Fusion Online

Chapter 4: Deception

"Your order will be ready in 10 minutes." A waitress before she walked back into the kitchen, leaving Ian in a booth. 'I thought hunger and sleep would be in games like these. But truth be told. They're not. They just keep bugging you and won't leave until you satisfy them,' Ian shifts to the right as he grabs his drink and takes a long, refreshing sip from his ice cold lemonade. 'So far. Everyone is all caught up with this dying here is permanent in real life. It's true, without a doubt, but people are overreacting. It's scary, hell, it is. But they don't get it. Do something about it,' Ian looked around him. "Most of the workers are NPC. But that doesn't means people can't get a job here." Ian murmurs. The mandalorian then hears a commotion around the corner,slight yelling and nothing to major. At first he ignores it, not wanting to intervene with anything. But it gets louder and louder. He can hear a girl shouting, not sure what for, but it's too loud for Ian to ignore at this point. 'What the heck.' Ian stands and walked to the noise. He saw five Spartan players, each about 16 years old or so, bothering a female player that is no older than 15.

"Hey, what's going on?" Ian asks. "None of your business twerp," a Spartan wearing soldier armor says as he refocused his attention on the girl ", you said our weapons would be ready by today, so why aren't they here!" The recruit armored soldier says. "I-I said t-there's to much to H-handle, just o-one more day." The female brunette player, wearing a pink shirt, jeans, and a black dust covered apron, says shaking in fear. "Hey! Leave her alone!" Ian shoves the Spartan. An Air assault armored player grabs Ian and kicks him, launching him to the nearest booth. "Go somewhere else twit!" The Air Assault Spartan says. Ian grunts as he stands up He grabs the Spartan that launched him and slams his head to the nearest table, shattering the Spartan's visor. "Who's next." Ian cracks his knuckles. The soldier armor Spartan draws his assault rifle and prepares to fire. But right as he begins to pull the trigger, Ian has already shot him four times in the chest with his one of his Westars-35's. The leader of the group falls in pain. "Don't be a wimp, I can't kill you in a safe zone, such as a city, now get up and leave." Ian says, glaring menacingly at the players before they all dash to the exit and leave the restaurant. Ian sighed, shaking hie head and turns at the young teen, who is shaking in fear. "Don't worry, I won't hurt you." Ian assures. "C'mon, I'll buy you something to eat" Ian says as she leads her to his booth.

"So, what's your name?" Ian asks. "My name's Jackie. I'm a Spartan class but with a blacksmith subclass." Jackie replied, looking at the table and still feeling a bit unsafe. "So they where bothering you because you didn't finish fixing there weapons?" Ian assumes, knowing where this was leading. "No, they wanted and upgrade but I couldn't do all 5 weapons. It was too much for me." Jackie concludes with a sigh. "What kind of upgrade did they want?" Ian asks. Surely it couldn't be something to big, for the game just started. "A more accurate upgrade, they wanted their assault rifles to shoot like a DMR." Jackie answers.This grabs Ian's attention. "That's impossible! No matter what you put into is it just won't shoot like a DMR! It breaks the perfectly well balance of the game." Ian says in shock of the upgrade the Spartans wanted. "Yea....I know but....they where offering a lot of Credits for it." Jackie says ashamed. "How much?" Ian says intrigued.
"100,000 per player."
Ian's eyes widen at the amount "That much?!? How did they get it" Ian says quickly, wanting to know so he can earn some credits fast. "They raided an imperial sensor array outpost, about 3 kilometers from the city." Jackie answered.
"A sensor array outpost?" Ian repeats slowly, placing his hand under his chin. "Yea, the one with the weird satellite thing." Jackie explained while trying to make a satellite shape with her hands. "That's not good." Ian murmurs. "Why? It's a good way to grind credits for players like you." Jackie replied to his comment with slight confusion. 

"You must be clueless at what those outpost do." Ian concludes about how much knowledge Jackie has on the different abilities different buildings do. "What do you mean?" The brunette player asks. "Those bases are meant to send an echolocation wave to gather information from a certain location. There's nothing around that they might possibly want-" Ian abruptly stops. He couldn't believe it, but it was the only reason they would set one up.

