I select the Headquarters Tutorial.
I soon find myself inside of a medium-sized room with blue walls. It’s lined with about a dozen or so desks with two computer monitors each on top of them, and headsets with mics resting atop the keyboards. I turn around to find a large window with open shutters looking into another, smaller office room with a solitary wooden desk dominating the center.
I lean into the window, staring inside. Damn. Whoever’s office this is, he must be the big man on campus or some shit.
“Ehm, hello?” I turn to my left to find a girl. She looks at her phone, and then back at me. “Ah, so it is you, Commander.”
My eyes scan the girl up and down; she’s got a grey hoodie on with the sleeves rolled up, zipper open to reveal the black shirt she’s wearing underneath it. She seems to be wearing some kind of black undersuit covering her skin where her sleeves aren’t. Sweeping my eyes down, she’s wearing denim short shorts, stockings, and high-top sneakers; the only things that contradicted her appearance as a civilian are her black and green tactical gloves and a magazine pouch buckled to her left thigh. Sweeping my eyes back up, I fully realize that she’s actually kinda cute, and probably early college age if I had to guess, with a messy, black ponytail and blue eyes.
Of course, she can’t match Griffin’s irreplaceable, incredibly dark vibe, but I certainly wouldn’t mind having someone this cute on my team. “Hey, darling. I take it you’re my first operative?”
She chuckles, and then she smiles. Fuck, she’s adorable. In a moment of weakness, I might’ve actually fooled myself into thinking I like her more than Griffin. “Actually, no. I’m just here to get you acquainted with the base, and then I’m gone.”
My heart sinks just a little. “Is there any way I could get in touch with you later, though…?”
“I’m normally an actual operative.” She tilts her head, flashing a small grin. “Maybe you can find a way to get me onto your team one day.”
I inhale and then exhale, to stop my heart from melting. “Alright. I’ll definitely keep it in mind going forward.” To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s a micro-transaction only character. They wouldn’t make a normal character this cute… Right? “So, show me what I need to know.”
“Right now we’re in the Dispatch Office, where you can assign people to listen and keep an eye out for new missions to play. Any missions you get from Dispatch tend to pay very well, though there’s some logistics involved in accepting them, so it’s not exactly a cakewalk.”
“And how would I get missions normally?”
“In your office, of course. Though, you may have been staring at it already, Commander.”
“Ohh, shit.” I glance back into the office.
“That’s actually where you can handle most of your tasks, including some functions handled by other facilities. It’s even got a few upgrade options.”
“Do the other facilities get upgrade options?”
“Actually, yes.”
“Alright. Where to, next?”
“Right this way, sir.” She mods before turning around, heading through the double doors behind her. I follow to find a larger room with white walls, a tile floor, and an area around the back segregated by a stainless steel counter. “This is the cafeteria, though it’s currently not operational. Serving food here can keep your operatives from having to go off-site for food, but it’s completely optional. Catering services can also be hosted here to improve morale.”
Catering services? I wonder if I can taste food in VR. “Huh, well… that’s one way of setting up a date.”
“Ah, that’s a pretty creative way of looking at it.” The girl giggles, ever pleasant. “Anyway, there’s bathrooms here, as well as the janitor’s closet.”
“Huh? A janitor’s closet? You mean I’ve gotta worry about keeping this place CLEAN!?”
“Of course! Not just the cafeteria, but the entire facility. Come and look.” She seemed awfully cheery, which is odd, since I don’t recall signing up to have reality chase me into a game.
I follow her in, and find a room that’s a bit bigger than your average closet, though not nearly as pretty as the other places around here. The walls are a dark color, the floor is a less sophisticated kind of tile, and there’s a large tub dominating the back wall, alongside shelves storing various cleaning supplies, from trash bags to stain removers, and on the wall opposite the shelving, a mop and a broom on a rack, mounted there like prized hunting rifles.
“Okay, fine, for a janitor’s closet it’s actually pretty cool, but… why should I care?”
“Operatives won’t like working in a dirty environment, Commander. That, and there’s one organization more powerful than even your own here...” A smirk started forming across her face.
“And who might that be?”
“The government.” She giggles. Oh, she thinks she’s funny. “And the government has health codes for establishments operating as restaurants, or cafeterias.”
“Great, more unwanted realism as busywork.”
“Don’t worry so much, Commander, you can always hire Grunts to do the cleaning instead! Though, it’s not unheard of for Operatives to be assigned to the closet as a punishment.”
“I see where you’re going. That’s actually kinda clever. Where to next?”
“I think you’ll take a liking to the next room, Commander.” She takes me along, out of the closet, and through a door across from the door to the dispatch room. It goes into a hallway that winds left, and then right to the next room. There’s an area on the left, cordoned off by a counter and stocked with empty gun racks and cabinets, among other things, with a door on the wall 90 degrees counterclockwise from the main counter, presumably related to the door on the wall to the room’s right. Opposite that is a wide glass window, revealing a shooting range segregated by a small, box-shaped room in between, like an airlock. Outside the outer door, a box hangs on the wall with earmuffs and glasses.
“As you can see, this is our shooting range. Pretty straightforward, send Operatives here to get them to train their accuracy, or come yourself when you want to pop off a few rounds.”
“You mean I can just shoot whenever I want?”
“Yeah. Lets you test new weapons, as well.”
I don’t know why, but when I was thinking of rooms, I never thought of something as obvious as a shooting range, but thinking about it now, it’s a really nice little detail to add in. “Absolutely fantastic.” I press my face against the glass. I should probably wait until this tour is over. “Alright, what’s next?”
