Accept the Challenge

A thought had just flickered through my mind.

Life, as a rule, never goes the way you want it to.

Everyone has a plan that looks perfectly reasonable on paper. The trouble is that a plan is only perfect in the imagining. The moment you actually try to carry it out, every kind of problem steps into the road and blocks the way. That is simply how the world works.

Like right now.

Tak. Tak.

Bullets cracked out with the most pathetic report imaginable and punched into the other player's body. I had hit him cleanly — I was sure of it — and yet he did not look like a man who had taken any real damage. If anything, he was staring at me as if to ask what the hell I thought I was doing.

"This is fucking bullshit."

The curse slipped out before I could stop it. I was live. I ought to have been watching my mouth. I could not hold it in.

The problem was not only that the gun hit like a wet napkin. It was tiny, and it had no barrel worth mentioning, so even landing a shot was misery. Unless you were close enough to count the pores on the other player's face, scoring a hit was, for all practical purposes, impossible. And even when you did hit them, they barely seemed to flinch.

There was damage, of course. The problem was how pathetic that damage looked next to any ordinary firearm. Short effective range, almost no stopping power — lethality hovering somewhere near zero. Whatever you inflicted was about on the level of being jabbed with a needle.

This was not how I had drawn it up.

The plan had been simple: wound them with a melee weapon, then finish them with the Kolibri. In the middle of a frantic fight, though, leaving an enemy just barely alive instead of killing them was never easy. A hair too much force and the blade sank too deep and the lights went out. Even if you managed to drop them with a sliver of health left, the Kolibri itself was so weak that putting them down was agony.

Even a round in a weak point — an eye, say — only dealt the kind of injury you would expect from a BB gun. And even that only happened if you were practically kissing the muzzle to their face. A featherweight bullet, a stub of a barrel, and no rifling whatsoever: the unholy trinity. Accuracy was a rumor unless you were shooting from point-blank range.

This was not a firearm you could actually take into a fight.

The version of me who had believed I could get fifty-five kills with this thing suddenly looked like a visionary. I had at least assumed that, being a game, they would have tuned it up to something capable of killing a person. Apparently the developers were far more devoted historical-accuracy freaks than I had given them credit for. It did not feel like they had made the gun usable. It felt like they had imported the real thing as-is.

At this point, punching someone with the hand that held the pistol would probably hurt more than shooting them.

The one consolation was that this was Bronze. Most of the player base here sat below average, so running the Kolibri did not create a genuine crisis. I was merely not quite at the level of being called a troll. Still could not get kills, though.

"If I dump every round into a weak point, they should die eventually."

While I was still talking, ambushes came in from both sides at once.

I was already in a kill box. I could not afford to take these people lightly. I had to throw away the idea of dodging everything and try to leave at least one of them with a wound that mattered. It was a question of choosing which bullets I was going to let punch through me.

Yeah. Better a machine pistol than a rifle.

I threw myself at the player on the left, slipping past the one on the right who was lining up a shot. This one was running an MP7 — light gun, blistering rate of fire. Players who favored relatively light loadouts ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠were usually confident in their mechanics and built everything around mobility. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠He did not panic when I rushed him. He sidestepped clean and squeezed the trigger.

Tatatatang!

A bone-chilling chatter filled the space as the gun emptied itself into the air. With a cyclic rate like that, dodging every round was impossible. That was the point. The burst had dumped his entire magazine. Completely exposed.

I only slipped the rounds that would actually have been fatal and reset my grip on the tactical knife. The most dangerous instant in a fight is the split second when someone thinks they have already finished you and lets their guard down. No attack opens a wider hole than the one meant to end it.

I ignored the bullets punching through my body, kept coming, and drove the knife into his side.

Shunk—

I did not just stick it in. I ripped the blade sideways and carved out his flank. A wound that would spill his guts — he would not be putting up a fight after that.

I did not stop there.

The man I had just opened up was still not dead. He would bleed out soon enough if I left him. But I had a mission. I was obligated to finish with the Kolibri, not the knife.

Tak. Tak—

A sound too feeble to even call a gunshot popped in the air, and the rounds punched into him. The bullets ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠were tiny, so whatever energy they had was concentrated; penetration was actually decent for the size. And I was shooting a man who was already mortally wounded, from kissing distance. No matter how weak the gun was, it ought to be able to kill someone sitting on one hit point.

The Kolibri hit. His breath stopped. The kill counter ticked up.

The fight was not over. The rifle player's killing intent was already close enough to feel, a needle pressed against the skin.

Surviving was a lost cause. If I could swing the knife even ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠one more time, that would be the best I could hope for.

Now, probably.

I could not see him. I listened to the crack of bullets splitting the air and knew, without looking, that they were aimed at my chest and my head. I could not dodge. I just had to keep it from being instant.

I reset the knife in my right hand. Using my right foot as a pivot, I wrenched my whole body around with everything I had.

Thud — the sound of a bullet punching through skin. I took even the shock of the impact as momentum, twisted through it, and threw one last strike.

The knife cut the air and flew true toward him.

...Too shallow.

I had thrown it at a distant target with no setup at all. It hit, but putting him out of the fight had been too much to ask. In my black-and-white vision I watched him yank the blade out and frantically start to heal.

We were in a sector cut off from the main force. Just stalling this long here was already a serious loss for the team. It should have been a real contribution toward a win. The fact that I felt this disappointed... maybe I really was turning into a streamer.

"That's one kill. Fifty-four to go."

I liked the mood in chat.

I ignored the people insisting that did not count as a Kolibri kill and skimmed the rest. The viewers knew perfectly well how absurd the gun was, and the room had decided to give me credit for even this. What a beautiful sight. Viewers, as a rule, are supposed to type the kind of chat that keeps a streamer going.

I was spectating my teammates while I waited to respawn when it happened.

In a match we were already winning, an all-chat message popped up. And the truly surprising part: it was from an ally.

A little silver medal glittered beside the name. That was the badge for Silver. I was still Bronze, but my win rate was high enough that matching into a Silver was nothing strange. An ally suddenly throwing down a challenge, though — that was rare.

I had not seen it coming. That did not mean I disliked it. If I had to pick a side, I was closer to enjoying myself.

Someone in chat had typed the word snipe. I could not actually be sure that was what this was. We were in Bronze-Silver-Gold, the ranks where most of the player base lived. Unlike the high tiers, this was not an environment where queue-sniping came easy, so the odds favored a viewer I had simply run into by chance.

Even if it was a snipe, I did not particularly care. Sniping was something that happened to famous people. I was a streamer, yes, but my career was still short. I had not expected that kind of attention to find me yet.

Silver.

Rank was not the whole of a player's skill. The basic assumption still existed, though. They would be better than the people sitting in Bronze — and they still would not be a hard matchup for me. But wasn't this exactly the kind of thing that made a stream fun?

The idea came to me on the spot.