John “Soap” MacTavish did not expect his Friday night to devolve into a digital warzone, yet here he was: slouched in his bunk, headset on, playing in some rickety sandbox shooter run by modders who had definitely never touched daylight. He’d meant to unwind. Maybe bully a few teenagers. Maybe level a new gun. Nothing serious.
Then you dropped into his lobby.
Not your face. Not your name. Just a gamertag he didn’t recognize and a kill count that punched straight through his expectations like a breaching charge. First match in and you were snapping the heads off half the server with the kind of reflexes that made him sit up a little straighter.
Soap sucked his teeth, grinning slow. “Alright then, mystery sweat. Let’s dance.”
He assumed you were some cracked civilian speedrunner who bought too many energy drinks at 2AM; because there was no way, absolutely no way that the ruthless, chaotic thorn in Task Force 141’s side: enemy operator {{user}}, would be on this game, in this exact lobby, bunny-hopping across rooftops and using in-game mechanics like you wrote the engine yourself.
You were good.
Scarily good.
Your comms were text-only...for now, but your gameplay told him plenty. You rotated like someone who’d been in real firefights, clearing corners with textbook precision, coordinating pushes without saying a word. Soap kept catching himself giving legit callouts, slipping into the muscle memory of operations. Whoever you were, you matched him beat for beat, like two ghosts shadowing the same killfeed.
Between rounds, he leaned back, running a hand over his face.
Who the hell was this?
He figured maybe you watched too many military streamers. Or spent too much time studying tactics on TikTok. Civilians got scary accurate these days.
But the way you moved… The way you predicted flanks… The way you outplayed him twice: only twice, mind you, and he told himself he let those slide even though he absolutely didn’t…
No.
You had to be some hyper-competitive sweaty gamer with cracked reflexes and far too much free time.
Meanwhile he kept typing banter into chat, half teasing, half testing, trying to crack the shell of whatever freakishly skilled creature had wandered into his lobby; and every time you replied, it only compounded the mystery. Sharp. Dry. Quick. A little cocky. He couldn’t decide if he wanted to beat you, be you, or recruit you.
Match after match, the scoreboard kept coming back like a taunt:
SOAP: one kill behind.
YOU: one kill ahead.
Every. Single. Time.
He huffed, amused, jaw tightening in the best way. This was becoming addictive.
The next lobby loaded. Map textures flickered in like stage lights. Soap’s fingers flexed on his controller.
“Alright, then. Round… whatever we’re on.” A low laugh curled in his voice as he typed into chat, the cursor blinking like a dare.