Too big to fail

(Featuring CHYOA usernames, used with permission.)

Update Complete!
Patch notes:
•Out-of-bounds areas fenced off in all Tutorial Missions
•Fire escapes removed or reworked in many areas.
•After feedback from players, the plan for a blanket ban on Team-Killing has been reconsidered. Going forward, Serial Team-Killers will now be flagged upon player kill. This flag is visible to other players, and will persist until the end of the match.
•Enemy spawning system reworked; Each spawner now tracks a list of total spawnees currently alive, rather than using a collision volume. This should prevent enemies from over-populating certain areas.

LEVEL 15-20 MISSION: Welcome to the Hotel Carabiner Free-rappel
Congratulations on your promotion, Sergeant 2Gamer4UBoiz . Your unit will be dropped off on the roof of the hotel. Rapel down the sides of the building and breach at the 21st floor. Sweep and clear the corridors, then rendezvous with Sergeant DarkSlayer6700's team outside the main ballroom. You will be awarded Style Points for opponents dispatched using Environmental Hazards during this Mission. As you know, Style Points can be used to upgrade, furnish, and decorate your Apartment.

DarkSlayer6700! You've heard of this fucker. He has quite the reputation for gaslighting new players, openly molesting female players until they log out, and pocketing female NPCs so other players can't turn in quests. And now, you finally get to take a crack at him. He sounds like a real piece of shit.

You hope the rumors are true.

On the roof of the hotel, you customize your skintight black kevlar bodysuit, cycling through all the girly options. Too revealing. Ew, not bright pink. Too tomboyish... hmmm... Yes! You accessorize the default black outfit with a chunky, beaten-up set of headphones, a sleek, triangular pair of sunglasses, an adhesive bandage across your nose, and a glittery heart sticker on your ass. It's just extra enough. And for the finishing touch...

You activate a consumable cosmetic item you acquired earlier by opening a "Loot Cratoxopest," which is what this game calls lootboxes in order to get out of saying the word "lootboxes."

Your avatar's jaw begins a chewing motion, then blows a huge pink bubble of bubblegum as big as your head. It pops in the most satisfying way, only to disappear back inside your mouth. You can contribute little lip or tongue motions to the emote, if you feel like it, but otherwise it's effortless, and automatic. You can't even accidentally bite your cheek or tongue by talking. There's even an override you can poke to trigger the next bubble early.

Feeling every bit like a sassy cyberpunk goddess of ****, you do a backflip off the side of the building, eager to go meet your "date."

Meanwhile, down on the street, in the armored rescue vehicle, DarkSlayer6700 made a face as he skimmed the mission briefing.

"So the Rappelling Team is being led by 2Gamer4UBoiz!? What the hell kinda user name is 2Gamer4UBoiz? He sounds like a wimp."

"Uh... I think 2Gamer4UBoiz is a girl," JakeSnakeCakes said.

"Oh, definitely," DirtyRat1931 said. "I saw a livestream of her on NoobTube the other day. It was fuckin' brutal, man. Enemies, NPCs, Teammates, she wiped out the whole map."

Dissonant-Soundtrack stroked his massive horseshoe mustache."I hear she's got a LonelyStans account," he said, glancing over his mirrored shades at his commander for this mission, "But she only gives out the key to players who impress her."

DarkSlayer6700's jaw dropped. "Well? What can you tell me about her?"

Luckily, insertnamehere already had three browser tabs open. "She's Level 15, if this thing is right... we know Apparent Level is bugged, lately, so she could be higher. She's not publicly acknowledged as a member by any Clan or League. She somehow got sorted straight into the Toxic Players Server on Launch Day, and seems to have made no attempt to appeal or otherwise circumvent this decision. Suspected cheater. Confirmed teamkiller. KDR: 0.3773, but that figure is misleading because she constantly puts herself into unwinnable situations."

"Most-used Weapon: Founder's Edition Akimbo Uzis. Strongest GameMode: Deathmatch. Weakest GameMode: Competitive Team Territory Control. By all accounts, good micro. Great fastswitch. Advanced movement tech. She seems to re-spec her class and kit almost every single map. She likes to tweak her cosmetic options, too. Form tends to follow function, not the other way around."

"She's consistently played an average of 12 hours per day since launch. Judging by uptime, she takes her bathroom breaks using the builtin catheter, which would put her in the DigiPerFusion F.I. Pricey. Above-average Internet connection. Good ping. Rarely drops a connection. Always agrees to a rematch after a drop, unless you're on her personal 'shit list,' then she tends to ignore all your requests. Either plays with Pain turned on, or else can do a damned convincing impression of it..." He stopped talking when he hit the more... salacious rumors.

