I hid in a drainage pipe in a ditch as the enemy walked by. Today’s scenario was based roughly on World War Two. One team, the Liberators, would invade from the outside. A second team, the Occupiers, would start in the fake city. The third group, the Resistance, would also start in the city, but would get thirty minutes to work before the Liberators could invade. The Occupiers had half the people that showed up today, and the Liberators got two thirds of the remaining people, the remaining third becoming Resistance. While Liza and Randy were part of the Liberators, I had been assigned to the Resistance, and had decided to hide out here just before the scenario started. I hoped I could use it as a base to hit any enemies that walked by, hoping to eliminate as many as possible before the Liberators got here. After the scenario ended by either all of the Liberators or all of the all of the Occupiers being kicked out of the city, the two sides would switch, with the Liberators and Resistance becoming the Occupiers and the Occupiers being split into the Liberators and the Resistance.

  A buzzer sounded, announcing the start of the thirty minute period in which the Resistance could try to disrupt the Occupiers and the Liberators could only do reconnaissance. I climbed out of the ditch and, once I was sure that they hadn’t seen me, I flew up to the roof of a nearby building, making sure to stay near the building to block their view. After jumping over to another few roofs, the distance close enough that I could clear the gap even without flight, I decided I was far enough away from my hiding spot and waited for them to get near.

  Once I heard the group of four walking by beneath me, I popped out from behind the edge of the roof and fired on them from above. Three of the four were hit before they noticed where I was and the fourth had to dive behind a car to hide from me. The car was just tall enough to block my view as long as he laid low, so I had to wait for him to pop his head out. A minute later two more Occupiers showed up and, when I fired at them, hitting one, the man behind the car popped out and fired at me.

  I ducked behind the wall and he hit it instead of me. If he had a chance to aim I’m sure he would have hit me, but he didn’t. I crouch walked over to the side of the building where he couldn’t see me, then jumped down to the ground, landing as quietly as I could. One of the two new people that I had shot saw me land, but he wasn’t allowed to tell the others, so he just kept walking. I looked around the wall and, seeing the first guy start entering the building, I shot him in the back.

  He cursed and started walking back just as the other guy ran over. I squeezed off a few rounds in his direction, but doubted any of them hit. Instead, I ran around behind the building and went inside. Apparently there was another Occupier inside, heading up the stairs to look for me, and I shot him as I ran by, revealing my position. I ran up the stairs past him and heard the remaining guy run in the front door.

  I kept running up the steps and onto the roof. Without qi that would have worn me out, but as things were now I didn’t even have to breathe heavily. Once on the roof I jumped up and landed on top of the raised area above the steps. About a minute later, I heard the man running up the steps. As soon as the door opened he moved his gun around to point it everywhere, hoping to see me. I waited until he was ten meters from the door and shot him in the back.

  He cursed and waved at me, then started walking back. I knew this area wasn’t safe any more. The first ones I shot would be back soon and I probably wouldn’t be able to take them out as easily next time, so I jumped over a few more roofs and started hunting again.

  I heard gun fire coming from the edge of the city and knew that the Liberators had arrived, but decided not to bother trying to get to them. I would see them eventually.

  I kept finding other, small groups of Occupiers and taking them out. Most of them still hadn’t realized that they were supposed to look up, and the ones that did tended to be slow enough that I could hide or dive for cover before they managed to see me. If I had gotten hit I would have to make my way at least 500 meters away to get back to a Resistance safe zone, but so far I had gotten lucky.

  For the next hour I would attack Occupiers in groups of one or two, leaving the larger groups for the Liberators to deal with. By the end of that time, though, the Occupiers had started to travel in groups of four or more. Not seeing any good targets, I started making my way to the battle front, only to be spotted by one of the groups. I managed to take one of them down with me, but I got shot and had to head back to one of the Resistance spawn points.

  By the time I had finished a bottle of water and was back in the game I was hearing gun fire nearby, so I wall jumped between two close buildings and got onto the roof. Looking through my scope, I could see that Liza and Randy were pinned down, so I moved over to the Occupier side and started firing at them. I hit one before they noticed I was firing at them and changed their cover, but Liza had gotten hit and was forced to return to the respawn point.