“Right this way.” She takes me down the opposite hallway, which goes straight into another room, this one holding desks with computers at certain locations, but otherwise dominated by shelving units. “This is the logistics office. It’s what makes sure everything needed is ordered in the right amounts, from bullets to toilet paper.”
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“Oh, great, another chore to handle.” I sigh.
“I don’t know, maybe you’re the kind of person that likes the feeling of reaching for a mag only to find it empty.” She shrugs. “So long as the strategy works for you, right?”
“Ughh.” I run a hand through my hair. I wish I could come up with something witty to say, but she’s got me on this one. I instead walk over to one of the desks, noticing the considerable stack of paperwork on top. “How the hell is there so much paperwork here in the digital age?”
“I don’t know, Commander, but I’ve heard that paper trails are the lifeblood of bureaucracy.”
“Another callback to real life, I guess. What’s next?”
“Down the stairs.” There’s a stairwell entrance at the center of the wall 90 degrees counter-clockwise of the door to the firing range. We step through it to find another white-lit room, this one full of various weapons lockers, like the one I was in at the first tutorial level. The main difference is that there’s also an area behind a counter, with multiple workbenches and weapons racks within it.
“Let me guess, this is the armory?”
“Yeah. It’s also where the armorer works.”
“The armorer?” What, does he like, build armories or something?
“In charge of weapons maintenance. You know, so your weapons don’t do something rude like jam on you in the middle of combat.”
Oh my fucking god, if I’m going to be forced to deal with any more cleaning in this game, I might just uninstall. “How boring.” I can almost feel myself wanting to faint, leaning back into one of the lockers. “Is there anything cooler that armorers can do for me?”
“Well, they sometimes help with modifying guns, though that usually gets pawned off to the gunsmith right next to the shooting range.”
“So, not that much, then. What’s next?”
She steps through a heavy-looking, reinforced door, 90 degrees clockwise of the stairwell and close to parallel with the armorer’s room, and I follow to find a faintly familiar-looking scene; a wooden kill house set up in the middle of a stretch of concrete, instead of the massive expanse containing four of them that I started my training in. “Yeah, I’ve seen this one before. A kill house. Anything more that I need to know?”
“This facility can be expanded to include more kill houses, with different layouts and whatnot. It can also be used to train Operatives in Maneuvering and Tactics scores. Kill Houses also function as repeatable missions, though the rewards are quite meager in comparison to normal missions.”
“So, this is where I grind. Got it! Actually, this would make for an absolutely wicked airsoft arena, any chance I could maybe open it to the public for fundraising?”
“Well, no, but...” She breaks into an incredulous laugh. I’d probably be dazzled by how cute it is, but it feels like she might be mocking me here. “Oh, Commander, that’s a good one. That’s really witty of you to say.”
“I was completely serious about it. There could be mad money involved…”
She just laughed again, but even harder. Meanwhile, a menu popped up in front of me.
Idea Submission Detected: "Allow Kill Houses to be opened to the public for fundraising" Submit to development team for consideration? [Yes] [No]
Literally the entire universe is laughing at me, at once. I lamely tap yes to make the menu go away.
I just let it happen for a while, before she’s finally done laughing. “You done yet?”
“O-oh, right.” She frowned slightly, looking away. “Perhaps I should just show you the last facility before I go...” Is she blushing?
“Indeed.” We walk across the room, and through another door, to a rather roomy indoor parking lot-like space, though it’s sparsely populated; just an unmarked van and a humble sedan grace its area.
“This is the garage, where your motor fleet is kept and maintained by mechanics. The motor fleet is how you get Operatives to missions discovered by Dispatch.”
“Alright, I guess that makes sense.” I walk over to the two cars already inside. “These don’t look tactical at all. They’re not even painted black or anything!”
“Well, that’s all they were willing to give you to start off. I’m sure you can work your way up somehow.”
“Cheap bastards.” That at least got a chuckle out of her. “So, I take it this is where we part ways?”
“Yeah. Bye!” She waves to me as she walks off, out of the garage and onto the street outside, though there’s nothing but dirt hills outside.
I sigh. I’m gonna miss her, aren’t I? I turn around, heading all the way back up and into the dispatch room, before stopping at the wooden door to my office. I step inside, letting the door close behind me as I walk to the desk, sitting down at the desk and pulling up the keyboard on a rack under the desk.
On the screen is a notification saying I completed the base tour and got a pack labeled ‘1x Starting Operative. Open?’
I click open, and then the window closes itself, and I get a notification in the upper-right corner stating that my new Operative will be arriving at my office shortly. Alright, I guess I can just fool around with some other windows here… Mission, Inventory, Base, Stats, R&D—That one’s blanked out—Operatives…
The door opens. “Hello, Commander.”
I look over from my screen to find a dude wearing a rather rugged-looking flak vest over a t-shirt with elbow pads. He’s dressed in all black, with a set of pouches below his flak vest, a drop-leg pistol holster on his right side, and atop his head was a pair of yellow shooting glasses and black hair with a little bit of spikiness to it.
“Oh, hello there, nice to meet you—wait a second...” I let my face drop onto my desk. In a game full of cute girls with guns, I just so happen to end up with a fucking dude as my first operative. I breathlessly sob into the desk. I don’t even get anyone to simp for yet…
“Ehm, are you okay, Commander?”
I catch another suggestion window popping up at the edge of my vision.
Idea Submission Detected: "Allow player to decide gender of starting operative" Submit to development team for consideration? [Yes] [No]