If I lose this, my chances of getting back the RP I lose and hitting the cap afterwards would be slim to none….. My nerves were already shot up before I stepped into this room, but getting reminded that this is my make or break doesn’t help in the slightest

“Welcome to Vertigo Towers”

(This place? At least I’m not walking in dark this time….. Now to see who I have to work with)

It didn’t take me more than a glimpse at them to figure out how co-operative they were going to be…However, while I was profiling my allies for the hour, I happened to come across a familiar face, only this time his mouth didn’t seem to move as much.

“I ll take mid… can fill in aggro if needed”

(Speak first, take charge of the room… Advice from the Haru’s arsenal)

“I can tank, my shield is a frontal deployable so once it goes down, it doesn’t move. I can substitute backline and add pressure as well”

(One of those deployable energy shields…. And I know a Barrett M82 when I see one. You can have all the body armor in the world and those rounds will still leave a crater sized hole in you)

“I can be the second player on mid, I’ll handle lane lockouts”

(AUG A3 and Glock…. As much as I abhor bullpup rifles, still dependable to have around)

“I can go scout, but I’d have to play secondary…. I’m not as agile as I want to be for my role”

(MP9 and Remi 870….. lethal combo)

“So you’ll be our primary scout” I filled in the remaining blank of our team as the once big-mouth was doing nothing but brooding

“Anyone got a plan?” asked our tank

“Right side lock out, we let the enemy do the glass breaks and take that time to get full control of our building….If the Artifact spawns on the other side, we bait them into our base and clean them up when they cross.” The other mid-ranger relayed his plan to us, getting this team off to a start like a well oiled machine

(So this is Haru’s usual game plan….. but for some reason, a part of me still think’s something is off… Eh, I might just be overthinking it)

Everyone lined up at the invisible barrier as soon as they had finished checking their weapons

(Alright, run the map through your head once)

I closed my eyes and pictured the battleground

(Vertigo Towers…. Two buildings, same height…. Separated by a plate glass panes with one random pane being bulletproof. Middle lane is a steep drop and the map’s unique death zone if anyone falls through. One building is a fully furnished lobby, while the other is under construction….And looks like we got the furnished side spawn….that’s reassuring)

“3….2….1….Engage”

I moved at my top speed along our side of the building while turning on the comms in my ear, I kept my focus trained on the long glass wall that separated both teams.

“Far side is ours” one of our scouts reported

“So is the middle” I reported after

“Base is secured, still no breaches in the glass” and then the tank

But a brief silence of inaction followed

“Scouts, got anything?” I inquired, but there was no response from either of them

(Are their comms muted? Damn, I got no intel on where the enemies are…. Guess I got to do everything myself)

I was the closest to the glass and I peeked over only to see the opposite side barren.

“Any breaches yet?” I asked, placing my hand on the glass pane in front of me

“Negative, it seems that-”, but it was at that moment a loud thud on the glass in front of me caused me to be thrown back in surprise

They attempted to coordinate and shoot me to knock me out of the fight before I even reacted….Lucky for me, that the one random bulletproof glass pane on this whole wall was right in front of me…. As the frustrated look on the enemy players proved that.

(Note to self…never do that again)

However it didn’t take a second more for our stalemate to break, as our scout opened fire onto the glass panes on our side, shattering long stretches of glass.

“You idiot!, what are you doing?!” The other mid-ranger who’s plan we were following was clearly mad, as now we had no way of funneling the enemy in as now they had multiple angles of entry onto our side

“Shut the hell up will you?” He spoke his first words all match, and there was not a single speck of cheer in his voice. It was almost as if he was deadpan

He handed the advantage to the enemy on a silver platter….and they were quick to act on it as they were using the moment of confusion among us to take out all the panes of glass on our side without breaking too much of theirs.

And now, they could hit our side without us having a way to funnel them, and it didn’t take even a second for the pressure to start piling.

“He’s throwing…he forced me off the edge of the map when I was making our first breach” our other scout finally spoke

“What?” But we weren’t given the luxury of getting to the bottom of this

Smokes and Frags started flying into our side of the map. We were glued to the cover we had as the shrapnel that flew from the grenades decimated everything on our side, including our health bars.