  I kept firing on them and Randy’s team was able to use my distraction to flank them, shooting the two remaining occupiers. One of the people on the Liberator team waved at me to thank me for my aid, and I waved back, then they moved further into the Occupier territory as I continued to cover them.

  I kept covering them for the next hour or so, with people occasionally getting shot and having to respawn, but they were capturing ‘clinics’ which acted as rest areas and respawn points from the enemy, so their side didn’t start to suffer from long respawn times.

  After another hour they managed to capture the last clinic and the round was over, as the Occupiers could no longer respawn when their remaining people were killed. We swapped sides and I met up with Liza and Randy. Apparently, he had gotten through the whole round without dying, but she had died five times. She did seem to be enjoying the game, though, even if the respawn was boring and took you out of the action.

  This time I joined their squad and we started on patrol. I was hoping to kill most of the Resistance before the battle started. While we couldn’t seize their clinics like we could with the Liberators, we could make sure that they didn’t get deep enough into our territory to get useful intel.

  We ran into a few of them and, with our superior numbers, managed to kill seven of them before the buzzer sounded that the Liberators could start. Randy actually got hit that time, as did I and Liza three times. These people seemed to be much better at guerrilla warfare than proper battles, as some of them had rigged small IEDs to hit us, though they only used fireworks and not proper explosives. Nothing bigger than a normal grenade was allowed, as a large enough bomb could theoretically penetrate some barrier devices.

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  Eventually I found myself on the roof of a building. Randy wanted to try the sniper thing from last time again, so Liza, a guy named Pedro, and I were watching his back. He managed to get three of them before they got his position and he had to move, and over the next twenty minutes they kept sending people to deal with the sniper that was covering the alley they wanted to use to advance.

  Eventually we thought they had given up, as they hadn’t sent anyone here for five minutes or so, and were considering moving to a different area, when Pedro reported that people were moving downstairs. There was a loud sound as a party popper went off, a ‘trip grenade’ that Pedro had left on the steps, and we knew they were coming up.

  Randy moved out of his nest to cover us when a bullet hit the wall beside him and we ducked for cover. He rolled over to a spot a few meters to the side and aimed at the general area where the bullet had come from. There were two people up there, a sniper and their backup, so he fired a round at the sniper. The sniper ignored the shots that hit the building, his building being four stories instead of our three, and therefore having the entire building act as cover for him, and fired again. This one missed by only a few inches. We knew that if we came out of cover the sniper would have a clear shot at us, but his friends would be here in about a minute.

  Randy aimed at where he thought the guy would be and waited. About ten seconds later the man popped out his head to aim again and Randy moved his aim slightly to the right before firing. A bullet hit the man on the top of his head and knocked his baseball cap off, but the man was fine. His assistant came over as he grabbed his hunting rifle, giving Randy a clear shot to get him in the chest too.

  Seeing that they would be gone for at least a few minutes, Randy turned to help us just as the door at the top of the steps was kicked open and the person in the front of the line opened up with an M2 machine gun. Randy got hit multiple times, though the barrier easily blocked them all, and Pedro threw a grenade. It exploded, taking out the machine gun guy and the man behind him and we had a few seconds to move around. I jumped up onto the roof above the stairs, like I had done previously, and waited for them to come up while the other two got into position to hit them as soon as they got to the top of the steps.

  When they came out bullets started flying and both Liza and Pedro got hit, but took two of them out as well. The last guy stepped out onto the roof, thinking that he had cleared it, and I shot him in the back. He waved and joined his buddies for the trip back, and Pedro, Randy, and Liza joined up to head in a different direction. I got on the Team call with the others, and they joined. “I’m going to head towards their clinic about one hundred meters west of here. Want to meet up there?”

  “10-4.” Randy answered, and I started making my way over. The street just to the west of the building was likely two wide to jump across, but I ran as fast as I could and leaped. I went about three quarters as far as I needed to before realizing that I wasn’t going to make it and flying the rest of the way. Anyone that was paying attention would have sensed that use of qi, but, as I was moving away from the area, it shouldn’t be a problem.

  Near their clinic I saw a group of four leaving. While spawn camping was against the rules, and you were only able to attack clinics if your team controlled a building near it, as long as I waited for them to get a good distance from it, it didn’t count as such.

