The guys and I sat in the ready room, taking over the sofa from a half-depleted and exhausted look squad of toughs who looked like they’d just barely pulled off their win.

Looking around the room, I’d been right about the order. Half of the teams were gone now, the rest here covered in dust, dried blood, one duo of lumberjack-looking dudes even covered in soot.

On the screen I could see, too, that all of the monster gates stood open and empty. All except one. Also, on the platform, one of the women battle cheerleaders or whatever the hell they were called was missing. Searching through the dirt, my eyes spotted a crumbled form, a leather skirt just barely peeking out of a muddy patch darkened by blood.

Jeez. What the hell is their game up there? I wondered. I knew they were NPCs, basically robots, but the whole thing just made no sense to me. I’d see if I couldn’t find out more about it later whenever possible.

The frat boys rose up first, our above ground view showing the dirt oscillate and open in a circle, the entry platform rising. It leveled out and, while the rest looked uneasy, I saw Beer Pong standing tall and proud, his face and eyes hard. 

I’m not going to lie. Had known him for, what, an hour? But I felt some pride then and there.

The announcer rolled through his theatrics, growling and emphasizing all sorts of gory nonsense that the dummy NPCs in the crowd absolutely ate up.

Then there was commotion on the platform. One of the battle cheerleaders kicked out. The other dropped and swept her legs . . . all the way off of the platform. She screamed as she fell, but silenced on impact, an AI-emphasized crunch marking her demise. 

Right at the feet of Beer Pong and his crew.

“No way man. No. That ain’t right. That ain’t right,” one of the boys moaned. His face had gone pure white. From the stands people began to laugh.

“Call them breakfast cause those dudes are toast!” one heckler catcalled. I tried to find the jerk in the audience, but with my limited view, even with all of these vidscreens and angles to choose from, I just couldn’t do it.

Another one of the boys looked like he was going to puke. A hollow feeling ran in my stomach. Had we just prepped them for nothing?

But Beer Pong stood straight and strong. “We’re Sigma Alpha Phi, and we never die. We’re gonna stomp these dicks and drop these bombs. Gonna rock this place like another Vietnam. We’re heavy as a war dog and hard as steel. So you better back off cause we’ve come for the kill.”

The arena silenced. Then people began to cheer. Behind Beer Pong, Chad came up and laid a hand on his shoulder, whispering something into the dude’s ear. My sense of pride returned. Beer Pong would have made a good scout.

Now the other platform was rising. On it we got to see the enemy, guys in leather jackets and pants wielding an assortment of bats and chains. Nothing too scary.

Then energy crackled around them, spurting from an unseen figure in the center and I felt my jaw drop. That was magic, it had to be. The electric white blue fizzle of game lightning coursed over them all as they glared and made over-the-top evil villain faces at Sigma Alpha Phi. 

I groaned, thinking of Doug. How dangerous would he be when he got to higher level?

On cue, I got a message prompt from the man.

So like these bead curtains, man, they’re super sexy. But this lady doesn’t wanna sell them for less than a hundred. Is that cool?

I snarled. Dragon and Blunt shot me worried glances.

Doug, listen to me. No more buying anything til I get back and see what the hell you have been doing. Also, we’ve got a magic problem here. Long story short, found other humans like us. Real people. And they got themselves into a bind. They’re about to fight a group that looks like it has a wizard. There’s lightning coming out of him into the rest of them and I don’t at all like the looks of any of this. Especially since I don’t understand it.

Time to earn your pay, buddy. What’s going on and what can they do about it?

On the screen the presenter had finally gotten to asking for their name and they responded in a voice amplified louder than even the announcer himself.

“We are Deathchomp and we’ve come for your children. ALL HAIL ODIN!”

Didn't make any sense to me but the crowd loved it. Especially when the gang opened up to show off their techmage at the center. Dude had one milky eye, stood about four feet tall, and wore his hair in long battle braids. Medieval-looking armor hid his body from sight, but it must have been a sight to behold because pure radiance shined out from all of its cracks and crevices. The metal itself snaked with lightning.

“Dude’s hardcore,” Dragon muttered in awe. I smacked him alongside the back of his head.

“No praising the enemy,” I admonished, even though he was right. I got another message from Doug.

Damn dude. Turned on the vidscreen, watching it now. This DeathNoob show is awesome. That guy is going to tear those Sigma guys up!

Doug was starting to piss me off.

Any ideas on what our guys there can do?

On the screen the match had begun. Just as drilled, Sigma Alpha Phi spread out to the ditches and barriers. Orange globs blasted out on the advancing group.

Picture perfect. But I couldn’t shake the bad feeling riding through my guts.

Deathchomp hadn’t spread out. Instead they were moving forward as a six-man glob, all sticking together, the Odin dude keeping in the center. And the lightning effect was still rolling.

That had to be their main battle strategy here.

Man, that’s a soak field. You guys have game stats up on your screens?

I looked about the room. We didn’t. Probably to keep us from metagaming future matches if we decided to stick around for another go.

That’s a negative. What are you seeing?

I waited a few moments. On the screen the globs hit two guys in the front and I saw them simply melt away with no apparent effect. One of the frat boys had equipped the Sambanator, I noted, seeing the dancing figure rise up over his head and giving away his position.

Without bullets flying I suppose it didn’t matter.

I’m seeing a loophole. Dude, listen, I’m gonna tell you game stats but expect me to be cut out at any second. I don’t think AI dude is going to appreciate what we are doing, and it will cut all comms.

Made sense. Part of me was relieved. I’d be spared more inane requests.

Center Dude has 1000 hp and tons of resistances. Water, Ice, Electric. Also has some neat buffs. Free movement, regeneration, etc. Soak field takes the damage and effects dealt to one guy and moves it to the caster. 

