Echo Online 2

by Zachariah Dracoulis

  It was good to have the conversation turn into an argument about how good pizza actually was, if only so it distracted us from the fact that I was leaving on the precipice of our great victory for a solid few hours of real time which I, if I’m being totally honest, had no idea how to calculate into game time.

  I mean, I probably could’ve taken the time it’d take to open up my calculator and figured it out pretty quickly, but that would remove some of my anxiety and what fun would that be?

  41

  “Fun day?” Pete lightheartedly mocked as I got into the kitchen where he and Kurt had been prepping, “Heard you’re armored units took a bit of a battering.”

  “Yeah,” I chuckled, noting that Kurt was deliberately avoiding eye-contact, “we got across though. What about you?”

  “Not as great,” Pete replied without looking up from the spring onions he was cutting, “whatever you set loose in the city has made it nearly impossible for us to get arou-”

  “Do you really think we should be telling him?” Kurt interjected coarsely.

  “Uh, yeah?” Pete laughed, “It’s not exactly like he can use the information. You knew we were pinned down pretty hard, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said with a nod as I made my way to the cold-room, “y’all should be able to start getting around soon though, right? The mist has pulled back a fair bit.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Carl’s on his way back from an Echo sesh now,” Pete replied, earning him a coarse glare from Kurt, “says there’s a good bit of wiggle room now, but you’ve really done a number on morale.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked, successfully hiding my smirk as I pulled out a large box of potatoes and went to work peeling them.

  “Tons of people just haven’t logged back in,” Pete explained, “got sick of the spawn, die, spawn, die of it all.”

  “Okay, can you stop?” Kurt snapped, “As much as I can respect the workplace banter, I’d prefer it if we didn’t readily tell the leader of our enemies that our army’s FUBAR.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I already know,” I chuckled, “way I see it, this is a pretty fair trade off considering that mass smiting thing Carl pulled off.”

  “Except what we did was directional,” Kurt said with a bitter expression, “what you did just fucked everything up.”

  “And we got a couple of our allies in the crossfire,” I replied with a shrug, “again, fair trade.”

  It was clear that Kurt and I just weren’t going to agree, but judging from the smirk on Pete’s face, he at least halfway got where I was coming from.

  “Truth be told, I think this was the best possible outcome,” Pete added, ignoring Kurt’s pissed off stare, “it’s not overly ideal for our side, sure, but at least we’re all on the mainland now. We can have ourselves a fair fight.”

  “A fair fight?” Kurt scoffed, “The shit he released actively pursues us. At this point we’re dealing with his army, the eldritch, and whoever’s gone turncoat. It’s bullshit.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll take it easy on you.” I lied, “Can I be honest though? Your boys couldn’t hold the city worth a damn.”

  “What are you talking about?” Kurt snapped.

  “Well, I got in and out of the city pretty easy, and I haven’t gone down in a fight yet. Unless you count that magic thing.” I chuckled, “That thing was a bitch.”

  “You just going to skip the part where you obviously had insider knowledge and attacked our weakest checkpoint?” Carl asked as he came into the kitchen, “Hey, everyone.”

  “Hey, Carl,” I said after he’d passed me and made his way towards the cold-room, “have fun?”

  “Not as much as you, evidently,” Carl called back coldly, “still can’t believe you did that god power thing. That was fucked.”

  “We were just talking about that, if you would believe,” I chuckled, “turns out you and Kurt are in the same boat. Pete seems to be on the fence.”

  “That’s because Pete is a Damned Legion sympathizer.” Carl said after coming out of the cold room with a big slab of meat.

  “I resent that,” Pete replied defensively, “I’m more of a… Damned Legion understanderer.”

  “I don’t think that’s a word,” I said amusedly, “and can we not pretend that my army are Nazis? I mean, which one of our groups is made up of tall dudes with blue eyes and blond hair?”

  “I’m still an Orc,” Pete chuckled, “and I’d say we also have Elves, but they kind of fit that bill as well…”

  “He’s been like this since Buck got in,” Kurt said after noticing Carl was staring at Pete, “just circle jerking and pretending that there’s any excuse for what Buck did.”

