Standing in front of the large metal gate, Zoe closed her eyes. She could hear the elated screams of the audience, booming with excitement, and the clanking and banging of the mechanisms shifting around outside. Louder than all of that, she could hear the announcers riling up the crowd.
It was like she was back in that living room, sitting on her knees, wearing her pink heart pyjamas, both her hands grabbing tightly onto the holographic display her parents had just bought. She was only five years old, but that single purchase had completely changed her life.
The colours burst out of the pixels; the blacks, the reds, the yellows. Her little blue eyes were glued to the screen and her breath fogged up the display. She wanted to feel like the buildings in the arena were collapsing around her.
It was the sound that really hooked her though. The shrieks of the people watching live shook her little arms and ripped through her eardrums like dynamite. She had put the volume so high the shockwaves were enough to make her shoulder-length blonde hair flutter in the air, dancing to the rhythm of the battle.
“W-W-W-W-WEEEELCOME ONE AND ALL, TO THE 3006 O-O-O-O-OBLITERATIOOOOOON CUUUUUUUUUUUP!!!” A male voice boomed from the display set with an unmatched excitement. Zoe's mouth widened and her eyes narrowed into a face that threatened murder, but it was only how the little girl usually smiled. In sync with the announcer, Zoe whispered the next line. “ARE YOU READY FOR SOME, D-D-D-D-DEMOLITIOOOOOOOOON!!!?”
The crowd roared and Zoe bounced in tandem, her fingers digging into the display screen, bending and distorting the image. A higher-pitched voice responded from the announcer’s booth.
“This sure is an exciting night, Mr. Zion! After all, this is the long-awaited return of Hazeko Sato after last year's disappointing finish in the qualifiers. We're all glad he's recovered fully after being hit with that busted timer-trap in Beijing.” Zoe beamed when she heard Ms. Om reaffirm that her idol was competing again. She'd looked up to Sato since she was born. His dominance in the sport was unmatched, winning the previous seven Obliteration Cups in a row. Only the previous year, due to a faulty explosive, had he been knocked out of the tournament. There had been many doubts regarding his return, but he’d made it all the way back to the finals.
The camera panned to the man wearing a flexible aerogel skin-tight suit, in black. His dark hair absorbed the bright lights of the arena as he waved to the crowd, the words “Hazeko Sato” holographically displayed above his head in a digital blue. He wore a set of blast vision glasses, sponsored by SeeBright, according to the broadcast, and on his back he had his soul on full display; it was the greatest arsenal ever constructed for the sport.
He used what at the time was considered an unorthodox style of play. He ran through his opponents like a bullet train, throwing sticky bombs and explosives that activated on contact. He wasn't just a hunter, he was a nightmare in the arena; a nuclear bomb hooked to a speeding bullet. He destroyed everything he set his eyes on, with no concern for defence or technical strategy.
Zoe's heart was beating out of her chest and sweat was dripping from her every pore, her cotton pyjamas sticking to her skin. It felt uncomfortable, but she just couldn't look away. The intensity of the match had overwritten her every instinct, and only the battle remained.
She had grown since then. At twenty-two, she opened her eyes. Around her was the smell of gunpowder and burning metal. The muffled sounds of the crowd beyond the thick steel door felt like they were miles away.
Her earpiece made a soft bell noise and she lifted her right hand to tap it.
“Are you ready, kid?” The deep voice of her coach collapsed into her brain like a fifteen-story building. She lowered the volume. “You're up next. Remember, this is your last chance. You need to win this to reach the qualifiers; second place is not enough.” He sounded worried and uncertain, his words wavering like a flag in the wind. Zoe smirked.
“Don't think I'm like you, Johnny. I'm not a second place kind of player.” Her words echoed in the small chamber, bouncing off the steel and the concrete and her baby-blue suit. The old man clicked his tongue.
“Good luck Zoe. I hope you get a leg blown off.” He ended the call.
She was fired up, bouncing on her feet and punching the air in front of her like she was shadow-boxing. The sound of scraping metal became louder as the doors of the chambers to her left opened. She thought back to what she was told by the people at SeeBright. Never take your goggles off. Lift both your arms to make sure the logo can be seen from all camera angles as you're introduced. She had the instructions on-loop in her head. Then, like the crack of dawn, a small sliver of light burst from the door and the noises got louder.
