It was a beautiful, rainy, shitty day. The only reason Bucky had even opened his front door was because of a package he spotted while watching the sky fall.
The package read
“Hi Bucky! I need playtesters for my new game, hope you enjoy it! - Galacta”
First, he assumed it was sent to the wrong address, he had never signed up to be any type of play tester and he didn’t even own anything to play this thing on. However, the fact his name was on it made him assume it had to be for him. Also because there was no return address or shipping address! It had to have been hand-delivered, but he had no idea who it could’ve been.
Cracking open the package, a shiny new PS5 case slid out with a vibrant art style of many people he seemed to recognize. It said “MARVEL RIVALS” in big bold lettering. Bucky thought he should be creeped out, like, his face was on the cover. Well, it wasn't his face, it looked different but the metal arm, long brown hair, and mask were an undeniable portrayal of his Winter Soldier days.
He called up Sam, with two kid nephews Sam had to own a PS5, right?
“Hey man, what's up?”
“Uh, honestly I'm not sure. I got this package at my door with this PS5 whatever game in it. Said they needed people to play test it for them. And before you say it was probably the wrong address, it has my name on it, and no address,” Bucky said, turning the case over in his hands while he talked.
“What? That's so weird. Lemme see if I got anything like that…” His voice trailed off as he put his phone down. Bucky could hear Sam opening the front door, closing it, and then asking his sister and nephews if they saw anything.
“I got nothing. Did you want to come over to try it out? I can't lie, I'm kinda curious,” Sam offered.
So, Bucky made his way over to the Wilson residence, game in one hand and umbrella in the other.
“What the fuck? It's got your face on it,” Sam pointed out, sticking his pointer finger against the drawing of Bucky’s face.
“That's how I reacted too. It even has Steve and Natasha on it,” Bucky added, pointing out the two others.
“Even Clint! Where am I??” Sam asked, sounding very offended.
“Maybe this isn't all their characters, let just boot it up,” Bucky said, walking over to their TV. Bucky was never really good with technology. He could remember the first time Sam had convinced him to play a video game, Fortnight, or something like that. Bucky’s mind was so jumbled up looking at the screen and trying to understand the buttons that he died before he could even take his first step. Sam laughed so hard at his horrible attempted he had fallen off the couch in tears. Since then Sam figured out that starting with the VERY classic games first was a good idea. No more Fortnight, only Ms. Pac-Man.
Bucky thought he had made good progress since then though, he had moved up from pong all the way to Overwatch in about 2 years. Was he good at it? Hell no. But was he good enough to play at Sam’s house every so often? Just about.
Booting up the game, a giant way of stimuli hit his face. Like 80 different colors and 7 different things happened all at once, his eye squinted to try and make sense of it all. Sam ended up taking control and starting up an AI bot match, whatever that was.
The screen popped up with a whole giant roster to pick from. Tanks, Damage, and Support.
“What the hell, I'm not even on here! But they got fucking Spiderman? Isn’t that kid like 17? That's gotta be illegal.” Sam said, 10 times more offended than he was when he had spotted Clint for the first time. His arms were crossed and his lips pursed.
“Oh, I see me. Winter Solder? Really? I haven't been the winter solider in like, 11 years,” Bucky clicked on himself anyway. If a game has you in it, you gotta pick you.
With the game finally starting he tried out his abilities. Which he found out, had NOTHING to do with his real-life abilities, besides shooting a gun. What was this weird red thing he was punching out? Or this grapple he could never aim right, or even his dive and punch up. Bucky could not move like this in real life. He also would never carry a gun with only 3 bullets, what was this nonsense?
“Wait, let me have a try,” Sam said, not waiting for a response before taking the controller out of Bucky’s hands. Sam seemed to be doing better than he was, a yellow thing popped up in the corner of the screen, screaming to be used.
“What's that?” Bucky asked.
“I think that's like your super special ability like in Overwatch ya know?” Sam said, eyes not leaving the game. Bucky kinda knew what he was talking about, it was like that thing Bucky managed to get just about once a game but everyone else seemed to have every 5 minutes.
“ARMED AND DANGEROUS!” The Bucky on-screen shouted before jumping high up into the air.
“HA! It sounds just like you! So over dramatic!” Sam laughed.
Bucky rolled his eyes “His voice is completely different,” He grumbled.
