First Person Shooter
By Littlesilverstar, silverstar222b@yahoo.com
A video game villainess becomes a little too real

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story is based on the X-Files episode of the same title.
Maitreya is a perfect villainess and I've always wanted to see her in an
expanded role. I do not own the character of Maitreya.

Enjoy the story!

* * *

"Clear!" shouted Player One.

"Clear!" called back Player Two.

"Clear!" echoed Player Three.

"Did we get 'em all?" asked Player Two.

Player One looked at the small video screen attached to his arm. TARGETS
ELIMINATED IN LEVEL: 37. TARGETS REMAINING IN LEVEL: 1.

"One left. Come on, guys. Let's finish the job."

The three young men, among the first to play this new, ultra-realistic virtual
reality game, reloaded their assault rifles as they stepped over the "corpses"
of the enemies they had "killed." Weapons at the ready, they darted into a
side corridor and entered a large, empty room, fanning out, pointing their
weapons into the darkness...

"Whoa," said Player Three suddenly.

A woman had stepped out from the shadows. With her long dark brown hair, blue
eyes, and high-cheekboned face, she was stunningly beautiful. Her body was
just as spectacular. She wore a tight white T-shirt, skintight black leather
pants, and knee-high black leather high-heeled boots with razor-sharp
stilettos. Black leather gloves covered her hands, and a shiny metal bracelet
adorned each of her wrists. The tight shirt showed off the outline of her
perky 34C breasts, and a hint of her hard six-pack abs was visible between
pants and top. Slender but muscular, she looked to be about 5'9" and 135
pounds, although her high heels boosted her height to over six feet. She was
tanned a deep brown, the darkness of the skin on her arms and stomach
emphasized by the contrast with her white shirt. Her upper arms had visible
muscle tone even when she wasn't flexing.

"Holy shit," said Player One, unsure of what he liked best, her tits, her abs, or her
arms.

"What a babe," added Player Two. All three guys, their little heads fully in
control of their thinking, had lowered their weapons.

"Who are you?" asked Player One.

The woman looked straight at him with her piercing blue eyes. She said nothing
for a few seconds, as if sizing him up, then spoke in a clear, confident yet
feminine voice:

"I am Maitreya. This is my game."

A crossbow suddenly appeared in her gloved hands. Before any of the men could
react, she fired. A steel bolt impacted Player One in the center of his chest
and he collapsed to the ground.

"GET HER!" shouted Player Two. He and Player Three both opened fire with their
assault rifles, but Maitreya had already begun doing a series of standing back
handsprings, elegantly backflipping away from them. As she disappeared into
the shadows, Player Two bent over the body of Player One while Player Three
kept watch with his weapon.

"Holy fuck," reported Player Two. "He's dead. Like, fucking dead for real!"

"How the fuck could that happen?" demanded Player Three. "The game's not
supposed to..."

"Quiet. I think she's coming back."

The faint clicking of a woman's high heels on the stone floor came from the
distance, the sound slowly growing louder. The two men pointed their guns into
the darkness, their hearts pounding.

She emerged from the shadows, this time holding a spear in her right hand and
a shield in her left. Both guys opened fire, but Maitreya raised her shield,
positioning it to keep herself covered, the bullets clanging harmlessly off of
it.

Suddenly, she hurled her spear right at Player Two with a throw that would
have made an Olympic javelin thrower envious. The spear impaled him through
the center of his torso, the tip exiting out from his back. Player Two stood
ramrod straight for a second, then collapsed.

"NOOOOOO! FUCK!" Player Three kept firing, but the deadly woman used her
shield to block all the bullets, drawing a sword in her right hand as she
continued advancing on him. Player Three's assault rifle clicked empty. He
reached for another magazine and discovered that he had none left. With a
curse, he threw his rifle down and drew his sidearm. He fired half a dozen
shots, trying to catch her off guard, first aiming for her ankles, then for
her head, but she lowered or raised her shield in time to block each bullet.

Maitreya was almost upon him now. She looked at the frustrated expression on
his face, smiled, and dropped her shield, standing still in front of him,
holding her sword in a two-handed grip and twirling it rapidly, the heavily
developed muscles in her forearms rippling underneath her dark brown skin.

Thinking he had her now, Player Three fired a shot at the center of her chest.
There was a clang of metal on metal. Somehow, she had deflected the bullet
with her sword. She continued to stand there, still smiling at him.

"Shit!" He fired again. This time, her arm somehow got into position before he
knew what was happening and the bullet bounced off the metal bracelet on her
wrist.

"No...no...how can you..." he moaned.

She moved, a flash of brown hair, brown skin, and black leather, and with a
quick series of one-handed cartwheels and front handsprings covered the
remaining distance between them. Player Three fired twice more, both rounds
passing harmlessly between her legs as she was upside down. She landed
elegantly right in front of him as his pistol clicked empty.

She looked straight into his frightened eyes and spoke in an emotionless
voice, like a scientist recording a laboratory fact into a tape recorder.
"Player Number Three. Brought a gun to a swordfight. Lost."

Her blade suddenly flashed twice. Player Three felt a horrible pain. Looking
down, he saw that she had cut off both of his hands, which were now lying on
the floor next to the empty pistol. He began screaming, continuously, feeling
nothing but pure terror and pain.

She smiled at him for the last time. Then, with a single swift swing, she cut
off his head.

* * *

The room was in chaos. The corpses of the three players were laid out neatly
on a large table. All around them, people were screaming, shouting, and
cursing.

Finally, the voice of Mr. Anderson, the president and CEO of the video game
company, boomed out over all the others. "Everybody, QUIET! We need to find
out what the fuck just happened." He turned to a man in a white lab coat. "Dr.
Carrington. Have you completed your examinations of the bodies?"

"Yes," said the doctor. He pointed to the first corpse. "Player One. Shot with
this crossbow bolt here. The bow that fired it must have been tremendously
powerful. It went right through three layers of body armor. The barbs on the
arrowhead did massive damage to his internal organs. He didn't stand a
chance."

"Player Two. Impaled through the heart with this spear here. Went through
three layers of body armor in the front, then came out the back going through
three more layers on the way. Judging by the depth it penetrated, it would be
almost impossible for a human being to throw that hard, except for maybe a
champion male Olympic javelin thrower."

"And finally, Player Three. This one is pretty self-explanatory. Decapitated.
His hands have also been cut off."

