"Haha! Look at that! It looks exactly like Karen's face!"
Maggie stared quizzically at the baboon that Joe pointed to.
"I...I guess it does kind of look like it."
"Wait a minute, I'm going to take a picture. He's going to have fun with it later."
The man waved to a drone hovering in the sky. He stood in front of the monkey's cage, grinning goofily and raising his two thumbs to his face. The machine understood his intention, took the photo, and immediately emailed it to Joe. He was eager to see the results, but didn't immediately run to the nearest public data terminal. This was probably a wise decision, as the humorous nature of the photo is somewhat undermined by the hostility boiling over Maggie's face. Seeing this would definitely ruin his good mood.
"There you go. Hopefully it captured your pout, too. You're surprisingly cute when you're angry, you know?"
Maybe not.
"My anger pleases you, which is somewhat of a relief," she replied flatly.
"Is that... is that sarcastic?"
Sarcasm is a form of satire. Sarcasm is a form of lying. It's offensive that you would even think that I would resort to such tactics. "
However, sarcasm is not lying. Well, I guess you said the exact opposite of what you wanted to say, but you also conveyed it with the right expression and tone. Do you understand me?"
Maggie blinked at Joe, trying to understand his unclear argument.
"So by making the deception obvious, it's no longer considered deception?"
"Completely correct!"
"The concept seems dangerously subjective."
"Oh, yeah. A lot of people can't read sarcasm. Especially when they have to read it. Well, I mean in text messages. A lot of it has to do with body language and stuff like that."
"Curious. So, would these animals be considered a caricature?"
"Uh... I mean, I've never really thought about it, so... maybe?"
"Satire is a more complex topic than I initially thought. I had to look into it in more detail."
Joe felt good because he had managed to cheer Maggie up a bit, if her soft expression was any indication. Admittedly, her "thinking face" didn't look happy, but it was a definite improvement from the lifeless scowl she'd had for the past twenty minutes. Of course, he understood her frustration. The girl was excited to see some real animals, but what she found were robot replicas. Joe didn't know how she could tell, because he definitely couldn't. In fact, he didn't know until she pointed it out. Whoever built these terrifying robots has gone all out. Not only do they look like the character, they act completely like the real thing. They even have wet tongues, steamy breath, and all the other observable vital signs of a creature. It's impressive in its own way.
Maggie, on the other hand, was less grateful. Yes, these lifelike machines are products of precision engineering and perform their functions flawlessly, but they are also inherently fallacious. The biggest problem is that the zoo's promotional materials fail to mention that their animals are not real. Of course, it makes sense for them to use alternatives. The machines don't require employee supervision or care, and any maintenance they require is likely to be cheaper than the food, medicine, and other expenses incurred by a real machine. The big problem is, none of these creatures are Butte
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D-4's native creatures, which means they have to be imported from other planets, while replicas can be made locally.
Having said that, even if she understood that it was logical, it didn't stop the zoo's inherently deceptive nature from irritating her greatly. Especially after she had her high expectations dashed for the second time in one day.
"Let's go see the Terran snake exhibit. I'm sure Azgod 'Kala
Will be excited to meet his relatives!"
Yet the relentless cheerfulness of her companion rubbed off on her. Maggie doesn't understand where his boyish laugh comes from, which only adds to Joe Mulligan's convincing mystique. Just when she thought she had a handle on this curious man's thought process, he displayed a whole new set of puzzling behaviors.
What she didn't know was that what brought Joe so much joy was that he was actually dating. He'd never really thought about it until today, and although he and Maggie were in some kind of weird intergalactic pact that he chose to interpret as a romantic relationship, they didn't really do much as a couple. Sure, they played a lot of games together, discussed a variety of topics, got to know each other, and generally spent a lot of fun time in each other's company, but that didn't count. These are all things Joe and the lads can do, but taking a pointless photo in front of a robot monkey is the kind of stupid thing a couple would do.
