The room was silent.

The bright lights flooded in from somewhere, painting the white walls and the dull steel table with their silvery glow.

The room was sound proof, so much so that when Haruka was alone in the room it felt like her ears were going to cave in on themselves, consumed by the sound of her own breathing and the furious beating of her heart rushing the blood in her veins.

That night, she wasn't alone, her father sat at the other end of the table. The only sound was the clinking of the cutlery and the methodical chewing of the pair.

They wore matching clothes. A remnant of a past life. Casual black pants matching a casual black shirt and black slippers. They were eating the same meal too, Peking Duck, served with cucumber and sweet bean sauce.

If someone were to stumble upon that scene, a calm smile might form on their face. A matching father and daughter duo, their resemblance clear on their face and in their bodies, sharing a meal. Haruka didn't feel like that was the case.

As her metal chopsticks carefully embraced a piece of duck, her mind was wandering a palace, walking barefoot through a different time. She remembered her father smiling, telling jokes and stories about his matches against some of the greatest Demolition players ever. She remembered the tales of his Obliteration Cup victories.

In a way, she felt like the way they were at that moment, sitting at the table, was the way it had always been. Cold and distant, though so close. She wanted to believe that to be the case, to continue living her life in that way without questioning what could've been. Like she didn't know it could have been any different, like there was no other way it would ever have been, but her mind didn't let her forget the warmth of his embrace and of his words. His encouragement and his passion, that same passion he passed onto her and that she was living. She couldn't forget.

When she returned from her match, her father was sitting on the couch, his black clothes like a stain on the white leather. His body looked relaxed, his eyes fixed on the holographic display set, Haruka's face made of pixels, her suit shining orange like a flame, running through broken down buildings, dashing, sliding, and dodging bombs thrown and shot.

They didn't greet each other. He told her something, the usual, “You wasted your bombs”, “You were too slow”, “Why did you hide?”, but Haruka tuned out his words and answered quietly and bluntly. He didn't mind it, Haruka wasn't even sure he cared if she answered or not.

Not a single word had been exchanged between the two since then. They left their plates on the table, a maid would come to deal with that after they were gone. He went back to the sofa, pouring over film of his daughter and shaking his head quietly as bombs exploded through the screen and burned her skin.

In her room, she sat at a desk. Metal, like the dinner table. She was reading a piece by the New Republic City Observer, written by Mary Scope. The topic was Zoe Fern, number one-hundred on the second round of the first qualifier match of Beijing, but the top finisher.

According to the article, she was the daughter of two academics from a local university and the childhood friend of Sarah Sayf, a sought-after technician heir to the Sayf Explosives’ fortune. It is thanks to that that she became the first player to use francium bombs in a sanctioned match.

Nobody knew who her coach was, though there were rumours it could be Pierre Monsant, Haruka's father's rival during his playing days. She's denied it several times, but hasn't revealed who she's working with, so the rumour mill continues.

The article went into detail on Zoe's path to the qualifiers, starting from her first match at the dawn of the year. She'd been playing for five years in a minor league in New Republic City, making a modest living. By Mary Scope's account, she had already displayed the talent to compete for the Obliteration Cup, but only this year had she attempted to gather the points. No reason given for the change.

On her first points match, she did something similar to what she had done in her match against Haruka. Run to a building, rig it to hell with explosives, and drone strike the competition. No one had even managed to get to her base that time, and she took out the last player without the poor guy knowing what was happening.

Her other matches weren't much different; that was clearly her MO. Occasionally, she would switch it up slightly and use an odd gun with too many buttons and a rather flimsy construction. She called it the Z-LOC in interviews, and said it was Sayf Explosives tech, though such a thing had ever been produced or sold by the firm.

The closest Zoe had gotten to a face-to-face confrontation, before Haruka, had been the match before, two months prior, where she had broken her arm.

Apparently, a team of players had noticed her strategy a few minutes before the second Catastrophe was triggered and went to approach her location. She took them out, one by one, using her traps and her drones.

