Good Grief

FenixForce777 peeked around the corner where the back of her enemy was in the distance, a trooper in a bright blue uniform. They were shooting down from the castle wall and stepping back and forth in front of the stones to avoid counterfire. She ducked behind the storage container. “I’m in position, where are you?”

“I’m here!” A trooper in a red uniform ran up a staircase behind her. Xx_Thundershoccer_xX knelt behind the storage crate on the other side of the passage and looked over at Fenix. “I don’t think we have much time, I ran into a guy on my way.”

“So they know we’re here.”

“Probably.”

Fenix looked at her sniper rifle. “I’ve only got four rounds before I’m stuck on the pistol. You?”

Thunder grinned and held up her assault rifle. “Three hundred rounds each with their names on it.”

“You move in first, I’ll take out the one we can see as you get up, then you move into the courtyard to draw fire from the other side. I’ll come up behind you and cover. The other three pinned down in the armory will be able to move in once we’ve distracted them. And remember not to pick up this guy’s drop. I need the ammo and going back to the ship isn’t an option.”

“Sounds good.” Thunder edged around the corner and brought her assault rifle up. “Ready when—”

Fenix’s head exploded in a spray of red gore. Her body slumped to the ground, blood still spraying from the stump of her head.

Thunder gasped. “What!?” She looked around and saw a blue trooper aiming at a rifle at her. She didn’t even have time to aim before the rifle fired at her head.

“Damn sniper!” Rainbow screamed. “Now we’re screwed!”

“Shut up and move, Dash!” Sunset’s fingers moved over her keypad to grab another sniper rifle from the supply crates and then run down the ship’s entrance ramp. “We’ve got less than two minutes before the match ends. We need to secure that checkpoint to access the grand hall. They won’t be in position to defend the throne room once we open the doors; we can still win if we move quick enough.”

Even as Sunset watched Rainbow’s character grab the assault rifle and run ahead of her, her teammate kept complaining in her headset. “We can’t, they got us from the bell tower and they’ll be watching the bridge access now. Unless you wanna die again, we’d have to go around the tunnel to get to the barracks.”

“Are you nuts?! We can’t move into the courtyard from the barracks, we’ll be sitting ducks! I’d rather take my chance against one sniper than four.”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t see the name of who got us.”

Sunset’s hand tightened on her mouse. “Midnight?”

“Of course.”

Sunset grit her teeth and hit the hotkey to call up the leaderboard. “She’s on a streak, up to nineteen.”

“Of course she is, she used the clipping glitch to get into the right tower and spawncamped us from the word ‘go’. I’m pretty sure the announcer was still talking about the objectives when she got her first kill.”

Sunset looked at the timer in the bottom-right corner of the screen. “A minute-forty left. You’re right, we’re screwed.”

“Yup.”

“But we’re not going out quietly.”

“Vengeance?”

“Vengeance.”

“Aw yeah.”

Fenix and Thunder ran down the small hill to a stone tunnel underneath the castle’s moat. Fenix ran into an open supply crate on her right and grabbed a rocket launcher and two ammo packs. “I’m going to enjoy this.”

“Who says you kill her? I wanna kill her!” Thunder protested as the two headed down the stone tunnel into the castle basement.

“Dash, Midnight has been griefing me for almost two weeks now. Every time I run across her in randoms she starts tracking me and making me her main target. Her team has lost games because she focused on me.”

“Kinda like we’re doing now?”

“She started it!” Fenix tightened her grip on the rocket launcher as the two ascended the spiral stairs of the bell tower. “And now I’m gonna end it.”

The two reached the top of the staircase and paused before the lift platform that ascended to the tower’s peak. “Strategy?” Thunder asked.

“No prisoners, no survivors.”

“Sounds good to me.”

The two stepped on the lift and it began to ascend. Fenix pointed her rocket launcher up, wondering if Midnight would hear the lift and be ready for them.

Unfortunately for her, she was correct.

A small cylinder arced through the air and into the lift shaft.

“Grenade!” Fenix yelled.

The cylinder exploded in the air above them, doing minimal damage but disorienting the two. Fenix locked two missiles into place and fired them up, and they exploded against the ceiling of the bell tower’s roof. Thunder looked the other way and opened fire with her assault rifle, making the right side of the shaft a storm of bullets.

The lift reached the top and Fenix saw her enemy – a trooper in a blue suit of power armor, the name ‘MidnightBP4VR’ above her head in transparent light blue text.

And she had a rocket launcher in her hands. A rocket launcher pointed to the right.

“Look out!” Fenix called.

Thunder began to turn but it was too late. Midnight fired a cluster of three rockets at Thunder. The rockets made impact and Thunder exploded into several gooey red chunks of flesh. Fenix fired her own rocket and began to move to the side. Midnight swung her rocket launcher around as Fenix’s fire struck her, making her body light up in a bright blue aura.

“Dammit!” Fenix snapped. “Dash, she grabbed the shield generator earlier!”

“Nice knowin’ ya.”

