Chapter 23: Get A Room
Chapter 23: Get A Room
I left Erin to her vegan burger and she left me to my worries.
The nearest light rail station was just a few residential blocks away. Picked clean by the DU area's Third Eye players, probably, but I might still scare up a few Materials on the way.
"Nah," I muttered.
The thought of dragging myself those few blocks seemed overwhelming. And if I encountered another player? On a side street, they'd probably collect some free XP from my 0 HP ass. I didn't want to lose another chunk. Lena and I had operated on the assumption that XP totals were how Third Eye Productions would decide who to cut from the beta.
That might be optimistic.
Another way to determine a "bottom 1% of players" was through a win/loss record in PVP.
No, I'd stick to public spaces until I figured out how to recover HP. And, hopefully, how to win.
I slunk a block along Evans and collapsed onto the first bus stop I found. I tapped out a quick update to Lena, in case she wondered what had kept me. 'U won't believe who I met,' I sent.
Instant response. 'Was it NugsFan15?'
I furrowed my brow. 'Everybodys an expert at guessing games now'
'She sent me an invite to her server,' Lena sent. 'Why did you tell her my username?'
'I didn't,' I sent. 'Will explain later.'
'You better.'
'I didn't,' I repeated. 'promise'
'Have you checked her server out?'
'Not yet.'
'Wonder how long it'll be before they ban me.'
"Heh." My eyes-half closed. 'Shades of DeepingShadows?'
'Lol just wait till you check it out.'
It took me a while to tap out that username. The lack of autocorrect made me realize I'd never entered it since I replaced my phone. Kind of sad. We hadn't been close, we hadn't always gotten along, but DeepingShadows had been kind of a friend, and in a way, I owed her a lot.
She'd been the admin of a Discord server for gamers in the Denver metro area. Maybe she still was, but I remembered her from back when people liked Overwatch. I'd say the game didn't matter, except in this case it kinda did. DeepingShadows really liked it. Rather, she liked the idea the developer was trying out where cities would have local pro teams, like they do for physical sports. Denver didn't have one. I think she dreamed that if she found five or six local talents she could start an esports team.
Didn't work. She was the best player on her server, and even she wouldn't have scraped the back of the bench as a pro. She didn't take enough Adderall, for one.
If not for that local connection, the group could have been focused on any of a hundred games in a dozen genres.
What mattered was this: That server was where a guy called OldCampaigner met a girl called Ashbird.
No matter what the game, we would've still sorted into the same roles and I think we would've still clicked. Her healing my tank, me healing her DPS, me tanking for her DPS. I made decent plans and Ashbird recognized when we needed to scrap them. She was shit at shooters and I was kinda shit in general but together? Look out. We were almost competent.
Then we hit it off over our shared cultural heritage. We had eclectic tastes, but a special appreciation for the classics. Lolcats. Zero Wing. Shit from our parents' generation. Too much appreciation, apparently, because we spammed the main Discord channel so much that DeepingShadows stopped joking when she told us to get a room.
We did.
That went some places.
One was me learning Ashbird's name was Lena. Another was Lena coming out of her shell in voice chat. When we first started playing together she'd hardly said a word, but the more she and I hung out in voice, the more she got into it.
Also, the more she got into it with DeepingShadows.
Lena respected winning, enjoyed competing, but she would ultimately choose a good time over a flawless record. DeepingShadows wanted wins, full stop. I just checked out when she tried to micromanage us, but once Lena started talking, she talked back.
If I wanted, I could open our old server. I never got banned. I could do a quick search and reread the log of their last big fight. I was pretty sure I remembered how it went, though.
We'd just lost three matches in a row. Does it matter who was right and who was wrong about our tactics? It didn't to me then or now, so I couldn't tell you.
DeepingShadows: Next time, I expect you to stay in formation, Ash.
DeepingShadows always used abbreviations for maximal efficiency. In her parlance, she was DS, I was OC, our other three regulars were DD, MB, and TT, our reserves were TA and XV.
And Lena, whose username was one word, was Ash. I bet having to type that third letter annoyed DS every time.
