[Chapter 1]
The stage was a dazzling spectacle, bathed in the soft glow of colored lights and a radiant LED display that seemed to pulse in time with the audience's heartbeat. Enormous screens displayed the game's action for all to see.
The sponsors banners adorned the arena, their logos glowing brightly. Vendor's voices selling merchandise, the scent of popcorn popping and the sound of sizzling sausages wafted through the air. Gamers of all ages clad in jerseys and gaming gear, mingled with one another, discussing strategies, sharing stories, and celebrating their shared passion.
A panel of casters provided live commentary from a booth hidden somewhere above the heads of the crowd, their voices filled with excitement and expertise, whipping the crowd into a frenzy as the teams for the day's events filed onto the stage to stand before their designated Mesh systems.
“Welcome folks, to the 5th annual Samurai Rush Finals!” A loud cheer from the crowd, barely subsided as the casters kept their intro going,
“Here we see today's four teams getting set up for their game. In the green jerseys, we have The Stalwarts!” One section of the crowd, a sea of green, bursts out cheering, a flag showing a shield waving above much of the crowd.
“In the red we have The Unleashed!” A sea of red takes over with a lot of howling while waving the teams banner, a stylized wolf on a red background.
“Next, in the black, we have last year's returning champions, Legion!” Before the caster can even finish his sentence, a roar shakes the walls of the stadium as almost half the crowd cheers for the team. The team lead for Legion steps away from the rest and raises his arms, drinking in the adoration.
“Last, but certainly not least, we have today’s underdogs in purple. A new team with an underground legend in their midst, The Myths!” At this a section of the crowd, significantly smaller than the others, begins cheering for the team. The Myths wave to the crowd before going back to setting up their gear.
The caster continued going on about the teams in the day’s match, discussing specific members and their strategies with his co-host while the teams on stage returned to getting their gear ready.
“I can’t believe we finally made it!” exclaimed Luke, one of the more outspoken members of The Myths. “Leo, are you seeing this? They love us!”
Leo looked over to see his childhood friend excitedly waving to the crowd. “Oh, I see it all right,” he said, smirking, “Kinda hard to miss while being on a stage in the center of a giant stadium. However, all that cheering won’t get your helmet set up you know.”
Luke glanced back sheepishly, “Oh, right. I should probably take care of that. Thanks bro.”
Leo chuckled before turning back to his helmet, a gift from his father before he was taken in an incursion five years prior. It had some scuffs and a couple scratches in the plastic, but Leo had taken care of it as his prized possession. Running his thumb over the slightly faded phoenix sticker on the side, “I made it dad. Thank you for believing in me.” Leo finished his setup and turned to help his fellow team members get their gear set up.
“Dammit, not again!” Luke swore. “I just had this fixed too!”
“What happened?” Leo walked over to his friend
“I was getting everything set up and it all looked good when suddenly it stopped recognizing the hub.”
Leo took the helmet from his friend and tried a couple things, but he could not get it to work. Knowing his friend's penchant for getting distracted, “Luke, take my chair and helmet, it’s already set up and you’ll need the time to rebuild your Samurai.”
“You sure? I know how much this means to you.” Luke said sincerely
“I’m sure. Dad would have wanted me to help you out. Besides, with how often you get into trouble you need the phoenix luck more than I do” Leo joked while pushing Luke towards the chair. “Get going while I work on this.”
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Luke smiled and shot finger guns before almost tripping on an exposed wire. Recovering, he simply turned and got to work calibrating the helmet to his taller frame so he could rebuild his Samurai while Leo turned towards fixing whatever was wrong with the helmet in his hands. Leo looked over everything he could before coming to the realization that he would need to take the helmet apart to get to the problem. Waving down one of the tournament officials, he had them watch as he took the helmet apart so they could confirm he did nothing to illegally modify the gear.
Taking out his portable repair kit, Leo pulled the main covering off the helmet and started poking and prodding at the different pieces. Finally, he noticed a tiny wire that was loose and seemed to be causing the issue. Showing it to the tournament official, “Here is the problem. Any issue with me tightening it down and getting this show on the road?”
