Welcome to the Arena

"First place... I actually did it."

Sakuya's famous last words, spoken proudly to no one, right before his heart gave out from caffeine overload mixing with two days of no sleep.
He hadn’t even left his dingy apartment in three whole months; life was a haze of empty cans, ramen cups, and flickering screens.

In the end, he just keeled over like a loser. Right at his computer. All for one last achievement: reaching number one on the REZREKTION ARENA leaderboards, that ancient, janky masterpiece of a multiplayer shooter made by Lithuanian weebs and code wizards, with character designs outsourced to Japanese freelancers and a soundtrack allegedly made by two Korean trance DJs in a basement. Calling it "the greatest game ever made" would be the understatement of the century. 

The only ones who still played it were diehards and 30-something bachelors working in sales, with far too good muscle memory. At 28, Sakuya was practically a child in the lobby. But he'd made it to the top anyway.

Well, at least he died doing what he loved.

Wait, why am I not—

A heads-up display flickered into view. Text and numerical data burned into his vision: health, armor, ammo. A voice growled from everywhere and nowhere, like a tiger learning to speak.
“GET READY FOR THE DEATHMATCH.”

Light found its way back into his eyes as a riot of color and noise slammed into him. Walls of metal slicked with blue, green and... red liquid. Blood? Molten glyphs pulsed in steel grates, platforms floated over churning pits of lava and something green and bubbly. Glowing, circular pads stood at specific corners beneath the hovering floors. Above, tall spires veined with neon energy stretched far and high, the black sky webbed by flying buttresses. The gaps in the walls were glowing red, then blue, seemingly at random, like lightning inside a machine. It smelled of ozone, gunpowder and hot metal. Neon pickups spun in midair. The stands were packed with a thousand impossible species, jeering for carnage. From horned giants to spectral wraiths to an indistinct, flickering vaguely humanoid figure, leaning over the rails and chanting.

He tried to move, but his body was trapped in something massive, heavy and cold. He looked down, seeing his once scrawny frame buried in the B-7X armor from Rezrektion Arena: metallic, blue, ancient, yet so high-tech. The internal servos hummed at every joint as the suit flexed with him, calibrating itself to his every twitch. He reached for his head, but the helmet was sealed tight. The HUD must have been part of the visor.

“THREE!”
He stood there dumbfounded, unable to process the madness—
“TWO!”
—of where or what he was—
“ONE!”
He hadn't even realized he had a gun belt before—
“FIGHT!”

A rocket slammed right into him. B-7X had a +50 armor boost, but direct rocket hits ignored armor.
Why am I thinking about armor stats of all things?
After such an explosion, it felt mundane and numbing to see his legs detach and spin in the air. An arm flew past him, scorched and smelling like grilled chicken.
I want some grilled chicken...
The head he'd been looking through hit the ground, a rain of burned bits of armor coming down. Some fell into lava, some bounced on jump pads, all of them eventually disintegrated into pixels, as did his head.
So this is what getting gibbed feels like, huh...

The voice never grew quieter, even when his hearing stopped registering the sounds of the crowd's cheers and the familiar techno soundtrack playing through magical speakers.
“KLIKK DREW FIRST BLOOD!”

Sakuya's vision faded into nothing, the world turning black around him. Only one thing remained:

The HUD. 0 HP, 0 Armor, 0 Ammo. Only a blurb of text in the center that said:
"Fragged by Klikk. Awaiting respawn..."

So that’s how it was…
He’d just died in real life for the win—
Now he was dying again, for real, in the game.
Fragged by Klikk. Of all the characters…

The countdown ticked down in Sakuya's ears.
He remembered how he'd first got into Rezrektion Arena. He'd found the box in the same dusty tech shop where he bought old keyboards and weird adapters. The cover art was completely insane: a lizard with a rocket launcher and a schoolgirl with a minigun, blasting what seemed to be a horde of demons. He'd bought it on instinct. 
Still the best decision of his life.

Despite everything, Sakuya grinned behind his visor. The world around him loaded back into existence, this time a little more clear. A little less foul-smelling. A lot more familiar.