Looking at the footage of the last minutes, Haruka couldn't help but feel like they were like pigs to the slaughterhouse.

A colour stuck out to Haruka, the fifth member of the group, a man in a red suit that was staying further back than all the others. Judging by the way he was moving, fidgeting constantly, he was deathly nervous. Clearly his in-game friends thought the same, as they were seen constantly comforting him, patting him on the back and making understanding faces. Haruka recognized him immediately as Julio Alario.

On a second look, the scenario looked much grimmer than before. It wasn't a powerful player methodically destroying a group of five weaklings. It was a monster guiding his meat shields towards their certain death.

After all the traps were disabled, there was only one player left to face Zoe, sitting calmly in her castle by a collapser. Julio waltzed into her room.

Haruka grinned at the sight, she'd made the same mistake as him. As soon as he stepped onto the floor, his knees started shaking and he fell. At that point, it was already too late. Zoe flashed that demonic smile and threw a grenade towards the collapser before jumping out of the window. The whole thing came crashing down a few moments later, taking Julio out of the game. Zoe broke her arm in the fall and went out of commission for a while, before returning in their fated game.

Haruka felt ready. She'd used the few days in-between matches to practise walking the collapser, but it seemed to be impossible. Even Zoe avoided standing in the room, she crawled around instead, her arms vibrating and bending, but it was enough to get around.

Haruka had no choice but to face her. There was no rush to get the first spot, after all, the top fifty after every match qualified for the next round, but she had only a limited number of head-to-heads before the finals. Haruka had no doubt that she would make the finals again, but she'd also found herself believing the blonde girl was going to be there as well. Regardless, she thought, it was only a matter of time before Haruka came up with a strategy to beat her.

An early attack was out of the question, due to the abyss between their ranks, but her father's relentless criticism had some truth to it at least. She wasted bombs, she threw them out recklessly. Zoe understood this, letting plenty of the players take each other out before she even took her drones out of her bag. Haruka had to do that as well, even with the target on her back, if she wanted any chance of beating Zoe.

Then, there was the issue of the gun. Zoe seldom used it, but it seemed to be a powerful thing.

The issue with drones is the control element. She used SeeBright goggles with ultra-high-definition drone vision tech which limited her field of view. While the stealthy flying machines were extremely powerful, they lacked the finesse necessary for extensive indoor manoeuvring, making them close to useless in a man-to-man confrontation.

Also, due to their light-weight construction, they're easily taken out if hit even by a rock or just the blast from an explosion that was a little too close.

Haruka wasn't sure how Zoe decided whether to take the Z-LOC cannon and glasses, or the drones and the goggles, so she had no way of predicting what the other girl would bring to the match.

Zoe used the Z-LOC cannon much more aggressively than the drones. For her, those floating demons worked as scouts and lookouts about as often as they did weapons. Without them, she had a lot of blind-spots. As a result, her use of the Z-LOC was much more direct.

She didn't shy away from shooting people point-blank and sending herself flying into a wall, and she would often give away her position with her reckless shooting. However, the truth of the matter was that nobody seemed to be able to beat her. She had incredible spatial awareness, and even when players knew where she was, they struggled immensely to reach her position. When they did, she would always know due to the innumerable explosions that announced their arrival. She would hide out and carefully wait for the right time to strike.

Then, there was the matter of the Catastrophes. Haruka poured over every piece of footage of Zoe's play that she could find, but the vast majority of that was during the end of the matches. Encounters between very few players and Zoe by her lonesome. Her lack of popularity and low ranking made it so that no cameras looked for her whenever she played.

Still, Haruka noticed something odd. While Haruka herself as well as other top-tier players were great at dealing with Catastrophes, it seemed to her that Zoe benefitted from them.

Time after time, Zoe would be completely unscathed even after an hour of play. As the cameras finally showed her, her suit would be as if she'd just gotten it from the cleaners. Of course, her positioning inside buildings made it hard for tanks and Terminators to spot her, but snipers spawned inside buildings, and bombadillos would often roll up stairs looking for players. Yet, through tens of matches, she was never hit or even scratched by them. It was suspicious.

