Chapter 11: Reforged In Person. The Tournament Starts. Danger. Turning Point.

Since at least a couple of the pilots invited to the event were not of legal drinking age, the planned night at a bar had been scrapped. Instead, they reserved a restaurant’s function room for the evening, which had more than enough space for twenty-four pilots, a few significant others, and even a couple of parents or legal guardians without feeling crowded.

Elias was glad to finally put names and faces to some of the handles he had been seeing around the guild. Some matched the internal picture he had formed of them just from their manner online.

Others were completely different.

<HaraldoftheApocalypse>, for example, was a long-haired, lanky man who gave off definite stoner vibes from his clothing and hair. Then he opened his mouth and sounded like the most prototypical New York accent ever inflicted upon the English language.

<MissileToe> was a teenage girl who was not NEARLY as foul-mouthed as she had been in guild chat. That was probably because her parents were hovering nearby like protective mama and papa bears.

<KannonsKompanion> was harder to read, simply because he never spoke. He communicated entirely through sign language, with his companion translating his ASL into spoken English. Nobody had the heart to ask whether he couldn’t speak or simply chose not to.

It was a motley crew.

At first, many of them crowded around Adrian, asking where he had gone after the ban and why he had decided to start a new guild after all this time.

Others flocked to Elias, and nearly all of them said the same thing namely that he looked much younger than they had expected.

Not that this was a bad thing, they hurried to explain. He had just seemed more ... worldly online.

Elias wasn’t entirely sure how to take that.

Kevin, meanwhile, was everybody’s favorite conversation partner as they traded stories about the increasingly ridiculous things he had done since joining the guild.

<MissileToe> was the one who made Elias laugh the most. Whenever she managed to break away from her parents, he found himself laughing at how perceptive she was about the other guild members. Never mean, exactly, but her jokes always had a cutting edge.

She even told Elias, “When my parents asked me who was running this whole thing, I told them, ‘Oh, he goes by ReforgedNumbersGuy. Rather steady and down to earth. He’s kinda like the Old Man of Reforged, keeping everyone from flying off the handle.’”

Elias looked horrified.

Not because she had called him old, precisely. But in his head, the sobriquet Old Man was still firmly attached to Ken from Everloathing.

He considered his response very carefully.

“Nah. I’m not the Old Man.”

He gestured around the room.

“I consider myself the ringmaster of a three-ring circus. My job is to keep all the clowns UNDER the tent and make sure Kevin doesn’t somehow burn it down.”

Elias shook his head.

“The worst part is, they don’t even give me a whip to keep these people under control.”

Amy had been wandering around, swapping stories with a couple of the others, and caught Elias’s last line.

“That’s for insurance purposes.”

Elias looked confused, mostly because he had no idea what Amy was talking about.

“The whip, that is,” she continued.

She winked at <MissileToe>, who looked awed, like Amy was the coolest big sister ever created.

“Besides, this way we keep him on his toes. Don’t let him get comfortable.”

Elias groaned theatrically.

“This is WHY I need the whip.”

Amy turned to <MissileToe>.

“Come on. Let’s go talk to Kevin. He’s about to tell the story about the dam he tried to sneak behind and what happened when Adrian noticed.”

As the two headed toward Kevin, <MissileToe>’s parents came over to speak with Elias.

“I’ll admit, we were a little nervous about all this.”

Elias nodded.

“I understand.”

“Abigail spends a lot of time playing.”

Her father glanced across the room, where Amy and Abigail were laughing about something.

“And you hear things.”

“Yeah.”

“Especially with girls online.”

Elias didn’t try to argue.

“Yeah.”

The man watched his daughter for another moment.

“But I like her.”

Elias followed his gaze.

“Amy?”

“She treats her like a little sister. Protective, but not overbearing. She lets her be part of the group.”

Elias smiled.

“That sounds like Amy.”

Finally, it came to the moment Elias had dreaded the whole night.

The guild leader needed to give a speech.

“First of all, thank you for being here. Reforged is glad to have you here. Enjoy tonight.”

He looked around the room.

“And I mean that. If things go badly tomorrow, this may have to be the highlight of the weekend, so celebrate.”

A pause.

“Responsibly, of course.”

Someone booed.

Elias pointed in the general direction of the noise.

“Especially you.”

A few people laughed.

“As far as the event goes, Adrian and I have been working on some general strategies for how to use what we have as effectively as possible.”

His expression became a little more serious.

“I’m going to be up front with everybody. I’ll try to get everyone involved if I can. But even if we do well, most of you are probably going to spend at least some of the day waiting.”

A few expressions changed.

“I know. That sucks.”

Elias shrugged.

“It’s also the truth. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. I will do my best to at least get everyone involved. That’s a promise.”

He swept his gaze over his team.

His.

Team.