There wasn’t much time. I shot off a message to Beer Pong.

Thunder-muzzle and whiz-nukes. All of them. As fast as you can. Just target whoever you can hit easiest. The damage will trickle hard into the mage. I’m not sure if it will be enough to take him out - but enough damage all at once like that will definitely hurt like hell. And if Deus Ex is playing fair then I’m betting it will have some nasty system shock debuffs in play. Maybe even a system shock saving throw versus death.

I sent the message, saw it get received, and then the messaging console shut down.

MESSAGING CLOSED DURING COMBAT MATCHES.

Whatever. The plan was out, the boys had some good high damage first strike capability. All we could do now was sit back and pray.

I shared glances with the rest of the guys. They were tense. We were tense. Honestly the whole room was tense. I found myself wondering if any of these nano-constructs were rooting for team human.

Then I thought about a catman named Eric Joel and I walked back my hate a bit. I bet some of them were.

On screen Sigma Alpha Phi stepped out of hiding, popping sideways from the barriers and up from their ditches. Beer Pong had the Sanata Karuta armor on and the Thunder-Muzzle on his shoulder.

“Back blast area clear!” he yelled, just as I’d told him to. Without hesitation his thumb popped the trigger and a whirly-horde of mini-missiles, rockets, and straight up balls of fire blasted into the lead guy, a bearded man with a hairy chest bared open to the sky.

The others threw their whiz-nukes, holding them against their chests, then moving into a straight arm overhead throw. Again, drill perfect. Except for one.

One of them had try to baseball pitch Deathchomp. I saw him jerk his nervous arms too loosely, as if he were trying for a fastball. The whiz-nuke slipped and fell into the ditch with him.

“Get out of there!” I found myself yelling at the screen.

As the rest of Sigma Alpha Phi popped back to cover, the frat boy screamed. A second later, all the vid screens were simply pure white lights, then a forest of miniature mushroom clouds, most of them a decent radius, showing hits on all of Deathchomp.

But it looked like enough. As the dust and smoke settled the vids showed the techmage down, the energy out. And why not? He’d been fed multiple lines of heavy damage from every single point of damage any of his team experienced. The more I thought about it, the crappier their plan seemed to be.

What a bunch of morons!

Beer Bong and Chad were out, both of them in their respective armors, gobbing down thugs to the dirt before they could even figure out what happened. Behind them the rest of the frat boys followed, equipping rifles we’d lent them for ballistic death-dealing.

My eyes slipped to the collapsed trench, where the one had nuked himself. There was no movement.

Another human lost, I thought. There wasn’t anything more I could have done though. There’d be casualties all throughout this damn thing, all the way up to when I shut Deus Ex down.

If I did.

On screen three of the thugs were already dead, but the techmage had gotten up and now was surrounded by some sort of green aura. Healing. I’d recognize it from anywhere. It was the same in all the games I’d played online. And whatever spell or card the mage was using had also freed his two remaining fellows from the dirt.

They’d changed weapons too, swapping over to massively awesome miniguns with slings that allowed the thugs to keep them steady at waist-level. I made a note of that — whatever that soak ability was, it didn’t work with people using ranged weapons.

I’d bet my life on that.

Their barrels circled, muzzle flash so constant that it might as well have been one constant gout of flame. I saw one frat boy go down, and then another, their blood leaping out from their bodies to arc through the air. Two of the remaining three hunkered down behind anything that would cover them.

Damnit! I clenched my fists, and noticed my battle guys doing the same. This was not going well at all.

I switched views to a different screen. This one seemed to be permanently on Beer Pong, and boy was he laying down vengeance on the techmage. The man had somehow sprinted through the hail of bullets and knocked Odin to the ground. He’d switched to the machine gun that Dragon gave him, the one that GhostFace had been using. The tripod was out and the barrel was beginning to glow hot, pumping rounds into his face at point-blank range, even as his magic kept trying to keep his hp up.

“Hell yeah!” Blunt shouted from next to me, jumping to his feet. I changed views to the screen he was watching, and I saw that the other two thugs had already run out of ammo. But not only that, Chad had taken the initiative and charged, knocking the first one down as he tried to stuff a rusty box into the back of his minigun, then popping a round into the second before just dropping his rifle and yanking the man’s minigun from his hands.

The NPC looked at him dumbly and I wondered if there existed a 'surprised' debuff in this game system. Because that was the look of a man who had no idea about the how of what just happened.

Chad tossed it aside and delivered a devastating uppercut, knocking the NPC to the ground. He followed by jumping on the man’s chest, then strangling him.

His buddy died getting up as the third frat boy peppered him with rifle shots. The techmage died as the healing aura faded. And, finally, the last of Deathchomp faded quietly in the dirt, his nanobot windpipe surely collapsed in on itself.

They’d done it. They’d won.

But at the cost of three lives. And what damage had they delivered in return, really? They’d fake-killed a bunch of robots.

I felt my face get hot.

“Let’s collect those bastards and go home. No second match.”

Blunt pointed up at a screen and I followed his finger. The last of the animal cages was opening.

I froze, shaking my head. No way. I was trapped here with my men, watching the extinction of the human race happen one man at a time and there was nothing I could do about it. I watched, horrified.

The three clustered together, two now wielding miniguns while Beer Pong hung onto GhostFace’s machine gun, somehow managing it without the tripod.

Damn. Dude was strong.

Spread out! I yelled in my head. Spread out and mitigate area of effect damage. One grenade or dragon breath or whatever is gonna get you all killed!

The cage door was fully raised now, and from it stepped something that didn’t really surprise me, all things considered. It was a mini-Godzilla.