PvP
The sun was a bright blur behind the clouds. The wind blew white off the dunes. Sand whipped our clothes and stung our eyes as the Fury Burds trudged north. Black shapes rose up before us. The giant, melting chess set I’d seen from Video Horizons’s roof was actually dozens of black bunkers, towering inflatables that would serve as our battleground.
“The Wasteland,” Soup whispered.
All I had to do was be perfect one last time. I might as well have actually been going to war, my heart was hammering so hard.
The three guilds gathered in the shadow of a bunker monolith. The players hummed with excitement. Even Zxzord had dragged his undead ass out of bed at the prospect of shooting someone.
The coach held up a paintball gun and called over the wind, “Each of you will receive a gun powered by a CO2 canister and equipped with a hopper—that’s this container on top—that has a two-hundred-paintball capacity.”
“Ahem.” G-man loudly cleared his throat.
“Right,” the coach said. “I’m supposed to warn you not to lift up each other’s masks—that’s your helmet—and shoot each other in the face. Got it?”
“No problem, boss!” Lion said. He licked his lips and rubbed his hands together. Why was G-man giving them these ideas?
While the coach showed us how to load the hopper, I overheard Meeki whisper to Aurora, “He’s got three compressed air guns he’s gonna give the Sefiroths since they have the fewest points.”
“Is compressed air better?” I whispered.
Meeki scowled at me.
“Is compressed air better?” Aurora asked for me.
“Those guns can fire twelve paintballs a second,” Meeki said.
“How?” Aurora asked, seeing my eyes widen.
Meeki curled her middle and index finger around an invisible trigger and rapidly double tapped the air. “It’s like being attacked by a swarm of neon bees. You might be able to avoid one, but . . .”
“Meeki,” I whispered, “are you a badass at paintball?”
She ignored me but told Aurora, “My parents wanted me to let out some aggression, so they let me play every weekend.” She looked at her own chest, which seemed to be . . . flatter than before. “Taped my boobs down this morning.”
“Round robin,” the coach called. “Every guild will fight the other two guilds, and then the two most successful teams will compete in one final battle for the gold. However, you must survive the game in order to earn points. Like G-man said this morning, for every survivor on your team, you’ll be granted a bonus twenty thousand. Understood?”
Soup raised his hand. “Do we have to pla—”
I pulled his hand down before he could finish. “Soup, we need as many players as we can get.”
“I don’t wanna get shot,” he said.
“That’s easy,” I said. “Play perfectly.”
The coach handed out masks and protective vests. The Cheefs looked like their bodies had been genetically altered to fill their red armor. The Sefs, in green, looked like a ragtag team of new recruits. The Burds . . . looked like children in purple Halloween costumes.
The coach handed out guns with paintballs to match our armor. I held my gun to my lips. “Make ’em bleed purple.”
Fezzik summoned the Burds into a circle. His armpits were two swamps of sweat.
“All right, adventurers,” he said, shoulders still deflated. “The big raid. Heh. . . . Here we go.” He was doing a terrible job of hiding his heartbreak. “I want you to remember that this isn’t about killing each other. It’s about self-respect and honoring your guild. It’s about helping each other get back into the real world. So . . . get out there, and . . . do a heck of a job.”
G-man summoned the guild leaders to discuss rules. Fezzik lumbered away, without having made a single Final Fantasy reference. The Fury Burds were left looking less inspired and more depressed.
“Okay, forget that whole speech,” I said, leaping up and addressing my guild. “This is about killing each other.”
For the first time ever, Meeki smiled at my words. Soup hugged himself.
This would be just like pumping up the Wight Knights before a raid, only I wasn’t really friends with these people, and if they didn’t perform, I’d miss the most important event of my life so far.
“So,” I said, “um, when I first got here, I thought you were a bunch of lazy video game geeks.” I hadn’t actually prepared an inspirational speech, so I had to make it up as I went. “But you want to know what I see now? Murdering machines.” I sized up my guild. “Zxzord,” I said, catching his sunken eyes. “Our undead electric warlock. Clearly, you’re the most hard-core among us. How do you feel?”
“Like complete shit.”
“Well, then, let’s get you out of here and into a proper rehab. Soup . . .” He nestled his little butt into the sand, preparing to be showered with compliments. This was the first time I’d need him to actually perform instead of throwing the game or just obeying my every command. I needed to boost him up with a compliment. “You are . . . the only player in Video Horizons who found a side quest—with my help—and you’re superdedicated to your guild. That’s why I’m asking you to act as my personal human shield.”
“I . . .” He gulped. “It would be an honor.”
