Operator
I've said it before, but living in a woman's body came with all kinds of difficulties. Clothes. Those magical days that arrived only for women. Things like that.
And just when I thought I'd already been through every hardship there was, another one found me.
The interest the opposite sex took in me.
Now that I was a woman, the opposite sex meant men. Men had started paying attention to someone who used to be a man. Of course that attention did nothing but make me uncomfortable—squirmy, ill at ease.
The day I went to have a school uniform fitted, my first time stepping outside after becoming a woman, was no different. Eyes and voices appraising my looks. The sharp hearing that had helped me so much with sound cues back in my pro days felt, in moments like that, like nothing but a nuisance.
What I couldn't stand above everything else was that some bastard tried to tear down even my skill, for no reason other than that I was a girl. The second I turned voice on, he picked a fight about who'd put me on the bus, and every time I took a kill he mocked me and laughed. If you're dead, shut your mouth and spectate, or at least call enemy positions—don't backseat my play. I had far more kills and assists than he did. He wrote every frag I took off as an empty kill bought with luck and my teammates' lives, desperate for any way to eat me alive. After I met that guy, I never turned my mic on in team voice again.
Telling the story would only set chat on fire, so I didn't bother saying it out loud. It was all in the past anyway. He was the type to stay stuck in that tier, and I was going to keep climbing, so we'd never meet again.
Just play the game.
Coming off an eco round, the attackers would be armed with AKs or M4s this time. We were recycling the guns from the round before, so our goal was simple: kill as many of them as we could and make them drop those rifles. In place of the light barriers already chewed up by default pistols, we bought only medium barriers and got ready for round three.
Our setup was the same as before. Three on A, one on B, and me in mid. Sova's recon bolt didn't tag anyone this time either.
"They're hitting A again?"
Honestly, I'd thought they'd take a shot at B Main around now. Instead they were stubborn to the point of obsession, going for A site and nothing else.
If they wanted to save their guns and take a clean win, rushing an A with three people already stacked on it was not a good choice.
Then a flash came flying into mid from the enemy KAY/O. His Q, FLASH/drive. He'd been using it, apparently, to check me, since I'd been cutting angles through mid the whole time.
Unfortunately for him, I wasn't the kind of person who died to a flash that obvious.
Anti-flash. Skills like flashes break extremely fast if you don't take them straight into your vision. The moment I saw KAY/O's FLASH/drive coming, I snapped my view away, slipped the blind, settled my crosshair on mid, and put a round through the head of the Jett who'd peeked off the flash. As a bonus, I left the KAY/O—who'd been about to Rendezvous in for the trade—looking like a dog that chased a chicken and came back with nothing.
"This much is basic."
Sadly, we couldn't overcome the gap in gunpower, and round three was a loss. The moment Jett died they smoked Short and Triple, pushed straight through Market, and hit B.
KAY/O swung in throwing another flash. I dodged it and drilled his head on the spot, but I'd already used Rendezvous, so I handed the trade straight to the player covering him.
"Ah, that's a shame..."
The bomb was already down on B. We set up the retake, but without the guns we lost the fight anyway.
Even so, we'd picked off four of them on a bonus round. A loss, and still a round we came out of ahead.
We'd been hoarding money. It was time to take that out.
What's the biggest fantasy men have in an FPS? Personally, I think it's sniping. Cutting someone's breath with a single shot from long range. Of course Project A has that fantasy too.
The Operator.
At 4,700 credits, the most expensive weapon in Project A. A single-shot sniper that deals 150 to the body and 255 to the head no matter the distance. A player sitting on a medium barrier has 150 health, which means one body shot is enough to send them back to the lobby. Absurd, when you put it like that. A bolt sniper's weakness is obvious—miss, and the risk is enormous—but Chamber is different. Because of Rendezvous, Chamber became the agent who could use an Operator better than anyone else.
We'd saved as hard as we could, so by round four I had the money. I bought the Operator and a light barrier on the spot.
Even in the pro scene, the Operator shows up constantly as the defense's decisive weapon. With that one gun, a defending side can shut an entire threatening lane and start the round having all but deleted one attacker. That's how unfair it is.
This round I was mid again, and everyone else held A and B just as before.
"They're definitely going to jump peek."
I hadn't missed a single round of cutting angles from mid. If they weren't idiots, they'd know I was here again. And once they saw I had more than 5,100 credits, they'd suspect I might be holding an Operator. My job was already decided.
If someone came out from the side I'd be in trouble, so I asked him to smoke one of the two ways they could enter mid.
The instant the round began, their Jett jump peeked toward my mid, and I didn't miss that sliver of time.
The Operator's heavy report, and Jett died without even getting to fight back. Of course I escaped on Rendezvous and didn't give them the trade. That's how Chamber erases the Operator's greatest weakness—the long cycle between one shot and the next—with a teleport.
They seemed to be jump peeking for info, trying to find out whether I had an Operator and whether I was even in mid. It was a bad choice. An Operator body shot is 150. Even on a jump peek, if your reactions are there, it's a gun you can kill with.
Honestly, I hadn't understood their response from the start. If they wanted to check whether I was mid, or on an Operator, they could have used Sova's recon bolt or Owl Drone. If they meant to kill me, they should have shut my util with KAY/O's E, ZERO/point, so I couldn't even Rendezvous. Instead they kept making half-measures and bleeding rounds.
"...Huh?"
What is wrong with him.
"I'm blocking him."
You really do meet every kind of weirdo.
The game was a blowout. Ascent favors the defense, sure, but they never once took mid while I was holding it with the Operator, and all the defense had to watch were two lanes: A Main and B Main. On Ascent, where mid control is everything, a team that had eaten mid clean was always going to be ahead.
First half, 11–1. The second the second half began, the other team hit surrender.
"That was easy."
I never once dropped the Operator I bought in round four. And I took first blood with it every single round, so MVP landing on me was, in a way, obvious.
"I'm way too tired, though."
I'd meant to play two or three games, but I was much more drained than I'd expected. It was already around four in the morning, and unlike the matches I'd been playing light, I'd actually focused on this one.
I was saying goodbye and about to end the broadcast when a message arrived in the bottom right.
"KZ...?"
At first I thought someone actually connected to KZ had sent me a friend request, and it startled me. He was just a regular person, by the look of it.
"Mm... you said he's the enemy Jett from last game?"
Normally, not giving people like this any attention is the answer. But for a long time, whenever someone was talking shit about me, I always went looking for it. I used to visit the communities where my hate comments piled up, too. My coach even told me once not to go in there, that he was worried about my head. If I thought someone was cursing me, though, I got so curious about what they'd said that I couldn't help myself.
Pressing that button was the same thing.
I accepted the way you accept just to hear what someone has to say, and for nearly five minutes a storm of abuse came flying in.
"Ha..."
I asked what on earth he was so angry about, and without anything resembling a real answer, all that came back were family slurs and curses.
"I'm ending the stream."
I'd meant to end it anyway. Sitting through some loser throwing a festival of insults had made me late. I didn't think it was right to keep letting the viewers see language that filthy, so I hit end in a hurry.
So. What was I going to do with this one.
If he'd thought words like that would actually land a hit on me, too bad for Cries—they wouldn't. In the four years I'd spent as a pro, I'd heard worse from countless people. This damned personality, the one that isn't satisfied until I've gone and read the hate, had put me in a psychiatric ward more than once. A few of the ones I decided had gone too far, I sued.
Anyway, if I learned anything back then, it's that people like him only come to their senses once they get hit.
"This one's getting sued."
Life's a real match, you little shit.