Three… two… one…
He landed on the spawn pad. The same contestants he'd remembered fragging millions of times at his computer were scattered around the map:

Klikk, the gray-skinned demon, ping-ponging across platforms in rocket-fueled jumps;
Fesorna, amber-haired, power-armored axewoman, axe glowing as it gunned for Fishter;
Fishter, armored lizard with a minigun arm, dodging like a storm;
Kinzorn, dark sorcerer, veins writhing with forbidden magic, aiming from afar.

They're moving like total bots... Is this the tutorial level? I don't remember it being in the Charnel Pits...
He laughed to himself, the sound bouncing around the helmet's interior, tinny and warped.
Of course... I'm with the rejects. Tier 0 out of 15. Guess it hasn't figured out where I belong yet. This is going to be a piece of cake. After all, I’m number one.

The tension in his chest faded a little. If anything, it was kind of hilarious. This, of all the possibilities, was his isekai fate? The noob lobby, with all the same AI patterns he’d spent years juking.

Even so, he wasn’t looking at the arena from behind a screen. The smell of scorched metal in his nostrils was not disgusting, but oppressive and overbearing nonetheless. B-7X's servos never stopped humming and the itch of adrenaline at the base of his skull remained unremitting.
This is actually happening, huh? I'm really here... inside Rezrektion Arena. Maybe it’s time I show them what I’m capable of. They’ll know my name.

The Quadbarrel Shotgun hung from the gun belt on his side, clinking against his leg, heavy and familiar. He unhooked it, feeling it in his hands and tossing it up and down lightly. It was a real, deadly weapon. The ammo counter on his HUD read "4."
Locked and loaded.

Klikk was in the air, having been flung towards Sakuya from a jump pad.
The world slowed down. Just like it did whenever he'd be "in the zone" back home.
Klikk took aim with his rocket launcher, lining up yet another predictable, telegraphed shot.
He thinks it's going to be another direct hit. They always open with this. It’s so obvious. Watch and learn, noob.
Klikk bared all one-hundred-and-sixteen teeth in that signature, drooling grin.

"Welcome to second place," Sakuya said.
And pulled the second of three triggers.

BANG!
Klikk exploded into a cyan mist as the shells ripped his body apart, leaving remains of scaly demonic limbs flying all over.

“SAKUYA IS TIED FOR THE LEAD!”
The announcer's voice reverberated in his skull. Sakuya let out a whoop of pure joy. The recoil rattled in his arms, the weight of the Quadbarrel real, the kill even moreso. His ears were still ringing from the sound, chest still rattling with the gun's kick.

The visor automatically wiped cyan blood off.
I actually did it. I'm here. It's all the same.

The Quadbarrel's secondary fire was always overpowered. The devs had never changed it, either because they were lazy or because it was just that much more fun.

Sakuya looked around the map, his brain on overdrive. All the pickups were in the same places as in the game: armor shards stacked under a busted stairwell, a rocket launcher waiting by a stone altar, health orbs spinning above hazard pits, jump pads at the exact same corners, offset just slightly from the platforms floating above. A special platform, requiring a well-timed double jump, floated far above, where a Hyper Damage powerup would usually spawn.

It was all just like the thousands of matches he’d played, but now every sound was deafening, every smell was sharper, and the weight of the B-7X was dragging at his muscles.

It’s all muscle memory, he told himself, reloading the Quadbarrel. His lips curled in an invisible smirk behind his helmet. He broke into a sprint, boots loudly slamming against metal, adrenaline flooding his veins. His mind started begging for frags, for victory. He wanted everyone to know he was number one.

“KLIKK IS TIED FOR THE LEAD!”
He dashed for the spare rocket launcher, scooping up armor shards along the way.
Just like usual.
But Fesorna lunged at him from behind a pillar, her axe lodging itself in his left shoulder. Pain surged in a flash. The HUD flashed red and stuttered a warning: -30HP. But his arm still stayed on—barely. Sakuya snarled, jerking the Quadbarrel around and firing point-blank at the armored axewoman.

