Uhhh…here. Saiga. Its magazine fed, so should be easier for you.” He then squinted at the walls around them, as a ghostly timer appeared as if projected against them and began counting down from ten. “You have to pick up ammo in this, so be careful not to waste yours. That thing has a ten round magazine, so you’re in good shape.”
Kurt was mildly alarmed as his friend dropped into a shooters stance, lifting his rifle to face the walls around them. The counter dropped to three and a loud chime began, counting down the last three seconds as the concrete walls around them began to rumble and slide into the ground. He looked around quickly, trying to take in his surroundings. They appeared to be in the middle of a construction site, but it was surrounded with heavy concrete walls that gouged their way skyward, forming a pyramid far overhead. He glanced at the incomplete building in front of them, gauging the area surrounding it to be roughly a thousand yards. As he was staring, Kurt noticed Jimmy ducked down running away. He moved to follow, and everything went black to the sound of a gunshot.
In the swirling dark that replaced his vision, Kurt saw a timer counting down from ten. When it reached zero, the world formed around him again, and this time he wasted no time in running to cover. Gunfire rent the air all around him, coming from three distinct locations, and when Kurt peeked his head over the large concrete block he had ducked behind he could see Jimmy engaged in a fight with two people hiding in the pillars on the ground floor of the incomplete building. He ran in a crouch to flank them and raised the AK 47 to his shoulder when he felt close enough to try a shot. It went wide, striking the ground near his target and immediately getting his attention. The other man fired wildly at him while running to new cover, but a single well aimed shot from Jimmy to the back of his head had him falling to dust.
Kurt scrambled to get into a new position, skidding to a stop as he noticed a leather satchel with various ammunition poking from it on a small metal folding chair pressed up against the foundation of the building. He stopped to grab the bag, and it immediately fell to dust as two large magazines deposited themselves in either of his front pants pockets. When he looked up to rejoin the fight, he saw a muzzle flash in front of him and everything went black again.
The timer hit zero and he respawned, happy to feel the magazines still in his pockets. This time, he managed to find a place to take cover in, and as he ran he heard the full auto roar of a nearby rifle as rounds began to strike the ground all around him. Before he could make it to cover, everything went black and the countdown started again.
The rest of the match played out frustratingly for Kurt, as he discovered a handful of details about the competitive side of the game. He could watch the two teams progress on his phone, which he did while simply trying to hide from his opponents. He was dragging their two man team down, with the vast majority of the enemy’s points coming from killing him. Jimmy was holding his own and was a surprisingly good shot. He continued to get kills and avoid getting killed, while Kurt felt like he was just flailing around and getting himself shot over and over. Once the match ended, Kurt and Jimmy were shunted back into the lobby, and a scoreboard appeared on the wall opposite the couch.
2 vs 2 Deathmatch
Scrotal Torsion Jurt & Kimmy
14 kills 12 kills
Scrotal Torsion Wins!
“Could you maybe not name our team that?” Kurt managed to be annoyed in spite of having cost them the match. “…every time.”
Jimmy grimaced at the other team’s name. “Better than scrotal torsion, jeeze…that’s nightmare inducing.” He nudged his friend in the ribs. “Almost as bad as your performance. Pretty sure you never even used the shotgun dude.”
“Ha-ha, yes I suck. Find us one with only pistols, I might drag us down slightly less.” Kurt scowled at the meager ten thousand dollar payout their team had received. “Only five K each for a loss. How much for a win?”
“On a five minute 2v2? Not much, only…30 K total…I think.” He scowled, browsing his phone. “Ah. Here we go. 2v2 pistols only deathmatch. No immersion skills or gear. So same as that last one, but just pistols this time.”
Kurt put on a tough face and nodded, accepting the invite as it arrived. They loaded into a new staging area, with linoleum floors beneath them, and white walls with red trim all around them. The selection of handguns was set onto a hospital bed in front of them, giving a hint as to the location this time around. Kurt stepped forward to inspect his options, standing beside Jimmy.
While Jimmy grabbed the largest caliber handgun he could find, a thick matte black Desert Eagle, Kurt scanned a few of them before settling on his choice. He selected a gun with a steel slide and polished wood grip, scanning it for details.
