SAVE POINT 91
Loading A Few Minutes Earlier Than EmeraldCity_88's Monologue...100%
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Rosabella
I stare at Dormouse, blinking at him from across the couch. He's serious right now? He's wondering if I've ever played a video game? Where I'm from, I'm the queen of video games. Give me a controller, and I'll beat you all. Except...except I have no idea how this going to go. Add the queasy realization that I'm literally fighting for my life and...and, well, this is more than a game suddenly.
"I just selected the basic bot players as teammates, " Dormouse drones, his fingers still flying over the controls in the air, "She chose the fortress level so—"
"She?" I ask.
And he nods, "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 narrows her eyes with the thin-lipped vow. "She looks like a child—"
"Don't underestimate her," Dormouse warns.
"I'm not," Joy counters, flipping her pink hair over one shoulder. "I'm just insanely confident in my own abilities—"
"Our abilities," Dormouse corrects, "We're a team."
"Right," Joy sours, shaking her head a little. But it doesn't look like she puts much stock in it.
"Grab your controls," Dormouse orders—who put him in charge?—as game controllers drop from above us, floating in the air. I swipe for mine, feeling the solid plastic in my hands and looking over the glossy buttons. They look new. Not too bad, Game Code. I readjust myself on the edge of the sofa, trying to get comfortable for what is probably going to be a bumpy ride.
"You guys ready?" Dormouse wants to know, swiping a nervous hand through his dark, short locks, tousling them even further into disarray as he squints at the neon prompt and buttons hanging in the air.
Joy smirks at him, raising an eyebrow. I see her fingers are already firmly positioned on the controller for action. She has death and determination in her eyes. "I think the better question is if you're ready," she mutters under her breath.
Luckily, the nerd doesn't hear her. He takes a deep breath and—
And pushes the button.
The screen slits, immediately, into three sections. I see the back of Mimi's avatar (Dormouse's character) on the left with two pistols snug in her grasp. Joy plays herself in the righthand box equipped, fittingly, with a grenade launcher. And, then, there's me—err, Sparo—at the bottom of the screen, wielding a machine gun. Let the games begin...
I test out the controls a little, my fingers running through the commands: walk forward, turn, rotate view, crouch.
But Joy's well over the basics. Beside me on the couch, she hunkers down over her knees, her stare intense as her character's view roams around what appears 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 dictates, "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 reasons, removing his eyes from the screen for a minute to send a quick glance at both of us.
Joy's stare doesn't leave the game, but I catch her eyes narrowing out of the corner of my own. "No offense, Dorkus," she sneers, "but you need a babysitter."
"That's—" the kid sputters, looking clearly upset, "That's not—fair."
"Exhibit A," Joy's voice is honey-smooth as she nods at the boy's character—Mimi—who is currently walking into a wall repeatedly as he struggles to get around a corner.
"Let's put it this way," Joy continues, 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 is silent. I see him swallow slowly, "When you put it like that—"
"Exactly what I thought," the girl answers shortly with a noticeable I-told-you-so slant.
"Joy, you take basement, we'll take the tower," I say, leaning forward on the couch, as I start to jog Sparo's form through the brick corridors, scanning for red enemy tags. So far so good.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
I race up a set of stairs, seeing Dormouse's green tag greet me along with his Mimi avatar. He nearly bumps right into me; I guess he's still getting the hang of the controller—if he's ever used one before. I'm guessing from his jolting movement that the answer is he's had very little practice.
"Watch it," I cry, attempting to move around him, but Mimi's face is in mine no matter where I go.
"Sorry," he bumbles back. "Wait...how do I fire?"
I show him the controls quick. The two pistols in his hands go off harmlessly against the wall with a ringing, rapid set of pings. I watch the sound and movement throw the guy back a little, but he's grinning at me from under his dark hair. "Cool," he muses.
—And, honestly, it's lucky that I do take a minute to show him the buttons because, the next, I see a red tag standing square in the middle of the courtyard.
And I recognize the avatar.
That's the one Dormouse keeps calling 'EmeraldCity'—the green-haired girl with the attitude problem who'd trapped us in the swirling black magic. She's the main enemy. The one we have to beat to save my life. And—well, since I have the chance—she is going down.
