Left 4 Retarded 2
(The Following is based on a TRUE STORY that happened while I was playing Left 4 Dead 2.)
They had battled through hundreds of undead hordes, and were covered in Zombie blood, guts, eyeballs, bits of internal organs and body parts that none of them even recognized. As far as they knew, they were the only four who were still alive.
They were in a mall near New Orleans. Bodies marked a gray-tiled floor. The mall's failing lights were casting everything in a sort of flickering brownish light.
"Holy shit!" [DM] Masterbait exclaimed in his thick southern accent. "Look at this here poster!" He was pointing to a poster on the wall of an athletically-built brown-haired man with gaunt features and a walrus mustache. Pictured below him was a blue 70s-style Dodge Charger with the number "22" written on the hood and driver's side door in white.
Aya-tan squinted to read the poster. "Jimmy Gibbs Jr." She read aloud. "I've never heard of him. Who's he?"
"Only the best stock-car racer on the face of this Earth!" [DM] Masterbait proudly exclaimed. "If the laws of nature allowed it, I would bear that man's child!"
Aya-tan rolled her eyes at Masterbait's bizarre praise for a man she didn't even know about. That was Masterbait, a stereotypical hick from Louisiana. He carried as many guns as possible and had an accent that made him sound like he belonged in a Burt Reynolds movie. He dressed in a yellow T-shirt and blue-jean overalls, and wore a blue and white baseball cap. Masterbait had been the most efficient zombie-killer amongst the four of them, preferring a Semi-Auto Shotgun and a pair of pistols. He was the type who would run ahead of the group to deal with a particularly threatening Special-Infected, the type of player that would always divert his attention to the most critical threat to the team.
Aya-tan may have been different from him in personality, but not in playing style. Aya was the least-developed of all four playable characters, and she suspected she was included in the game because the Valve Development Team wanted to include a female character. However, like Masterbait, Aya had that same "Do-or-die" flame in the way she hunted the infected. Preferring an AK-47 with a laser-sight and a bladed melee weapon such as a machete, a fire-axe, or a katana and also usually kept a pipe-bomb or a Molotov Cocktail close at hand, she was the team's tank-killer. As in she was the one who usually dished out the most damage to the fast, strong, tough, and over-muscled Special-Infected brutes known as "Tanks." Tanks were a critical threat to any team of survivors, which made Aya a valuable member.
And then there were the other team members. They weren't much to speak of. Kane was a pessimistic con-artist from up North, a big city fellow from New York or Chicago or some such place. He acted like he was a big-shot, sporting his three-thousand dollar white suit, which had been ruined by numerous stains of coagulated zombie blood. He, like Aya, preferred an AK and a melee weapon, but that is where the similarities ended. Unlike Aya, Kane was better at killing common infected, but those were little more than fodder for the survivor's bullets anyway. It was not killing common infected but surviving the special infected that gave the survivors their challenge, and Kane was absolutely the worst at fighting the special-infected. He had been pounced by hunters, jumped on by jockeys, pounded by chargers, puked on by boomers, constricted by smokers and slimed by spitters. Kane always said it was because he was "the most delicious" of the four of them, but in reality he just sucked.
There was also Kane's friend Domingo23. Domingo23 wasn't his real Steam-Name of course, the author of this story just couldn't remember what his name was. He was a heavyset African-American man native to Louisiana with a fondness for cheeseburgers and chocolate. He was bald and dressed in Khaki Pants and a Purple and Yellow Jersey. This was Domingo's first time hunting zombies, and Kane practically had to hold his hand to guide him through the game. In contrast to veterans [DM] Masterbait and Aya-tan, he was always chatting on his headset, constantly asking questions instead of focusing on the game.
The four of them ran along the balcony of the mall, boarding an elevator, to which they began to take down to the ground floor. "CETA's not gonna save us." Kane grimly commented. "Any ideas?"
"Actually..." [DM] Masterbait explained. "I've been thinking, you know those posters we've been seeing? "Get your picture taken with Jimmy Gibb's Jr.'s Stock Car?" That means it's here, man! We just gotta find it, and we've got ourselves an escape route."
"Well, it beats my idea." Aya-tan agreed. "Staying here and dying in the mall."
"Ok, now they don't fill up the tanks of these babies at car shows." Masterbait continued. "So we gotta find some gas cans, gas it up, and I'll drive that sweet puppy to New Orleans my damn self!"
"Great idea, Masterbait." Kane replied. "But I'm driving."
Masterbait rolled his eyes as if to say "Like hell." "Only if I get killed, Kane. Otherwise, you're gonna have to kill me if you wanna drive this baby."
Once the character dialogue was over, Domingo was chatting on his headset, asking questions again. "So how are we going to do this, guys?"
"Two up on the balconies throwing the gas cans down, two on the ground floor by the car picking them up and filling up the car." Aya-tan's player suggested on her own headset.