Ashbird: My character does literally nothing from your formation.
DeepingShadows: Then switch characters. I can take over as a DPS if you're not confident in your aim yet.
Ashbird: Or I could use a character with shotguns and get a bunch of kills for us.
DeepingShadows: If you're going to gloryhound, you should do it in solo queue.
OldCampaigner: That's harsh, DS. We're all trying our best.
Ashbird: Harsh? I was player of the game!
DeepingShadows: The game we lost.
OldCampaigner: It wasn't Lena's fault. I didn't have my shield at the right angle, but I'll fix it next match.
Ashbird: Maybe you need to fix your plan, DS.
DeepingShadows: At least I had one.
Ashbird: My plan, which worked, was to rope-a-dope them onto the objective and ult all of them while their shields were pointed at your line, teleport back, get healed, rinse and repeat. They didn't take a single point until you bitched me out and stopped healing me. Let Cameron switch back to heals and do your own tanking.
DeepingShadows: OC wasn't prioritizing heals correctly. Right now, he's better off holding the objective. As for your "plan," it was to do whatever you felt like.
Ashbird: Oh no! It's almost like we're playing a game.
DeepingShadows: Some of us are playing to win.
DeepingShadows: Ash is out after this round. XV, hop into queue with us.
At the time, I'd grinned at Lena standing up for herself, but had it really been growing confidence? Or had she started lashing out because of stress? She would've overspent on Third Eye by then. I knew because that was the server where she tried to drum up interest in the Kickstarter. Had her money started to run out? I wasn't sure how the timelines synced up.
Regardless, talking back got Lena kicked from our rotation. Complaining about that got her a two-day ban from the server. I pleaded her case and DeepingShadows told me she hoped Ashbird would come back to the team, but she had no interest in playing with lovebirds.
I told her Lena and I didn't have anything romantic going on and realized I was lying.
Another thing I owed DeepingShadows? I told myself Lena or I would've figured it out eventually.
The hiss of hydraulic brakes dragged me out of my memories. I shook away the little smile that had colonized my face and looked up at the bus.
A boy and girl got off, teenagers. He pointed at something. She whispered back. She hung on his arm and he, on her words. I resisted the temptation to peek through my phone camera to see if they were more inexplicable Third Eye babies like Erin.
I boarded the bus and scanned the Regional Transport District pass on my phone.
"Morning," the driver said.
Was it still? I felt like I'd spent about an eon out of the apartment. "Morning," I said. "This bus goes to Evans and Broadway, right?"
"Heading that way, yeah," he said.
"Cool. Thanks for the ride." I took a window seat, swapped to my camera and pointed it out at the city. Hydraulics hissed and buildings rolled past. A few of them had objects on or around them I thought might be Third Eye constructs, but nothing obvious. From the moving bus I couldn't swap back and forth to check, and I texted too slowly to make notes.
I tried to practice with Air, but found the buttons on my Reactions window grayed out. Apparently, being at 0 HP meant I wasn't allowed to play. I supposed it made sense. Otherwise I could just continue attacking after a "defeat." How was I supposed to recover? Just rest, or would we get some kind of healing powers?
Hell. Would I recover? I wanted to believe I'd get a message if I'd fallen into the bottom 1%.
No, I'd seen Erin's avatar after I lost to Matt. I still had Third Eye access.
I sighed. Scanning for Materials from the light rail would be even worse than from the bus. After I transferred and claimed a seat, I took the book out of my parka and tried to read. Nope. Text too small, not distracting enough.
I put the book away, switched to Discord, and accepted the invite to Erin's server.
It was a private one, with none of the click-through-to-sign-up shit from Third Eye's official server, although there was a pinned link to some rules.
As soon as I joined, I saw a chat log and lists of rooms and players. Five rooms, General Chat, Third Eye Chat, Wiki Planning, Material Scouting - Denver Metro, and Arranged PVP. Two voice channels, General Voice and Wiki Voice, both empty. I started in the General text chat and it didn't look very busy, just a series of greetings. I scanned the latest.
