The Word "Handicap"
A match invitation has arrived from user Bernie.
I'd figured it would take a while—she was in the middle of a game—but the invite landed faster than I expected.
The moment I accepted, my vision shifted, and I dropped into the custom room Bernie had set up.
The first thing that jumped out was how absurdly low her level was. Apparently the talk about her rocketing up the ranks on raw talent wasn't just noise.
"Hello, Unknown."
"Hi."
A black-haired woman looked my way and offered the greeting. Her features were neat, almost refined, but there was a charisma to her that snagged the eye whether you wanted it to or not. Put another way, she looked a little fierce.
The weapon in her hands looked like an MPX submachine gun. With a foregrip underneath, a red-dot on top, and a pile of other attachments, it could have passed for an assault rifle at a glance.
Modding a gun out like that couldn't have been cheap.
Whether she felt my gaze or not, Bernie held the gun out toward me and gave it a little shake.
"Is my weapon bothering you?"
She said it with a faint smile aimed my way. Whatever that smile was, it wasn't a friendly one.
Not that I expected a warm welcome, considering I'd been backseat-gaming her.
Come to think of it, she was Diamond, wasn't she? People that high on the ladder usually had a mountain of pride in their skill—and if the other person was Bronze, there was always that quiet little look of contempt.
"Want me to start by teaching you how to hold a gun?"
Not that I had any intention of losing, either.
"Haha. Skill at your rank? You couldn't beat me if you tried."
That kind of confidence looked good on her, at least.
Unknown's character, seen up close, was as shabby as they came.
All she was carrying was a Glock 17 and a tactical knife on her hip. No custom paint job. She didn't even have a basic optic mounted.
It was a loadout that clashed violently with Bernie's own gun, which had nearly every part you could slap onto it. Last of Quantum was a skill-first game, sure—but that didn't mean gear was irrelevant. A sniper rifle owned long range. A shotgun owned close range. Same principle. A lone pistol versus a fully kitted SMG wasn't even in the same conversation, and an MPX with every attachment unlocked assault-rifle-level performance.
The gap in armor was just as ugly.
Body armor in this game varied wildly depending on the plate you slotted in—soft stuff that might stop a pistol round, all the way up to hard plates that could eat rifle fire. Which meant her eyes went straight to whatever Unknown was wearing.
Fiber.
The default plate that came with the starter vest. Cloth, basically. Light, sure—but it wouldn't stop anything heavier than a pistol round. The cheapest junk in the game. Bernie ran plastic plates herself for the mobility, but the protection was in a completely different league from fiber.
She's not even wearing a tactical helmet.
No matter how she turned it over, this was going to be too easy. If you were outskilled, you at least tried to close the gap with gear. Unknown was losing on both fronts.
She'd come here to teach Unknown a lesson—but she hadn't wanted it to be this one-sided.
She'd heard Unknown was absurdly good. Good enough that people had called her a hacker. But still sitting in Bronze? That probably meant she wasn't anywhere near the hype. At best, a rung or two below Bernie herself.
Bernie, at least, had never doubted she'd blow through Bronze in no time. And she had. Which was why she filed Unknown—still nesting in that tier—as someone beneath her.
So why was chat acting like she was the one about to lose?
Probably the difference in first impressions. Bernie had climbed to Diamond so smoothly it barely registered. Unknown had shown up on Jump's stream from day one and soaked up the spotlight. Viewers were inflating her off a handful of highlight-reel moments from Jump's broadcast. That was all.
And Unknown was still Bronze. You could put on a clinic in that rank and it wouldn't change where you came from. A play that looked like a montage in Bronze was Tuesday afternoon in Diamond.
From the fundamental rank gap to the difference in gear—Bernie couldn't find a single angle where she lost.
The boards had been plastered with Unknown this, Unknown that, and it had been getting under her skin. Fine. This was the perfect chance. Once she made it crystal clear who sat where, those comments would dry up.
That confidence wasn't just about Unknown's rank, or the better kit. Bernie had put her name on the ranked leaderboards of more FPS titles than she could count. Last of Quantum was her first full-dive VR shooter, but she'd adapted well enough by now. Her game knowledge might still have holes—but she had never lost a fight on mechanics. Not to anyone.
And her opponent was the same type: someone who trusted her mechanics and came looking for a brawl. From Bernie's seat, a mechanics fight was the one thing she was most sure of. Looking down on Unknown was, in that light, only natural.
"If you'd like, I can run a pistol too."
"Why?"
"There's just such a gap between what I'm running and what you've got."
Bernie said it with a bright little smile.
It was a provocation, of course. The unspoken pressure of I can beat someone like you even with a handicap. It was also, in its way, a courtesy. If she fought with her main weapon, the match would be over in a blink.
Unknown, hearing that, let a laugh slip out before she could stop it.
"What, so if you lose you can blame the handicap?"
"Fine... we'll go without."
Bernie answered through a smile she had to force, molars clenched hard enough to crack. Apparently she was going to have to show Unknown what a real skill gap looked like.
I hadn't expected her to offer a handicap.
I knew she'd said it to get under my skin. The more I thought about it, the more I just wanted to laugh. How far down was she looking at me, to even say that out loud? She was so sure she had the edge that the arrogance came out without a second thought.
Not that I didn't understand the feeling. I was pretty sure I could walk over most people myself.
Honestly, I wanted to snap that sky-high nose of hers in half. If I took the handicap she'd offered, I'd win a hundred times out of a hundred.
But I didn't want to win like that.
The whole reason I was fighting this streamer was to show her how wrong her play was. A pistol-only handicap would make that pointless. Besides, I didn't figure I'd lose to someone whose shooting stance was a mess to begin with.
Handicap or not—on a real battlefield, you gritted your teeth and fought even when the other side was fully kitted. A gear gap? That had never been much of a limiter for me. A hole in the head killed you either way.
"Doesn't a single round feel a little thin, though?"
I couldn't tell yet whether the fight would be over in a blink or drag out—but a one-and-done still felt like a waste. The thought surfaced on its own. A bad habit, once it set in, didn't come out easy. There was a reason people said what you learned at three stayed with you till eighty. At least two or three rounds. Enough time for her to feel, in her bones, what she was doing wrong.
Bernie must have taken it the wrong way. One corner of her mouth ticked up.
"Alright then. Best of three. Sound good?"
"That seems about right."
Bernie stepped back a set distance and checked her weapon. Behind her, a red sunset spilled across a wide-open field. Not much cover. Not many variables. A map that asked for fight-shaping and raw mechanics, then.
I waited on her movement and let myself think. What kind of play would actually make her see the habit for what it was?
This wasn't like Jump. Jump called himself a mechanics god. This streamer actually lived off them. A simple rush and I might eat a counter.
The surest way to show her that her shooting was wrong.
I turned it over for a second, and a good idea clicked into place.
Then I put it into motion.
By dropping the Glock 17—my only ranged weapon—onto the ground.