  After they were thirty meters from the clinic, I started firing on them. This caused many people from the clinic to come out to join them, and soon I had more than a dozen people firing at where I was hiding. With no way to leave cover without getting hit, I waited for one of them to try attacking me. As soon as I saw one, I fired, only to have a different guy from a different angle shoot me in response.

  I got up and nodded to both of them, and flew towards the nearest spawn point. Maybe if I hurried I could join my friends.

  I passed them walking towards the enemy clinic and sent them a signal that I would join them as soon as I waited out my sixty second time out. I landed, waited for the timeout to end, then ran for where I saw them.

  This time, as a group, and with another group joining us, we managed to clear out the people at the clinic. As they had died during a legitimate siege of the clinic, neither side could use it as a respawn point at that moment, so they were forced to run two hundred meters away to respawn. By the time they had returned, they found that we had seized the clinic and they had to try and retake it, which they failed at.

  An hour later we were out on patrol when Randy got hit by a sniper. Liza, Pedro, and myself saw where he was shooting from and fired at that area, but none of us hit him. We dove for cover and he started firing again.

  As Randy made his way back to that clinic we had captured, the Liberators having taken most of the others since, we kept trying to hit the guy, but none of us managed to do so. Eventually, I was the last one left. I decided to run for the building and see if I could get close enough to hit him. I slung my rifle over my back and ran for the edge of the building. He fired a round at me but it missed by less than a few centimeters.

  I made it to the base of the building, where he wouldn’t be able to get an angle on me, and thought about how I would get up there. Should I try storming in, or try surprising him by scaling the building?

  That’s when I heard him yell from the roof. “It’s over Occupier! I have the high ground.”

  Seriously, he wanted to crack a joke right now? Well, I guess I could respond properly, at least. “You underestimate my power!” I called back.

  “Don’t try it.” He said loudly. Now I knew that he would at least let the meme play out and wouldn’t shoot me before I could go up there. Well, I might as well do what the meme demanded. I took a few steps away from the building, crouched down, and jumped as high as I could, angling to land on the roof. My jump carried me up eleven meters, soaring over the top of the nine meter building. When I got to the top of my arch, however, and was at my slowest speed, he drew a pistol and shot me four times in the chest.

  While the impact didn’t injure me, it pushed me backwards enough that I landed on the edge of the roof instead of the meter or two in that I hoped for. I started falling backwards and was considering using Flight to not fall when the man reached out and grabbed my arm, pulling me up to the roof.

  “Seriously?” he asked. “You know a 40 year old movie well enough to quote it, but forgot what happened to the guy whose role you were playing?”

  I shrugged. “Thought the ranged weapons would change things.”

  The buzzer sounded, telling us that the fight was over, and we headed back to the main meeting location. We talked on our way back. It turns out Mike was an army veteran sniper, and therefore had a good bit of experience in dealing with that exact situation. None of his enemies had tried to jump at him quite like that, however.

  We exchanged numbers in case I wanted to do another one of these competitions, and I met back up with Randy and Liza. The Liberators had won the last round, making the competition a tie.

  Randy wanted to stay to have a few beers with the others, but Liza and I decided to leave, returning his equipment to his truck before doing so. It was already 17:27, so she wanted to go get something good to eat and head home. Randy would stay there and drink for a while before driving home. Instead of the one hour per drink minimum wait from BQ times, for someone at Randy’s level, early Foundation, the wait was closer to five minutes per drink, making it hard for him to get drunk without very heavy drinking.

  Liza and I flew back to the city. The entire time we were flying back she acted like she wanted to say something, but even after we stopped and grabbed a couple of pizzas, one each, she hadn’t said it yet. I eventually landed in front of the door to her apartment, and she said what she was thinking. “Look, I know we just basically fought a war, and I’m all sweaty, but I still haven’t been able to slow my heart rate. It was just so exiting and new.”

  “I can teach you a meditation to slow it.” I responded, not getting what she was saying.

  “No, that’s not what I was saying. Um…” she waited for a few seconds to gather her thoughts. “Do you want to come up and eat with me? Maybe burn off some of that extra energy?”

  I was about to say something about that defeating the purpose of buying two pizzas and that we should probably find a gym if we wanted to burn off some energy, then I realized that she likely didn’t just want someone to talk to. Had I seen someone do the same thing with Dave? “Yeah, sure, I can do that.” I followed her up to her place and threw the pizzas on the table just seconds before she started throwing her clothes on the floor.