Plug and Play (VR tidbit 1)

The numbness hits you immediately when you plug in.  It's cold in a way, like all of your body got flash-frozen down to the core, and then it all disappears.  No sight, no sound, no touch, smell, or taste, just an empty feeling.  Some people get phantom sensations in the few seconds it takes before loading up; I don't.  Then the senses start hooking up, sight coming in first.  You have to go through the tests: full range of motion, identify the colors, adjust the hearing.  Most of it's automatic and it doesn't take long, slipping into the skin of the avatar you loaded up on the info-screen back in the real world.  Depending on how you logged in, you get a few different views.  Some people just go right into the big game, virtual reality of one sort or another.  Other people use it for work, creating a calm environment to be bored in all day.  I warp into a ring of portals.  Twelve colors shifting through the rainbow in their circuit.  between and around them is the stone-looking arches that form the rest of the ring, and the stone floor I'm standing on.  They used to be labeled, various information on the specific arena in each, the number of people on each specific server.  Loads more than that if I looked in the menus for it.  I know where they all go though, and I know enough about the trends from day to day to know which one is populated.  I walk through the lime green portal.  Jungle arena.  A display comes up in front of my head, slowly rotating through the different models I have for combat.  I have a few there, but only one of them is up to date, the others haven't been touched in months.  It looks like a fairly normal body type: tanned skin, black hair down to the waist, just a tad short of six foot.  The knives strapped to my belt are long and sharp, both of them cost me a good dealing in winnings, but they have a few features that were worth the cost.  For clothing, the armor just covers my chest, strapped on under the green cotton shirt and pants that I have on.  Hard leather boots on my feet and a shiny silver hairband to complete the look.  On the inside, I'm packing a few spells, some physical augments, including magic-sight and improved hearing, and some extra reaction-time.  I just have the basic capacity for languages uploaded though.  Some players like to give themselves a boost by getting a few obscure ones loaded in and using code during a match.  I'm not a team player, nobody to talk to, and I usually don't need to know what exactly other people are saying to know what they mean.  Play this for five years every day and you get good at that.  You get good at the game too, which is why I'm running right as soon as it places me down in the jungle.  I get a glimpse of the rest of my team before I disappear into the bright green foliage.  There's an elf, looks like he's a soldier-type with the bow on his back and the long-sword on his belt.  He had a tabbard on too, but I didn't catch the insignia on it.  Standing next to him were two halflings.  One of them sported a big fancy hat and robes; obviously a wizard.  Cringeworthy even, since a hat that big was just a target.  The other one was dressed similarly to me, but the way he was looking around made it seem like he was new, probably invited by his friend in the hat.  Over on the right had been a dwarf, very typical with the axe and the beard.  Dwarves didn't generally do that well in jungle arenas, but from the way he had some smaller hand axes on his belt and the relative lightness of his armor for a dwarf it looked like he might do alright.  Last, and directly in front of me was another human.  I had to squeeze past him and the elf on my way out.  He had a long, thin staff with what looked like wings at the top.  Cleric, likely, or maybe another mage.  Either way, he was dressed light, pants and a shirt instead of the typical robes.  That was a good sign.  One of them shouted after me, probably the elf.  Something about tactics, but I wasn't much interested.  The first one to the moonwell had the advantage after all, and with the magic-sight I had going, it was easy to lock onto the glowing blob that stood half a mile off in the distance behind a stretch of forest.  Dodge that tree, jump over this rotting log, don't step on the green snake on that rock.  Easy.  Every little obstacle had a subtle clue if you looked for it.  The pit trap coming up went fifteen feet down into spikes designed to take you out for a few minutes while the healing kicked in, but the pattern of plants and the big openness of the clearing it sat in the middle of gave it away.  I cleared it, leaping to the other side and rolling out of the landing.  Maybe it would have been hard if I hadn't been augmenting my legs with more strength, speed, and reaction.  Even then, skirting the edge wouldn't have taken long.  Not that I would go without those augments on a normal basis.  They cost so little in points, mostly because they didn't do anything flashy or dangerous to any armor, but they gave me way more mobility than people usually expected.  Most people who matched me in speed had some sort of elemental casing around their legs, going for the coolest or most damaging effect they could.  That or they left them normal and relied on other means of quick-travel.  I bet that cleric back there had some sort of flight readied to cast when he needed it.  The others would cope one way or another, but all of them were too slow reacting at all that it barely mattered.  