Kenshin's hair was cropped in a high ponytail scraped to the centre of his head. His red biomesh brakesuit was emblazoned with the crest of the Samurai 56 clan, a silhouette of a warrior seated, holding a sword in one hand and a lamb in the other. He stood looking down on the Western Edge of the second restricted district in the Mega City, this zone was for extreme FIM Real games only, and was situated far below what many above would consider the habitable zone.
The area was filled with old roads, tunnels, sewers, lakes and rivers. Dotted around were tangled spaghetti strands of cables extending down from the darkness above. To a player they were silent traps, ready to entangle you as you fought for your life, to an observer a spooky backdrop to the games. The Forgotten Zone was a culmination of centuries of both human innovation and waste. The light from the real city, over a kilometre above, rarely filtered down here, leaving whole areas enveloped in thick darkness, in others, needle points of pale blue light stabbed through the debris, revealing swirling eddies of dust spiraling lazily upwards from the grime. The thing that always got Kenzo was the smell, wherever you were in the vast arena the pungent chemical aroma was ever present, layered on top of the stale dank smell that emanated from stagnant water and rotting man-made materials.
Kenshin was one of the players who technically didn't have to play these games, he was a fully filamented Topworlder and led a comfortable mid-executive lifestyle. But this wasn't about the credits, this was about feeling alive, the games were an escape from a life devoid of meaning. Kenshin remembered being in his late thirties and fantasising what an enhanced SC score would do for his social standing. He remembered achieving a score of 5.3 by the time he was forty-five, giving him access codes to his filament that allowed him to travel to the Habs. He'd even moved up there, spent seventeen years in Low Earth Orbit on the Pangea Hab, he'd worked for the Mason family, Kenshin had even served in the accounting division of Acquisitions & Mergers, directly for the Doge himself.
It wasn't till his mid-to-late eighties that he started questioning his existence. He watched countless streams on the human dilemna and even got into the philosophy of Han Chu, the mystic who had started the Chu Life Cult, they believed death should be final and humans needed to go back to their pre-technological routes and accept the decaying of their bodies. They lived without filaments, some of them even without eyepieces, totally off-grid. They aged as naturally as a twenty fourth century human could, and they died preposterously young, rarely did one live to be over a hundred and twenty years.
It was never enough for Kenzo, he admired their commitment to the cause, however to him they seemed to be missing the point. Life had become stale and boring, predictable, even without any biotechnology the average human on Earth could expect to live out their lives in relative comfort. The human genome had been altered so much in the last few hundred years that disease was a historical footnote and even natural aging wasn't that bad as far as Kenzo could tell anyway. The older members of the CLC that he'd met didn't seem to look too much different from the late-twenties-early-thirties standard basic look that most people on Earth seemed to go for. Though their faces creased and their skin looked somehow saggier. What ever it was Kenshin didn't think the answer to his existential crisis was to rid himself of technology and die at an early age, so he left the Cult behind.
The first time Kenshin had truly felt the bloodlust was in a cheap FIV ironically called, Bloodlust II. It was a fully immersive virtual game, coded in parts, made from real human memory in others. Kenshin lost days in the game, he even changed his job to one that required much less of his attention. The move lowered his SC score by 0.8, something that would have mortified him half a century previously, but now he didn't care.
Bloodlust II had several game modes, but the one Kenshin played the most was the pre-industrial Japanese Samurai era, it was not long after discovering this mode that he renamed himself Kenshin, after an ancient samurai warlord Uesugi Kenshin, even going as far as changing his ID on the Earth Main Server and editing his name from personal memory via filament. If he wanted to he could find out, but as it stood Kenshin had no idea what his original name was and no longer hung around with anyone who could remind him.
The original Uesugi Kenshin was a powerful warrior who had risen from a struggle between peasants and warrior monks. He fought many battles with his main adversary Shingen and even took on the might of the Nobunaga Clan the elite military force in Japan at the time.
