A quiet morning came to the world called Earth. Rays of sunlight reached over the roofs to a street café. Its clients shielded their eyes, but a young man who shielded his tablet screen instead. The best of part of his favorite tv series was about to begin.

-

-Jet! Fist! -

The thunderous clap of the broken supersonic barrier reached the ground, throwing dust at the girl in a pilot suit. She ignored the earthly taste, her attention focused on the battle several kilometers above. There, a giant humanoid robot clenched its fist for the follow up attack. The forearm separated from the elbow and shot forward, riding a massive plume of fire.

The target, a turtle mechamonster, rivaled the robot in size. It threw away the half-melted shell-shaped shield and charged in like a mad bull. The fist met its outstretched paw and tore through it, shearing armor, support structure beneath and the superalloy bones like foil and sticks.

With the enemy thrown into an uncontrolled horizontal spin, the screen split between the robot's crew.

'Clean hit.'

'I couldn't have done it without you all.'

'Now, let's finish it.'

A stuttering warning cut into their chat. The spinning turtle withdrew the remaining limbs inside. The edges of its shell split apart into countless saw blades that'd slice the combiner mech into pieces. But by the time the crew understood the cunning feint, the enemy have already launched itself forward.

'Do not panic. We'll do as we trained.'

-Sky Boost-

The mecha rocketed up on a piilar of flame, its light reflecting off the single leg.

As soon as the speeding enemy entered leader's sights, his voice boomed through external speakers.

-Double DiveKick-

The robot's leg pushed the turtle's top scales deep into the shell. With most of its internal structure twisted like cotton candy by the merciless centripetal force, the mechamonster could only screech in a robotic voice as it fell to its doom.

'We got it now!'

-Volcano Blast!-

But before the humanoid giant flared its thrusters and separated, a sharp metal note resonated through the air. The lone leg gave into the outside pressure and bent, now inseparable from the wreck.

'Ah.' The spectator girl deadpaned as she retreated to the crashed remains of the mecha's other leg. The joined robots looked like a huge meteorite that would fall nearby.

-

The fiery impact blanked the screen as the credits rolled in.

The young man tapped the gadget as inspiration called him to open the robot designer. With one meter as mainstream scale, it'd take only a couple of workdays to make his current project look as cool as that turtle. If he refused overpay to stay until night, he could even adjust the weapons and behaviour.

Although, it would go into the table instead of into the arena.

Speaking of wet blankets, his personal one just arrived. On time as usual. He stood up to shake hands with his team manager. And his friend.

-

He took the offered document without hesitation, then dropped it onto the table as color drained from his face. All that was left was his signature and his self-resignation would be complete.

'My winrate is much higher now, you know that! Your suggestion to switch to pragmatic designs did work! Why do I have to leave?'

Spending a second to fix his glasses, his manager slid a graph across the table.

'Your winrates are higher but your subscriber retention falls after every show.'

'But I can change, I proved that.'

'Yes, but look at the audience reaction part. They are bored of you and your ideas.'

As his former boss traced the declining graphs, Lyle noticed a glow from his hand under the table. A blue spark ran up his arm. He moved to roll the sleeve but his opponent saw it as surrender and took the chance.

'Look, I don't want to do this, I invited you. If I could read the future, we wouldn't have these problems. But if this trend is not stopped, the team owner will eventually fire more than just you. It's already in the plan.'

Lyle shuffled his hands away from the paper, they itched to tear it into pieces. The plan he said. He probably drafted it yesterday in secret. And as usual. he expected others to just follow along.

'So, Lyle, do you want everyone in the team to give up on their dream?'

With as much animosity as he could put into his glare, the now former pilot made his pen move.

'I, Lyle Gallegos, resign as a member of the Nag-AI team.'

-

Several days later, Lyle combed through the fan streams from a big entertainment center. He searched for anyone from his former team. In another betrayal of expectations, his ex-colleagues pushed to reinstate him but their demand quickly turned into a scandal. Now, both sides wanted him as a prize witness, regardless of his own decision.

Several familiar faces crossed the screen in the background and Lyle grimaced. But he couldn't play it safe and stay at home. Not on the release day of the last game for his favorite character and voice actor.

With the pass, that showed his barely twenty self, he went to the back door. But made it only halfway, to a cabinet with a framed photo. It laid flat and Lyle traced the line on its back. His friend wrote that sentence himself, a promise that they would make their passion visible to the world.

But those words went into trash. Exactly where this photo needed to be.

-

The guard at the entrance glanced at his pass and reached for the door button.

Directions on the walls guided Lyle to the main exhibition hall. Despite the transparency and sunlight bleached colours, the holo projector made the room look like a piece of another world. Or worlds, as an iconic dialogue scene just cycled into a full scale mech encounter from another game.

