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Once upon a DEMON HUNTERS Hope finally put all her Society inheritance money to use and bought herself not only sweet new ninja garb but also several blocks of real estate which she proudly, like most rich people, put her name on. For about a week, Hopeful Heights was filled with hot dropping loopers jonesing (pun intended) for a bout, but upon the close of said week, the place became a ghost town.
Upon further investigation, Shadow Blade Hope found the rest of the Island was just as deserted as her new investment. Perplexed, she returned to Hopeful Heights to consult her partner in crimes against reality, Vengeance Jones, only to find him absent as well. It wasn't until a new match started that he returned to his post, only for Hope to interrogate him about his whereabouts. Jones dodged most of the questions before sighing wearily and admitting he'd been to the Fortnite OG mode.
"Literally where," Hope said.
"Fortnite OG," Jones said. "I was feeling homesick." He proceeded to wax poetic about the original Chapter 1 Season 1 island and its thirteen coloni- er, named locations. To Hope, it didn't sound that great, but she could see the appeal of an island without bars, mythics, or medallions. Sort of.
"All right," she said, "you've sold me on it. Let's go."
"Great," Jones said. "You're either going alone then, or with three other people."
She stared at him for a moment. "There's no duos?" He shook his head at her. "You're joking."
"I wish I was, Hope," Jones said seriously. "I wish I was."
Hope was relunctant to explore a brave old world alone or worse, with fills, and so sought out her allies across the Island. She'd only made one so far, however, whose name was Kendo, and he seemed perplexed when asked for a final addition to their fledgling squad. "I have two siblings," he said. "Don't make me choose between them."
"Because you'd pick Jade over Daigo in a heartbeat?" Hope asked.
Kendo shushed her, checking their surroundings uneasily. "He'll hear you!" he hissed.
Someone did hear them, though it wasn't either of Kendo's siblings. "Hi!" said a perky voice from Hope's side, spooking her into shouting a rather nasty swear. When she recovered from her surprise, Hope found Renegade Lynx there. "I heard you were talking about the OG mode," Rengade Lynx continued. "Being from the OG season battle pass, I have plenty of experience on that map and would be happy to join your squad!"
"Great," Hope said, and the four of them returned to the lobby to switch modes. (This was rather confusing to Kendo, even after Hope explained breaking the fourth wall to him. "Does it give wood, stone, or metal?" he asked, and Hope ignored him rather than bother to explain.)
"You guys are going to love it here," Vengeance Jones told them upon reaching OG's Spawn Island. "No bars, no mythics, no medallions. Just good old-fashioned gunplay."
"Exactly!" Renegade Lynx said, beaming. "So, where do you guys wanna drop? Somewhere off route until you take the training wheels off, like Junk Junction? Or Lucky Landing? Oooh, unless you wanna go straight for Tilted Towers!"
Vengeance Jones coughed into his fist in a poor attempt to cover his laughter while Hope and Kendo checked their maps in confusion. "Literally where," Kendo said.
Renegade Lynx frowned, her face falling further when she checked her own map. She started screaming and did not stop for a long time. Like, almost the full length of the bus route. "It's just two farms and a swamp!" she cried.
"Yeah," Jones said fondly. "Anyway, I'm dropping at the shithole assembly line. Feel free to join me."
"Flush Factory is a season 1 location?!" Renegade Lynx shrieked. "HOW."
"Something something Save the World," Jones said. "Try to keep up." With that, he jumped off the bus, and Hope and Kendo quickly followed lest they be pushed off at the end, and Renegade Lynx hyperventilated a bit before following as well.
Once reunited on the ground at Flush Factory, the squad proceeded to loot their respective corners of the location until they were equipped to their satisfaction, which is to say that they opened all the chests and eventually settled for a gray tactical shotgun and/or burst AR apiece. After a quick inventory, it was further determined that there wasn't enough shield for all of them either. "Well," Jones said, taking out his, "bottoms up, I guess."
"Nobody found any minis?" Renegade Lynx said incredulously.
"Those don't exist yet."
This prompted another round of screaming, this one involving the rest of the group. The further they explored, the more they found to complain about. Hope was bewildered when her grenades were represented by an amateurish icon of a grenade rather than its proper picture. Kendo was confused that the campfires didn't work, and that they provided bricks upon being harvested. And Renegade Lynx wrung her hands every time they passed a future named location which was currently occupied the same two-story colonial house with an open hole to access the attic, with optional ramshackle shed holding tires to access its upper loft because of the bygone days before mantling was invented. She often lagged far behind the group, bemoaning her lack of familiarity with so distant a past with every step.
"There's no Snobby Shores," she muttered, "there's no Haunted Hills, there's no Shifty Shafts... there's no indoor soccer field, there's no dance club warehouse, there's no motel..."
"There's the prison," Jones said helpfully.