"Oh my gosh, these are some long scarves," he exclaimed when he saw the ball python. "Thick, too. They could break me like a twig if they wanted to!"
"Anacondas don't kill people through squeezing force," Maggie corrected him. "They either suffocate the prey or cut off blood circulation to the brain. It's a hunting technique that relies more on accuracy and knowledge of anatomy than brute force."
"That's cool, too, per se. Do you think your little one will learn that one day?"
"It's a bit of a shame, but from what I've seen online, Azgod Kalar's subspecies has had most of its ferocious parts surgically removed."
This little snake is a round python - a genetic offshoot of its larger cousin. They have been specially bred and genetically modified to make them suitable for humanity's latest journey into space. They are smaller and more docile than ball pythons, although they do retain some of their endearing aggressiveness. It's also worth noting that they are far from the only animals to receive this treatment. Over the past few centuries, humans have forcibly adapted to more than 100 species in similar ways as part of Project Buddy. This effort is actually part of a serious effort to stop people from taking in and adopting particularly dangerous alien life forms just because "they look kinda cute."
Humans are weird like that.
"No. He'll grow big and strong," Joe said with unfounded confidence. "How could he not love having such an amazing owner looking after him?"
"That's my hope too."
Maggie smiled for the first time since entering the den of deception known as the Zoo. This was also the first time she said the word "hope" so naturally. She's looking forward to Azgod 'Kala
The physical and mental development of a young reptile as it grows up, and not just because she wants to study the process. Maybe it was a side effect of that ill-advised fear experiment, but her attachment to the little guy had definitely grown. She's well aware that this increased emotional investment will cause a lot of unpleasantness when this mortal inevitably dies, but that's her future self's problem. Her only concern now was to fully enjoy the company of the little snake that was slipping its front half out of the girl's left sleeve and coiling it gently around her thumb.
Of course, so does Joe, including the finger-grabbing part. Normally, he was more reserved when it came to skin-to-skin contact, but today, he seemed noticeably less hesitant to grab her hand and pull her to visit various exhibitions. He was so excited about this "girlfriend experience" that he visited the same exhibit multiple times without realizing it. He could have spent the day like this, but he and Maggie had to catch the subway. All told, the zoo visit only lasted about an hour in total before the couple had to leave.
The return trip wasn't much different than the first. The only obvious difference was that Joe slept well during the two-hour train journey, while Maggie was actively researching the game she was about to play. When he returned to his apartment, he felt energized enough to continue practicing virtual space combat. However, an unexpected problem awaited him. Quite unexpected for a loose man like Joe. Any ordinary person would have foreseen this particular development and taken steps to address it.
When the couple returned to his apartment, they found an official-looking notice taped to the door for all to see.
"Ah, nonsense," he cursed. "I guess the principal discovered your, uh, pod module."
It was only a matter of time before the woman in charge of the skyscraper noticed the tampering. According to the document, she was tipped off by some unusual electrical readings coming from the residence. Mrs. Janice Beckett, as they called her, was very stern. She and Joe had never met, but her reputation was well known. No doubt she was furious when she discovered that one of the residents had gone behind her back and failed to fill out the proper paperwork.
Thankfully, her actual powers are very limited, so she can't do something as drastic as expulsion. The most severe punishment she could give was to reduce Joe's pocket money from fifty pounds to thirty pounds for the next six months. She also told him that the lifetime warranty on his full-immersion Pod 3000™ had expired, but he wasn't worried at all. He has Maggie's technical wizardry for all his mechanical needs.
Regardless, the odd couple entered V-Life within minutes. Joe activated his underwater yoga blaster. Since she technically shares his pod, Maggie can join his game as a guest without having to purchase the title separately. They both appear in Joe's virtual hanger. This is a staging area where players can prepare their ships and equipment before engaging other teams in battle. Joe's other team members were busy with various trivial matters, so it took a while for them to receive his call for a meeting.