But today he couldn't dawdle. Otherwise he'd have an encounter of his own, or worse, see a spoiler in a midroll commercial.

Soon he reached the hall with his destination. But a crowd completely blocked the way.

Peeking above their heads, Lyle saw a robotic hardware shop with a post-tournament showcase. As an unfortunate drawback of success, many winners saw their blueprints sold after the victory. Otherwise they risked having their weaknesses exploited in the next season. Although for him, getting rid of the minmaxed counter designs was the silver lining in having to make them.

Despite several shouts and pushback, Lyle elbowed his way to the window. The team inside sported a *Metal* badge in front of their name. A source of pride earned by those who used only real machines, instead of virtual simulations and one of few things he regretted leaving behind.

'Ohhhh. Look at his robot. I never thought of using mag-levitation propulsion parts to create a robot that could float its parts around.'

'Its so cool, it even has sparks between its parts'

'Are you new? They are the wireless power and control paths, not sparks.'

'Look how sharp its movements are.'

'Please, can you send me the blueprints!'

'Me too!'

The man, currently operating the simulation table, drove the choir of pleas even higher by showing the last he had to offer.

'Those interested in my creations, please support our team. Please visit this address for our e-shop and don't forget to cheer for us at the tournaments.'

He switched the screen off and a website address appeared on the terminals throughout the shop. Right above the current month's ranking for customer presentations.

"My last robot is not even in top 50 anymore?"

He reached for his phone to double check on the main site, then stopped, As hurtful as it was, he could understand himself missing, but his former team's entire roster disappeared as well. A powerplay from his former boss?

While distracted, Lyle noticed one of his former teammates only when they already entered the hall. He turned and rushed through the dispersing crowd, ignoring the shouts from stepping on shoes in his way. Consolation and support speeches with an underlying agenda grated on his nerves harder than the derogatory ones.

-

Once behind the matte windows of the VR game shop and surrounded by familiar noise, he stepped away from entrance to catch his breath. Customers browsed through display cases with latest figurine and constructor sets. Or grouped around tables to talk about their newest combination.

Deeper into the shop, Lyle had to pass by an arcade, where onlookers mixed with spare players for the VR teams. When , One of the players interrupted the cross team banter to speak to him.

'Hey, did you really quit that Metal team?'

Lyle spun on his heel to reply.

'Yeah, I'm team video games now.'

'Eehh, are those guys that harsh?`

Lyle let the inertia turn him back to resume walking without skipping a step. It was a show off move, but others got the hint and lost interest.

The boy stopped at the aisle with shelfs full of transparent box cases. Each contained a client visor, that doubled as a VR control system, and a wireless data storage with the multiplayer game he wanted.

With the box in hand, he cracked open the door to see if his former teammate was still around. With the coast clear, he rushed outside. And redoubled his efforts when he heard a local chat call from his phone.

-

"Hah, I went only to one place and I'm already tired. But at least I'm still safe. Safe."

With ragged breathing, Lyle found rest in his half-reclined chair, then pulled it along the smooth wooden floor with only his toes. Once before the screen, he reached inside the data storage box for the download button and tossed the entire box onto the bed.

Several minutes of splash screens later, the game greeted him with loading screen. It warned about the failure to detect VR visor hardware. He looked at the box, that he would need to stand up for, and waved it off. A manual controller would do for today.

An ingame render of Milky Way galaxy appeared on the screen, with grayed out 'War Guild' and 'Galaxy Raid' buttons. Soon the screen started to zoom in.

It entered a solar system that had a Dyson Ring around its yellow star. First planet to appear was Jupiter that was surrounded by massive space stations. After several seconds, he saw Venus with a guitar icon on it. Then Mars with 'Mars Arena' and 'Echo Raid' and finally Earth's orbital ring with 'TeK Terra'....

He couldn't help but yawn so hard that it distracted him from the screen.

... Zoom speed fell as the screen descended to the ground level. A big concave spire, with tall and thin spiral antennas on the four corners around it, entered the screen.

-Please create your character.-

-Be careful, you cannot change your appearance as it'll be locked to your storage ID.-

A family of four preset characters stood before the laboratory. The parents dressed clear cut and formal while their son enjoyed highly detailed and hot blooded animations. But Lyle, as many long-term players, immediately chose the cool and unassuming daughter.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The reason wasn't much of a secret. Older characters were models for customers of the real clothing store. The son's future was a selection of genre archetypes and franchises that resonated the most with the fans.

But artists could go all out with the daughter, and her developers had lax deadlines to make sure that no unfortunate 3d model mishaps could ever happen. And given the efficiency of veteran dev teams, they always had time left to indulge in a variety of base models for clothing. Therefore the girl would have the most customization options later.

Lyle already moved the cursor over the Accept and Play button, but paused.

