by Natalie Grey
“Oh.” Callista’s fingers moved, and he realized she must be thinking. “Um, trying to remember exactly how I do it. You can’t always use the same one because shock blast decreases exponentially by distance.”
Startled, Jay looked at her. “Been reading up on things online?”
“No.” She sounded prickly now, and the reverb on the Aosi voice filters made her seem a bit like an aggrieved goddess. “I just happen to recognize exponential decay when I see it.”
Jay tilted his head to the side. “So, when you’re fighting—”
“Use AoE at regular intervals, and meanwhile, focus on the person with the highest DPS-to-hit-point ratio, all else being equal.” She shrugged again. “So, with a sender and a fighter, I wouldn’t bother with shock blast because I could focus fire on the fighter first and then get over to the sender. I suppose I’d play that one by ear. If the fighter was tank-specced like me, maybe I’d just go for the sender first. It all varies. It’s like…” She was quiet for a moment. “Like there’s a set of scales, and marbles, and the marbles are always moving, but they press one weight down at a time. That’s all the factors, shifting and saying which ability to use.”
“That’s…” Jay couldn’t think of an appropriate word. “That’s insane. How do you keep moving while you’re running numbers?”
She flashed him a smile; she had figured out the emotes. “The numbers run themselves, man. I just act on them.”
“Insane,” Jay muttered again.
“It’s even more fun now that we’re working with generating threat,” she said, and there was genuine excitement in her voice. “Or whatever they call it in this game.”
“Ire,” Jay told her.
“Why they had to change the terminology, I don’t know.” She sounded grumpy. “It’s just going to confuse people.”
“I’ll—” Jay remembered who he was talking to and broke off, but she had looked at him curiously.
“You’ll…” she prompted when he didn’t say anything.
“Just need to remember to make sure any groups are clear on terminology,” Jay improvised. “You know, so there isn’t a bad situation in a dungeon or something.”
She guffawed. “Kind of sounds like you’re talking about a sex dungeon and safe words.”
“Oh, crap.” Thankfully, in-game characters couldn’t blush. “Augh. That was embarrassing.”
“Sorry, man, didn’t mean to weird you out.” She gave another laugh. “I’m a bit jaded due to… Eh, never mind.”
“You can’t start that sentence and then say ‘never mind.’” Jay crossed his arms.
“Okay, counterpoint.”
“Yes?”
“There’s a pack of bears over there attacking a Piskie and a human.”
“Shit!” Jay looked around and started running, Callista at his side. “Do we have a plan?”
“Of course we have a plan! I make everything hit me, and you take them down one by one while those two get healed up. Looks like the human is a healer, and that tiny Piskie looks like she might be working on summoning a demon. Oh, I like that. Itty bitty demon-summoner!”
Incongruously, she was still laughing as she smashed into the first bear at top speed. It gave an angry roar and wheeled to face her, and Callista started screaming obscenities at it as she whacked it and its friends with what looked like wild abandon.
The obscenities were Jay’s favorite part. He’d ranked the finest ones, and the best so far had been an exceedingly detailed accounting of the lineage and sexual proclivities of a set of badgers that had attacked them while they were out foraging the day before.
This account of the bear’s upbringing, however, was climbing in the ranks. She must really have had a bad day.
Callista had been right about the human. Heals started coming quickly and the summoner had regrouped a bit away, crouching as the pentagram around her feet glowed an unearthly green and shifted.
“Anders!” Callista yelled in his direction.
Anders punched a bear in the nose and felt the primal satisfaction of any man who has punched an apex predator. “Yeah?”
“Invite them to the party!”
“Ah, okay.” In between punches, blocks, and buffs to make himself stronger and faster, he managed to invite the two individuals nearby.
“Fys,” Callista called on party chat. “What kind of demon you summoning?”
“An amarok!” the summoner called back. The ice-furred wolves were huge and hulking, like something out of a nightmare, with fur that gave off the faint sound of chimes when it rustled.
