"Boss! Over there! Big one!" the Ork boy shouted, jabbing a finger at a stretch of ground ahead that looked weirdly flat compared to everything else around it. The surrounding wasteland was littered with scorched metal wreckage and cratered by energy burns.
The air reeked of ozone and melted steel, all of it mixing with the Orks' mushroomy funk and general body odor into something that defied easy description.
Eric ("What the Hell") looked where his underling was pointing. At first, he didn't see anything worth noting.
Then he noticed it. The ground at the center of that flat patch looked wrong: unnaturally smooth against the pitted terrain around it.
Before he could get a better look, everything changed.
The ground heaved upward. Soil and rubble flew apart as though shoved by some invisible hand, and a massive jet-black pyramid, mirror-smooth, sharp-edged, dark as a void, tore itself free from the earth like a tombstone clawing its way up from hell..
It carried no markings, no insignia — just pure light-eating darkness radiating a cold, technological menace that had absolutely no business existing in this wasteland.
"What the..." Eric's jaw dropped. The whole vibe had just completely whipsawed. One second it was primitive Ork mushroom pits and salvaged junk; the next, a sci-fi monolith was erupting from the ground. Was this Christmas event map some kind of fever dream collision of genres?
"Who cares, Boss!" His Ork lackey, unbothered by any of this and eyes blazing with excited green light, stabbed a finger at the pyramid and hollered loud enough to rattle teeth.
"Bet those shrimps rigged it up! Looks solid as hell! Be a blast to smash open! Let's Waaagh!!! straight in and grab whatever's inside!"
The logic was staggering in its simplicity: big thing equals tough thing equals something worth smashing equals treasure inside. Flawless.
Before Eric could even comment on that caveman reasoning, things escalated again.
The black pyramid had risen to about three stories when its smooth sides silently split open along several seams, revealing a dim blue glow from within.
Then came a deep, rhythmic, mechanically precise series of clicks, and figures began pouring out from the gaps.
Eric's breath caught.
They were humanoid skeletons, but built entirely from dark alloy with a dull metallic sheen, joints flickering with faint sparks of energy. No muscle, no skin, just pure mechanical structure and cold geometric lines.
Their skulls were smooth ovals, their eyes two pinpoints of icy red light. Each one carried a sleek, high-tech rifle that glowed a steady, unmistakable green.
Necrons.
The Necrons came out without hesitation, without so much as a glance around to survey the field. They raised their weapons almost as one, their muzzles flaring with blinding green light.
Fzzt. Fzzt. Fzzt.
Three beams fired in quick succession, stitching straight into the Ork boy at the front of the pack, the one screaming his head off and swinging a rusty iron pipe as he charged.
No explosion. No gore. Wherever the beams hit, iron pipe, green arm, chest, everything just ceased to exist. It dissolved at the molecular level into a faint wisp of smoke and drifting metallic dust.
The Ork's remaining half-torso stood there for a moment, seemingly not yet updated on the situation, then toppled over in a burst of mushroom pieces.
"Hiss..." Eric's scalp prickled. What kind of damage was that? One-shot kill? Straight-up annihilation? Not even a full corpse left?
"Maybe we should..." He instinctively stepped back half a pace and dropped his voice. "We pull back? We don't have anything worth using against metal skeletons. Charging in right now is just throwing ourselves into a meat grinder."
The Ork lackey's brain, however, appeared to have no pathway labeled "retreat." He'd just watched his buddy get vaporized, and rather than feeling anything resembling fear, he erupted as though someone had touched a live wire to a powder keg.
"Waaaaaagh! Damn tin-boned freaks! You don't get to kill our boys!!"
The lackey pounded his chest hard enough to shake the ground under him, let out a noise that shouldn't have been possible from a single throat, then spun toward Eric and roared with everything he had, his voice cutting clean through the chaos of the battlefield:
"Waaaaaagh!!! The Boss! 'What the Hell' Boss!" He thrust a finger straight at Eric.
"He's the greenest, the biggest, the Ork-iest Ork alive!!" Smash those tin cans! Grab all their shiny bang-bangs! Get the boyz some real hardware! Waaagh!!!"
One roar. That's all it took.
Every Ork boy in the area, the ones who'd been scrapping on their own, wandering aimlessly, or just crawling out of mushroom craters and looking for something to hit, snapped to attention. The Gretchin too — shorter and louder, clutching whatever junk weapons they'd scavenged — all of them whipped their heads around at once.
"What the Hell Boss?!"
"Greenest and biggest?!"
"Grab the bang-bangs?!"
"Waaagh!!!"
It was the simplest pitch imaginable, but it hit every one of those green creatures somewhere deep and primal.
The hunger for better weapons, the instinct to rally behind something loud and confident, and the sheer joy of having a direction to charge in. They didn't need any more convincing. They were already moving.
In the span of a few heartbeats, at least five or six of the burliest Ork boys had closed in around Eric, along with a mob of chattering, bouncing Gretchin.
They waved rusty cleavers, rough wooden clubs, chunks of scrap metal, anything they could lift, eyes lit up as they looked to Eric, waiting, practically vibrating, for a single word to send them screaming toward those metal skeletons and those very desirable bang-bangs.
Eric stood in the middle of it, a little dazed by how fast everything had spun out of control. He looked at the crowd of eager, battle-hungry green faces surrounding him.
He looked at the distant Necrons, silent and methodical, picking off anything that got close with the kind of calm efficiency that made his stomach drop.
This is not how this was supposed to go. I'm a high schooler. I got dragged into a video game. How am I an Ork Boss right now?
But then, at the very top of his vision, the progress bar that had been sitting at zero since the match started, the rough-hewn one labeled [Global Waaagh!!! Value], gave a small shudder and clicked forward.
[Waaagh!!! Value: 1%]
Just one percent. Barely a blip. But it meant something. The first real spark of organized resistance on this rubble-strewn wasteland, map code 313, had just been lit, accidentally, by Eric and his way-too-enthusiastic lackey.
Eric stared at that 1%. He looked at the mob of eager green faces. He looked at the cold, precise harbingers of death waiting in the distance.
Running was probably off the table. And honestly, it didn't exactly scream "Boss" energy.
He swallowed, balled up his empty fists, and made a decision.
"Screw it. What the hell." He took a breath. "Let's Waaagh!!! and find out."