"For in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war."
Emilia "Milly" Rodriguez was your not-so-average gamer girl. Standing shy of 6 feet, she had back length black hair and mellow brown eyes. She currently sat at home, looking out at the falling snow outside, too piled up to play in and too cold to actually open the window and escape the suffocating confines of her room, she cradled the NerveGear in her hands, turning the pale grey helmet over in her hands. Almost two months ago, she had received it in the mail as part of her luck as a beta tester for the new VRMMOFPSRPG game, Heroes of the Imperium Online, even if she had never joined such a contest.
She fit the device onto her head, feeling the weight of the composite material weigh down her head as she lay back onto the mattress, letting the device do its work as she commanded the device to whisk her away to the far future, to an age of war, where humanity at its most advanced, was also at its most primal. "Link Start!" she said, her dull ceiling being replaced by white nothingness, before pillars of light rose up from infinity and speared towards her, disappearing behind her as the scene replaced itself with the inky darkness of space.
Emilia gazed upon a fleet of ships, warfare their obvious role, anchored in space above a slowly spinning globe. Some ships were kilometers long, with swarms of smaller ships surrounding them, like a school of fish surrounding larger beasts of the deep. Her view shifted as the scene changed to the inside of a locker room, herself standing before a full body mirror, clad in loose cargo pants and a sports bra. Her usual face looked back at her, plain, unassuming and normal.
Like everyone else in the virtual world, Emilia had adopted a pseudonym, a name to give herself during her dives within the twisted reality of the battlefields of the 41st millennium. She called herself Joanna Weiss, from a game she had played a long time ago, as a child. She changed barely anything, learning from the Beta Test that changing your body would affect how you moved and reacted physically. Changing her face to mask her identity, her skin took a paler color, almost white, but not unhealthy. Hitting the confirmation, she found the weightless sensation replaced by the feeling of boots on flooring and her body covered in dull green fatigues and her chest and shoulders covered by flak armor, a chainsword hanging at her hip, a laspistol at her side.
She looked around, several others had logged in already, their avatars winking into existence with the release of HIO and the servers opening since the beta test ended nearly three months ago. A notification popped up on her menu.
Swiping her fingers upward, she summoned the screen of her inventory and saw that she had received a gift for being a part of the beta test. Grinning from ear to ear, she hurriedly opened the gift, retrieving what items were inside. Whistling lowly, she quickly equipped the Carapace Armor and Power Sword, a gift from the creators for being in the beta test.
System Announcement: Special Event in 1 hour a voice broadcasted from the ship's vox, the message drowning out all sound for that brief moment the message was said across the channel. Looking around Emilia, or rather Weiss, walked away from the spawning room as several other players appeared from a storm of pixels.
Replacing her power sword into its sheath and the laspistol into its holster, she turned and headed to the only place she could regain a sense of combat, the simulator floor. Smiling to herself at rather fond and embarrassing memories, she headed into the elevator and emerged at the entrance at the simulator room.
Punching in the code for a real-time simulator, she noted the change in her status from the total protection of an inner area to the unrestricted combat of the unrestricted zones, combat at its most brutal and most violent. In fact, she found herself trembling, trembling at the chance to fight once more after two months of returning to a sense of normal during the end of the closed beta and the actual release date of HIO.
Weiss stepped into the simulation room, her health bar in the corner of her vision changed from being the safe white of full protection to the neon green of combat. a message in her HUD read, the simulation starting, several NPC guardsmen appearing at her side as she ran, ducking behind a wall, the guardsmen around her doing the same as white and green helmeted figures rounded the corner, bursts of micro disks peppering the wall that Weiss sheltered behind.
"Fire!" she cried, the guardsmen taking up her order as her current skill tree allowed her to command a squad of NPC guardsmen, for this training exercise at least, 'I need to remember to purchase some Guardsmen for the landing operation later.' she thought as the guardsmen began firing at the advancing Eldar warriors, cutting one down as his armor was perforated with dozens of minuscule burns as the fallen Eldar dropped to the ground before vanishing in a blast of pixels. The remaining seven or eight members of the guardian squad ducked behind a fallen wall as well.