Now for the person who hated my guts. If Meeki was going to help me win, I would have to find the pathway to her heart. And fast.
“Meeki.” She didn’t look at me, of course. “I’m sorry I let our egg baby die. It had your grim determination. Well, the Asian half of it did, anyway. Let’s win this for the Abomination.”
“And Muffin!” Soup said.
“Sure,” I said.
Meeki still refused to look at me.
“Also,” I said. “Scarecrow is a douche bag. Take revenge on his ass.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she said, but then she cocked her gun.
Good enough.
“Finally, Aurora . . .”
The coach blew his whistle. “Guilds to their positions!”
“Um, never mind,” I said. “Let’s get ’em, guys.”
Aurora pinched and twisted the back of my knee.
“GAH!” I rubbed the sore spot. “Right. Pain for healing. Thanks, Aurora.”
Fezzik led us to our position, north of the Wasteland. The sand swirled. The sun beat down. The Fury Burds flapped our arms to air out our armpits. We were as ready as we were going to get.
“First up,” the coach called. “Burds versus Sefs!”
The coach raised the starter’s pistol and fired. The Fury Burds crept into the Wasteland. Bunkers rose up around us like a black stone forest on Mars. I breathed the scalded air.
The Burds dodged and weaved around those alien bunkers, slaying every Sefiroth in sight. Forget their compressed air guns. They had no clue how to use them. I never thought I’d be so grateful for the sizes and shapes of my guildmates. Zxzord lay in the bunker shadows, as skinny as a sliver of darkness. Sir Arturius saw nothing but bunker until purple paint was suddenly dribbling down his visor. Aurora was small and spry . . . and a terrible shot. But she missed Parappa only to have the paintball ricochet off the pudgy side of an air bunker and then hit Parappa in the leg.
Then there was Meeki. Meeki the Destroyer. Meeki the painter of deserts. Meeki, the player who waited until Devastator was within two feet before shooting, because she wanted him to “taste it.” His sobs echoed across the Wasteland. At that moment there was no doubt in my mind that Meeki had hit her brother with that Wiimote, and I couldn’t have been happier about it.
Meanwhile, Soup and I were a two-headed beast, backs together and protected, prowling the alien desertscape. I could feel sweat pooling in my ass crack where he was pressed. For once I didn’t shove him away. No one could sneak up on us. They would die if they tried. That was, until a green paintball whizzed three inches from my shoulder and exploded on Soup’s throat. Even though he was sobbing, he managed a grin at having sacrificed himself for me.
The remaining Fury Burds met in the center of the Wasteland and tallied our kills while the sun singed my wounded shoulder.
“Who have you killed, fearless leader?” Meeki asked me.
“No one yet,” I said, trying to sound like a badass. “But Dryad’s still out there. I think she killed Soup, so yeah . . . let’s get her.”
We all headed in separate directions to hunt Dryad down.
Shield gone, back exposed, I shivered in the desert air. I tried to keep an eye in every direction, but it was impossible. Sweat fogged my visor. I could feel my heart beat in my mask. I was backing up to what I was certain was the wide empty wall of a bunker, when I felt the cold barrel of a gun press into my neck.
Shit.
I turned around slowly.
Dryad put her gun in my face. She did not look victorious. There was a sadness in her eyes.
I slowly raised my hands. “It would be really stupid of you to shoot me,” I said.
“Why’s that?”
“Because you guys won’t win.” I took a deep breath and a huge chance. “If you really want to hurt Scarecrow, then you have to let me win.”
Dryad narrowed her eyes.
“Think about it,” I said. “All of your guildmates are dead. The Sefs aren’t good enough to win in the end. The Fury Burds are. Scarecrow would hate that.”
Her eyes remained narrow. I watched her trigger finger tense, and I winced.
“Make him regret it,” she said.
I opened my eyes. “I will.”
Dryad dropped her gun.
“This is for Muffin,” I said. And I shot her in the face . . . plate.
• • •
“Next up,” the coach called. “Cheefs versus Burds!”
We got our asses handed to us. The Cheefs were everywhere at once—Lion prowling through the bunkers, Scarecrow slipping around corners, Tin Man stomping toward us like a freight train, and Dorothy, the invisible executioner.
Ten minutes after it had begun, the Burds stumbled out of the Wasteland, red-spattered, out of breath, and soaked with sweat. Fezzik had no words of encouragement. He just sat in a shadow and stared off to the horizon.
Thanks a lot, dude.
We peeled off our sweaty armor and used rags to mop off the red paint. It hurt Soup’s bruised little throat to talk, so he quietly karate chopped my shoulders. Aurora sat next to me.
