Posted 22 August 2013 - 01:08 PM
So there I was...
Alpine. Alpine again. I bloody hate Alpine.
So the screen resolves from black and Bitchin' Betty starts her sweet start-up serenade. "Reactor online. Sensors online. Weapons online. All systems nominal." I love that woman...
But like Dame Fortune and my ex-wife, it turns out that Betty is fickle, and all systems are pretty frickin' far from nominal. HUD won't come up. Minimap is blank. Battlemap is a fond wish. I'm running around with an 85 ton gift-wrapped box of Angry and no way to deliver it.
On the upside, at least I've got TeamSpeak and the three other Aces I dropped with. Don't I? Nope, turns out that my TS program has decided that an "exception" has come up, and it needs to take a break and pout in the corner. I try to get it to restart, but no dice. And when I alt-tab back to MWO, everyone's gone. They think I'm DC'd. Double {Scrap}.
So I head toward the nearest radio tower, hoping to hook up with at least the PUGs. And I do, for about two minutes. They manage to take down two 'Mechs while apparently indulging some sort of lemming-like collective death wish. It rapidly becomes five on one against me, as I manage to pick off one, leg another and then scramble (as much as a Stalker can be said to scramble) back over the ridge line. I begin a slow retreat down the back slope, guessing where my lasers might be trained and hoping that pulling the trigger doesn't just melt snow.
And there they are, one poptart, then three, four heads poking over the ridge. I pick out the Centurion and fire...into thin air. Total whiff. They open up and I begin what I will later laughingly call "evasive maneuvers". I correct my aim, but by this point it's all coming down on me. Lasers, PPCs, the unmistakable cockpit shake of paired AC/2s. Betty helpfully gives me the weather forecast- overcast and cold, with intermittent LRM showers. My AMS starts whirring, adding to the symphony of dying metal and living explosions playing through my speakers. At this point I'm just firing at whoever's in front of me, wondering idly whether it will my front or rear CT which gives out first.
Until I look back at the ridge line. Three 'Mechs in Tumeric and PC Gamer Black, cresting the hill and opening up with six different kinds of hell. Aces Wild, riding in to rescue their own. I fall to the last enemy 'Mech, but I have the pleasure of watching my killer collapse under the last salvo by the Aces, crumpling over my still-smoking 'Mech.
It was a good day.