There were boos and there were cheers, but she couldn't hear them. Only her furious heartbeat and the shaking of her bones with her every step managed to make their way to her ears. Then, she stepped into the lights. Like an explosion, she saw the arena. It was huge.
There were ripped up asphalt roads connecting decrepit concrete buildings, broken windows and banged up doors everywhere. Looking up, she could see the crowd. There were millions of faces being displayed on little holographic screens, as well as a few concrete and steel cubicles holding those that could afford the high price tag on the in-person tickets. To her left she could see platforms like the one she was standing on, floating magnetically in the air, one for each of the other ninety-nine players. They all wore skin-tight suits, goggles or glasses, and most importantly, on their backs, she could see their souls.
Each of them had attached their explosives to special magnetised titanium hooks on the back of their suits. From a glance, Zoe could only make out what five of her competitors had brought to the game. All but one of them were packing light, only bringing tiny sticky bombs and fast-detonation grenades. Zoe sighed and mumbled to herself.
“Wannabes...”
She raised her arms above her head and put on a beaming smile for the cameras. She could hear the announcers talking about her.
“AND FINALLY, STANDING AT 170 CENTIMETRES AND WEIGHING IN AT JUST OVER 65 KILOGRAMS, FROM NEW REPUBLIC CITY, ZOEEEEEEE FEEEEEEERN!!” Mr. Zion screamed her name like a war cry, so loud Zoe thought an earthquake might have hit.
“Ms. Fern has been running through the competition, Mr. Zion.” Ms. Om's calm and feminine voice contrasted perfectly with Zion's explosive demeanour. “Her very traditional Demolition style has captured the attention of long-time fans. It seems every youth these days tries to emulate Sato's run-and-gun style, so the young lady has the heart of the old guard. Tonight, she's carrying her usual large tactical bag filled with timer-bombs, wire-traps, and even a collapser. She has been the only player this year to bring a collapser to an official match. She really is the shining hope of old Demolition!”
“THAT'S RIGHT MS. OM!!!! THERE'S RUMOURS THAT HER COACH IS ACTUALLY THE ALL-TIME GREAT PIERRE MONSANT! HE WAS ALSO KNOWN FOR USING THAT OBSOLETE THING!!! THIS MIGHT JUST BE CONFIRMING THE SPECULATION!!!”
“Don't be so quick to call it obsolete, Mr. Zion. She hasn't lost a single match this season, and she used a collapser in all of them. Such a shame she had that injury; according to our stat-tracker she's missing one-hundred points to qualify for the Obliteration Cup’s qualifier stage, so the pressure is undoubtedly on the young pro to win this one.”
Zoe grabbed her left arm. She could still feel the cracks in her bones from when she fell off that building. The doctors said it healed perfectly, but those were the kind of injuries that ruined careers. She shook her head violently and slapped the place where her surgery scars should be. She had no time to waste with injuries or hollow worries.
The platform started descending slowly with a whirring noise like metal being cut by a laser beam. She looked ahead and calculated the best path to victory.
The first ring sounded low, like a tuba. She spotted two buildings that could serve as her base.
The first was an old grocery store. It was a small thing, one story tall, but it had thick concrete walls and the ceiling was reinforced with carbonic titanium. It would easily resist the small bombs that most of her competition was carrying.
The other was a tall thirty story building. The walls were thinner, but if she could get to the top it would be nearly impossible for anyone to take her down. If anyone did manage to evade all her traps, she could always collapse the whole thing on top of them; that by itself should be enough of a deterrent.
The grocery store was to the left of the skyscraper, making it easier for the others to reach it. She settled on the tall building as her base of operations.
The second ring sounded the same as the first one. She put one foot in front of the other and pressed her hands to the ground, ready to start running at a moment's notice.
Her strategy was simple. Run to the skyscraper and rig a bomb every two floors. She had enough wire traps, but Zoe decided to use motion detectors on floors five, eleven, and twenty-five. Motion detection was more finicky and could be triggered by a particularly large piece of paint flaking off the walls, but she thought it best to add some variety to the traps to try and catch people off-guard. When she reached the top floor, she would rig the collapser. From there, it was a matter of locating the others on the ground with her drones and taking them out, one by one. She called the strategy “princess in the tower”. She was the dragon holding her hostage, of course.
