Kicked.

[The Honeless Beard]

The siren sounded, and she huffed out an angry sound, pulling the bright orange T shaped plug and slamming it into the barrel of her M13 replica, reaching up with gloved fingers to tug sweaty hair tendrils out from underneath her sweaty goggle band. Around her, the other participants - all dressed in various levels of urban camo (especially Ben, wearing Palestinian camoflauge because Ben was a fucking tryhard) did much the same with slight variations - coming out of their taken, tactical positions to aimlessly mill around the constructed combat environment, transforming seamlessly from semi-military professionals to droning mob in two seconds flat.

Pavlovian siren, she thought. Siren means being chummy all of a sudden.

She wanted to spit nails.

Ben, the fucking tryhard, wandered over to her, eyes full of a question that she didn’t have the answer to. It was fairly unusual to stop a tournament play during a round. Usually they only did it in emergencies. Lots of the chatter from the drones was wonderment about who had gotten hurt, or what the stoppage could possibly mean.

Tryhard Ben and her, though, had the same tension in their shoulders.

“It was just getting good,” Ben complained, and though she had more tact than to say it, she agreed wholeheartedly.

The speaker squealed to life, one of those painted tan plastic jobs that were a staple of every high school across the country.

“Season 67 has started, y’all,” came a familiar voice, “and our boy’s on it.”