In a single second, reality seemed to change around them! 100 people all vanished from a small northeastern town in the United States. Gamers, they were all gamers! Playing either their favorite, or at least a game that they were the best at in this tiny little micro-city! They seemed to go up in a cloud of blue lightning directly from their various devices. But it was no explosion! They just vanished in less than five seconds! Whether they were with anyone or not, 100 people don't vanish off the face of the earth without someone noticing eventually, perhaps though this won't be a very long disappearance...

 Four of the gamers couldn't see anything until they opened their eyes. Below them only a vast grid made up of green cubes and a thick purples mist all over the air.  Wait....they weren't themselves. What were they now? They all seemed to have transformed into whatever the last game character they played was! Sense of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste completely dictated to a frighteningly accurate degree by whatever they had transformed into! What the hell was up with this place!?

  Wherever they were, they falling! Falling to the ground fast with only their new bodies to help them! What would they do?

Shanon, or was it Jadedespool, looked in disbelief at her green grease smeared hands the smell of saw dust, coal smoke, and might be the scent of eldritch spellfire. There wasn't really time to ask how, or why, or even if this was really happening. The ground was approaching and she hoped she remembered what control animation matched the mech movement she needed, to not splatter on impact. Fall damage was pretty rare in Goblin Gizmos who had time for parkour when the other team was on the move, but her bull dozer roll would cancel fall damage if she could time the attack to attack rather than crash into the ground. She grabbed what she hoped was the right lever and waited for hopefully the right moment.

Leslie, or it appears she was Silver Maiden at the moment, had no idea how she was going to survive this. Silver's abilities, impressive as they are, didn't include falling from a great height without getting hurt. ...Or maybe it did. Thinking quickly, she called upon the magic inside Silver Maiden just as she would do if she were playing Bloodreign on her computer in her bedroom. She wasn't sure this would work, but it was her only chance.

Silver Maiden got in a sky diving position, arms and legs bent as she continued to fall. If she timed this right she'd be able to use her violet blast to slow her fall to less than lethal damage. Trying to stay calm and not panic, she waited until she knew the blast would reach the ground. Please let this work. I'm not sure what's going on, but I really don't want to find out if I'll respawn from dying or not.

One second Joie was sitting in her chair in front of her computer, playing her favorite tank, Lady Electrica, slamming into a bunch of fasists mobs and sending them flying and then she was floating in the air.  She felt different and when she looked at herself, she was wearing Lady Elecrtrica's outfit and when she looked at her bicep, it was as toned as her characters. That was when she noticed she was falling. "AAIAEAAHHHHHH!!!!"  A scream of shock escaped her mouth as she froze.  Her eyes bounced around looking for somekind of explanation of what was going on and saw others falling as well. "AAAaaahhhhhh!!!!"   She was still screaming as she looked down to see a grid pattern, like she was under the graphics layer!

Wait, why was she screaming, if she was Lady Electrica now, she could survive a fall from a great height!  She blinked and stopped screaming as she looked down, she needed to stop thinking and let her body react naturally.  She consciously started slowly her breath down and preteneded she was looking through a computer screen as she watched the ground get closer, loosening her body.  Lady Electrica used her reflexes to avoid damage, she would be rolling out of the fall to dissipated the force of the fall.

She rolled in the air until she was falling feet first, as soon as her toes touched the ground, she let her legs bend, absorbing force and then she tipped herself forward, things happening in slow motion as she pitched herself forward into a diving roll.  she bounced along the ground, grunting and gasping in pain as she lost control of the roll as she eventually rolled to a stop, banged and bruised up, but alive.  She groaned as she got to her feet, already feeling herself healing up. "Nnnn..well..that hurt more than I expected," she muttered to herself as she looked around to see how the other people falling were doing, hoping they landed at least as safely as she did.

One moment, Sarah sat in her chair, labbing a particularly irritating matchup, and the next she was spinning, tumbling through the air. She felt different, though this was, obviously, not her first concern, given the situation. She floundered in the air a moment, panic setting in as the air whistled past. She could barely control her wheeling limbs as she fell, trying to orient herself, but wait when you were falling you were supposed to spread out to slow down right oh god what do I do-

Suddenly, everything became clear. It was like driving a car with only your mind before being given a steering wheel, and in an instant she righted herself and braced just as the ground came up to greet her. She landed standing, both feet firmly situated on the ground and, as if she'd been practicing for decades, fell into a stance. She looked around. All that greeted her was a green grid and mist, like some poorly-thought out training stage.

Where was she?

She looked down at herself...(?)

