Chapter Text
Your name is Sollux Captor, it is Day #12, Month #4, Year #201, and you are on Derse, this is one of your favourite Maps, there’s an identical one on Prospit, except everything is the exact mirror opposite - you guess that’s why you like them - usually people just find it confusing and forget which one they’re on, going in the wrong directions and getting lost, you don’t understand how they could forget.
You’re in a Non-Ranked 1v1 against a guy you’ve never seen before, he’s a Melee, so he should’ve been easy, but he can sneak up on you with his Ability ‘Flash Step’, an Over Powered move that means he can pretty much jump at you out of nowhere, only downside is he slows down for a second after jumping. Seriously over powered, and it’s Instant Cast, people say your ‘Ability is OP’, jeez.
Well okay, it is. But it’s still got some Handicap to cover it, basically it completely Debilitates an enemy, holding you both in Stasis for 2 seconds and they lose Vision, afterwards they lose 50% Attack Power and Movement speed for another 2 seconds, but you lose 50% Attack Power for that time too, and you’re ranged so the Movement Speed Reduction wouldn’t hurt if you did get it. In fact the worst part of your Ability is probably the losing Communication for 5 seconds once you’ve Channelled. But it only takes 1 second to Channel and you’re invulnerable during that time, so that’s not too bad.
Right now your problem is timing, whenever you run into this guy he either uses his Flash Step to Abscond the fuck away from you once he sees you cast, or he uses it to rush you, but he’s never close enough to actually hit you, and you manage to scare him off with your Laser but because of the long range the damage isn’t very high, you’re halfway through the match and neither of you has any kills, he’s hit you twice, and you’ve caught him maybe five times with your weak attacks but you’ve both healed every time.
Your main advantage is your Ability, and you need to catch him off guard and make him use his so it’s on Cooldown.
You lean to peer around a wall you were huddled against, you think you know where he is, he seems to keep doing a perimeter check every 2 minutes, he should be in the same room as you any second, you need to catch him in the middle and make him use his Ability, it’s only got a 10 second Cooldown which is ridiculously OP, did you mention how OP this guy is?
While you’re busy cursing whatever dumbass came up with Flash Step as a viable Ability, you almost don’t notice him walk into the room, he’s so quiet you’d almost think he was hacking but you can see him lower his feet, feather light, onto the Virtual Purple stone floor, which is fitting given his Avatar’s attire, he’s given it wings, only small ones but they’re there, and it’s wearing bright orange, he stands out dramatically against the Purple of the walls and you wonder how you didn’t see him at first, maybe he is hacking, just so subtly even you can’t tell.
You sneak out of your comfy little hidey hole and blast the wall next to him as you run around him silently as you can, because it’s only a warning shot you don’t Ping his Map and he’s not sure where you are, but he knows you’re right on top of him, predictably he tried to retreat and Flash Steps towards the door, but the range on the jump doesn’t go far – or maybe it doesn’t work on range, maybe it’s time, you weren’t really reading that part of his Bio, you read ‘jump’ and skipped to the Handicap, saw the Cooldown and freaked the fuck out.
You remember his Handicap is a 1 second Movement Speed reduction after jumping, and use it to your advantage, your Ability takes 1 second to Channel, so you start Channelling, there’s no way he’s escaping you now. While channelling you take aim, he drops back and tries to evade you, but you were expecting it.
There’s a loud crackling and a White flickering light surrounding you, electric wisps of light clutching for him and anchoring him to you, you feel warm all over, you can’t move, held in the Virtual Stasis. It makes you feel completely disconnected from your real body, and if you had your Physical Awareness Setting any higher you’d have lost connection with your Avatar as well and would have to take a second to compose yourself after you touched back down. You wonder if he needs time to recover, but you don’t indulge that thought, this isn’t a friendly match – he’s not one of your friends that you’re going to go easy on – and so you take advantage of your position and proceed to hit him with a blast from your Laser Goggles, you hit him in the leg because despite this being a Virtual Reality game, real tactics still work, your Attack power is reduced by half but it’s still enough to send him down.
You try and hold back a little so you don’t wear yourself out, because fatigue is still a thing and neither of you have died to regain full power, once the Flashing “REDUCTION” warning disappears, you unload your full power on him, and your Lasers are more powerful up close where you can’t miss, he rolls over and tries to deflect them with his sword but fails and eventually his Health Meter is empty and the Scoreboard on your HUD flashes
TG: 0/1 – TA: 1/0
You have 10 seconds to leave that area before he respawns with a vengeance, before it was just play defensive and make sure you don’t go negative, a tie is better than a loss, but now he’s losing.
It dawns on you that you’re thinking it’s a guy, maybe it’s a girl, you know plenty of girls that play, it’s just that ‘turntechGodhead’ doesn’t sound like a girl’s account name and they’ve chosen to make their Avatar male, then again lots of girls do that. As a sort of joke to yourself you decide to quickly send them a message while you find somewhere to wait for them to show up.
hey are you a guy or a giirl?