Sig Sauer P226
Pistol. Sidearm. Deathmatch sidearms respawn with players upon death if lost or disarmed.
Caliber: .40 S&W
Rate of Fire: Semi-Automatic
Capacity: 10 Round Magazine
“Make a lot of noise for me, I’ll sneak up on em.” Kurt gave Jimmy a quick smile.
His friend scowled back, shaking his head. “As if I was gonna to do anything else.” The ten second timer started.
Kurt chuckled, gripping his temporary gun and staring at the clock, waiting to be unleashed this time. When the timer dropped from three, the walls around them lifted into the ceiling, exposing doors and windows. Kurt immediately pulled up his map and swiped to widen the area, ducking through a nearby door and huddling behind a vending machine in the hallway. Jimmy jogged past, Desert Eagle gripped in a ready position. He stopped at a distant corner, raising a hand to wave at Kurt to get back. Gunfire erupted, as two shooters started trying to hit Jimmy from the far end of the hallway. Kurt smiled as their dots became clear on the map, fresh pings hitting it with each gunshot.
He ducked low, moving in a crouched run through the abandoned hospital rooms and hallways he had mapped out, glancing at his wrist from time to time to ensure he was on the right path. Jimmy would occasionally lean around the corner and squeeze off a few rounds, just to keep them interested. Kurt found them exactly where he expected them to be, one on either side of the far end of Jimmy’s hallway. They were taking turns firing down the hall at Jimmy, clearly invested in a straightforward fire fight. Kurt was only too happy to step out of the office behind them and fire a single shot into each of their rather surprised expressions.
That tactic worked nicely for the next few rounds, and when they wised up to it and began watching their backs, Kurt just came at them from a different angle while Jimmy made it impossible for them to ignore him. It was a shutout, with the opposing team only getting a single kill on Jimmy, with what Kurt assumed was a lucky shot.
They happily loaded back into the lobby, with Kurt looking particularly pleased with himself. His face fell as their payout came in exactly as Jimmy had predicted. 15 thousand each for a win felt a bit weak, and with their goal of 200 million, it would take a lot of wins to make any progress. Jimmy assured him it would go up to twenty thousand each once Gadot came in, but Kurt still sighed at the amounts. He began browsing the myriad game modes.
The competitive side of the game was well named, as all the different game modes focused around the concept of (at least somewhat) fair and balanced competition. There were deathmatches and races in hundreds of flavors, with the option to create one from the lobby as well. Kurt played with that a little bit, getting a feel for the different options and customizable areas before returning to his idle browsing. He stumbled across a game mode that involved setting one team on top of a building with heavy sniper rifles while the other team used high powered super cars to jump carefully designed ramps and hit them, both sides only getting one life per round. The balance of that mode was questionable, but Kurt saw the appeal immediately, browsing the thousands of variations it had spawned.
He was interrupted by Jimmy. “Hey, I’m gonna unplug for a minute, you take host.” A prompt appeared, making Kurt
the host of the lobby and transferring Gadot’s standing invite to him. As soon as he accepted it, Jimmy swiped to log off and vanished. He got a text from Jimmy explaining he had pushed himself too hard during the day and needed to take some meds. Kurt frowned at that slightly, before going back to scanning game modes.
Gadot popped into existence on the couch beside him, immediately moving over slightly and giving the room one of her ‘this place is probably sticky’ looks. “Nice lobby.” She spoke with her lip curled in obvious disdain.
“It’s not my…never mind I don’t care. Jimmy’ll be back soon.” Kurt looked up at her for a moment, thinking about the events of the day. “Hey, Gadot…Summer.” That got her attention.
“Gonna give me the friend speech?” She still had her lip curled, but it faded quickly as Kurt stared at her without saying anything for a moment.
“No. He’s a grown man.” He paused there a moment, looking back at his phone and speaking in a small voice. “Just…be good to him please. He deserves better friends than me and Kitty.”
That seemed to take her by surprise, and she stared at him openly as Jimmy logged back in. He quickly looked back and forth between them, nodding with a smile. “You guys are talking about me!”
Gadot flushed bright red, looking away from Kurt and forcing a smile to her face. “Yes! Yes, we were, Kurt was threatening me with violence if I made you cry. It was quite masculine and persuasive, I think I might be in love with him now. Sorry Jimmy.” She cocked her head to the side and shrugged as Jimmy flopped onto the couch beside her and casually threw his arm around her shoulders. She did not push him away this time, leaning into his side slightly.
