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Mirage hated when the ring closed in in Fuel Depot. There were just too many angles to watch for, too many buildings to hole up in, and too many points of interests to rotate from. Ending up there before the ring caught up usually meant fighting too many squads at once without a break in between.
At least one of the teams had Pathfinder on it. He and Mirage were both perched on separate roofs across from the other, using the back wall and AC units for cover, keeping an eye on each other through the thick plexiglas. Every so often, they’d peek out and fire a few shots off, sometimes hitting, most of the time not.
Once, Mirage had gotten him good, the sound of Path’s shields shattering after two direct hits with his Wingman. Pathfinder immediately fell back into cover, but he upped the volume on his speakers to call out, “Amazing shots, friend!”
Mirage laughed and ducked behind his own cover to reload the pistol. “You’re not so bad yourself, for a bot!”
He couldn’t see him anymore, but he could still hear Pathfinder’s cheerful, “Thank you!”
Shaking his head, Mirage settled down to check his ammo. He could stand to continue his and Path’s weird little competition, poke him down some more to whittle away at his meds, but he wanted to be sure he had enough for the last fight. With the way things were, it was going to be a big one. He could see the alarming red glow of Wattson’s fences through the windows of the building Pathfinder had been standing on. There was no sign of Wraith, but Mirage knew she’d be close if not already knocked out of the match.
Caustic, his other teammate, had hunkered down in the smaller, single-floored house off to Mirage’s right. Every door was blocked off, denying entry to any enemies - and teammates, something Mirage was sure he did on purpose.
There wasn’t any movement anywhere else in Depot, but there were two more teams left that weren’t accounted for. Capitol City was close, but the amount of space that wasn’t being burnt up by the ring was small. If both teams were out there, they would have clashed by now, thought the only shots Mirage heard so far were his own and Pathfinder’s.
Crypto had muttered something about hunting them down a while ago. He’d hopped up onto a desk left behind on the top floor of Mirage’s building, tossed out his drone, and focused on the holo screen in front of him without another word. That had been about ten minutes ago and he still hadn’t said anything yet. Every so often, Mirage would catch sight of a green light zipping in between the little valley separating Depot from Capitol City, so he assumed the chase was still on.
Mirage looked back out over his AC unit and saw Pathfinder doing the same. Quickly, before he could tell himself no, Mirage fired his Wingman once, twice, and didn’t find his mark. Pathfinder ducked back again, anyway.
“Those were warning shots!”
Behind him, through the open door, he could hear Crypto speak. “Gibraltar’s squad,” he announced shortly. “Racing the ring.”
“Loud and clear,” Mirage replied even though he knew Crypto couldn’t hear him. Anything the drone couldn’t see or hear, neither could Crypto, at least when the remote was active. And the drone was way out there, toward Capitol city right where Mirage had expected a team to be. All three teams accounted for.
Wait, four teams. There were four teams left.
That was probably why he could hear footsteps beneath him.
Mirage jolted up to his feet and sprinted back inside, flinging the door shut behind him before Pathfinder could get any crazy ideas. He headed for the stairs rather than alert Crypto, because it might have been Caustic, and he didn’t want to look stupid and panic over a false alarm that would aggravate both of his teammates.
The door downstairs swung open and Mirage could hear the hollow clanking of metal canisters, the sound of boots hitting metal too fast to be Caustic.
Bangalore, then. Mirage had spent too long running from that sound to not recognize it. It was a little lucky, though. He’d fought her enough times to know that she could get a little too eager for a kill; seeing a target with its back to her tunneled her vision. Mirage could handle her, he just needed to take the fight downstairs and away from his stationary teammate.
Who knows, maybe the fighting would draw Caustic out of his little rat hole and he’d actually contribute on his own volition for once. Doubtful, but a man could dream.
Mirage picked off a grenade from his belt and rolled it down the stairs after pulling its pin. He hoped the tapping of metal on metal was enough to grab the soldier’s attention, but if not the following explosion would do the trick. Mirage ran to the door at the opposite end of the room, using the noise to cover his movement, and vaulted over the railing.
He dropped in front of the open garage. Seeing no sign of Bangalore, he sent in a decoy to test the waters for him. It ran calmly in at its own pace and stopped the second it hit a wall, appearing as if it were looking out the window. He almost thought Bangalore had retreated to another building when a single shot cut through the decoy’s head and Mirage heard the ping of the tech on his left shoulder go out as the decoy shimmered away.
Still in the building then.
He pulled another grenade off his belt and threw it toward the corner he’d seen the shots come from. This time, Bangalore answered with the thumping pop of her smoke launcher dropping a thick cloud that smothered the first floor. Mirage cursed, hearing steps cross the room right before the grenade went off - steps that went toward the stairs.