  “It’s not really a circle jerk then, is it?” I said, “More of a line jerk, and at that point it’s just mutual masturbation.”

  “I’m not going to stand here and argue about the terminology for which you two jack off,” Kurt snapped while Pete and I shared a quiet little giggle, “the point is that you’re an ass and Pete’s an ass by proxy.”

  “Well, that’s not very nice,” Pete gasped in mock-offence, “besides, aren’t you two just as bad? From where I’m standing, we’re just two people arguing with two other people. Only difference between us is that one of our groups is made up of whiny little bitches.”

  Carl went to bite back at that but caught himself, cleared his throat, and turned to me, “Your bag was vibrating, by the way. I think someone’s trying to call you.”

  “Cheers,” I replied as I set my knife down and walked over to the sink to wash my hands, successfully hiding the fact that I was annoyed that it had taken him so long to tell me, “ringing or texts?”

  “I don’t know, I’m not your secretary.” Carl replied nonchalantly while I walked around the back to the bags.

  Have to be honest, it felt good to have Carl being a dick.

  Up until that point there’d been this little, tiny twinge of guilt gnawing at me, telling me that I’d overreacted and that maybe, just maybe, I was being the dick in the situation.

  It was good to get proven wrong is all.

  Anyway, once I got to my phone, I found a good dozen texts, all from Sam, most of which were correcting the glaring errors in her previous messages.

  She was amazing, don’t get me wrong, but translating her messages felt like I was decoding some kind of state secrets.

  Thankfully, I eventually managed to piece together the jumbled mess and got a mostly cohesive message that read something like ‘Shit all halos. No bosses at cathedral. Have to push now. Will only be a ten minute raid IRL. XOXO <3’

  My first instinct was to tell her that I had to work, but then I heard Kurt and Carl not-so-quietly bitching about me in the kitchen and went ahead and made a decision.

  “Hey, Pete?” I called out as I stuck my head back into the kitchen, “mind if I take this? Apparently it’s urgent or some shit. Could be a little while.”

  Pete seemed surprised by the question at first, but then he had a look around, shrugged and nodded, “Yeah, yeah. Prep’s pretty much sorted and we’ve got another hour before service. Go ahead.”

  “Why’s he get a break?” Carl snapped, “He just got here!”

  “Because he’s been covering for your ass,” Pete laughed, waving me off as he did, “and I’m sure we’ll be able to live without him for fifteen minutes.”

  Leaving the chefs to argue, I quickly and quietly rummaged through my bag before finding the login device with a smile.

  Not wanting to get spotted in the parking lot by customers or some tattletale waitress, I made a risky call and sat down in the corner where the bag rack met the wall.

  “In and out…” I muttered, my eyes darting to the kitchen doorway, “Ten minutes, in and out. Easy.”

  Yeah, I knew I was bullshitting myself.

  42

  When I spawned in I expected to get absolutely swarmed or, at the very least, end up dodging people like on the island.

  What I got instead was an emp
ty bar with some broken glasses lying around.

  “Hello?” I called out as I shuffled out of my booth and started walking through the bar, “Anyone down here?”

  No response.

  Hoping that I hadn’t missed out on the fight, I jogged over to the thankfully already lowered private dance area and pushed the button under the table, raising the platform.

  “You ready for a fight?” I asked as I checked my carbine’s mag, “Might get some close quarters action.”

  “I honestly can’t wait,” Dave chuckled, “speaking of, is there anything to make this thing go faster?”

  “Nope, we just sit here and wait.” I sighed.

  “That’s some bullshit right there,” Dave groaned, “but fine, as long as I get to kill some motherfuckers, I don’t care. You think you’re ready for the fight?”

  “I hope so,” I replied as the metal plate above us receded, “this’ll be really embarrassing if I’m not.”

  “Heh, yeah, you’ll never live it down.” Dave chuckled evilly, “It’s been nice knowing you though. Kind of.”

