[Adam Cooper]

12/21/18 : 23 minutes to Midnight : Somewhere in New York : 11F

It had just stopped snowing when he had managed to get past the door of his apartment. Long day. So many dishes. No work or pratice tomorrow. It was time to get some relaxing gaming in. The young man booted up his console as it gave its usual -Bing- Hello, Adam. He then selected the game he wanted to play. Destiny 2. Where he head-canonically played a brash, human Titan, despite him at times going out of his way to help other online players when public events came up. As that loaded, Adam slipped off his winter coat and hat. Then followed his shoes as the man grabbed some leftover grilled chicken and rice. He didn't even heat it up. Adam didn't care. It was food and it hadn't gone bad yet.

Once a couple of bites were down the hatch, Adam threw his titan into the the fray. Shooting, punching, and grenading(?) his way through waves of enemies as he first completed his daily tasks for misc. loot. It was good times. He even had to do a couple of gambit matches for some stat raising gear. By 1am he decided to hop on some strikes. Always good to meet people that way in short interactions that if you find you don't lick you can just exit at the end of the strike. Granted, you can leave earlier, but Adam wasn't the type just leave a lobby without good reason. It took a couple strikes but he managed to complete the set of armor he had been vying for.

Anti-Extinction Titan Armor

"This is awesome!" He said thrusting his fist into the air, with a mouth full of food.

It was here that a loading screen popped up letting him know that the server was searching new players. To which Adam just shrugged and waited patiently. Moments later, a new group plopped in with him. As the scene kicked up it appeared they were doing a strike called "The Arms Dealer." Adam enjoyed this one. One of the other players seemed to have a mic. Which was blaring music that was so distorted that he had to mute that crap. "Ow." He whispered. That person was immediately on Adam's shit list. "Anyways, you got a mic other person?" He asked, inquisitively, while trying to read the person's name.

[Taliah Dawson]

The cold front that had been steadily creeping towards California for the past couple of days had finally settled in the state bringing with it a chill that was just downright disrespectful. For most the dismal weather was the perfect excuse for amorous couples to bundle up in front of a roaring fireplace and have a movie night. However, as this simply wasn't possible for Taliah for several reasons the brunette opted for the next best thing... killing stuff. While Liah had several venues for satiating her need for virtual carnage, the young woman's desire to obtain better gear for her human warlock character led the twenty three year old to pop in Destiny 2. Without Tanice about to cook for the pair of them and natter her about her terrible eating habits, Taliah's diet left much to be desired. As evidenced by the box of half eaten meat lover's pizza resting on the coffee table. Never really having been one to play well with others, Taliah typically avoided participating in the strike teams, but alas she was bored. With any luck, all she'd have to do was fire off a few scatter grenades and toss a couple of nova bombs and let the others sort out the rest.  Having expected that it would take several minutes for the server to connect her with a strike, Liah set the controller down and shuffled into the kitchen. Returning with an ice cold bottle of Mike's hard lemonade, Taliah flopped down on the couch and reached for her headset which had started blaring 'Let the bodies hit the floor' by Drowning pool as her spotify app was still playing in the background. Just as she slid the headset over her ears, the server connected her to "The Arms Dealers' strike.  A voice was speaking but was effectively drowned out by the music forcing Liah to reduce the volume as she inquired "Wait, what now?" Notes

✬

[Adam Cooper]

Adam rolled his eyes, as the mystery voice didn't even seem to know that she was in a lobby with other people. Still, the voice seemed friendly enough so as the mission audio started to play the young man decided to move his character forward. "Oh cool, a warlock? Nice. Always good to have a diverse team. Lets do this." He sounded pretty cheery, for right now. The guy was just happy the strike was getting started and no one was AFKing.

As the Titan rolled up to the door, the muted third player used their Ghost to advance the story. He turned back to them both and his character emoted playing a projection of an acoustic guitar. As the character began to strum the doors began to open, allowing the three person team to advance. To which Adam moved forward happily, ready to take on all comers. "Alright, this first part is pretty easy. Just start shooting everything that moves. Take cover, because it is going to get pretty hairy."