"I'll probably regret it later if I don't do it."

With a brief visit to the character edit menu, he moved the breast size slider up.

-

-Starting tutorial-

'Listen, rookie, our job is to investigate. If you see something dangerous, run.'

The world famous hotblooded baritone welcomed him to a grassy plain, where rare trees gently swayed in the wind. The boy perked up, saved from nodding off by a rush of expectations.

The screen flashed with subtitles and a pair of giant mechs thundered into the view. The first was the Destiny, the game's mascot itself. A thirty meter collossus, rumored to subtly change its fine shape and colors as it never failed to impress over its many reincarnations. A part of playerbase even believed that the game company had secret player profiles.

The camera slowly shifted to the second mech. A grunt unit whose rugged boxy frame was completely dwarfed by its ally. Even the enemies stood a head taller, the beast like machines that phased into the center of the field.

'Hey, are you asleep, rookie? We have these mooks as guests. Why don't you show them our hospitality?'

-Push the joystick forward to tell your *Intelligent Algorithm* you want to walk. Use the attack buttons to create your own combination pattern.-

Lyle pushed one of the cockpit levers with the curse and a giant fist flew through the right viewscreen to punch air. But by the time he clicked through the follow up sequence, the mech was back in a neutral stance.

Lyle sighed as he made peace with little progress for today. WIth no visor the combos promised to take a while and keeping eyes open was already a struggle.

-

Finally, the last enemy fell into pieces. But instead of loot results screen, a ripple ran through the battlefield's air as a giant rift appeared nearby. ts translucent surface distorted terrain behind it and the franchise's theme music underlined the shout of Destiny's pilot.

'Kuh, It can't be, this is pure graviton energy. Run rookie.'

With arms opened to block the flooding white light from the smaller mech, and legs digging deep trenches, the massive frame of Destiny was slowly dragged to the mysterious rift.

A subtitle promted Lyle to move the mech to progress, but he missed and hit one of the nearby decorative buttons. Or so he thought, as it went in and a short shudder run through the TV screen as the game registered a *???* attack command.

Suddenly, his robot purged its boxy armor, revealing its inner frame covered by matte hexagons. The hex arrays whirred to life and spiraling blue energy arcs tore into the light from the rift. The blue interweaved with white, as if they were arms that sought to overpower each other.

Destiny's pilot shouted in surprise when the last wisps of white abandoned his robot. All of their power now focused on the smaller robot whose blue aura writhed like the mythical Laocoön.

Before the giant could as much as extend its arm, the glowing blue mech disappeared into the rift. The screen darkened, showing that stage has ended.

-Please wait. Your game is loading.-

-Loading..-

-Loadi--

As the boy waited, he closed his eyes to rest them just for a moment.

-

Lyle became aware of an expanse around him. It had nothing but blue light that permeated everything. He turned around in search of any distinct features but the view shifted before his muscles could act. After a moment's confusion, it dawned on him that he had no body to move.

As soon as he finished that thought and looked down to confirm, the world shifted and Lyle found himself standing on an invisible surface. His body and clothes were now materialized but shimmered as if surrounded by overheated air.

On closer look at his hand, it looked like his fingers subtly moved in every way possible at once, each movement so minor and fast that the afterimages merged into a single fuzzy illusion. It disappeared from the fingers he bent but returned soon after.

"Of all the days to get a weird dream. You had your nap, Lyle, it's time to wake up and get out of here."

As if in response to his wish, or in mockery of it, pockets of air around him began to solidify. Soon he was surrounded by layers upon layers of semi-transparent mirrors. They stretched into infinity, each one distorting his reflection in their own way. The farther a mirror was, the bigger the change was, eventually showing people who looked nothing like him in worlds he couldn't recognize.

Lyle poked the nearest one, that gave him multiple scars, and his finger sunk. It appeared inside of the reflection, now adorned by a shallow scar across both joints. The warm air and sunlight of the mirror world sun caressed the skin that felt too rough to be his own. He yanked the finger out to fervently wipe it on his shirt, as he spun in search of exit.

'Let me ou;...'

All of the reflections repeated after him and a choir of mismatched voiced rolled like thunder. Clutching his ears to shield them from the cacophony, Lyle remembered every advice he ever heard about controlling a runaway nightmare.

Soon enough he balled his hand into a fist. Focused on what he wanted to return to, the game, as his anchor, he willed as hard as he could.

"I want to wake up!"

-

'Tsune!'

'Wake up!'

Was he supposed to have guests? The voice seemed familar. Regardless, the name wasn't his, so Lyle stretched under bed covers and turned to the other side.

The covers were torn away and he spun off the bed into something soft. With a quiet groan, he opened his eyes. Before him was a red carpet with blue and silver lines. Further away he saw adult feet in blue sleepers that impatiently tapped the floor.