The Artifact hadn’t even spawned yet and they already found 3 points worth in kills, however they weren’t pushing their numbers advantage as the Artifact spawn wasn’t known yet to either us or them.

We barely had any room for a counter attack, as the threat of the grenades they were lobbing our way in 5 second intervals was enough to root us in place, and even if we pushed through the suppression, the smokes completely cut off our line of sight to them, and we would just be firing blind and wasting ammo.

(What am I supposed to do here?)

I was drawing a complete blank…. Usually, I’d have an escape plan if I was getting pinched like this, but being trapped within the confines of this ‘map’ throws all of that out the window

[“Competition can be boiled down to a simple definition….. You see or hear something; you make a decision, and you turn that into your advantage. But you’ll find yourself in two scenarios often… One, you’ll feel like that you don’t know what to do…..and two, you’d forget that you are not alone in the heat of the moment….. If you don’t know what to do…..”]

“You get everyone talking, see what you can’t see” I recalled Hayato’s words during our one on one sessions

I put my hand on my ear and got the stationary ball to roll again “Does anyone have eyes through the smoke?”

“No eyes….. But the pressure is down. They might be low on frags”

He was right, while I wouldn’t be able to tell normally, my ears weren’t ringing in here as much as it did when I fought out of matches due to the loud blasts of grenades and gunshots….. But I was able to gauge that they were blind throwing grenades every 20 seconds now

“Artifact spawns now active, obtain and deposit the Artifact” blared the voice in my head

“Artifact is on our side…. They are going to try and take control away from us” deduced our other mid-range player

There’s too much ground to cover for me alone…all the glass is gone and the smoke is cutting off what we can see.

(Come on…think….. The smoke works both ways…we can’t see into their side, and they can’t see into ours….The smoke is diffusing all over our side as well…. If only any of us had a…)

“…Thermal!” I hurried and checked my inventory as I just remembered something crucial….The gear I bought for the raid on the NWO building

All this time, I had no use for all that bulk on my weapons and it completely slipped my mind until now… and through my heavily disorganized inventory, I found the thermal scope I bought, and this was the break we needed to even the odds

“Tank, give me a shield near the edge…..Mid, take care of anyone who tries to break through the smoke to our side”

“What’s the play?”

But held my silence preparing for the ‘play’

I pulled back on the grip of my gun and converted it into the lever action… I hastily removed the red dot and the laser I had mounted on it and replaced it with the Thermal scope and a suppressor…..last thing I needed was them to pinpoint me through the smoke with my muzzle flash

I listened patiently for the next batch of grenades and acted as I heard the explosion.

“Now!” I called it out and ran into the wall of smoke, mere centimeters away from a steep drop down what seemed to be a few dozen floors up.

As I got down to one knee and set up with my repeater, a curved shield protected me from any stray bullets or from grenades getting thrown in my face. The bright blue frontal dome stuck out like a sore thumb in the cloud of smoke, but it was giving me some surefire safety against the barrage of gunfire that was thrown my way.

I looked through the scope and was opened up to a free firing range. No-one was in cover as they were busy laying down the pressure. But as I saw five enemies marked in red in my field of view, I held my trigger back for a second

“Kill with purpose” I whispered to myself as I recalled Hayato’s wisdom once again.

I took a moment to scope around, and my attention caught one enemy about to lob a frag grenade our way. I didn’t think twice before putting a round in his head, sending him back to spawn.

This caught the other hostile that was next to him off guard, and he dived away as his now dead teammate dropped a live grenade at his feet. And it was good to know that they were not immune to their own team’s utility, as I witnessed the shrapnel that flew, break open many cracks in the enemy’s body.

I levered and chambered another round, and relieved one of the overconfident enemies of one of his knees….chambered another and sent that shot right between his eyebrows.

[ “Precision instills fear….Never fail to hit you marks, and your foes will never even think of challenging you” ]

(Damn it, stop thinking about home….Get his voice out of your head)

But the moment I zoned out was enough to shift the advantage in their favor, as their sniper has broken into our side and I was a split second too late to notice that she had already set up. And by the time I did, I had a white hole in my chest and my HP bar started to deplete to nothing almost instantly.

