SAVE POINT 44
Rosabella – 10 Minutes Earlier
I stared at Dormouse, blinking at him from across the couch. He was serious right now? He was wondering if I'd ever played a video game? Where I was from, I was the queen of video games. Give me a controller, and I'd beat you all. Except...except I had no idea how this was going to go. Add the queasy realization that I was literally fighting for my life, both in the Game and in reality, and...and, well, this was more than a game suddenly.
"Okay, so we get a couple extra bot players. Looks like our enemy selected all bot players as teammates," Dormouse droned, his fingers still flying over the controls in the air, "She chose the fortress level so—"
"She?" I asked.
And he nodded, "EmeraldCity. The one I told you guys to be careful of. She's the one I was trying to run down from the nerd camp—a lose cannon and, unfortunately for us, who we're pinned against."
"Oh, she is going down," Joy narrowed her eyes with the thin-lipped vow. "She looks like a child—"
"Don't underestimate her," Dormouse warned.
"I'm not," Joy countered, flipping her pink hair over one shoulder. "I'm just insanely confident in my own abilities—"
"Our abilities," Dormouse corrected, "We're a team."
"Right," Joy soured, shaking her head a little. But it didn't look like she put much stock in it.
"Grab your controls," Dormouse ordered—who put him in charge?—as game controllers dropped from above us, floating in the air. I swiped for mine, feeling the solid plastic in my hands and looking over the glossy buttons. They looked new. Not too bad, System. I readjusted myself on the edge of the sofa, trying to get comfortable for what was probably going to be a bumpy ride.
"You guys ready?" Dormouse wanted to know, swiping a nervous hand through his dark, short locks, tousling them even further into disarray as he squinted at the neon prompt and buttons hanging in the air.
Joy smirked at him, raising an eyebrow. I saw her fingers were already firmly positioned on the controller for action. She had death and determination in her eyes. "I think the better question is if you're ready," she muttered under her breath.
Luckily, the nerd didn't hear her. He took a deep breath and—
And pushed the button.
The screen slit, immediately, into three sections. I saw the back of Mimi's avatar (Dormouse's character) on the left with two pistols snug in her grasp. Joy played herself in the righthand box equipped, fittingly, with a grenade launcher. And, then, there was me—err, Sparo—at the bottom of the screen, wielding a machine gun. Let the games begin...
I tested out the controls a little, my fingers running through the commands: walk forward, turn, rotate view, jump, crouch.
But Joy was well over the basics. Beside me, on the couch, she hunkered down over her knees, her stare intense as her character's view roamed around what appeared to be a fortress courtyard with brick arches stacked on each other upwards for several levels.
"I've played a ton of matches like this. The flag will either be at the highest point or lowest point of this place," the pink-haired girl dictated, "We should split up into teams—increase our odds of running into it. One team will search for access to the roof or highest tower, and one will go into the basement."
"Why don't we split up three ways? That's even more chances of finding it," Dormouse reasoned, removing his eyes from the screen for a minute to send a quick glance at both of us.
Joy's stare didn't leave the game, but I caught her eyes narrowing out of the corner of my own. "No offense, Dorkus," she sneered, "but you need a babysitter."
"That's—" the kid sputtered, looking clearly upset, "That's not—fair."
"Exhibit A," Joy's voice was honey-smooth as she nodded at the boy's character—Mimi—who was currently walking into a wall repeatedly as he struggled to get around a corner.
"Let's put it this way," Joy continued, shaking her hair out of her face, "do you want to take heavy fire from army guys who look like they could snap your nerdy girl avatar in half with their bare hands all by your lonesome? Or would you prefer to have Rosabella covering your ass?"
Dormouse was silent. I saw him swallow slowly, "When you put it like that—"
"Exactly what I thought," the girl answered shortly with a noticeable I-told-you-so slant.
"Joy, you take basement, we'll take the tower," I said, leaning forward on the couch, as I started to jog Sparo's form through the brick corridors, scanning for red enemy tags. So far so good.
I raced up a set of stairs, seeing Dormouse's green tag greet me along with his Mimi avatar. He nearly bumped right into me; I guessed he was still getting the hang of the controller—if he'd ever used one before. Did they even have video games in The Game? I was guessing from his jolting movement that the answer was he'd had very little practice.
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"Watch it," I cried, attempting to move around him, but Mimi's face was in mine no matter where I went.
"Sorry," he bumbled back. "Wait...how do I fire?"
I showed him the controls quick. The two pistols in his hands went off harmlessly against the wall with a ringing, rapid set of pings. I watched the sound and movement throw the guy back a little, but he was grinning at me from under his dark hair. "Cool," he mused.
—And, honestly, it was lucky that I did take a minute to show him the buttons because, the next, I saw a red tag standing square in the middle of the courtyard.
And I recognized the avatar.
It was the one Dormouse kept calling 'EmeraldCity'—the green-haired girl with the attitude problem who'd trapped us in the swirling black magic. She was the main enemy—the one we’d have to beat to save my life. And—well, since I had the chance—she was going down.
"Dormouse, check who just waltzed into the frame," I nudged him in the shoulder, nodding at the screen. His eyes widened when he saw the green pigtails. "Let's make it a party," I told him, winking a little. And my trigger finger was way too happy to oblige.
