The Paragamer

Triggers

Galveston, Texas, Saturday, December 19th, 2009

"HAHAHAHA You got owned hard!" I scream into the headset microphone as the last semi-final round of the tournament comes to an end. Some of my co-players are cursing; some are offering congrats, my opponents are weeping. At least, that's what it sounded like before they dropped the line and logged off. Half-hour break before the final round, and the new regional championship of the 'Video Gaming Decathlon' gets crowned. Win that, and I'll be in the big leagues, corporate sponsors, travel, better rigs, and regular cash prizes. I can taste the coming victory, or maybe that's just the orange Cheetos dust and energy drink film that's coating the inside of my mouth. Considering such, I need refills of both, and a trip to the bathroom. Six hours of non-stop gaming did a number on me, but at least I convinced my parents to bring my personal office chair and my rig setup, or my ass would've been a lot sorer.

Finally standing up and looking around, there are more empty seats at the tourney, more losers that have gone home. Only my team and a couple other lower ranked teams are left. They're playing a different set of games, already lost their chance at an upper ranked spot, but must be taking too long to clear their slots. They're just competing for 4th place or something, too far behind in points in the scoring system to catch up. Still, the top five ranks all have a cash prize so, guess it's worth finishing.

"Hey Joe, watch my stuff, be back before next round." I call out to my friend across the table.

"Mrrhh" he mumbles through a chug of Dr. Pepper. He's a decent guy but maybe friend is a strong word, we only know each other via the gaming circuit. My friends from home and school weren't skilled enough to pass muster. Sandy and Dirk did come to watch, but ran off to the food court before the last round. My parents came too of course, but left to go shopping in the department stores three hours ago.

The game tourney is set up in an empty mall front between a GameStop and a GameWorks arcade. I run next door into the arcade to find its bathroom. I run into some teenage redhead in the hallway with tears and running mascara. "Sorry," I say as I step around her, damn she's a looker, but I have to go real bad.

I come back out and I see her again, screaming into her cellphone while some other brunette girl hovers over her. I'm curious about what made that pretty face cry, but I have a bad habit of asking questions I shouldn't. I have to get back in time for the final round anyway.

I get back to my seat, Sandy and Dirk have come back and brought grub.

"Hey, I got your food," Sandy says.

"Thanks, no onions right?" I ask.

"Dunno, told them to hold 'em but you know, check it to be sure. You finish your games yet?"

"Final round in 14 minutes" I pull out the burger and inspect it. Damn onions. Don't have time to scrape them off either, just chow down while Dirk and Sandy gossip about the Madison Simurgh attack that happened last summer. Too busy stuffing my face to contribute, but rumor was that some Ziz-bomb escapees rampaged through Des Moines sometime this morning.

'You owe me six bucks for the food." Dirk says.

I mumble with my mouth full, pull my wallet out, and hand it to him. "Can you get me another Monster and Cheetos from the vending machine?" I ask between bites.

There wasn't really enough time to eat and buy more garbage from the machines before me and my teammates and have to set up for a 10 minute warm-up match before the final round. Dirk gets back just after we started. I see him speaking but my headphones are already on. They drown out the background noise once we get in game.

"Hold on to it until I'm done," I say over my shoulder referring to my wallet, "last round will last 45 minutes tops, probably less once we kick their ass."

Even though my team is on a local LAN with a sweet connection we're still playing against other teams online from all over the south-central region. All at designated locations so local judges can oversee the competing teams and make sure no cheating is going on.

Practice session over, we wait for the countdown to enter the final match. It gets to zero and the rest of the world just fades away. I'm shouting orders to Joe and Jamie, and before I know it, 15 minutes of the game has gone by, they're good but we're better. 20 minutes in, we're starting to get a clear upper hand. There's some muted roaring sound in the background and then Joe just stops paying attention.

"What the hell are you doing Joe? Get back and cover our flank!" I shout into the headset even though he's also just on the other side of the table from me. I shift my units to cover the gap his inattention had created, and manage to lure the opponent in when he tries to rush the gap. 30 seconds later the enemy units that tried to push through get annihilated. That made the whole rest of their line start pulling back. A sure victory is at hand.

