The Drake egg was the closest to my location, and it was currently claimed by Team Bear. The other egg was being simultaneously claimed by Team Hawk, so my team and I didn’t have much time left. I scored the medical center campus, rushing into another building where I heard sounds of a strife. The sound of raining glass and explosions were all too familiar, and when I reached the fifth floor, I saw another member of Team Bear, Wens, the metal bender.

A flying stretcher wasn’t exactly what I was expecting to see the moment I cut the corner from rushing up the steps. I was shocked that I had a fast enough reaction time to duck it, but then I heard folding metal and turned my head over my shoulder, noticing that she turned that stretcher into a legion of makeshift throwing knives.

“Watch your back, noobie!” she taunted, her long, blonde pigtails swinging wildly as a second wave of metal knives spun around her body like a vortex. She had some sort of a tactical looking Lolita dress, Wens married to the creepy porcelain doll concept. Her eyes were bright crimson red, making that evil smile on her face more ominous. She forced those knives into my back, the pressure from them borderlining pain.

That was my sign to dip.

I couldn’t fight her, not like I did Crisscross. I summoned a flame wrap around me and flung those knives off of me, and then leaped down the stairway, the sound of Wens following me not too far behind.

“Oh no, where are you going? I’m not done playing with you yet!” she growled, her voice dropping a couple of bars. I didn’t have to worry about fall damage with that leap, but I had to keep my ears open for the sound of her friends close by. I heard another close fight on the second floor, hearing Reina giving a hissy fit about Balizi breaking her blades. Balizi was the last member of Team Bear, so I had to wonder where Naomi was?

Unless Naomi was fighting the other team, she should have been here fighting Wens.

“Shit, where’s Naomi?” I whispered, and then tried to reach her on my com unit. “Come on, Naomi, pick up,” I begged impatiently, but more times than not, a call in the Hunter Games was left unanswered. When things were down to the wire, calling in was the last thing on your mind. If you weren’t together in those final moments, you were either in the White Box, or you were being grieved by a team. Either way, you were fucked.

So I stopped trying and turned my attention to where Reina’s voice was coming from. For a second, I forgot that I was being chased, and as soon as I heard the sound of knives whizzing behind me, I pivoted.

“Are you trying to run away from me, playmate?” She giggled, tossing her next legion of knives at me.

I bobbed and weaved between panting breaths, trying not to use the little stamina I had left. When she ran out of knives, I escaped, heading to the ICU from the waiting room area. She chucked chairs at me, trying to slow me down. By the time I turned down the next hallway, her barrage had stopped, but I’d managed to corner myself in a room, and she wasn’t too far behind.

“If you don’t stand still, I’m going to have to make you!” her echo said down the corridor. In the room, I waited for her to show herself, but instead of Wens, I saw three room dividers flying in.

I blocked them one by one, wrestling with the cloth as I found myself entangled in Wens’ restraints. I could barely hear my own strained breathing over the sound of Wens’ maniacal approaching laughter down the hallway.

When I tried to burn through the cloth, nothing happened. My stamina was too shot to ignite my body, leaving Wens a huge opportunity to twist and bend those bars on the dividers around me.

I fell to my knees and tried to budge the bars off…. It was no use….

Wens’ silhouette appeared at the entrance of the room, and a blood-chilling grin spread across her face as she met my eyes. She drew a new set of knives from her belt and pouted. “Aww, you seem so sad! I guess losing in round 3 does that to ya, huh?” She eyed the tips of her knives between her fingers and then looked back at me as I continued to struggle through her meta. “I must admit, you’re one seriously tough year one cookie! But like any foe, you can be studied and adaptation will soon follow. My team and I didn’t get here by luck, but by understanding our enemies. And you, my dear Nero, have been thoroughly understood.”

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With a flick of her wrist, she sent one of the knives at me. The spinning projectile was a test to see if I’d eat damage, and unfortunately, I did. She stabbed me right on the shoulder, and even though I really couldn’t feel much of it with the HG-Armor on, my HP was being shaved away.

Her eyes blew up delightfully. “Oh, would you look at that?! The tank can be killed. So let’s carve a smile on that sad face then!”

I already knew what was in store for me the moment she summoned the rest of her knives. Wens tossed another barrage at me, and I was defenseless. In no time at all, I was back in the White Box.

I had 25 seconds to think of a plan here. We were almost spent on time, and my team and I needed two more kills to secure a tie-win. “Without me, they have no guard,” I whispered to myself. “I know Naomi has two items she could use that would help us big time, but there’s no telling if the other teams have something that would counter it. Though, it didn’t matter what she had or didn’t have… because I can’t get a hold of her. And right now, I have no way of trying to connect to her at all.” I continued thinking to myself…. If Naomi wasn’t with Reina, and she wasn’t answering my calls, then she was either in a fight, or she was hiding. Then I weighed the possibility of her plotting something over being in trouble, because from the moment I started fighting with Wens to the moment she eliminated me, Naomi was sitting on 5 HP….

I hated being in the dark! I looked at my sys board, where everything was grayed out. I couldn’t use a damn thing, expect the one item that had any meaning in the White Box. “Respawn token?” My only respawn token….

I had to give a strip show for this priceless item. Those girls from school… they believed that I’d make it to the top. And Naomi promised she’d help bring me there, too. So just like I trusted in Reina, I ought to trust in Naomi.

She’d mentioned using a last resort before the round even started. Between all of us, she had the most sponsors, which meant that she had the most items. Luckily for her, she didn’t have to do much to get them, but it was also lucky for Reina and I, her teammates. There was one particular item that could make or break a point, something that some hunters said was more powerful than a respawn token:

Displacer: Swap places with an opponent of your choice. Good for one use only. Activates within inventory.

I heard that Team Hawk had used it yesterday during round 2. It was hard to imagine that someone like Bram had to use it, though, it worked like a charm. Displacers weren’t easy to come by, and the fact that Naomi had two was a goldmine. The corp only had a few in circulation at a time, and it was handed off on a first come first serve auction for sponsors.

Personally, I didn’t think it was better than a respawn token, but in tight last second situations like these, hell yes.

My only hesitation was that we may need her displacer for the final round. Naomi confirmed earlier that she would use one if she had to, and with the time winding down, I figured she may be using it for the last five seconds to score a point.

However, we needed two points and two kills, which had me thinking about the other one she’d given me…

The Displacer stared at me in my inventory, my time in the White Box almost over. This would be one hell of a Hail Mary if we pulled this off, but as I considered my options, the plan I was working in my head made the most sense.

We tackle the problems of today, and worry about tomorrow later….

So as soon as I respawned on the field, I went to work.

Scope (lvl 1): grants user guidable aerial view of map for 10 seconds. Activates within inventory.

Scope was a way better item than Radar (lvl 1), because I could see specific people and their placements on the map instead of little red dots of any movement. Radar (lvl 2) narrowed it down to enemies only, but this Scope item was exactly what I needed.

I couldn’t see Naomi before, but now, I saw exactly where she was, in the middle of the map, between the two eggs. And she wasn’t alone, being chased by a hunter from Team Buffalo. “Her stamina wasn’t doing too well, either,” I muttered to myself as I continued to check my sys board. “We only have a few seconds left now, and Reina… She’s still in the hospital with Team Bear. This placement doesn’t make sense….”

Team Hawk was holding down one egg, and Team Bear, the other. But the two hunters from Team Buffalo who weren’t on top of Naomi were waiting just outside of the hospital Team Bear was preoccupying. They were plotting something, but what?