Bullets sprayed, ricocheting off the railing and the concrete floor below. I saw the green-haired girl take a HP loss, but it was nothing close to what I would have wished for even if her HP was a low starting number. She ducked too quickly for cover. I swore under my breath. How was she giving us this much trouble when she wasn’t even L1? It was infuriating. …Dormouse, on the other hand, just appeared to have gotten control of the key and was firing at empty air.
"Did I get her?" he wanted to know, excitedly.
My lips hardened into a frown. I guessed was doing this mostly by myself here. From across the room, I saw Joy roll her eyes and shake her head, "Newbs, " she spat, "I can't stand them."
"Hey, anything in the basement yet?" I asked the girl hopefully as I searched for a second set of stairs to the level above me. My eyes were glued to the screen. Brick walls raced by, but I couldn't help the feeling of stagnancy settling in my bones and churning my stomach. It felt like I was running in place on a hamster wheel—even at full-speed, going nowhere. Could I actually win back my life? Or would I be gone forever—just another name on a headstone? Dying in a video game which meant death for real with no one to remember me outside The Game? The thought made me want to throw up. I needed this flag. I needed it bad. I needed to live. I would live.
"Nope, nothing yet," the girl huffed, "Just asshole meatheads with their motivations set to vengeance since they all keep trailing me like lovesick baboons." The volley of gunfire in the background of her screen backed up her statement. "Don't worry, I can hang," she called over her shoulder at me. As if to punctuate it, she shouted, "Take it, Rambo Wolverine!"
Apparently, that marked some sort of celebration for the girl as she jumped up and did a bit of a fist pump in the air, "Yeah!" The guy bleeding out on her screen must have been the reason why.
[JOY, WARRIOR 14 AVATAR: System Reward: TEAMMATE MEATHEAD, KILLER 10 Eliminated +15 XP, 1347/1400]
One down. How many more to go?
"Don't you kinda hate killing him? I mean," Dormouse drawled reluctantly, his tongue sticking out as he attempted to wrangle his controller, "I've read on a ton of forums, and there's mixed opinions on whether you die or respawn in The Game if you die in Multiplayer Mode. I think there’s an option for it—"
"But you turned on 'respawn' in the options, right?" Joy insisted.
The kid’s face turned sheet white as he shrugged weakly, "I don't know. I honestly don't remember—"
"Dormouse, if you keep your view head-on, it might help you move forward straight," I told him since his Mimi avatar was currently looking at the sky. Joy was right—well, kind of. The poor kid needed five babysitters and a tutorial to get through this level. I was about to let him do his thing and find the flag without his wandering when my HP appeared, flashing before my eyes:
[-10 HP, 106/116]
Pain flickered in my arm. I looked down at Sparo’s dark arm to see red rivlets running there where bullets had grazed the skin. I was hit?
"Down!" I yelled, admittedly almost making Dormouse almost fall off the couch in surprise, "Take cover!"
And I was, suddenly, all action. Tense. Quick. I slid against the wall, clenching every muscle in me as my sweaty hands gripped the controller. Okay, so my HP was all the way back up, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t have to focus here—
Fire back.
It was the only thing on my mind.
Fire back.
Survive.
Win.
The Grand Dragon gave me this second chance, I would have it. It was mine. I would take back life.
Ratta-tat
Ratta-tat
[System Reward: Shooting Good In The Neighborhood, +5 XP 1207/1300]
It was a rush hearing the gun going off in Sparo's hands on the screen. I swiveled, spraying the bullets as wide as possible. "You're going down!" I bellowed. And the emphasis behind the words surprised me, as well as my shout. Because the threat was deep, loud and unwavering. ...Pretty much everything that didn't describe my sporadic heartbeat right now.
"AH!" Dormouse cried sharply, "I'm hit! I'm hit!"
I glanced up, catching the text on Dormouse’s screen:
[MIMI, PORTAL GUARD 17 AVATAR: -20 HP, 130/150]
"Take cover!" I all but screamed.
"What a baby," Joy scoffed.
She was technically not helping right now. "Dormouse, there's an alcove behind me," I told him, and I watched him try to get Mimi's avatar there, but he kept running into walls. He was taking heavy damage.
[MIMI, PORTAL GUARD 17 AVATAR: -20 HP, 110/150]
[MIMI, PORTAL GUARD 17 AVATAR: -10 HP, 100/150]
"Shoot back!" I urged him, my own gun exploding in Sparo's hands, with round after round. But I had to take a second to reload and, as I did, the view pane lifted and—
I could barely believe my eyes, but I saw a yellow flag fluttering through the window of a tower on the roof.
The flag!
That was it! I'd found it! Elation jumped through me in the form of adrenaline.
"Guys! I found it!" I shouted, almost standing from excitement, "Joy, the flag's in a tower on the roof!" I leaned forward, intently, "I'm going to go get it."
"I'll meet you there," the pink-haired girl seconded.
And that was great except...
The enemies that'd been shooting at Dormouse and I were no longer firing at us—no longer charging forward. They were running down the hall. ...The opposite way...
"Are they retreating?" Dormouse wanted to know, "Did we win?"
But my mouth went dry, because they weren’t retreating. They were advancing towards the steps behind them.
They'd seen the flag too.