As time rolled into the night, Haruka sighed. Soon, she would have to face Zoe for the second time.

----------------------------------------

The smell of gunpowder filled the air in her chamber, the thick steel door keeping the lights out entirely, and only the sound of the cheering crowd and the announcers making it through, muddled and hollow.

Her heartbeat was calm. She felt the soft weight of the bombs tacked onto her back. Her feet were light on the ground, ready to bolt. On her face there was that unmistakable look of determination that her father had also worn. The certainty of victory filled her eyes.

The door opened and she waved to the crowd. Though she couldn't see it, she knew her name was being holographically displayed above her head so everyone could read. She looked to the faces tinged in blue that surrounded the arena, not searching for anything in particular, but her mind thought of the girl standing on the other side, beyond the buildings and the asphalt streets. Haruka had only one target this game.

The first bell sounded, deep. Her plan was simple. She would run and dodge, dash and avoid. In any other situation, she would call herself a coward, but she knew that's what it would take to beat the girl in baby-blue.

She could feel the stares of the other players to her right dig into her face and burn into her arms. To them, she was also a target. Hitting her with a bomb, taking her out, eliminating her from contention so early would make them celebrities overnight. She couldn't allow that, but she also couldn't allow herself to be swayed by their childish ideas.

The second bell rang out, reverberating through her chest. She was having a hard time figuring out what the best path was. She noticed several buildings, each with their pros and their cons. Was it better to go for the one story building with reinforced walls? Maybe the taller building, to get the high ground on pursuers? She considered not going into any, just carefully slithering her way through the streets, turning sharp corners and hiding behind cars. She clicked her tongue as the count came to zero before she could make a decision.

The third bell rang, sharp as a chef's knife.

She ran. Bombs exploded in the place she had been mere moments before, and other explosives were thrown her way like bullets from a hunter's rifle.

It seemed a lot of the other players had made the decision of ignoring each other for the sole purpose of taking her down. She dodged and weaved through the clouds of black and red and yellow. She ran over debris, broken concrete, and ripped up asphalt, her feet struggling to find even ground, but soon enough the people she was leaving behind started to turn on each other. After all, high-level Demolition players weren't prone to teaming up.

She decided to enter a building. A tall thing, standard inclusion in the arenas, only five stories tall. The elevator was on the ground floor, so she sent it up to the top, then took the stairs to the first floor, from where she began to oversee the battle.

She found a small room tucked into a corner with east facing windows, providing a good view of the fight but also getting her enough cover behind chairs and tables that it would be hard for anyone to spot her. Besides, the only entry into the room was a single door that was flanked by walls on both sides.

It was a scary thing to walk into, since if anyone had made it to the room beforehand, it would be a simple thing to hear the door open and throw a bomb at a wall to blow up anyone who had entered the room. The layout provided good cover for Haruka on the inside. For now though, it seemed nobody had entered the building chasing after her, so she started to analyse the fights.

It was a beautiful sight. Tens of people dressed in garish colours running around, throwing small bombs at each other, creating beautiful clouds of red, yellow, and orange, the asphalt being turned up and falling down like confetti, the concrete cracking and splitting, causing players to trip.

Sensing weakness, it was almost like all the other players paused their own battles to throw a bomb at the ones that fell to the ground, resulting in the poor souls being blown up by several bombs simultaneously.

In the streets, a player dressed in a pink suit hid behind a car, her chest heaving like an air pump while looking around like a maniac, trying to spot the player in a sort of dull maroon that had been chasing her. The player in maroon was being careful, looking around as well to avoid anyone interfering with the hunt.

Then, his face turned to a window of a nearby building and his face was contorted into an evil smile. He threw one of his bombs up and forward, towards the car in a tall arch. It was an odd throw, very different from the usual fastball-like bullets seen in the arena, but it was perfect for the situation.

