Can I have all the powers?
The twins went flying as Nova dove sideways and took Angel to the ground.
“The fuck!” Angel huffed, trying to swing his rifle in the general direction of the gunfire.
Gradie had snapped down into a crouch and brought his rifle into position the moment the first shot went off. His sight was just settling on the cluster of shadows, when they exploded. Luke had dropped into a prone position and fired his M203 in a single smooth motion. In an explosive burst of broken black crystal, two bodies went flying while another slumped mid-stride. A fourth form sank back over the side.
“Aight,” Luke said, reloading his M203. “This game fucks, whatever it is.”
In the rolling sky above, three stars fell in bright streaming lines and vanished behind the flat horizon. A moment later, a cracking boom echoed in the sky.
“I’m thinking that’s the respawn system,” Angel said.
“And I think we’re gonna need some kind of cover,” said Nova.
Angel looked down at the glass.
“But will it let us build constructs not attached to the avatar?”
“Wait,” said Nova. “I’m getting something,”
Gradie looked down at the glass and saw a shimmer in the reflection just behind Nova.
“What is that?” Gradie asked.
“You can see it?”
“Yeah, we all can,” Angel said.
“Help me out then! I’m trying to make a FOB. Fuck, this is slippery as fuck.”
“It’s responding to me.” Angel squinted at the wavy shadow and crossed his arms. “I can help push it over, but I need to know what your—"
“It’s the one dads in front of in that photo. From the Army.”
“Why don’t we make like a sci-fi base with turrets and shit?” Luke said.
“No time,” the twins said.
“This generator is unforgiving as hell,” Angel said. “It wants exact details. Fuck! Man I can’t remember that fucking photo! We have to do something we actually saw. Like, uh,”
“I’m not making fucking Burger Box bro.”
The twins laughed, then cut it off and looked at each other.
“Shit.”
A vibrating thud like some massive piece of metal or stone had locked into place echoed under their feet as if the creation had tapped some invisible frame embedded in the cube. Gradie turned around, and there it was.
Faded red-orange painted sheet metal. Neon sign flickering the name. Roof twice the size of the footprint reaching over the drive thru and cement front stoop and newspaper machines. Its flourescents bulged into the darkness and a soft evening sunlight fell from nowhere all around it. Suddenly, Gradie felt he wasn’t in Gunmaze, but had stepped out into the outer edge of the Other, where anything was possible and the Princes were all sleeping if not nonexistent.
“A bullet will go through that shit without even sneezing,” said Luke, his voice skipping across the concrete in just the expected way.
“Are y’all thinking if we make everybody cheeseburgers, they’ll agree to a truce?” Gradie put a hand on his chin and frowned like he was thinking.
“Fuck y’all.” “You make something then.”
“Aight. One little bird coming right up.” Luke scowled down at the black glass ground.
“Why’s it look weird?”
The glass was rippling like a windblown lake, or a puddle caught in a leaf blower, and a light mist drifted off of it.
“Must be a mechanic to put a cap on how much you can make at once,” Nova said. “In case someone tries to cheese it.”
“Got cheese on the mind bro? That why we got a greasy box of drywall instead of a fucking space ship or something?”
“You want a spaceship? I thought you wanted to fly around in that skytours shit we got killed in ten minutes ago.”
“Nah this time it’ll be armored. Now get over here and help me. And try not to get to distracted by my reflection mogging the shit out of you.”
“Yall see that?” Angel pointed. On the horizon to their right, something dark was rising into the stars. A long thin line like a telephone pole, then a square shadow, all accompanied by a sound that Gradie recognized but couldn’t identify, until Luke helped him.
“Is that a tank? You mother fuckers!” He sounded more jealous than scared, but Nova made up the difference.
“Shit! Move! I still don’t have a fucking weapon!” He bolted towards the front door of the Burger Box. Luke glanced down at the glass and frowned again.
“What?” Gradie snapped at him, wondering why they weren’t all taking Nova’s lead and getting the fuck inside.
“I’m trying to think Javelin thoughts.”
The tank groaned and fell forward onto their plain of gravity with a loud hollow thud that echoed across the glass and vibrated below their feet.
“One second,” Luke groaned, and Gradie wasn’t sure if he was talking to them or the tank. Ironically, about a second later, the tanks barrel exploded in a flash and the Burger box spat half of its front wall and all of its metal awning in a deafening blast.
“Shit!” one or all of them screamed. Gradie hit the ground inches from Luke, who had gone prone and fired another M203 at the tank. The resulting pop, right on the side of the turret, was like a cap gun shot off at a machine gun shoot. Debris fell all around them, but miraculously, or maybe expectedly, given the unclear nature of the “games” rules, all four of them were unharmed.
“Cover me!” Angel yelled. He pulled something like a shotgun pump mixed with a ratchet and hinge on his rifle and it made a whine like a jet engine spinning up.
“With what?” Nova yelled.
Angel stood up just as the tank’s MG strafed the half blown out restaurant and field of debris around them, and either due to the sudden absence of the restaurant’s floursecents or the presence of a wafting cloud of smoke or because they just didn’t know how to aim it, none of the rounds found their target.
“Fuck you,” Angel said, then said it again with his gun. A single blue-green beam of light shot out of his rifle (which pushed back into his shoulder and made a satisfying “cha-byuuuuu” sound) and sliced a molten orange line into the tank from tread to turret. A few seconds of laser beam slicing later, a section of armor gave and the sparking end of the beam disappeared inside the tank, then it went off like a car bomb.
“Fucking nice!” Nova said as the turret separated from the bouncing burning main body and shot off into the sky, where a breath later, three stars twinkled and started to fall.