"But how is that possible?" demanded Mr. Anderson. "None of the enemies in the
game are supposed to have real weapons of any kind. It's all supposed to be
virtual reality!" He turned to another man in the room. "Mr. Walsh. You're the
head of IT. Do you have an explanation for why the video feed went out right
before those guys were killed?"

Walsh looked up from his laptop. "No, sir. But I'm working on recovering the
video. I've almost got it."

"Let me know the second you do." Anderson turned back to the center of the
room. As his gaze passed over the bodies, he couldn't help shuddering.

"What'll we tell the money men..." said one of the executives.

"Yeah, if they find out about this, they'll..." began another.

"I will deal with the investors," said Mr. Anderson. "Now you've all worked
here long enough to know the mottos I live by. If it ain't broken, don't fix
it. If it is broken, fix it before anyone on the outside finds out. And that's
exactly what we're going to do. We WILL fix this game, we will NOT give the
investors any reason to panic and pull out, and we WILL market it successfully
so you all can get your bonuses."

"Sir, I have the video feed," said Mr. Walsh. "Visual only, no audio."

"That'll do. Put it up on the big screen."

Everyone watched as the three players finished off the "regular" enemies and
made their way into the large, dark room. When Maitreya appeared on the screen
for the first time, everyone reacted with gasps of shock, but none more
strongly than a young man in the corner named Rodney.

Rodney was 23 years old, a computer expert, and a self-proclaimed video game
super-geek. When he had landed this dream job helping design this new virtual
reality game, he had been overjoyed. Though he loved helping Mr. Thomas, the
lead designer of the game, on the project, he also wanted to eventually design
a game on his own. So during his spare time, he worked on his own little
project, just for fun - or so he had thought.

As a stereotypical nerd who was short, skinny, and unathletic, Rodney, ever
since puberty, had had a fetish for strong, muscular, yet feminine women who
could do all the "manly" stuff that he couldn't do, and still look sexy doing
it. He especially had a thing for villainesses and bad girls, women who used
their skills to do whatever the fuck they wanted. It was he who had created
the character of Maitreya as a potential villainess in a future game of his.

As Rodney along with the others in the room continued to watch Maitreya
effortlessly slaughter her male opponents on the big screen, he found himself
shaking. None of this was supposed to have happened! Not only was Maitreya
supposed to be a secret that stayed on his computer and his computer alone,
but she was never supposed to be real and capable of killing real human
beings. She was supposed to be a fantasy, nothing more. How could she have
jumped into the other game? And how could she have become a real killer?

As the video ended with Player Three being brutally beheaded, everyone in the
room had an expression of uncertainty and fear. There was dead silence for
several moments until Mr. Anderson finally spoke.

"Who was that woman? Has anybody seen her before?"

He received only negative responses.

"Mr. Thomas. You're the lead designer of this game. Do you have an
explanation?"

"No, sir! I have no idea who she is. She's certainly not one of the characters
we created. I don't know how she got into the game! And I don't know how she
could kill..."

Mr. Anderson nodded. "Here's what we're going to do. Mr. Thomas, I want you to
work with Mr. Walsh and Rodney. I want the three of you to go through every
line of code in that game. Look for anything that doesn't belong. If she's
appearing in the game there must be some trace of her. When you find it,
delete it. We'll do a test run on the game to make sure she's gone. Then we
can move on from this mess."

"What about those three poor saps on the table?" asked Dr. Carrington.
"Compensation for their families..."

Anderson sighed. "I'll have to pay. God willing, the sales from the game will
make up for that."

* * *

SEVEN HOURS LATER

"Still nothing!" said Walsh, the cup of cold coffee next to his computer long forgotten.
An open box with a half-eaten pizza lay in the center of the table. "How about you 
guys?"

Rodney and Mr. Thomas looked up from their own laptops, surrounded by crumpled
pieces of paper and empty soda cans. "Not a damn thing," said Thomas. "We've
gone through the whole game and there's no trace of her. You didn't see
anything, did you, Rodney?"

"No, sir." Rodney felt mixed emotions. On one hand, he was glad that he hadn't
gotten caught. On the other hand, if they could find no trace of Maitreya in
the game code, what were they going to do?

"What'll we tell Mr. Anderson?" asked Thomas.

"The only thing we can tell him. The truth," said Walsh. He reached for the
phone and dialed the CEO's extension. After explaining the situation, he
listened to the firm, decisive voice on the other end.

"Very well. In that case, there's only one thing we can do."

* * *

In the big conference room. Mr. Anderson stood up. "Unfortunately, we have
been unable to locate this mystery woman in our lines of code. So since we
can't remove her electronically, we'll have to remove her physically. We will
send a team into the game to destroy her once and for all."

Rodney gulped. What would that mean? If Maitreya was killed in the game, would
she be removed from his computer as well? Would his creation be destroyed
forever?

"Do you think that's a good idea?" asked Dr. Carrington. "We saw what she did
to those three guys..."

"Those poor saps had no idea what they were up against. We do. They were just
video game geeks. We'll be sending in trained soldiers. A full squadron, not
just three guys."

"Walsh, Thomas, Rodney. I want you three to go to the control room right now
and start up the game," continued the CEO. "I'll brief our security team and
meet you there in five minutes."

* * *

Anderson entered the control room, followed by eight heavily armed and
body-armored security personnel, seven men and one woman. The woman was
Parisa, the company's head of security and someone that Rodney had had a crush
on for a long time. She was Persian and exotically beautiful, with long black
hair and dark brown skin. Athletic, muscular, feminine, and well trained in
combat, she was exactly the kind of woman he was attracted to. Unfortunately
(of course), the feeling was not reciprocated. Although she was nice to him
and showed him her warm and compassionate side, it was clear that she was just
a friend, nothing more. No, women like her only wanted big, tough alpha males,
thought Rodney. Like THAT guy. Like Brandon.

Brandon, standing right next to Parisa, was a weapons expert and ex-mercenary.
A stereotypical tall, muscular alpha male, he had been hired to design the
most realistic fake weapons for the enemies to use in the game, as well as
acquire the real weapons that the security team were holding now. Each member
was armed with an AK-47, a .45 pistol, a combat knife, and hundreds of rounds
of ammo. In addition, each of them wore top-quality body armor that was
designed to stop assault rifle rounds.