BANG!
The blast deafened him. It was loud, metallic and crunchy. A thunderous clang echoed in his helmet, just slightly drowned out by the splatter of blood, gibs and the clattering of broken armor. Fesorna’s upper quarter evaporated, her axe yanked out of Sakuya’s shoulder as her remains fell back and despawned. The visor cleaned itself with a single, lazy wipe, as if all this was all routine.
Jesus… That’s blood. Human blood. That’s real.

He barely had a second to breathe. Fishter’s minigun chewed into his armor with rapid, metallic pings. Only chip damage, but it threatened to shred him into cheese if he hesitated long enough for the barrel to fully spin up. The HUD screamed:
Health: 63. Armor: 70. Ammo: 2.

He spun, snapping the Quadbarrel back up, barely lining up the shot.
BANG! Orange blood sprayed, Fishter’s body dissolving in a splatter of gibs and sparks.

“SAKUYA HAS TAKEN THE LEAD!” The announcer’s growl was almost reassuring this time.

Adrenaline surged again, for a fleeting second, Sakuya felt that old confidence return, hyping himself up as he caught his breath.
Still got it. Even when I’m actually in the game. These guys are nothing but a warmup round—

A shadow flickered above him. Klikk, the demon, rebounded off a wall and catapulted from a floating platform. An angle Sakuya had never seen in-game, not even from the top pros. Not even from himself.
No way. That’s not a bot path—
A rocket trailed smoke straight at his face. Sakuya dove backward, crashing against the metal floor so hard that his HUD glitched. He rolled, chipping off the suit’s blue finish, but managed to get just outside the blast radius. His hands were shaking now.

Before he could steady himself, Fishter had respawned and opened fire again, spraying both him and Klikk. Sakuya ducked behind a pillar, snagging a +50 health orb. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Klikk in pieces.
M-must’ve taken the brunt of it.
No time to gloat. Kinzorn was perched right above, dark energy coiling at his fingertips.

Not good. Need to get to that jump pad!

He bolted sideways, boots slipping on plasma ammo scattered across the floor. He scrambled to his feet.
“Hah! Too slow, scrap man!” Fesorna taunted, still airborne from the force of Klikk’s last rocket, at the perfect angle to cleave Sakuya in half with her axe.
“FESORNA IS TIED FOR THE LEAD!”

He didn’t even have time to process the pain before everything pixelated out.
Respawn.

He dropped onto the spawn pad. The chaos was already here. Fesorna was dueling Klikk, cutting his rockets out of the air, while Fishter and Kinzorn battled across the upper platforms.
Right as Sakuya materialized, Kinzorn turned from Fishter, snapping a spell his way.
Spawn-trapping me? You serious?!

He dove for the nearest jump pad. Fesorna, ricocheting on Klikk’s missed rocket again, intercepted him. Sakuya just barely caught the pad’s edge, launching into a wild, twisting midair tumble as her axe sliced the air behind him. The crowd roared.
Were they cheering for him, or mocking him?

“FISHTER IS TIED FOR THE LEAD!”
“KLIKK IS TIED FOR THE LEAD!”
…Crap.

He landed hard, knees buckling with the weight of the armor and the force of the impact. Klikk materialized in his path, feinting left, then springing right to block Sakuya mid-jump. Sakuya tried to sidestep away, but lost his footing on the narrow platform and tumbled straight into a pit of bubbling green sludge.

Hazard alarms blared and screeched in his helmet, the health meter plunging way too quickly:
Health: 54…39…21…
He flailed, hauling himself onto the ledge, skin tingling under the armor. He staggered upright, every single system in the suit complaining. His breath was hot and ragged under the helmet.
There’s no way he did that… Bots can’t juke. But then that’d mean—

“FESORNA HAS TAKEN THE LEAD!”
The rhythm had changed entirely.
No one was sticking to their loops like he’d expected. Klikk was reading his jumps, Fesorna was intercepting health orbs, Kinzorn was aiming ahead of his dodges. Sakuya’s familiar paths were suddenly death traps. He tried to outmaneuver Fishter as he ran back up the stairs, but a spike grenade forced him right into the fire.

