"Lia, can you slow down for a second? What are you so hyped up about?" Tao asks, following closely behind Lia as she weaves through the crowded atrium floor at the Serica Esta Vida Arcade. The ceiling reaches up into unfathomable heights, a tenebrous well of darkness dappled with innumerous lighted rooms set against walls that seem infinitely far away, rooms filled with people tuning into the games, drinking, singing karaoke, getting together with family. Most everyone is here for one reason, though: to watch Angel Arena, the game that rules the world.
"Look at that!" Lia exclaims, pointing up into the holographic screens that furnish the atrium, interspersed among gaming hubs where players tap into eNeLViaR systems (a system name for Neural Link, Virtual Reality, or NL-VR for short), "Snipers!" she says, "I told you everyone was going to start playing them!"
"Yeah, no joke," Tao yells after her, "of course people are playing snipers this patch."
On the screens above, an angel is depicted wearing a clean blue tunic slipping into the ethereal realm, becoming a green wispy apparition of herself, beating her wings and passing through the walls of a vast telluric labyrinth, firing an arrow towards some unseen target. Her ethereal arrow passes through a wall before turning corporeal. "Calignosa teleports right into an arrow!" an announcer's voice is amplified throughout the atrium, "What a shot!".
"Come on, Tao!" Lia yells through the crowd.
"Where are we going, Lia? Why don't we just go to our lucky spot?"
Tiring of Tao falling behind, yet wanting to talk his ear off, she slows up to take him by the shoulder and yell in his ear, "I knew this day was going to come when I picked up Zephyra. Nobody believes in Zephyra—she's auto-balanced because nobody thinks she can balanced and everybody still thinks she sucks. She doesn't suck—she takes skill. Zephyra shines in this meta."
"Yeah, I mean—you're the best—but there's another patch before the Pinnacle."
"People think she uses too much stamina—who cares? She can fly. Oh—but a melee that can fly is no good—nah, bruh—Zephyra kills it, bro—she slays giants, too."
"I've seen you play Zephyra, Lia," Tao yells.
Up on the screens, a titanic reaper clothed in tattered black robes, surrounded by a rainy fog, shoots a blood-red laser from its eye, striking a character that looks like a cast-iron knight from across a shimmering field of tall wheat-grass, between two lanes, staggering the knight. "A Lachrymoth laser out of left field," an announcer says. "I guess we don't gotta wonder what that's about, because here's Dastardly Doorknob to sweep the kill." A lithe woman wrapped in leather bindings appears from invisibility, slinging shadow bolts from her hands as she glides through a gravitational field produced by a number of transient black holes that are being summoned and dismissed. The cast-iron knight attempts to deflect a number of bolts using its cape, but is defenseless to Jejunia's infernal familiar manifesting from behind, clawing through him with arms of bladed fire.
"The thing is, you can't pin her down—she can make a play from any position on the map!"
"I'm literally in your pocket every day!"
Lia pulls on Tao's sleeve as she finds where she's trying to go. The two converge on a gaming hub surrounded by a thick crowd.
"I've got next on this game!" Lia announces. A couple of sour guy faces turn towards her.
"I'm beyond skeptical that they'll let you play, but pop-off, queen," Tao says.
"We're Master rank, Tao."
"We're solo-queue," he responds.
"I'm gonna ask Dex. He'll get me in on the next game. He's a fuckin' dick, but I think he'll give me a shot."
One of the bugbears turns to Lia, "I'm sorry, are you lost, little lady?"
"Buzz off, dickhead." Lia peels her way farther into the cell of people huddled around the featured players as they lay sedentary in their eNeLViaR pods.
That archer on screen is Dex's Venatrixa, flashing now to Argonaut's Thallazar, the Drowned Lich walking calmy down a lane, pushing back wave after wave of lane minions with a literal tidal wave commanded at his behest.
"Thallazar is back from the Eldergleam looking jacked," an announcer is saying, "and Team Nimbus doesn't look prepared to handle this at all. If you're Team Nimbus what are you doing in this situation?" The partner announcer contributes, "No, I don't think you do anything Kev, you know that Calignosa has trouble accessing Thallazar with her DPS focused approach, you've got Isepheron and Orphezar who look good on paper but who have been beaten down this whole game—it looks like the only character on Nimbus's team that can fight him is Carbuncle's Herkaos, but she can only be in one place at a time. Orbital Edge just defeated Maze Elemental, so the map is even more closed off—you have to wonder if that was intentional."—"Yeah, there can be no doubt at this point that the advantages that keep coming up for Orbital Edge are no coincidence, and word's out that these calls are being made by team leader Dex, who left Mental Prime to start his own team—not an irreputable team themselves."—"No, very prestigious, in fact."
Lia looks around for Tao and sees him following her through the throng of people. She hangs an arm around him and talks into his ear again, "Watch this—they're gonna pick Lachrymoth and I'm going to be dodging lasers all game. They try picking Calignosa, I ignore them and farm. Venatrixa—assassinated." Lia waves her hand out in front of Tao, trying to show him the stars.
Tao looks up into Lia's face. His almond skin against her brown. There's a moment away from all of the buzz where Lia sees the charming boy she's had a crush on for forever, where she wonders, is this the moment I should close in for a kiss? But the pounding sound and the feel of some creep's hand grazing her butt takes her out of it. She turns and hits the guy in the belly, who gives an oomph! "Fuckin' dick!" She wants to turn into Tao to hold him with both arms, but lets him go instead to watch the screens.