“When you’re not needed, duel. Talk. Get to know each other. For obvious reasons, they’re not letting us carry phones, tablets, or anything else internet-enabled into the team area, so bring a book. Bring an MP3 player if you’ve still got one of the ancient artifacts lying around.”

Kevin, somewhere in the crowd:

“I HAVE A ZUNE.”

Elias closed his eyes.

“Of course you do.”

Then back to business.

“Relax as much as you can. But understand something. When we call your name, we need your A-game. You may spend three hours doing absolutely nothing and then get five minutes’ warning that you’re going in.”

He looked around the room.

“So have fun. Enjoy the weekend. Get to know the people behind the handles.”

A small smile.

“And stay ready. Reforged will need everything you’ve got.”

Despite a few people pretending to protest that they were young and wild enough to party all night and still be in top form the next day, everyone turned in at a reasonable hour. Elias’s last thoughts that night came while staring at an unfamiliar ceiling, wondering what tomorrow would bring.

His brain wanted to run through the possible scenarios one more time. Elias finally convinced it that, much like a student who had read the material for a final exam twenty-three times, going over it a twenty-fourth would accomplish less than getting the sleep he was desperately going to need.

The event formally started at noon the next day, with buses beginning to take the various teams to the convention center at nine-thirty. Adrian and Elias had to arrive early for preliminary interviews with the event casters, footage that could be played during slower moments in the broadcast.

Nothing groundbreaking. Mostly questions about Adrian’s return to higher-level play, along with the fact that Reforged, despite being a fairly new guild, had made a much larger impact on the game than anyone had expected.

They found their sectioned-off part of the convention floor and had enough time to make sure everyone’s controls were set up to their particular needs before the rest of the guild arrived.

After that, they stayed busy putting out the kind of minor fires that always seemed to appear when something this complicated was being assembled.

Nothing major.

Someone wanted a mouse replaced because it felt slightly off. Another pilot wanted to make sure a monitor was displaying correctly. Someone else had somehow managed to change a control setting they swore they had never touched.

Adrian spent most of the time between those little problems walking up and down the rows of Reforged pilots, checking on people, calming nerves, and trying to get everyone into the right headspace for the day ahead.

Technically, that was Elias’s job as guild leader.

But Adrian and Elias had an unspoken agreement.

When you had someone who had actually played in front of large crowds before, it made sense to let him be the one telling everyone that yes, the butterflies were normal, no, the crowd was not going to eat them alive, and yes, once the match started, most of the noise would disappear anyway.

More than once, Adrian reminded people that five minutes after the event launched, with everyone wearing headphones and concentrating on their own fights, the crowd would stop mattering.

And when the crowd did matter, it was probably because somebody else was doing something interesting.

Don’t read into it.

Don’t react to it.

“Play your game. That’s why you’re here.”

By the time the formal launch approached, it had become something close to a mantra for Reforged.

Harald was repeating it under his breath, and it bled through his microphone into team comms just before the commentators came over the convention center’s loudspeakers.

The stream had begun.

“Welcome, everyone, to the third annual World of WarMachines End of Summer Showdown! I’m Tommy ‘Xcel’ Labert, and with me is Mike ‘The WarMAC General’ McKenzie.”

The crowd noise rose behind them.

“This year we’re taking things to a new level. Eight full guilds fighting it out for a prize pool of nearly a quarter of a million dollars.”

Tommy turned toward his co-host.

“Mike, most of these teams have never played for stakes like this before. How do you think they’re going to react?”

Mike laughed a little.

“Well, they’ll all react differently. You’re right, there are going to be a lot of people thinking about how much money they can earn for their guilds today. Some will freeze because the moment is just too big for them. Others will be too aggressive, or not aggressive enough.”

He gestured toward the teams below.

“Whoever reacts best under pressure could find themselves a lot higher on the scoreboard than a team of better pilots who falls apart when things get really chaotic as the day goes on.”

Mike smiled.

“And let’s not forget, this year’s format is going to pile even more pressure on them later in the day.”

Tommy picked up the train of thought.

“That’s right. This year we’re going with a modified King of the Hill format. Today’s broadcast will be broken into eight forty-five-minute rounds, with fifteen minutes between rounds for teams to repair, rearm, reinforce, and build their strategy for the next round.”

The broadcast switched to a map of the large-scale game area, highlighting bases of various shapes and sizes scattered across it.

“Each team starts with one assigned base. As you know, bases are normally useful for both repairing and rearming, but in this modified King of the Hill format, in-round repairs are limited mostly to armor and other minor damage.”

Several damaged WarMAC icons appeared on the demonstration map.

“So if a WarMAC takes crippling internal damage, it may become a sitting duck for the rest of the round. If a team wants to keep that machine on the board, somebody may have to protect it until the round ends.”

Mike continued.

“Teams earn Reinforcement Points based on how many bases they control at the end of each round. So if you hold a base for forty-four minutes and another team snipes it from you in the final sixty seconds, too bad. They get the Reinforcement Points from that base. You don’t.”