Welcome to the Arena

Sakuya didn’t die heroically.

He didn’t get hit by a truck while trying to save a child. No goddess pulled him into a magic portal. He hadn’t even left his dingy apartment in three whole months; just a haze of empty cans, cold pizza and flickering screens. In the end, he just keeled over like a loser. Right at his computer. His heart gave out after one too many energy drinks. All for one last achievement: reaching number one on the BLOOD ARENA leaderboards, that ancient multiplayer shooter only played by diehards and 30-something bachelors with too much time. At 28, he was a rookie amongst fossils.

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, hunched 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 Blood 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 death metal 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 his ears. 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, and a lot more familiar.

3...2...1...
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, power-armored axewoman, axe glowing, gunning for Fishter;

Fishter, lizard-headed, muscular barbarian 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.

But the arena itself was real. 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 Blood Arena.

Maybe it’s time I show them what I’m capable of as number one. 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.
It's going to be another direct hit.
...Or is it?
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, noting everything: all the pickups were in the same places as they were in the game itself, all the jump pads were the same, even all the movement tech seemed the same. He just had to relearn it with his actual body.

His lips curled into an invisible smirk behind his helmet as he reloaded the Quadbarrel and jumped into a sprint, boots loudly banging against metal. Adrenaline was surging, his mind begging for frags. Begging to be number one, as if that was his default state.

BANG! Fesorna down.
BANG! Fishter, too.

A beam of purple magic sliced through the air. 
Damn, I was too slow.
Sakuya had barely turned before it hit him, his body dissolving not into gibs, but into flickering pixels. 

Kinzorn, of course. Who else? The devs designed his play style with the express purpose of keeping other players moving. Only the sweatiest ever mained him. Sakuya may have been number one behind the screen, but here, he was still learning to retread all those skills with his real body. He was not at peak condition.

PEW! Fishter evaporated.
PEW! Sakuya, again.
PEW! Fesorna.

"KINZORN HAS TAKEN THE LEAD!"

The respawn timer ticked in Sakuya's ear. Three... two... one...

He landed back on the familiar spawn pad and instantly hit the deck as a rocket shrieked past, the blast trail hot against his boots, like walking through fire.
No time to think! Gotta move! Dodge! B-hop my way out of this!

He did just that, jumping the exact moment he hit the ground, over and over again. The movement mechanics were as familiar as ever. He b-hopped over a pit of green goo, just barely. Klikk was already gunning for him, rockets whistling by as the HUD beeped and pinged flickering splash damage warnings on the visor's display. Fesorna's axe clipped his arm. -35 HP. The armor's pain suppressors flared a red warning along with the HUD:

"Low HP! Low HP!"

I'm playing like a bot myself, he thought grimly, ducking behind a pillar as Fishter's minigun chewed through the wall beside him with nearly pixel-perfect aim. He'd just barely managed to dodge out of the way and fall on a +50 health orb as the bullets clipped his legs, his armor smashing against the floor—metal on metal—his shotgun nearly clattering out of his hands.

He heard himself laugh: crazed and intoxicated with adrenaline, echoing inside his helmet.
Guess I'm with the rejects for a reason. The game must seriously be trying to tell me something. Did I start over from last place like all those MMORPG isekais?

The arena was real. Way too real. Sweat trickled down from his neck inside the suit. The HUD's aim assist was of hardly any help; his own muscle memory just kept betraying him. Every moment he wanted to dive out of a rocket's way, only his thumb would move, as if looking for a spacebar to press. Every frag took work.

Klikk barreled into his path, Sakuya fumbled his reload—the shells jammed, even fell on the ground as his thick metal gloves slipped against the unfamiliar mechanism. 
Klikk kept smugly grinning, acidic saliva dripping from his jaws. He primed his launcher, aiming it right at Sakuya again.
Not this time. Not again.

Sakuya snapped the Quadbarrel shut, rolled and fired just in the nick of time—BANG!
Another shower of cyan mist, scales and demon acid.
The recoil kept getting stronger, like an actual explosion in his arms.

"SAKUYA IS TIED FOR THE LEAD!"

Sakuya was catching his breath the best he could. It was no time to gloat or celebrate. Fesorna was already on him. He juked, sidestepped. The pain arced up his leg—the armor suppressing it just as quickly—as Fesorna's axe kept nicking him. Text flickered in his vision again:
"Low HP! Low HP!"

Health at 25%. He gritted his teeth and risked a shot. It missed. The only thing that managed to save him from Fesorna's ferocious axe was Fishter's minigun fire coming at both of them. It distracted Fesorna and forced Sakuya to slide behind cover.

His breath fogged the visor.
I'm tired.
This is way harder than any all-nighter I've ever pulled.

Yet—moment by moment—he kept fighting. He had to rely on his knowledge of the map, his knowledge of the game mechanics and his quick thinking all at once.
A lucky random spawn of a Hyper Damage power-up behind him let him snack two quick frags. Kinzorn was reckless, though. He picked off anyone who'd pause for even a split-second.

Is this really the damn tutorial?

"SAKUYA IS ON A FRAGROLL!"
"SAKUYA'S FRAGROLL WAS STOPPED BY FISHTER!"
"FISHTER IS ON A FRAGROLL!"
"FISHTER'S FRAGROLL WAS STOPPED BY KINZORN!"

By the end, Sakuya was limping. His armor kept flashing warning lights. Even if he knew where all the pickups: health, armor, ammo and power-ups were, he just wasn't fast enough to get to them. Not with his real body. One badly-timed b-hop, one slip, one reload... any of these would be all it'd take to kill his momentum and let someone steal a sweet item. And yet, camping was never an option. Cover kept getting destroyed and self-rebuilding.

The match timer ticked its last seconds down as crimson lights filled the coliseum. The same voice spoke to everyone and everything in the arena.

"FIVE..."
"FOUR..."
"THREE..."
"TWO..."
"ONE..."

"TIME'S UP."
"KINZORN WINS!"

The match timer hit zero; the crimson lights turned yellow as Sakuya crumpled to the ground in exhaustion. The final scoreboard blinked on his HUD:

Kinzorn: 35 frags

Klikk: 27 frags

Sakuya: 23 frags

Fesorna: 18 frags

Fishter: 12 frags

He was relieved. Slightly humiliated, but relieved. It was finally over. He’d just survived a real match of Blood Arena. Barely. And he was in the top three. But after all that work it had taken to reach number one…

He let out a shaky breath, the armor hissing with him. The crowd’s roar faded as the arena itself began to steadily disintegrate and flicker away.

His HUD pulsed:
"Returning to lobby..."

The world’s pixels loaded out one by one as his body felt lighter and insubstantial.
Whatever came next, it couldn’t be worse than getting gibbed by Klikk or disintegrated by Kinzorn... 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.