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Maxi whipped out her sword as the “zombie” cowered back and yelled, “I just died, man!”
Her office pool whirled around with their weapons at the ready. However, the situation quickly diffused when she realized he wasn’t undead at all, but rather wearing the clothes of an extra from The Walking Dead. There was a fresh yellow button-up on his desk.
“Nuub,” Patti scoffed.
“Just what the hell was that?” Maxi asked.
“A Rolly Chair of Resurrection,” Yancy said. “It’s standard equipment, though resurrection time does vary pending on Level. Doesn’t repair equipment, nor can it cure some deaths, like incineration.”
“The Rolly Chair of Resurrection ensures no employee can die via working themselves to death,” Terry said from her computer. “It cannot be stolen, lost, traded, bought or sold, and ownership reverts to the Company in the event of your permadeath or termination, whichever comes first.”
“Right, so I guess it’s my respawn point,” Maxi said. “What happens if I can’t make it back to my chair?”
“Don’t,” Daisuke said ominously.
Before she could inquire further, Terry’s voice announced from all the computers in the room at the same time, “Office Pool Lus3rs, you may proceed to the raid. All members of the team must take part. Failure to comply will result in XP penalties.”
Maxi secured her sword, attached her +1 Stapler of Binding to her belt, grabbed her phone, and stepped into line.
“Hurry up, Farhad,” Patti yelled.
The “zombie” took up the rear, scrambling to put on the fresh shirt. His wound was gone, just the taut skin of his well sculpted body. The elevator door opened, and while they filed through, she looked down at her phone.
QUEST (RAID): “DEFEAT ANTITRUST LAWYER.”
GOAL: Participate in daily defense of the Company.
TIME LIMIT: 13 days, 4:32:05 with the seconds counting down.
ALLY LIMIT: Office Pool.
REWARD: Based on your Office Pool’s Contribution.
FAILURE:
Tier 1-3: XP Penalties
Tier 4-6: XP and Credit Penalties
Tier 7-9: XP, Credit, and Stat Penalties
Tier 10-12: Immediate Termination.
Current life remaining: 11351903406/12000000000.
“What the hell?” Maxi said. “They are just going to kill everyone?”
“It’s happened before,” Farhad said. “I was Tier 9 when the last raid failed, now...”
The elevator lurched to a stop and opened to another floor of the building, where a receptionist wearing a red dress and a big dopey smile on her face waited at a desk. The words “Alfred, Alfred, and Alfred” hung on the red velvet wall behind her in large silver letters. There were two other Office Pools ahead of them. The first were power players with black metal power armor, a man in a posh Italian suit, two women in black bodysuits that seemed to blend into the shadows, and the Customer Care Advocate she had met named Benson. The other group wore yellow shirts like her Pool.
“Power players on the right, cannon fodder on the left,” the secretary directed traffic as the players began flooding in from the single elevator door to the lobby.
Maxi’s group went left, which made sense. She surmised her weapons weren’t going to do much against the boss, considering anything powerful enough to be a raid boss probably had damage resistance, which she immediately looked up. The effect would reduce damage to a minimum of one, so at least it was something. Maybe she should have gotten the leather and letter opener, since her sword was useless, and perhaps the bludgeoning resistance would allow her to survive a smidge longer.
They walked through a hallway until they got to a massive conference room where a colossal, bulbous lawyer sat at the end of the table. He was easily the height of three basketball players standing on each other’s shoulders, with the girth of a man who rarely saw his toes. It was as if Jabba the Hut with a toupee cameoed on Law & Order as the ruthless lawyer of the week. He was surrounded by men and women in three-piece suits holding briefcases. The cannon fodder was at the floor level, while the power players were situated on the balconies that overlooked the room.
There were at least three top Tier teams, and perhaps eighteen groups on the floor. She guessed the folks on the floor level might be as high as Tier 6, as all six dudes from another Office Pool near her were wearing gleaming Kevlar armor that she swore required Tier 6 in order to equip. Benson looked down at her from above, and she waved. He averted his gaze. So much for making friends. Not that she was here to make friends.
The room itself had six doors in total. Two large mahogany ones behind them where her group had entered, two on her side of the room leading to the balconies where the power players were streaming inside, and then two at the opposite end behind the lawyer.
The balconies up top had two staircases on each side. The stairs near the enemy side were narrow, only wide enough for one person, but the set on her side could allow a whole group to go up or down at once.