Then the screen froze.

Connection to Server lost.

"What the fuck?"

That's an automatic loss. Five years of training and preparing for this moment down the drain all because of the stupid fucking mall's shitty connection? I fall into an incoherent daze. This was my big break, now it's nothing! I feel nauseous, the room is spinning. The game's music has stopped. Wait, the room really is spinning, no it shook. I can still hear the sirens, so I take my headset off. They're loud.

"Endbringer Sirens!" I hear Joe yell.

People start screaming, trying to push their way toward the door. I look for Sandy and Dirk, spot them and make my way toward them, and then the whole mall shakes. I see my rig slide off the table as the floor buckles, and then the lights go out. People scream. I can hear drywall cracking under compressive force the way your house creaks and groans, because of soil movement. I can hear metal beams straining, both louder than the screams of everyone around me, oh fuck this is bad.

The emergency lights come back on. Where's my friends? I yell but no one answers. No one can hear me over the noise. Sandy made it to the front of the store front, up by the large windows. It's still somewhat dark though, it's evening in winter. The plate glass of the entire front just explodes, all along the top level of the mall. The roof is caving in, from something, and the metal window frames holding all the glass just compressed in and buckled, imploding the panes. I instinctively shield my face but wasn't fast enough. I feel stuff hit me, but there's people in front of me who take the worst of it and fall down. I fall too, crawl forward. I find Sandy lying on the floor in a pool of blood, not moving on her own. She is…sliding toward the front, as is everything else, tables, computers, and bodies, living and not.

I see Joe, life gone from his eyes; part of the roof has crushed him. Some of the screaming, and noise of the cracking mall has died down just enough that I can hear something huge walking on the roof. Gallons upon gallons of water start pouring in through all the new cracks in the roof. Then the mall shifts again. I hold on and scream until my throat is dry.

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Somehow I make it out onto the now heavily slanted, wet, and slippery balcony-walkway area in front of the storefronts. We're on the upper floor; the railing had been smashed apart in various places as heavy items hydroplaned right out of the stores and smashed into them. I see Dirk. "Dirk! Can you hear me?" Dirk is barely hanging on to some of the railing, water pouring over the sides. "Hold on, Dirk!" I watch in horror as one of the huge heavy concrete potted plants slowly starts sliding toward the part of the railing he is holding on for dear life from. "No, no, no, no" I yell again, unable to do anything. The mall shakes again, a wave hits the potted plant and it picks up speed, crashing into the railing and tumbling over, taking Dirk with it. I slip and slide further down through the dirty, pink bloody water. The once level walkway is slick with water and blood, everything is getting drenched. I barely grab some mangled railing myself. I just barely see Dirk and the plant pot as they fall with a loud splash into the rapidly pooling water below.

Dangling from the railing, I have a good, but horrendous view. The rest of the mall is just gone. It's fallen into a sinkhole that is rapidly filling up with water, just as this part of the mall is trying to do. Oh God, that was where my parents had been, somewhere out there. I vomit and almost lose my grip, spinning around to catch myself. About 20 to 30 feet away from me, hanging from another part of the wrecked railing, I see the redhead I ran into on my way to the bathroom. We stare at each other for a while.

Both of our attentions are distracted by strobing laser flashes from above. I can see the evening sky through the open hole in the mall from where what is left of it dangles on the edge of the sinkhole, and to the water below us. The hero Gatling is flying in his jet pack above us, firing his trademark laser Gatling cannon at something on the roof above us.

"SAVE US!" the red-head screams.

Gatling momentarily pauses in his firing. He moves his hand and a spot light on his suit turns on, illuminating the both of us through the rain and scanning the wreckage. The Endbrigner takes advantage of the distraction, Leviathan leaps from the mall roof. It shudders again and more things, water, and bodies fall into the rising pool below. I know some are alive because of the screaming. Somehow I still hold on, but have stopped screaming, I have no voice left. The water of the after echo follows his leap as he lands on Gatling. The momentum of the majority of the water echo arcs well over our heads, and falls down into the sinkhole, filling it up further as Leviathan and Gatling fight. The fight lasts only seconds, Gatling is torn in half.

