Eirairr Plays Tarkov
Eirairr smiled. He had finally convinced Ecirr and Qlul to buy him Escape from Tarkov, the game he had been seeing so much of lately! Apparently, the final update or something had just come out⊠not that Eirairr cared about that. It seemed like a game where he could help people!
           Qlul had looked at it, looked at him, and asked, âDo you know what this game is about?â Eirairr had laughed and said, âI go into a place full of violence and help people!â
           To which Qlul (Ecirr had been there too) had told him, no. Tarkov was a brutal, realistic extraction shooter where he likely would be unable to help anyoneâbecause they wouldnât let him. But if he was alright with that and understood it was just a game, then he could play it.
           Of course, being told he would be unable to help only fanned the fires of his resolve.
           He launched the Battlestate Launcher. Logged in with his account Ecirr and Qlul had helped him make. And⊠pressed the launch button.
           Desolate began to play in the background as he read the terms & conditions, as he made his PMC. He chose USEC because one of them looked funny. âHis jaw looks like big chungus!â
           Big chungus. Of course, Eirairr had learned what that was while at school. He had also learned about the â6-7â meme and could not stop repeating either, to the chagrin of his guardians and friends⊠and pretty much everyone around him.
           â6-7â, âBig chungusâ, âSusâ, and âAmogusâ had made themselves staples of his vocabulary, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop him from saying those words upwards of a thousand times per day.
           He stared at the menu.
           And⊠started to cry.
           The music⊠it was so somber. It was so sad. It felt like the theme of a horrible place where horrible things had happened. It filled him with a strange emotion he did not understand, and that only made him cry harder. He sat there in the menu until Qlul came to check on him. His face was concerned.
           âEirairr? Are you okay?â
           âIâm okâŠâ he barely managed to reply. âThe music is just⊠so sadâŠâ
           To that, Qlul smiled softly and placed his hand over Eirairrâs shoulder. âIâve heard it before. It is sad.â
           âY- you have?â
           âYeah. Taka was asking if we would all play, actually.â
           âReally?â The tears stopped in an instant. âTaka will play with us?â
           âWant me to call him? He should be out of school by now.â
           It was six-PM on a Friday, after all.
           âOkay!â
#
           Taka was going to play Tarkov with him. Not only that, but so was Beriyl and Arthur! Ecirr and Qlul had âvery importantâ (their words exactly) work to do, so they couldnât play, but that was okay. It was unfortunate, but it was okay. It was okay.
           Yeah!
           He played a few raids while he waited for everyoneâs game to install. They were calling on Discord while Eirairr struggled with his initial raids. At first, he had been confused with the controls, but once he figured that out, other players became the main problem. See, Eirairr did not have a violent bone in his body, so for a PVP focused shooter like Tarkov, he was at a massive disadvantage.
           Eirairr could strategize â barely â and he had shockingly good loot luck and spawns and the such. Blessed by RNG as it were, he could not bear to shoot another player. It was too violent. He resolved to do all quests possible without violence. He resolved to help as many other players with their quests â and that decision was made the moment he saw the game even had quests.
           As they watched him play, Taka urged him to shoot and defend himself. Beriyl tried to help with places for him to go, despite neither of them having played before. Arthur offered minimal commentary, but sometimes he would say things like âThatâs unfortunate,â or âToo bad.â
Most of his initial raids ended in death. Eirairr would approach a player, introduce himself, and get shot. He would approach a player scav, drop loot, and get shot. He would offer healing to someone after a battle and get shot. He would run at someone with his hatchet out⊠and get shot.
