Theres one silver lining to getting your sh*t rocked and being deemed medically unfit for competition.

You dont have to do a damn thing for yourself. People are willing to go places on your behalf and run your errands; its almost as if you have everyone waiting on you hand and foot. And since Mak just recently got his Xbox 360 back from his brother, hes been joining his groups party and having the lot of them cause as much chaos as possible on Second City. If you take the violence you get in the actual city of Chicago, and blend it with the logic and physics of video games, you actually get a not too far off description of Chicago, except everyone respawns after dying. Need a weapon and ammo? Set your waypoint and head on over to the southern part of the city where the local ammunition and weapons store, aptly titled, Bang Bang! stands. Hey, no one said it was an accurate representation of the city. Need some fresh digs, just head north and go wild in the downtown district. Its like the Mag Mile, just more bullet-ridden and prone to explosions.

Like your typical open-world minstrel show for sociopaths and psychopaths alike, the game is only as limited as your imagination (and some graphical and gameplay restrictions but aside from that). For Mak and his buddies Paxton (Pax for short) and Maurice, their collective imagination is the reason the three of their avatars have currently taken flight in a Buckingham Shamal, the best business aircraft blood money can buy.

Maurice Tell me again why we let Pax fly the plane? Pax First to get to the airport got first dibs, like always. Maurice By that logic, I should be the one flying. Mak First to get to the airport and not die, Maurice. Maurice [Scoffs] Pax ran me over as soon as I got out of my car! Pax Who told you to get out of your car when you knew I was right behind you? Maurice I didnt know you were doing your best Evel Knievel impression when you decided to LAND ON MY UNSUSPECTING PERSON. Pax

The past is the past. Maurice Sometimes I question why Im friends with you.

Pax Because Im adorable? Mak Youre a borderline psychopath. Pax But an adorable one. Mak Just dont crash when you land this time, Evel

The three friends chat away as Pax keeps flying over the city, which looks quite nice even though you know multiple people just died in the most violent ways possible because on the multiplayer mode of this game, everyone connected is online at the same time. For example, say if someone wanted to shoot a plane out of the sky. [A rocket just misses the plane the three are flying in, surprising the three] Like that. Mak Dammit Maurice, did you not turn on private? Maurice No, we were going to grind it out, remember? Pax Who the hell is shooting at us anyways? [Mak checks the proximity inventory, a feature in Second City that shows the closest people from you, dependent on settings] Mak Shit. Pax What?

Mak JacobScarlet is the only user in the air right now Maurice Scarlet? You mean, of the Scarlet Crew?

Mak None other. Pax I hate those assholes so much. Mak Aw, shit! Maurice Now what? Mak If hes in the air shooting at us, theres only one thing hes flying. Pax A Lazer. Hang on, boys. Pax makes a sudden left turn and dodges another rocket in the nick of time. Pax As much as I love the thrill of cheating death, I love not being a sitting duck that much more, if you catch my drift. Mak Setting a waypoint now. Maurice You headed where I think youre going? Mak Where else? Mak may be the least erratic of the three, but he knows this map like the back of his hand, so he sets the waypoint to the crews not-so secret hideout. Its not-so-secret because its located in the middle of the Loop, but few people pay it any mind when any of the three are on. They dont usually get into it with the other players, but when a Scarlet is after you, it usually means two things: either you pissed them off and they want to prove a point or one of them got

bored and you were the unfortunate bastard they saw first. But its best not to ask why, because youll just keep getting shot until you leave the game or they grow tired of you. As for Jacob, he doesnt tire easy. Pax so far has done his best dodging the missiles, but he knows its only delaying the inevitable. Our trio can only hope they reach for their base in time to even the score. Pax Everyone got their parachutes equipped? Maurice Were not even a mile out yet, though. Pax If we jump nowMak It gives us more time to call for a getaway. Pax College education at work right there. [The next rocket shoots over the plane and nearly clips the nose.] Maurice See you on the ground! [Jumps out of plane] Mak You drive or I? Pax You drive, I shoot. Mak Yep. The two remaining in the plane finally jump out and start dropping from the sky at high velocity as the plane begins its own descent. The three deploy their parachutes and begin steering towards land. Scarlet realizes what is going on yet stays in the air and flies on. The three eventually safely touch land and head to their hideout after Mak and Maurice call for rides. Mak Guess he just wanted to cause havoc. Pax No, he had his reasons.

