I'm Not an Idiot!

nailing the solo thing

The air smelled like gunpowder. At least Bangalore would say that now, but she was downed and killed within the first 3 minutes. Caustic, Mirages second teammate, got pushed down the cliff by Wraith, who was still hunting him with her kunai in her hand and her horrifying glare.

His day was absolutely terrible. He forgot to fix his decoy-problem and now, if you watch closely, you can see the difference, you can tell the real one from his decoys apart, so having decoys, who doesn't fool anyone was pretty useless at this point....He was pretty useless, some would say, but he was still able to cloak while reviving or respawning (I would still play him 💪🏽). Now he had to depend even more on his battle skills then his abilities.
The second thing, which only worsened the day, was the current bad game. It's not over yet, he still had a chance to win this, but his optimism already left him yesterday evening, when he got that cursed e-mail and alone the thought of it made him all uncomfortable again, but he was in the game right now, so there was nothing he could do for now.
"Damn only a few minutes before ring closing, better hurry up and find something to heal. At least I found a level 4 knockdown shield... aaaaand I'm still talking to myself... perfect." He rubbed his tired eyes and finally reached the city. The respawn beacon on the big building was still unused and no sniper was to be seen. This was his chance to recover his teammates banners. He quietly cheered to himself and continued his way. His whole body felt heavy from the lack of sleep and he was shivering from the cold temperature on this damn cold planet (Talos). He sneaked into the building in front of him and rubbed his hands, even thought he was wearing gloves.

"Idiot, this won't do much"

He would love to rest in the abandoned building for a moment or get his teammates back right now, so he wouldn't be that paranoid anymore. He reminded himself of Crypto "He always looks around as if somebody is following him. Wonder what this nerd is thinking and what's with that fake personality..." He rubbed his chin and decided to stop talking to himself and get rid of Wraith first, who was still following him, knowing he was an easy target with his longbow, without any optics, and his p2020. She got herself a devotion and a mastiff .... It will surely be his end if she finds him. He hid behind a few boxes in the corner of the room, gripping his pistol really hard, hard enough to stop the blood flow and making his hands all tingly. He could hear the little footsteps and imagined how she spun her little knife in her hand around, ready to stab it right between his eyes.
To be honest, it was a bad idea to hide from Wraith, because some of her voices could tell her he was just behind these boxes, tell her something like 'hey pretty girl, the handsome guy is just sitting behind these boxes, staring at you'. He knew her voice wouldn't say it like that, would be too good to be real. He did his best to keep quiet and decided to just risk it, maybe not aiming or staring at her would help too. He looked down at his gloves and loosened the heavy grip on his pistol. His glance wandered to his Holo devices on his arm and he was really happy for his choice of armory today, at least one good thing. He was wearing his dark artist outfit, a fully black battle suit with orange accents. Wraith would've seen him for sure, if he had worn 'the revenger' outfit, the yellow version of his current black.

"I'm checking upstairs!" . If you speak of the devil, there he, well she, is, passing by in an blink of an eye and vanished through the other doorway. She didn't see him.

"She didn't see me?! Oh god. Maybe this day isn't all that bad. At least I don't get ripped into pieces with that nasty kunai of her...for now."

She continued with her squad to check for the other buildings. He breathed out, relieved to be left alone. There were only 5 other squads left and he was still equipped with a rather bad, for his taste, equipment so he changed his beloved longbow with a hemlock, because a weapon without ammonition in a late game was a big problem. He decided to moved forward, being all sneaky and somehow managed to avoid any fights and got more nervous by every second. He could almost hear the impatient grunting from Caustic and the tapping of his fingers on his gas canisters, waiting in the recovery room and watching his every move through the cameras in the arena.

"Yeeesss! Almost there, only one building between the respawn beacon and myself, Mirage." but his happy cheery (?) mood soon changed into a alarmed...well scared one. There were footsteps.... Fast and heavy footsteps right beneath him in the lower level of the building. He was pretty sure it was Gibraltar and the whirring noise of a drone was to be heard. "Shit, this is going to be a problem, well at least bloodhound isn't her-" he was scanned.