The first thing she noticed was that her head was way, way too far from her feet- or, at least, what seemed were her feet now. She must've gained at least two dozen inches, if not more. Her skin was now a dark gray and- goddamn- she could probably shred cheese on those abs.

Who- How...?

Jadespool's bull dozer mech had just managed to land it exactly the right way to roll! The Bull Dozer roll had managed to land safely, with minimum fall damage from the height in the hands. The ground itself seemed invincible, not scarred at all from having a mech with four legs fall from a distance onto the thing. As she managed to comb her way through the mist with her own eyes and from the purple fog seeming to bend around the arms of the vehicle she managed to see a robotic green figure with a single yellow-joint eye looking up at her. Or, Jadespool did. Whatever she thought if was odd feeling in a this goblin body.

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VIOLENT BLAST As if involuntarily Silver Maiden called this out upon nearly hitting the ground!

 The energy shockwave simultaneously managed to push her back up and more gradually lower her onto the ground. Within seconds of hitting the concreate the force, of gravity, or whatever was in this odd world had worked it's forces upon the Silver Maiden's body and had managed to decrease from terminal velocity. She still landed somewhat hard, on her stomach, but it was less the force of a mile in the air, and more the force of tripping down a very small flight of stairs. Still, not pleasant. As she saw, the same green figure was observing from close by where a goblin like creature in a giant robot had fallen just a moment before...

-----------------------------------

Lady Electrica found herself pulling up her feet, directly in front of what looked like a green robotic bug-like creature! She had seemed to land closer to this thing than the other three summoned here did. The green robot did a bizarre dog-like head tilt to the right, Lady Electrica could see it had a yellow mono-eye staring at her with an inquisitive robotic noise.

Oh, your here! I see, yep definitely human. I didn't know they wore such garish costumes though!


-----------------------------------

 Dura-Noka had found that body crashing to the earth in a perfect way. Landing on their feet, and feeling no more pressure than one would feel jumping off their bed in the morning! Once they fell onto the green grid with glowing electronic green lines rushing through it at what seemed like random intervals. A shockwave like their had just been an earthquake emanated from his feet and if someone was near Dura-Noka they had a feeling they would have fallen over and perhaps even fallen through the floor if this simulated floor didn't feel invincible! Their new body was very different but from their they could see a green bug-like robot talking to a young lady dressed like a superhero though.


The bug like robot spread it's legs, and put it's hands onto the floor in front of it, very much in a frog-like stance as it jumped over into the middle of these four gamers suddenly transported into another world!

Ah, humans! I'm very glad to see you all!

As the hulking warframe hit the ground like a dement rusty iron spiked rolling pin for a giant even bigger than Dura-Nuka. The plates grated on their hinges as the mech uncoiled like a hedgehog, bringing up it's drill spear in a pose not unlike a castle guard save for its severely hunched back and obvious oil burning medieval demolition derby style construction.
As the jeep like cockpit exposed from behind the heavy metal back spine plates, the tiny goblin mechanic Jadedespool peered out mouth agape eyes looking arround in furtive amazement. Shannon was used to being 6'3", so suddenly being 2'6"  and three of that being hair everything looked huge and Dura-Noka might as well have been a two story building, this was somewhat mitigated by the monster truck sized mech she was driving.
So the interesting thing said here was humans, which apparently she was despite being a Goblin, but more alarming their speaker was not.
"How, are we here? You're not human?" She screamed as if expecting her voice to be smaller and quieter than it turned out to be, but in a polite curious tone, thick with understated confusion.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:36, Wed 24 Jan.

Sarah just gaped as she spun around repeatedly, trying to take in the situation. Unbeknownst to her, the expression looked rather silly on Dura-Noka's usually always-serious face. Glancing down again, some strangely mirthful part of her thought, I knew I should've mained Kaguya. She chuckled internally at that.

Her eyes locked onto the bug robot. Starting to panic, she started to interrogate the thing. "You! Robot thing, where are we? What's going on? Why am I not myself? Can I go back home?" She took a moment to breathe. "TELL ME, YOU DAMN ROBOT!"

Sarah wanted to go up, grab it and shake it, but ignoring the possible damage that could do, the bug robot was, well, quite short, and thus quite far from her hands, and she didn't feel like crouching at this time of crisis. That's... A little ironic.