The player in maroon had spotted the player in pink through a reflection in the window and threw the bomb perfectly so as to go above the car and land right on the head of the girl hiding behind it. The girl in pink instinctively moved her hand to her head, a confused look on her face, before a large explosion consumed Haruka's field of view.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Almost immediately, a recovery drone spawned in front of the girl, now laying slack on the floor, her short brown hair splayed on the cracked concrete floor.

Haruka glanced at the numbers displayed on her glasses. Only a few seconds until the first Catastrophe. Still ten players left standing.

Haruka always brought thirty bombs with her to matches, as was standard practice for someone her size. Well, fifteen sticky bombs and fifteen explode-on-contact dynamite explosives were the standard, but she switched one of which for two foam bombs so she can jump out of any building Zoe might collapse.

She was feeling a bit bored, just standing around. Worst of all, though she couldn't see it, she knew there was a recording drone stealthily watching her every move and broadcasting it live to the world. She was behaving shamefully, and she was getting tired of it. That's when she caught something from the corner of her eye.

Really, she got lucky. There weren't any fights taking place where she could see, so her eyes wandered to the skies as she listened to the explosions. There, floating in the air, quietly, was a small drone staring at her. She noticed it at the last possible moment and threw herself through the window, landing strongly on the floor, a sharp pain coming up her legs to her back. An explosion went off in her little room, blowing window glass and tiny pieces of concrete over her like rain.

Her mind raced. How long had the drone been there? As she was taking her first step, a sound like a gust of wind came from behind her as blue lights appeared around her. The first Catastrophe had begun. She clicked her tongue and threw a sticky bomb on the location a Terminator was about to spawn, cursing under her breath.

The drone could have been watching her for several minutes at that point. Maybe Zoe had spotted her as she was distracted with the fighting going on on the ground. Still, the girl in blue didn't shoot, she waited. She's having fun.

Every movement of the blonde was calculated. Shooting at Haruka would lead to a revelation, that Zoe knew where she was, that she was already a step ahead. A shot might be able to take Haruka out immediately, but there was also a chance that it wouldn't. If Haruka simply looked up at the wrong time, or if she moved for some other reason she would be able to withstand the blast. So Zoe bided her time, and only shot when the Catastrophe was about to hit, so that Haruka would need to waste bombs on the machines. Haruka realised she had been outplayed once again.

She threw curses at every robot that showed up in front of her as she wasted bombs on the environment. At that moment, it felt like even bombs that saved her from certain elimination were being thrown in the trash if they weren't aimed at the blonde.

That drone kept following her through the rubble, not shooting even once, like it was mocking her from above, baiting her to rage, to waste another bomb on it only for it to run away giggling like a schoolgirl.

Haruka continued strong and defeated the Catastrophes that spawned nearby using only ten bombs, but she couldn't shake the drone. It would be useless to simply throw a bomb at it as it was too far up and could easily react, but Haruka had a plan.

Drones were hard to pilot, and they're especially hard to pilot along corners. During her film-session, she'd noticed Zoe had a tendency of dropping speed and height as she turned sharp corners, especially when she wanted the drone to fly into narrow gaps between tall buildings. Haruka grabbed one of her sticky bombs and prepared to turn into one of those gaps, dashing sideways in a flash.

She aimed the bomb at the corner of the building to her back, from where she expected the drone to appear. She couldn't hit the agile drone, but it was easy to hit the wall.

The drones were lightweight and fragile, so the explosion on the wall would be enough to throw it off course, hopefully crashing onto the other building, carving out one of Zoe's eyes from the sky.

She waited, staring at the corner, her hand like a finger on the trigger, holding onto the bomb ready to fire. Instead, the quiet whirring of the drone faded, and she was left alone in the gap between the buildings, stomping her feet and gritting her teeth. She felt her throat clutch in rage, and her face contorted into an expression of unadulterated fury and contempt, the demonic vision of Zoe haunting her mind.

Haruka turned around in the narrow gap right as someone else ran into the space between the buildings, crashing into her and knocking her down to the floor. Her arm snapped up, holding the bomb and ready to throw, only to be met with a sea of red and the face of a man she recognized laying on the floor, also holding a bomb pointed at her. She was about to fire, before his voice boomed, laced with a terror she knew was a lie.