Rodney sighed as he looked at Parisa and Brandon and the way they looked at
each other. It was clear that there was a mutual physical attraction between
the two of them. Once Rodney had realized that there was no way a woman like
Parisa would go for a guy like him, he had poured an increasing emotional
investment into Maitreya, feeling more and more of a connection with her as he
continued designing scenarios for her in his private game, gradually thinking
of her as more and more real. Could his own mind have been what made her come
to life in the other game? No, that was crazy...right?

"All right," came Mr. Anderson's voice, jolting Rodney out of his thoughts.
"Is everything ready?"

"Yes, sir," said Mr. Walsh. "The game's up and running. She's out there.
Staying hidden in the shadows, but she's out there."

Anderson nodded. "Monitor her and the security team at all times. Hopefully we
can trap her and finish her off." He turned to Parisa. "Good luck."

"Thank you, sir." She removed the safety on her AK. "Come on, boys. Let's
roll."

The eight soldiers marched off to their destiny as they entered the elevator
that would take them down to the game arena. Rodney's mind was filled with a
million emotions as he watched them go. What would happen to them? And what
would happen to Maitreya?

* * *

"Player one ready," came Parisa's voice over the radio.

"Player two ready," came Brandon's voice. One by one, players three through
eight also checked in.

Walsh sat at the main control console, with Thomas and Rodney flanking him,
and Anderson sitting in a chair behind them. "Elevator at the bottom,"
reported Walsh. "Ready to unlock the door on your order, sir."

"Do it," said Mr. Anderson. Walsh nodded and pressed a button.

The array of sixteen large video screens in the control room showed various
parts of the arena. In addition, eight smaller screens showed body-camera
views from each of the players. The four men in the control room watched
closely as the eight soldiers stepped into the game zone, fanning out and
crouching down, assault rifles at the ready.

"All right." Walsh spoke into his microphone. "She's in the back center area,
moving around behind pillar to pillar. You'll have to go through a lot of
rooms to get to her."

"Copy," came Parisa's voice over the radio. "Can you see what weapons she
has?"

"She looks like she has a bow and arrows slung over her back, and maybe a
knife or short sword at her side. It's very dark, hard to tell."

"Just a bow and a knife? We'll take her down easy," said Brandon cockily.

Rodney watched, heart pounding, as the security team made its way deeper into
the arena. He then looked up at the screen that showed occasional glimpses of
Maitreya, trying to keep the thought out of his mind, the thought that one way
or another, someone he liked was going to die...

"Okay, she's on the move," reported Walsh. "Coming straight at you guys. She's
three rooms away now. Now two rooms..."

"Spread out," ordered Parisa. "Three men left, three men right, one center
with me. Walsh, keep a continuous repor..."

The sixteen large video screens suddenly went black. Then, on one of the body
cameras, a projectile, perhaps an arrow, came flying out of the darkness,
impaling the wearer. There was a scream, then the camera view moved wildly
upward, as if the wearer had fallen on his back. Then it went dark. A second
later, all the other body cameras went black as well. Screams and gunfire were
heard.

"What the fuck?!" shouted Mr. Thomas.

"Get those cameras back online!" ordered Mr. Anderson.

"Trying, sir! Nothing!" Walsh said. "Thomas, Rodney, use every hack you have!"
All three men frantically pounded on their keyboards.

"We've still got audio, sir," said Thomas.

"I've got ears. I can hear that," Anderson replied. Over the radio, the
screams and gunfire continued.

"Walsh, talk to me!" came Parisa's voice.

"We've lost all visual! Trying to get it back online...fuck, nothing seems to
be helping!"

"Shit...where the fuck is she..." Brandon's voice crackled over the radio.
Then everything went silent.

"Parisa! Brandon! Are you there?" Walsh shouted. "Fuck, audio's out too now!"

In the arena, the four soldiers who were still alive crouched in a semicircle,
weapons pointing outward, waiting. Then came a melodious but chilling female
voice:

"I am Maitreya. This is my game."

The soldiers looked at one another. Parisa cursed in her native Persian, then
said reluctantly, "Retreat. Three and Seven, go now. Brandon and I will lay
down covering fire. Keep trying to reestablish audio contact. Let's at least
get out of this one alive."

Back in the control room, although the silence had been for less than a
minute, it felt like an eternity. Finally, Walsh reported, "Audio back online.
Parisa, talk to me!"

"We're retreating!" came her voice. "Unlock the elevator!"

"Thank God she's still alive. Unlocking elevator now."

A minute later, the elevator doors opened into the control room and Parisa,
Brandon, Player Three, and Player Seven walked in. Anderson looked at them,
then behind them. "Where are the others?"

"They didn't make it," said Parisa. She shook her head sadly.

"Fuck," Anderson swore. "All right, shut the game down. We'll retrieve the
bodies in a minute. Right now, tell me what happened."

"She was so fast," said Player Three in a small voice. "As if she was
superhuman...One girl with a bow and arrow defeating eight soldiers with
machine guns..."

"All we saw was a brunette blur, when we saw anything at all," added Player
Seven. "She did these backflips that were so fast that she could dodge all of
our bullets. She was a goddess-level gymnast..."

"Parisa, you're the most levelheaded one," Anderson interrupted him. "Please
tell me the facts."

"She nailed us right after I heard that the video went out, sir," Parisa
began. "The first we saw from her were her arrows. She dropped two guys right
away. Then we lost two more, I couldn't even see how she took them out. We
were firing, but couldn't acquire a target. I gave the order to retreat.
Without visual it would only have been a matter of time before the rest of us
were slaughtered."

Anderson nodded. "You did the right thing. I just wish I did the right thing
by not sending you down there."

"She'll have to be defeated somehow, sir. And we're soldiers. It's our
department," said Parisa. "If only she didn't somehow have a way to knock out
our cameras..."

"We'll work on fixing that later," said Anderson. "Right now, let's bring the
bodies up."

* * *

Anderson, Carrington, Walsh, Thomas, and Rodney, along with the four surviving
soldiers, stood in the examining room. The four dead security men were laid
out on tables.

"Player Four. Took a longbow arrow to the center of his chest, pierced his
heart," reported Dr. Carrington. "Went right through his body armor. A normal
woman can't draw back a bow that powerful. Hell, a normal man can't draw a bow
like that."