And very, very big teeth.
“Cool beans. Send it over to the one on the far left, would you?”
“Got it!” Fys called back.
“Mirra, you just keep doing what you’re doing, but save enough mana for a big group heal. Something’s coming; I can feel it in my bones.” She managed to grin at Jay as she said that last bit.
How she’d guessed it, he wasn’t sure, but the “something” came about thirty seconds later. They’d unlocked some sort of bear berserker mode, maybe by killing one of the bears in front of the others. Callista’s target went crazy, lunging at Jay’s avatar and then turning to rampage through the amarok and bowl over both Mirra and Fys despite their attempts to get away.
“Mirra, now! Anders, with me! Fys, get that amarok on this one!”
Mirra threw her spell as the others piled onto the rampaging bear and burned its health down. Callista was throwing herself into her attacks with smooth grace. No auto-attacks or finger twitches for her; she was putting herself into every strike.
“Now, the other three at once,” she called somewhat hoarsely. They could hear her panting. “Fys, you take the one on your far left. Anders, the one you’ve got. I’ll take that one over there.”
They brought the other three bears down in health all at once, and when they were close to dead, Callista called, “Bring them in!” Anders and the amarok lured the two bears closer to the third, and a moment later, Callista slammed her fists on the ground in a shock blast. All three bears crumpled.
There was a long silence, and then Callista started laughing.
“Holy shit,” she managed. “Okay, hands up if this game is going to give you a heart attack.”
All three of the others raised their hands at once. Even Jay was panting now. He jumped when he felt a tap on his shoulder and told the team to wait for him for a moment, switching off his voice chat before pulling his headset off.
The whole team was clustered around him, including his boss’s boss, Chris. Each GM’s interactions were streamed to a television to make sure they weren’t off doing anything too random. They weren’t technically supposed to get into parties, but Jay had been betting that no one was paying attention on this shift.
“What was that?” Chris asked him bluntly.
“Player called for help with some bears,” Jay gasped. His lungs were on fire, but he felt strangely exhilarated.
Go on, try to get on my case, he wanted to tell Chris, I just fought a bear, and I won.
Luckily, he managed to talk sense into himself. “Let me tell you, you do not know how immersive VR can be until you’re staring down a bear.”
“Clearly you’ve never played the Alien game,” one of them muttered. “I nearly pissed myself in that one.”
Everyone was grinning as they drifted off. Chris opened his mouth to object, but Sam met Jay’s eyes for one critical moment before slinging an arm around Chris’s shoulders.
“This team was such a good idea,” he said as if the whole thing had been Chris’s idea to start with. “They’re seeing how the game works right at the ground level, and Jay’s been right there the whole time. He’s developed this metric to track NPC interactions, and they have the sort of player feedback you couldn’t buy, man.”
They headed off, and Jay relaxed somewhat.
He knew he should say he had to go and drop the party. That was clearly what Sam was giving him time to do. On the other ha
nd, they’d be occupied for a while looking over reports, and Jay could claim this was a new party, or he’d been getting critical feedback or tracking a bug.
Plus, he actually was getting good data on buffs and debuffs. Dragon Soul had decided to make the system or advantages and disadvantages more complex than it was in other games. Some player buffs interacted with one another in ways that they were waiting to see if the players noticed, and some of the debuffs that enemies gave off, slowing the players or giving them Damage Over Time, linked up with other debuffs, or canceled out player spells.
It was an interesting system. They had spent months developing it, but Jay was now realizing that you could debate numbers all day and not really get a feel for something until you started playing around with it yourself.
Yeah, that was what he was going to say he was researching. He put his headset back on with a grin.
“Okay, who’s up for more?”
“Me,” Mirra chimed in. Short and slight, she had wispy blonde hair and a pointed chin.
“Me,” Fys added. Her bright pink hair was piled above her head in three huge buns and she was sitting contentedly by her amarok.
Callista caught his eye and nodded. “Absolutely,” she said. “I was hoping we hadn’t lost you.”