The doors to the room shut behind her. “Your Company is nothing more than a cartel. We will take you down,” Jabba bellowed in a deep voice.
He swung his arms, and his army of minions rushed the front line that had formed with the cannon fodder. They shot papers from their briefcases that said “SUBPOENA.” The front line of yellow shirts went down as the papers cut off limbs, embedded in skulls, and generally sliced through the group. Maxi didn’t think, just reacted, and split a paper that was coming for her in half.
Flav stumbled back to the door with a paper that had cut through his shirt. The projectile protruded from his shoulder. Patti’s neck was bleeding, and she, too, backed away toward the exit. Daisuke pulled out a katana and wakizashi from what Maxi assumed to be invisible sheaths, because they seemed to materialize from thin air. He chopped through the deadly papers heading their way. Farhad had a pistol and ducked behind a chair at the long table in the center of the room, taking potshots at the minions.
The power players concentrated their firepower on Jabba. Lightning bolts, plasma rounds, streams of fire, and all sorts of projectiles were flung from the balconies toward whatever that thing was. The pudgy mass of legal representation machine-gunned the razor-sharp paper from a briefcase toward the balconies above. The power player tanks blocked all the stairwells leading up to the ranged fighters. As Jabba’s minions fell, more flooded from a room on the far side with no break in the flow.
Then it hit her. She was never meant to damage the boss. Her group was merely a meat shield blocking the two largest staircases to the balconies above. The stairs closer to Jabba allowed the tanks to fight one minion at a time, whereas the ones on her side would leave the ranged warriors vulnerable.
She chopped through more papers until the battle lines met and the briefcases were turned into melee weapons. One of the knights took a hit to the chest and crumpled to the floor. Guessing that one hit would be enough to take her out, she dodged and wove through the battle as the minions split the yellow shirts into two groups around each stairway.
The minions only took one hit from her sword and two from a letter opener, so they were easy to kill, but there were just too many of them. For every one she felled, two more would take its place. She could cut them down in swaths, but it wasn’t making much of a difference because the players were being swarmed.
There was a loud noise as Jabba pulled out a phone and fired several lightning bolts that bounced throughout the room, hitting friend and foe alike. She was lucky to be under the high point of the arc at the time. Half of the remaining yellow shirts went down as crisp husks. Their teammates dropped the defense of the stairs and dragged the fallen back in a fighting retreat.
The minions flooded the stairs as a few melee fighters formed a line at the top for a final defense. The power players on the balcony were barely keeping up with the deluge of minions by utilizing AoE weapons like grenades and firestorms that would thin the herd briefly, giving the Customer Care Advocates time to heal the tanks. However, it was a no-win scenario. Even Benson wasn’t healing anyone. He must have run out of mana, or whatever was used for magic.
Meanwhile, the power players began to fall under Jabba’s attacks. Seeing that the entire battle was only going to last a few more seconds at most, Maxi fought her way to Farhad, who had barricaded himself between a chair and the table, blasting minions that got close. She cleaved through the last couple in her area, and since most of the minions were concentrated on the stairwells, she had a moment’s reprieve.
“Screw the minions,” Maxi said. “Let’s go for the boss.”
“That’s suicide,” Farhad said. “And you’re not going to do more than one damage.”
“One less damage that we have to do before the month is out. Now push me,” Maxi said, and stood on the chair he was hiding behind.
Farhad shrugged and pushed the chair while blasting minions on either side with his gun. Maxi sliced through enemies who threatened to block her way and ducked behind the chair when the razor subpoenas headed her way.
Farhad got hit by two papers, and an opponent brought up a briefcase for the death blow. He pushed her chair with one final shove and sent her on a trajectory toward Jabba’s massive belly. Jabba glanced down at her and motioned some of his minions toward her. The gargantuan man moved toward her as well, rolling on a powered chair.
It was as if they were two knights on a collision course, if knights had office chairs instead of horses and a briefcase and sword instead of lances.
Maxi figured if she was going to go out, she was going to damage this guy, even if it was just one life point toward the defeat of the foe when its life reached zero. Besides, rewards were based on the team’s performance. She imagined no one in her Tier had ever done any damage, so even one was better than none. She brought up her weapon for her final attack. As she closed in with the sword pointed at the bulbous belly, the thing belched. A green haze engulfed her as the sword connected with flesh. Her vision darkened.