Mirage ran into the smoke toward the sound, ignoring how he couldn’t see a foot in front of him, and pulled his Carbine out from where it’d been resting along his back. Once out of the garage area, the room beyond it was small so it didn’t take more than a few seconds to come across Bangalore through the haze; she let him know he’d found her by swinging out with the butt of her Scout. Mirage ducked under it narrowly and came back up using his shoulder, shoving Bangalore back. If it was hand-to-hand combat she wanted it, it was hand-to-hand combat she was not not going to get. She’d win that any day of the week. What Mirage needed was distance and enough room to aim without firing from the hip.
A blue light began to glow through the slowly fading smoke and Mirage heard the mechanical whirring of a Peacekeeper warming up just in time to lurch away. The spread was more controlled and easy to avoid thanks to the attached choke, but if Bangalore even got one shot in on him, he’d be in a lot of trouble.
The smoke was mostly cleared now and Bangalore rose her Peacekeeper to aim at the first figure she saw, blinking before she could pull the trigger. Mirage stood in front of her, one hand on his hip and grinning like he’d done something to be proud of. To his right, Mirage fired off a round from his finger gun, pretended to blow smoke from the barrel, and winked at her. In between the three of them, Mirage seemed to be checking the state of his hair in the reflection that wasn’t there in the glass of the window. Somewhere off in the back, Mirage waved over the shoulder of Mirage almost like he was trying to get her attention.
Bangalore scowled harshly. “Son of a - “
Behind her, Mirage thumped the back of her head with his Wingman. “Quite the prebi - predippa - “ He winced at himself, pulled the trigger. “Bad situation,” he finished as a purple death box clattered to the floor. “Bad situation, got it.”
“What happened?”
Mirage turned to see Crypto at the bottom of the stairs. He didn’t seem particularly panicked, just eyed the several Mirages that littered the room and the door that was blown out - presumably from one of the grenades he’d thrown earlier. Mirage looked around, too, like it was his first time seeing the chaos himself, then down at the crate Bangalore had left behind, and finally back to Crypto.
“Oh, nothing, honey,” he said, waving the other off to match with his put-on dismissive tone. “Just another one of those salespeople, don’t worry about it. I told them we weren’t interested.”
Crypto’s brow rose and if it wasn’t for the small, tiny snort, Mirage would have thought he wasn’t amused. “Good work.”
The smile dropped from Mirage’s face. “What?”
Crypto’s head tilted. “Good work,” he repeated slowly, coming off more like a question.
“Oh,” Mirage said, though he still sounded confused himself - or maybe shocked. He pulled himself together quickly. The showy grin returned and he shrugged. “Oh, yeah, well, of course. What else did you expect?”
Crypto’s curious look didn’t fade away, but he must have decided to spare Mirage any questioning. “Two teams left. We are almost through.”
Mirage nodded and pulled off his pack, mostly as an excuse to get out from under the scrutinizing gaze. “Right, yeah, just gotta patch myself up real quick.”
“Take your time,” Crypto told him, heading back for the stairs, hands in his pockets. “Caustic isn’t going anywhere.”
----=----
Usually when Crypto ventured out further into the drop ship it was when he knew no one else would be in the halls, and even then he liked to have his drone with him. Elliott jokingly referred to it as the “buddy system”. Any time Crypto would leave, Elliott would notice that the drone would lift from its docking station to follow him and he’d call out, “Wait, don’t forget your buddy!”, like maybe the drone was following him as a preference rather than just being programmed to track and follow Crypto’s position.
But that was Elliott, always putting personality and character into anything.
Today, though, that wasn’t possible. Not after it’d been shot down late in the match earlier that day. He’d been forced to leave it back at it his dorm, laid out on his desk waiting for repairs. Ones that would probably take up the majority of the evening if he got distracted, which he probably would. He still showered quickly, because it was best to get started even if it was tedious.
The mess hall was loud when he passed it and full enough that no one noticed him when he slipped by. They weren’t landing that night as the morning block schedule started tomorrow for the games, so everyone must have gathered to make a mess in the kitchen together rather than spend the night alone. Crypto remembered hearing Gibraltar mention Pathfinder’s stew during the day, but had shrugged off the invitation despite the general interest of seeing how well the robot could pull it off.
He was more interested in the quiet of the dorms. With Octane gone, there was bound to be plenty of it. Every time he even thought about the speakers Octane had set up, pointing out of his room, Crypto felt the corners of his mouth twitch down involuntarily. He never said anything, though, because Octane was nice. Actually, joining the Apex Games forced him to learn several different skills; most were for survival, like how to tune out a lot of incessant noises.