Maurice What did you do? Pax Quick to judge, much? Maurice A Scarlet tried to blow us up Pax, thats takes quite an effort. Pax Fine. Remember when Free Fall Studios introduced the bounty system by placing bounties on random people playing at the time? Mak [Chuckles] Yeah, I collected yours. Pax Thanks for that, prick. Well, a couple of the Scarlets got a couple bounties of their own. Maurice Including Jacob. Pax Which I kind of , sort of collected the other day. Mak Youre kidding. Pax No man, 5 Gs. My proudest accomplishment in the game, prouder than flipping the single player in a week, if I say so myself. Maurice How the hell did you pull that one off? Pax So I happened upon him just minding his own business for once and I guess he mistook me for a new player, so he tried to do that bullshit orientation. Mak Pretending to be buddy, buddy and then suddenly killing you in cold blood? Pax You can call me psychotic, and I may have done some crazy things in this world-

Maurice Remind me to never trust you regarding stickies ever again. Pax Oh hush, you only lost a couple grand. Anyway, so I played along and to his credit, he was playing a hell of a long haul; he showed me around the city, even went to the Tower roof via helicopter. So we get there, right? We mind our own business looking out at the view and he has his back turned. Obviously, hes treating me as a new player, so I grab my pistol and headshot him off the Tower and took the bounty. Mak YOU were that asshole noob? Pax Please, that asshole is fine. Maurice Jacobs gone on record saying if he ever finds out who killed him, hes going to make the person regret ever logging on. Mak So what, every time Pax is online, hell be attacking him? Maurice The Scarlets have been less petty. Pax When have I ever expressed fear of anything, much less the Scarlets? Mak Rice pudding. Pax shut up. Maurice What? Mak Show him rice pudding, even just a picture and his stomachll turn. Pax It is the most disgusting substance known to man. It looks like curdled maggots. Give me a crazy online, Ill wreck him all the time. Mak

What about a crazy covered in rice pudding?

Pax Dont even joke. Im starting to gag at the thought[Rapid gunshots] Pax The fuck was that? Mak Not what. Maurice Oh, shit. Jacobs back. And hes brought a few friends with him. Mak Scarlets. Pax How many? Mak All five. Maurice 3 on 5; great. [More gunshots are heard, this time even closer] Mak Get ready. Pax Born ready. The three friends each gathered their weapons and took cover. The Scarlets quickly converge around the not-so-hideout. They go in through the opening and immediately Pax snipes two of the Scarlets. Now its even. Pax Got to love this gun.

Maurice Grenade! [Explosion] Mak Everyone alright? Pax Im fine. Maurice Dammit, I got hit. Mak How long? Maurice I can only take a couple more. Pax Stay behind. Pax and Mak keep shooting as Maurice tries to rush towards the health pack on the other side of the hideout. Mak took down another Scarlet making it 3-2 but just before Maurice can get the health pack, a bullet clips him. [JacobScarlet shot MTercer] Pax FUCK YOU SCARLET! Mak Stay calm man, were not losing this to him. It took us way too long to sustain this damn place, Im not losing this. Pax Im going to shoot him in his face again.

Suddenly, the two remaining Scarlets leave the hideout and head in their car and drive off. Mak and Pax decide to follow, hell bent on getting revenge for Maurice. The cars race around the Loop, without a care of any run over pedestrians or smashing other cars around. Pax drives as Mak tries to shoot at the Scarlets car while Jacob shoots for his car. Oh yeah, the police tries to subdue the two carskeyword being try.

