Dave was not happy. Who could blame him for it? One moment he's on his way to a quick family reunion before shipping out on his first deployment, and the next, he's aboard one of the official games vessels and handed a dinky Mossberg Shotgun from the 20th century and a small pack of shells while a government official with all the bells and whistles to prove legitimacy informed him he was being reassigned and to do well, and then he was unceremoniously dumped in the middle of a war zone and had to make a mad dash to what little safety he could find before anyone else caught him. Now here he stood in a little hole in the wall, barely a closet, and he considered what he knew and what his options were.

  He had only been moderately interested in the games of the Warzone - the surface was an all out war between varying factions that broke apart and reformed almost daily, armies and small groups constantly moving from one location to the next to stay ahead of the game. It was brutal open warfare with trenches and weapons emplacements everywhere. Below the surface however, where Dave was at, were multiple layers of metal. Everywhere one looked, there was metal. Halls, walls, floors, rooms, ceilings. It was a maze with only a handful of physical exits to the surface in any one sector. Those exits were usually held by elements of one faction or another, and often times could be a death trap or a recruitment center. Sometimes someone traded in their weapons to crawl into the shotguns and knives only subterranean zone.

  On top of that, he knew that every person dropped into the games had Heads Up Display (or HUD for short) elements and in the beginning had some points to spend on 'upgrades' based on whatever sort of support friends and government could throw together quickly - family was purposely excluded in the beginning to avoid most unfair advantages, and government spending was capped as well, though at a higher limit than any 'rich' friends would be at. It took Dave only a handful of seconds to calm himself enough to think, and bring up the HUD, seeing that the government was only giving him a little support, which explained his HUD and General User Interface (Or GUI for short) looking and feeling sleek and quick, but not overly much, while the few friends he had, all poor, had only managed to scrounge up enough for his Mossberg and the pack of shells he had strapped to his hip.

  He sighed. His folks were going to be quite upset, and his brothers and sisters were going to raise hell - what moron decided to involve one of the most successful families within the Empire of Humanity without dropping even a hint of what was going to happen? What were they reasonably thinking? Not only would his immediate family be upset, the plethora of cousins, uncles, aunts, and various hangers on were going to be PISSED and had the influence, and pull, to make sure everyone knew it. At least no one in his family was entirely against the games. It was just family policy to not apply to enter, or to be entered. He checked a second sigh as he moved over to his personal stats screen and saw that he at least had a few upgrade points to toss around, and the stats reflected his life-style, training, and experience already accumulated before he was thrust into the games.

  One of the reasons the games were so popular, to play and watch, was due to the games taking into account what was already there rather than just giving a faux blank slate. Tall with broad shoulders, he was fortunate that his training and lifestyle had missed out on the stereotypical bulkiness associated with tall broad builds. He had decent eyesight, but that wouldn't help him in the dark, and he could defend himself in hand to hand combat if he needed to, but he knew he could improve on it. In fact, there was a lot that he was good at, and a lot he could grow into. At least entering the games meant he could augment some of his more egregious deficiencies. For now, he needed to see better in the dimly lit maze of war, so he selected the eyes on the characters - remembering watching others selecting bits of themselves to filter upgrades - and found low-light sight.

  After he hit accept he had to blink a few times as his eyes itched, as if he had forgotten to blink for a couple of seconds. It was immediately apparent that it worked as he could see better now when he slowly peaked his head out of his little cubby hole. He had to get moving soon - staying in one spot for too long was a death sentence unless he was waiting for prey. Being as he was prey, he couldn't just sit tight and wait. He had to get a move on, but before he did, he selected his ears and went for the weakest form of enhanced hearing he could, and had to resist the urge to shove fingers in his ears as they itched. He sighed in relief when the discomfort abated and he could more clearly hear the sounds of distant conflict, already a dim background noise he could hear before but was just low enough he hadn't noticed it until now.

  He had one more point to spend on himself then he would have to either hope he performed well enough to get more, or that his family would soon be made aware of his situation to support his growth in the game. Or the off chance he managed to impress the government enough to get more support from them. Unfortunately, there was only so much upgrading himself could do for his chances of survival. He needed gear to further improve his chances. As it was, one shot would be all anyone would need to put him out of any fight.

  Dave listened for a moment, nodded to himself as he deselected his ears, selected the magic ability and unlocked it. Apparently everyone had the ability to use or get magic, but some species never could unlock it on their own- Humanity being one of them, but once it was unlocked for one person, their affinities were revealed and they filled up with cosmic voodoo magic juice. Now with magic unlocked, his character sheet updated, filling out more information in the boxes beside the visual representation of him. As he suspected, being human, he had mid level affinity for most types of magic, but no actual way to use any yet - he had to wait for that space juice to build up and he had to learn how to play with it. Later though, he was out of points and he really needed to get moving now.