“If we win,” she said, “what are you going to talk about on your date? Will you tell her you’ve been in video game rehab?”
I scrubbed the red off of my vest where Scarecrow had shot me. “Maybe I’ll tell her I was in a real rehab, so she thinks I’m a badass.”
Aurora gave a half grin and glanced at Zxzord, who was rubbing suntan lotion onto his tattoos.
“Or maybe you could just tell her the truth,” she said.
“Ha,” I said. “How are you going to break up with Max?”
She scratched some red off her mask’s visor. “I think maybe I’ll do it in Arcadia. I’ll approach him with my Neon Elf, reveal my true identity, and then break up with him in front of his guild. Let him and everyone else know that the badass he’s been adventuring with is actually his girlfriend.” She blew paint shavings off her helmet. “But that would require playing more, so I don’t know.”
“Your true identity, huh?” I said. I stuck out my hand. “I’m Jaxon.”
Aurora looked surprised for a second. Then she shook my hand. “Jasmine.”
“Huh. Both Js.”
“Yep,” she said.
I noticed she hadn’t shaken her hair into her face once that day.
“Let’s win this thing,” I said, “so I can tell the truth to Gravity and you can break up with Max in style.”
Aurora smiled and nodded.
We had barely finished cleaning our armor when the Sefs limped out of the Wasteland, covered in red.
The whistle screeched. “Final round! Fury Burds versus Master Cheefs!”
My stomach filled with butterflies. Butterflies with razor-sharp wings.
“This is it, guys,” I said to my guild. “We got this?”
“Got this!” Soup croaked, holding his bruised throat.
“I’ll try to convince the wind to favor our paintballs,” Aurora said, pouring little mounds of sand in a circle around her.
“Um . . . that would be awesome,” I said.
I meant it. That would be awesome.
“Zxzord?” I said.
He didn’t respond, just lay flat, arms crossed over his face.
“Okay. . . . Um, Meeki?” I said.
Meeki held up her gun. “The Meeki shall inherit the earth.”
“Excellent,” I said.
“But not for you.”
“Still fine,” I said. “Everyone, stay alive.”
I slid on my mask and tried my best not to admit we were probably completely screwed.
The coach blew his whistle.
We stepped into the Wasteland.
A shot rang out.
Again the coach blew his whistle. “Dead Burd!”
Purple paint dribbled down the side of Zxzord’s mask. He had shot himself in the head.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked him.
He pulled off his mask and threw it. “I’ll be in the bathroom.”
“We all know you’re faking,” I said.
“We’re all faking,” Zxzord called over his shoulder, and then ambled back toward Video Horizons.
“Seriously?” I said. This was the biggest betrayal I’d seen since Leeroy Jenkins.
“Rrg!” Meeki stormed over to the coach. She was arguing that we should get Parappa, the nerdcore kid, on our team because our player committed suicide . . . when red exploded out of the back of her neck.
Again the coach whistled. “Dead Burd!”
“Move, move!” I shouted, dragging Soup into the arena by his arm. Aurora ran in the opposite direction.
Soup and I fled deep into the Wasteland and hid behind a long, squat bunker. I peeked over the top and saw the coach point Meeki out of the arena.
Shit. This wasn’t fair. We’d lost two players in less than a minute because one of our players was possibly faking heroin withdrawals. I wanted to rage quit the whole game right then. I couldn’t.
Sand stung our faces. Gunshots cracked through the dry air. The sand sizzled my ass, and the air smelled like melting bunker plastic. We were in bullet hell.
“What do we do?” Soup whispered, terrified.
“I have no idea,” I said.
“If we lose,” Soup said, “at least we can build sand castles together tomorrow.”
“No,” I said. “I will not admit defeat.”
Another shot. No whistle.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” I said, before I knew what to say. I searched the Wasteland and pointed to a bunker that towered above the others. “I’m going to boost you up on top of that.”
Soup looked worried. “I’m scared of heights.”
“Well, then it’s a good thing that you’re a weaponized animal who doesn’t know the meaning of heights, isn’t it?”
Soup didn’t look so sure.
“Come on,” I said. “I’ll toss you up there like a Pikmin.”
He followed me into the shadow of the bunker. I cradled my hands, Soup stepped onto them, and I hefted him up. The bunker wobbled, threatening to tip over. Soup whimpered. But then it stabilized, forming a nice cozy cleft with him tucked inside. He peeked his nose over the edge to look down at me.
“For every Cheef you kill,” I whispered, “I’ll spend a whole . . . afternoon with you back home.”