"WHAT ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT," Renegade Lynx said, wringing her hands once more.
Jones smiled, remembering fond days of landing at said location and finding only a bolt action with which to attempt to no-scope. Ah, that had never gone well. His smile never waned, even as the squad lost match after match, while his teammates' interest in the mode waned further and further.
Finally, Hope decided to put her foot down. "Look, Jones," she said while they trudged through the swamp called Moisty Mire, "I can tell you missed this place a lot and have a lot of fond memories here, but the rest of us don't, and aren't currently making any."
Jones opened the chest they'd been heading for but whipped his head toward her in shock instead of immediately snatching the items before anyone else could like he usually did. "What?" he snapped. "How can you not enjoy this? This is Fortnite at its finest."
"Well, for starters," Hope said, "this chest only spit out a gray AR."
"So?"
"So gray weapons don't belong in chests, Jones! They should be floor loot only, where they belong!"
"Conversely," Jones shot back, "you can find gold weapons as floor loot, not just in chests."
He grabbed the gray AR and kept walking, while Hope scrambled to follow and meet up with the rest of the squad. "Who cares?" she said. "That almost never happens! Most of the match we're all stuck with gray shit and one shield between us, not that it matters since we don't even find any opponents until the endgame, and you're the only one who understands how traps work!"
"I don't even like playing with builds," Kendo added when they reunited.
Renegade Lynx, for her part, muttered something about being sick of seeing the same two-story colonial house with optional ramshackle shed. (Which, like, fair, those things are everywhere.)
Jones scoffed. "I was cranking 90s before you were even concept art," he said haughtily. "It's skills like those that made all those Snapshots of mine, and here's where those skills were honed."
"That doesn't make you special," Hope said. "It makes you a default. And so was everyone else back then! The game was so new nobody knew what 90s were yet, and it's been seven years since then. Nobody wants to wander around the same basic green fields stuck in 10 minute shootouts with gray weapons that have too much bloom nowadays. They want lower time-to-kill so that they can drop 20-bomb dubs to post to Tik Tok."
Jones shushed her near the end, not because he didn't want to deliver a retort, but because he saw footsteps. He crouched and readied his gray AR, ready to aim the moment he saw a figure. But the footsteps' owner saw him first, not that it mattered because chapter 1 bloom was in full force. And also needed to jump at random, even though they were on solid ground and not swamp. And also needed to build a wall while they healed that was easily mantled over for Jones to deliver the kill. Standing over their downed form, he frowned. "Is this a bot?"
Hope checked the kill feed. "Is APeelySmoothie a bot name?"
Jones switched to his pickaxe and bludgeoned the downed looper to death. (He particularly hated that bot name.) "What are those doing here?" he said angrily. "Bots, in MY Fortnite OG? Heresy. Getting a dub is so much more satisfying when you've earned it after beating one hundred other REAL PEOPLE."
"You mean ninety-nine," Hope said. "Er, ninety-six, since we're playing squads. Plus, you're not really beating all of them when you only see two other squads the whole match."
Jones sighed. "You don't get it, Hope," he said. "This game has never been about the murders."
Hope glanced at her other squadmates, who looked similarly confused. "It's not?"
"No!" Jones shouted. "You don't actually have to kill anyone to win! You just have to survive! That's what this game is about- survival! It's about hiding in the basement of a house in Salty underneath the stairwell until the sound of bullets stops upstairs. It's about landing at Dusty and pickaxing the ten other people who landed there in hopes that you're the lucky shit who gets to pick up the gray revolver. It's about opening one of those random sheds and screaming when you get shotgunned in the face because somebody got there first. It's about camping in a bush in the endgame and hoping everyone else is AFK and gets lost to the storm. That's what this game is about, Hope. It's about being the luckiest son of a bitch on the Island. That's what winning is. And it always feels better when all those other people who weren't as lucky were real people."
Despite the impassioned speech, none of Jones' squadmates looked particularly moved. "Have you considered that, maybe," Hope said, "after SEVEN YEARS, the skill ceiling is so high that even your self-proclaimed 'above average' building skill is still in the bottom 10% of the playerbase?"
"That's not true!" Jones cried. "That's impossible! I have earnings!"
"Earn this," Hope said, and gave him the finger. "This is boring and I'd rather be hugging sprites and studying the blade."
"Same tho," Kendo said. "Even if there's no expertise quest for that."
Jones turned to Renegade Lynx in a last appeal for sympathy but found her still lacking. "Let me know when we get to the fun seasons," she said.
"But, but..." Jones despaired for ways to convince her while watching her open the menu to return to the lobby. "Don't you miss being able to hold 999 mats?"
"Nobody needs 999 mats," Renegade Lynx said. "Besides, I miss those super cute sprites and Zero Build is way better."
Jones scowled. "Get out."
The end.