Mission
───Vrrrrrrr….
"Ugh, this thing shakes way too much…."
"Military vehicles are all like that. Hang in there a little longer."
They were riding a UTV toward the UN General Assembly building.
The death of a metropolis with an unimaginable population density left behind an enormous residue of itself and then went quiet. Literally — every trace of the people who had once lived there remained exactly as it had been.
And if there was one thing easiest to find among those remnants, it was the graveyard of countless automobiles that began only a few blocks out from Central Park HQ.
With no one left to drive them — and with every drop of fuel siphoned out besides — the cars abandoned along the roadside were less vehicles than meticulously assembled piles of scrap metal.
In short, discarded trash. Trash that might still have been useful, maybe.
But to the two of them tearing toward the mission site in a high-mobility vehicle, those hulks were nothing more than giant obstacles strewn in every direction.
The result was a mobility route that was pure chaos — and the further result was the little mint-colored cat beside him reacting exactly like that.
He'd had his own moments like that, too.
"We're almost there."
Gradually easing off the speed, they entered the area around a single towering building standing alone at the river's edge, and the government-office-like structures clustered near it.
Back in the old days, on real ops, he'd always ridden around in a V-44TA1 Valkyrie transport under the callsign Photon 1. Now they were just scripting their way in. Games really did prioritize user convenience in places like this.
The fact that a fast-travel function unlocked the moment you'd visited a region once already pointed in that direction.
He hit the brakes, concealed the vehicle as best he could, and scanned the approaches to the building entrance.
According to the results of a quick drone recon sweep…
"Enemies everywhere."
"Ah, those guys…."
"Something you recognize?"
"They're the enemies from when I first started."
No standout armor, nothing special for guns, and not particularly skilled fighters either — just ordinary escaped convicts and a loose collection of gang members. For reasons unknown, they had occupied the UN General Assembly building and turned it into their stronghold.
Put another way, getting the network node in the basement back online meant punching straight through all of them.
…I wonder what kind of time Olivia and Laurentia spent here, before I ever became an Operator. The situation was nothing like the operation footage he'd seen.
What should have ended with something close to Captain Peacock's summary execution had twisted into this instead. The location happened to overlap, but everything else might be different.
Whether that was something to be glad about, he couldn't decide.
UN General Assembly
📍 Recommended Party Size: 4
🎯 Neutralize the gang occupying the center and reactivate the Icarus Network Node in the basement.
"But it says the recommended party size is four…."
"If we start running out of steam, we can recruit two more. You're a streamer — finding people shouldn't be a problem for you."
"You're really okay with that?"
"No reason not to be. I only just started this game myself. If there's someone better, you're free to run with them instead."
A donation that made her uneasy just hearing it.
Harmony briefly weighed what to do, decided it wouldn't hurt much time-wise either way, and made a quick call.
"Thank you for the four thousand, JustTheFriedChickenPlz! So we'll try it once or twice, and if it doesn't work out I'll grab two more through the random collab function and push through fast. Not sure if I'll even turn it on, though…."
Click.
He checked the chamber and remaining rounds. Safety on safe. Dot sight zeroed automatically. It was a fine day for killing enemies.
The moment they closed to a certain distance on the area, a mission-exclusive voice channel opened. A support operator standing by at Central Park HQ laid out the mission overview and objectives, and a matching hologram bloomed across the user interface.
It was a shame for Harmony, but she'd had no choice but to leave the grenade launcher behind this time. Unlocking that ammunition type still meant a long road ahead.
The support operator's voice rang out, announcing the start of the mission.
"Oh, objectives are up. Enter through the south gate, bypass the parking garage, and head into the building. Explosives are along the route — grab them as we go."
"Navigation?"
"Let's see… yep."
A single thread of light bloomed before their eyes, running through a passage beneath a thick overpass and on toward the south gate. Harmony took a small breath, slapped both cheeks with her palms, and steeled herself.
Watching her, Eugene spoke in that same level tone he always used — no real rise or fall.
"If you don't want to make mistakes in real combat, you have to go through a lot of real combat. Today I probably won't be helping nearly as much as I did yesterday."
"…Huh? Wait, hold on! Didn't we already do the live-fire prep at the range earlier!?"
"Not even close."
Not in a tone that said the idea was absurd. Not in a tone that cut her off cold. Just a calm voice stating a fact, nothing more.
Harmony could only sense, with absolute certainty, that today was not going to be easy either.