He went down in a quick burst of minigun.
Respawn.

He landed and immediately b-hopped away as best as his real body could, jumping the moment his metal feet hit the ground. He was panicking now, desperate to get away from the chaos and get some extra armor, only to get body-checked by Fesorna. The crowd howled with laughter.

Fesorna didn’t swing; she just vanished into purple smoke. Sakuya was barely catching his breath when a flash of magic cut right through the air.

Damn, I was too slow.
He was gone before he could turn, disintegrating into flickering pixels.

Kinzorn, of course. Who else? The devs had always designed him to punish campers and force movement, even more than the gameplay itself had already been doing. Even his AI would play a specific way.
But never like this. These aren’t bots.

PEW! Fishter evaporated.
PEW! Sakuya again.
“KINZORN IS TIED FOR THE LEAD!”
PEW! Fesorna.

“KINZORN HAS TAKEN THE LEAD!”

The respawn timer ticket in Sakuya’s ear.
Three…
Two…
One.

He landed hard on the familiar spawn pad. His HUD pinged with damage immediately, but he barely registered the numbers. There was no time to strategize, only frantic instinct.
Can’t think. Dodge, move, b-hop, GO!!!

The moment his boots hit the metal, he snapped into position, chain-jumping toward jump pads and over the same pit he’d fallen into just a minute prior. Klikk’s rockets shrieked past, slamming the ground so close Sakuya felt the heat through the suit. Every jump was desperate, every landing a little off balance. He was hitting his limits.
“KLIKK IS ON A FRAGROLL!”

Fesorna caught up, her axe aiming for his head. His landing was just slightly unstable. Without intending to at all, he turned to catch his balance, throwing Fesorna’s swing off just enough for the flat end of the axe to collide with Sakuya’s helmet instead.
A grinding clang echoed as his helmet vibrated, the sound resonating inside like that of a tuning fork. -15HP, thankfully.
“KLIKK’S FRAGROLL WAS STOPPED BY KINZORN!”

He readied the Quadbarrel, but Fesorna had already gotten evaporated by Kinzorn’s magic. Of course, Sakuya got hit too, right as he pulled the trigger.
“KINZORN IS ON A FRAGROLL!”
“KINZORN’S FRAGROLL WAS ENDED BY SAKUYA!”

It wasn’t the revenge he hoped for, but it was just as satisfying to finally kill Kinzorn in a frag-trade.

He respawned right into Fishter’s fire. He dove behind a pillar, the minigun chewing gouges into the stone, making sparks, chips and dust fly past his helmet. Sakuya darted out just long enough to get a +25 health orb, healing back to 100. His legs were tingling with the aftershock, the bullets unrelentingly nipping at his heels. He tried to hit Fishter with the Quadbarrel’s secondary fire, but the lizard was too far, only being grazed by a few pellets.

Why is everything so damn heavy!?

Right as Sakuya was trying to reload—Klikk barreled into him, knocking him over, the shells slipping out of his trembling gloves and clattering uselessly at his feet. Klikk grinned, getting up and picking his rocket launcher up from the ground, loading a rocket back into it as the panic jolted Sakuya upright. He rolled, hastily sweeping up as many shells as his shaking hands allowed him to. Klikk was already taking aim.
“Looks like you’re pwne—”
Before Klikk could finish his taunt, Sakuya had managed to snap the Quadbarrel shut and fire it, all in a single breath. The demon burst into a turquoise geyser. Sakuya felt the recoil through every bone.

Breathe. You’re number one, Sakuya. You’re number one!

There was no time to calm down. Fesorna lunged again, her axe scraping Sakuya’s knee right as he got up. He stumbled sideways, his HUD flaring with “Low HP!” warnings. His breath was fogging up the visor, sweat running down his neck. The suit activated its internal cooling. He risked a wild shot, only managing to break off some pieces of Fesorna’s armor. He only survived when Fishter’s minigun forced her away from him. Sakuya slid behind cover, fighting for air.

God, my arms feel like they’re made of lead. This isn’t just a game. Not anymore.