“Right on. Can I watch?” He looked at Kurt, making strong eye contact and raising his eyebrows twice.
“OK, time for a match!” Kurt hit the button for a random match, and both of his friends absently accepted the invite without reading it.
They loaded into a floor to ceiling tiled room, with a strange table in front of them. The floor had several drains, and the table itself had one in the center, with a disturbing brown stain smeared around it. On the table was an assortment of melee weapons, most of them simple tools. Kurt shrugged and reached for a short-bladed knife, testing its edge against a thumb.
“What mode is this?” Gadot looked around, clearly uncomfortable at the grungy surroundings.
“I dunno, I just hit random to make Jimmy stop flirting with me.” Kurt shrugged at his friends incredulous wide eyed looks.
“Oh man…you never play randoms man. Never.” Jimmy sighed and turned to look at the table, pulling up his phone. “Ok…Five minute 3 VS 3 Deathmatch, melee weapons only.” He nodded. “Thisss…might be fine, we played the hell outta Brescia online, we can probably take these guys.” Reaching for a hatchet, Jimmy swung it experimentally a couple of times.
Gadot shrugged and picked up a long handled sledge hammer, hefting it over a shoulder. “Well, I sucked at melee in that game. You guys will have to carry my sorry ass.”
Jimmy raised an eyebrow. “Odd weapon choice then. Whatever, Kurt and I can take it.” The timer interrupted them, going into its ten second countdown. “I’ll go scout out the enemy team and draw their attention. Same old game Kurt.” They bumped knuckles briefly as the three second timer ran down. The walls slid down out of sight and Jimmy jogged off down the hallway of what looked like a slaughterhouse, brushing past a series of hooks dangling from a track in the ceiling.
“Just hang out here, we can sneak up on them when Jimmy gets their attention.” Kurt opened his map, scowling to see Jimmy’s dot moving back towards them at a high rate of speed. His friend slid around the corner, slipping briefly on the wet floor before picking himself up and sprinting towards them.
“RUN! Run, they’re all wearing diapers, just run!!” Jimmy shouted as he ran past his wide eyed friends. Kurt had not seen him this scared since their early days in the fantasy game.
“Diapers?” Gadot was confused and clearly a little scared, but she actually screamed as she saw their opposing team, taking an involuntary step back with her hand held over her mouth. “OH NO!!”
Three men wearing little but diapers and open toed sandals came around the corner, each of them running at full speed and gripping various melee weapons. The one in front was uttering a deep voiced and disjointed giggle that set Kurt’s hair on edge. He ran the edge of his bowie knife across his bald scalp before pointing its freshly blooded blade directly at Kurt.
The man behind him was heavily overweight, and unhealthily pale with a similarly stubbled head but bushy full beard. He grunted and snorted in exertion as he sprinted shockingly fast towards them, raising a pickaxe over his head. The man beside him wore a bright yellow smiley face style hockey mask, smeared in bloody fingerprints with long dark hair poking out around it on all sides. He screamed in a high pitched and fear filled voice as he approached, gripping a simple hammer. “STOP ME!! PLEASE STOP ME!!”
The next five minutes passed at an achingly slow rate. None of them attempted to fight, they just ran and hid from their opponents and tried to run out the clock without being brutalized. They all failed, several times. When they loaded back into their lobby, it was a massive relief.
Gadot hunched forward, putting her head into her hands for a moment as Jimmy glared at Kurt. Without warning, she sat up straight, clapping her hands together. “Thank you, Kurt. That may have actually been the worst five minutes of my entire life.” With that, she began swiping at her phone. “You guys have fun, I’m gonna go run a few races and wash the taste of…that…out of my brain. Back in a bit.” Her hands shook as she swiped to log out of the lobby.
“Good work.” Jimmy lounged back against the couch, stretching his legs with a slight grunt. He casually glanced over at his friend. “So. What did you learn?”
Kurt continued staring at the floor. “Never play randoms.”
He blinked a few times before both men spoke at the same time. “Never.”
