Modders have all the coolest toys

She introduces herself as Starlit Sniper. She listens to you and answers your questions. It takes her a little while to figure out what you're actually asking. You're prickly and standoffish, but she's empathetic and persistent.

"Other than the buildings? Most of what you see here is user-generated content," she finally explains.

"Wow." You take a moment to process this. "When did they announce that feature?"

"They didn't. Somebody just discovered the tools one day, and a few of the geekier players started messing with them. Theories are split on whether they were developed with users in mind and just haven't been announced yet, or whether they were intended for the developers only, and somebody just forgot to lock them up properly. Either way, they're player-accessible until the devs make them not."

"I see. And the only things you guys have made with this tech so far is horny NPCs and BDSM gear?"

She looks a little perplexed by the question. "What server do you think you're on?" she asks wryly.

You shrug. "Toxic Players?" Her tittering is not what you expected.

"Oh, no, dear. I'm afraid you left them behind two updates ago. They forked the playerbase again. This is Horny Toxic Players." She pauses the conversation to offer a set of Dildo Energy Swords to a pair of new players. It gives you a little time to think.

Dammit. Why does this game have to be so complicated? These days, you're too busy playing the damned thing to read about it!

"Well, you seem pretty nice," you say, as she waves goodbye to the newbies, laughing and slapping at each others' asses with their floppy new stun weapons. "How'd you end up getting sorted into here?"

She blushes. "That is a secret," she says. "I'll tell you what, though. I'll make you a deal. There's a brand-new Raid Boss that should be spawning here for the first time, tonight. If you can help me take it down? I'll be in your debt." Something about the way she says 'debt' makes you think she takes this promise a lot more seriously than you do. After all, you're a Girl Gamer. You take what you want.

"I dunno," you say, "I've pretty much got my own stuff going on tonight. What would you need me to do?"

"Depends on your build. But I'm stuck firing the Ol' One Shot Special, here." She runs a gloved fingertip down the rifle's pearlescent barrel. "If you can keep it off me? Maybe distract it, give me a shot at its eyes? I'll do whatever you want."

You scoff at the offer. "Fat chance. Nobody gets to tell me what to do unless they earn the privilege. So here's my counter-offer. I'm gonna kill your precious Raid Boss and keep the loot for myself. But if you can stop me? Either by getting in the last hit on the Boss yourself, or by killing me before I can do it? I'll owe you a favor." You're not sure why you're putting a bet like that on the line, but the look on her face tells you that it's thrown a wrench into her plans, which is basically what you were going for. The chastity belt was a dead giveaway. Whatever she's hoping to get out of this, it sure isn't glory or loot.

"Let's do both," she says finally. "Winner take all. Loser owes the winner a favor. Do we have a deal?"

Behind you, a building explodes.

"Fuck you," you start to say, unsheathing your katana. There was more, but your words get caught in your throat as you see the massive flying silver serpent spiraling its way across the sky. You wrench your gaze away from the Boss to look back at her.

"Earn it," she says with a strangely proud smile on her face, even as her cheeks redden. She crouches and takes aim at the beast.

You unleash a sudden barrage of rapid slashes doing massive damage to her neck, and putting the katana's Special Attack on cooldown. Then you quick-switch to your rocket launcher, jump backwards, and fire right into her face, knocking her down onto her hands and knees as the shockwave from the blast boosts you higher into the air.

You reload your rocket while falling, aim down, and fire again just before you hit the ground, propelling you even higher. Even with your character build kitted out for explosive defense, it still shaves away at your health with each blast, so there's a limit to the number of times you can do this.

BOOM!

That said, by the fourth jump, you'll be leaping more than ten skyscraper storeys in a single bound, so Fall Damage will kill you instantly if you get the timing wrong.

BOOM!

You spot a large chunk of falling debris ahead of you, so you quickly bring your launcher up and fire an extra rocket, blowing it apart before it can hit you.

BOOM!

But that also affects your trajectory. "Shit!"