  He closed the sheet and checked his Mossberg - there was a shell in the chamber and the mag was full. He was as ready as he was going to be. He checked both ways then slipped from his little hidey hole and walked down the hall, away from his drop in point. There was no door at the end of the hall, just a frame where one should go and the room beyond was empty but for a few spent shells from some fight previous. He checked the corners as he carefully stepped through the shells trying not to disturb them, being as there were enough to make it impossible to go around them. He wasn't worried about traps so much as alerting any ambushers that he may be coming. He reached the other end of the room, and consequently the only other exit from the room and swept the corners around the frame as he left the room.

  This hall had several doors along his right side and a broken door at the end of it. Explosives weren't banned per se, but they were expensive, and usually were restricted to low-tech variants, such as the old fragmentation grenades of 20th century Warfare, among other ordnance. Not to mention the plethora of other alien weapons. He moved his back to the left wall and slowly moved forward until he reached the first door, then moved his back to the wall beside it. He took a deep breath, readied himself, then waved one hand in front of the reader on the door. It slid open, the swish of air moving the only noise and he turned into the room, shotgun barrel leading. Inside looked empty save for what looked like a box in a corner and a terminal with a glowing display. He put those out of his mind as he checked the corners as he stepped fully into the room. No one was there. Taking as little chance as he could, Dave swiped the door closed before lowering his weapon and checking the box he swiped the lid open to find more shells for his shotgun and a utility belt. He dropped the extra shells - thirteen of them, into his pouch, nearly topping it off before he took the belt and tossed it over his shoulder before he swiped the lid closed. Next order of business was the terminal, which beeped at him when he approached. It was a message terminal that showed only messages to whomever was using the terminal. Right now, he had several messages - one from the government, one from his parents, and another from his poor ass friends.

  He hit play on the message from the government first. "Lieutenant, we hope and believe you will do us proud in this games. Your objective is to survive for no more than three years and show the galaxy at large what it means to pick a fight, any fight, with any human. At this time we're unable to fully support you due to difficulties. We'll only be able to supply you again sometime next week, and any contributions we make toward your progress will be restricted. Take care down there and know we're watching you."

Dave frowned. That was a very impersonal text to speech message, and quite unusual to say the least. He also got the feeling he was being told something without outright being told. If he had it right, it probably meant someone tried to pull one over on humanity and now whoever was running the show was playing hard on him. Lovely. As if Humanity didn't have enough problems going on with a surprise war going on and the war machine of Terra and her autonomous systems gearing up to repay the fool empire that launched the surprise attacks on her distant colonies taking much of it's attention away from other matters.

He shook his head, checked that the door was still closed, then played the next message. "Hey Dave, we did what we could on such short notice, those pricks wouldn't let us get you more shells. Something about not letting you have too much advantage, whatever that means. We're rooting for ya' buddy and hope you appreciate that Dregge we got you." He head snapped down to glare at the Mossberg in his hands. He had nothing against it, but now he knew something wasn't right. The Dregge was most definitely not a Mossberg, and was, while still centuries old, much newer than the Mossberg, requiring only a reload for every few hundred shots fired or so. Smaller shells in a drum mag with an optional belt feed into said mag allowed for a lot of damage to be dealt.

Before Dave lost control, he went to the last message- his mother's voice rang clear. "Boy, you just stay alive in there and we'll sort things out. Your unit has been reassigned from answering Terra's call and we've been granted quite a lot by the government for what they've done to you. The whole family is aware, and we're sending your sister to the games, with the fleet of Amura Sigma Terranus. This is one Terra has granted - permission to send her to watch over the games and make sure you're not interfered with. Terry was over and let us know what happened. We've tracked your friends down and repaid them and then some for the help they sent - don't worry about that Mossburg for now, yes, I already checked the feeds, I know you were cheated out of that Dregge. Once your sister is there, she'll ensure no further interference in the games and she'll be our personal representative to the games masters. Stay strong and survive."

His anger was only slightly mollified as his mother's voice stopped and the text faded. He was somewhat in awe that the Amura Sigma Terranus fleet had been given permission to move- that was nearly a third of his family's entire armada and constituted well over a hundred ships of war, including the squadron his ship was in. His sister, a full Admiral, was on her way with a very modern, very deadly fleet with likely very angry crews manning them - his family was well loved and respected in the several systems it outright owned and governed as well as the nearly two dozen it had major claims in.

He turned from the terminal and grinned to himself as he attacked his ammo pouch of shells to the belt, then cinched that on. Whoever had dumped him here didn't seem to realize that moving against his family was essentially declaring war on his family, and his family planned to answer in kind it seemed. What wasn't said but was clearly implicit in his mother's message was he had full permission and approval of doing the same here.

Dave's grin turned into a smile as he hummed to himself and pointed the barrel of his Mossberg at the door. It was no Dregge, but it was still a 12 gauge shotgun with a reputation behind it. The door slid open before he could move to swipe it open himself. He pulled the trigger as a very surprised person jerked their shotgun up.