Next thing I knew, I was in that empty void again

I screamed in frustration…but the only one that could hear it, was me

(Idiots….it was their job to watch our flank. Can’t they do the one job they have properly)

[ “You can only trust yourself….you are special, Yulia…. Noone else can measure up to you”]

<< “No battle is won alone, Yulia-san…. Even someone who doesn’t even do the bare minimum right, can be valuable to a team”>>

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

[“People are liabilities, they are unpredictable….dangerous, and uncontrollable”]

<<“There’s nothing wrong with going solo, but it is wrong when you think you can do everything on your own”>>

I clutched my head as I felt my brain feels like it’s about to explode….. as the voices of my friends and my old man starts fighting each other

[“Make them play by your rules, your battleground”]

<<“The thing is, Yu-chan. You watch your team’s back and let them shine, they’ll do what they can to let you do the same”>>

[“Putting your faith in others, is the same as asking for a knife to be buried in your back”]

“SHUT UP!!!!”

Once again, my screams reached no one in my solitary realm, but it succeeded in stopping the voices. It was like the moment I try to go against all I have been taught, his voice comes in to try and correct me…..into his way

“I am done listening to you….. I had very little in my sorry excuse of a life, and listening to you, cost me everything I had….. It’s because you taught me to look away from people, I never saw Isaac using me…… and Minami…”

I shuddered as I remembered.

“I’m done being your weapon…to be pointed at and told to kill….. I’m done with all your guidance. If this is going to be a life away from you, then I’m going to start by rejecting all the poison you’ve fed me my entire life.”

I turned around and paced a few steps forward “Makoto and Isaac are going to pay for what they did-” and I turned back around to face the darkness “-but they will suffer on my terms…..not yours” I turned again and attempted to walk away

[You will not stray from the path, Daughter Dearest]

And I took that a challenge

“Watch me”

My 10 slow seconds of self-reflection came to an end and I was thrown back into the spawn room

“I’m back…talk to me” I asked over the comms

“Objective still uncontested by they are on our side of the map”

“Their sniper’s down but our other scout is throwing…. He’s on comms but unresponsive, and is actively feeding and revealing us to the enemy with flares” I was brought up to speed by our team’s active flanker

“So what if I am throwing huh?” And he finally talked again

“What the hell are you even trying to do?” I asked, having played with a completely different version of him before

“Day in and day out I’ve been doing nothing but losing and winning and losing and winning…..I don’t care anymore, why should any of you get to ascend, while I get to be stuck down here with the common trash?”

(Ego much?)

“I’m going to thoroughly enjoy trashing all your futile efforts”

I took Tatsuo’s advice and muted him completely off the comms using the pop-up wheel on my earpiece. At this point, he is just cluttering comms for nothing

(Alright, second wind)

I started rushing out the spawn door, taking in everything around me

(No more smoke blocking the windows. Tank playing defensive on point….Scout and Mid-range trying to push into the Artifact spawn on the other edge and that guy is….well….)

I replaced the thermal scope with a red dot on the way, and turned my repeater back into it’s base SMG form…right on time as well, as I was able to glue myself to the pillar across from the point and put a few rounds into the two who are pressuring our tank, forcing them to look at me and play more safe.

( Who out of all the enemies would cause the biggest problem to us? Nothing we can do about the thrower…..Mids? No… I focus on them, we can take more control over our side of the map… But it won’t give us any momentum)

And it was at that moment, I felt a presence behind me…which I was quick to react to this time. A pair of Kusarigama was thrown my way which I managed to side step out of the way of…. He pulled the chains back and I was able to block the sickle that almost grazed me with my Karambit.

(The scout? No.. He would be a hindrance to me and the other mid player, not to the others.)

While Kusarigama masters are rare, I was able to read the scout’s technique and predict his moves ... .Problem I had to deal with was his range.

