by Alexis Nedd
“We need to drop that Jenkins,” Penelope says as we leap onto a rooftop to get a better idea of where Ivan’s headed. “He’ll take us both out.”
“I know,” I say. Pop fog, jump to next roof. Penelope’s doing a great job staying in the radius of Pharaoh’s stealth attacks. “Up ahead, VANE’s scouting that palace.” From my angle on the roof, I can see that the payload isn’t there, but now’s as good an opportunity as ever to get a shot in. “Cover me.”
Penelope swings her character around to keep my back as I ping a bolt off Ivan’s armor. I watch him spin around and spot me on the roof. Another bolt crunches through and takes off the tiniest sliver of his health bar. It’s enough to grant me the power to charge a magic shot that will take off more than a sliver, and as I send it sailing into Jubilee’s shoulder, I see my camera angle slide wildly to the left. Someone’s hit me from the side.
I wheel around and see Byunki swinging at me and pop another fog to try to get behind him, but he’s seen me play against Lucafont and anticipates my move. He pulls his arm back for a heavy attack and—BAM!—collides with Bob’s mech armor instead.
“I got him, keep hunting.” Bob doesn’t have to tell me twice. Penelope and I leap down from the roof and continue on street level, dashing through ruined walls that form shortcuts through the city’s half-destroyed buildings.
Our payload is in another castle, it seems. Up ahead, the windows of the western palace glow with the unmistakable rainbow tint of a jewel cask. Penelope alerts the team that we’ve spotted the payload. Jake meets us on the street, where we see Ivan and Muddy heading straight for our prize.
“Don’t let them land,” Bob pants. You’d think he was actually running around with how out of breath he sounds over chat. His command comes too late. Red text appears in the center of my screen: Payload Timer, Two Minutes. Fury’s got the cask marked.
Before I can stop him, Jake’s Pythia dashes past me into the palace and smacks Muddy’s Nero with a well-placed staff strike. It’s enough to knock Muddy out of the payload’s radius, but it’s also exactly what Muddy was waiting for.
“Jake, no!” I call out as I run in to support him. I fire off triple bolts at Muddy, hoping to land a stun. Get the hell away from my snake priestess boyfriend, space scum. Yeah, that’s right. I’ve decided. I’m kicking Fury’s ass and asking Jake out right after, you slut-shaming piece of shit. Penelope falls back to swipe at Ivan while Jake and I chop Muddy’s health up as best we can before he leaps away. With all three of us in proximity, the payload quickly switches to Team Unity’s possession. Flag: captured. Now we just have to keep it.
The rest of our teams have caught on to the battlefront moving to the western palace. Bob and Ki file in quickly and form a half circle around the payload. I see from the health bars in the top corner that Han and Erik are topping off Fury’s health for the next phase of battle. Ki and Jake heal us as well while we wait for our enemies to arrive.
It doesn’t take long.
I’m more than happy to engage Ivan one-on-one as Unity launches into a dense, defensive battle—a sortie, if I remember Byunki’s military terms correctly—centered on the payload. I trained with him for months, so there’s nothing he could do to surprise me. Parry, leap back, pop fog, close-range shoot. Tap into my magic meter to cause a little pain, dodge back, and keep chipping at his health.
To my right, I see Ki engaged in an ice fight with Han-Jun. Neither of them has any advantage, but the giant icicles erupting from their battle quickly begin taking up more of the palace floor. Euphrates Crater might not have any default environmental hazards, but player-generated ice can change that real quick before it melts. Ki is playing masterfully, barely taking one hit for every three she lands on Han-Jun. Her special meter fills up faster than I thought was possible, and the millisecond it’s charged, Ki blasts Han-Jun across the palace with a chunk of ice big enough to bury him completely. Han-Jun drops. Fury is down a healer and is no longer eligible for a payload win!
“Nice one,” Jake congratulates Ki. He’s locked in a fight with Erik’s Jenkins, holding his own, and still has time to toss a heal where it needs to go.
“Don’t you mean ice one?” she asks triumphantly.
Her victory is short-lived. Erik dodges one of Jake’s attacks and slides on the remaining ice toward Penelope, who doesn’t see him coming.