“AGAIN!” “AGAIN!” “AGAIN!” It kept shouting after each time it jumped up. It seemed like Bucky was the only character who was able to reset his ult like this, it ended when Sam couldn’t manage to kill Captain America.
“Ah, just like real life. You can never kill your best buddies,” Sam shook his head jokingly.
The match ended once the timer ran out, the bots were never able to leave their spawn after the first minute or so, it was a straight blood bath.
“Let's see who else is on here,” Sam said absentmindedly while trying to find the hero roster. “Ah, here we go.”
The obvious standouts were the people they recognized, some random other people neither of them knew of but it was slowly becoming reasonable to assume that this was a gift given to Bucky by someone who could travel in between realities. It wasn't a new topic, the whole defeating Thanos debocle had taken their friends across time and dimensions so who's to say other beings can't do so too? The Bucky in the game had some weird monster in his arm, a present from Hydra it seemed. Captain America had woken up 100 years later, being from 2099, and Black Widow seemed to be from a world where she only used snipers and was bad at hand-to-hand combat.
“GODDAMNNNN!” Sam yelled, “BLACK PANTHER GOT A FLAT ASS!!!! They gotta change this, he had a fatty for real!”
“You gotta stop using Twitter, your whole lexicon is going to shit,” Bucky looked at him with dead eyes. Sam shrugged in return.
“I just wish they would add me… how are you gonna have the whole Avengers team BUT ME?” Sam threw his hands up in exasperation.
“They didn’t add ant-man,” Bucky laughs.
“Don’t compare me to that fool. Sam mumbles.
They continued playing for the next few hours, this time against real people. Sam fared a lot better than Bucky did, winning almost every game while Bucky got curb-stomped into nothingness.
“Winter Soldier? More like Summer Civilian!” “Bro is unarmed and kind,” were a couple of the things his teammates typed into chat. Whatever! Bucky could play another character, he had nothing against learning. So he swapped to Captain America, cuz why not?
“DAMN Swap back to Bucky! Ur even worse at Cap!” Okay, Bucky was mad. In retaliation, he swapped to what he thought would be the worst character in the game, the little shark-dog thing, Jeff.
“Dang, you're kinda kicking ass now…” Sam said, eyes transfixed on the gameplay. Jeff was a lot more mobile than Winter Soldier and had more ammo, that latter half was probably the reason for him being better. Long range and quick to run away, perfect. Why did it have to be a stupid shark dog though?
“Okay… pop off doggy,” A new chat message showed up on screen. Somehow, by the end of the game, Bucky had managed to take the MVP spot and he breathed a heavy sigh. That was the first game he won, and also the first game he didn’t play Winter Soldier.
“Damn, they were really cooking your ass,” Sam looked at him with evil in his eyes.
“Shut up, it's your turn,” Bucky said, shoving the controller in Sam’s face.
Sam was growing increasingly mad, they had a Spider-Man on their team going 0-7-5, no kills and a lot of deaths.
“SWAP OFF SPIDER-MAN YOU SUCK!!” Sam yelled into the mic. A message quickly popped up on screen “Spiderman doesn't kill”. Bucky couldn't help but laugh, Sam's head was about to light on fire, he could almost see the steam.
They ended up losing, kinda badly.
“I can’t play this game anymore, I’m gonna destroy my TV if I keep going,” Sam admits in defeat, dropping the controller in Bucky’s lap.
“I think I'm done too, we can pick it back up some other time. Maybe I can find something online about it and then I can get another copy so we can play together,” Bucky thought out loud.
“That would be sick, I’d be so down for that,” Sam responded. Almost as if that were an invitation, the front door knocked. The two looked at each other before peeking through a front-facing window. No one was there, only a few very dry packages ranging in size, littering the porch.
“What the hell?...” Sam said, opening the door. A sheet of paper was stuck to the largest box of the group. “Dear Bucky and Sam, thanks for enjoying my game. Here’s a computer for Bucky that already has the game downloaded on it. I thought it might be easier for you to understand :)”
“I don't know if I should be offended or not,” Bucky said truthfully, eyes bugging out at boxes below him. 2 monitors, a desk, a keyboard, a mouse, a mousepad, and a computer. Bucky was ever grateful for the porch roof protecting his mysterious present from the rain.
“Why don't I get expensive gifts from mysterious gods,” Sam complained in jealousy.
“I don't know, maybe be cool enough to be put into a video game next time,” Bucky shrugged.