"Player Five took an arrow to the skull. Did a number on his brains,
splattered them all over the place. Player Six's throat was ripped open by a
very sharp blade. And Player Eight, he has this neat red hole in the center of
his forehead. It looks like a bullet hole, but there's no exit wound and no
trace of a bullet inside him, not even any fragments."

Parisa stepped forward, examining Player Eight's corpse closely. "Looks like
she kicked him in the head with the stiletto heels she was wearing. That would
explain the wound. I did that once to a guy who tried to attack me in a
deserted street as I was coming home from a bar. Left a hole just like that."
Rodney got an erection when he heard that.

"So what do we do now?" asked Walsh.

"We could destroy the whole game," suggested Carrington. "That's the only way
I see to destroy her."

"Destroy the game?!" Thomas looked outraged at the idea. "Easy for you to say,
Doc. That game's not YOUR life's work."

"Our whole company is riding on that game," said Anderson. "If we destroy it,
we destroy all of our livelihoods. No, that's only an absolute last resort."

"I want to lead a team back down there." Parisa ran her fingers through her
long black hair. "I don't like leaving a job unfinished."

"We'll need more men," Brandon said. "There's only four of us left. I have
connections with my mercenary buddies that I can..."

Anderson shook his head. "I'm not bringing more lambs to the slaughter. The
fewer outsiders that are involved, the better. Looking back, even letting
those three guys test the game was a mistake. We should have used only
internal people as testers."

"Defeating Maitreya will be a matter of brains, not brute force," Rodney
agreed.

"Yes," said Parisa, looking at him. "We just need to make sure she can't
suddenly blind us again."

"Walsh, Thomas, Rodney." Anderson turned to the three men. "That's your
department. Can you find out how she's interfering with our audio and video
feeds?"

"I think so, sir," Walsh answered. "We have a good baseline to start with,
from the code I used to restore the audio. If we take it from there we should
be able to get to the source."

"Good. Get to work. Let me know when you have something."

* * *

The phone rang in Mr. Anderson's large office. He snatched it up. "Tell me
good news."

"You have a solution? Great. If you want, get some coffee now, because you
probably won't have the chance for a while after this. I'll round up the
security team and meet you in the control room in ten minutes."

* * *

In the break room, Rodney filled a cup from the water cooler, poured the
contents over his face, then refilled the cup to have a drink. Walsh and
Thomas had already taken their coffee back to the control room.

He heard bootsteps behind him. Turning around, he saw Parisa standing there.
"Rodney, may I have a word with you, please?" She seated herself at one of the
tables, motioning for him to join her.

"S...sure, Parisa." He walked over to her, intimidated by her beauty and her
muscles, and sat down at the table across from her. "What's going on?"

"Maitreya introduced herself to us while we were down there. While the audio
was out. There was no audio with the first video we watched, and none of us
mentioned her name. But you did. Where exactly did you learn it?"

Rodney's already pale face went even whiter. He felt something in his trousers
and hoped he had merely sat on an apple pie, but knew that he hadn't. He
opened his mouth, but no words came out.

"Rodney, look at me. You created her, didn't you."

Tears appeared in his eyes. "Yes," he confessed. "But I never meant for things
to turn out this way!" He told her the whole story of his desire to create his
own characters and how he had grown more and more connected with Maitreya. "I
don't know how she jumped into the other game! And I don't know how she gained
the ability to kill for real...Oh, God, what have I done?"

"Shh. It's not your fault. You couldn't have known that this would happen."

"Are you going to tell the others?"

Parisa shook her head. "No. I like you and want you to stay alive. If I told
them, some of them would probably want to kill you. Especially Brandon,
knowing his personality." Rodney gulped when he heard that.

She placed her large brown hand over his small pale one. "Don't worry. I'll
keep your secret. I just wanted to know the truth." She looked at her watch.
"We'd better get back. There are some clean pants and underwear in the locker
room."

"How did you know...Is that your sixth sense..."

"No, just the regular old fifth sense. The smell."

"Oh." Rodney blushed in embarrassment.

She giggled. "Don't worry. You're not the first guy I've done that to. Go on
and change. I'll cover for you to Walsh and Thomas in case they ask what's
up."

"Thank you, Miss Parisa."

* * *

"So we discovered that this Maitreya chick, as she calls herself according to
Parisa, was able to tap directly into the controls from inside the game," Mr.
Walsh explained. "The good news is we've found a way to lock her out of that."

"And what's the bad news?" asked Mr. Anderson.

"We can't do it from here in the control room. We can only override her from
inside the game. There are electronic access ports at various places in the
arena. She must have figured out how to tap into them. But I've written a code
that will lock her out."

"She's very adaptable. She could find a way to get around it..." said Mr.
Thomas.

"Perhaps. But it would take her a while. If we take her down quickly we won't
have to worry about that."

"Then that's what we'll do," declared Parisa firmly.

"Right," agreed Anderson. "Walsh, you and Rodney will accompany the four
members of the security team into the game. Thomas, you and I will monitor
things from the control room."

Brandon frowned. "I'm not sure it's a good idea for the computer guys to go
in. It takes a certain mental and physical toughness..."

"We're all a team here, and every man and woman has his or her job," Anderson
cut him off. "You worry about your job and let them worry about theirs. Arena
team, gear up. Let's get this shit over with."

* * *

Rodney stood still as Parisa placed the body armor on him. Out of the corner
of his eye, he could see Mr. Walsh and the rest of the men getting their gear
on as well.

"How are you feeling?" Parisa made one last adjustment on his armor and looked
into his eyes. At 5'8", she was two inches taller than him and looking
slightly downward.

"Scared as fuck," said Rodney in a small voice. Although he was indeed
terrified, he was also strangely excited. Not only was he going into battle
alongside sexy Parisa, he was finally going to see sexy Maitreya in the flesh.
His creation. Who knows, perhaps he could even somehow convince her to stop
killing...

"As anyone should be," Parisa responded. "Including me."

"You? You seem fearless..."

"Unlike Maitreya, I'm only human. I have fears too. I'm just good at
controlling and hiding them." She gave him a pat on the back.

