Foreword: The usernames that appear herein are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual usernames is coincidental. Please accept my apologies if your username appears in a negative light.
Chapter 2
Three days earlier
Kirika watched silently from the small dining table as Mireille deposited a large brown cardboard box on her pool table.
"What's that?"
"I thought you might be getting bored waiting to recover," Mireille replied, stepping back from the pool table, "and since I can't have you using my computer all the time, I thought I'd get you a laptop."
Her eyes widened slightly with surprise. "A… laptop? For me?"
"Yeah," Mireille affirmed with a nod.
She didn't consider herself a particularly heavy computer user, looking mostly at cat pictures and videos, and some J-pop music videos on YouTube, and she understood that Mireille wanted to use her computer herself, but she had little else to do while waiting for her injury to heal. This was a welcome surprise.
"You didn't have to," she finally said softly, with a tiny smile.
"It's ok. I paid for it with your cut."
Installing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 took longer than either of them expected, but then again, it was a two-DVD install.
Kirika promptly went to the singleplayer. Having never played a first-person shooter before, she was a bit slow on the tutorial level, but was satisfied with her speed and reactions after three or four runs, so on with the campaign she went.
After a couple of hours spent playing the singleplayer, Kirika decided to try her hand at the multiplayer. Here, she was at a disadvantage: other players were far more experienced, they knew the maps, and they had more varied weapons with whatever attachments affected performance, as well as the 'perks' that gave players different attributes.
Still, some players had suspiciously fast reflexes, as she saw from viewing the 'killcam' that showed your killer's point of view in the last few seconds leading up to your death. Was this hacking in action?
She was decent when it came to the singleplayer campaign, but her amazing real-world speed and reflexes had yet to translate into the game, and Kirika often found herself being frequently killed online, far more often than in singleplayer. As the deaths mounted, her sighing and grunting in frustration with each multiplayer death grew louder, transitioning into loud cursing.
One player she came across early was a blatant hacker, firing a Barrett semiautomatic sniper rifle on what was practically full-auto, also somehow scoring direct torso or headshots despite firing from the hip.
"Fuck this shit," Kirika had declared, leaving the server after the second time she was killed by this player.
An observation she made was that players of this game seemed to be fond of insulting each other using the in-game chat. It was a crude form of psychological warfare, she mused. Perhaps they hoped that a player's performance would suffer as a result of receiving an insult.
One common taunt was a boast of having had sex with another player's mother, an insult that mystified Kirika.
Some victories or kills led to gloating.
Kirika stood by herself on a rooftop, overlooking a city. The rooftop was, it seemed, partially under construction or closed for maintenance, with some areas bordered with chain-link fences and tarpaulins, and the perimeter of the roof ringed with small cranes, ostensibly for hoisting equipment up from below. Nearby, to her left, was a partially walled-off area containing what looked like transformers, or some other large electrical equipment. Two similar devices were nearby, surrounded by chain-link fencing. To her right was an open pair of elevators.
She had to move fast. Her team's score was down. They on the verge of defeat. Anyone could come around these corners. She had to be ready.
Kirika turned a corner. Nothing.
An enemy player appeared, turning a corner a few metres ahead. He shifted his weapon, intending to fire down his sights. Kirika's finger tensed on the left mouse button.
Suddenly, everything stopped and went gray. "Defeat" appeared in red text.
"Oh, shit," Kirika muttered.
"Mission failed. We'll get 'em next time," the game said.
The round was over. Someone else on her team was killed.
ifucanreadthisimabout2killu: pwned
Hawkeagle1000: ahaha
illogical1: bg
humungousmember: dickslapped
"Asshole," Kirika muttered to herself.