Immediately heading left, Adam fired off a few rounds with his shotgun. It took down a couple enemies but only served to kick the hornet's nest. More Cabal and Fallen end up coming out of the woodwork. Guns starts blazing from everywhere. He tossed a grenade quickly to try and cull some of the fire they were suddenly taking. His experience points raised so a few of them must have been taken when the lighting explosive went off like a thunderbolt.

"Cmon guys, water is fine. Don't be shy, their faces love your gunfire." He said laughing, and taking a few shots.

[Taliah Dawson]

The Arms Dealer. Gods, how Taliah hated this strike. It was insanely, unnecessarily difficult for no reason. The amount of damage that one took during this strike was absurd even for characters with healing capabilities. There was some freakishly powerful gear to be obtained by those that had managed to complete the strike. Alas, Liah had yet been able to do so. At the mention of a diverse team, the brunette glanced at the trio assembled there noting that they had one of each character type. "One of each. That's a first for me. Really balanced team here, should make for an interesting strike." Typically the twenty three year old wasn't one much for taking direction, however as much as she hated to admit it allowing the Titan to take the lead made perfect sense. They were after all created After all, that particular character type was built for absorbing massive amounts of damage. Her character, on the other hand, was not. As the doors opened, Taliah advanced her character forward her gaze darting from one side of the screen to the other as she scanned the area for enemies. Not needing an invitation, Taliah moved off to the right as the Titan headed to the left. Vaguely aware of the handful of enemies the Titan had taken down, had fired off a few shots of her own when suddenly Cabal and Fallen seemed to show up out of nowhere. "Son of a b*tch. Looks like you pissed them off," Liah commented casually as the Titan tossed a grenade at a cluster of Legionaires. Heading back to the left to rejoin her comrades, Liah launched a storm grenade at a pair of Incendiors before firing a few rounds at a Psion a few feet away taking him out before he had a chance to snipe her. Noticing that the Hunter (muted player) had yet to join the fray Taliah inquired "Hey Hunter! You there? Get your head in the game, dude." Notes

✬

[Adam Cooper]

"They had it coming."

His voice was deep and cheeky, as his focus was more on the task at hand. More enemies were dropped, each time they fired. The beginning of strikes were usually easy but this was easily one of the bigger pains he has run into. A lot of tanky enemies in close quarters was like stuffing dynamite into a barrel. Crap was going to start flying once it goes off. The young man spots another grenade going off, thus bringing down the enemy further.

"Another arc user? Very cool." Adam said, casually.

He honestly was too busy trying to shoot down baddies as the other player tried getting the attention of the hunter. The player then started to move...sort of. The character was running in place and teleporting. Lag. The hunter was a bonafide Lagfest, but a few of the enemies were randomly dropping. At least the guy was still useful.

As the platform started to be cleared, the next bit of audio began to play. Adam already knew what needed to be done. He snatched up the flamey, round objective only to be followed by another quip from Cayde-6. Great character.

"Alright, lets see if we can't get this over to the other platform in one try hm?"

Without another word, he took off, meleeing a psion as he went by.

[Taliah Dawson]

Taliah chuckled softly as the husky voice of the Titan's player filtered through the microphone asserting that the Cabal and Fallen deserved what they'd received. "That's your story and you're sticking to it, huh," the brunette teased. Despite being grossly outnumbered miraculously the trio somehow managed to be holding their own against the throng even with the Hunter being MIA. Sure, they weren't barreling through them the way that she would have preferred but at the very least they seemed to be giving as good at they got. As the Titan player remarked on her arc use, Liah shrugged casually replying "Seems more effective when it comes to taking down waves of enemies as thick as this one." Unsure of whether it was because of her urging him to get involved in the battle or his system was slowly trying to crawl back to life but the Hunter started moving. Erratically, but moving nonetheless. He seemed to be trying to run but not actually going anywhere. Then there was some off glitching thing happening when it looked like he was teleporting. It was strange to say the least.  He was definitely lagging although to his credit he had still knocked off a few enemies, but was unlikely to be of much use until he got a handle on his lag. While they hadn't taken all of them down, it would seemed that they'd wiped out enough to advance to the next platform as the Titan seized a glowing orb and darted off. The twenty three year old's brow shot up as the Titan's player suggested that they attempt to clear the stage in one try. Chuckling, she responded "Well, that's ambitious, but what the hell? Everyone's got to go sometime, right?"  That said the she sprinted off after him drawing her gun as she did so. Notes

✬