Enemies approaching.
"Do I keep shooting single-fire?"
"Full-auto is a luxury."
An underground tunnel no one traveled anymore. Into a space already heavy with death and settled cold, rough curses, shouting, and ear-splitting gunfire layered themselves fresh.
Figures in orange prison jumpsuits and tattered body armor, armed with the kind of semi-auto rifles, shotguns, and pistols you could pick up at any big-box store, were sweeping the tunnel.
In the middle of the hail of gunfire and yelling, enemies one by one laid their bodies down on the freezing floor.
"I'm out of bullets!"
"Get in the habit of saying 'reloading' when that happens. That way I can cover you while you load."
"Okaaay… whoa!"
Piiing!
The instant Eugene raised his rifle, a series of sharp reports — dampened by the suppressor, sure, but still enough to make the ears ring — cracked through the tunnel interior one after another.
The head of a man who'd been advancing with a shotgun, fearless and stupid, burst like a watermelon. The rifleman maneuvering behind him took a round through the leg and went down. The one winding up for a grenade throw became a corpse.
With a cheerful whump, an explosion bloomed in the middle of the enemy formation.
"It's not shooting!"
"Pull the charging handle. Or chamber a round manually."
"Oh."
Harmony scratched her head, looking embarrassed.
But this was a gate every female player passed through at least once. How was someone who'd lived an entire life nowhere near firearms supposed to know the structure of a chunk of metal the first time they picked one up?
She racked the charging handle clean, felt a round feed into the chamber, and settled the far side of the tunnel back onto the red dot of her holographic sight.
The engagement in the tunnel was over quickly.
"This guy really talks like he wants a punch in the face."
"Want me to mute him?"
"…I'll tell myself it's not that bad yet."
No enemies left, but perimeter security was still mandatory.
Sweeping every direction as they pushed forward, a concrete wall eventually resolved in front of them. Harmony pulled the explosives from a multipurpose pouch and was poking at them with her fingers, looking fascinated.
Eugene glanced over, smiled faintly, and added,
"If that goes off here, we both get ejected straight back to the start of the mission. Handle it carefully."
"Eep — putting it down right nowww."
"You don't have to put it down. Stick it to the wall. You brought the detonator, right?"
"Let me see…."
With little hurried footsteps she went to the wall and slapped on a generous handful of charges. Anyone looking could tell it was more than enough to reduce a concrete wall to powder — but then, explosives were always more fun the more of them you had.
She seated a blasting cap that looked like a cut plastic straw into the charge, and the two of them didn't just back up — they left the room entirely.
While Harmony held the detonator in one hand, eyes sparkling like a kid on a sugar high, Eugene carefully took her hand and walked her through it step by step.
"I just press this?"
"That clip-looking thing is the safety. Flip it back, then just press. It's going to be loud, so brace yourself — and always do a countdown."
"Okay then… three, two, one. Fire!"
───!!!
An earth-shaking blast, and tens of thousands of shattered concrete fragments mixed with screams filled the air all around them.
Two figures punched through the white-dust-choked passage, and heavy gunfire bloomed outward like perfume. Behind a set of movements that held not a shred of hesitation, a slightly clumsier set of movements followed.
Every pull of the trigger was inevitably followed by a scream of pain and the sound of bodies hitting the floor. Through the entire rapid advance, the firing never once broke.
Just like at the range — he never slowed his movement or his rate of fire just to put an enemy in his sights. It sounded almost too simple when you said it out loud, and that was exactly why, among millions of American soldiers, only the absolute elite could ever practice that particular aesthetic of killing.
A small sound of awe slipped from Harmony's mouth as she followed behind.
"…Whoa."
People used other people's backs as their guide, didn't they?
And on that point… she was someone worth following. That much was certain.
Years of streaming experience and exposure to every kind of game had broadened her tastes a little, but military content and FPS were still a somewhat opaque region for Harmony.
And yet, in that experience that lasted barely three seconds, she thought she might finally understand why men went so crazy for this stuff.
But then—
"…Perimeter's clear. Let's start again."
"Okaaay…."
Watching her own turn to fight come back around without fail, Harmony felt the tactical high that had shot all the way to the top of her head drain right back out of her.
In the end she adjusted her grip on the rifle again and forced out a heavy breath.
"Thank you for the thousand, UsedToBeOrangeDiseaseNowOrangeSoldier… guys, somebody save meee…."
And she was exactly right.