WE SPEED TOWARD THE PIN ON MY WORLD MAP, the gigantic rubber duck darting through the water on giant webbed feet. Too soon, though, our 10-minute head start comes to an end.

  

  STASIS RELEASED!

  All vessels are now active. ALERT: In this final phase of the World Deathmatch, all restraints are now off! Shoot, stab, maim, and kill your way to victory! There can be only one!

  PvP ACTIVE

  Back where the race is thickest, a cavalcade of explosions rips through the air as everyone starts firing on each other. It’s like watching an entire mine field detonate at the same time. A ship is blown high into the air, flipping like a whirligig. “Wow!” cries Pepper. “Pretty fireworks!”

  Several boats speed toward us, racing with supercharged engines. Some fly over the water. Holy hell, those things are fast. Even with the 10-minute head start, there’s no way anyone could stay in the lead without paid upgrades. Yep, the designers made certain only the teams who pay the most have a shot to win.

  This is why I stopped watching baseball, the NCAA, and all the games I used to enjoy. Buying the best team means the underdog never gets to win. No Villanova over Georgetown, no ’69 Mets, no Miracle on Ice—no hope for a David vs. Goliath.

  And let me tell you, I want to see David win.

  Goliath-sized RiftElite ships are on us in less than a minute. As the first one pulls alongside, they blast the Quacken with a cannonade. Bombs riddle the rubber duck hide; most bounce off, but we take a few hits.

  “Fire the quacktillery!” yells a Critical Troll. Forty cannons explode from the rubber duck’s flanks and pound the enemy to ash. But before the smoke clears, another ship is on our tailfeathers. “Fire!” he yells again and we blast the hell out of them, too.

  The Quacken proves its worth. A magic spell called Fowlitzer Storm absolutely wrecks ships that come too close with a barrage of fire-breathing mallards. Soap scum spews out behind us like a James Bond car’s oil slick. A pursuing ship hits it, skids out of control, and, impossibly, flips. It makes no sense, but it’s hilarious to watch.

  “Hahaha!” Pepper belly-laughs. “It tripped!”

  “We’re out of munitions!” cries one of the Trolls. I glance at the Quacken’s dashboard and see AMMO REMAINING: 4800. “What are you talking about? We’ve got plenty more!”

  “Ackchyually…” One of them puts up a finger. “Given the 17th-century design of this ship, the maximum number of cannonballs on even a military mission would be two hundred or less.”

  “Fewer,” another Troll corrects him.

  “But we have more!” Dammit, I’m going to get killed by LARPers.

  “We’ll have to improvise!” One of them turns to me. “Good thing we hired your services, slave!”

  A pirate jams a gigantic plug down a cannon, a big cork that goes all the way to the bottom of the barrel. I eye it suspiciously. “What’s that for?”

  “You.”

  The Critical Trolls grab me and stuff me down the cannon’s mouth. I try to fight them, but they are too many and once they pin my arms inside the cannon, I can’t move. “Stop it!” yells Pepper. “You’re hurting him!”

  “We fire you over there,” a Troll points at the nearest vessel. “You commandeer the ship, and we win!”

  I holler at him. “I thought you didn’t care about winning!”

  “Yeah… until we won.”

  I holler in his face. “Let me out of here, you discount Drama Club!!”

  

  EmpathyEngine?: Don’t Be a Debbie Downer!

  Please refrain from insulting RiftElite players’ outside interests! All passions are valid, even crazy ones! Happy words make happy hearts!

  “Bon voyage!” The Troll lights the fuse.

  I feel Pepper grab my hand just before the cannon detonates. The explosion is so loud I can’t hear anything else as my face turns into a dog with its head hanging out a car window, all flabberjabber cheeks. “Ahh!” Pepper is attached to my wrist, screaming. Through watering eyes, I see I’m hurtling toward the enemy ship, but I’m coming in too low. The LARPers didn’t bother to re-aim the cannon. My trajectory is sending me right into the enemy ship’s hull, and when I hit the steel, I’ll splat like a bloody water balloon.

  “Hell’s bells…” I pop my inventory and grab Can’t Touch This, the laser discs I got for the Hydra quest. I punch the magic item and it activates. Glowing CDs suddenly whirl in the air. They latch onto me, forming a second skin over my whole body shing-shing-shing! Suddenly I’m wearing a skin-tight suit of invulnerable mirrored armor.

  “F§cking awesome!” I will survive the impact. Maybe I’ll end up in the water. If I’m fast, I can climb up— “Oh, sh§t.”

