<em>You float in the void. The non-space of virtual reality, between one setpiece and the next; A space that's usually glimpsed only briefly, in passing, the lightspeed servers of the fibre-optic network usually reducing lag to nothing...But you're away from safe harbors, in the deep, dark swell of the ocean.<br/><br/>Venturing forth into the Black.<br/><br/>In the real world, you recline on your sleeper chair, your features anonymous behind the mirrored arc of your visor. Here and now, cut off from all sensory input, you do not exist; Without an avatar to define your existence, you merely drift.<br/><br/>Onscreen:</em><br/><br/><strong>HYPER HOLY HEARTS OF HEROES</strong><br/><br/><hr/><br/>It definitely wasn't Callie's first VR game, she had untold hours logged into WOW-VR, which had been to VR gaming what the original had been to monitor-and-speaker gaming. It was through her WOW-VR guild that she had met KrampedKasket, a solid player in-game who could be relied upon in raids, but who somehow created the impression in Callie's mind that he dealt in drugs or something equally shady in real life. But perhaps that was unfair, because the man had connections and was willing to use them to the benefit of his friends, such as when she bought a bottle of not-exactly-illegal-but-hard-to-get mental enhancers from him during the last exam season. And now he had introduced her to the world of Blacksite gaming.<br/><br/>A typical Blacksite tournament had a million-dollar prize and a thousand-dollar buy-in, with a nominal fee for spectators who knew how to access the live stream, while the big bucks were made gambling on the outcome. Catering to those looking for an illicit thrill, the games up to now had been overly violent or sexualized... but now Blacksite gaming was looking to expand into new markets, to go mainstream so to speak (even though it was still as illegal as ever), with more... family-friendly games, so to speak. Codenamed the H4 project, usually the game itself was a secret until launch, but rumor had it that it was basically a rip-off copy of WOW-VR, with nothing more risque than scanty female armor. And most importantly, for this trial the buy-in had been reduced from the usual thousand dollars to a mere hundred dollars, still expensive but no longer affordable for a college student.<br/><br/><hr/><br/>The title faded away and Callie slipped into the consciousness of her avatar, Syndella, her senses gradually shifting away from her real-world body in her room and into her player character in the game world. She was a level capped fighter in elite armor - she knew it was elite because it was scanty enough that she could feel the breeze across her bare skin in too many places! - and she was standing at the foot of a volcano along with fifteen other similarly-leveled-and-geared players. The Virtual Reality not only looked and sounded like a volcanic landscape, but felt like the real thing, from the smothering heat of the lava flows that was already making a drop of sweat trickle down her ample curves, to the ash-laden air that smelled of smoke. So this was a sixteen-player raid, which funnily enough was entirely made up of women.<br/><br/>From the top of the volcano a giant dwarf emerged, heavily armored and wielding a warhammer longer than Syndella was tall. "Who dares trespass the realm of the King of Cinderheart! For your transgression, the punishment is death!" From the volcanic landscape to the giant dwarf boss, this was pretty obviously a rip-off of one of the raids in WOW-VR, except that there he was called the King of the Hollow Mountain instead. Minions scrambled out of holes in the ground or skidded down the slopes from above to give battle - the raid had begun, they had to fight their way to the boss and then defeat him!