"Okay, I'm doomed. Goodbye world."

They started to fight and Elliott felt like a sandwich, right in the middle of them. He quickly climbed out of the building and spotted Crypto, who had just killed Wraith and was now looting her stuff.

"Oh no, you're not going to take that baby with you smarty pants" (the devotion)

He started to shoot at him and downed him much to his own surprise, but he got no time to say something or tease his enemy before Gibraltar knocked him too. "Ey brotha, seems like today's not your day" he stepped to his side, knowing Mirage was cloaking and waited to finish him when Wraiths teammate, Bloodhound, appeared. Elliott quickly crawled into the building while Gibraltars airstrike rained down. It was like he was back at the frontier, bullets everywhere and the raining death crushing down on them. He closed the door and spotted Crypto, kneeling below a desk staring at him when his cloak disappeared. "Pff, so they got you too, old man?" His voice was rough and he coughed blood. Elliott did feel sorry. He was the one who did this to Crypto, but it was their job to kill each other out here. "at least I got to down you, kid" he crawled into the room and smiled at Crypto, even thought they were on opposite teams. "I-I would love to spend my last minutes with you, cutie, but I don't want to bleed out yet. I'm g-going to get back in" he pulled the syringe out and was just about to stab it into his chest when metallic footsteps approached them. Crypto didn't move or say anything when Revenant went down the stairs and immediately laughed when he saw Mirage on the ground, fully exposed to anyone with the syringe in his hand. "Oh, hello there skinsuit." He walked to him with slow steps, the fighting outside was gone and everything was quiet, but Gibraltar or Cryptos other teammate must be still alive, because Crypto was still there watching them silently. "Perfect timing, I was so bored. Let's have some fun together." He grabbed Elliott's neck really hard and hold him up into the air. "P-please stop----stop! Don't eat me!" Elliott was scared. He was always scared of Revenant, I mean he was sort of a killing machine and likes the killing. He would even torture you to death, just to see you suffer until you breathed your last breath and now it seems like Mirage had become his next victim. "Eat you? I would, if I could. Believe me little one." He let Mirage breathe for a moment before choking him again. His other hand was scratching through the thin layers between his armory. "Aarrgh....s-stop! Wh-what do y-y-ou want?" He gasped for air and tried to fight back, to free himself, but he was too weak. The blood was dripping down onto the floor. Crypto was holding his breath, he must admit, he really wanted to help Mirage, but who was he to help him to end this suffering when he was dying himself. Revenant stared blankly with his dead eyes at the pale Mirage in his hand "I want your heart, I could slice it up for a snack, hmmmmmmnn...." And he literally did that. His hand formed itself to some kind of spear like shape and his long fingers went with sickening noises through his skin and flesh, through muscles and shradded his ribs along it's way to the other side of his body. The blood was splashing around, onto the floor, the table, the deathbox beside them, even Cryptos face, who was still watching the whole scene with wide open eyes and shook. "ahhhhh!...urgllhhhh.... Hah.... Argh..." Elliott screamed out of pain, groaned and gasped until his movements stopped. He coughed blood and was slowly drowning, drowning from his own blood which was filling his lungs with every passing second. Revenant let go of him and his body fell down to the floor into the pool of blood right below him and painted his face in different shades of red. The simulacrum only laughed, deeply satisfied as he looked down at his piece of art for a moment and then started to loot Wraiths deathbox. Mirage looked at Crypto with a painful and tired look before his eyes were closing and he was nothing more than corpse, which changed to a deathbox after a moment.

-

He woke up and the first thing he saw was the all to familiar ceiling of the medbay. He shifted his glance around the room, but there was no one to be seen. He was all alone so he just closed his eyes again and groaned. He remembered all to well what happened in the ring, he could still feel the cold metal fingers, which were curling up inside him, stabbing his lung and his heart, before ripping through him completely, but there was one thing that didn't left his mind and bugged him even more than the painful memory. Words from a unknown messenger:

....do you understand? You will do as we say or bad things will be happening in the near future.