  Pepper.

  Can’t Touch This won’t protect her. She’ll die on impact.

  We’re moving too fast, there’s no time to think—

  “Pepper!” I shout over the wind. “Meat Missile! Now!”

  “Okay!” I feel a surge of energy flicker through her body as the penguin suddenly ignites like a Dragon Ball Z cartoon guy. Flames and white energy sizzle off her body; her professor’s hat trails flaming sparks. I cock Pepper over my shoulder like my name’s Peyton Manning and hurl her at the ship.

  

  Meat Mis—

  The entire world turns to hellfire. Pepper explodes like an Sidewinder missile. None of the explosion gets through Can’t Touch This, but I get a front-row seat to the carnage. From inside my CD-shell, I watch metal, fire, and pure force tear the universe apart. RiftElites fly past me in chunks as the ship is split in half.

  The explosion subsides and the smoke clears; I find myself in what used to be the hold of the ship. The entire vessel is a charred wreck. The pieces that aren’t starting to sink are still flying through the air.

  “Pep!” I see her lying on the charred hull, her body smoking. Her chalkboard flickers to life: Health: 1%. “Pep!” I scramble to her. Turning herself into a Meat Missile saved her from dying on impact, but her massive attack exacts a massive toll. She looks dead. I grab a salmon fillet and force it down her beak, hoping her infused snack will heal her. “Come on, Pep, come back to me!”

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  She coughs smoke. Some of her color returns as her health goes to 34% and I feel an unexpected rush of relief surge through me. “Hey! Hey, you’re good. You’re good.” I see her chalkboard flash.

  

  Meat Missile Cooldown: 3 days.

  “Did…” she blinks. “Did we get them?”

  “You got ‘em, Pep. You got the hell out of ‘em.”

  “Oh good. I was worried there for a moment.”

  

  EmpathyEngine?: No ‘I’ in ‘Team’!

  You have split the party. Your team cannot win the Deathmatch unless you are together. Please return to your party immediately, or Icebox x52 will apply. NPC happiness ≠ HypePoints.

  The boat smokes and sinks around us. I eye the smoking wreckage looking for something to keep us in the game, but the only thing that has survived is the biggest cannon. “Hold on, Pep. We’re gonna do an encore.”

  “But I can’t use Meat Missile again!” cries Pep. “It’s on cooldown!”

  “Then we’ll improvise.” I grab a broken metal plate from the ship’s hull, two floating lifejackets, and shove all three in the cannon’s mouth. I activate my MacHack and combine them all together. My HUD flashes.

  

  Butt Plug

  This improvised sabot is a wad that cradles whatever cannon-junk you’re launching to make sure it all blows in the same direction. Like a popgun cork with more dirty secrets.

  Sabot, right, that’s what they called it on Mythbusters. I aim the cannon at the closest ship and climb on top of the sabot. Pepper takes my hand. As I strap her to my back with a couple of my old belts, I realize my plan has at least one gigantic flaw. “Dammit! I can’t light the fuse from here!”

  “I got it!” She squeaks.

  

  Head Fake

  Pepper’s distraction spell pops off with a series of sparklers that sizzle like angry bacon right above the cannon’s fuse. Pepper holds on to my neck. “Here weeeEE—”

  She screams as the cannon goes off beneath us and we’re exploded into the air again. We shriek toward the nearest RiftElite ship at a low arc. I realize I aimed too high and we’re going to pass right between the masts. “Hang on!” I throw my Kaboomerang into the sky. It snaps out to the end of its string and detonates at the apex. I lose 5% Health, but the shockwave redirects us toward the ship.

  I land on the deck and roll, protecting Pepper. A pair of RiftElites stare at us. “Hey! You can’t do that!” Both of them grab for their weapons, but I throw the Kaboomerang again. The frying pan hits one in the face and explodes him off the ship in a smoking backflip. By the time I turn, the other RiftElite already has his gun up and leveled on me.

  “Nice try, dipsh§t.” He pulls the trigger.

  

  Mirror Mirror

  His psychic doppelganger blinks into existence right in front of him. Both fire at the same time and blow the same smoking hole in both their chests. They both sink to the ground and smile, “Gotcha,” as they disappear into pixelated dust.

  “Nice shootin’ Pep!” I slap her back.

  Pepper slaps me right back. “Nice shooting, Dave!!”

  “Nice shooting, both of you!” comes a pair of familiar voices in Dolby stereo. I glance up to see the Ampersand Twins standing above us, leveling gigantic blaster rifles at our heads.