No one can warn her in time. Erik is juiced up from his fight with Jake and slams a mechanical baton into Penelope’s Castor. If she wasn’t weak to mechs, she might have survived, but that baton attack drains health over time, multiplied by his character’s advantage. Castor glows blue, briefly turns so transparent we can see his skeleton model shine bright through his armor, and drops.
It’s death to look away from my screen, but I sense Penelope’s movement two seats down. She leans forward and holds her head in her hands, allowing herself a moment of disappointment before she pops back up, crosses her arms, and drifts her eyes up toward the ceiling. Dropping in competition shows the dead player a third-person view of the rest of the match and cuts their audio so they can’t advise their teammates.
With Penelope done, we’ve lost our chance to win the payload too.
“Abandon ship!” Bob shouts. With the payload strategy scrapped, we move through to our less-loved but still feasible plan of going for a checkmate.
Unity scatters like roaches, the remaining four of us each leaving from a different direction pursued by a Fury player. Byunki is after me, and a glance behind me shows Muddy running to catch up with Bob.
Byunki’s Lucafont whip-catches Pharaoh’s ankle, and I take another hit. I spend my leftover juice from my fight with Ivan shooting at his spectral armor but don’t have enough to pull the Shatter special that won the first round.
“Heal.” I try to remain calm. We still have both of our healers, and one should be free to help me out here. No one arrives. “Heal!” I try again. Nothing.
Byunki lands more blows on me faster than I can throw fog to evade them. I’ve shaved off about a fifth of his health, but he’s easily taken three-quarters of mine. It’s possible that Unity could take him from here, but I’ll be damned if I let Byunki take me out of this match without taking him with me.
Lucafont’s head is hidden beneath a glowing white helm, but I picture it shielding Byunki’s face, salivating at the prospect of humiliating me one last time in front of my parents, friends, and Jake.
“Stand down, Em,” Bob calls. I don’t know where he is on the map or how he can see where I am.
No. I don’t want to abandon this fight. I have maybe a quarter of his bar now and enough of a charge to pull off another necromagic attack. If I use it, my special counter will reset to zero, but it might be exactly what my team needs to hammer down the rest of Byunki’s health.
“Em, don’t do what he wants,” I hear Jake say. “Come to me. Middle plaza.”
He’s right. I should have listened to it coming from Bob, but hearing Jake’s concern snaps me out of the rage I was feeling just a moment before. I turn and run, using Pharaoh’s superior speed to leave Byunki whipping his sword into a cloud of fog.
My call for heals went unanswered because of the situation going on in the middle plaza. Ki, Bob, and Jake are there staving off double attacks from Ivan and Muddy. I had decent luck with Ivan before but don’t want to alert them to my presence, so I leap up onto a building and see if I can line up that magic shot I wanted to use on Byunki. I could aim for Muddy, since he has an elemental strength against Bob, but I see his health bar is nearly twice what Ivan has to work with.
As much as I want to slam this bolt into the asshole who betrayed Unity—and I really, really do—the smart move is to take out my former partner. Never say I don’t learn from my mistakes.
Ivan’s played alongside my Pharaoh for so long he’s forgotten what it feels like to play against me. Remember those insanely difficult ranged kills Byunki asked me to master, Ivan? I’m about to nail one right . . . now.
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He doesn’t see it coming, but it comes nonetheless. Right in the back of Jubilee’s head. VANE drops out immediately, and my Special Attack bar sinks down to a quarter of its full power. Worth it. Fury’s down two.
A lot of times in GLO matches, death comes in pairs. It’s a side effect of each game inevitably splitting off into a series of mini-battles that winnow players out until a final few are left standing for the checkmate. I leap down from the roof to join the rest of my team in kicking the crap out of Muddy but can’t get there in time to stop him from launching his Special at Bob. No! I think. Bob’s weak to Nero. That’s a checkmate.
Ki slides Doctor Jack over faster than I can even perceive her (that’s ice powers for you) and sucks up the hit instead.
Like I said. Pairs.
I hear the beginning of Ki’s howl before her audio abruptly cuts out. Can’t comfort her now. It’s just me, Bob, and Jake against Muddy, Byunki, and Erik.
“Bastard,” Bob snarls. “Jake, heal Em. He’s mine.”
