Page 17 of Don't Hate the Player
BYUNKI WANTED MEto be a surprise, but I wasn’t prepared to stun everyone into silence. Other teams have girls. One other team, I think. They have two. It’s not that weird for me to be here, is it? Is it because it’s Fury?
I hear a couple of girls start it. I can’t tell exactly where they are in the arena, maybe up in the players’ box, but their chant punches through the quiet that’s frozen me to my spot on the stage. “KNOX. KNOX. KNOX. KNOX.”
Yeah, wow. I don’t have anything to say as the chant catches on. Compared to the silence before, this is louder than anything I’ve ever heard in my life. I feel my feet vibrating as the stage shakes; they’re stomping and yelling—in a good way!—and chanting my name. They’re shouting for KNOX, and that means they’re shouting forme.
What happens now? I smile and wave, I guess? Moving my arm makes moving my legs easier, and I can finally start walking again. Behind me is my own face blown up to the size of a brownstone, and I’m seized with a cheesy impulse to point to it like “Yo, would you look at that? That’s a lady up there!” and when I do the crowd amps up to absolutely wild sonic proportions. By the time I get to my seat, I’m beaming, and Ivan is here to clap me on the shoulder. We are the New New. Fury DPS: ready to rock.
Byunki gives the signal, and we lift our headphones up to our ears—in an instant, the roar of the crowd is gone and replaced with the hum of noise cancellation and team chatter.
“Back in, focus, we have a countdown”—that’s Byunki calling us in. The screens around the arenas light up with a digital clock ticking down to the start of the match. On the other side of the stage, Team Vulcan, I’m happy to say, looks shook. Who’s trending now, Twitchbois?
Each time a number clicks away, I can feel myself sliding further into the place in my mind I go whenever I log intoGLO. I’m hyperaware of my fingers tracing over the ball of my gaming mouse, feeling it roll in a beautifully familiar way. The monitor zooms in to fill my line of sight, locking out the glow of cell phones and the bright arena screens. The headphones help, but the way I drop into the world onscreen is something I’ve always been able to do with games. There are just the buttons, my eyes, my hands, and the instantaneous connections firing between them all. The clock hits zero. Showtime.
We land on the Frye Island map, a tropical location that’s meant to look like a post-apocalyptic Hawaii, if Hawaii were populated by space warriors and alien wizards. I know this map like the back of my hand and feel good about being able to pilot Pharaoh around it.
Byunki gives us our first orders. “Luca tank. KNOX is up.”
YES, the other team went with Lucafont. I can’t see where he is, and since we’re both trying to capture a wandering payload, I’ll need a better look to see where he might be going.
Pharaoh isn’t the most mobile character, but he piggybacks well with other people’s abilities. I whistle for Erik, and he obliges, using his healer Jenkins’s cannon to send me up and over the map. Pan down, two-second aerial view before I land. Lucafont spotted on the Celestial Beach.
“Beach, coming east,” I report.
I let Pharaoh deploy his parachute beyond their Lucafont and cast a three-second fog that keeps me from his line of sight. I get two hits in—not enough to fill my meter but enough to claim first blood of the match, which starts Fury’s Special Attack counter before Vulcan’s. The team that hits first always gets a boost, and the more damage we deal, the faster we earn more points toward deploying our best abilities. Now the rest of the game can start.
I dip out from the beach and start darting around the map according to Byunki’s instructions, counting down the milliseconds until I can pop my stealth fog ability and hack away at Vulcan’s other members. I mistime it once and take a few shots, but Erik is doing a great job keeping Ivan and me alive. Byunki clicks his tongue into the mic, telling us his Klio tank has the payload in sight.
Both Fury and Vulcan race to the center of the map, a weird, little island made of crystals surrounded by a doughnut- shaped lake. Han-Jun uses some of his Special Attack bar to generate a heal/harm barrier, which tops up our health but will damage anyone from Vulcan who tries to cross it—like this guy is right now.