Benny appears as a fairly generic fighter pilot, while Cullen is what he calls a "retro/space pirate fusion." Maggie was somewhat impressed with his creativity, but she doubted the eyepatch, prosthetic legs, and hook hand would hinder his game. The last member of their unit chose to appear as a military commando, wearing body armor, camouflage uniforms and armed with a fully automatic assault rifle. He bears a striking resemblance to the soldiers who tried and failed to prevent Watcher Maraslak from entering their reality.
"Magazine, right?" shouted the stranger. "Nice to meet you." I'm Huey. "
"Hubert Peterson. A hopeless nerd so obsessed with military technology that he would sell his own mother just to fly in a gunship."
The girl's answer was exactly the same as Joe's exact words describing Huey a few minutes before, leaving everyone stunned.
"Ah," she realized her mistake. "I apologize. Force of habit."
"Ha! Hahaha!" Karen laughed. "Good job, Mags!" Ahahahaha!"
"Oh-hoh," Benny managed to hold back. "The same way she said it. It's like Huey is a gunslinger with a scientific basis. "
"Sorry, man," Joe apologized. "I'll ask for this."
"You shameless guy. Next time I see you, I'm going to slap you."
It's hard to tell what the guy's face looks like with the armored helmet on, but at least his tone suggests he's in good spirits.
"I wouldn't do this if I were you. If you did, my girlfriend would be angry, and she's scary when she's angry. Here, see?"
Joe then shared the photo of the baboon he had taken earlier, which he had projected into the air in front of him. It's in this photo that Maggie's angry mouth stands out.
"I don't know, man," Huey said conflicted. "I don't know if she's going to rush out and hide in a corner and sulk, or if she's going to eviscerate someone with her bare hands."
"More importantly, I recognized that ugly face," Benny said, pointing to the monkey in the camera lens and then to Karen.
"Oh, yeah!" said the confused pirate. "Isn't that the one from Dave's 157 Zoo? The one where Uncle Ryan works?"
"Yeah. Maggie and I went there to fix his pod. Well, yeah. Long story short, it turned out he was just exhausted from our endless training and wanted to leave, so he made up a Knott's Glue jam story."
There was silence as they processed the sudden news. They looked at each other, wondering what the others thought. It was an awkward situation, but at least none of them were particularly angry about it—just disappointed, and maybe a little guilty. They then have a brief debate about their friend's breach of trust, but Joe's completely relaxed atmosphere ensures that Ryan's behavior isn't exaggerated by some pointless drama. Finally, they agreed that everyone was at least a little at fault, and they began discussing who would take his place.
"So I brought Maggie here. She'll take his place," Joe announced proudly.
His three friends looked at each other again, silently confirming their agreement.
"I don't know, man," Benny said loudly. "I'm sure Muggs means well, but has she played this before?"
"I didn't," she admitted.
"Yeah, it's a big problem. U
-Yo-Bee is not newbie friendly. Don't like it at all. "
Indeed, between the variety of ship choices, loadout options, and complex controls, players will need to spend a lot of time and effort learning the game. It's a team-based experience, which also means that, in some ways, it's better to play with a smaller guy than a heavier guy.
"I studied 42 different tutorials and guides detailing the game's features, content, and mechanics," the girl declared. “I will have no trouble putting this knowledge into practice.”
Everyone looked to Joe for confirmation. He knows best if she can back up her bombast, and they trust him not to shoehorn her into their little social circle just to be with his girlfriend. All three of them knew that Joe was a shameless fellow who would rather make a fool of himself than inconvenience anyone. And he readily admits his mistakes, something he must do with alarming regularity.
"Well, now that I think about it, that might be a little tricky," he crossed his arms and looked at her. "Don't get me wrong, Maggie, you're a quick learner and you have some great skills in terms of reflexes and accuracy. The problem is that you're not good at strategizing or working in a team."
The girl was speechless because this was Joe's honest assessment of her abilities as a player after watching her browse the interactive media library.