"Holy cow!" Kev exclaims, "That laser just annihilated Quest's Orphezar from down the lane! Lachrymoth has been out of control this whole time—you really can't pick Orphezar into Lachrymoth, and this is exactly why—Lachrymoth has a lot of difficulty seeing, especially as it starts to get blood in its eyes; but when you have full health on Lachrymoth, you get these opportunities for the perfect shot, with one-hundred percent accuracy—and you're looking at Orphezar, who has no armor, and it just looks like a free kill."
"I can't help but feel that Team Nimbus lost this in Angel select, Icy. I think Isepheron is finally dead in this meta. DeadBrain has been following Dionyx around all game trying to leech enough mana to cast Flare, and now he's going into the Eldergleam when his team needs him the most because it's no longer contested. Team Nimbus knows it's over—and, yep, here comes the surrender."
"Look—there's no doubt that Orbital Edge is the best of the best in the amateur bracket—but this is Team Nimbus, and Edge made this game look easy—I think this is the sniper meta knocking at the door of the amateur bracket, here, saying, 'hey—the old meta is dead—no more three-stacking tanks with a support and a carry. The snipers are here to stay.' Players are starting to get a bead on patch 110, and the slow power creep of the past 4 to 6 years is setting in."
"Not enough people play Bibi," Tao remarks.
As team Orbital Edge begins emerging from their NL-VR pods, Lia scrambles through the crowd to catch Dex's attention—but a couple of particularly stubborn guys won't let her past, "Hey! Dex!" she shouts, "Dex! Over here!"
"Get out of here, groupie!"
Dex catches her eye and starts pushing through his fans with a swagger, opening up a pocket where they become the center of attention. "Lia! Did you like the game?" he asks, "I hope the guys here weren't too rough with you," he laughs.
"Is this your girlfriend, Dex?" one of the guys asks. Lia gives him the stink-eye and says to Dex, "Yeah—I don't care, Dex—I want in on the next game."
Dex laughs idly, throwing his head back, rolling his eyes and looking humored. "You and what team?"
"I'll take a pick-up group," Lia says, looking back for Tao and not finding him immediately.
"Team Red Rogue has next, Lia. There's an order to this kind of thing. Especially when you start breaking brackets—we can always play on the Nets later," Dex says, flickering his eyebrows at Lia.
"Get me in on the next game—put me on Rogue—I don't care. I want to play against you—and you better pick snipers again! Come on, don't be a coward, Dex!"
Dex rubs his lips with his fingers, "I could probably get you on the team," he says.
"And Tao."
"No! I can't get you both on the team! Two nobodies? That's a big ask—but I can convince them to take you—I know their captain—but what do I get out of it?"
"You can get humbled knowing that a girl kicked your ass," Lia says, and the guys around her give a sarcastic fright, "Wo-woah! Calm down, honey!" one of them says.
Dex smiles complacently, "No—how about this. If I get you on that team, then promise you'll marry me. You can consider this my proposal."
"Sure, whatever," Lia says.
Dex scratches the back of his head, looking down at Lia, "Alright, then! Guess I'm engaged. That was easy! Yeah—I'd say that's a small ask for a favor of that magnitude—I think they used to call that a value bet."
"Just get me on the team, Dex."
"Okay—but… change your tag, alright? Everybody knows you as Bombora—they won't agree to take you if they know you're a girl—and, hey—give us hell. I mean it. Don't throw the game. I've got a reputation to maintain."
Lia gives Dex a cross look, saying, "Deal—I'll send you a request in a minute."
"Fifteen minutes! Don't make me wait, or I won't get you into that game."
Lia turns back through the crowd, feeling discombobulated as she makes her way through the jeering crowd, feeling someone grab her flank as she moves past, pinching her nose at a waft of body odor. She eventually finds Tao looking up at the holo-screens, listening in on the post-match commentary. Tao gives her a composed look. He'd stand a palm's length shorter than her, if it weren't for his shaggy hair. She takes a second to appreciate his stark eyebrows and his curt mouth.
"This Dionyx versus Herkaos duel was pretty good," Tao remarks, watching the replay of the giant onyx titan clashing with the herculean woman with flaming fists. "Dionyx is just too big at this point," he says, as Dionyx's fist leaves a crater in the wake of Herkaos's rapture.
"I got in," Lia says.
"They let you in on the game?" Tao asks for confirmation.
"Yeah—but I couldn't get you in—sorry."
"I wasn't expecting to get a game against them—honestly, I didn't think you would get in that game, either.
"Well, it's not one-hundred percent, yet, but I had to promise Dex I would marry him," she retches half-sarcastically, half-sincere. "Fuck him. I'd never want to be with that guy. He's a fucking asshole." Lia tugs at Tao's sleeves trying to ferry him along. "I'd go to jail before I slept with that loser," she says, thinking about all of the women who have gone to jail for refusing to copulate with a man prior to coming of age, taken into prison by the Guardianship.
"Why would you do that? He's never going to stop harassing you about that. He's going to tell everyone you agreed to it." He pitches his voice louder to speak through the din, "What's the point of playing against him anyway?"
Lia turns to him as she gets her bearing, looking for their lucky pods. "Dex is an asshole and has probably already told everyone he knows that we're sleeping together. This might be my chance to be recognized. If I can show off my Zephyra in this meta, I can turn this meta on its head all by myself. I wouldn't worry about it, Tao. Besides, if it comes down to it and I have to have a baby, I'll let you knock me up so I don't have to get carted off to jail." In her mind, this sounds reassuring, but as she trudges on she loses her grip on Tao, turning back to see that he's stopped. "Come on Tao! Let's go! I need to spin up a smurf!"