A generic Discord notice read, 'Please welcome our newest member, Ashbird.'
Lena posted a bell emoji.
Ashbird: What's a gal gotta do to get service around here?
Lena's introductions always brought a smile to my face.
NugsFan15: Welcome to the server, Ashbird. Please make yourself at home.
Ashbird: Hiya!
Then she quoted her bell emoji.
NugsFan15: If you have any questions you can post them in the appropriate rooms, or DM me if you don't see one.
NugsFan15: If you're just having fun, though, it's self-serve.
Ashbird: Self-serve? Lucky! Finally, decent waitstaff!
NugsFan15: Ha ha!
Nobody had posted anything after that until I signed in and got the same generic welcome notice Lena had. I didn't type anything yet because I didn't want to wrestle with my phone, but while I was looking around the interface, Erin copied and pasted, 'Welcome to the server, OldCampaigner. Please make yourself at home.'
I tapped out thanks while I scanned the user list.
One Admin, NugsFan15. Three other users Online: me, Ashbird, and somebody called CannibalHalfling. I assumed there was a story there, or a reference I didn't get.
More interesting to me were the nine grayed-out Offline users. I recognized almost all of them! ShakeProtocol, another Big Name Fan for breaking the physical signup bonus story. Salamancer, the first person to post about impossible objects. Both very active on the official Discord. Then LikeItsNinetyNine, the dancer whose TikTok had sparked a lot of the graphics discussion on the subreddit; she was an admin over there. I thought the next two, OpenMike and xWellingtonx, were as well. Only two usernames were entirely new to me, OffGrid and DU_Goldie.
As far as I could tell, the server's population was a mix of Third Eye BNFs and players Erin had met locally.
The last two, though.
One was VisibleFromSpace, the Third Eye dev who never seemed to communicate on the official server. I was surprised to see them active enough to have responded to an invite, much less open to accepting one. Also, if the devs were cooperating this much with Erin, where was all-smiles AlephLambda?
The most startling, however, was the final Offline user. No wonder Lena was counting down to a ban.
The last user was DeepingShadows.
I left Erin to her vegan burger and she left me to my worries.
The nearest light rail station was just a few residential blocks away. Picked clean by the DU area's Third Eye players, probably, but I might still scare up a few Materials on the way.
"Nah," I muttered.
The thought of dragging myself those few blocks seemed overwhelming. And if I encountered another player? On a side street, they'd probably collect some free XP from my 0 HP ass. I didn't want to lose another chunk. Lena and I had operated on the assumption that XP totals were how Third Eye Productions would decide who to cut from the beta.
That might be optimistic.
Another way to determine a "bottom 1% of players" was through a win/loss record in PVP.
No, I'd stick to public spaces until I figured out how to recover HP. And, hopefully, how to win.
I slunk a block along Evans and collapsed onto the first bus stop I found. I tapped out a quick update to Lena, in case she wondered what had kept me. 'U won't believe who I met,' I sent.
Instant response. 'Was it NugsFan15?'
I furrowed my brow. 'Everybodys an expert at guessing games now'
'She sent me an invite to her server,' Lena sent. 'Why did you tell her my username?'
'I didn't,' I sent. 'Will explain later.'
'You better.'
'I didn't,' I repeated. 'promise'
'Have you checked her server out?'
'Not yet.'
'Wonder how long it'll be before they ban me.'
"Heh." My eyes-half closed. 'Shades of DeepingShadows?'
'Lol just wait till you check it out.'
It took me a while to tap out that username. The lack of autocorrect made me realize I'd never entered it since I replaced my phone. Kind of sad. We hadn't been close, we hadn't always gotten along, but DeepingShadows had been kind of a friend, and in a way, I owed her a lot.
She'd been the admin of a Discord server for gamers in the Denver metro area. Maybe she still was, but I remembered her from back when people liked Overwatch. I'd say the game didn't matter, except in this case it kinda did. DeepingShadows really liked it. Rather, she liked the idea the developer was trying out where cities would have local pro teams, like they do for physical sports. Denver didn't have one. I think she dreamed that if she found five or six local talents she could start an esports team.