The closer I got, the harder it got to predict with the sickles being my blind spots. But I kept the chains in my peripheral vision and predicted where the strike was coming from judging by the movement of the chains.

But as I dodged and weaved and closed the distance, he pulled back his sickles as a last ditch effort, dropped them and went for his sidearm…. But he was already in my kill range by then.

I grabbed his gun and pulled it to the side, exposing his wrist ... .slid my blade down it, forcing hands to crack open.. I then slid past his arms, putting them to the side of me and had my blade at his throat while I was beside him…. And I tore it open, sending him to the 10 second void.

My eyes immediately went towards the now vacant opposite side of the map, the enemy team’s lane.

(How are they confident enough to go on a full assault on our side while keeping their side wide open…. What am I missing here?)

And that is when I remembered

(Their sniper….. after I got taken out, there was no mention of her on our comms. Out of sight, out of mind…..perfect way to catch anyone off guard)

Time to put my theory to the test.

As I ignored everyone who was laser focused on the artifact right now, I made my way around them and scoured the opposite side. There were 4 enemies on our side which meant the sniper was alone on the other side.

(If I was him, where would I play? I’d have range advantage, and if I was solely focused playing far behind, I’d want somewhere where I would be hidden and would have easy line of sight of our base zone)

Getting a running start, I jumped across to the enemy’s side of the map, over the extremely long drop that lied in the middle.

(This map has no high ground ... .maybe I’m not looking for line of sight…. Maybe, ease of repositioning.)

The problem with the construction side of the map, was that the lighting was considerably worse as the only thing illuminating everything in here was the dark blue sphere outside sneaking in light through the glass panes….. As much as I wanted to break out the flashlight, I didn’t want to alert my query that I was closing in.

I paced my footsteps and kept my eyes and ears open. Darting my vision around my proximity as I trained my hearing towards any abnormal patterns in footsteps which were not in rhythm with mine.

But I didn’t have to hunt for long, as the silhouette I might’ve seen darting across, had me on high alert.

I opened my inventory slowly and grabbed myself my weapon flashlight. I slowly slid it onto the underbarrel of my MP7 but kept it off until I absolutely needed it. I moved towards the disturbance…. Two seconds of keeping my eye on my red dot sight, and two more observing my surroundings. I was presented with the challenge of turning a blind corner, but my lack of information made me hesitant to face check it blindly. I leaned against the tall cover right before the bend and took out the mirror in my inventory.

Eventhough the dim lighting didn’t help, I found nothing to be alarmed about. I face checked the right side and my eyes caught nothing, so I decided to proceed.

“Mid, regroup on us…. We need your firepower to break this stalemate.” The voice of our tank player rang in my ear

“Did they bank?” As I knew noone except my team could hear my voice, I didn’t hesitate to ask

“No… We managed to take out the carrier but we can’t push towards the drop… They are danger close to our base and if their scout shows up, we’ll lose the defensive battle”

“Wait, their scout’s not in the fight?”

(That can’t be, he should’ve had ample time to respawn and rejoin the fight)

But I was cut off as a red laser that flew past my shoulder for a split second.

I immediately hit the ground, turned around and opened fire….. and not a moment later, I was jumped on by another enemy with a melee weapon. I was quick to roll out of the way only to hear the clatter of metal onto the floor, narrowly missing me as I got back onto my feet in record time… Guess I now know where their scout went

I walked into a trap, forcing me to now go on the defensive in this two against one situation. But I didn’t have too much time to think, as sickles flew towards me in the dark. I turned on my weapon flashlight but didn’t have a second to take aim as I was ducking, weaving and jumping over the chains.

I had no choice but to retreat as he pulled the sickled back to him, but right the next moment, he was in front of my face at melee range.

I wasn’t given even a chance to put away my gun and go for my Karambit, and I didn’t want to risk and get disarmed at a time like this. The only option I had is to blind fire at him as I dodged and weaved.

(This is bad, if I stay here, I am going to get shot in the back by the sniper…. Come on, think)

Out of desperation, I tried to go for his throat with my free hand once an opening presented itself, but the shock that followed was a quick reminder about the fact that I can’t fight close quarters without a melee weapon.

