“Agents missing from the city,” said Sahara on the comlink.
Marisa scanned the rooftop quickly, with a quick glance at her camera feeds to make sure. She’d brought the recon drones this time. “Nothing up here; they must be in the sewers.”
“You hear that, Fang?”
“Kù,” said Fang. “Think I know where they are. Hide in the rubble of that old laundry place, and drop down the hole on my signal.”
“On it,” said Sahara. Jaya echoed her, and Marisa watched on her map display as their icons moved across the battlefield. This match was in a ruined city, full of collapsed buildings and overturned cars. Marisa was perched on top of a bombed-out gymnasium, working as Spotter to Anja’s Sniper.
“That leaves us alone for a while,” said Anja. “Want to try something weird?”
“No, she doesn’t,” said Sahara. “We’re trying to practice for the Jackrabbit, not screw around making blooper reels for some weekender’s gamecast.”
Anja was already up and running, sprinting across the rooftop as fast as she could move. Marisa smirked and followed her; as Spotter it was her job to keep Anja alive, and even Sahara couldn’t argue with that. “How weird are we talking?”
“All the key spots to take out the turrets are guarded by attack drones, right? So the normal way to disable them is to kill the drones, move into place, and pour as much damage into the turret as we can before the drones respawn.” She was moving forward as she spoke, headed for one of the standard sniping positions, but stopped a full rooftop short. “Today I brought every range enhancer I could pack in—my DPS sucks, but I can hit from way, way back, where there are no drones. Cover me.”
Marisa caught up to her just as she started firing; Anja’s avatar today was some kind of fairy princess, pink tutu and all, which looked hilarious crouched on the edge of a rooftop holding a six-foot Arlechino sniper rifle. She folded down her tripod, lined up her shot, and fired. The enemy turret was far down the road, only barely visible from this vantage point, and Marisa didn’t expect any of the Overworld weapons to have that kind of reach . . . but the shot hit.
“You can attack turrets from all the way back here?”
“I saw it on a Korean gamecast.” Anja fired again, more rapidly now that she’d set everything up. “It’ll take me twice as long to kill it with these damage values, but I can do it.”
“Spend that long in one spot and you’re dead,” said Marisa. “The enemy Sniper’s going to know exactly where you are.”
“Which is why I waited for their whole team to go underground,” said Anja, firing freely. Her shots left bright afterimages in the air: tracers designed to help a Sniper walk their shots, but which an enemy Sniper could just as easily follow back to the source. Marisa crouched low, trying to spot any threats before they could counter.
“Now!” shouted Fang, and the comm channel filled with the sounds of gunfire, swooshing magical effects, and the sharp clangs of the Katana powerset. Marisa watched her teammates’ health bars move wildly up and down, while still keeping a wary eye on the rooftops.
“Enemy down!” roared the announcer.
“Ally down!”
“Enemy down!”
“Tā mā de!” yelled Fang, her icon transforming to a pale skull. “I almost got away.”
“We’re lucky you’re the only one who died,” said Sahara, regrouping with Jaya as the enemy icons retreated out of view. “They had all five agents down here.”
“A two-for-one trade isn’t bad,” said Jaya. “Heartbeat, Happy, we scared them back up to you.”
“Roger that,” said Marisa. “Time to stop shooting, Anja.”
Anja kept firing. “But I didn’t kill it yet.”
“But now they’re all back, and they’ll see you.”
Anja grinned wickedly, still staring through her scope and firing shot after shot into the enemy turret. “Good thing I have a Spotter.”
Marisa saw the three remaining enemy agents run past one of her recon drones. “You have a Spotter who isn’t designed for melee. We’re about to get crushed.”
“Pull back,” said Sahara, “we can’t get to you in time to defend you.”