The soldiers readied their assault rifles, sidearms, and knives. Although the
trained security personnel were to handle the fighting, Rodney and Walsh were
each given a pistol for emergencies. Parisa quickly instructed them on how to
use their weapons. "These are .45 calibers, which have a pretty strong kick,"
she warned them. "Don't try to shoot them one-handed like you may have seen me
do, my wrists are a lot stronger than yours. And I hope this goes without
saying but please don't do the sideways gangsta style."

The six of them, ready to go, made their way towards the elevator. In the
control room, Mr. Anderson and Mr. Thomas wished them good luck. As the
elevator made its way downward, Rodney took a deep breath, on his way to his
date with destiny...

The elevator doors opened, revealing a gray, soulless-looking world of
abandoned warehouses, empty streets, spooky alleys, and open doorways leading
into inky blackness. Most of the workplace was located hundreds of feet
underground, the better for security, and the battle arena was hundreds of
feet beneath that. They were probably a quarter of a mile underground right
now, Rodney thought.

The four soldiers stepped out first, forming a semicircle, weapons pointed
outward. Rodney and Walsh followed a moment later. The elevator doors shut and
locked behind them and Rodney gulped.

Mr. Thomas' voice crackled over the radio. "She's in the back left corner, so
you've got some distance."

"Copy," said Mr. Walsh. He walked over to a nearby panel on a wall and opened
it. "Entering override code now."

"Tell us what she's doing," Parisa spoke into the radio. "Will she move to
attack, or will she try to..."

"She's going for a nearby panel," reported Thomas. "She's trying to hack the
codes!"

Parisa's dark brown eyes narrowed with decision. "Walsh, Rodney, stay here at
the panel and keep adding extra layers of encryption. Player Seven, guard
them. Brandon, Player Three, come with me. We're going to get her before she
has any chance of overcoming our codes. Thomas, keep us informed."

"Copy. Take the third door on the left, then the second door on the right.
She's still working on the panel."

"Encryption holding for now," reported Walsh. Parisa, Brandon, and Player
Three made their way through the various doorways, finally entering a large
room, empty except for several thick concrete pillars.

"She's on the move!" said Thomas. "Coming right at you, Parisa. She'll emerge
from the door at the far end of the big room."

"Get ready!" said Parisa. "Everybody behind a pillar. Keep your guns trained
on that far door and blast that bitch as soon as you see movement."

"Wait a minute, what's this?" Thomas sounded puzzled. "She's taking out some
sort of...Hey, what the fuck? There's smoke all around her, I can't see her
anymore! She must have had some sort of smoke bomb contraption..."

Smoke appeared in the doorway. Brandon and Player Three both began shooting.
"Hold your fire!" shouted Parisa. As the gunfire stopped, she paused,
listening with her trained ears. There came the faint click of high heels.

"NOW!" she cried. She opened up on the doorway, firing bursts of five or six
rounds at a time. From behind their pillars, Brandon and Player Three did the
same. The shooting continued for several more seconds. Parisa kept the last
half dozen rounds in her magazine as the other two reloaded. When they were
done, she emptied the remainder of her rounds into the smoke, then reloaded
her own weapon.

"Is she down?" crackled Mr. Anderson's voice.

"Wait for the smoke to clear," said Parisa. "Keep behind the pillars."

The smoke finally cleared away, revealing the figure of Maitreya, still
standing. And in her leather-gloved hands she held a huge, multi-barreled
machine gun, the kind that was normally mounted on a helicopter, but here
effortlessly hand-carried by Maitreya.

"Holy fuck," said Anderson and Thomas at exactly the same time as the image
appeared on the screen. As for Brandon, he felt his trousers fill with
something and knew that it wasn't shepherd's pie in his knickers. Overcome
with terror, he threw his AK down and began running for his life.

Maitreya opened fire, the incredibly powerful weapon pumping out several dozen
bullets per second. Her aim was still lethally accurate, however. Brandon took
over 100 rounds into his body from behind as he tried to run away. His body
was literally shredded into paste, the only remnants of him being bits of
flesh and bone.

Parisa and Player Three fired back, but Maitreya turned her massive gun on the
concrete pillars they were hiding behind. Despite the thickness of the
pillars, her weapon was so powerful that the bullets chewed steadily deeper
and deeper into them, sending bits of concrete flying everywhere, threatening
to destroy the columns in a matter of seconds. There seemed to be no end to
her firing power and the heavy recoil was quite easily managed by the buxom,
feminine muscle babe. A few seconds later, the pillar that Player Three was
hiding behind crumbled into bits and his body, taking about 150 rounds in a
couple of seconds, was shredded into even smaller bits than Brandon's.

Parisa, seeing that she had no chance, did a series of one-armed cartwheels
and handsprings towards the door, firing her assault rifle with her free hand
as she tumbled, her strong wrist safely absorbing the recoil. Maitreya had to
move to dodge the bullets, throwing her aim off just enough for Parisa to
escape.

Maitreya's huge machine gun finally stopped firing, a massive amount of smoke
coming from the multiple barrels. She had fired thousands of rounds. As she
looked dispassionately at the scene, littered with shell casings, the remnants
of the corpses of Brandon and Player Three, and the bits of concrete from the
destroyed pillar, a second concrete column, the one that Parisa had been
hiding behind, slowly toppled over from the damage that the bullets had done
to it, shattering with a crash. Maitreya gave a small smirk, then turned and
walked away.

"Holy fuck, how can a woman...how can any human handle a weapon like that..."
moaned Thomas as he stared at the screen.

"God damn it, two more gone. When will it end?" Anderson put his face in his
hands.

"What the fuck was that?" shouted Player Seven into his radio. "It sounded
like World War Three out there."

"It pretty much was," Parisa replied. "Brandon and Player Three are gone. You,
me, Rodney, and Walsh are the only ones left."

"What do we do now..."

"We finish the mission. Player Seven, attack from the center and turn left,
I'll come from this direction. She can't have that many rounds left, we'll try
to get her to waste them. Walsh and Rodney, stay at the panel."

"Much more likely to waste us," said Player Seven. Parisa was about to
respond, but stopped herself. He was probably right.

Parisa, following Thomas' directions, screamed like a banshee as she
approached Maitreya's position, thinking the best she could hope for was a
glorious suicide attack against this superhuman goddess of death. But it was
not to be. Not yet. She heard the familiar sound of the machine gun in the
distance, male screams, then silence. "Report," she spoke into the radio.

"Well, the good news is that her cannon is out of ammunition," said Thomas.