20. The Fox and the Hounds (Final)
Chapter 20
The Fox and the Hounds
Kurt took a deep breath and worked on calming his nerves. “That was rough.”
“Yeah man, competitive side can be pretty nasty. Told you tonight would suck.” Jimmy had gone back to swiping at his phone, probably looking for new matches. “Hey, you wanna go do a death race? Those are kinda fun.”
“How’s it pay?” Kurt was not particularly interested. He had seen the kind of players those races were populated with and was under no illusions about his driving ability.
“Hundred K for a win. That’s with thirty racers though…I don’t win often.” Jimmy squinted, one side of his face scrunching up a bit. “I usually get like…fifteen to forty K?”
“No thanks dude. We need to make some real money, and this piecemeal crap won’t cut it.” Kurt resumed browsing the modes, looking up when Jimmy snickered under his breath and shook his head. “What?”
His friend shook his head wider. “Well, we could always try the Fox and the Hounds.” Jimmy paused, giving a helpless shrug. “I’m pretty sure that’s the single biggest potential payout in any competitive mode. Beats the pants off most heists, actually.”
Kurt glared at him. “You’re being obtuse. Why do you seem to think it’s a bad idea?”
Jimmy nodded, snorting a laugh. “Cause it is. I know you dude, you’re gonna wanna play Fox, and that’s just…I mean two people have won Fox in three years. It’s signing up for a beating.” Jimmy rubbed an eye absently. “The people who play Hound play it hard too man. These guys are dedicated, they form entire guilds around this game mode, there’s a lot of people who play this game JUST to play Hound. Lotta scrubs in there too, but…” He shrugged, still not looking up from his phone.
“Well…I do like a challenge.” Kurt shrugged while inputting ‘fox and the hounds’ into the game mode search bar. A result came back to him immediately, with a single game. Four hundred and thirty-two people had signed up for Hou
nd, and the solitary Fox space still sat open. He blinked a few times, swiping to read more specifics.
The Fox and the Hounds game mode was at its core a running man contest. Each Hound player had to pay in a million dollars in game cash to play, and the Fox was able to play for free, with a massive bonus to skill exp gain; an extra 100% of the normal rate. Enticement appeared needed to lure people to play Fox. It was played in a full size copy of the city, without its normal player population, NPCs, or any form of the Heat mechanic from the immersive side. The Fox was given a five mile head start at spawn, but their dot on the map was permanently visible to all Hounds until they came within a hundred yards of the Fox. At that closer range, the map rules returned to normal, with whatever noises the Fox made causing them to be visible on the Hound’s map. Phone communication was limited to NPCs, players were not allowed to communicate except via their own voices.
Full immersive side benefits were active for the Fox and the Hounds both, with whatever gear, skills, and vehicles they had at their disposal available for use with all of their standard rules and risks of loss. The goal of the Hounds was to hunt down and kill the Fox as quickly as possible. The Fox needed to stay alive as long as possible, by whatever means possible. If the Fox lasted the entire hour of the game mode, they won the pot payed in by all the Hounds. Whichever Hound or Hound team killed the Fox was given the pot, but it was automatically and evenly split between them if they acted together in any way. This was outlined as encouragement to form teams, but Jimmy explained it meant the different Hounds crews and guilds just killed each other on sight more often than not, as no one was able to respawn. Once you died, you were out of the game and ineligible for a cut.
The Fox would be awarded fragments of the pot at the fifteen, thirty, and forty-five minute mark as well. Ten percent of the pot for fifteen minutes survived, twenty-five percent for thirty minutes, and fifty percent for forty-five minutes. Hounds were severely penalized for any action that directly aided a Fox, aside from killing one another; immediately forfeiting any claim to the pot and being permanently flagged on the map as a traitor, a glowing red dot announcing their allegiance to all the other Hounds. Jimmy told Kurt about several attempts to win Fox by stacking the deck against the Hounds, but the numbers were just never sustainable. One would need too many turncoat Hounds to have any viable chance of winning, and any instances of rogue Hounds turning traitor ended with the other Hounds teaming up and ripping them apart. The game’s AI monitored the match and ensured that the Fox played in good faith by not allowing any Hounds to kill them with the intention of feeding them the win. That resulted in instant forfeiture and a heavy reputation penalty for any players involved in it.
The Life- Illusion Page 35