I feel like I haven’t seen Jake in this fight for a hundred years. Muddy’s fled across the plaza to regroup with Bob in hot pursuit, leaving Pharaoh and Pythia hanging out alone just like old times. Jake showers Pharaoh with a healing spell that brings me up to 50 percent. Back in the real world, which seems further away the longer I spend in this match, I feel my body shiver with relief.
“You good?” Jake asks.
“I’m good,” I reply.
“Not my daughter, you bitch!” screeches Bob.
Wherever he chased Muddy, Bob must have cornered him good. The screen flashes red with another Fury drop. I could have shot Muddy earlier, but I like the idea that he dropped off-screen to my perspective. Die like the NPC you are. That’s how little you matter to me.
“Em, eyes,” Jake suggests. I hop up to another rooftop and scan the surrounding streets for a sign of Fury.
“Nada,” I say.
“They’re coming,” Bob says, sprinting his Carrigan back into the plaza. He took some serious damage in that fight, and Jake needs time to replenish his healing spells before he can help him. “Hold our ground. We’re in the endgame now.”
Soon after Bob comes in, I spot Byunki and Erik’s Jenkins walking slowly in from the east perimeter. What they lack in speed, they make up in strategy. Erik is laboriously maintaining a force field around Byunki that shields both of them from our attacks. I land a few normal bolts on the field to jack up a few Special Attack points before Bob calls me down to join Unity’s last stand.
In most cases, three players against two would be an obvious win, but I’m the only one with an advantage against Byunki and I’m dangerously weak to Erik’s character. Using Pharaoh at this point would be the same as killing him, making me completely useless.
Byunki and Erik lumber toward the three of us, maintaining their shield like a two-man Spartan phalanx. I know what we look like to them: a weakened tank, a healer too drained to heal, and a nerfed DPS piloted by the stupid girl they thought they buried two weeks ago.
“He’s coming for one of us,” Jake says quietly. Byunki’s next move will depend on what he wants more—to checkmate Bob quickly or punish me for stepping out of line. I know Byunki. He’s going to go for Bob. Fury’s about winning, and that’s his winning move.
“It’ll be me,” Bob says grimly. At least we’ll lose on the same page. “Em, fire at that shield, see if you can crack it.”
I oblige, slamming Erik’s defense with normal bolts that do nothing but incrementally increase a Special I won’t be able to use without Jenkins taking me out anyway. Wait. That gives me an idea.
“Jake!” I say quickly while firing. “Fire at the shield. Get your special up.”
“May as well,” agrees Bob. He’s shooting too; now we’re three idiots chucking bullets, bolts, and magic at an unstoppable moving object. This is good. We need to keep firing.
“We need to get Byunki out of that shield,” I say.
“He won’t leave until he can attack me,” replies Bob. “He knows he’s got us cornered.”
“I almost dropped earlier because I was so mad I wanted to kill him,” I reply. My Special Attack meter is so close. I peek up at the top of the screen where Unity’s status sits and see that Jake’s is almost done too. “We have to make him do the same thing. Jake?”
I see Jake sit up straighter in his chair. “Yeah?”
“Remember Crystal Cathedral?” Back when we talked about the ice cream incident, Jake told me to use my fire to goad that pesky player into attacking me. That player turned out to be Muddy, who is now the only person who can warn Byunki of my plan. Thanks to Bob, he won’t be able to warn anyone, even if he screamed.
“Yes. Why—Oh!” Jake’s catching on. “But he already sees you.”
“Uh, report to your captain, please?” Bob is too cool to panic. Audible stress is a different story.
“Jake and I did this move, a combo. If I can get Byunki out of the force field, you’ll both need to attack at the same time.”
“Okay,” Bob replies, “we can time that. How—”
No time to explain. Byunki and Erik are almost in striking distance. I shoot off the last bolt I need to charge my Shatter and step behind Jake and Bob.
The only way I can think of tricking Byunki into attacking me instead of Bob is to make him do what he almost made me do. Something really, really stupid. He hates Bob for all kinds of personal reasons and needs his checkmate to win. I can’t change that. I can, however, pull Byunki’s devil trigger by reminding him I’m an enormous pain in the ass.
