The elevator opened into the dark parking garage beneath his building. Most civs didn't drive, because most civs never bothered to level up, much past the point where they could hire an NPC or two to work a job and maybe gain a few skills for a hobby.
Driving was a real luxury that was it was just too expensive and too dangerous to indulge in; besides there were faster, cheaper ways to travel. The garage was almost empty. The few cars there were parked here belonged to some of the NPC's who lived in the building, the occasional low level player, and Necrobump's custom motorcycle.
Necro walked over to the custom matte black Ducati 1200. This was his ride. Wards and enchantments throbbed with embedded power. He placed his wizard staff into a specially designed holder that hugged the gas tank and engine where the fairing would normally be.
He loved this bike. Necrobump loved to ride so much that he’d been contemplating making the his motorcycle his Wizard’s familiar. He’d even been researching the appropriate spells. The thing that was stopping him was that he needed at least 45 skill points in spirit bonding to embed the proper spirit into the bike. Forty-five skill points was a shit ton of experience or over two years’ worth of just grinding at his level. Maybe if he pugged a lot more than normal…? It was worth considering. He loved this damned bike. It was a sexy beast.
Putting his leg over the seat and sitting down, he put a key into the ignition gave the Ducati a little choke and then turned it on. It purred. It simply purred like a 1200cc cat. Yes, my beauty, welcome your master, Necro thought. He fed her a twist of the throttle and felt it roar underneath him with excitement. Not a cat, a lion, a stylish matte black Italian lion. Shifting into first he pulled out of his parking space and into the garage.
Necro, knew his limitations. He was a Wizard, hence he was squishy. But the thing about being a high-level player was that he had hit-points to burn. Thus by astounding feats of logic, Necro felt that he didn't need to wear a helmet.
The light outside was stunning. There was blue overhead, and green in the trees. Tiny digital AI NPC birds fluttered through the leaves and branches. Some algorithm had really programmed a spectacularly beautiful day. He would have to ask Choirboy which AI he should thank. It was days like this that made driving a thrill. Sunny with just a hint of a chill breeze coming in off of the Potomac. His apartment building was in Rockville and he needed to get downtown.
Today a few of his friends from I Like Big Booty had a pre-raid meetup in McPherson Square.
Since the fastest and safest route was to drive down highway 270 to highway 495 and from there to drive into downtown Washington DC, he decided not to go that way. It was a dreary utterly plain route anyway. Too much concrete, too many rich pricks flaunting their cars. Today was too stunningly sunny and beautiful to take the highway.
The next fastest route was driving down the Rockville Pike. That would be fun, but since a big portion of it was designated PVP, that route would take him forever. Or more likely, since he spent some of his days off driving up and down the Pike looking for fights, his distinctive gear and cycle would make that route just as boring as if he’d driven down the highway.
Instead, he chose to head over to Connecticut Ave with its parks and residential neighborhoods. Only a small part of this route was PVP, over towards the Bethesda Naval Hospital. But since this route combined the best of both worlds, scenery and a chance at random unprovoked violence, that was the route he took.
It was an incredible feeling driving 1200 cc's of finely crafted Italian Engineering down the streets. Of course the Ducati he was driving wasn't actually from Italy. Some engineer had probably scanned one in the flesh world at some point in time. After that generations of AI's had undoubtedly compiled service manuals, photographs, computational insight into physics, digitalized player insight into aesthetics and come up with something that roughly equaled what everyone thought a Ducati should look and feel to drive.
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And if the digital end result was completely different from the actual experience of owing a super sport bike (no maintenance -- it actually respawned if you totaled it. Top speeds that would make a ‘busa blush in shame, an incredible ability to hug a curve, anti-theft spells, and armored wards) then well... it was the romance of the machine rather than any need to be stuck in any purely physical or historical paradigm.
He’d payed enough for the damn thing, that he got to say in however much of limited a manner, to "screw physics" and Necrobump liked it that way.
Whipping around the curves in Rockville Park way too fast and pulling into the area near the Bethesda Naval Hospital, his digitalized senses picked up a faint sense of something that he instinctively knew meant he was entering a PVP zone. He slowed the bike down to an almost leisurely pace. Either making himself look like a magnificent moron or like the biggest fucking bad ass of them all -- depending mostly on how many points some random player had spent putting into intelligence.
Within seconds someone took the bait. Without warning, the ambient music switched to battle music, and from a dark alley a fireball shot at him. Necro smiled. He didn't even slow down, just took his hand off the clutch. Mentally he reached out and grabbed hold of the nearby lay line. Magic pulsed strong and steady filling him with an incredible amount of mana. Then Necro lobbed his own fireball back towards the alleyway.
In theory driving through a PVP zone in any kind of vehicle was like this. Players were out to ambush drivers and steal their cars taking them for joy rides. You could gain experience and infamy this way, especially if you chose to do battle with the police NPCs who chased you to arrest you. This was one of the more dangerous parts of town, and Civs habitually avoided it.
The player attacking from the safety of the alleyway’s fireball didn’t even make it through the wards on his Ducati. The wards glowed glossy black against the matte black of the gas tank. Necro's own fireball however, coasted gently into the alleyway and suddenly there was a swift breeze as oxygen got sucked like a vortex out of the area.
And BOOM!
Fire poured out from between the buildings. It exploded upwards and outwards, walls directing the flames like a furnace. There was a shock wave that threatened to knock over his bike, but the wards took care of that too. The glass on one of the buildings nearby however, imploded. A bakery Necro had never noticed before. Usually these places had PVP insurance or the construction respawned automatically. This one wasn’t respawning.
In Necro's vision his player kill count went up by three. Not that it mattered, after a few years of playing the kill count number became a meaningless measurement anyway. The ambient music went back to what Necro normally had playing in the background.
Necro was more concerned about the window. Some poor Civ had probably invested their savings to set up their dream bakery, hired an NPC baker to watch it, and here he’d gone and knocked out all the windows. He grabbed a screenshot of the location, pulled up a query for their banking address, and forwarded them $100 "for the window." anonymously.
Twice more as he wound his way through the city, he had to kill a couple wannabe gangsta’s. His kill count climbed up 7 more bodies. He never bothered to slow down, never bothered to pick up any drops.
The rest of the journey into the city was disappointingly uneventful. It was almost a shame and he halfway wanted to go back and give the Rockville Pike a try. But up ahead he could see McPherson square and his raiding party was waiting for him.
They had a schedule to keep, and though he was early he didn't have time to go look for any noobs to toast.