As he waited in the gloom, the twenty fourth century Kenshin remembered what it was like to plunge his katana into the gut of another person. It was in virtual, but the person was not just A.I. code, they were a captured soul, who'd either leased themselves out to the game, or were Deceased Indentures, people who had died in debt and were brought back to life to serve it out on the Shadow Servers.
After a while though, the FIV became boring to Kenshin, without the actual fear of real death, and opponents who were no match for him in skill, Bloodlust II became stale fast.
The one thing he was grateful to Bloodlust II for, apart from providing him with a new form of entertainment, was because it was the reason he was so good at combat games. Which had allowed him to make some credits on the gaming scene, ironically raising his CS score almost back to previous levels, which in turn had allowed him to save up for the mods he needed to play in the FR games.
A small beep in his ear told him the arena was live, he was standing on the flat roof of a derelict building in a non descript jumble of dwelings built around the late twenty first to early twenty second century. A lot of the concrete had crumbled, but they had started to used meshed, non-oxidising metals by then. So the struts and columns were still in relatively good condition. Kenshin saw an old dirt path around thirty metres below where he stood, he jumped aiming purposefully for a spot, his brakesuit whirred slightly as it slowed his descent. Kenshin immediately took off at a dead run upon landing, sprinting heading for an old carboceramic walkway less than two hundred metres ahead, a trail of camera drones accompanied him like pilot fish dashing after a startled whale.
His first opponent loomed before him stood in a small covered clearing at the end of the walkway, the air vibrated with the deep hum of the geothermal generators underfoot. Kenshin took stock of his opponent's weapons and armour. His brakesuit was modified to be a parody of a battle samurai, heavy bright red, Volpear armour and a Volpear two-headed axe. Kenshin drew his own katana, a long thin, silver-pink blade, flashed in the dull gloom. In his left hand he had his nontraditional short sword, a twelve inch blade with two short prongs on either side.
The two of them stared at each other in silence, both frozen momentarily by the thought of what they were doing.
Technically Kenshin didn't have as much on the line as his adversary who would become a deceased indenture. Even though he would escape this fate if he died Kenshin would be effectively bankrupt should he die here. It was what he wanted, this was what no virtual could do, give a sense of loss.
The two began to circle each other slowly, both held their main weapons in their right hands. Kenshin's opponent made a half-hearted feint, a stabbing motion towards his midriff. Kenshin held firm, he felt himself go calm, a fight was just like a dance, except one where each partner was looking for an opportunity to trip the other.
Kenshin noticed the rhythm of his opponents breathing, it was sharp, shallow. Another feint, this time with more conviction, Kenshin obliged and reacted, drawing his right foot back and raising his sword hand to parry. The attack came almost immediately after, an upward diagonal strike. Kenshin took two quick steps to his left, crouching low and swooping his blade out in defence.
He had the rhythm now, step-step-step-attack, feint-feint-attack-step.
The skill was to blend into your opponent's rhythm so that you could subtly change it to your own. Draw them into thinking that they could anticipate your every move, put them to sleep with a repeated move that they deal easily with. Then strike.
Another attack, this time both hands on the axe, thrusting the sharp spike at the top towards Kenshin's chest. This was part of the feint-attack-step, sure enough his opponent immediately stepped diagonally back. Kenshin flicked his sword downwards to the right, causing it to spark on the hard metal-mesh, then instantly brought it up to his foe's waist. The blow was parried easily, Kenshin lunged in for a head strike, again the blow was parried.
Step-step-step.
Two wild head-height swings of the axe, Kenshin ducked, there was the feint-feint, now where's the attack? He thought. A left hand flashed from beneath his armour.
'A throwing weapon!
Kenshin managed to pivot on one foot, the powered ninja star whizzed past, only inches from slicing open his chest.
He flicked his sword onto the ground again, once more bringing the blade up to strike at the waist, then changing it to a head thrust which seemed to surprise his opponent.
Feint-feint-attack-step
They were locked in the dance now, their attacks and flurries coming in short seconds-long bursts. Kenshin felt the sweat build up on his palms underneath the gloves of his brakesuit. Thin tracks of perspiration made their way down the back of his neck, pooling at the airtight collar of the suit.