And the first thing her eyes landed on was a bug robot with one eye looking at her with a tilt to its head indicating curiousity. She stepped back, automatically dropping into a defensive posture as electricity sparked around her body and focused on her hands. "Umm... if you think this is garnish, you haven't seen much of humans," she hesitating responded before the robot leaped like a frog toward her as Lady Electrica sidestepped to the side, getting out of the robots way as it landed behind her.  She turned to follow it's path as it landed in the middle of a rough circle created by her and three others.  One was a very tall human man, then there was mecha with a green skinned woman poking her head up and another woman who looked human.

As the tall man shouted out his questions, Joie nodded her head in agreement as wanting those answers.  But panic was only going to get in the way of things.  She walked slowly toward the big guy, "Easy there, fellow.  We all want those answers, but best to keep our heads," she soothed as she approached him, keeping an eye on the bug robot. She was focusing on helping the big guy to avoid panicing herself as her busty, petite body was dwarfed by the guy.
This message was last edited by the player at 14:43, Fri 26 Jan.

Sarah did as asked and stopped. "Uh… sorry." Her face would've reddened if was still capable of doing so. She must've looked so silly acting like that in this imposing body with its imposing face. 'Panic' was not ever meant to be an emotion found on Dura-Noka's face.

"What's your name? Are you also from… Earth?" She grimaced at the awkward wording of the question, but right now, pretty much anything was possible. Who knew if she was from Earth, wherever here was, or some other plane?

"Ugh, well that sucked the big one. Geez. At least I'm alive I think anyway." Silver Maiden got to her feet and looked around. She didn't recognize the place at all and it was not part of Bloodreign, she knew that because she'd seen just about every dungeon and region that Bloodreign had. Spotting the others she started to walk towards them but stopped when she saw the green robotic thing and turned that way instead. It looked the most interesting at any rate.

Jadespool's small body and mech suit came up against the green robot, it's feet and arms still in position from jumping into the center of the "room" or at least between the circles of wherever this place was. It certainly wasn't exactly outside in the clear blue sky or green grass, but it wasn't exactly a room indoors. It felt alienating and distorted. In response to the screams from Jadespool he mearly stood up and attempted to calm her down. "Oh, you are here because I brought you here, to help our people, and your people...

 The robot was interrupted by a giant hulking mass of grey stone-like skin with a red mouth started interrogating him with an intensity usually seen by enemies of his, or at least the enemies it had seen while it combed through entertainment. "Oh, hello giant monster, your body seems particularly useful for melee focused combat. Or perhaps that is just your avatar? I'm not sure. You are not yourself because I have transformed your into your own virtual avatar, for your protection! You are all video game experts, or at least the masters in a 100 mile radius where my power is strongest. I knew many players would be playing at approximately 6 PM Eastern Standard Time right now and were more likely than not in private areas of their homes while playing this, and being familiar with these avatars, would be the best to use them in virtual combat. You can go home now if you wish, but I wouldn't advise it...:"


He turned to Lady Electrica next, observing the electricity flowing through her body. "Thank you, but I'd advise you save your power for your opponents, but where are my manners. I am Prince Rom, royal helped program of this interactive system! You are on Earth, or at least um...sort of... Oddly, the royal joyful robot seemed to not exactly know himself. He turned over to the Silver Maiden with a response,

 I guess I could say we are in data form, inside some server. I'm an original creation of the United States military program underneath your home city. My body and mind was programmed to preserve this simulation and the outside computer system inside a base nearby, but umm....I'm not exactly sure where that is or how it works! All I know is that I can transform one kind of matter into another using this shockwave, and Emperor Zai cannot. Oh, my manners have failed me yet again...

Welcome to The Battle Grid, a vast simulation of any combat capable objects and people anywhere! In any world!"
With that, a quick sting of royal music accompanied the end of his speech as he stood up and bowed in the circle. He bowed towards the four potential heroes, seeming to not understand quite how bewildered they would be from all of this...

Lady Electrica smiled at the giant mountain man, "It is okay.  This is a very strange situation, we are allowed to be shocked." She patted the thigh of the man who was towering over her, "Joie," she introduced herself, "I am from earth and the United States."



Lady Electrica relaxed, slightly, as the electricity absorbed into her body.  "Hello, Prince... Rom." She considered their words slowly as she absorbed what it was saying, "Soooo...you brought us into this...simulation to fight... something?  This Emperor Zai?" The only reason she was taking this robots words at face value, was that she was here, on the Battle Grid and in Lady Electriac's body.  Her VR system was not this good, heck she hadn't heard of any publically available VR system to be this good. "So you are a... program?  That has evolved beyond its original form?"  She was very unsure of the situation, "How do we know you are who and what you say you are and we aren't just going through a delusion?" She asked nervously as she looked at the other 3 around the robot.