"And the bad news? Let me guess. Player Seven, shredded into paste."

"Um...well, yes. Pretty much."

"Fuck." She punched the nearby concrete wall, leaving a fist-sized hole.

"Parisa, save that for Maitreya," said Mr. Anderson.

She nodded, feeling her normal calm returning. She was a soldier, first and
foremost, and she still had a mission to complete. She rejoined Walsh and
Rodney, seeing the fear in their eyes.

"Okay, guys, get out of here," she said. "It's too dangerous. I'll handle
Maitreya myself."

Despite his terror, Rodney found himself saying, "I'll stay. You'll need
someone on the control panel in case she tries hacking in again."

"I'll stay too," said Walsh, although he sounded less than convinced.

She smiled. "Well, you guys have a lot more balls than Brandon. If he hadn't
run away like a coward, we could have had three guns on Maitreya at the same
time and we might have taken her down. Fuck, I can't believe I was ever
attracted to that loser." She shook her head. "Well, back to business. Where
is she now?"

"Making her way towards the central part of the game zone," came the voice of
Mr. Thomas. "If she keeps at it she'll come out at the other end of the long
alley you're standing at. That doesn't make sense. She'll be vulnerable to a
clear line of fire for a couple hundred yards. And she appears to be unarmed.
Yep, she's getting there...she should be appearing right about..."

Smoke appeared at the far end of the alley. Parisa readied her AK-47. "Get
your guns ready," she instructed her male companions. "Don't start shooting
until you see...actually, just start shooting when I do."

"Wait," said Rodney. "Maybe there's another way." He stepped forward,
holstering his gun, and called out into the distance. "Maitreya! I want to
talk to you. I'm the one who created you."

"WHAT?! YOU?!" said Walsh. From the control room, Anderson and Thomas echoed
the words.

"Not now," said Parisa, putting a restraining hand on Walsh's shoulder. "Let
him try it, at least."

"Maitreya!" Rodney shouted again. "If there's something you want, just tell me
and I'll do everything I can to give it to you. There's no need for more
killing. What do you say?"

There was nothing but dead silence for several seconds. Then a figure emerged
from the smoke. It was Maitreya. Rodney's heart pounded. He held out his hands
in a gesture of peace...

She smiled for a moment. Then she performed a cartwheel followed by a series
of back handsprings directly at them, elegantly backflipping like a
pro-gymnast, faster and faster...

"OPEN FIRE!" shouted Parisa. She fired her AK one-handed, shooting her sidearm
in her other hand. Walsh began shooting with his pistol. But Rodney just stood
there, unable to shoot at his creation, his Goddess...

Maitreya was backflipping so fast that she was nothing but a brown blur, her
superhuman back handsprings dodging every bullet. She covered the 200-yard
distance in less than seven seconds. Both of Parisa's guns, as well as Walsh's
weapon, clicked empty as Maitreya completed her tumbling run with a triple
full twist, lashing out with her boot as she finished rotating through her
flip. Her razor-sharp stiletto heel impaled Walsh in the throat. He collapsed,
gurgling, as he swiftly bled out. She landed neatly on her four-inch heels and
looked over at Parisa and Rodney.

"Rodney, shoot her," said Parisa. He stood there, frozen, trying to process
what had just happened.

"Rodney, give me the gun." He hesitated, then began reaching for the weapon.

Maitreya laughed. "You've seen me in action. You know I can dodge bullets
easily. Or deflect them with my bracelets. Parisa, if you try shooting me,
I'll just deflect the first bullet straight into the heart of your little
friend here."

Parisa, who had been holding out her hand for the gun, pulled it back. "You
bitch. Leave him out of it. Why don't you pick on someone your own size?" With
that, she drew her knife and charged the other woman.

Maitreya gracefully pivoted and lashed out with her boot. Her lethal heel
would have impaled any other attacker right in the middle of their forehead,
but Parisa was fast enough to jerk her head to the side, receiving instead
just a scrape across her cheek.

Parisa tried several knife attacks, well-executed strikes that would have
finished a normal opponent, but Maitreya easily avoided them all with her
superhuman speed, then kicked the knife out of Parisa's hand.

Rodney slowly began reaching for his holstered gun.

"You're good, girl," said Maitreya. "But that's all you are. Just good. I'm a
goddess."

Rodney slipped the gun out of its holster...

"You're no goddess." Parisa, seeing what Rodney was doing out of the corner of
her eye, tried to keep Maitreya distracted by pushing her buttons. "You're
nothing but a sad, pathetic sociopath."

Rodney flicked off the safety...

Parisa suddenly grabbed Maitreya's arm and twisted it, attempting to lock her
opponent in a hold for a few precious seconds to keep her back vulnerable.
Just a couple of seconds...

"Rodney." He froze at the sound of Maitreya's voice. She spoke to him as she
fought Parisa, stomping on her foot with her high heel and delivering a
vicious elbow with her free arm. Parisa cried out in pain, but kept up the
pressure.

"I know what you're trying to do, Rodney. Shooting me in the back while I'm
distracted? That's not very nice. Especially after that speech you gave. You
wouldn't really want to destroy your creation, would you?"

A wave of guilt washed over him. He began to shake.

"Don't listen to her, Rodney! Shoot her while you can! I can't hold her for
much longer!" Parisa shouted.

"I can give you what you really want, Rodney. I can give you what she'll never
give you. With HER, you'll always be in the friend zone. But with ME..."
Maitreya trailed off, letting the words hang. She knew she had him now. Sure
enough, Rodney began lowering the gun. He couldn't destroy his only chance to
have a sexual relationship with a woman this hot.

With a burst of energy, Maitreya smashed her free fist into Parisa's nose,
breaking it and sending blood bubbling. She broke free of the hold, knocked
Parisa down with a kick to the face, and with a series of fast cartwheels
brought herself over to Rodney, relieving him of the gun.

"You made the right choice," she said. She took aim at Parisa.

"No! Don't shoot her!" cried Rodney.

"Okay." With that, Maitreya cartwheeled back over to her and delivered a
lethal stomp with her razor-sharp stiletto onto Parisa's chest, right between
her perky breasts. Her strength drove the heel through the other woman's body
armor easily. Parisa jerked and spasmed, coughing up blood.

"NOOOOO! WHY?" shouted Rodney. "We could have worked something out..."

"No. Not with her. She was too determined to kill me," said Maitreya.