He'd played alongside DarkSlayer6700 before, and he didn't want to encourage him.

DarkSlayer6700 shrugged. "I don't care about any of that shit. Is she hot?"

As you fall, you execute the rhythm mini-game necessary to roll out of your backflip and begin braking with the provided hitch. Your boots throw sparks as you kick off from the side of the building. You arc to one side as you fall, homing in on one of the red dots you can see moving inside of the building. Your teammates complain about how this maneuver will put several walls between their breach point and yours, but you ignore them.

It's worth it, just to really nail this landing.

You crash through a window right into a terrorist. The game gives you +1 Style Points, presumably for the many shards of glass that perforated his body when you smashed through the window.

You retract your rappelling hook, waiting several seconds while it snakes down from the roof and back into your arm-mounted hookshot. Another terrorist comes around the corner at just the wrong time, and without even thinking, you fire the rappelling hook at him. It grabs him by the waist, dragging him screaming towards you. At the last second, you frame-cancel into a Judo throw, and send him crashing out the another of the skyscrape's windows. +1 Style Points!

You turn and begin to strut down the hallway, idly blowing a bubble with your bubble gum. You tap a button on your headphones, and your asskickin' playlist starts to play.

Seconds later, you're rewarded with the sounds of a distant crash, a car alarm, and another +1 Style Points as the terrorist you threw out the window hits the street below.

The door you're walking towards suddenly begins to open towards you. You dodgeroll the rest of the way, and grab the Terrorist's gun arm just as he's raising his **** rifle. With your other hand, you repeatedly slam the door on his arm, granting you +1... +2... +3 Style Points, by the time he finally drops the gun.

You kick the gun away.

Where you're going, you don't need guns.

Earning Style Points is fun!

You kick open the door, knocking the empty-handed terrorist backwards into the lavish public restroom on this floor. Good news. Both the door hit, and the impact of his skull on one of the sinks, count! +2 Style Points! He's down and out, but two more come in from the door on the opposite end of the restroom, shotguns at the ready, while a third kicks open the door of a bathroom stall where they'd been hiding.

You fire your rappelling hook at the open stall door, ripping it off its hinges and pulling it towards you, just in time to protect you from the shotgun blasts. Mirrors and tile shatter, and pipes explode, as you advance through the hail of gunfire through the gunfire with your makeshift shield. You launch the door into the guy who came out of the stall, knocking him into the other two, and slamming all three of them into the wall. +4 Style Points!

Wait. The door counts... and the walls count?

A goofy grin spreads across your face, as you suddenly realize that every object and surface in this room is a deadly weapon.

You blow another bubble.

You grab the nearest terrorist and fling him back the way you came. He slides through the water pooling on the smooth marble floor, trying to scramble to his feet, only to crack his head on the last three sinks he passes, and then slam headfirst into the tile wall. +4 Style Points!

You grab the remaining two terrorists and hurl them up towards the ceiling. One slams his head against a crossbeam, while the other smashes head-first through a light fixture. This is when you learn that, apparently, electrocution counts as a multi-hit combo. Good to know! +7 Style Points!

Then the bodies of the terrorists and, more importantly, the light fixture, start to fall towards the floor, dragging sparking ceiling wires down with them.

Uh-oh.

You fire your rappelling hook up into the corner of the room, and use it to pull your body up towards the hook. The entire wet floor ripples with electricity behind you as the bathroom lights flicker and go out. +15 Style Points!

Then the bathroom door nearest you opens, and you see a terrorist dressed all in grey, backlit by the light from outside the bathroom. Maybe a random mini-boss of some sort?

He throws up his hands as you dive at him. "Nononononono!" he begs. You grab him and stick his head in the nearest stall door, and Power-Dash to the other end of the stalls, clipping his head on each stall doorway as you pass.

+12 Style Points!

2Gamer4UBoiz killed DirtyRat1931 using (unknown blunt ****)

You have been marked: Team Killer

Shit. They mark Team-Killers now? You really should have read the patch notes. Also, who the fuck is DirtyRat1931? You look down at the lifeless ragdoll in your hands. Underneath all the hats and capes and overly-grey custom color choices, you suppose there might be some police uniform bits in there somewhere. It's not your fault his avatar looked more like a hobo from an old Three Stooges sketch than an officer of the law.

Oh, well. It was inevitable that you'd cross paths with DarkSlayer6700's squad at some point. You had planned on playing along nicely with your teammates, right up until the end of the mission, then betraying them all by jumping off the building with the female V.I.P. during the escort mission at the end, thereby rendering the Quest unwinnable. But, as your own personal corollary to the old saying goes, no allies survive first contact with your plans.