Fenix locked another pair of rockets in her gun and jumped to the side as she fired, avoiding Midnight’s rocket. Fenix’s rockets struck Midnight and her blue shield shone again. Another rocket flew past Fenix’s shoulder as she fired once more, missing but hitting the roof support next to Midnight. Midnight’s body let out a small spray of red, and Fenix grinned at the sign of her foe taking health damage at last.

Midnight fired another rocket, and as Fenix jumped to avoid it, taking only a small bit of damage as it hit the ground nearby, she saw the weapon in Midnight’s hands change from a rocket launcher to a small pistol. Fenix let out a barking laugh – Midnight had run out of rockets. Fenix still had a dozen. And judging from how the game had cycled out her empty weapon, Midnight didn’t have any other weaponry than her rifle, which was useless at this range.

“Not bad, Fenix.”

Fenix paused at the voice in her ear. It sounded familiar but she couldn’t place it. Her chat display blinked a speech icon to indicate it was Midnight who had spoken, opening up a private voice chat. She hit the key to shift her speech to the private chat.

“This is the first time you’ve spoken to me,” Fenix replied.

“This is the first time you’ve given me a challenge,” Midnight said. Fenix grit her teeth; she could hear the smirk in her voice.

“I’ve been wanting to see your head explode for two weeks.”

“I wanted to see yours explode two weeks ago. And I did.” Midnight laughed. “I didn’t expect it to be so colorfully violent. I just had to do it again.”

“Oh, you are so dead!” Fenix screamed and fired her rocket launcher. Midnight dodged it and fired back with her pistol. Fenix stayed in place and let the bullets strike, taking piddling damage.

“I think not!” Midnight jumped over the next rocket and the weapon in her hands changed again, to a pair of large pistons with sparks shooting between them.

“The shock piston?” Fenix paused, confused as her opponent armed herself with the game’s nigh-useless basic melee weapon. “The heck is that for?”

“Launching.” Midnight ran up to her and fired the pistons. Fenix grunted as the impact knocked her backwards and held down her weapon trigger to load more rockets. At this point-blank range a triple blast would kill them both, but at least she—

Fenix paused as she realized the image of Midnight was rising above her, replaced with the side of the bell tower.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

Fenix watched the bricks of the tower zoom past her and tilted her rocket launcher up to feebly fire her last shots, knowing Midnight would just watch them shoot past her into the sky.

Sunset rolled her tongue in her mouth as her character hit the roof of the castle and instantly died from the fall from the tower, the model ragdolling down the slanted roof into the moat. She glanced at the match timer and watched it tick past eight seconds, not even bothering to respawn.

“Did you get her?” Rainbow asked. Sunset tabbed back to their private chat.

“She launched me off the tower.”

“Seriously?”

“Yup.” The match ended and the announcer triumphantly announced the blue team as the winners – and as Sunset expected, when the screen changed to show the team’s best player, it focused on Midnight, standing on the bell tower with sniper rifle in hand, the killscore screen proudly displaying ‘21’ in gold letters next to her screen name.

“New game!” Rainbow snapped. “And this time, we’re going right for her!"

“Sounds like a good idea.” Sunset glared at the screen and clicked to join another game with Rainbow. The matchmaker announced it had found them a team and the loading screen appeared; Sunset saw a couple familiar but unremarkable names on both teams, and then saw ‘MidnightBP4VR’ on her opposing team.

“Two weeks and I haven’t been able to kill this bitch once,” she growled. “Who is she and how is she so damn good at this game?”

“Wonderful, we got the Carrier map!” Princess Luna smiled and used her magic to press the key to mark herself as ready to begin the game. “This is my favorite map.”

Beside her munching on a bowl of popcorn, Spike gave her a thumbs-up. “This is the one you got the thirty-three streak on, right?”

Luna’s magic manipulated her movement keys, her character grabbing a sniper rifle and two clips of ammo. “Yes. The ship’s front tower is not meant to be accessed, but we can walk along the railings to get there.” She walked up the stairs and began demonstrating her strategy to Spike. “From here we have a clear vantage point into the window of their base. Most of the time they spawn in the rear areas and have to pass the window to leave, making them easy targets.”

Spike scrunched his nose as Luna knelt and zoomed in her scope. “Can they shoot back?”

“Yes, but if I’m quick enough they won’t get the chance. Don’t worry. The only problem is when we need to go back to get more ammo.” Luna looked at her ammo counter. “But there is a lot we can do with twenty-six rounds.”

“I wasn’t worried. I was more thinking it’s kinda unfair.”

Luna snorted. “Spike, if it was unfair, the game’s designers wouldn’t let me do it.”

“What about using that piston to glitch yourself into the tower last game to shoot them as they came down the ship ramp?”

“Sloppy programming. Am I to be held responsible for shoddy work?”

“Still seems kind of unfair.”

“Now you’re sounding like Fenix.” Luna smiled softly. “I like to think I’m pushing her to try harder. She’s one of my favorite opponents the last couple of weeks. And she almost got me last game. Perhaps in another week’s time she may finally kill me.”

“Do you really think so?”

Luna saw a red trooper pass the window and clicked to fire, watching the head of FenixForce777 explode as the announcer declared her first kill of the game.

“Maybe.”