“HEY! Wait, wait Haruka!” Julio's expression bent and shifted like the skin of a chameleon. His eyes asked for mercy, his mouth twisted in desperation, his forehead creased in horror. Only his hand stood firm and unshaking, holding the bomb, ready to throw with no hesitation.

“I know you're faster and more accurate than me, but that's a sticky, right?” He continued, using his chin to point to the bomb the girl was holding, “Well not even you can make those things explode on contact. You may be faster, but if you throw, I throw. We're both going down.”

Haruka's face twisted as she fell victim to the man's schemes. He lied with his face, but the cunning nature of his words spoke louder, and the worst part was that he was right. Haruka couldn't see a way out of that situation. If only the drone hadn't chased her, she cursed. She thought if he had engineered this encounter? Is this how he got people to join him?

“So? We've already qualified.” Her voice sounded firm, the words slithering out of her lips, venom dripping from every syllable. The man only smiled.

“Oh please. Like you're just trying to qualify. How stupid do you think I am?” His tone was almost mocking, it pissed Haruka off. “Hey, I'm also not trying to go down anytime soon. How about we do the same as last time, huh? You and I, centre of the arena? Sounds fair?”

His tone shifted again, begging.

Haruka saw through him like glass. His plan was crystal clear.

He was weak, he knew it, he wanted help dealing with Zoe.

Haruka's eyes glanced at the blue letters displayed on the inside of her glasses. Only three names remained on the list of participants, and she knew he had experience with Zoe first-hand. He wanted to use Haruka as a sacrificial pawn, but he'd underestimated her. Her mouth lied like his, flashing a kind smile. Her voice lost its burn and she held her tongue.

“That does sound fair, Julio. What do you suggest, exactly?”

“We team up.” He put his cards on the table. Haruka nodded lightly. “There's only Zoe Fern left, she's a tough nut, that one. A coward too. All she does is sit in buildings and hunt with drones.

Together, we can go past her traps and take her out.” His tone rose on the last sentence, hopeful, gleeful almost.

Haruka wasn't sure how much to trust the veracity of his words. How much did he really know, how well had he researched the girl in blue? Without knowing the extent of his knowledge, she could be a step behind at every point and turn into minced meat at the first sign of trouble.

He didn't mention the cannon. Zoe had brought the drones, maybe he didn't find it useful to mention it, but Haruka wasn't so sure the other girl wasn't crazy enough to stuff both of her weapons in her oversized bag.

She considered for a moment she might have an intel advantage over him, but decided not to lean on that possibility too much. Better not to get burned, she thought.

They agreed to team up for the time being and to then face each other at the centre of the arena. Then, they started carefully making their way to the other side of the rubbled city.

They walked together, always keeping an eye on each other. At any moment they could be betrayed, and that was a reality they were both keenly aware of. Every step could be their last, and they were desperate to be the last one standing.

After a while of sneaking, they noticed two drones flying overhead, their targeting systems clearly pointing at the two of them. Their bodies prepared to bolt, but the drones didn't shoot. The girl was mocking them again. Haruka squeezed the bombs in her hands so tight for a moment she thought they might explode.

A few minutes later, they noticed a tall twenty-story building conspicuously wobbling from side to side. In the heat of battle, the slow movement of the concrete walls would likely be imperceptible, but with two pairs of eyes actively looking for signs of Zoe, that was like a beacon calling their names. They strained their eyes to see inside the top floor, but it was impossible to make out anything through the dusty windows, from the ground level.

As they stood in front of the glass double-doors that led inside, they both pondered their situation, and exactly what kind of building they were about to walk into. Zoe was a master of traps. Her wires were so thin they were almost invisible, and they were so well-placed they couldn't stop looking around for even a second, as any step could trigger a bomb.

Moreover, wires weren't all that she had in her arsenal. She used long-distance trigger-based dynamite sticks, as well as motion-detectors. Basically, they couldn't take a step without the threat of demolition looming over them.