"No way, man." Kane's player replied. "Filling the gas tanks causes zombies to spawn. All four of us run up there, staying together, and throw all the gas cans down into a big pile. Then, we fill up the car as quickly as possible and get the hell outta here."
"Zombies spawn based on how long we spend here, not how full the gas tank is, dingus." [DM] Masterbait's player snidely remarked. "I don't know about you guys, but I'm for Aya-tan's idea."
"I think we should try Kane's idea." Domingo23's player commented. "It just makes more sense to me than splitting up." Naturally, Domingo23 would inevitably side with his friend.
And so there was a rift between the four players. The veterans [DM] Masterbait and Aya-tan against the raw-recruits Kane and Domingo23. In the end though, the person who wins in these debates is not the person with more experience or more logic, but the person who is more stubborn. As such, the two veterans reluctantly followed Kane and Domingo23.
At first, it all passed without incident. The four of them as a group were effectively mowing down zombie hordes and tossing gas cans down to the ground floor. They had even managed to set up effective crossfire to take down the giant and deadly Tank Zombie that had spawned and come after them, with Aya-tan taking point as the Tank-Killer once again. However, their escape was simply not meant to be due to one person's stupid mistake.
All sixteen gas cans were in a neat little pile on the ground floor. The four survivors ran down and began filling the gas cans. Yet they had barely begun to fill the tank when tragedy struck.
"Careful guys." [DM] Masterbait warned the other three players. "I hear a hunter." Indeed, the other three survivors had noticed the low growling which alerted the presence of a hunter, a hoodie-wearing zombie that crawled on all fours. Hunters were dangerous enemies, faster and more agile than any other special infected, and with a very long jump. A hunter could pounce a survivor from almost anywhere and quickly incapacitate them with it's sharp claws.
All four survivors scanned their surroundings, searching for the imminent threat, the telltale black hooded zombie that could kill them so easily if left unchecked.
"There it is!" Kane shouted "By the gas cans!" All three of his teammates wheeled around and sure enough, there it was. Aya took a bead on the hunter, but Kane fired first.
Unfortunately, Kane's aim, which wasn't very good to begin with, missed it's mark when the hunter jumped out of the way of his bullets. Instead, Kane's bullets hit one of the gas cans in the pile, instantly igniting it in a ball of flame.
Gas cans in Left 4 Dead 2 catch fire for two reasons. One: they are shot by a survivor. Two: an already existing fire spreads to the intact can, either from a Molotov Cocktail or another ignited gas can. Regrettably, Kane's misplaced shot had set off a chain reaction. All of the remaining gas cans burst into flames. The hunter was torched, burned alive, but that success was miniscule compared to the great tragedy the four survivors were now faced with. The gan cans were gone, and with it, their only hope of escape.
"You idiot." [DM] Masterbait scolded Kane over the microphone. "That's why it's stupid to just have one big pile of gas cans lying around. This is why we should have gone with Aya-tan's idea."
"Eheheheh...oops." was Kane's only reply.
At that point, Aya-tan began to get seriously pissed off at the realization of what had just happened. "You stupid fucking cunt." She half-whispered on her headset.
"What was that? What did you call me?"
"You stupid fucking cunt!" Aya-tan repeated, shouting at the top of her lungs now. The enraged 21-year old girl playing the character of an African-American woman suddenly turned the sights of her AK-47 on Kane, and began perforating her teammate's guts with the 7.62mm bullets. "You just doomed all of us and all you have to say for yourself is "oops?"
Aya-tan's wrath was unrelenting, even after Kane was incapacitated and in need of help to stand up again, her player continuously ventilated him with her bullets, constantly pouring on fire from her AK-47, pausing from fire only to reload. In about a minute, Kane had been killed by his own teammate.
"Faggot!" Kane's player exclaimed over his headset as he left the server, enraged that he was ruthlessly murdered by his teammate in cold-blood.
"Alright." Aya-tan ordered. "Domingo, Masterbait, get over here." The two of them got right up next to Aya-tan. Domingo complained that Aya-tan had just killed his friend, even if he had made an incredibly stupid mistake that had doomed all of them, but those complaints were silenced when Aya-tan threw her own Molotov Cocktail at the ground, bathing all three remaining survivors in fire.
"We're not getting out of here." Her player explained. "That idiot Kane fucked it up for all of us. From this point it's either kill ourselves or wait for the infected to do it, and I'm not too keen on the latter idea. We'll respawn in the last saferoom and we'll take our second shot at this."
"Yeah." Masterbait agreed. "And nobody better get us all buttfucked this time."
Credits
Aya-tan (me!) as Rochelle
[DM] Masterbait as Ellis
Kane as Nick
Domingo23 (real username unknown) as Coach
1 idiot was harmed in the making of this story.