Soup nodded. “I trust you, Miles.”
I crept off to find Aurora. A shot rang out behind me, followed by Soup’s giddy laughter.
“Miles!” he cried across the Wasteland. “I got one!”
“Well, don’t give away your position, idiot,” I mumbled to myself. But I was smiling.
The coach whistled. “Dead Cheef!”
Lion walked out of the Wasteland, shoulder splattered in purple, looking like he was about to cry. Three Burds versus three Cheefs. Still terrible odds. Hopefully the remaining Cheefs would follow Soup’s voice and not think to look up.
I crept to the west side of the Wasteland, keeping my back to the bunkers, and blinking maybe once a minute. Every gust of wind, every ping of sand hitting my visor was a potential end of the world. I passed a droopy bunker with the ghost of the Happy Sun Summer Camp logo on it. It was deflating, softly whistling out air.
I found Aurora crouched beside a wide bunker. Holding a finger to my lips, I gestured her to follow me to the deflated bunker, where I knelt and lifted the vinyl. The bunker’s base strained against the ropes that anchored it to the sand, but a small cave formed underneath. Aurora nodded and elbow-crawled inside. I laid it down so she was nothing more than a gun barrel sticking out of a black cave.
“Can you breathe in there?” I asked.
The barrel nodded.
This was it. From here we’d wait them out. The Master Cheefs may have had stealth. They may have had talent. They may have had dexterity. But the Fury Burds had scrawny and skinny kids who could fit under and on top of things.
I headed north.
A shot rang out from the west. No whistle.
“Come on, Aurora,” I whispered to the wind. “Aim.”
The game stretched on. Scarecrow, Dorothy, and Tin Man couldn’t find us, and I, for the life of me, couldn’t track any of them. Then they found Soup, who couldn’t stop giggling because he’d shot someone. His giggling definitely stopped when the Cheefs surrounded him. Tin Man boosted Dorothy up onto his shoulders, and she shot Soup in the stomach—at the exact same time he shot her.
“I’m sorry, Miles!” Soup sobbed as he exited the Wasteland.
“That’ll do, pig,” I said quietly. “That’ll do.”
I mentally leapt around the Wasteland like on a map in a MOBA game. With Aurora hopelessly pinned under the monolith, it was me versus Tin Man and Scarecrow. I had to survive. My love life depended on it.
Gravity. Mandrake’s. Tonight.
The thought eased my chattering teeth.
I couldn’t fit under any of the bunkers. I’d pop one if I tried to climb on top. I had no choice but to hunt.
I stalked the Wasteland. The Cheefs must’ve realized we had another trick up our sleeve, that an invisible assassin was taking shots at them, because nothing stirred in the west of the arena save the shifting sand. I headed north.
It goes without saying, but a real fight was a hell of a lot more complicated than video games. I couldn’t go inviz or see little red dots on my radar or watch for vision cones coming out of the bad guys’ eyeballs. Without a map or X-ray vision or a third-person bird’s-eye view, I had to find a new way of tracking my enemy.
Ever since being unplugged, with no headphones filling my ears with explosions and lasers and chipmunks, the world had offered up its subtler sounds—the ticking of Command’s Oldsmobile, the buzz of V-hab’s fluorescents, the tick of the Nest’s bird clock . . .
Tin Man was big. And he liked crushing vermin. I closed my eyes and cupped my ears. The wind howled through the channels of the bunkers. To the east players chatted. To the west a crow cawed. Then, to the south . . .
Krsh, krsh, krsh.
I opened my eyes and crept toward the footsteps. Tin Man tromped through the sand, eyes ablaze. His skin was red. He breathed like an angry bull.
I raised my gun.
“Miles!” a voice screamed. “Behind you!”
I dropped and twisted just as Scarecrow lifted his gun. I shot him twice, purple blossoming from his chest. I felt the splat on the back of my mask from Tin Man’s direction a split second before Aurora shot him in the leg.
It was over.
I lay on the hot sand, squinting at the sun, piecing together what had just happened. I wasn’t ready to admit what the splat on the back of my mask meant.
“Thanks a lot, bitch,” Scarecrow said to Aurora, before unloading his gun point-blank into her chest.
She collapsed in the sand. I jumped up to go after him, but Tin Man stepped in front of me. His fists weren’t bigger than my head, but they definitely looked that way.
Scarecrow sauntered away. Tin Man slouched after him.
“Dicks!” I called after them. I stood over Aurora. “You okay?”
She groaned and clutched her stomach, red oozing between her fingers.
“Aurora?” I dropped to my knees. “Are you really bleeding?”