  “Are you seriously assuming I’m going to die?” I asked, my foot tapping along expectantly while the platform moved at a snail’s pace, “Or is this some kind of pop psych bullshit designed to motivate me?”

  “Which one shuts you up the quickest?” Dave mocked, “For real though, you bitch way too much for someone so good at killing halos and Elves.”

  “I need your approval, Dave,” I joked, “it’s very important to me.”

  “Eat a dick,” Dave laughed as I finally gave up on waiting and climbed up once the floor reached waist-height, “we’ll be good though. You’ve got one Hell of an army backing you.”

  “It’s very nice of you to say that.” I replied, half-expecting Dave to pull something snarky or witty out of his ass, “Let’s just hope I can find them.”

  “I sincerely doubt they’re going to be that hard to find.” Dave huffed, “Have you tried your pockets?”

  “Have you tried eating a dick?” I scoffed as I made my way towards the club’s exit, hearing the clamoring of who knows how many people as I did.

  “Ah, I’m going to miss this witty repartee when you’re dead and I’m in the hands of an actual warrior,” Dave sighed, “maybe that Gnome guy. He seems like a real Chad.”

  “‘Chad’?” I mocked, “2020 called, they want their dated ‘cool guy’ slogan back.”

  “Yeah, well,” Dave stammered as he struggled to come up with a comeback, “1999 called, and they want you to go fuck yourself bloody with a tailpipe.”

  “Look who decided to show up,” Sam lightheartedly jabbed as I got outside and saw the bulk of both the Gamer Grilz and the Damned Legion armies, the ones who made it across the bay anyway, cramming the street, “sorry to text you at work, I know you just got in, but-”

  “It’s fine,” I interjected with a smile as I followed her to the front of the pack where Jane was waiting for us with a big ole gun, “how’ve the others been? Patient?”

  “More or less,” Sam replied, nodding towards the middle of the crowd, “Pash and Frank are in there telling everyone what’s what.”

  “And Sergei?” I asked.

  “Set up somewhere over there,” Jane said as she pointed to our right, “then the ICU and some more of the Damned Legion are over on the other side. Plan is a sort of pincer maneuver. We push up the middle where the bulk of the skeleton crew is supposed to be, Sergei pushes from the right, Lleyton pushes from the left, we take the cathedral.”

  “Easy peasy plan,” Sam added happily, “you give the marching order, we’ll press up, quick mop up. If we’re lucky, they might even surrender when we get there. Shave off a few seconds of fighting for us so you can get back to work.”

  “Alright then, send the order out to Sergei and Lleyton,” I chuckled before looking back at the army, some of whom had turned their attention to me while others were still engrossed in their conversations, “we’re moving out! Let’s kick some ass!”

  I was met with a wall of cheers as we started the trek towards the cathedral, guns in our hands and fires in our hearts or… I don’t know, some bullshit like that.

  For me, the whole thing felt kind of dirty.

  Good dirty though, like we’d pulled a cheat out of our ass on the Hallowed Kings as opposed to the other way around and we were actually using it for good.

  I mean, sure, as we marched through the streets I kind of knew that we weren’t exactly the typical ‘good guys’, but at the same time I knew San Francisco was about to get a whole lot more free.

  We were going to shake the whole system to its core, possibly literally depending on what kind of load we were already putting on the servers, and that felt good.

  “This is so badass.” Sam giggled after a few minutes of us double-timing our way through the city, “Like, so badass.”

  “It really is, isn’t it?” I chuckled, “Not going to lie though, I’m a little bit concerned with being literally one room away from the entirety of the Hallowed Kings’ leadership. They walk in and see me, they’re definitely coming in.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Jane replied with a shrug while Sam did a quick comm check on her walkie, “besides, even if they do come in, we’re still only dealing with a skeleton crew.”

  “Exactly,” Sam agreed, “big bad Carl and the Gang can only do so much when they’re up against a horde.”

  “We can hope,” I said, smiling eagerly, “we’ve really got this though, right? After this we’ve taken the city?”

