742 Bird Brain

The damage was nothing major, just a bit of bruising and a bloody nose. The amount of blood was just because the kid had been in VR and hadn't been able to wipe it away. 

They were playing on extreme mode with the safety protocols hacked so that the player would take some of the damage that the avatar took, in the form of intensified gravity waves to the body, instead of the more gentle ones that usually let you know that you were hit in a high-end VR simulation.

Well, a high-end military VR simulation intended to build muscle memory. That wasn't the sort of thing that an arcade would usually have, but it made sense why this pod was so different from the others. The player was suspended in the pod, and their body moved with the avatar, the same as training to pilot a Mecha. 

At least, this would be an easy fix.