"Dormouse, check who's just waltzed into the frame," I nudge him in the shoulder, nodding at the screen. His eyes widen when he sees the green pigtails. "Let's make it a party," I tell him, winking a little. And my trigger finger is way too happy to oblige.
Bullets spray, ricocheting off the railing and the concrete floor below. I see the green-haired girl take a health loss, but it's nothing close to what I would have wished for. She ducks too quickly for cover. I swear under my breath. Dormouse, on the other hand, just appears to have gotten control of the keys and is firing at empty air.
"Did I get her?" he wants to know, excitedly.
My lips harden into a frown. Guess I'm doing this mostly by myself here. From across the room, I see Joy roll her eyes and shake her head, "Newbs, " she spits, "I can't stand them."
"Hey, anything in the basement yet?" I ask the girl hopefully as I search for a second set of stairs to the level above me. My eyes are glued to the screen. Brick walls race by me, but I can't help the feeling of stagnancy settling in my bones and churning my stomach. It feels like I'm running in place on a hamster wheel—even at full-speed, going nowhere. Can I actually win back my life? Or will I be gone forever? Just another name on a headstone. Dying in a video game which means death for real with no one to remember me outside The Game? The thought makes me want to throw up. I need this flag. I need it bad. I need to live. I will live.
"Nope, nothing yet," the girl huffs, "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 backs up her statement. "Don't worry, I can handle," she calls over her shoulder at me. As if to punctuate it, she shouts, "Take it, Rambo Wolverine!"
Apparently, that marks some sort of celebration for the girl as she jumps up and does a bit of a fist pump in the air, "Yeah!" The guy bleeding out on her screen must be the reason why. One down. How many more to go?
"Don't you kinda hate killing him? I mean," Dormouse drawls reluctantly, his tongue sticking out as he attempts 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. It's so rare that not many people know—"
"But you turned on 'respawn' in the options, right?" Joy insists.
The kid shrugs, "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 tell him. Joy was right—well, kind of. The poor kid needs five babysitters and a tutorial to get through this level. I'm about to let him do his thing and find the flag without his wandering when my health bar appears in the corner of the screen, inching down:
I'm hit.
"Down!" I yell, admittedly almost making the kid almost fall off the couch in surprise, "Take cover!"
And I'm, suddenly, all action. Tense. Quick. I slide against the wall, clenching every muscle in me as my sweaty hands grip the controller.
Fire back.
It's the only thing on my mind.
Fire back.
Survive.
Win.
The Grand Dragon gave me this second chance, I will have it. It's mine.
Ratta-tat
Ratta-tat
It's a rush hearing the gun going off in Sparo's hands on the screen. I swivel, spraying the bullets as wide as possible. "You're going down!" I bellow. And the emphasis behind the words surprises me, as well as my shout. Because the threat is deep, loud and unwavering. ...Pretty much everything that doesn't describe my sporadic heartbeat right now.
"AH!" Dormouse cries sharply, "I'm hit! I'm hit!"
I glance up, catching Dormouse's health bar sliding downward.
"Take cover!" I all but scream.
"What a baby," Joy scoffs.
She's technically not helping right now. "Dormouse, there's an alcove behind me," I tell him, and I watch him try to get Mimi's avatar there, but he keeps running into walls.
"Shoot back!" I urge him, my own gun exploding in Sparo's hands, with round after round.
But I have to take a second to reload and, as I do, the view pane lifts and—
I can barely believe my eyes, but I see a yellow flag fluttering through the window of a tower on the roof.
The flag!
That's it! I've found it!
Elation jumps through me in the form of adrenaline.
"Guys! I found it!" I shout, almost standing from excitement, "Joy, the flag's in a tower on the roof!" I lean forward, intently, "I'm going to go get it."
"I'll meet you there," the pink-haired girl seconds.
And that'd be great except...
The enemies that'd been shooting at Dormouse and I are no longer firing at us—no longer charging forward. They're running down the hall. ...The opposite way...
"Are they retreating?" Dormouse wants to know, "Did we win?"
But my mouth goes dry, because they're not retreating. They're advancing towards the steps behind them.
They've seen the flag too.