Didn't work. She was the best player on her server, and even she wouldn't have scraped the back of the bench as a pro. She didn't take enough Adderall, for one.
If not for that local connection, the group could have been focused on any of a hundred games in a dozen genres.
What mattered was this: That server was where a guy called OldCampaigner met a girl called Ashbird.
No matter what the game, we would've still sorted into the same roles and I think we would've still clicked. Her healing my tank, me healing her DPS, me tanking for her DPS. I made decent plans and Ashbird recognized when we needed to scrap them. She was shit at shooters and I was kinda shit in general but together? Look out. We were almost competent.
Then we hit it off over our shared cultural heritage. We had eclectic tastes, but a special appreciation for the classics. Lolcats. Zero Wing. Shit from our parents' generation. Too much appreciation, apparently, because we spammed the main Discord channel so much that DeepingShadows stopped joking when she told us to get a room.
We did.
That went some places.
One was me learning Ashbird's name was Lena. Another was Lena coming out of her shell in voice chat. When we first started playing together she'd hardly said a word, but the more she and I hung out in voice, the more she got into it.
Also, the more she got into it with DeepingShadows.
Lena respected winning, enjoyed competing, but she would ultimately choose a good time over a flawless record. DeepingShadows wanted wins, full stop. I just checked out when she tried to micromanage us, but once Lena started talking, she talked back.
If I wanted, I could open our old server. I never got banned. I could do a quick search and reread the log of their last big fight. I was pretty sure I remembered how it went, though.
We'd just lost three matches in a row. Does it matter who was right and who was wrong about our tactics? It didn't to me then or now, so I couldn't tell you.
DeepingShadows: Next time, I expect you to stay in formation, Ash.
DeepingShadows always used abbreviations for maximal efficiency. In her parlance, she was DS, I was OC, our other three regulars were DD, MB, and TT, our reserves were TA and XV.
And Lena, whose username was one word, was Ash. I bet having to type that third letter annoyed DS every time.
Ashbird: My character does literally nothing from your formation.
DeepingShadows: Then switch characters. I can take over as a DPS if you're not confident in your aim yet.
Ashbird: Or I could use a character with shotguns and get a bunch of kills for us.
DeepingShadows: If you're going to gloryhound, you should do it in solo queue.
OldCampaigner: That's harsh, DS. We're all trying our best.
Ashbird: Harsh? I was player of the game!
DeepingShadows: The game we lost.
OldCampaigner: It wasn't Lena's fault. I didn't have my shield at the right angle, but I'll fix it next match.
Ashbird: Maybe you need to fix your plan, DS.
DeepingShadows: At least I had one.
Ashbird: My plan, which worked, was to rope-a-dope them onto the objective and ult all of them while their shields were pointed at your line, teleport back, get healed, rinse and repeat. They didn't take a single point until you bitched me out and stopped healing me. Let Cameron switch back to heals and do your own tanking.
DeepingShadows: OC wasn't prioritizing heals correctly. Right now, he's better off holding the objective. As for your "plan," it was to do whatever you felt like.
Ashbird: Oh no! It's almost like we're playing a game.
DeepingShadows: Some of us are playing to win.
DeepingShadows: Ash is out after this round. XV, hop into queue with us.
At the time, I'd grinned at Lena standing up for herself, but had it really been growing confidence? Or had she started lashing out because of stress? She would've overspent on Third Eye by then. I knew because that was the server where she tried to drum up interest in the Kickstarter. Had her money started to run out? I wasn't sure how the timelines synced up.
Regardless, talking back got Lena kicked from our rotation. Complaining about that got her a two-day ban from the server. I pleaded her case and DeepingShadows told me she hoped Ashbird would come back to the team, but she had no interest in playing with lovebirds.
I told her Lena and I didn't have anything romantic going on and realized I was lying.
Another thing I owed DeepingShadows? I told myself Lena or I would've figured it out eventually.
The hiss of hydraulic brakes dragged me out of my memories. I shook away the little smile that had colonized my face and looked up at the bus.
