Zoe’s room at the training complex was small, barely enough space for a bed and a desk, no space at all for a nightstand or a wardrobe. There was only one window and one door; the door led to the long corridor that connected other identical rooms, all of them empty, while the window was the sort that only opened a little at the top. Not that Zoe had ever had it open for more than a few seconds for the length of her stay, on account of the putrid aroma of the city. The view from the grey room was equally dull; it was the outside of a neighbouring building, a skyscraper of steel and concrete, reminiscent of the buildings in the arena.
This didn’t matter to her much, of course, not like she looked outside for any length of time either. Instead, her blue eyes stared nigh unblinkingly at the holographic display screen of her computer. On it, a video was playing of a girl dressed in orange.
It showed her from the back as she ran full-force into a crowd of colourfully dressed individuals. Her legs struck the ground as if trying to dig themselves a grave in the concrete, propelling her forward with unbelievable speed. The girl dashed and slithered through the mess of bodies like a ballerina performing a beautiful play for the king of the universe. Her shoulders were broad and powerful. She used her body to push a man dressed in a quiet purple out of their way, sending all of her weight into his chest. Zoe wondered if she was the only person in the world that saw Haruka in that way.
She had read countless articles about Sato. They spoke of her as the perfect image of her father, they danced to her dominance and sung her ravage. They painted her like a shadow, a reflection of that man that Zoe had longed to be. But Zoe saw something else entirely. She saw the way her feet were carefully placed in between the cracks in the asphalt and the jagged edges of the concrete floors, she saw the way her body twisted and bent, her arms wasting not a moment when she grabbed at her back and cast destruction upon the field. The wild black hair of Haruka Sato, trailing her body as she carefully navigated her opponents, drew a path of strategy and concern, not of fearless advance.
By the end of the fight, Zoe’s heart was beating to a rhythm she could never perform with her own body; it beat with the rhythm of the song Haruka was dancing to.
As the camera panned to show the front of the girl, engulfed in flames and surrounded by rubble, the corners of Zoe’s mouth bent upwards and her eyes narrowed slightly. Had anyone seen her in that moment, they would’ve thought her mind was filled with thoughts of torture and vengeance. But she was simply looking at Haruka’s heaving chest, her breathing troubled as she tirelessly worked to catch her breath. Her ears and her cheeks were red from the exertion of battle. Her face was dripping with sweat, granting her pink lips a subtle gleam that quietly reflected the furious lighting in the arena. Haruka didn’t smile. Instead, Zoe could see that unrelenting focus in her dark eyes, and it pulled her in.
Haruka had won her first match in Madrid. Enough time had passed that the giddy feeling of having beaten her in Beijing was starting to fade, so only frustration and a tang of jealousy remained to torture the blonde.
The pain in her back had completely subsided, but the untenable reality of her situation was tugging at her ego. She mumbled to herself as she thought of what she could do to beat Haruka in their next match, only a couple of days away, her hands grabbing the holographic display and distorting a frozen frame of Haruka being lifted by a recovery drone.
Her friend’s words kept playing in her mind. Zoe thought of a strategy, like rigging two different buildings with collapsers or using larger drones that could carry more bombs, but Sarah’s face with its look of concern and reluctance had inevitably overtaken Zoe’s ideas. She stood up from her chair, an old shabby thing with its black paint peeling off the uncomfortable metallic body, before making her way to the practice room. She was only wearing a stained white t-shirt two sizes too big and some worn down shorts that barely reached half-way down to her knees, her feet clad in baby-blue flip-flops with the SeeBright logo almost completely vanished from the foam of the sole.
Sarah was sitting on the floor, her hands surrounded by wires and plaster and little hexagonal pieces of what would soon become a weapon. Her face looked calm, at that moment. Zoe thought back to the years that came before the qualifiers. It was a different time, but somehow Sarah seemed to have changed not one bit.
Her thin fingers still skilfully navigated the complex mechanisms of bombs and cannons, her speed second to none, her precision unmatched, her passion peerless. Sarah’s dark skin reflected the soft light in the room. Her curly hair fell in locs over her face and draped over her pink-rimmed glasses. She wore a thin red summer dress that left her neck and shoulders uncovered. Zoe blushed, looking at her own get-up, the obvious disparity in their appearances made clear.