He pressed himself against the wall, trying to get a grip. His old strategies were failing to translate from repetitive mouse flicks to his full body. It was only knowledge of Rezrektion Arena’s mechanics—and desperation—that kept him alive.

He caught a glimpse of the Hyper Damage powerup spawning far above, right on time. It’d always spawn right before the end of the match on this map, shifting the entire scoreboard. He forced himself toward the jump pad, timing the bounce just as he remembered, his thumb flicking over the Quadbarrel’s grip as if it were still pressing a spacebar. A bolt of Kinzorn’s magic sizzled past, almost knocking him off.
Not today, you bastard!

He just barely landed the double jump, falling on the powerup, and felt every system in the suit hit overdrive.
“SAKUYA HAS HYPER DAMAGE!” Even the announcer sounded excited.

He hit the one of the lower platforms running, shaking off the fall damage. First, Fishter—caught by surprise—was blasted into orange confetti. Klikk was too busy fighting Kinzorn head on. They reacted and even tried to gang up against him, but Sakuya blasted the both of them into gibs.

“SAKUYA IS ON A FRAGROLL!”

Kinzorn, after respawning, was already lining up a spell. Sakuya slid behind cover, the last few seconds of Hyper Damage flickering away. He only peeked out to get two risky shots on Fishter and Klikk. Fesorna saw him and dashed forward.

She swung her axe, but he ducked, the blade biting deep into a broken pillar behind him. Sakuya snapped his Quadbarrel up, firing it at her again.
BANG!
Fesorna evaporated, but not into gibs. Only into purple smoke. Kinzorn stole the kill.

Damn you!
BANG!
Thankfully, Kinzorn was just barely close enough to get turned to pulp. Everything was so chaotic, Sakuya hadn’t even realized the match only had 30 seconds left. He wanted to play it safe, until—

Klikk barreled right into him again, the two of them flying off the platform, limbs tangled and weapons fallen somewhere far off. They hit the ground with a loud crash. His HUD glitched again, scrambled symbols replacing every stat.

The Quadbarrel was nowhere to be seen. Klikk’s rocket launcher was gone—melting in the lava. The demon clawed at his armor, prying through plating strong enough to deflect bullets.
The HUD just barely recovered enough to show accurate readouts:
Health: 16. Armor: 0. Ammo: 0.

The announcer growled.
“FIVE!”
Health: 12.
“FOUR!”
Fesorna and Fishter were ganging up against Kinzorn, desperate to stop him, even though he was already winning.
Health: 8.
“THREE!”
Sakuya looked up at the black sky, seeing a drone pointing a light down, most likely recording the arena. It reminded him of baseball games back in Japan. How you’d see them from just every angle.
That’s right.
I’m not going to be seen getting ripped to shreds by some ugly—
“TWO!”
Health: 4.
—piece of shit demon like this guy!
With his last amount of strength, Sakuya raised his arms up, wrapping his fingers around Klikk’s horns.

And pulled. In opposite directions. Cyan juice sprayed everywhere, Klikk crumbling, split into almost identical halves.

“TIME’S UP!”
“KINZORN WINS!”
Sakuya lay there, staring at the drones. The crowd was roaring. He was tired. Too tired to think. Too tired to do anything else. The visor wiped itself off again.

The HUD flashed with the final scoreboard:
1st place: Kinzorn
2nd place: Klikk
3rd place: Sakuya

Third… place…
Better than nothing, I guess…
He felt relieved and humiliated. At least it was finally over. A real match of Rezrektion Arena ended with him still getting into the top three.

For a moment, the scoreboard glitched, the spectator count ticking up and down by one constantly, as if one spectator kept leaving and rejoining.

He could finally breathe a little, the armor hissing with him. A strange force knit his wounds and armor back together as the arena began to flicker and dissolve, the crowd growing more distant.
The HUD pulsed:
“Returning to lobby…”

Whatever came next, it couldn’t be worse than getting gibbed… right?
If every match is like this… how am I ever going to make it back to number one?

For now, at least he’d made it out.