 "What is it?"  

"That must mean..." Ian trails off. "Mean what?" Jackie asks once again, getting frustrated that he wasn't answering her question. "They're planning an attack on the city!" Ian informed. Jackie's face goes pale, her eyes widen and her mouth opens in fear. "B-but we are I-in a safe z-zone, they can't enter." Jackie says trying to convince Ian that it's impossible for an attack, or more like herself. "No, a safe zone protects players from killing each other, it also defends from creatures alongside the covenant, the droid army, and Prometheans, but....the imperial can waltz right into the city without problem, that's their special advantage they have in this game." Ian says as fear crawls up to him. "I have to go to the outpost and check it out." Ian says as he stands up, and puts his helmet on. "W-wait, add me to your friend list so you can tell me if something happens. You know, so I can help or send help." Ian nods and quickly adds Jackie to his friend list, as Jackie does the same and puts Ian to her friend list. "Here, this should be enough for anything you want." Ian gives Jackie 1,000 credits and leaves the restaurant. "W-wait this is," Jackie starts but Ian is long gone ", way to much."

'An imperial attack here! In Wayland! I just got here and there's not way I'm going to let the imperial take over this city.' Ian grits his teeth and runs to a parking lot, searching for his bike. When he finds it, gets on his Mandalorian Bike, and heads to the direction of the Outpost. He reached his destination after a while of travelling and keeps his distance, not wanting to alert the Imperials. 'Better check this out.' Ian gets of his bike and pulls out a pair binocular to see the base. 'Not a lot of defenses, I mean a few guards at the door, 10 on patrol, and like 2 talking near the speeder bikes.' I am looks around to see nothing suspicious. 'Well. Better get ready.' Ian runs stealthy towards the base, not making a sound. upon his arrival, he shoots the enemies' blocking the entrance and dashes inside. Ian crouches and sneaks around the outpost. 'Easier than I thought.' Ian's smirks under his helmet, getting overly confident on his progress. The Mandalorian sneaks from room to room to find anything helpful. He then makes it to the comm center, where many tablets and information stations are located at. 'This'll be helpful.' He plugs a tablet into the holo table and retrieves some data. 'Well. Nothing here about an attack. Then do they want?" Ian keeps looking through the files until he finds something....something out of the ordinary. 

'What the?' Ian descends his hand to click the file, but before he does, the door blows open and Stormtroopers surround the room in seconds, their rifles ready to shoot the intruder. "Surrender now and you will be put into custody!" The Stormtrooper commander says, having his men slowly move closer to the player. Ian turns around and looks at the commander. "..No." Ian draws his Westars and starts firing at the stormtroopers. The Stormtrooper start dropping one by one before any of them have a chance to return fire. "This is bad." Ian unplugs his tablet, placing it away and sprints outside the room. The alarm is the activated, calling for all available Stormtrooper to Ian's position. "Argh!" Ian groans as he grits his teeth and runs to his bike. While getting on, several scout troopers open fire. Ian ignites the engines to his bike and heads towards the city, but gets trailed by a squad of scout troopers.

"C'mon faster!" Ian tells himself as he tries to speed up, but he can't, he is already at his full speed. He hears the sound of enemy speeders hot in persuit. "Better see what's in these files." Ian clicks a button on his forearm hologram utility. A small blue hologram activates, showing a round object. "What is this, it's just a moon-" Ian stops himself as fear strikes him once again. "That's not a moon! It's a Space station! They are going to attack the city to gather pieces for the Death Star, and while at it, even slave labor!" Ian's bike gets shoot from behind, for he was distracted from the fight he was unknowingly in. His bike's rear burst into flames as the vehicle moves in an uncontrollabe way. Ian jumps of his bike and into the city entrance. As Ian tries to get up. He gets shot by a scout trooper's bike. Ian yells in pain and crawls behinds he city walls. Ian looks at his HP. "That thing packed a punch..." Ian says weakly as he is down to 3/4 of his health. "I have to warn The city to leave...." Ian says as he open's his friend list and sends a message to Jackie. "Warn....them." Ian grunts as he gets up, going to hide into the darkness of the night.