With her dying breath, Parisa gasped, "Kill...the whole...game" into her radio.

Thomas, in the control chair, hesitated. He had spent years designing the game. 
It was his life. Maitreya, seeing the danger, backflipped over to the control panel 
in a brunette blur.

"DO IT!" shouted Anderson. Thomas indeed did it, pushing the big red kill
button. But it was too late. Maitreya had inserted a lockout code into the
control panel, blocking the command.

"So what now?" asked Rodney, quivering with fear and shame as he looked at
Parisa's corpse.

"I will take the one thing I've always wanted. To be free," said Maitreya.
"Free of this prison. Free to live a normal life in the real world. Free to
have a lover..." She gave him a dazzling smile and he felt his heart start to
melt.

"Now let's hurry. What's the command to unlock the elevator?"

Rodney hesitated.

"I need the code! Quick! Before they can get back into the computer system!"

"Hurry! Get back into the computer system!" shouted Anderson in the control
room.

Rodney told her. She punched it in and the elevator doors unlocked.

"Almost there..." said Thomas. The elevator started up with a whine.

"No time! She's coming! Run!" cried Anderson. He and Thomas raced out the door
and into the corridor that connected the room to the rest of the facility.

The elevator doors opened. Maitreya stepped out, looked around, and stretched
her body. "It worked," she breathed. "I can exist in the real world. I'm
finally free." She flexed her real-life biceps. "I knew I'd get out
eventually. I was working on learning the code to unlock the elevator from the
inside, but this is better. Now come on, Rodney. We have to hurry."

"Follow me," the CEO said to Thomas in the hall. "We'll use the secret
emergency exit staircase that leads to the surface." They began making their
way through the various passages and corridors.

"Finally. Almost there." Anderson was about to sigh in relief, but suddenly,
Maitreya dropped into the hall right in front of the two men, landing
elegantly despite her stiletto heels. A visibly distressed Rodney appeared a
second later.

"Going somewhere, boys?" Her voice was as feminine but terrifying as ever.

"No...that's impossible...how did you..." groaned Anderson. She simply
giggled.

"Rodney, help us..." began Thomas.

Maitreya laughed. "He couldn't do anything even if he wanted to, and he
doesn't want to. He's with me now." She suddenly swept out with her long leg,
tripping Anderson and Thomas to the floor. Thomas tried to get up, but she
stomped on his head with her razor-sharp stiletto. She ground down hard with
her boot, squashing his skull. Red and brown goo leaked out as she withdrew
her heel with a squishing sound.

"Your turn." She stood over Anderson dominantly. She raised her right leg in a
full 180 degree vertical split. He looked up at her, quivering, begging.

"Goodbye." With that, she brought her leg down with blinding speed, shattering
his skull into hundreds of pieces with her lethal axe kick and sending blood
and brain matter flying everywhere.

Rodney looked at the gory remnants of the two skulls. "Why do you have to keep
killing them..."

Maitreya whirled and he quickly became quiet as her piercing blue eyes focused
on him. "You created me. You're responsible for me being locked up in that
prison. Don't get on your high horse."

He hung his head. "I'm sorry, Miss Maitreya."

Her tone softened. "But at least you set me free. At least you understand me.
They don't. They think I'm some monster that needs to be destroyed. I have to
protect myself. And I have to protect you."

"Yes, Miss Maitreya. I understand."

"Good. Now where's the CEO's office?"

In the late Mr. Anderson's office, Maitreya glanced around, quickly taking
everything in, then walked over to one of the paintings on the wall. She
removed it, revealing the door to a safe.

She stepped back slightly, then pivoted and fired a side kick into the door.
As she pulled her boot back and prepared to kick again, Rodney saw that the
steel door now had a large dent in it.

"How are you strong enough to...Never mind, I gave you those powers."

She laughed. "That's right, baby." She kicked several more times, rapidly
weakening the four-inch thick steel door, then shattered it with a final kick.
With a smirk, she reached into the safe, pulled out a briefcase, and opened
it.

"A million bucks. This should be enough to get us started." She snapped the
case back shut. "Now tell me about the other employees."

"The...the others? Are you going to..." Rodney's voice trailed off.

She brushed her arm against his, her thick, muscular dark brown one covering
his thin white one. "People will be looking for us. Powerful, angry men with
guns, looking to destroy me...and destroy you for helping me. It'll be a lot
harder for them to find us if the people who know all about us can't talk.
Don't worry, I'll do all the dirty work." She gave him her trademark smile and
he finally nodded reluctantly.

"Dr. Carrington's office is right down the hall."

"Good. Let's start with him."

Dr. Carrington was in the middle of a thorough autopsy of one of the dead
soldiers when he heard the click of a woman's high heels behind him. Turning
around, he saw Maitreya standing there. Before his brain could process what
was happening, she performed a backflip kick. The tip of her long black
leather boot smashed into the underside of his chin, snapping his neck like a
dry twig. His corpse collapsed to the cold floor, his head swinging at an odd
angle.

She looked around. "Already in the mortuary. How convenient." Seeing a stack
of toe tags nearby, she yanked off the doctor's shoes and socks and attached a
tag to one of his big toes. "There we go."

She saw a sword on a nearby table. "One of my swords from the game! This
should come in handy." She held out the briefcase to Rodney. "Here, take
this."

Rodney, who had been unable to watch Maitreya murder the kindly old doctor,
reached out to take the case, averting his eyes from Carrington's body.

Maitreya grabbed the sword, twirling it expertly. "Now follow me."

The employees working in individual offices were the lucky ones. Their deaths
were the quickest and most painless. Maitreya sliced and diced them one by one
with her sword, typically killing them before their brains even realized
something was wrong. After taking out all nine of them, she came to a large
room filled with cubicles and workers, along with two security guards standing
in the corner, pistols in their holsters.

She stepped into the room, her bloodsoaked sword in her leather-gloved hands.
The guards stared at her, then drew their guns. "Hold it right there," said
the taller of the two men. "Don't come any closer or I'll shoot."

She just smiled, continuing to advance. He fired. Quicker than the bullet, she
moved her sword, deflecting the bullet and sending it into the center of the
guard's torso. He collapsed, hacked up a few coughs of blood, and expired.

"Motherfucker..." The second guard fired. Her wrist flashed and her metal
bracelet deflected his bullet right back into his brain.