However, when he crossed into the threshold of the dorms, there was still music blaring through the sitting area - music that came from his room. Crypto ventured closer and stopped in the doorway, coming across the sight of Elliott stretched out on his bed, and waited for the other to notice him.
Which didn’t take too long. Elliott let the magazine he’d been reading drop onto his chest then onto his lap when he sat up to smile at Crypto. “Oh, hey. I figured you’d be sneaking around somewhere.” He leaned over to paw at the remote left on the desk and the thundering rock lowered into a more bearable volume. “I fixed your drone, by the way. There wasn’t much I could do about the casing - that’s one gnarly bullet hole. It’s up and running, though, but I would still run diagnostics. Anyway, I was wondering what you wanted to do for dinner, because everyone’s in the mess, but there might be some of Path’s stew leftover by the time they all leave. If not, though, lemme tell ya, I got the best recipe for - what? Oh god, what?”
“You fixed my drone?” Crypto asked, voice tight despite his efforts put into appearing unworried.
“Well.” Elliott threw a look over to where the drone was docked, its eye glowing a faint green. He looked back at Crypto nervously. “Well, now I’m not so sure because you’re acting like maybe me doing that wasn’t very intellella - a very good idea.”
Crypto moved over to the desk, picking up the drone’s control cube and effectively putting his back to Elliott. He didn’t want the other to see his expression or to let on how genuinely worried he now was. There were a dozen different kinds of firewalls he’d implemented into the drone’s software, ones that - if they weren’t passed through carefully enough - could brick the entire system entirely. It was for safety, mostly, since the drone stored quite a bit of data that he technically wasn’t supposed to have. If Elliott had hit even one of those, it was likely Crypto would have to reboot the entire drone. That could take hours depending on how severe the damage to the hardware was. Which, like Elliott had said, was pretty severe. If that were the case, he probably wouldn’t be able to use the drone in the games tomorrow, but -
But besides a slightly distorted screen, the remote communicated to the drone with maybe only a quarter of a second of lag. On the dock, its green light grew more intense and buzzed with power.
Crypto’s shoulders slouched and his head tilted quizzically.
“I’m sorry,” Elliott burst out suddenly. “I probably should have asked - or just, y’know, not even touched it. I just stopped by to wait for you and saw it laying there and thought I’d do you a favor, but - “
“It’s fine,” Crypto told Elliott, and also himself.
The other seemed hopeful, yet still a little unsure at the surprise lilting in Crypto’s tone. “Yeah?”
“Ya,” he assured, turning just enough to show off the functioning holo screen before he snapped the control cube shut. He wanted to ask how he’d managed it, but judging by the shocked expression on Elliott’s face Crypto imagined he wouldn’t get much of a straight answer. In a sense, the trickster still managed to create more work for him, since he now worried about the effectiveness of his security protocols, but he’d work on that later. For now, Elliott really had done him a favor. He pocketed the cube and aimed a small smile at him. “Thank you.”
For a split second, Elliott’s features lit up. A genuine, relieved smile curved his lips and Crypto knew that if something actually had been wrong, he wouldn’t have told the other. That scared him a little bit, implications of what that could mean caught him off guard, but in favor of enjoying Elliott Witt’s smile, he decided he just wasn’t going to think about it.
Because it was gone soon enough, replaced by a cheaper grin that still wasn’t bad to look at. “Don’t mention it,” Elliott told him with a nonchalant shrug. “All in a day’s work. Actually, mention it if you want to, I’m not gonna stop you.”
Crypto scoffed and rolled his eyes. “I think I’ll restrain myself for now.”
“If that blew you away,” Elliott continued, pointedly ignoring him. “Then wait until you get a load of my pork chops.” He paused and gave Crypto a considering look. “That kinda sounded suggestive and weird - but I promise, they’re really good.”
----=----
“We need to push someone.”
Mirage pulled back around the rock he’d been looking out from behind to level his teammate with an annoyed and disbelieving look. “Yeah. Yeah, okay, Wraith, let’s push someone - here’s our options.” He pointed down further into Thermal Station where he’d been watching the boxed in, electric hum of fences. “We got Wattson and Gib’s fortress of solitude, or - “ He then jerked his head to gesture up toward the train tracks high above them, “ - Bangalore’s fun and interactive ‘Shooting Fish in a Barrel’ game. Let’s just push one!”
Wraith narrowed her eyes at him, teeth gritting at the sarcasm. “The ring is closing, Mirage.”