Pax shoots out a tire, causing the Scarlets car to spin out at a construction site in the game. The Scarlets dive out and the car crashes into a random building. The Scarlets run into the site and as Mak and Pax stop in front of the site, Mak gets out with Pax following behind. The Scarlets have gotten high ground quickly and the two scatter off to avoid being shot. Mak finds his way to a lift, which he controls to get towards the last remaining Scarlet lackey. He sneaks around in hopes of catching the Scarlet off guard, but instead, the lackey whips him and holds Mak hostage, wrapping his arm around Mak neck. Mak Dammit, Pax, Im caught. Pax I got up here just as I saw him tag you. Mak Dont worry about me, just make sure you get Jacob When a player is taken hostage, the only way they can escape out without getting killed automatically is a short minigame. Its essentially button mashing until whoever overcomes their opponent first. Mak activates the minigame and after a few seconds, he breaks free, but since he was taken hostage, has to not only take the time to get his weapon back out, but he has to reload as well. It seems as if death is a sure possibility before he can reload when the lackeys body goes limp. [DScarlet whacked by LosPax] Pax Man, if you didnt have me, where would you be? Mak I owe you one. Pax Dont worry about it. Lets get that fucking prick. The two make their way to the top of the construction site. The roof has nowhere to cover, a sure shootout for those who make their way here. They get to the roof andJacob is nowhere to be seen. Mak The hell did he go? Pax He didnt jump, did he?

Mak No, we would have seen that Pax You gotta be kidding me. Look out! Scarlets in a SWAT helicopter, only possible by a glitch in the multiplayer. Mak How did he have the time to get that? Its only possible in a single session. Has he been here for that long? Pax Maybe he does have no life. [JacobScarlet left you a message] Pax The fuck? [Message: Shoot me off the tower will you you punk ass pussy?] Pax This man is insane. I of all people saying someones insane. Mak Can we not do this right now? About to die.

[Missile woosh, followed by the helicopter exploding] The helicopter explodes over the two men, who quickly run before the shrapnel kills them. Jacob is seen parachuting back down towards the roof. Mak Who the hell was that? Pax I dont care, look at that sitting duck! Pax takes aim at Scarlets parachute, however just before he shoots, machine gun fire pierces Scarlets chute, sending him plummeting to the ground. Mak and Pax Oh shit!

[MTercer shot down JacobScarlet] Pax WHAT?! Maurice Miss me? Mak When did you spawn? How the hell did you find us? Maurice I spawned back towards the airport. There was the jet. Found you pretty quickly, these suckers are quick, couldnt compromise my cover though. Pax OH GOD DAMMIT Maurice Yeah, I was camping over for a while Pax Fuck that, you stole my kill you bastard! Maurice Your kill? The motherfucker shot me down, that was revenge. Mak Got a point there. Pax Oh dont suddenly join his side because he finally learned to play the game. [Machine gun fire] Pax Jesus, what the hells the matter with you? Maurice Big bad wolfs not so bad when hes the one vulnerable. Pax Well see about that. Pax attempts to aim at the flying Maurice. Maurice circles back towards Pax and to flies down at him as Pax just shoots at the jet.

Maurice If Im going down fucker, Im taking you with me! The two begin to scream at each other before Maurice crashes on the roof, the blast radius wiping out all three players. [MTercer kills himself] [MTercer blew up LosPax] [MTercer blew up TravieRose] Mak Well, that was a thing. Pax and Maurice Fucking prick. Mak Think Scarlets done with us? [JacobScarlet sent you a message] Pax Nope. Maurice You gonna open it? Pax Nope. Let me guess what it says. You have not seen the last of our wrath, you will regret ever fucking with the Scarlets blah blah blah. Its a fucking video game, its bad enough you take it seriously enough as it is, youre going to waste however many hours it takes for you to hunt my ass down? Mak Ah shit, its already six-thirty I got to head out. Maurice Yeah man, my girls going to kill me if Im late for our date. Pax Same man, shell kill me if I dont get a quickie before you get there.