A boy and girl got off, teenagers. He pointed at something. She whispered back. She hung on his arm and he, on her words. I resisted the temptation to peek through my phone camera to see if they were more inexplicable Third Eye babies like Erin.
I boarded the bus and scanned the Regional Transport District pass on my phone.
"Morning," the driver said.
Was it still? I felt like I'd spent about an eon out of the apartment. "Morning," I said. "This bus goes to Evans and Broadway, right?"
"Heading that way, yeah," he said.
"Cool. Thanks for the ride." I took a window seat, swapped to my camera and pointed it out at the city. Hydraulics hissed and buildings rolled past. A few of them had objects on or around them I thought might be Third Eye constructs, but nothing obvious. From the moving bus I couldn't swap back and forth to check, and I texted too slowly to make notes.
I tried to practice with Air, but found the buttons on my Reactions window grayed out. Apparently, being at 0 HP meant I wasn't allowed to play. I supposed it made sense. Otherwise I could just continue attacking after a "defeat." How was I supposed to recover? Just rest, or would we get some kind of healing powers?
Hell. Would I recover? I wanted to believe I'd get a message if I'd fallen into the bottom 1%.
No, I'd seen Erin's avatar after I lost to Matt. I still had Third Eye access.
I sighed. Scanning for Materials from the light rail would be even worse than from the bus. After I transferred and claimed a seat, I took the book out of my parka and tried to read. Nope. Text too small, not distracting enough.
I put the book away, switched to Discord, and accepted the invite to Erin's server.
It was a private one, with none of the click-through-to-sign-up shit from Third Eye's official server, although there was a pinned link to some rules.
As soon as I joined, I saw a chat log and lists of rooms and players. Five rooms, General Chat, Third Eye Chat, Wiki Planning, Material Scouting - Denver Metro, and Arranged PVP. Two voice channels, General Voice and Wiki Voice, both empty. I started in the General text chat and it didn't look very busy, just a series of greetings. I scanned the latest.
A generic Discord notice read, 'Please welcome our newest member, Ashbird.'
Lena posted a bell emoji.
Ashbird: What's a gal gotta do to get service around here?
Lena's introductions always brought a smile to my face.
NugsFan15: Welcome to the server, Ashbird. Please make yourself at home.
Ashbird: Hiya!
Then she quoted her bell emoji.
NugsFan15: If you have any questions you can post them in the appropriate rooms, or DM me if you don't see one.
NugsFan15: If you're just having fun, though, it's self-serve.
Ashbird: Self-serve? Lucky! Finally, decent waitstaff!
NugsFan15: Ha ha!
Nobody had posted anything after that until I signed in and got the same generic welcome notice Lena had. I didn't type anything yet because I didn't want to wrestle with my phone, but while I was looking around the interface, Erin copied and pasted, 'Welcome to the server, OldCampaigner. Please make yourself at home.'
I tapped out thanks while I scanned the user list.
One Admin, NugsFan15. Three other users Online: me, Ashbird, and somebody called CannibalHalfling. I assumed there was a story there, or a reference I didn't get.
More interesting to me were the nine grayed-out Offline users. I recognized almost all of them! ShakeProtocol, another Big Name Fan for breaking the physical signup bonus story. Salamancer, the first person to post about impossible objects. Both very active on the official Discord. Then LikeItsNinetyNine, the dancer whose TikTok had sparked a lot of the graphics discussion on the subreddit; she was an admin over there. I thought the next two, OpenMike and xWellingtonx, were as well. Only two usernames were entirely new to me, OffGrid and DU_Goldie.
As far as I could tell, the server's population was a mix of Third Eye BNFs and players Erin had met locally.
The last two, though.
One was VisibleFromSpace, the Third Eye dev who never seemed to communicate on the official server. I was surprised to see them active enough to have responded to an invite, much less open to accepting one. Also, if the devs were cooperating this much with Erin, where was all-smiles AlephLambda?
The most startling, however, was the final Offline user. No wonder Lena was counting down to a ban.
The last user was DeepingShadows.
".