“Get her!” Alpha yelled. The 450 or so surviving members of Clan:LESS tore up the incline as Bugz turned to the hills and ran.

Before she could reach a full sprint, laser beams and machine-gun fire rained down all around. As if dodging the spray from one gun wasn’t hard enough, Bugz found herself dodging overlapping fire from several automatic weapons at once. She moved as though she had the power to slow down time. As the tsunami of weapon fire chased her, she bobbed and weaved a perfect path that avoided each beam and bullet.

With so much firepower bearing down, there came a moment when no path remained for Bugz, no way to move that wouldn’t see her riddled with slugs and lasers. In this instant, the chat screen in her heads-up display filled with expletives and shouting.

“d@rcy987: INCOMING!”

“sweet_n_lowa: #!@& no!”

“Porselyn: Holy @#$%!”

The Floraverse’s automatic chat-censoring captured the worry of the fans watching Bugz’s livestream. They all aspired to fight as forcefully and move as gracefully themselves, but none could match Bugz’s preternatural ability in the ’Verse. So they watched her, imagining themselves in her shoes. Or moccasins.

The view counter ticked upward; this battle between the Floraverse’s greatest individual warrior and the most ruthless clan in existence was pulling in the most views in the history of the game. But with the artillery closing in, it seemed as though it would come to a premature end. In just a millisecond, the lasers, bullets, and spears would converge on Bugz and eviscerate her.

But just as the first of the beams approached, Bugz traced a quick zigzag motion through the air behind her. Instantly the roots of the nearby trees tore through the earth and grew thick, forming a shield. The laser beams and gunfire ripped through this organic barrier in a fraction of a second, but Bugz didn’t need any more than that. By the time the gunfire obliterated the plant matter, Bugz had gained a step and was once again weaving a perfect path through the mayhem.

Her chat screen exploded with gold coins, flowers, and diamond rings as her fans showered her with gifts, inspired by her virtuosity. Bugz could back herself into a corner and stun them all with an impossible escape. Fans paid for the virtual gifts themselves with real money or crypto, and Bugz, like everyone else in the Floraverse who received a gift, earned a micropayment every time she received something from a fan. Bugz glanced at her balance. She’d just earned enough to buy a new car.

Behind her, Alpha raised a giant, oversized cannon onto his shoulder. It resembled a jet engine, with a blue-and-white glow sparking outward from where the turbine should have been. He aimed and fired a massive energy blast, incinerating a huge chunk of the forest and splattering shrapnel up the hillside toward Bugz.