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I smile, then take a deep breath and spreadisle And I fly

My stomach drops as my brain believes I’m actually thousands of feet in the air I let out a whoop as I soar over the plain, theplayers--some worlds allow players to fly around or swiravity But audience members are always free to wander around the landscape however they wish We’re barred fro with the players The players won’t see us, either They can only hear the roar of our cheers or boos, as well as the referee’s calls

I fly straight through the floating isles like a ghost, angling up to go as high as I can until I can’t get any farther from land Then I turn around and dive back down like a ht as the cheers of the audiencefro to the Cereht to watch this all-star perforins At the far end, we have Tea! At the near end, we have Team Beta, led by Penn Wachowski!"

The players finally appear, scattered at opposite ends of theislands I fly away from Keira and head over to see them more closely

The avatar rule for official, professional Warcross players is that their virtual selves must look like their real selves, without any of the crazy customizations typical users can have, and that each team’s members must wear the same color Team Alpha’s color is blue There’s Jena, all blond hair and lanky lion scale texture tailored to hteen, same as me--and is from Ireland As I watch her, she tosses her hair over her shoulders and places her hands on her hips Her silver arleahs The audience screa island nearby is Max Max, the son of rad His Warcross position is a Fighter, for sheer brawn and poith the goal of taking others down instead of hunting for the Artifact At twenty-eight, he’s the oldest player in this year’s tourna, so shiny that it reflects the sky and contrasts sharply against his dark skin

Then there’s Asher, the teainally known only as the younger brother of Daniel Batu Wing, an actor and stuntht because of Warcross He has thick brown hair so light that it’s almost blond, and his eyes are a playful blue, the saoon below him His deep sapphire armor is finished with steel shoulder plates and leather straps along his arainst his chest, and calls out a challenge to the other teaale my view to show the audience in the Tokyo Do batons frantically MARRY ME, ASHER!!! screah his secure line, words only his teaea off soaoes on, my attention shifts to Team Beta They’re decked out in red arame always color-codes the tea red Artifact hovering over his head He and Asher so up an octave

Over my earphones, the announcer finishes her speech with a now-standard reminder of what the objective is, for the benefit of any new audience"Reoal--take your enemy team’s Artifact before they can take yours!"

The players each raise their right fist They hit theainst their chests, the standard response to acknowledging the rules There is a brief pause, as if everything in the level had suddenly frozen

"Gaht!"

The world trembles from the roar of the invisible audience, and the clouds in the sky start totoward us at a frightening pace, its lightning forking closer with each passing second As with every Warcross world, the gahtly coloredover many of the isles These ites to help you fly for short periods, shields of defense that can stop an enemy attack, and so on There are dozens of different power-ups that can potentially appear in a game, and new ones are added all the ti that helps you ju over isles close to h-level power-ups (like the ability to fly for the entire game) are very rare and hard to reach Soht send one of their players after theame

Power-ups can be worth a lot of ames, unused power-ups that you collect can be stored in your player inventory You can then sell or trade them to other players Valuable power-ups can sell for thousands of notes

Warcross is so well programmed that I’ve never tried to steal a power-up--but I recently found a security bug that ht as she’s about to use it