“Get ready,” I call out to Bob and Jake.
This part’s easy. All I have to do is miss. I charge up Pharaoh’s Shatter and aim ever so slightly over Lucafont’s shoulder, just close enough to make it seem like I’ve genuinely mistimed my attack. The impact doesn’t take down Erik’s shield, so to Byunki’s eyes, my attack is entirely wasted.
If I were a narcissistic dickweed who was threatened by a girl’s perfectly timed Pharaoh Shatter three short weeks ago, and I saw that girl mess up the same move in a pathetic attempt to deny me victory, I’d get a little cocky. I’d maybe even deviate from my checkmate priority to take her down first, proving once and for all that she’s a nobody who doesn’t belong in this game. Hell, I wouldn’t even notice that my force field got nudged a half step back from the force of that “failed” Shatter, which would totally leave me exposed to a poison attack on the off chance that I lunged forward to humiliate her once and for all.
That’s how it would go if I were the dickweed here. I feel comfortable declaring I am not. Next time you try to bury me, Byunki, dig a deeper hole.
Jake recognizes his moment, nearly identical to the way we stunned Muddy in Crystal Cathedral, and sends his poison field streaming out from us in all directions. Lucafont’s whole body is out of the force field now; I pull out Pharaoh’s bow and shoot an endless stream of bolts to keep Erik from coming in to heal or protect his tank.
The stun reduces Byunki to a two-second window of powerlessness. Jake and Bob do their jobs and make sure he can’t catch a single break. They don’t even need Pharaoh for this part; Byunki’s health is already circling the drain. One fragment left, less than half, Bob lands an attack and chips off a little more—honestly they’re beating his ass like he stole something, and it’s the best thing I’ve seen all day. I can drop or not drop at this point; without magic I’m basically set dressing, but I shoot a quick bolt into Lucafont’s thigh anyway. For old time’s sake. In one final flash of Pythia’s staff, Byunki drops. Checkmate.
TANK KILL: HOOP.
The arena’s screens immediately light up with Jake’s name and face displayed on every monitor. I yank my headphones up and leap from my chair alongside the rest of my teammates, who are all so good and talented and worthy and extremely physically attractive. Ki and Penelope rush around their chairs to glom me, Jake, and Bob as the final three, and whoa—Jake has confetti in his hair. Bright blue confetti
.
Jake remembered that silly combo and saved the day. Sure, it was after I remembered Byunki’s an asshole and also saved the day, but the screens don’t lie. Jake took Byunki out. He had a lot of reasons, like wanting to see our names up in lights as the first GLO players in the Guardians League and winning a bunch of money, but I think he also did it for me.
I can’t hear a thing over the crowd and the announcers declaring our victory. Not everything needs to be said out loud.
“Thank you,” I mouth through the noise. Jake doesn’t bother trying to respond verbally through the noise and puts his arms around me instead. We’re still getting jostled all over from the rest of the team, so it’s a normal-looking friendly type hug. The kind we can definitely pass off as friendly for now.
Heck. No, we can’t. In the heat of the game, I’d forgotten about Muddy’s threat to release the picture he has of me and Jake kissing. That’s still a huge problem. Jake feels me tense up and leans down to yell in my ear.
“You okay?”
“No!” I shout. I hope no one in the audience can read lips. “Muddy’s picture. They’ll know we kissed.”
Jake looks over my head at Fury’s table, where the five horsemen of the dumbpocalypse are jabbing their fingers at one another in a useless argument. I turn my head and catch sight of Muddy staring both of us down. All my excitement drains faster than Byunki’s health in the final phase of our match.
“Kissing’s not that bad,” Jake screams. “Lots of people kiss.”
“I’m wearing my Fury jersey!” I explain. “Red, says KNOX on the back, puts the kiss before the swap.”
Jake leans down to get closer to my ear and screech more intimately. “Em. He took a picture of surveillance footage. Black and white. All they’ll see is ‘KNOX.’ ”
Bob had to rush to get the order in, but he did manage to get me a Unity jersey with “KNOX” on the back. If Muddy’s picture really is black and white, no one would be able to tell I’m not wearing my shirt from today.
“Still,” I shout. “Kiss! If he leaks it, he can spin it.”