With your Rig’s Thought-to-text technology it only takes you a split second to write the message; you read it over and send it.
You hop over a wall, then another without looking, you land a few feet down on a stone roof, you know this place like the back of your hand – well better than that, you don’t spend much time looking at your hands, who even came up with that phrase? You think it’s one of the Earth sayings, Humans sure are weird.
You think you spot him disappearing around a corner heading away from you, but you just got a message and you’re curious, so you just duck into a building that’s close by and stay hidden while you read it, keeping an eye out to make sure this isn’t some sneaky tactic - even though you messaged him first – the message text is in red, red just happens to be one of your favourite colours, he gained a point on the cool scale.
ill be whatever you want me to be babe
You snort a laugh, you reply as quickly as you can so you’re not distracted for too long.
2o youre a 2leazy guy.
You were watching the doorway you thought he would come through but he hasn’t shown up yet, you’re pretty high up, there’s a couple of sets of stairs on the outside of the building he’d have to climb to get to you if he’s on the ground like you thought, and you’re pretty close to the edge of the Map so if he’s scanning around he’ll probably check here last, you might be waiting for him for a while.
You huff when you see another message notification, is he just sitting around talking to you now?
aw don’t be like that im no sleaze ball what about you
His lack of punctuation makes you wonder, is he asking for your gender, or whether you’re a sleaze ball? You decide to just ignore the message; you’re bored of him now.
And yeah, you’re sure he’s a guy, you wonder how old he is, then remember that you don’t care.
You decide to go looking for him, you go back into the building where you killed him, his Avatar’s dead corpse has magically evaporated leaving only a nice smear of Black as a reminder of your victory.
Your gloating is short lived, you turn and see him just too late, he’s already Flashed at you and his sword is completely buried in your Avatar’s shoulder before you start Channelling, if this was Reality he would’ve just cut your arm clean off, as it is your arm is still attached.
You Ability is an “Invulnerable Channel”, which means that even if someone is trying their hardest to sever one of your limbs, if you’re Channelling you can’t take any Damage.
The White surrounds you again, and this time he’s so close you can feel the point he becomes completely frozen by the Stasis, one thing you’ve always loved about your Ability is, in SGR;UB, when a Player loses their Vision, their eyes go white and glow for the Duration, so while your Ability is Active, their eyes are white and contrast with the generic black of the Avatars’ skin, but this time it’s not as satisfying because his Avatar has shades on and you can only just make out the glow around the edges, which makes you frown, you don’t know why, it’s not that you don’t like shades, your own Avatar used to wear some pretty awesome Blue and Red Bi-Colour shades back in your Beta testing days – back when you were using your laser band – you just like seeing blank white eyes for some reason.
This time you are completely at one with your Avatar as the Stasis Releases you, you need to act as quickly as possible and blast him with your Laser, while you pull back away from his sword and use the momentum of him falling on his ass to help wrench it out of your Avatar’s Virtual body, there’s Black blood everywhere and it pools on the floor as you abscond, he isn’t following you thank fuck and you get to a First Aid Point to refill your Health Meter – your shoulder is still in a state of disrepair, but since this is only a game it doesn’t actually affect you – it takes 5 seconds to Channel the First aid point, and once that’s done you go back and try to find him, he’s not there any more, and there’s no trace of him, not even footprints in the blood which is always a rookie mistake that so many people forget, it’s why your lasers are good, there’s hardly any blood when you use them, only if you manage to dismember something on them, unlike swords which just slice everything to shit and leave blood everywhere, but then you don’t have as much practice avoiding blood on the ground as he probably does from being around it all the time, and you guess that gives him an advantage. Fuck.
Your HUD flashes that you have a message, you decided to indulge him.
that abilitys pretty sick dude whered you get it
where the fuck do thiink ii got iit?
nah man you cant seriously be telling me you found that legit what level even is it
we only have fiive minute2 left, are you going two try or are you 2urrenderiing?
you know at first i thought you were making lots of typos but i guess thats just the weird way you type huh
This guy is ridiculous, how can you even typo with your thoughts.
You decide to just go looking for him.
After a minute of searching through rooms and outside you find him sat on a wall by the edge of a roof. When he notices you he proceeds to do a terribly executed back flip off the wall, when he gets the right way up in the air he uses his Flash Step to land on a lower roof a little way down and rushes off, you don’t go after him.
Instead, you send him another message.
what are you even doiing?
virtual parkour dude you should try it
You’ll admit he’s got a sense of humour.
ii thiink iill pa22 thank2.
dude that sentence looks hilarious write more stuff with lots of ss and is write mississippi
why do you want me two wriite mii22ii22iippii, what doe2 that even mean?
oh my fuck dude i think i just died of an aneurysm that actually makes me dizzy to read
youre pretty cool
And then the match finished.
WINNER: twinArmageddons: 1/0
He went offline then, and you haven’t seen him since.