Nanoswarm, Deploy!
For a very long time, video games belonged to men.
It wasn't that women never played. A woman who did was simply a rare sight, something close to an endangered species. These days the story has changed. The share of women in the player base climbs with every year that passes, and in an FPS like Project A a woman in the lobby has settled in as an ordinary fact of life.
Even so, a woman with a good voice was still more than enough to catch a male gamer's interest. I understand it. From where a man stands, a woman who actually plays can seem like a novelty, and if she sounds good on top of that, interest is going to show up whether anyone asked for it or not.
"Killjoy, how old are you?" Reyna said.
Please. Could we just focus on the game while we were in one?
"One second. Let me focus."
I wrapped shut up in something polite, and Reyna's mic went quiet. That ought to have been enough to get the point across. Becoming a woman, and deciding to live as one, did not mean I was prepared to welcome that kind of attention.
"Jett, where are they?"
I asked the last Jett we had left for a read on their positions.
"Two or so Under, one toward Battery, and somebody might have gone up on Heaven? I don't really know."
"Is the Short door shut?"
"Yeah. They closed it."
Unfortunately, it wasn't exactly quality information. In a hole this deep you gamble anyway. I ran through every dangerous angle that could be holding A site: Under, Battery, Heaven, the gate on the Short side, the top of the box to the right. More than five places a person could be standing, and seven angles between them, a full hundred and eighty degrees.
When it's like that, you play on the bet that they simply aren't in certain spots. Exclusion play, they call it. I had been quick to wrap around behind them, so I was willing to assume the box on the right—the one that watches A Main—was empty. I set the turret I had just picked back up, my E, at the mouth of A site.
Now if anyone hiding in Battery, Under, or Heaven stuck a head out to shoot me, the turret would call it. Until it did, I didn't have to clear those angles myself. The trouble was that they heard it settle too, and that sound handed them my position—A Main—for free. So I threw one more gamble on top of the first.
The instant the turret finished deploying, I stepped onto A site. If someone had been aimed down A Main, I would have died before my foot settled.
But the enemy, sitting on a lead that comfortable, didn't bother to peek. They stayed hidden, and I dropped the Jett tucked into the corner of the left Short gate and ran back off the site. A beep, then a late rattle of gunfire—they peeked to punish the kill, too late. The turret was already pulling their attention, and I slipped out to A Main untouched.
It had already done its job. What it left me was premium information: where the rest of them were actually hiding.
"One on Heaven. Two Under."
"I'll slow-push Heaven."
Jett knew the job without being told. From A Main I made noise, enough that anyone watching would forget a Jett was coming in from CT.
A thud. A rush of air, twice. Another thud.
Jump peeking—you leave the ground and show only a sliver of your head, just enough to steal what's ahead. It's how you clear an angle when someone is holding you at head height. The Sova on Heaven sprayed anyway, determined to catch me at the top of the jump no matter what. Forgetting the Jett who had rotated out through CT was a fatal mistake.
Two-versus-four became two-versus-two. From the gunfire when they had shot at me, both their Omen and their Chamber had been Under, and both of them were on default pistols. Jett and I had Ghosts. Better guns now, and the better position too.
"Nice!" Fade shouted.
She knew it as well, and the call came with a cheer for the rest of us behind it. A favorable round is still no excuse to relax. Project A always leaves room for a fight to turn. Pros flip one-versus-fours; a two-versus-four is nothing to get proud about. Complacency gets you killed.
What I actually had to worry about was whether they were still in Under at all. Both of them had been there when I looked, but that look was about five seconds old. If they had been bold enough to slip toward Battery, and if we didn't check it, the round was over on the spot. So I spent the time. I cleared Battery properly, and nobody was back there.
That pinned them to Under—two corners I couldn't currently see, the far left and the far right.
"On three, I'm dropping."
Jett was already too hurt to survive even a default pistol. He went down.
He had still done his job. He kept Omen off me until Chamber was finished.
Killjoy◎Omen
I closed out Chamber, snapped my crosshair the other way, and set it exactly on Omen's head. That was for Jett. The spike was still live, but there was more than enough time to defuse.
"Nice~" Jett said.
"You're actually good, Killjoy."
A clutch: the last one left, alone against several, wins anyway. Jett's part in it had been enormous. Even so, I had played it better.
Ahem.
Round two, off a pistol-round win. Naturally, we full-bought. On any other day I would have picked up a Marshal, but a Marshal and Killjoy are not a happy pair, so I bought the 2,050-credit rifle—the Bulldog—a heavy shield, and every ability I had, and started for B.
"Huh?"
Last round our defense had been me alone on B, Reyna in mid, and everyone else holding A. I had assumed Reyna would take mid again. Instead she walked onto B, where I was. Ordinarily I wouldn't have thought anything of it. Last round, though, the moment my mic came on she had latched onto me and would not stop asking my age, and standing next to that now felt strangely unpleasant.
Nobody had been precious with their credits. Armed like this, the round would be hard to lose. Our job was a stable win that didn't put guns on the ground. Theirs, even in a loss, was to kill enough of us to take those guns away. That is what round two is for.
And the moment it started, something went wrong.
"What the fuck—why are you just wide-swinging out?!"
One step up B Main and Reyna ate the enemy Phoenix's flash, his Q, Curveball, and the rest of them piled onto her. The gun gap was enormous, and Reyna is built to take one and leave on Dismiss, her E. None of that matters when a flash connects clean. You can't see. Shooting anyone isn't a real option.
"Killjoy, get out, there's a ton of them—back, back, back!"
"No. I'll hold."
The other three were on A, and I was alone on B. If I died for nothing on top of her, they would leave with both our guns and a three-versus-five. Bailing out was the correct play if all I wanted was the safest possible win. Killjoy, though, is the agent in Project A best built to stall a push. And if I simply left, it would feel like doing what Reyna told me to. I didn't like that.
Killjoy's C. Nanoswarm. A grenade that blooms into a patch of damage and holds it for five seconds, and you can set it in advance. I had them down across every lane into B, and Phoenix and Jett—delighted, swinging in on the gun they had just taken off Reyna—were ground down by them. Literally shredded.
Killjoy▸▸ENEMYJett
It was an eco. They hadn't bought so much as a light shield, and Reyna's blind spray had already taken health off both of them. They had nothing left to spend against the swarm. They must have decided it was too late to turn around. Both of their entries were already dead, and they pushed the site anyway, double-peeking the corner where I was waiting.
Killjoy◎ENEMYSova
A default pistol does not close the distance to a Bulldog. One hundred and fifteen to the head. On an eco, that is a trip back to the lobby in a single bullet, and that is exactly what the Bulldog is for. Their Omen died and dropped the spike with him. Hold this B site and the round was ours with nothing lost.
Four of them were mine. One left: Chamber. And I didn't have to guess where.
Killjoy's Q. The Alarmbot. It waits invisible until someone walks up, then calls their position and hangs a Vulnerable debuff on them, amplifying every point of damage they take. One of the tools she uses to own a piece of the map.
"Found them."
Reyna had never gone mid, so mid was empty, and that was where I put the bot. It told me Chamber was rotating through. Already caught, he committed anyway, swinging onto B like the round was all or nothing. A surprise doesn't work on someone who saw it coming.
No information, and no firepower. Chamber was helpless.
Three kills and a defuse on the pistol. Five kills and an ace on round two. Two rounds in, and Killjoy's ultimate was already full.
"Nice! What— Killjoy, how are you this good?!"
"Thanks. I got lucky."
"Incredibly humble."
"...Nice."
Reyna's energy had dipped in a way that was hard to miss. Everyone else was at the ceiling.