You and I at Eye Level
The first to yield is the one who breaks.
The fight ground on without an inch of give. In the countless exchanges between them, neither had room for anything resembling flourish.
Bunny found an opening and struck. It was a perfect attack — and still, as if it were a law of nature, Unknown turned it aside completely.
The contempt she'd felt at the start had long since vanished. By now, the Unknown standing in front of her felt like nothing short of a monster.
She couldn't believe she hadn't landed a single clean hit. It was true she was somewhat lacking in close-quarters knowledge — but "somewhat lacking" was a far cry from having none at all. Even in Diamond, almost no one could fight her on even terms. Her raw mechanics alone were more than enough to overwhelm people.
Against the Unknown in front of her, that was impossible. As if to prove there was always a higher peak, Bunny felt her like a wall. A wall she could never climb as she was now.
Maybe it was the impatience. In a flash, Bunny swung too wide — a mistake she hadn't even meant to make. Unknown was never going to miss an opening that large.
In an instant, a keen knife drove for her chest. Bunny jerked back, but it was already too late to dodge.
If I don't stop this, I die!
Acting on that judgment, Bunny caught the thrusting knife with both hands. The blade sliced both palms, but she kept it from taking her life.
When the attack failed, Unknown eased back a step. A flicker of surprise crossed her eyes as she spoke.
"Didn't think you'd stop that."
Could you even call that stopping it? Blood poured without pause from both hands the blade had punched through. Keep fighting like this and she'd be the one to lose. The health bar draining at speed was just the bonus.
Faced with that, Bunny had no choice but to admit it. She could never beat Unknown in melee. From the flow of offense and defense to the sharpness that found every gap — Unknown was ahead in every respect. As she was now, no amount of effort would let her play at a level that could overwhelm Unknown.
So what was she supposed to do?
Then a thought flashed through Bunny's mind. Last of Quantum was an FPS. In a game with guns, why were they fighting hand-to-hand?
The leap from thought to action took less than a heartbeat. She snapped back, opening distance, and drew the pistol at her hip in the same motion. She'd have preferred her primary — the MPX. Unfortunately, she was out of ammo. Trying to reload at this range was as good as asking to die. Which was why she'd drawn the pistol instead.
Bang! Bang! Baaang!
With a chilling report, rounds tore through the air. Shot after shot flew as if to swallow Unknown whole.
"......"
The instant that swarm of bullets was about to devour her, she shifted her feet — lightly.
A whisper of a step. A motion so light it barely made a sound. At the same time her arm moved, and she drew the pistol at her own hip.
She moved as instinct pointed. She could feel the bullets filling the space ahead, slicing the air as they came. Dodging them wasn't particularly hard. But if she only focused on dodging, they'd just fall back into the same standoff as before. This was exactly when you took a gamble.
Pistol leveled, Unknown surged forward at speed. Bunny ducked, thinking the shots were meant for her — but Unknown wasn't aiming at Bunny.
Bang! Baaang! Ting! Tick!
Clear, ringing notes filled the air, and light kept bursting in empty space.
"...What the hell."
The black-haired character let out a hollow, exhausted laugh and slowly lowered her pistol muzzle. She'd lost the will to fight. To Bunny's eyes, none of this made sense.
When she'd first seen Unknown dodge a bullet, she'd written it off as luck. She'd gotten lucky dodges herself, now and then.
Ting! Tick!
So how was she supposed to explain what she was looking at now? The ringing kept spreading, and bits of metal — spent rounds, she had to assume — clattered to the floor.
She'd imagined it. She'd never believed it could actually be done. Unknown was shooting the incoming bullets out of the air. Rounds so fast you had to wonder if the eye could even track them. Every last one, dropped perfectly.
Watching the viewers' reactions, Bunny almost nodded along without meaning to. What Unknown was doing was anything but simple. Even dodging bullets would have been a feat. But shooting them down as they came? That went beyond reading their trajectory. You needed the aim to hit them dead-on.
Before she knew it, Bunny's broken will — the look of someone who'd given up the fight — entered Unknown's field of view.
I'd won.
One last incoming round, knock it down, and the win was mine. The instant I thought that, something I hadn't accounted for happened.
Tick!
The gun didn't fire. Going by how many I'd already shot, there should still have been rounds left. And yet nothing came out. There was only one explanation — something that happened even on real battlefields, now and then. A malfunction.
In a fight, whether you had a working weapon mattered. When every second was a crisis, being unable to use your weapon was fatal. Especially with bullets still coming.
The round I failed to stop punched through my body. Of all places, it had hit a vital. I couldn't even resist. My vision washed to black and white.
You have died.
It was absurd. I hadn't lost because my skill had fallen off. The game had screwed me. It was so ridiculous I couldn't even get angry.
"Unknown...?"
"You've got to be kidding me."
"This is my loss. I'll admit it, honestly. I can't beat you."
If I'd just stopped that last bullet, it would have been my win. But that was that, and this was this. In the end, failing to stop the last round was because my ability had fallen short. If I'd accounted for a malfunction that might happen now and then, it would have been a winnable fight.
My fault for trusting the Glock too much.
What had just happened was probably a feed malfunction. It was a phenomenon that happened especially with Glocks — magazine spring issues, a round hanging up on feed, any number of causes. With a Glock, it could also happen if you didn't grip the gun firmly enough.
In real combat, there were definitely times you couldn't hold a firearm tight. A feed malfunction then would be a problem, sure. You could argue it was a flaw in the gun itself. But the flip side was that if I'd just held the gun firmly, it wouldn't have happened.
"Best of three, so we've got one more, right?"
"No. Let's leave it here."
Bunny had already stowed her weapons. She waved her hands, refusing another round with me.
"I'd just lose again anyway. What's the point of another fight?"
"You won't know until you—"
"I don't need to fight to know. I can't beat you. Not as I am now."
When she put it like that, I couldn't keep pushing for another match. Someone admitting they were the weaker one and accepting the loss — what was there to say? Just let it go.
"Alright. We'll end it here, then."
Right. Just finding out where my own skill stood was a solid takeaway. And I'd gotten a read on how good the high-tier players were, too. I had a reason to climb the ranks as soon as I could.
"Maybe I should've gone live for this..."
It had turned out to be a more entertaining duel than I'd expected. I wondered if it wouldn't have been fine to share a scene like this with my viewers. Well, Bunny had been streaming anyway, so maybe it didn't matter.
"I'll be heading out, then. I said it in chat too, but you should look up shooting stance sometime."
Unknown vanished in a bright wash of light.
Bunny stood there a moment without a word, staring at the spot where Unknown had been.
Someone leaving her feedback. Until now, users like that had mostly been all-talk basement Challengers. Unknown wasn't one of those. She'd proven her words with real skill.
"I can't win. Not now..."
Right. She couldn't win now. But put another way, that meant she could win later. She had talent for the game. Thinking that, Bunny recalled Unknown's last words.
Shooting stance, huh... Maybe I'll look it up.