We all went in with so much hope. We knew the road would be tough, but we had mics, a good mood, and teamwork. Some of us even had skill. But salt, salt never changes.
The first rounds already showed us they meant business. It took two restarts and a lot of seriousmode grumping before we felt confident enough to move on, but no matter how much you prepared, salt was always lurking.
Death could come in many forms. You might get backstabbed and your buildings destroyed, or crit arrow'd from the other end of the map. They would even taunt you, but you just sighed and respawned. You knew you had all night, and with good company, who would care that it took a few tries? Basically, we were invincible. Or so we thought. Because there were ways to die that could fill you with salt you had never tasted before. You would look at the nigh-invincible Soldier and his Medic, and nothing less than a flood of crockets towered over you. You could use that uber canteen, and survive just a few seconds longer, but once it wore off that starry sky of blue death was still there, and all that filled your mind was "Why?"
Cmndr was the first to fall. Under the ruse of homework, he left with tears streaming down his face, the salt inside overflowing through his eyes. Next was ice cubes, who, even though his natural weakness for salt, thrived on longer than any human should be forced to. Then idiot cube left; although the shimmer of fun we gave him by letting him play spy, his complete lack of skill became the end of him. With the salt consuming his heart he too was off to bigspuf, to make a thread about how Valve was literally worse than Hitler
And then there were three of us. Aabicus, Doopliss and me. Our salt too was mor ethan we could handle, but the randoms who came to fill the void of our fallen comrades gave us hope. One of them, sporting a very, very funky German accent, even told us stories about the land beyond: there was a way past this wave, and what lied beyond was, whilst still hard, very much doable, and we would be rewarded with dozens of virtual robot scrap parts. Looking back I realize how foolish we were to fall for his white lies.
Randoms came and randoms passed. Idle talk about doter kept the others going, but deep inside of me questions were brooding. How could we change our strategy to make this work? Another dozen tries later, I had tried with all and failed with all. The doter talk had grown silent, and as I looked at Dooplis I saw a husk of a man, the salt inside him drying him of all fluids and fun until all that remained was a crusty mess. "Bear" he whispered to me, hardly audible, "we all know this has no use. There is nothing past this wave, there is only salt. Valve has abandoned us like a shitty game waiting for its halloween update". Aabicus only looked at us, saying nothing and instead making screenshots looking for his lost refund key.
I wanted to tell them to shut up. I wanted to go on. But I knew doop was right. I looked at the time: 5 AM. This had been going on way too long. It was time for the final death.
Silently, we walked towards the meat grinder. There were no goodbyes. We grabbed eachothers hands, and prepared for the disconnect. We raised our feet for the final step, and a phrase escaped my crusty lips;
"video games"
The final step, the familiar slapstick slide whistle. Then only darkness.
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