Zoe leaned on a treadmill and crossed her legs, pulling a piece of hair behind one of her ears.
“Looks cool,” Her voice cracked, dying her face a vibrant scarlet. She cleared her throat before continuing. “That thing you’re doing, I mean. That’s francium, right? I heard you talking to your dad some days ago, you’re developing something new?”
Zoe’s eyes flickered between Sarah and the mess of components on the floor, her voice only barely leaving her lips as she intended. She sounded meek and quiet.
Sarah looked up to her friend. Her large dark eyes stood out in her face; Zoe saw that as one of her defining features. They were like perfectly cut pieces of onyx, precious jewels that adorned Sarah’s beautiful face. She looked confused for a moment, before showing Zoe a pretty smile that reached up to her eyes.
“Um, yeah.” She chuckled, before blowing air upwards, failing to move one of her locs out from in front of her left eye. Zoe was staring at Sarah’s plump lips as they made a little O shape. “Francium and modified azidoazide azide. Back at the lab they tried to mix them. It’s supposed to make a two phase explosion, you know, in layers. The MAZA on the outside first, then the francium on the inside when it gets exposed to the atmosphere. But they weren’t getting it to work so, dad asked me to work on it for a bit, see if I can do something…”
Her voice trailed off, about as quiet as Zoe’s, but it was still pouring with excitement and glee. It was late at night, so they both kept their voices down, despite being alone in the facility. Sarah’s focus was incredible, her face like a lake surrounded by mountains, not even a soft breeze disturbing its surface as she looked at the complication in front of her.
“I see.” Zoe continued, taking a few steps and moving to sit by her friend’s side. Leaning her head on Sarah’s shoulder, her friend resting her head on Zoe’s. The blonde’s voice turned to a soft whisper. “So, did you prepare what I asked?”
Zoe felt Sarah tense up for only a moment. The other girl lightly moved the blonde’s head away, before standing up and walking to the metal table that sat at a corner of the room. Sarah picked up Zoe’s goggles, clicking a metal piece into place on the left side, hiding away the goggles’ internal components, before throwing them in Zoe’s direction, who caught them in mid-air.
“Yeah. And I put the rest in the bag, like you asked. It’s by the Z-LOC.” Sarah didn’t turn to look at Zoe as she spoke, her voice sounding far away and hollow. She sat at the table and put on a full-head welding mask. She only motioned with her hand, shooing Zoe away from the messy room.
Zoe stared at Sarah’s back for a bit. She was hunched over the table, her hands grabbing at pieces of metal seemingly at random and nudging them in different directions. Zoe assumed Sarah was organising things, though she couldn’t find any rhyme or reason to her actions. Her eyes lingered on the lace of the red dress as she turned to leave, the thin metal door sliding open and closed as she passed through.
Two days later, Zoe had woken up feeling utterly refreshed, as far as her body was concerned, though her mind still burned as if trying to char the inside of her skull.
Her feet were pounding on the concrete floor of the chamber, her hair bouncing up and down and hitting her neck and the side of her cheeks. Her thoughts were racing, images of Haruka’s brutal dance shifting like smoke in front of her eyes as Zoe punched away the time until the start of the second qualifier match of Madrid.
Stepping onto the platform, the bright lights like a million blades slicing at the atmosphere of a warm night, Zoe raised her arms and smiled to the crowd, their holographically blueish faces smiling back.
As the first ring sounded, shaking her bones, Zoe breathed in. Haruka was at the other end of that arena. This time there was no Julio and there was no Baolie. Zoe held her real smile in, her face contorting awkwardly in an attempt to keep it from the cameras.
As the second ring sounded, pounding in her chest, Zoe let out the air in her lungs. She prepared to run, her hands touching the concrete. The bag, hooked to the pieces of titanium on the back of her baby-blue suit, weighted on her back. It was heavier than the last match, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been the last time she’d faced Haruka. She hoped her body would handle it well.
As soon as the high-pitched screech of the third ring reached her ears, she set off, her hand reaching behind her to grab at the cannon, already loaded with a small C4 explosive. She felt two explosions go off behind her in quick succession, both the players to her left and to her right decided to aim at her. The explosions’ intensity passed through her body like a wave, propelling her forward, almost making her lose her step, though she managed to keep running.