The third ring finally sounded, higher-pitched than the others, like glass shattering. She broke out into a sprint straight at her target.
Her large bag was cumbersome, but she was used to it after five years of professional play. Everyone else was already throwing bombs at each other, the explosions ringing in her ears. The arena had been transformed into an active war zone.
She readied her shoulder and burst through the glass doors of the building. The glass shattered into tiny pieces and fell to the ground like a melody. She didn't slow, beelining to the stairs as she threw a five second dynamite stick towards the elevator box. There would only be one way up, and it would be through her minefield. By the time she had rigged the first floor with a wire and two hexagons of francium plaster, the elevator box exploded with the sound of crumbling concrete and steel wires snapping, before a loud crashing sound rang out.
Floor after floor, she dug into her bag and threw up different kinds of explosives rigged with wires and motion detectors. It took her less than fifteen minutes to reach the thirtieth floor.
It was a single wide room, surrounded on the north, west, and east sides by panoramic windows, most of which were missing pieces or missing entirely. The stairs came in from the south-side of the building, which was the only side without any windows; her blind spot. She slapped ten evenly-spaced bombs on the concrete wall, rigging them to a detonator that she then attached to her wrist using a sticky plaster.
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Then, she took out a large metal contraption from her bag. It was a weird mess of white and blue wires encased in a square steel box. It reflected the light from the beacons around the arena like a mirror, illuminating the whole room.
She placed the collapser in the middle of the room and pressed the button inside, skilfully weaving her fingers through the wires to reach it. The bomb made a loud beep, before four claws, one on each of its sides, snapped out from its body and dug into the concrete floor, firmly attaching the bomb to the building. Then, it started beeping quietly at regular intervals while humming and vibrating.
The ground shook with every beep, like a small earthquake, and Zoe had a hard time standing up straight. It was an odd feeling; the floor wobbling from side to side. She had used the collapser countless times, both in competition and in practice, but it was just impossible to walk after setting it up.
She tapped her goggles twice on the side and a series of blue numbers and letters lit up in front of her eyes. Still ten minutes until the first Catastrophe, and out of the one hundred competitors, only thirty remained. She recognized some of the names from online forums, her research, as well as previous matches, but only one stood out above the crowd, a name that was like a spell that took the air out from her lungs.
Haruka Sato. The heir to the throne of Hazeko Sato and the reigning champion of the Obliteration Cup. The only person still left standing that could pose some threat to Zoe.
Like her father, Haruka used a run-and-gun, fast-paced style.
Unlike her father, as well as the rest of the field, she was a highly-technical player. She didn't just overwhelm people with sheer physicality, she was more than a monster of speed and strength. Haruka was a master strategist. She positioned herself perfectly in between buildings and behind vehicles, only throwing her bombs at the last possible moment, baiting and tricking those around her into walking into her violent traps, before switching on a dime and running towards danger, slithering her way through explosions before sticking a bomb to the back of her enemies, sealing their fate. She was a deadly opponent, and the two of them were matching up for the first time.
Zoe smiled. Right when she had no choice but to win, no less, she had to face the number one ranked player in the world. She remained stead-fast in her strategy and thought about the clock. That was Zoe's speciality, the Catastrophes.
Every thirty minutes, the arena would shift. From random spots all over the field, robots and stationary weapons, as well as automated vehicles rigged with explosives, would be teleported in and start attacking the players. It was a hard thing to deal with for the Sato-wannabes, who relied on open space to win. When Catastrophes spawned, they'd have to dodge more than just grenades and sticky bombs from players, but also bullets being fired from the top of buildings and raging armoured tanks running at them at full speed.
Zoe's stationary play style made it easy for her to avoid the chaotic Catastrophes, and her long-range strikes were great at taking advantage of the poor souls being run out of the game by the environment.
She splayed out the items left in her bag. She still had her two drones, each loaded with ten concentrated C4 spheres, five francium bombs, two grenades, and a foam bomb. It was more than enough to blow everyone in the arena to pieces. She stored everything back in her bag, save for the two drones.