  “Sure seems that way from where I’m standing,” Sam replied, looking around at the empty buildings, “and we played it smart. Scouts, planning, the whole shebang. All we have to do now is follow the plan and we’re golden.”

  “And the plan is essentially to just attack them from all angles and demolish their HQ, right?” I asked.

  “Pretty much,” Jane said with a nod, “it’s elegant in its simplicity. Like you said, the entirety of their leadership is currently occupied at work, which means they’re more than likely to be uncoordinated as fuck.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that…” Dave chimed in as we rounded what was set to be our second-to-last corner.

  Surprised by his sudden input, it took me a moment to look down to the end of the street and realize what he was talking about.

  “That’s…” I muttered as we came to a stop, “not a skeleton crew…”

  43

  Three blocks.

  Three tiny blocks until we were within spitting distance of the cathedral, that’s when we had to run into Jane’s ‘skeleton crew’ of a few dozen Angels and double that of Elves.

  “They’re holding the other streets,” Sam muttered after clicking off her walkie-talkie, “no cover, same as here, and it’ll be bloody, but Sergei and Lleyton are confident they can push through and meet us at the cathedral.”

  I nodded and gave her a quick smile, “Thank you, tell me if that changes.” I replied, unable to take my eyes off the wall of Angels and Elves standing shoulder-to-shoulder a mere few hundred feet from us in the safety of an extra-large, extra annoying version of one of their bubbles.

  We’d been prepared for a fight, sure, but the fact that we hadn’t been shot on sight made me think that there might be a diplomatic option.

  I didn’t like it, my Civilization record can attest to that, I just didn’t like the idea of dying more.

  “You can turn around,” I called down the street, my words bouncing off the buildings and piercing the deafening silence, “log out, take a few minutes to shower or eat, and skip the part where we take back this city. We aren’t salting the earth here, and it’s not like we’re gonna have some kind of ‘The Nuremberg Trials: Part Two’ after this.”

  Unsurprisingly, I didn’t get a response, unless you count a handful of halos at the front of the pack gesturing for their Elven lapdogs to hold.

  “Alright, you asked for it…�
� I murmured before rolling my shoulders, puffing up my chest, closing my eyes, and digging deep, “Delustramus.”

  The incantation came out less like a word and more like a wave, sending translucent but visible ripples along the road towards the Hallowed Kings’ line where it met the bubble and crashed against it, bursting the golden shield and stunning those closest to it.

  Once again, silence reigned, with the only noticeable difference being that the Elves and Angels were visibly terrified.

  Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Hocus Pocus’ ‘Focus’ ruptured the sky, spurring the Legion to charge past me, led by Frank wielding an M16 atop a fiery-eyed Pash with his mystical pimp cane.

  I chuckled at the display as I heard Sam go full-cat and watched Jane take flight, building up some kind of spell as she made for the front of the pack.

  Honestly, upon seeing the halos and the Elves, I worried I was going to be offed within a few seconds, but as the mix of Damned Legion and Gamer Grilz made a healthy meat wall between me and them I couldn’t help but feel left out instead.

  So, with a cocky smirk, I unfurled my wings, catching my carbine as they tore through the gun’s strap, and took to the sky, Thijs van Leer’s yodeling fueling my ascent.

  Disappointingly, in the short time it had taken the troops to charge, the Angels had created a smaller though still quite impenetrable bubble, leaving their Elvish counterparts to look around in horror as Demons, strippers, and demonic strippers battered away at the retreating halos’ shield.

  Pulling out a strip of flesh and slapping it to my carbine, I set my sights on a particularly faded section of the bubble and started unloading demonic rounds which splashed and cracked against the shield with fiery screams.

  I wasn’t the only one laying out an aerial bombardment though, Daddy Frostiey and her fellow Gathlain girls were absolutely barraging the bubble with vines, mystical leaves, and the furious roar of flamethrowers.

  Yes, the flamethrowers threw me off, too.

  Ultimately we were at a stalemate, the Angels were holding strong despite their retreat, and we were hammering them like Thor, neither of us letting up for fear that the other side would take the advantage.