My flurry of dodges started to slow as my stamina gauge was getting eaten at every second, and found myself with a sickle buried in my shoulder.

But in that brief pause, I was able to ignore the pain and throw my gun into my holster and pull out my blade as I was pulled closer for the kill.

I blocked the kill strike with my blade and was able to grab onto his right dominant arm. But as I was a moment away from putting my knife to his throat, I felt a sharp hit onto my right shoulder blade, forcing me to drop my blade and force me off my counter attack

While a high caliber sniper round would’ve been enough to send me back to spawn, I was left with only a sliver of health left, indicating that it was in fact, not a sniper round.

There was a slight moment where both me and my close range opponent were motionless, but I knew I needed to get away. I opened my inventory with my working left arm and pulled out an impact smoke from my quick access bar.

I was given a brief cover of smoke as bullets started flying my way from my ranged assailant, but I took that moment to retrieve my disintegrating blade and put some distance between them as I could only hope that a stray bullet won’t end my attempt here.

My assailants lost track of me but they were very close… leaving me sitting down behind low cover, full of cracks from all the damage I just took. I kept my senses trained on my surroundings as I attempted to reset.

“Mid, you went radio silent on us… What’s going on?”

“I’m fine…. Everyone, any chance you could get possession?”

I gripped the top of an open HP potion with my teeth and looked up to tip it’s contents into my mouth...... in the meantime, I swapped out my mag for a full and fresh one

“What?” asked one of my team

I let go of the empty HP potion bottle onto my lap “I’ll give you a window where you can rush over to their side uncontested….Get ready to-”

Repeated the same as I did before but with an SP potion and filled up the tube of my lever-action conversion

“Are you out of your mind? There’s two guys close to you…. We already got one person throwin…”

“Do you want to win this?!”

While some answered instantly, some hesitated

“If you do, just follow my lead on this…..20 seconds…On my go, you’ll have your chance in 20 seconds…. Have that Artifact in your possession by then and make it count”

I got up onto one knee and carefully checked my surroundings. I didn’t want my flashlight to give away my position so I kept it off and replied on my sight alone. But clearly, my opponents didn’t think to do the same.

I moved out of my bit of cover, having a clear indication of where the sniper’s laser and the scout’s flashlight were giving away their positions…. Now that I knew that crucial bit of info, all I had to worry about is not stepping on debris or bumping into any loose cover that could make noise and alert them.

They might think that I would’ve retreated….All I have to do is wait it out-

“We got possession, making the run” I immediately heard on the comms

(Wait, what?)

“I haven't given the go yet… Hold back”

“No way…. We don’t get this in now, we’ll have no chance of winning this”

(This is bad, I need to hurry)

But it almost proved to be my undoing as my haste allowed their scout to intercept me as I ran towards the direction of the sniper’s exposed laser.

He struck me around the corner with one of his sickles, and I reacted to it by raising my left arm up to protect my vitals. While I escaped getting stabbed or ... .shattered in this case, I wasn’t able to keep the chains from wrapping around my arm, binding me to the scout’s reach.

There were at least two lengths of chain around my arm, and before I could even react, there were two more around my neck and I was being propped up from his back with my feet off the ground.

(I messed up….. Need to….find a way….out)

I was being slowly choked to death….I was a few inches of the ground and I had no leverage to push myself off to counter this hold….The last bit of salt on the wound was the fact that their backline sniper was just right in front of me, taking aim to counter our push.

I had no choice but to give up…. I brought up my inventory which showed itself alongside my failing health bar, and I wasn’t given the liberty of an early respawn as much HP was still around the halfway mark. But as I saw my quick access bar again, I recalled a crucial lesson Hayato taught me.

.

.

.

<< “Two of you versus five of them…. You are in a no win situation and your death is all but guaranteed… But your teammate is your win condition… he has the Artifact and they are so close to banking it and winning you the game. What would you do to help them?”