You don't even have time to plan what happens next. In a flurry of adrenaline, action, and **** glancing around, you keep putting rockets into walls, and you somehow manage to propel yourself up onto a rooftop with only a quarter of your health gone.

Out on the street, various players are throwing everything they have at the Dragon. You hear gunshots, turrets, missiles... somebody's piloting some sort of mini-helicopter drone that peppers the dragon's face with missiles, until it gets summarily eaten by the beast.

"Looks like this is going to be a Long fight," you quip. The katana/rocket launcher combo, while ideal for trolling peaceful players, just isn't going to cut it for a boss fight of this magnitude. Fortunately, you're in a Hub area, so unlike on a Mission, you're free to re-spec your build and change your Equipment loadout at any time. You start cobbling together a build for the situation, but then you can't make up your mind which helmet to equip. You don't have time for this indecision, so you remove both of them from your inventory and literally weigh them in your hands.

BAAAAANG!

One of the helmets goes flying. You have no idea where. Someone must have revived Starlit Sniper, and now she's gunning for you. If your head had been inside that helmet, right now it would be three city blocks away, glitching around in some entity or collision volume.

Right. You crouch down. Zoom Goggles. Skysurfer. Magnet Boots. Decoy. Shocking Quarterstaff. Flamethrower. Comet Launcher. It'll have to do. You jump off the roof and activate the Skysurfer. A rocket-powered surfboard appears beneath your feet.

BAAAAANG!

You activate the Decoy just in time. Starlit's round passes through the hologram, while you roll off in the other direction, invisible. The magnet boots make it really easy to stay on. The Skysurfer should last long enough to get you to the dragon, but the Decoy will surely run out before the halfway point. You take a look behind you and see Starlit crouching in the middle of the road, lining up her next shot. Not exactly the most well-hidden or best-protected sniper's nest. Then again, you need to get closer in order to attack, and she doesn't. Still, you're starting to suspect she doesn't main Sniper.

You're going to do your best to make her regret the fact that you can see her.

Just before the Decoy expires, you sweep to one side, firing four rounds from your Comet Launcher. The rockets streak towards Starlit, each brightly burning a different color as it sails through the night sky. This would surely make it impossible for her to--

BAAAAANG!

She makes the mistake of putting a sniper round through one of them, which may prevent the rocket from reaching her, but it does this by prematurely detonating the rocket into a massive pink firework, making it even harder for Starlit to see than with the comet trails alone.

You unload a few more more Comet Rockets one at a time, sweeping in a random direction after each shot. It's enough to foul her aim until you reach the dragon. You don't go near the head, because you don't want to draw its attention. Instead, you attach to the side of the silvery creature with your magnet boots, and begin running along its back. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to notice you until you're too far along for it to turn around and bite you. A massive clawed hand slams down on you, but you light it up with your flamethrower until it retracts its hand, shaking the flames out. When you reach the back of its skull, you're further along its neck than the arm can reach. You switch to the Shocking Quarterstaff and begin hitting it with a massive combo of sweeps and slams, lightning grounding into its skull with every hit. It roars, and begins ramming buildings head-first, trying to scrape you off.

You crouch low, pondering whether you should keep attacking or try to move towards the eyes.

Then your eyes focus on the terrain beyond the dragon, and you suddenly realize that you're staring down the barrel of Starlit Sniper's One Shot Special.

BAAAAANG!

What happens next, happens in slow motion for you. You see a burst of red light ahead of you as one of the Dragon's eyes shatters. Then you see a burst of radiant energy from the back of the creature's skull. Almost simultaneously, you feel the hit, and go from crouching by choice to huddling due to the Bleeding Out mechanic.

Fortunately, players who are bleeding out can't take any more damage. This matters because the dragon's head rolls as it slams into the ground, scattering a cloud of asphalt and concrete as the massive body of the dragon slowly drags to a halt, inches from the tip of Starlit's muzzle.

StarlitSniper sniped WhiteDragonOfTheEast百東龍 and 2Gamer4UBoiz with the One Shot Special!

Great. You can already tell from the stupid grin on her face that you're never going to hear the end of this.