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“First to fifty kills wins,” I call to Sabrina, to annoy her.
“I’m aware,”she hisses.
It’s four vs. four, each of us paired up with three random teammates.
From the moment we spawn, I’m hunting for Sabrina.
InHalo, the key to winning is to have a high kill-to-death ratio. You want to murder as many members of the opposing team as possible before taking a bullet yourself.
I’m staying in close proximity to my teammates because smart teams stick together.
As soon as we spot the opposing team, I start hurling grenades. You can chuck them before you get close enough to shoot, and if you’re precise enough, you can bounce grenades off objects and even around corners.
I hear Sabrina curse, and I know I must have hit her shield. She’s not dead though. Before I can close in and shoot her with my pistol, she bolts and disappears.
Sneaky little bastard—she knows it’s a battle she can’t win, two-against-one with my teammate close by.
She’s a fucking shadow, not sticking with her team at all, but running across the map solo, constantly changing positions, picking off stragglers then melting away again.
My team is still winning. We’re up 24-20, because I’m leading the group like a phalanx. I get the gravity hammer and rack up six kills in a row, though none are the person I most want to smash.
“Where are you hiding?” I mutter.
Sabrina can hear me—we’re only two feet apart. But she stays silent, only the clicks of her sticks telling me that she’s in motion, not hunkered down somewhere.
I see a shimmer of red out of the corner of my eye. Sabrina bursts from cover, ambushing me under the protection of an over-shield. Impervious to my hammer blast, she shoots me twice in the face.
I’m out for ten seconds—the longest ten seconds of my life. Sabrina uses my absence to go on a fucking rampage. She kills two of my teammates in the first three seconds, an achievement the game commemorates by declaring “DOUBLE KILL!” at top volume.
“You hear that?” Sabrina calls.
I grit my teeth, watching the seconds count down until I’m back in the game.
“TRIPLE KILL!” the game announces, as Sabrina murders my last remaining teammate.
“I think that was all of you,” Sabrina says, so smugly that I have to restrain myself from karate-kicking the barrier between us.
The moment I’m back in the game, I sprint for Sabrina. I’m determined to blast her shield off and send her to purgatory in revenge. Catching sight of her, I lob the most beautiful grenade right at her feet, bouncing it straight into her shield, cracking it off like a cantaloupe.
Now she’s back to normal, unprotected, me against her. I’d planned to follow up that grenade with a pistol shot to the face, but Sabrina is a fucking jumping bean. She won’t stay still for even an instant, leaping and darting through 3-D space, up and backward and around, using her grappling hook to yank herself around like Spider-Man.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I laugh, trying to blast her.
Sabrina responds by grappling directly over me and shooting me in the back.
I can’t fucking believe it.
I’m out again. Sabrina celebrates by raining terror on my hapless team for ten excruciating seconds.
This time when I respawn, I’m determined to get the over-shield myself. It’s due to regenerate in twenty seconds, and I know exactly where to find it. I jog to the spot, arriving precisely when the game announces, “OVER-SHIELD INCOMING …”
I crouch under cover, knowing better than to run out in the open before it appears, counting down silently in my head.
With two seconds remaining, I break cover.
Only for Sabrina to catapult down from the ramparts and land right on top of me, smashing me in the back of the head with her rifle.
Instant kill.