"Guardsmen A through D, flank from the left. G, H and I, to the right. E and F, provide covering fire." she ordered, moving with the three guardsmen to the right, the hiss of a pair of lasguns discharging in her ears, as well as the report of the thud of shuriken catapults firing at the pair still sheltered behind the walls. "Fire!" she yelled, the seven guardsmen and herself moving to fire upon the guardians, four falling beneath the hail of crimson and scarlet bursts as a guardsman was shredded by a hail of return shots, disappearing into fragments as he hit the ground.
Ducking under a beam, Weiss drew the power sword at her hip, vaulting over the wall and cutting into the first guardian with the hiss of armor melting and blood vaporizing agains the disruptive energies of the power sword's field slashed the guardian apart from shoulder to hip, the body coming apart in a spray of digital blood before exploding into fragments.
Unaware, a shuriken round caught her in her left arm, forcing her to drop the laspistol as she brought the sword up to cut the guardian's shuriken catapult apart before thrusting the blade deep into its chest, the field cooking blood and leaving the scent of blood briefly in her nose as she withdrew the blade and the guardian collapsed before exploding into fragments again. "Damn, that was too careless." she muttered, pulling the shuriken round out as the simulator ended, her laspistol by her feet and she flicked the micro disk into a corner before stooping to retrieve the fallen pistol.
Leaving the simulator, she headed down the corridors to the center of the ship. "Left, then right." she muttered to herself, running in her impatience to get to the heart of the massive vessel. Announcement: Special Event in 30 came another message from the ship's vox. She hurried her pace, the walls of the ship whizzing by her and the sound of carapace boots slamming into metal in her ears as she reached a crossroads. "Let's see, was it~" Weiss muttered to herself, but stopped as someone yelled from behind her.
"Hey! Wait up!" came the voice, a guy by the sound of it. Spinning on her heels, Weiss turned to face him.
Half expecting it to be a large, overly-muscled man with biceps the size of my head, scars and the works. Instead, Weiss came face-to-face with a rather modestly designed character. Rather rugged, he stood at least a good head higher than me, with normal sized arms and covered head-to-toe in regulation flak armor. I also saw that behind him was another player, almost like him, if a bit taller, but seemed rather reclusive. The first carried a sniper rifle and the second with a grenade launcher and a bandolier of grenades across the front, and I assume the back.
"Hi. D'you need something?" she asked. "Oh, and I'm Weiss by the way, Joanna Weiss." she said with a small smile.
"Christian." the sniper nodded, jerking his head behind him, "The quiet one is my brother, James." he said.
The second moved his mouth, but no sound came out. He also waved his hand, saying hi, she thought. "Uhh, is something wrong with your brother's NerveGear?" she asked. "There's no sound." she said.
Christian gave off a sigh, "I wish, he's just . . . a man of few words." he offered, nudging his brother in the rib with his elbow. "He's usually this quiet. Anyway. You seem to know your way around, I'm guessing you're a Beta." he said.
Giving a grin, "Was it that, or did the carapace armor and power sword give it away?" she asked coyly.
"That too." Christian admitted.
"So, what do you need from this veteran?" she asked, crossing her arms across her chest. "The event should be a tutorial, so other than that, I can't help you." she said.
"Can we squad up for a bit? We need some pointers if we're gonna survive longer than a minute on the battlefield." Christian asked, eyes pleading.
Taken aback, 'Huh, not everyday that a guy asks a girl for help in a game.' she thought to herself. Sighing, she nodded, "Sure, I'm meeting a few friends in the atrium, why don't you tag along." she said, sending the invite to the two before she turned and continued her jog towards the heart of the ship.
The two followed behind Weiss in silence, their out of sync steps the only indication that they were still behind her.