The official ran his gaze across the helmet before nodding at Leo, “Go ahead, everything looks up to code. But you’ll want to hurry, looks like the rest of your team is already in dive”
Glancing up at his team, he noticed that they were all laid back into their gel lined chairs and fully in the Mesh. Rapidly tightening the loose cable and putting the covering back on, Leo got the final okay from the official before he speedran the connection sequence and laid down to work on building his Samurai from the ground up.
Leo got through the diagnostics that calibrated the helmet to his body in record time and dove into the Mesh. When it was finally ready he initialized the HUD and loaded up character creation.
In front of him stood a depiction of his real life body wearing a rather bland body suit that covered everything but his hands, feet, and neck. Looking into his own eyes was always a strange phenomenon. One eye blue while the other was red, a reminder of when he had to get one replaced after a childhood accident involving Luke daring him to jump out of a tree in the mountains near their hometown. Shaking the memory out of his mind, Leo got to work. Deciding to leave his eyes and hair, blond with red highlights, he immediately pulled up the list of available Samurai gear.
Using his pool of 800 points that they all got as a starting point, he bought the staples of his kit.
First to come up were the Hard Light Wall Emitter Rings from the Hard Light Technology catalog. These rings would allow him to set up killboxes for his team. Leo got two of them as each allows him to set three walls that are 10 feet on each side. Normally hard light has the limitation of being rather weak to allow them to be very adaptable, able to make any number of shapes. These, on the other hand, are only able to make walls. This allows them to be more robust at the cost of versatility.
Second was his one and only damage ability, the Mark I Wrist Mounted Chemical Synthesizer from the Class I Antithesis Biomass Denial catalog. A favorite of his, it allowed him to fill a magnetically stabilized plasma ball with a few concoctions to let him fight the Antithesis or to just remove the biomass from the field. At Mark I, and with the limitation of this not actually being true Samurai tech, he could only preload three different mixtures into the gauntlet. His current choices were Greek Fire (a mixture that was released once one of the Greek themed Samurai discovered the secret), an acid that only melted Antithesis and was a wonderful exfoliant for humans, and finally, a mixture that would rapidly crystallize over whatever he threw it on.
His third purchase was one of his favorites. A sleek rifle appeared in his hologram’s hands. It was just below four feet in length with a rather large magazine hanging out of the bottom. Pulling the bolt back, Leo confirmed that the rifle was loaded with the requested nanite syringes. The rifle, Mark I Ranged Biotic Support Rifle, was another uncommon pick for most players of Samurai Rush. This was primarily because it could not damage Antithesis at all. The only thing this rifle fired were syringes filled with nanites meant to heal humans at range, allowing Leo to sit back and observe the battlefield while still keeping his team alive.
Leo made the final purchase to truly round out his Samurai, an armor set that made it look like he was the Phoenix. Known as the Phoenix Mantle, it was a part of the Class I Mythical Phoenix catalog. As it appeared on his hologram, he marveled at the way it made him look fierce and powerful. The Phoenix Mantle was a rather simple armor piece compared to most. It offered middling protection against most direct attacks, but allowed him to steal the heat from any nearby object that produced heat and use it to power gear he planned to buy later in the game, or give him a cloak of fiery feathers that burnt any who got too close. When at rest, it looked like a cloak of feathers colored every color of fire you could attribute to normal fire; yellow, orange, and red, but when fully charged, it glowed in every color of the rainbow. It made him truly look like his gamer tags namesake, the Phoenix.
By the end of his character creation, his loadout looked something like this:
Class I Hard-Light Technology Catalog - 100 Pts
Hard-light Wall Emitter Ring x2 - 60 Pts
Class I Antithesis Biomass Denial Catalog - 50 Pts
Mark I Wrist Mounted Chemical Synthesizer - 100 Pts
Class I Combat Support Catalog - 50 Pts
Mark I Ranged Biotic Support Rifle - 100 Pts
Class I Mythical Phoenix - 120 Pts
Armored Phoenix Cloak - 50 Pts
Phoenix Heatsink - 50 Pts
Points Remaining - 120
Character creation done, Leo finalized his options and loaded up the tournament version of Samurai Rush. When he loaded, he got the feeling of falling, one of the reasons it was called “Diving” into the Mesh.