"I have an idea, we could make her the rover instead of Cullen," Huey suggested.
"Ugh, that means I have to support you!" the man complained. "I hate playing 'fake support'."
"It's okay, if you'll be the tank, I can do it," Benny interjected.
"Yeah, okay."
"Sounds good, Maggie?" Joe asked. "Do you think you're qualified for the rover's position?"
Although the game is a hyper-realistic space combat simulator, competitive matches in open space are very rare. The virtual battlefields are either filled with obstacles and hazards, such as asteroids or nearby mines, or they take place on giant, cavernous asteroids filled with tunnels and passages. This makes navigation and flanking critical, and it's the rover's job to prevent enemies from sneaking up on the rest of the team. This is the perfect "lone wolf" type, which is what Maggie seems to be, based on Joe's description of her play style.
"Good," she agreed. "I agree to the solitary vigil."
With the end of the role reorganization, the team immediately entered the state. At the beginning, they played against some AI-controlled opponents to let Maggie get used to the game. She was very incompetent in her first few games, but quickly improved as she got used to piloting her starfighter. Calling her a "quick learner" is a tragic underestimation of her processing abilities. Within a few hours, she had completed evasive maneuvers that made her virtually unbeatable in a one-on-one fight. She is even able to take on two opponents at the same time, albeit with understandable difficulty. Her accuracy is equally impressive, despite the different speeds and angles at which her craft fly.
Because her mechanics were correct, the team focused on fixing her poor strategy flaws. Maggie sometimes loses the big picture, which results in her team being unable to complete their objectives, even though she wins the battle. Furthermore, like in a certain fighting game, she was fooled by every trick and feint that Joe's team threw at her. For example, one would fire a suppressive volley, forcing her to duck into another's line of fire. Maggie is not too offended by these underhanded tactics because she recognizes that in war and combat, misinformation is a powerful weapon. Although she dislikes this deception and refuses to use it, she does not feel sorry for others using it.
All told, Maggie was able to practice in time-accelerated virtual reality for nearly two weeks before the big day. While others call it "The Big Game," it was actually the annual event of Blastopia that year, a massive galactic race that spanned several months. Teams compete to be declared the champion of their respective metropolitan cities, who then must compete for the planet championship, and then the star cluster championship. If they do that, they advance to the national level, culminating in the grand show-off of the honor and glory of being named Galaxy Champions.
Joe's team had no such desire. In "Blastopia," a group of people from Butte
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There is no way a "people's farm" little guy like the D-4 can defeat military squadrons and space pirates. Their goal is to reach the top eight of Super City Dave-156, which is already tough. With more than 100 teams competing, they had to win four consecutive best-of-five knockout games to get to this point. Thankfully, they're unlikely to face any big names in these local preliminaries, so they feel like they have a good chance of success.
Joe, Culle
, Be
y, Huey and Maggie came to the virtual meeting area of the Dave-156 competition. This is a huge room with an orbital station theme. There's enough seating for thousands of people, and the ridiculously high walls are lined with plenty of monitors for spectators to watch the action live. Competitors will also wait here until game time, when game officials will call them on. As the person in charge of registration, and the team's official captain, Huey chose "Three Fires" as their team's name. Looking at the lineup, their first opponent appears to be Dangelino Tonglino.
As the name suggests, this group turns out to be a joke team who want to make themselves into some cheap jokes. It turns out that their sense of humor is also very crude. They emerged with five pink-dyed human ships outfitted for maximum self-destruction. Needless to say, T
iple Misfi
e won easily 3-0. While it was a free win, the nature of it left a foul taste in all of their mouths. Except, of course, Maggie. She completely understands the vulgarity of the situation, but she chooses to address an incredibly puzzling question: Why would anyone show up to a game with the intention of losing?