“What do you want us to do, Wraith? We can’t go left without giving Bangalore a clear line of sight. There’s no way we head into Thermal without Gibraltar calling down his bombardment on us on our way in, and even if we did make it, we’d be walking straight into Wattson’s fences. She probably has her weird, generator thing set up, so it’s not like we can just flush them out with ‘nades. No matter what, we’re caught out.”
It really was an unlucky circle. They had landed out at Epicenter and had too many fights that lasted too long; most of the match was spent running and out-healing the burn of the ring. By the time they’d caught up and were able to catch their breath, they were left out of position as the other teams made it there before them. If it hadn’t pretty much cost them the game, Mirage would have found petulant joy in the fact that Wraith really couldn’t prove him wrong.
She looked over at Crypto, who’d been passively watching the argument and looking like he had no intentions to intervene. Wraith rose her brow very pointedly in a nonverbal question Mirage couldn’t catch.
Before he could snap, ask, What are you looking at him for?, Crypto shrugged one shoulder. “I’ll take care of it.”
That seemed to satisfy her, because she threw a thankful look up to the sky.
Mirage looked between them. “Take care of what?”
Neither answered him. Crypto’s hands pulled from his pockets and his focus went into the control cube, his drone buzzing to life and zipping around their cover.
Wraith stepped passed Mirage to follow it. “Get ready to move,” she told him, blue sparks crawling around her right arm. She clenched her fist and the air around it popped in a high pitched, suctioning sound. Left behind was a small, pulsing orb with a trail that connected it to Wraith as she took off in a sprint around the very edge of the ring. Straight for Thermal.
“Uh, team?”
The popping of a G7 above them startled Mirage and the dirt kicked up at Wraith’s feet, but she was too fast. Weaving in and out of boulders and using the haze of the storm to her advantage, she was able to avoid the shots until it was all downhill into the factory. Just above her was the green light of Crypto’s drone, keeping pace.
Then, the sky darkened after the low, rumbling call for mortars and Mirage heard himself crying out, “What was the plan, here?”
Before the ground started shaking and explosives started blasting the dirt in smoke and fire, Wraith slid down the decline for the extra momentum and kicked off the ledge right above the platform.
They’ve got a shot on you.
The barrel of Wattson’s Devotion glinted from the glow of the lava when it lifted to aim at her. She could hear the energy start to burn as it fired up.
You’re in danger - move!
“Phasing,” Wraith called into the comms, and with her left hand she pulled. Like a curtain, reality opened for her and she slipped right through.
A few seconds behind came the drone, its green aura already shifting to something much more intense, to blue, to white. It hung above the fortified platform, pulsing, pulsing, until it burst out in a massive wave. Fence nodes sizzled, circuits fried, and the electricity buzzing between them died out. The dome shield Gibraltar had thrown out at the first sign of an oncoming attack fanned and faded away. Even the Interception Pylon hidden behind a stack of crates went dark.
Wraith stepped back through and the second she did, she punched a hole to finish the tunnel. “Portal’s placed.”
The air distorted as something passed between it, and out from the roiling black exit came Mirage, Peacekeeper preemptively raised and ready to fire. Gibraltar’s shields shattered easily on the first hit, knocking him back against the platform’s railing and sending his own EVA-8 blast wide. On the second hit, Gib was down. Mirage cocked the shotgun and turned, but Wraith was already standing above the electrician’s deathbox.
“Only the two of them,” she remarked, twirling the kunai in a competent flip, showing off a job well done.
“That,” Mirage went to add, “must have looked so cool.”
Another surge announced Crypto’s arrival through the portal and Mirage rounded on him instantly.
“Babe, that was sick! That’s gonna be in the highlight reels for weeks, no doubt about it. I didn’t even know you could do that with your drone.”
Minutely, Crypto’s eyes widen and his mouth opened, but nothing came out. Quickly, he snapped it shut and just tried to school his expression when too much time had passed in between the intention to speak and actually speaking. Mirage still stared at him expectantly - shrewdly, even - so Crypto escaped by cutting his gaze away entirely, purposefully focusing on nothing but the deathbox Gibraltar had left.
Huh, Mirage thought, perhaps a little too excited. He sidled up next to the other to pick through some ammo for himself, but mostly so he could reach around Crypto to get a better look at his face and barely hid the fact that he was doing so. Mirage was utterly delighted to find that the apples of his cheeks were a good shade or two darker than usual and he couldn’t help but grin at the sight.
Crypto caught him staring soon enough and glared. He snatched the scope off of Gibraltar’s dropped EVA and ditched the box entirely, pulling the collar of his coat up higher to block Mirage out as he stormed away.
Mirage would have to make it up to him later, definitely. But for now? For now, he was just going to enjoy knowing that fact that maybe he wasn’t the only one who enjoyed showing off.