Page 14 of How We Play the Game
In an instant, the fantasy ofGuardians League Royaledissipates in my mind. There is a man, a real, three-dimensional man with a camera in my face and a boom microphone dangling above my head. He has asked me a question.
“I … uh … what?” I turn my gaze back to the screen and see a stun grenade come flying through a window into my hiding spot. I roll away from its area of effect and leap out that same window, taking out the dummy crouched right outside. Three kills.
“Zora?”
“Yes, I’m Zora!” I snap back. I don’t care if I sound rude; who interrupts someone in the middle of a battle royale? “Can I help you?”
I take a hit on-screen. Damn it. This wouldn’t have happened if this camera wasn’t in my face and getting closer by the second.
“First blood in the first match of the summer academy—how does it feel?” the man asks and bends the microphone down. Too close. Way too close. I push it away with my palm—an unforgivable waste of my hands right now—and get backto playing. I reload my lasers and quiver before booking it to the next zone, trying to regain the focus I lost.
“Zora,” the man says again, less patiently.
“Feels great, I don’t know!” I flick my eyes up toward my live webcam and scowl. A camera on my computer. A camera in my face. Forty-odd players left to go. This is starting to feel bad to me, inside. “Can we do this after?” I notice my hands are shaking. Not enough to throw me off the rest of the game, but that’s not normal.
“After defeats the point of an introduction. The audience wants to meet you!”
“Well, I don’t really want to meet them, so.” I know it’s the wrong answer, but he’s standing so close to me I can almost feel a dull pain under my skin.
“Anything else you want to say to the fans?” the man asks skeptically.
More players have come into my proximity zone, and with them comes their chatter.
“So, what do you think? Should I build up a fort or—”
“—outfit only costs like 5k Wizzcoins, but the backpack is from the—”
“Zora!”
“Please go away,” I say quietly. The microphone picks me up or doesn’t.
A handful of shots ring out from around a nearby dumpster, and I toss a gravity bomb in that direction. The two players hiding behind are thrown up into the air and suspended for the shortest of seconds. My shaking hands make me miss the dual shot that could have taken them both out.
“—what you get for messing with RUDY!”
“—hopefully next time I’ll be able to see chat so I can—”
“—been to New York, but I’ll be doing GRWM vids starting—”
“Zora,” the camera man begins again.
“I said FUCK OFF!” I all but shout. The mic definitely picked that one up. I glance up to see if anyone noticed. The players haven’t, we all have headphones on, but I do catch a glimpse of Brian Juno staring right at me. Frowning. That can’t be great.
Camera Man yanks the mic away from me and steps back like I’ve shocked him through the lens and hurries not toward the next player in the row, but toward Brian. It’s then I notice that there are multiple camera guys onstage, at least ten, each one currently engaging in pleasant back-and-forths with other players. No one is bothered by their presence except for me, and probably Cassius, if I could see him.
I may be failing at meeting my audience, but I have the highest kill count of anyone in the match. That has to be enough to make up for any popularity points I lost by skipping my inconvenient intro.
A loud horn blast interrupts the match, signaling that we’re down to the top twenty surviving players. To make sure we run into each other, the play area shrinks and those of us outside the safe zone have less than a minute to make it in before we are automatically disqualified for the rest of the match. I cast around for something that can help me move faster and see two important things.
First, I see a unicorn. A scaly, leathery space unicorn. InGuardians League Royale, unicorns can fly, which would bevery useful to have right now. Second, I see VANE again, gunning for the same god damn horse.
“No!” I yell out.
“Yes,” Ivan’s voice says sweetly. He mounts the unicorn and soars up above me, cackling over chat.
If there’s one thing I have to give Ivan credit for, it’s his uncanny ability to find the right person to put him in the wrong situation. I’ve been sniping up all match, so it only takes a second for me to look up, aim, calculate the trajectory of his flight, and shoot not at him, but at the unicorn’s hindquarters.
Zip. Neigh!The unicorn’s legs flail in the open air, and I hear a faint whickering noise before it pops out of existence. VANE has nowhere to go but down. His character falls quickly, too quickly for him to pop his parachute, and his avatar crashes to the ground before blipping away just like his noble steed. Big RIP, you absolute fool.