Julio looked at Haruka and made a sign with his hand as if to say “Ladies first!”

Haruka rolled her eyes and pressed her hands against the glass doors. The moment the doors were opened wide enough, one of the drones that had been following them zoomed through the gap and flew up the stairs at a tremendous speed.

Haruka and Julio looked at each other confused, and then at the second drone, as it made a noise they were both familiar with.

They jumped inside the building like they were diving into a pool, before an explosion erupted in red flames a metre behind where they were standing. Zoe hadn't aimed at them, she aimed slightly behind them, as if to push them inside the building.

At this point, Haruka considered another possibility. Zoe was bluffing.

Haruka already knew that Zoe was an extremely strategic player, which required an in-depth understanding of the players around her, as well as the mechanism and preconceptions that players had in regards to how the game was played.

That understanding included knowing one’s own limitations. If Zoe didn't think she could beat both of them, what would she do? Haruka considered this question thoroughly, and came to the obvious conclusion.

If she can't beat both, she just has to turn them against each other. That could be why she didn't shoot at them before, just like how she didn't shoot at her until the Catastrophe began. She was waiting for the moment where her bombs would have the most impact, and for Zoe, that wasn't about blowing them up, it was about increasing the pressure; making it as hard as possible for the two of them to trust each other.

She didn't need to hit them, she just needed to make them think one of them might be hit, and soon enough they'd be throwing each other at the drone bombs to save their own skin.

What's worse, that meant that Haruka was stuck between a rock and hard place. If she played into Zoe's hand she would eliminate Julio, her only support. If she didn't, she would be playing into Julio's hand by relying on him as a teammate, which made her vulnerable to being used as a meat shield like he had done to others before.

She looked at the man as he wiped some dust off his suit, his eyes locked onto the drone and his body ready to jump at any moment to avoid a bomb. She told him they should keep climbing, and he nodded.

Floor after floor, they were carefully dissecting the maze of demolition Zoe had laid down on the building. They found wires, saw where they connected, then sent one of their bombs in the direction of where Zoe's bomb would be, disarming it by blowing it up. When they found motion-detectors, they picked up pieces of concrete and threw them at the devices, triggering the explosions. Little by little, they made it up, all while being followed from the outside by the drone, spying on them through the windows surrounding the winding staircase.

On the eighteenth floor, something was different. Not every floor had been rigged up to that point, only the odd-numbered ones. Except for the eighteenth.

Julio was careless, almost tripping the wire before Haruka pulled his arm back, making him fall backwards. Zoe had switched up the pattern near the end. A last ditch attempt to eliminate them from the match. Haruka grinned at the futile strategy of the blonde girl.

She helped Julio stand up and was about to congratulate herself for a total victory over the building's traps, until she heard the whirring noise of the drone. It sounded strained, like it was carrying something too heavy.

Then, she looked to the top of the stairway. The door to the eighteenth floor was ajar, and from the gap between the metal and the concrete Haruka could see the other drone, its targeting system staring at them, with a metal wire attached to its underside. The lightweight flying machine was pulling up on it so strongly it sounded like it was about to blow a fuse. Haruka followed the wire with her eyes, and it led to a piece of plastic moulded to the shape of a cylinder, the diameter of which was about the size of a ping-pong ball. She recognized the Z-LOC immediately.

Haruka held her breath before jumping down the stairs towards the seventeenth floor. There was a delay as the drone kept pulling up on the wire and Julio and Haruka stared at each other. Haruka's face was twisted in terror, but Julio only looked at her in confusion, standing on the platform between the eighteenth and seventeenth floors.

Then, the sound of the drone staggered, as if something had collapsed. A small object flew from the top of the stairs and hit Julio on the side of his torso before exploding furiously in yellow and red, sending him flying towards the wall. His body rag-dolled and then fell flat on the floor. A recovery drone appeared from thin air in a flash of blue light and picked his body up, before floating down the stairs.