“Respawn timers like nothing,” Angel said thoughtfully. “This could get crazy fast.”
Gradie watched the stars disappear behind the horizon.
“So what’s the goal then? Team deathmatch?” It didn’t feel right. There had to be more to this place. But maybe, he thought, that was the trick. The dragon. The stars, the strange setting. Present something simple, but dress it up with glitz and glamour.
“Looks like it,” Nova said, looking at a hovering square light on his wrist. “I found the scoreboard.”
“Oh shit. Where—” Angel glanced at his palm and the same light appeared. “It wasn’t there before!”
“No. Must be part of the trick. To make you think you’re cut off.”
“Oh damn that’s pretty—. Wait. No, I still can’t message out. Still no help desk.”
“What’s ‘mass’?” Gradie interrupted. He had brought up the scoreboard easily just by looking at his forearm and thinking about it. The scores were divided up into six teams, one for each side of the cube, probably, and each team had a column for kills, deaths, and mass.
“Amount of stuff made?” Angel suggested.
“There’s no way,” said Nova. “Why would you incentivize making a ton of shit?”
There was a quick huffing sound like something big and hollow had thrown out a lot of air right next to them, and when Gradie turned around, Luke was standing in front of another Little Bird with his arms spread.
“All aboard mother fuckers.”
Gradie noticed twin rocket tubes on the sides, as well as miniguns on some kind of swinging mounts in the doors, and what looked like a thick armor all over.
“Look who’s the big time maker now. I might start sniping yall’s clients.”
“Oh, I think the hazy effect actually makes making easier,” Angel said, an emerald bladed sword appearing in his hand.
“Fuck you,” snapped Luke.
Nova shook his head at them.
“Why the fuck would they make it progressively easier to make?”
“I’m telling you, this shit is unfinished.”
“There’s no way this many people—”
“Watch it!” Gradie pointed at the sky. He had seen a shape fly up out of the horizon, but it had taken a few seconds to identify. Another player, who had somehow flung themselves up against their own plane of gravity, then fallen against it before crossing over the gravity line on the horizon at the last second. The end result was a figure flying sideways over the team’s side, like a gunship on a strafing run.
Gradie and Angel raised their guns, but Luke was already seated in the helo, a sitting duck. The figure turned, and a glowing orb that had been hidden behind the silhouette appeared, held in his hands like a football being pushed by a running back. Gradie got off two wild shots before the orb shot out in a beam of energy, cutting a bright line in the ground and right through the helicopter.
An instant later, the helicopter exploded in an orange fireball that lit up the plain and cast long shadows across it.
“Where’d he—” Angel tried to sheath his sword and looked around. It didn’t take long.
The energy blasting player had rolled in the air and slid across the ground like a figure skater while charging up another blast. As he slowed to a stop about fifty yards away, the ball grew in his hands with a familiar cartoon sound. Gradie saw him smiling like an anime villain in the AUG’s scope, and shot him to death with three quick trigger pulls.
“Uhhgh.” He collapsed like any other person Gradie had shot in the Hardworlds, and the stark contrast of his mundane death (besides the energy ball bouncing off the ground like one of those multi-colored bouncy balls, ‘bing’ sound echoing and all) against the fantasticness of everything else was, for some reason Gradie couldn’t quite place, disturbing. Like he had brought a sacred piece of the Hardworlds into a farse. Though in spite of this, or perhaps because of it, the sight was fucking hilarious.
“Holy shit!” Nova cackled.
“Fuckin really just got killed by some Goku wannabe!?” Luke said on the comms as the helicopter fireball morphed into a rolling cloud of black smoke and two stars flickered and fell.
“Where are you?” Angel said.
“Was in some weird bright crystal place. Now I’m falling towards y’all. Can I steer this bitch?”
One star veered off toward the other side of the cube, while another, clearly Luke’s, barreled toward them.
“Oh shit watch it bro!” Nova scrambled out of the way, and a few seconds later the star struck a bare patch of black glass between the burning helo and the dead wannabe Z fighter. A cracking sound, like a sound clip of glass breaking with the reverb cranked up for use in some video game, echoed in the dark and an area of ground the size of a small house lit up in bright fragments that floated towards the sky.
“Well god damn!” Luke got up out of a crouch at the center of the crater. Surprisingly, he still had his rifle with him.
“What’s the point of this thing if you can just shoot death beams out of your fucking hands here?”
“I told you it’s unfinished.” Angel sounded disappointed.
“You have to charge them,” Gradie said. The twins looked at him.
“What?”
“The longer you charge them, the stronger they are, otherwise they just like push back and maybe set shit on fire. He probably had that thing charging the entire time he flew up.”
He had known it all the moment the beam went off, but couldn’t explain how. It had felt like remembering, but he knew from experience that such a sensation couldn’t be trusted.
Luke laughed.
“How the fuck you know that? Is that how it works in the hentai?”
“Uh,--” Gradie wasn’t actually sure how he knew.
“The segments probably handing out dreamknowledge,” Nova said, glancing out at the horizon.
“Why didn’t I get the memo?”
“Because it’s unfinished!” Angel snapped. “It’s not as easy as you think to store data like that contextually and have it bleed to everyone equally. You have to honor the prince’s restrictions here, so you can’t tap too deep—”
“Can you stop talking in makeresse?” Luke snapped.
“It might be intentional,” Nova said thoughtfully. “Give random players knowledge of random abilities. Kinda spur them into combat. A game like this is really vulnerable to inaction at the start, especially for new players.”
He barely got the words out before three new silhouettes appeared on the horizon.