She didn’t bother to look behind her back, she had no time to waste. She placed the Z-LOC on her shoulder, aiming behind her. She only hoped her spatial awareness was good enough as she held her breath and jumped up, pressing the trigger. She was sent flying forward with the recoil, dashing through the air, before landing a few metres ahead. Then, a powerful explosion that turned the concrete behind her to dust belted out a violent blast in a colourful display of vibrant reds and yellows.
An uncertainty crept up inside Zoe as her eyes darted from side to side, looking for a place to find cover on the inside of the city.
Her hand reached in her bag, grabbing another ping-pong sized explosive to load into her cannon, before setting her back against the concrete wall of a building. It was a small square thing, barely two metres in any direction. It looked to be an outside closet space, probably intended to store cleaning materials. Not like it ever performed that function, after all, the arenas are all designed by the international federation. Regardless, it was perfect.
She went inside, closing the metal door behind her before sticking a piece of dynamite to it. She sat in a dark corner of the storage space, pressing her hands to her ears. The five seconds that passed felt like an eternity. Then, the door was violently blown off its hinges, crashing into another building, its steel bending and deforming.
Zoe put her bag down to her left. While pointing the Z-LOC towards the door, her finger on the trigger, Zoe’s left hand dug through her bag.
First, she retrieved a tiny round drone, barely larger than an eyeball, equipped only with a camera system. She threw the thing into open air and two tiny wings started flapping on its sides, before her own face started being displayed on the inside of her goggles next to blue lettering that indicated there were twenty players still left standing as the first Catastrophe commenced. Zoe placed both her feet firmly on the ground, her knees coming up to her chest, and tried to control the small device. By raising her left foot up, down, and to the sides, she commanded the drone to rise and fall, advance and retreat, while by shifting her right foot from side to side she could have it turn. She made the little thing fly out into the arena, her eyes glancing up at the small display that showed the top of buildings and violent explosions players were throwing at each other, before letting her eyes return to staring at the open space where a steel door had been.
Then, she retrieved the first of the special items developed by Sarah, as well as a francium hexagon. The item was a small robot that fit snugly in her hand, with two wheels on either side made of a malleable nitinol mesh. Her friend had called it the Land-Acclimated Delivery Object, or LADO, for short. On the front of the tiny vehicle there was an even tinier camera, and on the top was a jutting piece of metal that stuck out from its body like the skyscrapers of Madrid stuck out from its grimy streets. The construction of the thing felt flimsy and weak, but Zoe put her trust in Sarah.
The girl in the blue suit pushed the metal piece into the body of the vehicle until she heard a click. Then, she carefully attached the hexagonal bomb on top of the LADO. After placing the combination of metal and explosives on the floor, Zoe put her left hand on her left knee, then raised it slightly. As she did so, the little machine sprung to life, somehow balancing itself on its two wheels with a whirring noise as the image of the hole in the wall repeated itself in Zoe’s field of view. She bent her wrist forwards and the LADO quietly rolled out of the storage space. She continued to monitor its path, while observing the arena via her eye-drone and carefully watching the hole in the wall, her Z-LOC ready to fire.
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It had taken her quite a while to come to a rather obvious conclusion regarding her typical strategy. At the highest level of Demolition, it would only be a matter of time before it fails. The truth was that there was a very good reason why the static style of play that Zoe was the last bastion of had died out: it didn’t work. More specifically, it didn’t work against the fast-paced style pioneered by Hazeko Sato and that he passed down to his daughter. Sure, Zoe can catch Haruka by surprise with the collapser once, but then it’ll never work again. Yes, Zoe can out-gun Haruka once, but then she’ll be so hurt from carrying the enormous weight that she’ll be out of it for a while, not to mention that good players will learn to simply play around Zoe’s army. She’s not fast enough to outpace them, she’s not strong enough to outmuscle them, not for eleven matches straight, at least, especially not when the field gets stronger every single time.
So, Zoe had to change her approach. If she couldn’t win with her normal strategy, she’d just make a new one. If they adapted to that too, she’d just do something else entirely. Be it one, two, eleven matches, it didn’t matter to her. She was determined to win, no matter the cost, no matter how much she had to sacrifice studying, thinking, researching. She would carve a new path to the top with her bare hands if that’s what was required.