She sat in front of the collapser, facing north, and threw the drones in the air. Immediately, her goggles lit up with her own face twice repeated. A quiet sound, like the beating of two butterflies' wings, floated gently in the room. She moved her hands to her knees and lifted them slightly, adjusting her position to be as comfortable as possible, before leaning her wrists forward and to the left, directing the drones to fly out through two broken windows.
In that room, alone with the collapser, Zoe could see the whole field from a bird's eye view via the drones' camera systems.
Her left drone spotted a running player, clad in a deep blue suit, holding two small spherical bombs about the size of ping-pong balls. His face was contorted into the image of fear, as a two-metre tall bipedal mechanical monstrosity chased after him at full speed, each step cracking the asphalt of the street.
Time was up, the first Catastrophe had begun.
The drone's targeting system showed a red square around the player running through the debris. Zoe bided her time, quietly following his movements. The player turned around quickly and threw both his bombs towards the Terminator running towards him. They stuck to its metal chest and exploded violently. Pieces of titanium and steel flew in all directions as a shockwave ran through the atmosphere, briefly disturbing the light-weight drone.
In that desperate effort, the poor player had been knocked back by his own explosions, falling to the ground.
In her ivory tower, Zoe made a fist with her left hand, her nails digging into her palm as her knuckles turned white. The drone made a plocking noise and the camera systems showed a small circular object fly out from beneath at an incredible speed in the direction of the red square. As the player was trying to get back on his feet, the bomb reached him, exploding in a flash of red and yellow.
Zoe unclenched her fist and made a motion to the left, directing the drone, who quietly continued on its path of demolition.
Her eyes flicked to the list of names in her peripheral vision. The player count had dropped from thirty to twenty-three. The Catastrophe was doing its job brilliantly. Zoe’s smile widened. It was a different smile from the one she flashed at the cameras. It held none of the innocence and cuteness she liked to show the fans. Instead, it was a curling smile that exposed too many of her teeth, and behind her goggles her eyes were narrowed horribly. It was the same smile that little girl had shown the display screen only seventeen years before.
By the time the second Catastrophe hit, Zoe's left drone had returned to base, all bombs exhausted. The camera system of the right drone was consuming the entirety of her field of view.
The collapser behind her continued its persistent humming, while Zoe's right hand held a quiet calamity; a hunter unheard, looking for the only other player still left standing after one hour of battle.
She could see tens, close to a hundred Catastrophe-spawned environmental weapons. Tanks, Terminators, snipers, and small bombadillos rolling around the carved up streets and through the walls of the torn down buildings. There were still some players being lifted by the recovery drones after being defeated, but no sign of Haruka Sato.
Then, she heard a loud explosion coming from beneath her. It was hard to tell from her location at the top of the skyscraper, but it had almost certainly come from inside the building. Maybe a motion-detector had finally failed, she thought. Another explosion echoed through the concrete walls, that time closer. Then another. Zoe's wrist flicked up painfully as she desperately commanded the drone to return to base from the other side of the city-sized arena, explosions ringing in her ears and shaking the ground beneath her. She grabbed the detonator she'd stuck to her wrist and flicked open the protective lid, placing her thumb carefully atop the red button before turning around and dragging herself to the north-side window, facing the concrete wall rigged with explosives.
BANG. BOOM. POW.
The explosions continued, louder and louder. They were slow, but steady, like a meticulous force was setting them off, one by one. The Catastrophe had nothing that could survive the explosions head on, so Zoe came to the only sane conclusion. She mumbled to herself, the corners of her lips rising so far up in her face they dislodged her goggles.
“Haruka. You've come.”
Like a flash, the drone flew through the window above her head and started fluttering above the collapser. Zoe moved her fingers in an X pattern, enabling the manual aiming mode, and placed a red square on the only entryway to the room: the door she had come from, which was being shaken by explosions coming from closer and closer, as Haruka Sato broke down Zoe's defensive strategy. She had come to end the game.
She set her drone to fire as soon as a player was detected in the aiming square, and with her right hand she dug through her bag for a foam bomb and a grenade.
Then, a loud bang crashed through the room. The light from the chain explosion was so bright Zoe would've been blinded without her goggles. Haruka had blown up the wall, which triggered the explosion of all the bombs Zoe had rigged to it. The building shook violently and pieces of steel and concrete flew all over the room, hitting the drone, which sent it flying out of the window and crashing violently to the ground, thirty-stories down, in a flash of red and yellow. Zoedropped the useless detonator and moved the foam bomb to her left hand.
