Militia: Episode 2: Deja vu

Instructions

Episode 2: Deja vu “So.” Jacob said, trying to confront the awkwardness in his team. Raylia looked at William and Malcolm with a stink eye, which, Malcolm largely ignored, and William shied away from. “You gonna start up a computer or what?” Malcolm asked, annoyance beginning to seep into his tone. It was the last day of 5th grade, and they were spending it on a school-wide tournament. “Right,” Jacob said, starting up his computer. “So we have to make accounts?” William asked, nervously. “Seems so,” Malcolm replied, quickly typing something in. “Oh? Tutorial. Nice.” Malcolm said, popping on his headphones. “Hey, Jacob? Can you help me with this?” Raylia asked. “Sure!” Jacob said, walking over to her. Raylia had named her account, Rayray, taking the first three letters of her name and repeating them twice. “So, what do you need help with?” Jacob asked. Nothing. Malcolm internally screamed. Raylia just wanted Jacob’s attention, as she had a crush on him. Anyway, time to focus on the tutorial. Malcolm thought shaking himself and turning his attention back to his screen. “Welcome, to Militia!” A robotic female voice said as Malcolm stared at the screen. The view was really similar to how his RTS’s functioned, actually, but, instead of commanding a whole army, he commanded a single unit. Kinda like Craft of War, with all those heroes. Malcolm thought. Malcolm’s beginning hero was a simple soldier, with some sleek sci-fi armor and an assault rifle. In a way, he kinda reminded Malcolm of a marine, from Craft of Stars. Below him was a profile picture with his face, five squares, each with some sort of artwork, and 3 of them with arrows above them. The game forced him to click on the first one with an arrow, so he did. Immediately, one of the five dots beneath it was filled in. “Huh.” Malcolm murmured to himself. “Like spells I guess?” He noticed they each had hotkeys above them, Q, W, E, and R. One of them didn’t have a hotkey and as he hovered his cursor over it, it ended up being his “heroes” passive. “Neat,” Malcolm said, dismissing the tutorial. He was pretty sure he had a hang of this now. He sent his character down the lane, several large turrets on the way there. “Did you just skip the tutorial?” William asked, glancing at Malcolm’s screen. “Yeah. I already got the gist of this game, I don’t really need it.” Malcolm replied. “Then what about the shop?” William asked, looking at the six empty slots that sat next to his character profile. Below them was a 500, which Malcolm assumed to be the currency of the game. “Ehh, it’s fine,” Malcolm replied shrugging. “Battle Bots, have been summoned. Malcolm moved his vision off his character to the side of the map where he spawned, where he watched a row of blue dots marching his way. Malcolm tilted his head. They were little robots, much shorter than Malcolm’s avatar, half wielding little electric bats, and the other half being guns with feet. This gave Malcolm time to examine the map. Wherever he, his allies, or an allied structure was, he had vision. But everything else was pitch black. So they have fog of war too. Malcolm thought grinning. As he played this game, he found more and more similarities between it and RTS’s. “It’s almost like one originated from the other. Or something like that.” Malcolm accidentally said aloud. His teammates all turned to him with strange looks on their faces. “Sorry. Just, thinking aloud.” Malcolm said sheepishly. He turned his attention back to the game. It seems that this game tournament wouldn’t be as horrible as Malcolm originally thought.