  Thing 1 smiles. “Hiya, Pepper!”

  Thing 2 grins. “Change your mind about leaving this fossil behind and joining us?”

  “No!” Pepper folds her flippers. “You boys made everyone think Dave is a traitor!”

  I growl, partly because the gremlins have the drop on us, and partly because I don’t want Pepper with anybody but me. “If you’re going to kill me, get it over with.”

  “Kill you?” Thing 2 laughs.

  “You’re a LivingLegend! We can’t kill you!”

  I cock an eyebrow. “You didn’t seem to mind so much inside that volcano god.”

  “Dave.” Thing 1 says. “You’re old. We don’t care if you die—”

  Thing 2 joins in. “—that’s not the same as wanting to kill you.”

  I try to remember these are just two kids in a hospital bed somewhere. “Then, from one LivingLegend to another, I need your help.” I point to the Quacken, only a football field ahead. “I need to get back to my party. Can you catch them?”

  “No.” Thing 2 frowns. “Our new squad Scrooged on ship upgrades.”

  “But we could give you a hand.” Thing 1 spins the dial on his gigantic rifle from Blast to Repulse. “For the Hype.”

  “Oh I like it!” The second twin changes his gun’s settings and now I’m facing two barrels. “Pepper, boost this vid, would you?”

  “Sure!”

  “And when you speak of us, speak well.”

  “Wait,” I hold up my hands. “There’s got to—”

  They blast away. The repulsor explodes yellow circles beneath me, shattering the deck with a wall of force that feels like getting hit by a Mack truck. I’m smashed thirty feet into the air by the yellow explosion… but take no damage.

  

  Boop!

  You have been booped! Knockback 50m

  DEBUFF: Stunned

  My body flops, limp as spaghetti. Camera drones circle me as Pepper’s MemeQueen skill ignites. A bunch of graphics come up, laughing emojis and numbers that chart my trajectory and speed. The twins blast me a second time. I cartwheel skyward like a limp crash test dummy.

  I hear Pepper giggle from where she’s strapped to my chest. “Hehehee, you look funny!”

  Plow! Blam! Krunk! The Twins blast us across the sky as my limbs flail about, helpless.

  

  RiftTok Vid: “DDD goes UpUpUp”

  #RagDoll Physics #DaveBoop +?1500

  Pepper giggles uncontrollably. “Whee! You’re a human popcorn!”

  The twins stop shooting me when I’m over the Quacken. I plummet toward the ship like a rock. Stunned, my body can’t move. I watch my death rush closer and closer as I fall and wonder if I did all this just to go splat on the ship where I started.

  

  Debuff Complete (Stamina 15)

  Twenty feet above the deck, I whip out my Over The Shoulder Boulder Floater. The big bra snaps open, and we decelerate just in time to hit the deck in a heap.

  “What the hell are you a§sholes thinking?” I spring to my feet and yell at the Critical Trolls. “You could have killed us! And what the hell do you care anyway?! You’re playing for the reality of it, not to win the game… right?!”

  Guilty, a Troll glances at the 20 ships that have overtaken the Quacken and are now in the lead. “Well, we did pay a lot of money to be here, so…”

  “If this were a game, my character would probably try to win.”

  I resist the urge to beat them to death as I see the RiftStorm has closed around us from all sides. The swirling malevolence smashes into an island and rips it into the sky before it’s chewed to pieces in the storm. I check my map and see the RiftStorm has eaten everything in the world that isn’t right here, right now.

  

  GLOBAL ANNOUNCEMENT: RIFTSTORM HAS REACHED CATEGORY 6

  STORM DAMAGE: 1000% DPS IN ACTIVE ZONES

  30 minutes until RiftStorm destroys the world.

  The sky darkens. Wind howls across the regatta as the ocean below us pulls inward, like it’s holding its breath. A gong rings out above everything, the toll of the universe, RiftBorn’s death-knell.

  >PHASE 3: FINAL DEATHMATCH

  >This is it! The moment you’ve all been waiting for! For your literary enjoyment, and to fulfill our E/I requirements, RiftBorn introduces the first, and still the best Greatest American Novel, the Herman Melville Classic! Buckle up and Call-Me-Ishmael because ladies and gentlemen, it’s——

  A white whale the size and shape of a Falcon 9 rocket breaches the surface of the ocean and hangs in midair above the pirate regatta.

  >MOBY DIIIIICK!!