5 days remaining

  John awoke in the middle of the night. After eating his fill he’d passed out on the large sofa that sat in front of the viewing window looking out over the stadium.

  He didn’t remember falling asleep, he’d only been awake for half the day. Days of non-stop battle had taken their toll it seemed; he was only human after all and once the adrenaline had worn off he’d succumbed.

  Knowing that there was only five days left to get all his cards and find the next tori gate was concerning enough to give him heart palpitations, but a part of him was at least glad that sleep still existed.

  Logically, it would have been useful to transcend the need for sleep entirely, a feat which he was certain the aliens could enact, but he liked sleeping too much to want to go without it.

  The past few days had inflicted horrors on his eyes that he’d never expected to see and sleep was the only non-permanent escape from them. He deserved his rest. It was the only time he felt at peace. Even with his emotion altering skills, he still needed to reset. He wanted to.

  Thinking on that as he rolled onto his back and stretched laboriously across the luxury, cushioned fabrics of the sofa, he wondered if he’d have been able to take so much of this world in his stride if it wasn’t for the psychological skills that had been inflicted on him at the beginning of the game.

  Perhaps if Joanna had been gifted Trauma Response and Greif Counselling like he had she wouldn’t have turned out to be so psychotic. He wondered how Truffle coped so well.

  “Good rest?” Kesh’s harsh, deep squeal rang out through the dark in what he had to assume was an orcish attempt at a whisper.

  John startled, his heart pounded momentarily before settling back down and he stared into the darkness above his sofa and answered. He didn’t know where Kesh was, and though he was weary of her, she didn’t seem to have any immediate ill intent.

  “Yeah, thanks for letting me crash here,” he replied, his voice croaky and dry.

  “You have bedroom next door, do humans not like beds?”

  “I love a good bed, but I was exhausted and sometimes a good sofa is just as rewarding.”

  He heard a soft grunt that almost sounded like a chuckle. John had expected to go straight into the next round, so he was pleasantly surprised when Kesh had told him that he had the night off. He was also frustrated; time was of the essence.

  Ah duality, the folly of man… or so I’ve heard, he thought with a contented sigh.

  “Kesh, can I ask you something?”

  She grunted in affirmation.

  “Can you really protect Truffle from this game?”

  “No, O.R.C can help within confines of game rules. No protect… sorry.”

  Her last word came as more of a whimper. John wasn’t sure exactly what O.R.C’s game was, but something about this orc seemed oddly genuine to him. Though it could have been an act, she appeared to genuinely care about Truffle. In a way, it irritated him. Where was that compassion for all the people the IPSC had needlessly slaughtered at the start of this game?

  “What kind of help can you give him?” John asked quietly.

  “Doesn’t matter, you find out soon enough human. For now, focus on winning battle. Get cards, find gate. All that matters.”

  “My wife said something similar to me once,” he replied, his voice barely whisper, “before she died.”

  The room went silent again for a moment, the only sounds were quiet breathing and the hum of the appliances shelved behind the bar.

  “Sorry, system generation always hit hard. Future humans have good lives, current humans… not so much. Way it was for all system races.”

  Future humans? Only one of us can survive this damned game. We’re not plants, there needs to be at least two of us, John thought, but he didn’t voice it. What was the point?

  “Was it bad for your people?” He asked.

  “System happened many generations ago, Kesh not there. Orc warriors, battle in our blood. Heard game bad, glad wasn’t there. Glad wasn’t conscripted in Arachnidite wars either.”

  “Arachnidite wars? What’s that?” John said, feeling his skin quiver at the word. He’d never liked spiders much.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “Tragedy,” Kesh replied, then John heard a soft padding followed by the soft hiss of a sliding door closing and he knew she was gone.

  “Good talk,” he breathed out into the darkness, shaking his head slightly as he smiled softly at the ceiling.

  ***

  Welcome back to this season’s first tournament, as we begin the quarter finals! The jovial announcer said, his voice ringing out across the stadium to the backdrop of screaming fans. We have some exciting matches lined up today, but first a word from one of our sponsors.

  “This again?” John groaned as he stood petrified in his purple tube of light, looking out across the field of battle.

  Floating above the centre of the arena was a hologram of a monstrous creature with six hulking arms, stubby legs and a body the size of a rhino. It had a huge, bulbous head with frog-like eyes and a bowtie around its neck.

  When it opened its mouth to speak the inside seemed to go on forever and a thick, muscled tongue sat threateningly behind its oddly flat teeth.

  “Do you tire of tipping the help for every little thing?” It said with a deep, yet pleasant voice that seemed much too sophisticated for a creature of its appearance. “Eating a meal, tip, parking your space cruiser, tip, booking a night away at a lovely hotel in the Praxius Nebula, tip. Need I go on?”