A bombadillo rolled by her hideout, its round shape clicking and clanking on the concrete floor. It didn’t notice her, and its presence was a good sign that there wasn’t a player around. She refocused her eyes on the display from the LADO as it rapidly rolled on an asphalt road beneath a car. Its small form-factor made it a great tool for sneaking around without being spotted, as opposed to her traditional drones, which while quiet and small were still large enough to be spotted by anyone that knew to look for them in the skies. On the other hand, LADOs stayed low to the ground, which made it incredibly hard to spot anything and find her way around. That’s what the eye-drone was for. It was much smaller and quieter than a regular drone, but it still provided the bird’s eye view perspective so valuable to Zoe.
It wasn’t long before she spotted a player hiding in the small space between two large buildings. She moved her hand, conducting the LADO to roll in the direction of the tall man clad in green. Zoe knew what it felt like to be stranded after a Catastrophe had been triggered, so it didn’t surprise her when he didn’t hear the soft rolling sound of the LADO’s wheels behind him. His heartbeat was probably pounding in his ears, the intensity of the match weakening his senses. She bent her wrist forward and to the left and the LADO made its way to a position only a few centimetres behind the player’s feet. Then, she clenched her fist. From the LADO’s camera, it was like nothing had happened, but from the eye-drone she was able to see the little metal rod unlatch and pierce the francium hexagon. Francium bombs were a sensitive thing, Sarah had made that clear too many times over the course of her tenure as Zoe’s technician; all it took was a little hole. That small increase in surface area was enough to trigger the explosion. The video feed from the LADO vanished from her goggles as the eye-drone registered a violent burst of red, yellow, and orange, pieces of concrete flying in every direction. Zoe’s hand was back in her bag before the recovery drone was even teleported in. She took out another LADO and a little blue hexagon.
Zoe managed to eliminate another player before any sort of problem presented itself. As she was directing her third little LADO to approach a pink-haired player crouching behind a half-wrecked wall, throwing bombs to the other side of the street, she heard a noise coming from behind her.
It startled her, causing her to almost pull the trigger on the cannon. Her heart started beating so violently in her ears she couldn’t hear anything else. Her hands started shaking as well, causing the LADO to wobble and turn, so she placed her left hand on her knee, disabling manual control. It was better to ignore the robot than to get blown up.
She felt naked. Sitting in a dark corner, completely exposed. No traps, no collapser, no window to jump out of. Not even a drone to watch from above and shoot. She couldn’t even steady the aim on the Z-LOC. She bit her lip and drew blood, a metallic taste in her mouth dancing with the sharp pain. Then, she saw a small hand peek out from the left side of the door, holding something that looked like a ping-pong ball. Her stomach dropped and she clenched her jaw. The hand flicked the bomb inside the small storage space, but the bomb went in the direction of the corner furthest from where she was sitting, sticking to the wall. She was about to breathe a sigh of relief, but stopped herself, instead tensing her whole body and bracing for the explosion. It was violent. The explosion was terribly bright and shook the room like an earthquake, rumbling through her chest, her body being compressed against the wall. She only barely managed to hold on to the cannon. Her whole body ached, but she was conscious, and had managed to avoid making any noise that would reveal her presence. Without wasting a second, she tried her best to aim the cannon at the hole in the wall. Her hands still shook, but at least the sound of rushing blood in her ears had been replaced by a high-pitched ringing.
The other player waltzed in the small space completely unaware. His body language said that he was utterly unpreoccupied with anything, until he spotted the little blonde girl pressing the trigger. As the bomb hit his chest and exploded, he was sent flying back, while Zoe was once again knocked against the wall.
She inhaled painfully, her ribs hurting with the movement. She grit her teeth and prepared to continue her hunt. Her legs felt relatively fine, so after retrieving another C4 bomb and loading it into the cannon, she put her knees back up and raised her left hand, regaining control of the LADO. She glanced at the letters displayed on her goggles. The second Catastrophe was well underway, and after she had eliminated the intruder, there was only one other person left to chase. Even better, Haruka had been the one to eliminate the girl with the pink hair she had been approaching before the interruption. She could see her from both cameras and with a quick flick of her wrist, the LADO started approaching her.