Maurice Next time I see you in person, remind me to break your nose. Pax You can try, later gents [LosPax has quit the game] Maurice Still dont know why Im friends with that guy. Later dude. Mak Later. [MTercer has quit the game] Rinse and repeat, and you have Second City Online in a nutshell. Everyone tries to kill everyone, yet no one would have it any other way. All you can do is get a couple friends and try to kill before you get killed yourself. Maybe theres some tragic parallel between the game and urban life, especially Chicago. But everyone just believes its weird coincidence instead. [Makaveli has quit the game] A video games a lot different from a squared circle. Maybe instead of playing games with random people, I should start training. Im not dealing with pushovers. Im dealing with dangerous people. They call themselves dangerous, rather. Am I back? I wouldnt say Im back. That implies I left. I never left. I may have slacked off. I may have gotten lazy. But I never really took my ball and went home. Id imagine my balls pretty deflated at this point. I dont blame anyone but myself.

At the same time, I dont care for wins and losses. Not at the moment. I dont care titles. Not now, anyway. You dont get into a ring and ruin your body night in and night out if you arent looking to grab yourself one of those few pounds of gold to hold your pride up with. But all thats for another day. Right now, I have other things to attend to. Im coming back a little earlier than expected. I have to team with people I may not necessarily like or am familiar with to beat up other people who you dont know or like or am familiar with. To be quite honest, this is nothing more than getting my feet wet before diving back in to the swing of things. Sure, everything is fun and games one day, but you need those sort of days after killing yourself with weights and treadmills and miles and bumps, all while praying nothing goes wrong and derails your progress. I dont really care if I can beat Trace Demon, Crow, Thunder and Malakai. I know Cam doesnt care right now either, and maybe thats a little unprofessional, even if I should be considerate of other partners. But I didnt ask to team with Devilkiller and Dex. As far as Im concerned, theyre just in the way like the four others on the opposite team are, sorry boys. You might be taking an extra loss that night, you can live with the losers purse for one more week, last I heard, none of us in this main event are exactly getting paid peanuts around here. Sure, momentums a thing, and you definitely need it when the biggest show of the year rolls around, but all my momentums right here, in the dome. Because Ive noticed something very interesting and it would be remiss to not mention this but all of my opponents from SuperBrawl will be wrestlingexcept there are two particular people not wrestling at Revolution and coincidentally enough, they are the two people I am most interested in in this company at the moment. Perhaps they have some vacation days built up and want to take advantage of them before their big night, although if you ask me, they REALLY would want to wait until AFTER that big night to use them, but thats beside the point. Whatever the reason Eustace and Muriel want to be missing from Revolution, possibly to take advantage after the rest of our matches or whatever predictable trope from their fantasies they want to emulate, I guess I should not take for granted my team will be squaring off with some of the most talented and dangerous that ring has ever come across. You have a guy that wants to rule the world, but havent realized his pseudo-sociopathic tendencies dont actually work in a real-world context, a man who is literally dying with each passing day, some sort of bird and a guy Ive already beaten, on his 30th regeneration or so. Look, lets just cut to the chase: were going to beat each other up, we wont trust anyone who ends up holding a tag rope, and were eventually going to say screw it, and run the gauntlet in the ring and whoever happens to be pinning someone will end up winning. Too meta for you? We each have more important things on the brain. Im not looking to send a message, or prove a point or re-establish a reputation. I just want to hurt two specific people to the point where if I have my way, well never see them again. I will leave that ring and look for them myself if they arent going to try and sneak me.

Some may take some offense to that, claim my head or hearts not in it if I cant take those men seriously. That cant be furthest from the truth. I just know what I want. I want to see Slanted and Enchanteds heads on pikes if Im so given the wish. A tag match isnt going to change that. Win, lose or draw, Im coming for them. This is simply a speed bump.