His opponent rushed forwards, Kenshin broke step and attacked halfway through the second feint, he flicked his sword on the ground and brought it up waist high, though this time he pulled back his right hand and swirled his opposite hand round in a hooking motion, rising from his crouch and plunging his short sword into the right side of the Red Samurai. Kenshin activated combat mode on his brakesuit, tiny motors and hydraulics fired up and his arms blurred for a second, stabbing his opponent multiple times with both blades. A bloodcurdling scream wrenched forth from his fallen foe, echoing through the darkness.
Kenshin jumped back, panting, the mod that allowed him to use the combat mode prevented his arms from being ripped from their sockets, but did nothing for the fatigue that came with moving so energetically in such a short space of time. He stood there panting, still in attack pose, blade pointing to the fallen Samurai. Kenshin stayed focused on the fallen warrior's breathing, rasping now, it wasn't till a full minute after his last breath that Kenshin dared to move.
He had signed up for the death run tonight, meaning he had to complete a predetermined route through the Forgotten Zone. Each of the opponents he met would be of increasing skill simply by lieu of the fact they had survived. His eyepiece beeped and a schematic appeared in front of him, a pale yellow line showed him where to go next.
Kenshin came to an area he was unfamiliar with, it consisted mainly of broken walkways, platforms held up by giant carboceramic struts interconnected with a myriad of pipes and cables. The light here shafted down in wide pools illuminating the platforms and giving them the appearance of gleaming white stepping stones placed at random in a dark ink-black sky. Kenshin moved forward on to the nearest walkway and looked down. The exit point was half a kilometre away, a dull yellow flashing light pulsed somewhere below him through the gloom.
Kenshin's felt his brakesuit's wings working to slow his fall as he leapt from one descending platform to the next. Each landing was then swiftly followed by a powered jump to the next platform.
A sound.
As Kenshin landed on the sloping platform that had been his target, Kenshin felt the source of the sound, a micromesh plasma bullwhip. It struck him on the top of the shoulder. The crack of the whip was painful enough without the accompanying high voltage shock.
It flung him from his feet and for a moment he couldn't see where he was falling. He landed with a thud on something hard. His mouth tasted of zinc and his ears were ringing, the pain mods hadn't kicked in yet and he felt as if a giant had ripped his arm off. He staggered to his feet looking up to try and ascertain where his latest foe had attacked from.
Kenshin felt the vibrations through his feet from another thud, a landing this time not a fall. Before he could analyse where it came from a sun-bright blue arc lit up the left side of his body as the plasma whip struck him again. He slammed into an unseen wall, Kenshin could just about make out a huge figure charging at him. The pain mods had started to kick in and he dived to his right just as his enemy's sword crashed into the space his head had been a tenth of a second earlier.
He fell into something wet and rolled to his feet in a crouch, katana extended in front of him, short sword held close, waist-high.
The wall behind Kenshin shattered causing him to jump and whirl, he was bringing his blade round but it was too late. Kenshin shut his eyes to the blinding flash, the whip hit him in the chest and flung him back fifty metres.
'What's his rhythm?'
Kenshin felt like he had no time to adjust to the situation, his enemy was keeping him just off balance. Another charge, a whip, then gone.
'That's it!'
Charge-whip-charge, jump.
The knowledge of this didn't help Kenshin, not in the dark anyway. His enemy must know this terrain, he was using it perfectly to his advantage. Not meeting him in uninterrupted hand-to-hand combat, instead preferring to disorientate Kenshin, wound him, disable his brakesuit little by little.
Death by a thousand cuts.
He had to make his way back to the pools of light, he couldn't risk using his enhanced vision mods, even without them the flash from the plasma whip threatened to blind him. His eyes stung with tears and his throat and nostrils burned with the aroma of sulphur seeping out of one of the nearby malfunctioning geothermal vents. Kenshin felt like he was running through treacle, he got to an edge he just about saw in time, the wet noise of his feet sliding to a halt echoing around the chambers.