Thankfully, the second game was a decent one. Peter and his friends tried their best, but they were nowhere near as good as T
iple Misfi
e practiced that way so much, it was obvious. They manage to eke out a win, but one of them misses Joe's engine with a lucky shot, causing his ship to spin out of control and collide with Benny's support ship. Without the latter's energy and ammunition supply, players can only crush other enemies through consumption. They lost miserably in the other three rounds, which was far more satisfying than the farce of the first game.
As they entered their third game, morale was high, only to find that their opponents - the Galaxy Murder Force - had adopted a so-called "leave" strategy. "U
-Yo-Bee's generally accepted lineup is fairly balanced. There's a nimble rover manning the flanks, and that's Maggie's job. Cullen is the tank for his team, which includes piloting a heavy helicopter gunship that serves as mobile cover and weapons platform. Huey and Joe are offensive interceptors that put pressure on the enemy. Last but not least, Be
y is in charge of the support ship, responsible for keeping everyone in the fight, while also hindering the opposing team through cyber warfare attacks.
However, the Galactic Murder Force took an unconventional approach and deployed five gunships. Protected by thick armor and high-capacity force fields, this is a formidable firepower. Their main drawback is mobility, but this doesn't seem to matter as they can reduce any enemy target they encounter to scrap within seconds. That's some scary stuff when you consider that a ship typically takes between 1 and 5 minutes of combat to destroy.
Without investigating their opponents in advance, the "Three Fires" team was caught off guard in the first game and suffered a disastrous defeat. The team held a frantic strategy session during the two-minute pause between rounds, trying to figure out how to deal with this absurdity. The obvious solution is to use hit-and-run tactics and slowly wear down the enemy's gunships. The problem with this is that it takes so long that the 30 minute time limit is used up, resulting in a tie. Since the enemy has won, a draw is equal to a loss.
Surprisingly, Maggie gave them the answer. When a team loses a round, they are allowed to change their equipment between rounds in an effort to counter their initially under-equipped opponents. This girl took advantage of this rule and swapped her agile combat-class ship for a navy-class ship. This type of ship is best described as a massive ion cannon with several engine bolts on the side. It was sometimes used in ten-on-ten or twenty-on-twenty games, but never in competitive five-on-five games. Not because it's prohibited by the rules, but because its limited mobility and lack of armor make it easy for Rovers and Interceptors to take it out. Others in the Triple Fire had all but forgotten that such ships existed and therefore did not consider them until Maggie pointed out that they were a logical counterattack to the enemy's strategy.
The Galactic Murder Force also ignored the presence of the Arbalite, and their gunships were completely destroyed by Maggie's Arbalite before they could reach effective range. The massive cannon was so destructive that it blasted through any asteroid they tried to use for cover. In the third round, they completely abandoned the non-meta combination and returned to the standard combination. The winning team can't change their ammo, so they think targeting the fragile cannon will give them an easy win.
But that didn't happen. galactic murder force underestimates a
The proficiency of the Balest pilots was such that their support ships were annihilated within seconds of the engagement opening. They did manage to blow up Maggie's ship, but the rest of the Three Fires were able to clean them out without any trouble. Those back-to-back defeats were so humiliating that Galaxy Murder Force - who, by the way, was talking crazy nonsense on the public comms channel for the first round - immediately canceled the game.
Since they unexpectedly ended the game early, the "Three Fires" returned to the lobby to wait for the next game.
"marvelous!"
"Bloody brilliance!"
"Eh heh, heh heh!"
As soon as they entered the general audience area, they were suddenly greeted with a small burst of cheers and applause. It’s not often you see a player of this caliber in a five-on-five game, let alone to such spectacular effect. As a result, their performances earned them some fans. One of the monitors even showed a highlight reel of Maggie's decisive blow at the start of the third round. The girl herself has received a lot of attention, not only for her unique acting skills, but also for her avatar. After all, her half-woman, half-terrible look is completely unique.
Of course everyone felt good about it all, but Maggie was especially happy to experience something new.
That is the thrill of victory.
feels good.