  It opened its arms wide… all six of them.

  “With Grok’s Gratuities, let tipping be a thing of the past. Sign up now and get free app installation that’s compatible with all major devices. All you have to do is tap your device at the locations you would usually leave a tip at and let Grok take care of the rest. Grok’s Gratuities, gratitude, without the attitude. Terms and conditions apply.”

  The hologram disappeared and the jovial announcer’s voice took back over.

  Wow, I’ll be downloading that app right away! Now, onto today’s first event, the quarter finals. There have been a few rule changes due to recent events that we need to go over before we can get on with the show. Firstly, this season’s contestants will not be authorised to yield. These matches will be fought to the death or until the time limit is reached, so no flaking out.

  Secondly, in light of the first rule change we have introduced a time limit. Each battle will only last for five Earth minutes, if a contender is left standing at this time then the winner will be decided by a panel of mystery judges from the top corporations attending this season of Battle Royale.

  Finally, we are introducing some spicy new twists to the battles this season, but I think it’d be more fun to let you lovely people find out what they are first hand.

  The audience erupted into a cacophony of screams and cheers at that.

  They must really love violence, John thought, rolling his eyes as he waited in his tube.

  He spotted Joanna across the field. Surprised that she was still able to participate, he squinted his eyes to try and get a better look at her but all he could make out was the blurred outline of a woman with bright blonde hair.

  John was certain that it was her, though he couldn’t see her well enough to gauge her injuries properly. The last time he’d seen her, half her face had been burnt off.

  Serves you right.

  Alrighty then, onto our first battle, it’s everyone’s favourite cowboy: John Doe, vs Ton Thorn of the Zon Confederation!

  The tube of light holding him in place moved towards the centre of the arena as the other contestants vanished, likely back to their rest areas.

  Screaming bounced around the stadium from the blood thirsty crowd above and John steeled himself for his next fight, stretching his fingers in anticipation of the starting bell ringing out.

  A green tube of light carried his opponent towards him, an avatar no doubt, with brunet hair and purple jeans. Ton Thorn looked like an ordinary human, an everyman, with the exception of the nebula rings that replaced the irises of all the avatars.

  DING, DING, DING.

  The bell rang out across the arena and John immediately reached for his twin revolvers; he stopped however when he saw that Ton Thorn hadn’t moved from his spot.

  His eyes followed John as he instinctively moved to the side following his release from the stasis light, but he seemed a little perplexed.

  Lifting his right hand slowly to his waist, he clicked his fingers and a large, yellow instrument appeared in his hand, it looked sharp at one end with an eraser on the other.

  “There are one hundred ways I can kill you with this pencil,” Ton Thorn stated confidently, twirling the instrument lackadaisically as he took his first step forward. A sinister half grin appeared on his lips and he winked.

  A pencil? John thought, dumbfounded as he furrowed his brow at the odd man standing before him. For a moment he forgot that he was in the middle of a death battle.

  “Why…” he began, “why do you have a pencil?”

  “I would have thought that a native to this planet would be better versed on Earthen proverbs than I, perhaps not though,” he announced patronisingly. “When studying this land in the avatar creation hub I came across a wonderful saying that has given me the path to ultimate power, perhaps it has been lost to time in this modern era but I believe it will hand me victory.

  “It is the ancient human proverb: the pencil is mightier than the sword. How odd that a writing instrument would be such a deadly weapon, even mightier than steel blades which were designed to cut down mortals.”

  “I think you might have taken that proverb a little too literally…” John sighed, readying his own weapons: guns, real weapons, ones that could actually kill a man.

  “We shall see.”

  Ton Thorn lifted his mighty pencil into the air and began drawing on the wind… literally. As he drew a shimmering light stuck to the air around him, its black outline taking form as he scribbled with intense, anime-like speed.

  “I don’t know what you’re doing, but don’t expect me to wait around,” John said, raising one of his revolvers and aiming for the man’s centre mass.

  CRACK.

  He fired a shot at Ton Thorn. The avatar stopped drawing and with inhuman speeds he flipped the pencil around, catching the bullet with the eraser on the opposite side of the instrument.

  The bullet disappeared.

  “With this mighty weapon I can erase your primitive projectiles form existence. Do not think you can survive this fight.”

  Well that was unexpected, John thought, but it can’t be that easy to catch a flurry of bullets.

  However, before he had a chance to fire again, Ton Thorn had added the final line to his drawing and the air in front of him shuddered.

  Black lines faded, giving way to colour and life as a 3D shape took their place. With a devastating roar, a white tiger pounced out of the air landing a few feet away from John.

  More urgently, strapped to its back was a gunner’s seat with a revving mini gun bolted into the beast. Ton Thorn jumped gracefully onto the back of his creation and John knew he was fucked.