“Can’t get rid of me that easily,” Jay told her. “Now, let’s go storm the castle. Metaphorically. Though, there is one at the end of the starting zone.”
“We’ll probably be there in a couple of nights,” Mirra pointed out. “Party up for it? Fys and I could definitely use some DPS and a tank.”
“Agreed,” the Piskie said.
“I’m up for it,” Callista said. She sounded deeply pleased. “I like your play style. You’re both real intuitive. Jay?”
Oh, what the hell. “Sure. Yeah, sounds good.”
“I sense the makings of another great guild,” Fys joked. “We’ll be the next HonorBound.”
“Eh?” Callista asked. “Hey, this bear dropped a sword. Anyone else want it, or—”
“Nah, you should take it. And HonorBound is one of those…sponsored…guild thingies.” The Piskie waved her hands. “You know, they get sponsorships to wear logo gear as they get up in the ranks because people watch the world first clears, and stuff? If they make one of those, they get extra bonuses beyond the game.”
“Wait, you get a bonus for a world first?” Callista’s words were slow, as though she were thinking hard.
“Yep,” Jay said before she could answer. “Five grand to split.”
“You’re fucking kidding.”
“No way. Compared to the number of people paying in each month? That’s chump change for them.” He realized too late that maybe he shouldn’t have said that. “It’s only $500 apiece, I guess.”
“Only $500?” She was laughing, now. “You must have a better job than me, man. All right, let’s get our leveling on. What quests does everyone have?”
Jay watched for a moment as she, Mirra, and Fys bent their heads together to plan out an order of events. Callista’s earlier annoyed energy had transformed into something happier as they fought. As Jay watched, she suggested a string of attacks to Fys for the amarok, and Fys excitedly agreed to try them out.
“Jay, come weigh in.” Callista waved him over.
“Right.” Jay smiled and had his character walk over to the rest of them.
This, he thought, was what Metamorphosis Online had been made for—this kind of connection. It had been worth every late night he’d put into it to see a world where things were finally determined by who you were, not all the other crap people usually judged you for.
And being able to punch a bear in the nose and live to tell about it. That, too.
Chapter Eight
Mirra and Fys were already waiting when Gracie logged in the next night, but Anders hadn’t gotten there yet. She fought a stab of disappointment as she walked over to the other two.
“Fancy seeing you two here.”
“Hey.” Mirra gave her a nod. She was standing on a boulder, surveying the lands around them. “How was work?”
“‘Bout the same as it was for you, I’m guessing.” The night before, Mirra had mentioned that she worked at a restaurant chain. Gracie was guessing there was a healthy dose of corporate bullshit to put up with there, too. “What about you, Fys? Did you hit the job jackpot? Tell us it’s possible.”
“Eh, I get by.” Fys shrugged her tiny shoulders.
Mirra snorted but said nothing more, and Gracie felt a flicker of curiosity. It seemed that the two of them knew each other outside the game. She didn’t want to overstep, though. Part of the magic of this game was that you could let your personal life in…or not.
“So, are we all at the same stage of Something Went Bump in the Night?” Gracie asked. “Fys, you just picked it up, right?”
“Yeah. I thought maybe if we all went over to the Killing Fields, I could do the first stage and the rest of you could grab some herbs and stuff. Then I could make everyone potions for the bit in the temple ruins. I read up on that fight, and it looks a bit rough.”
Gracie looked at the hill that held the temple ruins. She was curious about it. She loved any piece of lore that had grand, abandoned buildings and forgotten history.
“Do you want to wait for Anders?” Mirra asked.
“We’ll shoot him a party invite when he logs on,” Gracie decided. “The Killing Fields aren’t packed with mobs. They tend to patrol in ones and twos, so we can just pull as many as we can handle on our own, and— Oh, hey, speak of the devil.” Anders had finally logged on, and she pinged him with a party invite.
“Hey, guys.” His voice came over the chat, sounding annoyed. “Sorry, got caught in a meeting.”