Aurora pulled off her mask and coughed into her hand, spraying droplets of red. “I’m . . . I’m just . . .” She winced in pain. “A really good . . . actress.”
I lifted her into my lap and dramatically shook her shoulders. “You’re going to make it.”
“No—koff—I’m not.” She blinked her strange eyes, fake-trying to focus on mine. “I have one . . . dying . . . wish.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Tell me . . . the compliments you owe me.”
That’s right. I’d complimented every Fury Burd except her before the coach had started the game.
“Let’s see,” I said. “You have fascinating eyes. You make stupid things like dandelions super-interesting. And you don’t look too bad while you’re dying—or pretending to die. You’ll probably make a striking old lady.”
“I already am a striking old lady.”
Aurora died theatrically in my arms. Sand grains fluttered in her eyelashes. A moment later she came back to life and wiped some red off her cheek onto my pants.
“You didn’t win,” she said.
My brain finally acknowledged the wet plaff against the back of my mask. I was dead. I wouldn’t get the points. The numbness released from my rib cage and spread to my arms and legs. Gravity. God dammit. God fucking dammit. My eyes grew hot. I sniffed like it was from the dry air.
“No, I didn’t win.”
“I’m sorry,” Aurora said.
“It’s okay,” I said.
It wasn’t.
“You were so close,” Aurora said.
I was so close.
I didn’t know if I was going to throw up, go blind, or strangle a bunker with my bare hands. I’d lost Gravity. That was it. Because of stupid everything out of my control.
“When I get home, I’ll just live at Mandrake’s,” I said. “She likes that place. She’ll have to come in sooner or later. . . . What are you looking at?”
“I’m just counting your eyes,” Aurora said.
It wasn’t easy looking into those four pupils of hers for long.
The coach whistled, signaling the players back in.
“You need me to drag your dead body out of here?” I asked Aurora.
“I can do it.”
We walked out of the Wasteland.
“At least you won, right?” I said. “You get to break up with Max now?”
“I guess so.” Aurora touched her chest and breathed out some nervousness.
At the sidelines Tin Man was yelling. “That’s a lie!”
Meeki shook her head. “Aurora shot him forever ago.”
“Where?” the coach asked.
“In the back of the head.”
The coach turned Tin Man around. His mask was clean. The coach gave Meeki a look. She walked in a circle around the other Cheefs, roughly grabbing their heads and examining the backs of their masks. She stepped behind Lion.
“They switched!” she said. “I was on the sidelines and saw Lion get hit right here.” She rapped on the purple paint blossom on his vest. “So when did he get shot in the head?”
She flipped Lion around. The back of his mask was splattered with purple.
The coach glared at Tin Man, who pointed at Scarecrow. “He told me to do it.”
Scarecrow said nothing.
That meant Tin Man had already been out of the game when he’d shot me. . . .
“They cheated?” Aurora said.
“I’m not dead?” I said.
The coach gave a slight nod.
250,000 points. . . . With Aurora still alive, I had 270,000.
I was over a million.
I’d won.
I had beaten V-hab. And I had done it in four days.
I didn’t tear off my shirt. I didn’t go cartwheeling around the sand. I just breathed deeply and looked east, toward Mandrake’s.
Aurora held out her hand. “Congratulations, Miles.”
“What, no pain?” I asked, making my love handle available.
She shook her hair.
I took her hand. I stared deeply into her strange, collapsing eyes before she turned and walked away.
I shook away a feeling.
“Fezzik, what time is it?”
He checked his watch. “Four thirty-nine.”
I had to get out of there if I was going to shower before the drive back. I smelled like a sweating corpse. Still, I wanted to show the Fury Burds some respect for helping me win.
Fezzik gave me a half-assed high five.
Meeki refused to lift her hand. “You didn’t even kill anyone,” she said.
I hugged her with her arms still crossed.
“You can’t ruin this for me,” I whispered, then released her. “Soup! We did it!”
When I raised my hand to high-five him, he ran and hid in the Wasteland.
I watched him go. He’d be fine. He might be a little lonely for his last week in V-hab, but then he’d go home. I’d go over to his house and we’d spend an afternoon—no, wait, he’d shot two Cheefs—two afternoons, doing whatever he wanted. And if I knew Soup, then that would be whatever I wanted.
I owed him that much.
“Bye forever, guys!” I said, and awkwardly sprinted across the sand toward Video Horizons.
Congratulation! This story is happy end.
A WINNER IS YOU!
I HAD A MILLION MOTHERFUCKING POINTS!
Gravity was waiting.