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They're Talking To Me Again

My characters are talking to me again. It's... kind of cool and kind of troublesome and kind of making me wonder what it is about just putting words to screen that wakes them up again.

Though, to be honest, it was really the asthma that woke Ukitake up, and he was gently encouraging me to breathe slow and deep, to keep control of my breathing rather than letting the coughing take over while I was in my bed in the middle of the night and I really needed more sleep. It worked.

Life and characters and creation is an odd mix.

The one that has been waking up the most used to be my original twist on Kisuke (yes, equally intelligent and amoral, but lazy enough to stay on the right side of the law). A character that I signed over all rights to someone else; but... I still have an even older name, Argent, who has been in my head for a very long time. He's woken up and is watching me with sleepy gray eyes. He's been enjoying the Rainbow Six Siege games immensely. Just yesterday, I clutched two rounds in a row, first an attack round, where one of Jet's friends got downed by Caviera.

Caviera's special ability is that once she downs someone (if someone is hurt just a few points past zero they get to be in a down but not out state, where a teammate can revive them to half health and they can keep going, if they're hurt too much past that, or headshot, they're dead dead and stay dead), she can use her Interrogation on them and then her whole team can see everyone on the attacking team.

So Jet, who had died earlier in the round, yelled at me, "Kill D--! Kill D--! Cav is on him!"

It was the main way to make sure that our team stayed safe from her Interrogation.

I whipped around, killed both D-- and Caviera, and heard someone coming into the hallway, through a kill hole my team had made in a wall behind me. I spun 180, sights already up, killed both the people in the hallway coming at me, and saw the fourth and last sprint across the opening. I got a few shots on her, but missed killing her. There was a wall the way she was running, so I just waited there, behind cover, and sure enough, she came right back, and I killed her with a single shot because she'd been so hurt already.

That's when I realized that my whole team had died, but for me, and I'd been last man standing against four people. There's only five to a whole side.

The very next round, while we were on defense, I cleaned up as the last man standing against three people, getting a clean headshot on a Jackel who was tracking me; and then finding a new spot with a great angle against a Hibana and Twitch coming in from a brightly light doorway. The inside of Coastline is very dark in some of the bars, and I downed the Hibana while she was coming through a barricade, and I left her downed but not dead to see if her teammate would try to pick her up where I could kill them. They didn't, but since I was already aiming down sights when Twitch charged in the door, I killed her easily and won the round.

I felt Argent sigh in satisfaction in the back of my head, and Jet's friends were like, "Wow, Momma G, good work."

Yes, they now call me Momma G, for Autogyro, and it's kind of fun as some of the competitive guys are now calling me that, too. An odd mixture of Mom and little brat sister, who they bring around on games 'cause she insists and badgers them and admires them. It's kind of fun; but then I pull things like playing with three comp guys and heading the scoreboard with 72 points and the nearest of them has 48 points. And one of them said, "You look like you have a Free To Play's tracking, but you certainly get the kills..."

Even Tomato complimented me and admired the frags I was actually able to do that match, which felt pretty good. Tomato is one of the best players I know, and is brutally honest when there's a lack of skill, too. For some reason he really likes playing with me.

But that whole team thing, having people right in my ear helping me make tactical and strategic decisions in real time. It's an interesting experience, after reading Scalzi's Ghost Brigade and after my experiences with the six's team, knowing what it's like to have continuous comms with the people I'm fighting with, to have an inkling of what it's like to share enough information that all of us are acting as a concerted unit, doing everything that has to be done to reach the objective together.

To even make decisions together, as everyone is adding the bit of data they know about enemy positioning and movement, and having the calls be made in the place that can most benefit from them. Our flank when they were feeling bold enough to tell the main body to come through and when, telling us when they were going to make a distraction so that we could push. And the same thing is happening with the R6 people that I play with frequently. I'll often flank on offense and either create a distraction from a different direction so our main team can push in, or I'll take advantage of their push to kill the defenders from behind. And how that feels when it works, and all the ways it failed so that all of us could learn how to do it better.

But the dynamics of that is amazingly good, and it's stirring a storyline in the back of my head that's been cooking for a while, which had to do with a team of people in the first place, but now I'm wondering just how closely knit they might be or might become.

And I have some very different takes on people, now, than I used to, including some really interesting people who are an amazing blend of rough, salty, and sweet. Gamer boys are not the nicest people in the world... but they're deeply protective of me, which still surprises me and I'm very vocal about being grateful to them for their abilities and willingness to destroy people who are rude to me.

I am watching to see how they treat Ready Player One in the theaters and while I don't want to write something about people getting caught in a game world as that's been done a few too many times already, there's something that's starting to form in my head.

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