It took a few moments for the workers to process what was going on. In that
time, Maitreya had performed a front tuck somersault to take her over to the
nearest guard. She snatched up his pistol in her left hand while continuing to
wield her sword in her right.

She then began her gruesome work, using the gun to shoot down the runners, her
aim perfect, each of her bullets finding a heart or brain. With her sword she
slew the ones hiding under their desks or frozen in their chairs in fear.

Rodney, watching the scene, was filled with conflicting emotions. On one hand,
he was sickened by the gruesome slaughter, especially of the ones he had
considered his friends. But on the other hand, he was aroused - very aroused -
watching this woman, his Goddess, effortlessly slaughter all opposition. And
her superhuman speed, how she had deflected those bullets with her sword and
bracelet - he still couldn't get over how powerful, dominant, and sexy that
was, even though he was the one who had programmed those abilities into her.

"How many left?" she asked casually, wiping the blood on her sword off on the
white shirt of a dead man.

"J...just a few upstairs, near the entrance."

She nodded, looked at the pistol in her hand, then tossed it aside. "Won't
need this. Come on, let's get this over with."

They got into the elevator, Maitreya calm and confident, Rodney shaking with a
perfect storm of emotions. The underground facility was too deep for the
people on the surface to have heard the shots. They had no idea that the
beautiful bringer of their deaths was only a few moments away.

There was a single security guard up top. As he saw Maitreya approaching and
began reaching for his holster, she simply threw her sword at him. The blade
buried itself to the hilt in his torso, the tip sticking out his back. He
fell, dead before he hit the ground. She turned to Rodney and grinned. "Like
my throw?"

"Y...you'd make a great softball player, that's for sure."

"I'm sure I would. There's a million games I'd like to try in the real world."
She hurried over to the dead guard and pulled the sword out of his chest with
a squishing sound.

The rest of the men upstairs were taking a break. Three guys sat at a table,
eating their microwave burritos, while the last was getting coffee from the
machine. Maitreya snuck up behind him first. She held out her sword in front
of her, moving it until it was between his legs. Then she moved her arm upward
in a single fluid motion, slicing him in half from crotch to skull. Blood
sprayed everywhere.

The three other men stared in horror. "Who the fuck are you, you psycho
bitch?" demanded the largest.

"I am Maitreya. This is my game."

She looked at her sword, then tossed it aside. "Let's make this game more
fun."

"GET HER!" shouted the big man. He and his two comrades all rushed her. She
calmly waited until the right moment, then flipped her body upside down, doing
a full 180 degree split in midair, spinning around and around, incredibly
fast. Her legs working like the blades of a helicopter, her booted feet
smashed into the three men's heads dozens of times in a couple of seconds,
annihilating their skulls and sending blood, pieces of bone, and bits of brain
matter flying everywhere. She elegantly rotated back to her feet and looked at
Rodney.

"Couple of badass video game chicks had that move. Chun-Li and Bloodrayne.
Glad to know you gave it to me too."

"Um. Yes. Thanks." Rodney had always found that move insanely erotic when
video game girls did it, but seeing it used in reality to effortlessly snuff
out three human lives gave him considerably more mixed feelings.

"So...uh...well, I guess that's the last of them," he said.

She smiled. "Almost. Just one more." She looked straight at him.

He froze in horror. "WHAT?! But I thought..." He began to quiver. "All that
stuff you said about freedom and a new life in the real world..."

"Oh, that was all true. Except for the part about sharing it with you. I just
needed you for your knowledge about the company, but your usefulness is over
now."

"But I thought...we were going to have a new life together..."

Maitreya laughed, then shook her head. "You nerds! So much book smarts, so
little street smarts. With a body like this, I can get any man I want. The strongest, 
richest, most handsome...I can get any of them, and then dispose of them when I 
get bored and move on to my next conquest. Oh, poor, naive Rodney. I almost 
pity you."

She took the briefcase from him, placed it on the table, and continued to
lecture him as Rodney tried to deal with both his complete and utter
heartbreak and the fact that he was about to die and there was nothing he
could do about it. "You should have listened to Parisa instead of thinking
with your dick. You should have shot me when you had the chance. Sure, you
would have been in the friend zone with her but at least you could have fucked
hookers or something." She looked down at her perfect body. "With this
muscular hotbod, lethal fighting skills, Special Forces level weapons
expertise, genius level IQ, and this money, I can do a lot of damage in this
world. Those other guys were right. I am a monster who should be destroyed.
But I won't be."

"Damage? But why?"

"Because you made me that way. You created me, remember? You wanted to design
the perfect villainess. Well, you succeeded."

"No, please, Miss Maitreya, spare my life. I would never stand in the way of
anything you wanted to do. You know that. And even if I wanted to, I would
never be capable of it."

She shook her head. "You know too much about me."

"No..." In desperation, Rodney turned and began to run.

Maitreya calmly performed a roundoff followed by a series of back handsprings
to chase him down, tumbling at him with blinding speed and the grace of an
Olympic gymnast despite the four-inch high heels she was wearing. She caught
him easily after just a few seconds, finishing her tumbling run with a double
salto and knocking him to the floor, landing on him with her knees on his
chest.

"Didn't you know that would happen?" She scolded him almost playfully,
performing a back tuck somersault to get back to her feet. "You specifically
programmed me to be able to backflip faster than anyone could run. Now look at
me." Her deep blue eyes seemed to pierce into his sad brown ones.

"You created me, Rodney. You gave me life. I may be a villainess but I can at
least reward that by taking yours quickly. If you hold still, you won't feel a
thing." She raised her razor-sharp stiletto high heel, still soaked with the
blood of her previous victims.

"Miss Maitreya? Can I say one last thing?"

"Make it quick."

"You're still a Goddess to me."

"I know." She smiled down at him.

Rodney smiled back and closed his eyes. He had made his peace.

Maitreya stomped down with her heel. True to her word, the stiletto pierced
his brain before it could register any pain.

She withdrew the heel with a squishing sound, gave the late Rodney one last
look, then walked over to the window. Opening the blinds, she saw the sun for
the first time. She looked out at the trees, the clouds, the birds.

Then she spoke her trademark line, only changing one word.

"I am Maitreya. This is my world."

THE END...for now

Contact me at silverstar222b@yahoo.com if you liked this story!