“Try to draw the enemy’s attention to me, kill as much as I can before going down?” I answered

“As much as I think you might be able to just do that ... .in these kinds of situations, you won’t be able to draw everyone's attention ... .You might catch the eyes of at least 3 people on you, but what about the others? They’ll be free to counter that game winning play”

“You have completely lost me”

“Kills and banks are not all you can do to have your opponents on the backfoot… Wasting your opponent’s time is an effective way of forcing them to slip up. Hide in their backline, shoot and move…. Do whatever you can do to distract your enemies from your win condition… If you can’t shoot them-” >>

(Disrupt them)

I grabbed an impact smoke out of my quick access bar, and threw it at the sniper who was taking aim. But my spur of the moment decision overachieved.

The puff of smoke that erupted instantly caught the scout by surprise, causing him to relax his grip a bit…enough for me to get my feet onto the ground for a split second….which is all I needed.

I pushed on the floor and flipped over my captor’s back and onto his front, loosening the chains on my neck and forcing him to hunch down to my level….to his misfortune, my gun barrel was pointed right at his chest. I held down the trigger and the cracks that turned into shatters on his back was more than enough indication that it was a death blow….Now, it was me and their backliner who remained.

The dead scout materialized and I was left with a straight shot to my target…..and wasn’t she a familiar face. I reached for my blade but she was quick on the trigger…. That G36C rifle made it near impossible for me to push her head on.

I returned fire ... .single handedly firing my SMG as I moved out of her line of sight, but she didn’t let me off that easily. It didn’t take me long to realize that she was a lot more skilled than the others, I barely had time to catch my breath, and she wasn’t letting up…..What she failed to realize was that I wasn’t running away.

Flurries of gunfire rang both ways. We both found our marks, but neither of us could finish the job. The fight kept moving but the distance between us didn’t change…. She was doing all she could to keep me from getting close.

The faster rate of fire on my gun meant that my pressure had constant breaks in between as I had to reload more often, but I made sure to always leave on in the chamber to save a few milliseconds. As much as I hated to admit it, I was very much on the backfoot ... .so much so, that I even ran out of real estate.

A few seconds of this continued and I found myself at the edge of the building… One more step and I would find myself plummeting down what looked like a hundred storeys ....

I had no cover whatsoever while I now was the sole target on a glass shooting range. All I could do now was keep my head down and shoot controlled bursts at my opponent. I stayed low as much as possible as I rushed down the hall of glass.

Her aim was shaky due to all the suppression, and I felt all the glass shattering behind me as I ran….. A bit ways in, only one pane of glass stood, that being the one bulletproof pane on their side of the map. But I couldn’t run too much further, as I ran straight into the back of the enemy team who was trying to fend off our coordinated assault, and just for my luck, my mag was empty.

“Shit” I muttered to myself, now truly cornered…… I had no choice but to turn around.

The enemy team didn’t turn to shoot me, as they had bigger things to worry about, meaning I still was in a 1v1. And in the spur of the moment, I took cover on the opposite side of the bulletproof pane…on the edge of the building on my toes, with a drop to a void awaiting me if I slip.

Their backliner attempted to shoot me through the glass, but even her PSG-1 conversion couldn’t penetrate the glass, she quickly switched it back to her assault rifle and kept firing at me, to keep me from trying to come back into the building. I looked backwards at my only option of escape, and realized it wasn’t a possibility ... .The gap was big enough that I needed to get a running start to cross, and even if I did grab onto the ledge, she would just shoot me in the back and kill me anyways…

She was closing in on me, pumping lead into the unbreakable glass while I was barely keeping my grip on the ledge. Everytime I tried to hold the glass, she attempted to shoot me loose. Through my straining fingers and the cold breeze on my back, I had an idea to tip the odds in our favor even a little bit, but that required me to hold on until she got into my striking range.

(A little closer and I might be able to pull her off the side of the building along with me……But will she see it coming?)

But I only remembered when she was almost in front of me

(Wait….. I can’t grab her without getting shocked if I don’t have a melee weapon in my hand…she’s smart, she’d see through me the moment I go for my blade.)

But I ran out of time before I rethought my plan….. She leaned towards the outside to shoot me off the glass, but I instinctively stepped back into the building from the opposite side of the glass….. I had no time to go for my blade, so whatever I was to do in the next half a second, I had to make it happen with my gun.