“In a…what time zone are you in?”
There was an awkward pause. “I have coworkers over in Asia,” Anders said finally, “so sometimes I have late-night conference calls. I just bring my laptop home. Yeah.”
“Uh, okay. Listen, we were going to head over to the Killing Fields. Meet you there?”
“Sure. I’ll repair my gear and head over.”
The party ran smoothly now. They’d learned a few tricks, as well as the timing of each other’s special abilities. It was just habit now for Gracie and Anders to step out of the way as the amarok lunged forward to rake enemies with its claws, and Fys was careful to move it from enemy to enemy so it didn’t build up too much threat and drag enemies away from Gracie. Mirra, meanwhile, was becoming comfortable enough with regular heals that she was able to switch to damage-dealing for parts of most fights.
It wasn’t long before they had the components needed for her stage of the quest, and they all trooped along to the tavern for her to turn them in. Anders had ordered a beer and was holding it up, staring intently at the way the liquid moved and the bubbles rose inside.
“Can you not figure out how to drink it?” Gracie asked.
“No, look at the foam.” He held it up. “See how it clips the edge of the mug asset?” He shook his head.
“Come on, man.” Grace pushed out an elbow to nudge him before remembering that he wasn’t really there. She had nearly overbalanced a few minutes before when she tried to lean on the bar.
This game, in addition to being a surprising workout, could help one acquire a surprising number of bruises. She had also acquired a healthy respect for the virtue of cleanliness after she managed to step in a container of lo mein she’d left by the coffee table the night before.
Anders looked at her.
“The game works so well,” Gracie said. “You aren’t going to nitpick the whole thing, are you?”
He paused, then smiled. “No, you’re right, I should appreciate it. I, uh, have a friend who works in QA for video games, and he tells me a lot of details. I just see that stuff now, you know?”
“Seems like they QAd this one pretty heavily.”
“Yeah. But it’s big, and who knows what’s out there, right?” He grinned. “All sorts of mys
teries. Players cause chaos, as they say. Design your game to do X, Y, and Z perfectly, and the players will come waltzing in and all want to do Q.”
“Ah, Q,” Gracie said. “The most fun one can have in a game. Sec. God, this fucking thing.”
“What’s up?” He tilted his head curiously.
“Got a new bra, and the strap keeps falling off my shoulder. It’s fucking annoying.” Gracie looked around at both of the others, who had stopped moving entirely. “…What?”
“You’re actually a chick?” Mirra asked.
“Of course I’m a chick. I have—” Gracie gestured at the female body. “I mean, I’m—why did you think I was a dude?”
“Most female characters in MMOs are dudes,” Anders said.
“You’re kidding me. Really?”
“You didn’t know?” Mirra was laughing now. “You’re this model-looking character with a big-ass sword, so I kinda figured, well, you know. Who wants to be in proximity to huge tits and have a giant sword, after all?”
“Man, what kind of dicks do you know that are serrated?” Gracie was laughing. “You should see a doctor, seriously.”
Anders sounded like he couldn’t breathe, he was laughing so hard.
“All right, what’d I miss?” Fys was standing nearby with crossed arms, and the fact that she was knee-high made that hilarious. The other three descended into a new storm of laughter. “No, seriously, what the fuck is going on?”
“Let me guess,” Gracie gasped out. “You’re a dude, too? Big, hulking, six feet tall?”
“Accurate enough,” Mirra said. “He keeps in shape.”
“I wanted to know what it was like to be short,” Fys said, with great dignity. “I’m Kevin, by the way.”
“And I’m Alan,” Mirra said.
“Jay,” Anders chimed in.
“Gracie.” She waved.
“Whoa, wait, whoa.” Kevin waved his hands. “You’re not a dude?”
“No.” Gracie threw up her hands. “The sword is just a sword.”
“That’s good. It’s got a greenish tint. Not so healthy.”
“See, he gets it,” Gracie told the other two as she gestured to the tiny Piskie.