As Zoe was about to dig her nails into the palm of her left hand, Haruka’s eyes stared at her. They were cold as ice, a look that was focused only on demolishing everything in her way. Zoe held her breath. Haruka had spotted even the miniscule LADO. She jumped backwards, dropping a sticky bomb in the direction of the wheeled robot. At her command, or maybe due to Haruka’s bomb, Zoe saw an explosion trigger right before the camera feed disappeared from her field of view. From the eye-drone, she could see Haruka running, her eyes darting to the sky desperately searching for her drones, anxiety visible on her face as she scanned and found nothing every time.
Zoe quickly dug in her bag for the last LADO and another piece of francium, repeating the set-up process and sending the little thing rolling towards Haruka’s location.
She was nearby. Though her eyes still periodically scanned the skies, sometimes looking to the floor around her, she was more focused on locating Zoe. She looked to building after building, prioritising the tallest ones, trying to catch a glimpse through the windows on the top floors. Zoe grinned, her teeth showing a bit too much. Haruka was fast, but she was doing things other than running, so even the tiny LADO was making up ground. For a moment, Zoe thought Haruka had spotted even the eye-drone, but she continued her search the same way, never returning her gaze to the location of the tiny machine, so Zoe relaxed as she continued to drive the two-wheeled robot in tandem with the drone.
Haruka’s search pattern was somewhat unorthodox. Zoe wasn’t exactly sure what the most optimal path would be, but she was positive it was not whatever the girl in orange was doing. She was basically moving in circles, counter-clockwise, looking at building after building, only occasionally changing to a different street and continuing in a circle. Zoe was having a hard time controlling the LADO because of the broken asphalt and shattered concrete, so Haruka managed to avoid another explosion, but Zoe thought it only a matter of time. Soon enough, the third Catastrophe would start, and being out in the open like Haruka was a sure-fire way to get eliminated at that point.
Then, Zoe heard the faint noise of footsteps from somewhere around her. They were quiet. If she hadn’t been so relaxed and confident in that moment the anxiety would probably not have allowed her to notice. Haruka wanted to dismiss it as just a Terminator wandering the arena, but as she looked at the video feed of the eye-drone she saw a small concrete building with a hole in the wall. Haruka had been nearby to start with, but she had gotten closer and closer. Zoe was taken aback. Her hands began shaking slightly as the realisation hit. After analysing Haruka’s path it became clear. She wasn’t running in circles, she was running in a spiral. And at the centre of it was the tiny storage space where Zoe was holed up.
She tried to think but her thoughts were running past her without any concern for her safety. How had she pin-pointed her location? There were no indicators, no markings. She could have been controlling the tiny LADO from anywhere in the arena. She thought back to when she briefly saw Haruka lock eyes with the eye-drone, now certain that it had happened. Even if that was the case, how? Zoe tortured her mind with the questions, all the while Haruka slowly approached her location, the footsteps getting slightly louder. Zoe continued flicking her now trembling wrist and the robot continued its chase. She tried to calm herself. Haruka hadn’t pinpointed her location, not yet. She was approaching it, that was obvious, but if she knew where she was already she would’ve just gone straight to her. That’s how she operates. Moreover, she was wasting a lot of time running around and the Catastrophe was only getting closer. If she was just playing with her food, it was a very dangerous game to be playing, and it would be completely out of character for her. No, there was something else, she had found a way to locate her but it wasn’t perfect, she still had to search.
Zoe steadied herself, aiming the Z-LOC straight at the opening in the wall. She breathed in, deeply, then out, trying to cleanse her body of the stress and the pressure.
Now that she knew Haruka was coming, it made the job of the little one much simpler. She twisted her left wrist to the right and the little robot turned in tandem, making a beeline for the base of operations. LADO would be playing guard dog for the dragon.
Zoe was sure Haruka had her figured out when the eye-drone spotted her look at the small concrete building, then at the buildings around it, then back at it. Zoe’s wrist tensed up, and her lips curled up in anticipation of the explosion.
Haruka approached her location, her steps steady but careful. She bent her feet in a curious way with each step. Zoe was confused at first, but then she noticed the sound of her footsteps had vanished. As Haruka stealthily approached her location, Zoe slowly moved her wrist. Her cheeks were hurting from the way her lips curled and slashed through her face, her eyes narrowed to the point she could barely see. She was struggling to keep her chest quiet as a violent laughter crept up inside her. She got her. Haruka had gotten too close. As the girl in orange reached behind her back, the small LADO got close enough to blow Haruka up. She couldn’t hold her emotions in any longer, and screamed at the top of her lungs as she clenched her fist, her nails leaving bloody marks on the palm of her left hand.