The Vulcan DPS loses control of his character and slides into Han-Jun’s wall, earning himself a nice hot cup of murder. One down, four to go. Or one, if we get their Lucafont in a tank kill. That’s an instant checkmate inGLO, which is why all of their tank characters are crazy overpowered in the health department.
Lucafont’s a ghost character, which means he’s weak to Pharaoh’s necromagic. He’s going to do everything he can to take me out first, and I have zero intention of letting him. He spots me through the wall and pauses for a second, probably timing the cooldown from Han-Jun’s deployment, and nails his lunge perfectly. He’d have taken me out if Erik didn’t Shadow Step my Pharaoh away like a dad shoving a stroller out from in front of a speeding car; he takes a huge hit in the process. Han-Jun is busy keeping Byunki alive closer to the payload, and Erik’s self-heal isn’t ready yet. He’ll go down if I don’t strip Luca.
Without waiting for Byunki’s signal, I start hammering at the tank’s armor with Pharaoh’s relatively weak dagger attack. My special isn’t charged yet, but Ivan gets a kill on one of the Vulcan healers and bumps up all of our bars. Ivan, I love you. Thanks for the hand warmers.
“KNOX, stop. Let Erik get his timer back,” Byunki grunts through the exertion of manning Klio.
I can’t do that. A quick glance up at my team health shows Han-Jun has used too many heals in the last minute and has depleted his mana. Byunki is babysitting the payload, which is transferring ownership to Fury way too slowly. One of Vulcan’s DPSes is trying to take him down, but Byunki has his shields up every fraction of a second, parrying his attacks. We’re going to lose Han-Jun, and a red flash on the side of my screen tells me Erik is next in line for a drop. Without healers, we’re toast.
I fog one more time and slide over to Byunki’s attacker, spiking him with a death magic spell that paralyzes him for just enough time to fog back and face Lucafont. Erik dies, but the length of my spell charges me one more tick toward my Special.
Han-Jun throws his last heal at Byunki and drops. With no more heals available, Ivan goes nuts around the perimeter of the payload, hitting his Bend Time Special and cutting down both a Vulcan DPS and a healer—an incredible play, but Lucafont turns from the payload and takes him out withhisSpecial, Ectoplasmic Chains.
I really, really hate ghost characters, and we’re running out of time. With me and Byunki up against the two remaining Vulcans, it’s not looking great. Fury isn’t going to lose this match. I won’t let Fury lose in the first round.
Time for a Hail Mary. I ping a ranged shot at Lucafont, which doesn’t do much damage but certainly gets his attention; he whirls on me like a cat that just felt a toddler yank his tail. Oh, did you think I meant to hurt you with that? Look again, a-hole. My Shatter ischarged.
So I hit it. Purple magic explodes from my crossbow, and the charged bolt turns Luca’s silvery armor to glitter. Byunki swings for the final blow but misses by a millimeter, so I take the kill shot. Lucafont goes down.
In the absence of their tank, Vulcan auto-surrenders the payload to Fury and we win the match. Ivan leaps up next to me and yanks his headphones off to strike a victory pose. I can’t hear a word he’s saying, but he’s grabbing my arm and pulling me up to a standing position. Han-Jun and Erik are up too, making gestures around their ears and looking at me expectantly. Noise cancellation! I don’t need that anymore.
When I lift my headset off, the noise from the arena almost knocks me back into my seat. Every one of the dozens of gigantic screens is alternating between showing Fury’s logo and the three coolest words I’ve ever read in my life. TANK KILL: KNOX.
That’s what the crowd is still shouting when Fury heads backstage, “Tank Kill: KNOX.” We basically clamor all over each other as we follow Byunki through the arena’s staging area, just an absolute conga line of arm rubs, high fives, and shaking each other by the shoulders while jumping around (I thought that only happened in sports movies, but nope; it’s happening IRL). This feels like love. It’s teamwork! We are Fury, and I’m a part of this. I could either vomit or fly, whichever one feels more plausible.
Han-Jun, Erik, Ivan, and I have not calmed down by the time we get back to the green room, which makes sense because we just showed everyone why Fury belongs on top.
“Ivan, you got two with one Special!” Han exclaims.