They were back there "planning" and I just broke the treeline into the moonwell glade.  It sloped down into the ground, green grass unusually short on the hillside of a jungle, and unusually pure of other plants.  Even in five years they hadn't been improving the realism of these virtual reality games that much.  Still I was only picky because I hadn't gotten into the action yet.  Just five long strides before I jumped, clearing the last ten feet and splashing into the water.  There was a tingle on my skin as it got everything on me wet.  Not like the numbness, more of the opposite if anything.  Then I was sinking to the bottom, soaking in the magical energies that were infused into the water.  This is when I activated the first spell I had prepared.  Underwater breathing.  Meant I could stay under here and the other team, and my team, would be none the wiser, at least for a little while.  I dove for the bottom, pulling myself down onto the smooth, stone basin before flipping over with my feet under me, touching the water.  I had enough magic stored up by then to cast the second spell, a variation on clairvoyance that let me see what was going on in the clearing above without having to re-surface.  Usually the enemy would assume it was some enemy scrying from outside of the clearing and lower their guard.  Then I waited, storing up magic for the next step.  It was about a minute later before the next person entered, some Elf I didn't recognize.  He was floating, scanning the opposite edge of the clearing as he drifted out toward the water.  Mages like that spent points on giving themselves a starting magic reserve, and he must have meditated a bit to get it up high enough.  He was followed by another elf, similarly outfitted as the one on my team, but with a crossbow instead of the normal recurve.  Both of them approached the pool.  This was time for spell number three, which was a five second burst of physical power.  It was two seconds longer than it needed to be, this time.  I was rocketing out of the water just as they reached the edge.  One action to slit the floating one's throat and the other to fall feet first into the warrior's chest and slit his with my other dagger.  Two down, four to go.  Then I was up and running off to the side between where I had made my entrance and they had.  That sort of trick only worked once. At least against anyone competent, and I couldn't risk the rest of them being competent and making me pay for that.  It would be another two or three days before people started checking the bottom of the pool before strolling into the clearing, so the first use was safe enough, what with it being out of the common tactics these days.  I curved right, parallel to the route the other team must have taken to get to the pool.  My magic reserves were brimming, and I was confident about my chances if I ran into them four on one.  A blip of magic appeared on my radar, and I heard two voices talking in some dialect I couldn't make out as they closed in on the well.  I gave them a little room and then headed farther back, looking for the stragglers.  One halfling in full plate armor, slowly pushing through the undergrowth.  Spell number four gave me a boost to my knives sharpness.  Activating that and the third spell gave me a strike powerful enough to stab through the helmet and quick enough to stop him from attempting to parry me as I came up from his side.  Three left.  Then an arrow went whistling past my head.  Frosty, pulling snowflakes in its wake that burned as they touched my cheek.  It was a dwarf with an absurdly big bow that had been trailing even farther behind.  He grinned as he started to draw it back for the second time.  I didn't have enough magic left to pull the same stunt again, so I just ran at him.  The reflex augment helped me dodge the next arrow at a safe enough distance that the frost-burn didn't hit me again.  The pain on my face might have been a little distracting i I hadn't been used to it.  A third arrow, and it was even farther off than the last two.  The dwarf's grin had faded, a straight line of pursed lips in the middle of his red, bearded face.  It stood out quite nicely against the green and brown of the forest.  He started drawing his own dagger too late, somehow stupid enough to underestimate my speed even after the stunt he saw me pull on the halfling.  Then he was down, knife to the throat.  I turned back toward the last two that had been going towards the moonwell just in time to see my teammates ambush them.  An arrow from the elf, a lightning bolt from the halfling mage, and the other two keeping track of the rest of the area as they walked down towards the pool to inspect the two elves that were already dead.  Ther looked like they were still expecting a fight, but the return started and the whole area faded out, transporting me back to the circle of portals.  A score screen floated in front of me, tallying the points I earned.  Not that many, but that had been an easy match.  The matching algorithms must have been off, but I wasn't about to complain.  Maybe they would have been more of a threat if they had been given time to get up to speed.  Next to the score screen, a message box popped up.  I didn't recognise the name, at first, but it appeared somewhere on the scorelist too.  Probably some angry asshole upset about getting his ass handed to him.  I deleted it.