I ran at her and tried to tackle her off the building ... .while my rush connected, she redirected both of us away from the direction of the drop… So far, I hadn’t been jolted for fighting close quarters and I still held onto my SMG strongly….. Unfortunately, I could only use it as a bludgeon as the chamber was empty.

While she was holding her own against me in a close quarters battle, her moves were the same as many of the others, and as long as I avoided the barrel of her 1911 sidearm, I had nothing to worry about.

Even at a range of mere centimeters between us, she wasn’t letting up on the aggression, so much so that the second I even thought of pulling my blade out, I avoided taking a bullet to the face by a very narrow margin.

I managed to slip behind her back and put her into a choke hold, but she responded by putting two rounds into my left leg. However, that sharp pain spike was not enough for me to let go. As I was getting my leg out of her line of fire, I accidentally pulled back on the stock of my SMG, converting it into the longer lever-action rifle.

She broke out of the choke as I was readjusting my grip onto my rifle, but I immediately responded by smashing her in the face with the back of my gun and pinning her against the nearby pillar with the barrel of my repeater pressed to her stomach. And the second I felt the trigger, I pulled it with all my strength.

She definitely felt her stomach cracking open, but she immediately tried to retaliate, quickly raising her handgun to my head. I kept the barrel of my repeater stuck onto her and cycled the next round as I ducked under her attempted killshot…. And I pulled the trigger again. Two high powered shots to the lower torso was more than enough to put the biggest threat on the map out of commission…. However, I didn’t have a moment to rest.

Ahead of me, my efforts got me a great position, a clear line of sight to the backs of 3 occupied enemies…..and just like a brief stint at the shooting range, all it took was one shot to the back of each head from my repeater to send the whole team back to a collective timeout.

“Team Blue…. Team kill” announced the voice in my ear, assuring us that we got a moment for ourselves without getting shot at.

I took this moment to catch my breath, as there is nothing stopping us from banking that Artifact now

“Artifact Destroyed…. Await Artifact Respawn”

“Huh?” I muttered the second I heard that announced

“What the hell just happened?!” exclaimed our tank on the comms

“Damn Tilt Queuer! He snatched the Artifact from the enemy and threw it over the edge”

“WHAT IS YOUR DAMN PROBLEM? YOU IMBECILE!” the other scout was clearly pissed

But all he did was wear a smug on his face, as he took pleasure in our desperation

“You sad sack of” the other scout pulled out his MP9 and unloaded on him, however it was as if he was shooting blanks, since everything he shot phased through and hit the outside of the opposite building.

“Look at you idiots, you still think you have even the slightest chance of winning?.... How does it feel to have everything you fought for to be turned into nothing in seconds?” He taunted us all

Unlike the rest of my team, I wasn’t mad….. Just frustrated. I turned my hand over to check the score only to see it at a mere 11-17, and the match timer showing that only 15 minutes had passed.

After feeling like I had been fighting for ages and after escaping by the skin of my teeth, not only did we lose the one advantage we desperately needed, but we are still losing.

(Has it always been like this? The stress of this one game which decides it all….Why is that I don’t have any control over what’s happening here?….)

I picked myself off the ground and attempted to reset. Starting by treating my wounds and fatigue

(I don’t know what I am doing wrong here….. I can’t afford that right now. If I lose this then….)

Tossed away the empty mag, swapped it out for new one, and pulled the charging handle to chamber in a round.

(Okay, first… I need to calm down. Close your eyes, and take a deep breath. Only see the win in front of you, empty your mind and focus only on the things that will get you the win)

And lastly, I started loading my rifle, one bullet at a time

(I was on the right track about marking the backline player. But I only survived that out of sheer luck. There has to be a way to reel this game in…)

I pushed myself onto my feet to be met with the sights and sounds of hopelessness. One of the screaming at the thrower who was enjoying every single moment of making our match miserable, and the rest of team wallows in silence, completely given up on the possibility of a win

(I’m going to need a miracle if I am to pull through this)