The girl in orange cursed under her breath and grabbed at one of the bombs still stuck to her back. She walked to the place where Julio had been eliminated and looked to the half-open door. The drone was still there, this time just observing the result of its actions, staring at Haruka as if laughing in her face. She looked at the wire that Zoe had placed on the stairs, and quickly realised it led nowhere. Just concrete. It was a distraction.

The frustration that Haruka had been feeling since their last meeting came to a boiling point. Every step of the way she'd been one step behind.

Even as she hid away like a coward saving her bombs, even as she tried to take out her drones, even as she teamed up with Julio.

Every step of the way, Zoe was ahead. Methodically outplaying Haruka with the precision of a surgeon. Haruka felt like she was lying on the operating table, her guts on display as Zoe took a scalpel to her heart and a drill to her brain.

She walked up the stairs and destroyed the drone, still tied to the metal wire. She also grabbed the cannon and threw it out the window, noticing the second drone wasn't outside any more. The Z-LOC looked like it was made as a science project, just a bunch of wires and plastic sloppily put together. That was the cherry on top; she was being outplayed by a girl with a bunch of toys.

After defusing the trip-wire on the nineteenth floor, she tried the same thing she'd done last time. She threw a couple of sticky bombs towards the wall of the room on the last floor, just in case Zoe had rigged a bunch of explosives to it.

That was a good decision, as the wall exploded with tremendous power, shaking the building like an earthquake. She then spotted the drone flying above the collapser, it had survived that time, but at that distance she could finally notice that its barrel was empty.

The last bomb had been the one used to push them inside the building, so they were worrying about it all the way up for no reason at all. Haruka had saved up every bomb she could on her back, while Zoe had used every bomb she had to bring her to the spot she was in at that very moment.

It felt like deja vu.

Zoe was sitting on the other end of the room, near a west-facing window. On her back, she had that cumbersome bag attached onto the titanium hooks on the back of her suit. In the centre of the room was that cube of metal and wire, beeping softly, shaking the whole building.

The thing that Haruka remembered the most was there too. That baby-blue suit matching her blue eyes. The short blonde hair framing her slim face. Those large goggles packed with drone tech. That smile that curled too far into her cheeks, revealing her perfectly aligned white teeth, screaming wordlessly of death, destruction, and demolition.

Haruka couldn't tell if it was genuine or the result of the adrenaline, but Zoe's smile was creepier than any horror movie.

This time, Haruka didn't step into the room, remembering the way her body had failed her. Zoe didn't say anything either. Instead, the blonde girl simply threw a grenade towards the collapser, before throwing herself out of the window, waving a hand to Haruka.

She was ready for this. Haruka immediately threw herself off a window to the side of her, a feeling of weightlessness she wasn't used to turning her stomach upside down. She could see the other girl falling on the other end of the sea of glass and office space, as an explosion went off in the top room, followed by a loud siren and the collapse of the twenty-story building.

They both threw a foam bomb to the floor beneath them, two clouds of light-pink smoke giving way to wide platforms made of a cotton-candy like substance that would guarantee their safe landing.

Then, Haruka looked at the other girl.

From her bag, Zoe had retrieved a long metallic object. At first, Haruka didn't register what was about to happen, she simply wondered how Zoe had managed to move with all the weight in her bag. Then, she recognized it. It was a sniper gun, like the one that had been used against her in the first qualifier match.

In free-fall, Haruka had no shot at throwing a bomb with any degree of accuracy, and she didn't have enough strength to make the bomb actually reach the ground at the same time as Zoe. With a gun, Zoe could.

She was aiming at Haruka's landing foam, counting the short seconds of their fall before pressing the trigger. A small object came flying at a terrible speed from the barrel of the gun, just as Haruka was about to touch ground. She also threw a bomb towards Zoe, but she was sure it wouldn't make it far enough.

First, her field of view was consumed by a pink mass. Then, a horrible pain shot up her legs as heat surrounded her on all sides, flashes of red and yellow and orange consuming her consciousness.

Haruka didn't get a chance to read the blue letters that were holographically displayed on her glasses, but they said “THE LAST ONE STANDING IS ZOE FERN”.