"Uh… Sarah." She gave a little smile, which, again, was not an expression that had ever graced Dura-Noka's face before and looked horrifically awkward. It was good to know she wasn't alone in here, at least.

"The US military built this? I don't think they're allowed to suck us into a virtual reality and make us fight without our consent…" This was all a little ridiculous and Sarah wasn't 100% convinced she wasn't in a dream of some sort. Maybe she needed to cut back on the amount of Hyperfight she was playing…

He turned his robot one-eyed face to see the superheroine character. "Hello Joie. It is pleasant to make your acquaintance. Yes, that is correct, I did bring you into fight the Emperor. Sort of, he isn't the real Emperor Zai. He is an A.I. composite of all the antagonistic forces in this simulation. Patterned after the villain faction in the Real Time Strategic computer game Colonial Comet Wars from the year 1993 A.D." .

He paused a moment at the accusation, or rather the odd interrogative statement from the superheroine, or rather "Joie". "Oh that would be quite interesting delusion, but I don't think it is likely. Here, if you try to shoot the electricity in the simulation you'll be able to feel the effects through your arm. Much more so than you've ever felt it while playing Heroine Central I assure you! The Battle Grid can simulate any combat affect, any superpower, or any environment perfectly!"

 Seeing the grey-skinned hulking humanoid respond and inquire about him as well, the crown Prince Rom frog-jumped again closer to Dura-Noka, or as he overheard "Sarah" and told her the truth.

 "Oh, I believe The Battle Grid project has been officially abandoned for several years. I alone was the one who called you all here to help fight him. Without you, the Emperor can access and use any web-enabled system anywhere with impunity! I have no doubt he would use the earth's weapon systems against the most tactically advantageous targets or use the matter changing device to unleash his own armies all over the earth to kill all humans. Which, I can ssure you is very not cool..."

 All four of the gathered gamers could hear his speech as he finished explaining it to Dura-Noka.

Adjusting to a normal speaking volume
 "Sorry, not used to-- this." weird as the situation was for her, Jadedespool seemed willing to take it in stride. "So you've scienced our physical bodies into a digital representation to battle a threat to earth and I guess cyberspace-- I'm Ripple-N-Mirror, this is Jade-Despool my really short gaming avatar. Smells more real than any dream I remember. But how dangerous is this I'm good, but I'm not a million long iron-man streak. Can we ghost walk to res, here, outside?"

Curiously the crown prince tilted his head to the other side to show confusion. His eye-like visual processor turned blue as he spoke next...Processing, advanced net lingo...

 "Ah no, Ms. Ripple-N-Mirror. You will not die if your character dies, not unless it is a very specific circumstance. Not unless your original body was going to die anyway, of it the computer system you virtualized from blows up or something. You will just be transformed back into your original body. I must warn you though, the process is very exhausting!"

Joie nodded her head thoughtfully as she absorbed Prince ROM's answers so far, "Are our bodies in danger while we are in here?  Like will they suffer from dehydration?" She stopped and tilted her head, "but you translated us here?  Does that mean our bodies are no longer in the real world anymore?"  She asked nervously/vuriously, "And how long are we going to be in here?  Until the fight is over?  I am trying to understand all the dangers we might be facing," she explained to Prince ROM.

Sarah just watched and listened, mouth agape. It was all hard to understand- but not to comprehend, if you get the idea. So she just let her fellow stolen earthlings talk as she tried to process all the information being given to her.

That was, until one thought cut through the confusion. "Wait, I get to fight people… as Dura-Noka?" she said. That… actually sounded cool. But she had none of the training or years of experience Dura-Noka did. Could she actually do any of his moves?

She attempted to do one of Dura-Noka's most infamous moves, a massive forward-stomp that was both a fantastic pressure tool and one of his best combo starters. She expected to just fall over, but to her own surprise it came out perfectly- knee bent and raised up to about her shoulder, before being slammed down with enough force to make Sarah flinch at her own strength.

"Goddamn…" she whispered, eyes wide. Immediately she also attempted to do one of Dura-Noka's supers, a double-fisted punch that radiated energy, but nothing really happened when she recreated the motion. "Must not have any meter..." she observed.

He turned to Lady Electrica. "Oh yes, your real bodies have been completely modified and changed. Your real bodies have been turned into data and downloaded onto the system. Your body is not in any danger, but your physical matter is not existent except on a hard drive at the moment. This transfer process or "virtualization is quite powerful, and if used in the wrong hands, dangerous. Speaking of that...."