Haruka stood at the top of the stairs. She wore an orange suit with “Sato Explosives” printed on her chest. Her face was clad in stylish glasses that lacked the drone tech that Zoe's goggles had. Her skin was white as snow, and her long black hair flicked wildly in the air from the explosions. Zoe was taken aback for a moment as she looked at her last barrier. Haruka's legs were toned and her stomach had well defined abs that showed through the suit. Her arms were long and her shoulders were bulky. Her hands were rugged and callused, adorned with scars and burns from the battle. She held an explode-on-contact francium bomb in each hand.
Zoe's eyes widened at her form, the image of her idol flashing in her mind. There was no fear in her heart, only admiration and a violent force that compelled Zoe to win, and to surpass his daughter.
Haruka stepped into the room and her knees immediately buckled. Zoe laughed maniacally at the other woman, before taking the pin out of the grenade and throwing it towards the collapser.
“Oh, what's wrong Ms. Sato?! Have I not introduced you to my friend? Well, say hello to collapser!” Zoe screamed at the top of her lungs, her voice cracking and breaking with every word. Then, she pushed herself out of the window behind her.
She fell only through five floors before she heard her grenade detonate. The collapser's soft beeping turned to a loud siren, warning of what would be unleashed upon Haruka. The building started shaking and wobbling violently in every direction, as steel beams and concrete pillars cracked and snapped. The thirty-story skyscraper was collapsing in on itself with Haruka inside.
When the ceiling fell on the top floor, Zoe saw a message in the corner of her eye: “THE LAST ONE STANDING IS ZOE FERN”.
She'd won. Those were the last points she needed to get into the qualifiers for the Obliteration Cup.
Had she been in any other situation, she might've broken down crying with relief, but the feeling of weightlessness and imminent doom as she fell brought her back to reality.
She got flashbacks of her last game. It had been a similar situation, though from a much shorter building. She fell, she won, but she still broke her arm in the end. The suits were made to protect the players from things exploding or being thrown at them, not from the players themselves crashing into things, so although she had survived, it had not been a pleasant experience.
She threw the bomb in her left hand straight towards the ground. The little ping-pong sized foam bomb crashed and exploded with a cloud of light-pink smoke, before an expanse of foam covered the street in a five metre radius. Zoe fell into the cotton candy-like substance, victorious, and this time completely unscathed.
The recovery drone was already there for her, and she grabbed on as the lights shone onto her like a million suns. She looked at the faces of the fans cheering, crying, grabbing each other and smiling. She heard the words of the commentators celebrating her victory.
The recovery drone let her down at a platform on the other side of the arena and began leading her to the media room. She was already used to the process, to the reporters and the cameras. She sat down at a table, the logos of sponsors holographically displayed behind her. A woman sitting near the front of the mass of cameras and mics spoke first.
“Ms. Fern, Mary Scope with the NRC Observer, this might have been the most important game of your career so far and it happened right as you returned from injury. How did you manage to keep your cool and get the win?”
“Well Mary, Hazeko Sato also returned from injury and proceeded to win the Obliteration Cup! Maybe it's a lucky charm. I just trusted my practice and played the way I know how to play.”
“Jack Swen, Beijing Standard. Ms. Fern, the last two players of this game were Haruka Sato and you. Did facing the daughter of the greatest of all time have an impact on your performance?”
“Not really, no. To be honest, I didn't even know she was participating until I saw her name at about the time of the first Catastrophe. She's just another player; she can't ride the coattails of her father forever. Well, she has won already, so of course I recognize her as a great player. Beyond that, there's nothing there.”
She answered the questions as she had been coached in media training, but though her words were such, her face couldn't betray her true feelings, as a shadow of that creepy smile remained on her face.
Zoe, as well as thousands of other players, would face off in ten matches all over the world, culminating in the tournament match in Paris at the end of the year. Zoe's first match had already been scheduled in Beijing. Her heart beat in her chest, a familiar rhythm, as she continued to answer the reporters' questions.
In her mind she saw the face of the man she was going to surpass.