'Who...'

'You are going to be late.'

The owner of the voice yanked him from the floor and shook him.

'Wake.'

White sleeves, followed by a mane of long red hair, flew through his field of vision.

'Up.'

As his head bounced back, he saw green eyes on a feminine face.

'You.'

'To the bathroom. Right now.'

The woman shoved him out of the door.

-

Once alone, Lyle closed the door behind him and looked around. The bath shelf before the mirror was full of bottles he never saw, much less bought. But she did seem familar. Did he fall ill while asleep and she took him in for home care?

He wiped the steamed mirror, then wiped it clean. Elegant lines and strict eyes framed by short blonde hair. The reflection showed a younger twin of his game character.

Speechless, and unable to look away, he raised his hand. The girl in the mirror raised her dainty hand, pinched her cheek and he felt her pain. When their finger joints grew white, and tears flowed from pain, Lyle tried to find an invisible device around his eyes, or any implants in his skull.

"What is this? Did I sleepwalk and put the visor on??"

Carefully massaging the stinging cheek, he felt his body lower and was in for another shock. The long sleeved blue shirt disguised them, but the chest had two obvious bumps.

"This a nightmare."

"Or I'm in a hospital's induced VR and there was a mistake."

"Or I'm actually lying on the floor right, with that visor mel..."

Violently sick from the flood of mental images, he doubled over the sink. Then put his face under the warm water.

As water ran through his hair, calming his senses, Lyle heard the bathroom door open. The same woman as before pulled him out before taking his wet shirt off.

'Right. I was as nice as I could be, but if you can't force yourself, I will force you myself.'

'But I'm sick right now.'

'You know I manually cook our food, so quit it.'

The woman pushed him into the shower stall. Then water turned to cold.

-

Five minutes later, Lyle stood outside the house, dressed in a long sleeved silver uniform with red lines over zippers and a blue vest. A strong gust found its way inside of his collar and Lyle couldn't help but shiver. A terrible weather to explore an unknown city and the smartphone map was locked to a single route. A red line weaved through the streets, each corner tied to a countdown timer above.

He was about to restart the device to see if he could close the app, but a sound from the other side of the door made him hurry along the path. The last thing he wanted was her escorting him around.

The buildings, several story high, had familiar architecture, albeit with rounded edges and corners. People dressed about the same as always. But the common ended there.

Wide streets with sleek elongated cars that rarely had drivers. Several shops along the street promoted mecha teams and mecha workshops for hire, another turned their front wall into a screen that showcased car-sized machine parts. Above the street, power poles and roofs carried spiral coils with no electric cables in sight. Even the sky was made different. A thin orbital line crossed it from horizon to horizon.

But the strangest of all were giant robots he saw over the roofs. Soon he reached the crossroads and, with buildings out of the way, he couldn't help but stare.

The humanoid mecha looked like tall people that built toy houses out of colored plates. Flat turtle-shaped platforms carried big premade construction pieces and containers while small mechanical owls regulated traffic with their glowing eyes. Robot bulls pushed the completed vertical slices to the rest of the building along the sparkling ground rails. Last but not least was the only exception to the animal theme; clouds of small machines that covered the finished parts with welding glow.

"So strange. But my mind would want a dream like this, wouldn't it."

As Lyle thought about how much of this was inspired by games, and how one could define reality while asleep, the phone interrupted him with angry beeping. The last timer ran out.

-

The destination was a circular dome, as big as a major stadium, connected to a two story building in front. The school grounds gate proudly carried the banner *M City's premier robot Academy welcomes the future heroes!*

-

Something great flourished in his heart that day. At first it was a muted feeling, called forth by mecha decorations in this empty hall. Then he found a window into the dome and it sprouted into eager excitement. There, on a huge training field, animal-like mechs practiced four and more legged movement, humanoid robots did warm ups and wrestled...

'Tsune.'

...Huge multi jointed cranes extended from the below the ceiling to take several air and other -craft of stunning variety. The vehicles combined into a huge robot, seamlessly shifting to become body parts, then separated as if in a dance...

'Listen to your superiors, Tsune Red. Its bad enough that you missed the ceremony and the first lesson.'

A man, wearing the academy uniform, lightly hit Lyle's head with a paper notebook. When he gave him the undivided attention, the teacher pointed at a row of square metal rooms near the far wall of the entrance hall. Away from the window to all of the action.

'Take whichever simulation cabin you like and remember it. Put effort into studies or you'll never be with the ones you stared at.'

As if pulled by invisible strings, Lyle moved to the cabins. The feeling inside of his heart has fully grown, as did his smile.

"You know, I don't even care if I'm in a coma or whatever. I'll enjoy this while it lasts."