“BANG!”
Her voice echoed in the small room as a weak click sound was heard outside. Then, there was silence. Both Zoe and Haruka took a second to realise what had happened. Zoe tried to jump, her body contorting itself and leaping forward, her right arm painfully extending so that the cannon could aim through the hole in the wall, but it was too late. Haruka’s reflexes were faster than Zoe’s, and she managed to throw a dynamite bomb into the room, hitting the leaping Zoe in the chest, sending her slack body flying into the wall as her world went black.
She woke up in the medical facility of the Madrid arenas. The medicine they’d given her in her unconscious state had done its job at fixing her up physically. Still, it hurt. She felt a terrible pain and an overwhelming rage boiling her blood. The LADO had malfunctioned.
She stood and ran to the training complex, only taking the time to grab her bag. She had the burning image of Sarah in her mind like a curse, a demon that haunted her every thought. A plague on her existence. That fire hadn’t subsided as she burst into the practice room. She was sitting on the floor again, it seemed that was all she was doing these days, Zoe thought.
Her mind raced. Sarah was staring at the same mess of wires as before, something clearly more important than Zoe, as was evident. The bombs, pushing things forward, that was all she cared about, that was she ever did, that was all there was to her. Zoe’s face was contorted and curled, an image worse than her natural smile. Sarah looked up in shock.
“Ah, so that’s what you’ve been doing, huh?” Said the blonde, every syllable dripping with venom and poison and liquid explosives. “That’s all you’ve been doing, isn’t it? I ask you for ONE THING. You’re MY technician, you’re supposed to do your JOB! I mean, I noticed they were flimsy, but really? I mean, are… Are you serious?”
Sarah tried to keep a calm voice. She closed her eyes firmly, trying to reason with the girl still in her blue suit.
“Zoe, things malfunction. It happens, it’s not my fau—” She was cut off by a scoffing Zoe, indignation clear in her tone.
“Oh they malfunctioned! Of course! Oh, and, of course, the tech malfunctions and it is NOT the technician’s fault! Silly me, I’m just so dumb, aren’t I?!” A dark feeling crept up from Zoe’s stomach to her chest, a pressure that bent her ribs inwards and made it hard to breathe, like an explosion had tried to cave her body in. “Tell me, Sarah, did you have fun making me lose?”
Sarah’s face shifted rapidly between fury, confusion, and sadness, settling on the first.
“I made you lose?! Are you listening to yourself?” Her volume almost deafening, her voice cracking as tears welled up in her eyes. “It was you using the drone like an idiot, Haruka tracked you! You made yourself lose!”
Zoe heard the words as they blasted in the room, but her brain refused to accept them. She shook her head violently before Sarah continued.
“You know how much I have on my plate, you know how much I sacrifice! I have other work, Zo, I do this for you. I travel the world by your side, all for you. It’s all for you, you know that!” The tears flowed, leaving black lines on her face from her eyeliner.
“W, What are you even saying?! I am the one making the sacrifices, I’m the one giving my all, I’m the one taking the explosions! You’re just sitting at a desk and playing with toys!” Zoe’s voice rose even higher. Sarah winced and took a step back, her eyes wide and glossy staring at Zoe’s. “What?! Did you get a nice offer from Sato, huh?!”
As Zoe’s last sentence made its way around the room, Sarah’s face fell and broke like shattering glass. Her fury had subsided, giving way to an emotion Zoe didn’t recognize, silence overtaking the room. Sarah mumbled something, before walking out of the door in a hurry, pushing Zoe out of the way.
She thought about yelling something as Sarah walked towards the exit of the training complex, but decided against it.
Only then did the gravity of the situation collapse on top of her. Why had she said those things, she wondered. She felt a warmth on her face as tears flowed, seemingly with no end. She fell to the floor, an exhaustion consuming her, unannounced. She gulped, making whimpering sounds, her hands grabbing at her face too hard. It hurt. It hurt so bad.
She felt so alone in that dimly lit room.