Kenshin risked turning his enhanced vision on for a second and looked down, he saw he was standing at the edge of the vent, a bad egg smell rising on the air warming his face. He saw a ladder twenty metres to his left, it led up to a walkway that led to one of the pools of light. Kenshin didn't dare to look behind him as he turned to scramble for the ladder. He sheathed his swords as he climbed rapidly, three rungs at a time, hoping that the ladder was strong enough to take him. He reached the top, bashing his shins on the edge of the walkway as he scrambled to his feet and ran towards the light.
As he ran a surging pain jolted through his ankles, for a moment he thought he'd run into a trap, the illusion quickly dissipated as Kenshin was lifted off his feet and thrown twenty metres into the air.
'How does he move so quietly?'
Kenshin landed with a crunch he whirled round, unsheathing his sword, his attacker was nowhere to be seen. Kenshin stifled a scream as he scrambled to his feet, tungsten needles of pain shot up from his ankles through his thighs. He spotted the ruins of a two storey building around a hundred metres straight ahead. Kenshin bit down on the pain and made his way as fast as he possibly could towards the entrance.
Anger burned in his eyes as he finally made it to cover, his enemy was playing with him, he could have killed Kenshin by now, but he was letting it play out way longer than Kenshin himself would have allowed. Although Kenshin concluded, the price for the FIM recording would be a lot higher than if his enemy had killed him within a minute.
Kenshin burst through the open doors to the building and immediately made his way up to the second floor. What little light there was inside poked through gaps in the walls and ceilings in thin, gloomy columns.
He stood trying to calm his breathing from rasping, snatched breaths, to something more akin to calm. For the first time in the games, Kenshin knew he was completely outclassed, surely it would only be a matter of minutes before his opponent finished him off.
Kenshin accessed the games menu via his filament, and looked at the available combat mods on offer. He found the one he was looking for, Microseed ™, when used it would allow Kenshin to perceive time in milliseconds. The main downfall with this is that his suit would be operating in combat mode, giving him no more than around thirty seconds.
Kenshin hesitated, the cost of the mod was more than he could afford, if he used it and still lost the fight, he'd be in the unenviable position of being both dead and in debt.
He stood shaking in the dark, back to a wall, thin pinpricks of light poked through unseen gaps. He bought the mod, this was what he was here for, this was life and death.
A horrible crunching mental sound accompanied a concussive whump as the wall he was leaning against blew out. Kenshin activated Microseed ™ just in time to see the blue arc light from the plasma bullwhip lancing towards him from his left. This time he was able to react, whirling round to meet the whip with the edge of his blade. To Kenshin this all appeared to be happening in slow motion, it was as if they were fighting underwater, to an outside observer the two warriors were a blur of violent activity.
The next ten seconds played out like two minutes for Kenshin, however even with his enhanced mods his enemy was still faster than him, more skilled. Kenshin knew that it was futile, he knew he couldn't win before the Microseed ™ app ran out.
The two of them battled on a wide carboceramic platform bathed in pale blue light, darkness shrouded the edges, giving Kenshin the feeling as if they were the last two people on Earth.
He tried for one last desperate attempt, as the plasma bullwhip came rushing towards his face Kenshin dropped to his right and rolled, at the same time he flung his short sword out towards the chest of his onrushing foe.
Blackness
When Kenshin awoke he did not need the Server Orientation Officer to explain what was happening to him. His use of Microseed ™ had pushed him into the red just before he'd died in battle.
"It appears you have a skill for hand-to-hand mortal combat games. That's good for you, they pay some of the highest fees."
"Yes." Was all Kenshin managed to say.
"Do you have a handle?" The SOO asked.
"No, I am just Kenshin." He replied.
"Well we must find you one, I think Fallen Samurai is good, people will pay good money to battle you, there's a decent legend behind your name. Anyway, think about it, for now I'll show you to your quarters."
Kenshin stared back at the officer, at least now Kenshin supposed, he would get to do battle on a daily basis without the inconvenience of having to do a normal job. This was his life now, just another Deceased Indenture trying to pay off his debts in the real by dying a thousand times a day in the virtual.
Cryptogee
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