The water level has risen, and flows over some fallen power lines or a transformer because the entire sinkhole lake starts lighting up with sparks. Some flying cape flies straight down and slams into Leviathan from above, too far away for me to identify them.

"Y'all hang in there, I see you!" I hear someone shouting from above. I look up and see a man in a brown suit, thick coils of corded rope draped over his body. It's Rappel, a local villain that could literally walk on walls. He peers at us from the mall roof, then starts glowing and just steps off, pivots, and walks down the side of the ruined structure to the slanted walkway I had slid off of moments before. He pulls out a green paracord rope and ties it further off somewhere in the back of the mall interior that I can't see. The other end is harnessed to the villain and Rappel stops glowing and carefully, eases himself down toward us. I'm too busy being pants shitting terrified to ask why he didn't just walk down like he did before.

He then lowers a harness to me, starts glowing again and walks toward me and puts the harness on. He leaves me there and does the same to the red-head. Altering his glows on and off, apparently some kind of short term breaker state. There must have been someone else as well that I can't see because he moves out of view again. Then what's left of the mall starts creaking loudly again.

Pieces of railing, waves of water and the building start falling into the water. My rope goes slack and I drop, debris slams into my arm as I swing outward. I scream as I nearly fall. Pain, I feel so much pain in my arm, something is broken. The red head is almost directly above me now, screaming her head off.

"Fuck! Can't go back up that way!" I hear Rappel shout. He's standing on the side of the sinkhole wall, just across from me and presses some kind of gun up against it. There's a loud 'thunk', and he clips another rope into the anchor point he just made. Then he aims a grappling hook at me and fires. I think I piss myself as I flinch at the oncoming barbed harpoon of death.

I open my eyes to discover I’m not impaled by the giant barb. Now there is a rope spanning a thin slice of the edge of the sinkhole chasm.

"Hook yourself to the rope, use one of the clips on your chest, and detach yourself from the other one. I have to get the others."

"I don't know how to do that!" I try to scream, my voice is still hoarse. Rappel ignores me, starts glowing and walks back up the wall toward the red-head. I try to do as he said, but only one of my arms is cooperating, I manage to hook myself into the spanning rope but that is all I can manage.

"I need flyers for civilian rescue in grid G3." I hear Rappel say into an armband as he walks up the wall, a second slack rope trailing behind him as he goes. I heard his armband crackle in response "That Zone is hot! Leviathan is back in the area" I’m hit by a wave of water and feel myself falling.

I'm struggling, underwater, and feel myself getting pulled downward. In the back of my mind, I have one thought, I'm underwater and Leviathan is here. I'm fucked. Somehow though, I manage to slip out of the rope harness, swim to the top and push through to the surface. A pile of floating debris has conglomerated together, I pull myself onto a big piece of floating particle board. The words 'Tank Commander' is on the side. It was broken game cabinets from the arcade. I'm cold, my left arm feels like it's on fire. I see the red head thrashing in the water and pull her up onto the raft of broken arcade cabinets. She's lying on top of 'Tron'. There's another man thrashing in the water, too far away to aid, it wasn't Rappel.

We can see because there's a street light, still on, precariously hanging over the edge of the sinkhole, threatening to topple in at any moment. So was what was left of the mall. In its light I can see Leviathan fighting at the other end; waves from his after echo threaten to break our arcade raft. Some unseen cape is causing live power lines to wrap around his limbs. Leviathan just grabs the cables and pulls, tearing out pylons and transformers off the edge of the sinkhole and sending them tumbling toward the water.

So many things are happening at once. "Get out of the water!" The redhead yells. A flying cape appears above us, the sparking transformer hits the water, Leviathan moves like a flash. The Endbringer is less than 50 yards from us, and impales our would-be rescuer with his whip tail, and casually flings him off into the wall like he was shaking off an annoying bug. The man we couldn't reach was screaming in the water, and Leviathan looked at me. We were going to die.

Some foggy vision of two great bloated whale-like worms spiraling through space filled my mind like a nightmare.

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