Don't Look at Me Like That

To cut to the chase: my signature charge ended more pathetically than I'd expected.

Trying to clean up a mess five people had made, all by myself — that was nonsense from ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the start. And the ones who'd dumped it in the first place were insisting they weren't even the culprits. What a spectacle. From where I stood, all five of them were guilty.

If I was being honest, finding a teammate I actually liked at this rank was the harder problem. Sure, there were people grinding their way back up. But most of the players hanging around here had made this rank their permanent address.

I think I've said this before, but Last of Quantum was different from a real battlefield.

The reason people love FPS games. Some folks will go on at length about simple objectives and this and that. Cut it short: it's the simplicity, and the gut-level satisfaction. Games have gotten more complicated over the years — more than just pointing and shooting — but at the end of the day, an FPS is still about using a gun to wipe out the enemy.

Whether it was a bizarrely named game called The Culling, or a massive sixty-four-player occupation mode, what you actually did was kill people with guns and complete an objective. Occasionally you'd get a title that cast you as a war hero answering a call of duty, or one about escaping a sealed-off special economic zone. They were still all FPS games. Put another way, they just lived on completely different platforms.

But then...

"...That's a lot."

I'd just lost the last match and was about to queue again. The newly unlocked list that came with the level-up had more mission types than I'd expected.

I hadn't known that. Apparently Last of Quantum unlocked new content as you leveled — everything from the missions I was looking at now, to co-op ops, to sixty-four-versus-sixty-four meat grinders.

...I'd seen all of these somewhere before. Why had they all been dumped into LoQ?

Some of them were even missions based on things I'd actually done as a mercenary. Old memories surfaced, one after another. Come to think of it, I'd glimpsed something about this in an article when I first heard of LoQ. A VR game that let you experience countless battlefields, or something like that.

So it wasn't impossible, technically... I still couldn't quite wrap my head around it. I never thought I'd run into my old ops packaged like this.

Reading the descriptions on the external mission list — LoQ's game modes, in other words — there were little differences from what I'd actually lived through. More specifically, they'd been warped a bit in the process of folding them into this setting. Some of them were hard to recognize as the originals.

But as if to tell me the contents were what mattered, the moment I opened the details, familiar maps unfolded in front of me. Villas, ships, coastlines — all of it.

Hmm.

I'd have to play one to get a real feel for it.

I tapped one of the missions at the top. The UI slid in without a hitch, the world around me peeled away, and the next instant I was standing in something like a briefing room. This was apparently where you waited for a match.

A huge monitor was mounted on the wall. You could preview mission details, a simple map layout, all of it. The way a light touch sent the screens whipping past was a little fascinating.

Ding—

Meanwhile, a grand sound announced a match, and a map bloomed in front of me. Bank. A tangled three-floor layout — 2F, 1F, and B1.

Time limit: three minutes. After three rounds, attack and defense swapped. First team to five wins took it. Simple and clean. Definitely a different feel from deathmatch, where you just fought until someone hit a kill count.

While I was thinking that, the lobby started filling in. Bursts of light announced other players joining.

But then.

"Please! God, just this once...!"

"Wait, this actually worked? I landed a viewer match like this!?"

"It's Unknown!! Hell yes!"

...I had not seen this coming.

Every last one of them was in a dazzling, gaudy avatar that had absolutely nothing to do with an FPS. While I was still wearing a face that said what even is this, the variously shaped "female avatars" were cheering at me like this was a fan meeting.

"Unknown, I'm a real fan!"

"I watch your stream all the time. I queued on a whim and actually got you."

"Playing with you was on my bucket list. I can't believe it actually happened!"

The briefing room had gotten loud in a hurry. The characters in front of me were female avatars, but the voices coming out of them were men's. That was the problem you got when Last of Quantum put no limits on character customization: a deep, fully broken male voice pouring out of a woman's body.

Was this what it felt like to run into a netkama?

If I thought about it that way, I was a kind of netkama myself. Body and voice both female, mind still male. A ninety-nine-percent-pure netkama.

Anyway, I couldn't leave a match that had already been made just because I'd run into viewers. There wasn't even a reason to. If anything, meeting viewers might be a blessing. At least if I asked ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠about something I didn't know, they'd actually tell me.

"Nice to meet you too. I seem to run into viewers a lot whenever I play LoQ."

"That's because you've got a lot of fans, Unknown."

"Almost Jump-level influence!"

Static crackled. Text bloomed in front of my eyes, and a slightly mashed briefing rolled into my ears.

And then a wall of equipment for the attacking team. A breaching hammer, EMP grenades, a flash shield, explosive grenades, and so many other gadgets it was exhausting just to list them. Naturally, you could only pick one.

This was clearly different from ordinary deathmatch. It didn't feel like the old days of fighting with nothing but the kit you already had. The defending team would get gadgets like this too, I assumed. I'd have to keep that in mind — or maybe I wouldn't.

There were plenty ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of gadgets laid out. Surprisingly few I actually wanted to take. This was my first time in a mission-style mode, so I couldn't even tell what would be useful. I settled on explosive grenades. Going by everything I'd learned so far, those looked like the most practical choice.

A glance at the others suggested they'd grabbed an EMP grenade, sticky cluster bombs, a demolition hammer — that sort of thing.

"First time in this mode, Unknown?"

"Yeah. Pretty much."

"Nothing special about it. Gadgets get added as extra gear, and if you die you don't respawn. That's about all you need to know."

"Got it."

I could treat it like a simple raid. There were gaps in the explanation, but those were the kind of things you figured out by playing.

"Nobody grabbed anything stupid, right? Sticky bombs when we've already got a demolition hammer, or whatever."

"We're good."

"Think I forgot my skill at home."

"You never had any."

The way they grinned through it, they all clearly knew each other. I checked whether I'd forgotten anything too, but... I hadn't had anything to forget in the first place.

The others had differences in weapons and body armor. I had a destructive-round launcher on my back and spare ammo, and that was it. I didn't have the money for the rest of that kit right now.

And sure enough.

"Uh... Unknown?"

"Yes?"

"Are you going to keep running the sniper? These missions are usually indoors. A sniper's gonna be rough."

"This is kind of a promise I made to myself."

"...What?"

Default ammo, four grenades, my primary sniper rifle, and the shared gadget — the destructive-round launcher. Body armor: the lightest one, same as always. Bullets hurt if they hit you? Then don't get hit.

"It's not a problem, is it?"

It didn't take long for five faces to look at me like they couldn't find a single thing about this that wasn't a problem.