He observed the large gray monster-like Dura-Noka jumping and turning around everywhere.

"Careful Dura-Noka, you will want to save your fight energy. Afterall, I called you three here, because as of this moment... the emperor is preparing to hijack an aircraft carrier out in the ocean. With access to numerous fighter jets and weapons, I believe he intends to stage a military invasion of your town. Although he has no nuclear material, the numerous weapons could easily fly mainland enough to hit the city with enough force that many thousands would die! I urge you to go to this sector and fight whatever he has planned for us as soon as possible!"

 He stepped onto a green square, suddenly it rose up above them from the "ground" and just underneath him a green portal full of code opened up.

"You will learn how to do your battle moves soon, but I advise you to fight quickly. Will you do it?"

Joie still wasn't completely sure about things, she was having to take a lot of things on faith.  The biggest one was that they could trust Prince Rom, they only had his word that he was fighting this Emperor Zai for the right reasons, or that Emperor Zai even existed.  It could be that this Emperor Zai was a construct of Prince Rom's and these battles for a completely different reason.  Unfortunately the only way to find out was to follow along until she was able to gather more info.

"Okay Prince Rom, I will help you," she turned toward the other two, "My avatar is called Lady Electrica.  Or Lady E if you are in a hurry," she smiled. "I have an aura that will attract the attention of my opponents towards me and I am very hard to be hit.  As I take damage, I get tougher and harder to damage more," she smirked confidentally as she shook her arms loose.  "My aura is strong enough to keep the opponents attention even if you hit them rather hard. The further away the opponent is from me, the weaker my aura will be at pulling their attention."  She explained her avatar's abilities, "I generate electricity and can shoot it out of my hands to do damage."

She waited to see if the others had anything to offer, team work was important for their success.  They only had each other to depend on at the moment.  Once the other two were ready, she would step through the portal.

"Don't love the short notice, but you've shown power that could infinitly decieve. But if you're lying a bunch of unknowns have to arrange just right and it's simpler and more fun if you're telling the truth.

So what are we up against and how do we support each other, not like dropping wood and steel is going to help Dura-Noka heal. I usually build a ganker run fast, scrap mobs and dominate from the get go, this little tunnel runner approach can bushwack um make trails between trails if you know where to dig. Then it's ambush burst scrap and run. But, I can support, push, tank, carry on a respec. Maybe I mean I spaded the heck out of my game. If I knew the numbers I could build whatever, we needed, that's the beauty of it."

The little Goblin mechanic eyed the electrical super heroine thoughtfully, an electrostatic meant oil slicks could stack AoE damage, flechets could up to-hit, but did City of Heroines have a to-hit number? She scratch her wild pink mane with a claw thoughtfully.

"Uhhh…" Sarah frowned at the question. "I don't  think I have any support power- I'm just really good at punching people." Which raised some interesting questions; with a character from a 1v1 game, how would she do with crowd control? Could she do anything or would she just get overwhelmed by the power of numbers nearly immediately?

Well, anyways, it was impossible to know without checking, and this whole business with this 'Zai' person seemed important. She'd fight- hopefully a digital realm meant only digital consequences for herself as well (the aircraft carrier was a different story, obviously.)

Susan had been keeping it zipped, just taking it all in. Trying not to losie her head, feeling old wounds reawaken. Memories she'd been trying to avoid

"Time to lay it out, innit? This ain't the first time I've been dragged into some twisted game like this" a bit of a hard edge to her voice "Last round, we were proper stuck, had to fight our way out to get free. I made it through. One of my mates did, but the other two... well, they didn’t. As in, vanished, off the map. Ended up with some serious benefits back in the real world, but shit I gotta tell you, the cost was no joke."

"The real tough bit was dealing with the head mess. Normally, you’ve had enough of a game, you just stop. Wasn’t an option here. Getting banged up? It’s just as rotten as the real thing. I’ve been shot, ended up in hospital. And I’ve put others there, too. Only difference is, in the game, you heal quick, and no old bill .. er that's Pigs to you I guess...  knocking on the door. But when you lose your mates? That tears you apart, especially...” She paused, her face blank for a moment, then she was back in. “Especially when they’re as close as family. And when you’re fed up, you can’t just switch off; you’ve gotta keep on. That’s when you need your crew the most."

"Other stuff? Doesn’t matter where you’re from, this ain’t about just us and showing off our leet skills. We gotta think like it’s some massive online battle, gotta stay tight. Those of us who are hard? We need to watch out for the ones who ain’t."
This message was last edited by the player at 11:18, Tue 13 Feb.