           Once his friends got on, things changed. Taka helped protect him. His three friends formed a protective circle around him, firing on all cylinders at prospective threats. Their goal? Keep Eirairr safe and extract together! Sometimes, they failed. Tragically, there were times where Taka died, or Beriyl died, or even Arthur died â but generally, they managed to get Eirairr out safe. Â
           Most importantly? They were all having fun. Laughing, joking, and actually doing well. Taka got so many good plays, he started wondering if he should become a streamer. Arthur encouraged him to do it, and Beriyl said something along the lines of, âOh please, God no.â
           Eirairr had simply smiled â though nobody could see him through his monitor â and said, âYou should do it, Taka! Youâd be a great streamer! Iâd watch you every day.â
           He could hear Takaâs smile in his next words. âMaybe Iâll try it, Eirairr. Thanks.â
           âYeah!â
           Even though they didnât always get out alive, they had a great time. Even Taka, who didnât particularly even enjoy games like Tarkov was having fun. Even though nobody ever managed to truly Escape from Tarkov, they had each other.
           And that? That was more than enough for Eirairr. A fun night gaming with his best friends.
           He loved his friends.
           Despite the cruelty of the Tarkov playerbase, he thought he was falling in love with it. The game, that was. Was this what sexuality meant?
           Eirairr still didnât understand. That was okay, he figured.
           Some day.
           Pushing the thoughts from his mind, Eirairr turned back to the game. They were playing on the map Customs⊠in the middle of the apartments, they had found themselves in a deadly firefight against a fully geared enemy team! It was only the first day, but they had made so much progress, theyâd unlocked nearly all the maps! It was all thanks to Eirairr, every time they needed an item it just happened to spawn! Taka had asked if he was cheating several times â as a joke, of course, but Eirairr didnât know that â and Eirairr had always responded earnestly, âIâm not cheating!â
           âHelp!! Help help help help,â Taka cried. âHeâs pushing! Heâs pushing, heâs pushing, heâs on me, heâs on me, heâsâoh, my fucking god, please help me, oh come on, come on⊠THANK GOD. Eat shit!"
           Taka certainly liked to swear!
           After they looted them, they found that there were in fact no dog tags⊠as they hadnât been PMCs after all, but Goons, a special type of enemy Eirairr learned spawned on the map, when the boss âSanitarâ was present. Sanitar was a cool name. It sounded like Santa! No, wait⊠Sanitar spawned on Shoreline. Wasnât it Reshala that spawned on⊠oh whatever!
           It was as he thought these things that Eirairrâs screen faded to black. Successfully extracted.
           âŠOh. That was the death screen.
           âWhere the fuck is this guy?â Taka cussed. âEirairr, are youââ
           âYeah⊠I died.â
           âShit, uhâŠ. Beriyl?â
           âIâm alive, those guys really messed me up, though.â            âArthur? Whereâs Arthur?â
           âThey got me.â            âYouâre kiddingâŠ. AghhhâŠ. Yeah, this is really bad. UhâŠ. Okay. This isnât good butâŠ. Um⊠Beriyl, how about we just retreat? I think weâve lost like â I mean, itâs just us. Itâs literally just us left.â
           âThatâs very well, Taka, but how are we going to retreat? We donât even know where weâre being shot at from!â
           âYeah, uhâŠâ
           Taka tried to escape through a back window, where he met his end at the hands of an enemy who had pushed up and was camping along the wall.
           Beriyl hid in the bathroom, roleplaying dramatically his final goodbyes to the world and his shotgun, his âmost prized possessionâ.  Eirairr thought he should write a bookâit was that compelling!
           The door opened.
           Gunshots rang out. Screens flashed white, red, and⊠black.
           Beriyl had successfully taken down not one, not two, but the entire enemy squad. Due to the extreme wounds he had sustained in the previous engagement with the goons, he died right as he fired his last shell.
           Little did he know, that the fourth player who he had been fighting as he died would later die of the wounds he sustained in the battle. Beriyl had done it. Despite the immense casualties, he had defeated the entire enemy team. At the cost of himself and all his friends, he had at least ensured the enemy squad would not be extracting from that raid.
           So, it went⊠and then they queued up again, and again, until the early hours of the morning, when Taka was incredibly glad he did not have to go to school. He was, however, extremely, inordinately tired, and so⊠they all logged off⊠and went⊠to sleep.
