A few days had passed after the last match in Madrid, but Haruka still hadn’t caught so much as a glimpse of her father.

When she arrived at the Sato family training complex, she expected to see her dad in the film room, mumbling to himself about how she had failed, how she had been utterly outplayed. About how she just got lucky that Zoe’s robot had malfunctioned.

The dark room was empty when she arrived, the holographic display paused on a frame of Haruka throwing a bomb into the small building Zoe had holed herself up in.

Haruka sat at the chair and stared at the image before gesturing with her hand as if swiping away dust, directing the system to rewind the footage. She saw herself look up at the sky and spot the little drone that had been spying on her for several minutes. She clicked her tongue, cursing at herself for the time it took her to find it. Then, she began her spiral strategy. Zoe was driving the drone carelessly, and Haruka managed to pick up on it.

She was actually really proud of herself for figuring out how to hunt Zoe down. As she ran from building to building, looking for the slow wobbling that promised the presence of a collapser inside, she noticed the drone was always to her left. Even as she turned corners and ran in-between buildings, as she emerged from the shadows the drone would be on her left side. So she decided to chase it. Of course, it would have been too easy for Zoe to notice her plan if Haruka just started running in the drone’s direction, so instead she turned left. She would pretend to look at the buildings and search the skies, all while keeping the drone in the corner of her eye, periodically narrowing the radius of the circular path she was taking, spiralling towards the drone’s position.

That careful strategy had been successful. The drone stayed on her left, and Haruka kept narrowing the area where she was sure Zoe was controlling it from.

All the cameras were focusing on her for the broadcast, but Haruka wished at least one damned reporter wanted to know what Zoe looked like as Haruka slowly closed in on her. She wanted to know what Zoe looked like, what face she was making, what she was thinking.

Then, she saw herself spot the little building. It was ridiculous to even consider a Demolition player good enough to reach the qualifiers might hole themselves up in such a place. It would be easy to just throw a bomb in there; if Zoe really was inside, she had already lost. Haruka looked around the arena, staring at windows and small gaps in concrete. She had felt eyes on her, she felt like she was being watched. It was more than just the drone, it was a fear, an anxiety that consumed her, that screamed in her ears and banged on her chest, that prophesied of a threat she could not see and warned her of the barrel of a gun, far away, aiming right at her. She wanted to just throw a bomb inside, but the questions burned in her mind and locked her arms and hands in place. What if she wasn’t inside? What if it was all a trap? What if she had been outplayed? What if, once again, she was the one who had already lost?

By the time Haruka was close enough to act, she heard her voice. It sounded so gleeful, happy, like a little girl opening her presents on Christmas morning. She couldn’t understand what she said. The simple fact words had come from inside the small building had made her ears ring and her body tense up; her guts twisted and froze, her stomach dropped, her skin turned clammy and dry and wet at the same time, her eyes almost rolled back in her skull. All that came next was a click. It was quiet, like turning on a light or snapping your fingers. It had come from below. She looked and saw that little robot with two wheels made of a metallic mesh carrying an explosive hexagon.

It took her a moment to process the situation. All she could do was what her body allowed her to do. She threw a bomb inside the small concrete storage space just in time to strike Zoe in her chest.

Her blonde hair was fluttering in the air like little strands of gold. Her eyes were blue like the summer sky, framed by bulky goggles that made her look nerdy and awkward. Her face was dirty, caked with dust. Even her blue suit had been turned almost completely grey. She looked so small as she jumped, holding a cannon that looked more like a toy, trying to point through the hole in the wall but failing miserably, her skinny arm barely able to hold the weight of the whole thing. Haruka couldn’t decide if she looked cute or ridiculous.

Watching the footage back, she giggled. Zoe’s mouth was open, maybe from the exertion or maybe in an attempt at a warcry that never left her pale lips. Haruka had finally beaten her, and yet, her face ended up falling down to a frown.

After she paused the footage, Zoe’s body in mid-jump, the dark film room fell into an eerie silence.

The plane ride to Buenos Aires was quiet. The small metal bird was enough to hold twenty people and it was packed; Haruka’s three technicians, her five strategists, her nine trainers, and the pilots. The inside of the plane was all white leather, except for the floor, which was a thick white carpet made of some sort of synthetic material that was unnaturally soft to the touch. She sat on a window seat next to one of her trainers, the one in charge of her scheduling. If Haruka looked to her left, she could peek into the display and read the blueish letters detailing the painful minutia of her life for the following two weeks, but she preferred to stare out into the dark sky and the clouds rushing by.

Her mind wandered.

For Haruka, the world was about time. Everything was about time. Time was the one thing that never changed, and because of that, nothing else changed either.

From the moment she could walk she was running. From the moment she could fight she was at war. That was by her own will, of course. Nobody had ever pushed on her back or pulled her by the hand; she took the steps herself, she threw the bombs herself. Still, she was never alone. She had her father by her side, her right-hand man, her idol, her guide. She remembered the way he smiled as he taught her how to run and throw with perfect aim. She remembered running in the garden after him, the smell of the flowers and the fresh-cut grass staining her shorts and her shirt. She remembered collapsing from exhaustion with a smile on her face, matching his, and then he would pick her up and talk of a future that was to come. He told her she would follow in his footsteps, she would dominate, become the greatest; that she would surpass him. That’s what he told her, and so that’s what she believed.

Even as she remembered this, she felt that it must not have ever happened. After all, nothing ever changes.

For that same reason, her heart beat in a way that was familiar, though she only felt it a few times. In her mind, she saw a face that she had known her whole life, though she only learned the name that matched it very recently.

She wondered if Zoe felt the same way after beating her; if there was that same dissatisfaction in her heart. Their score still favoured the blonde, so maybe not. Still, Haruka couldn’t shake the image out of her mind. Zoe’s body flew horizontally through the air, her face filled to the brim with desperation, like it was begging to win, to beat her. Haruka couldn’t help but feel the same way about the blonde, that same feeling, that same force that propelled her forwards.

Upon her arrival, the photographers and reporters flooded in from every direction. Despite using a private plane and a private airport, it seemed they’d managed to sneak themselves in. She heard the usual questions, her father’s name being thrown around like a poison arrow or stabbed into her sides like a cursed dagger. Her staff tried to make a way for her out of the building, but it was proving itself to be a rather difficult and complicated affair on account of the sheer number of cameras, camera drones, and people clogging up the large hall of the airport.

There was one reporter that said that name that was dancing in Haruka’s mind. She only got a glimpse of a drone with the letters “NRCO” holographically displayed on its metal body before she was finally pushed out into the outside world.

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Buenos Aires looked like a city stuck in time. While the rest of the world kept rising, the buildings growing taller and taller, piercing the skies and ripping up clouds, the Argentinian capital had decided to descend upon the bowels of the Earth.

The surface of the city looked like an arena. The tallest buildings barely made it to fifty-stories, and there were one-story and two-story houses everywhere.

It was incredibly colourful. There were houses painted in deep browns that were the envy of dirt, others with soft blues that rivalled the sky.

There was also graffiti all over the walls and the windows of the buildings. Images of bombs and people dressed in colourful skin-tight suits, images of faces Haruka didn’t recognize, images of music being played and people dancing.

It was a good day, the sky was mostly clear, and the streets were rather empty, on account of the underground lifestyle, which allowed the air to be clean and fresh even in such an enormous metropolis. All over the streets Haruka could see large metallic tubes, wide enough to fit two or three people shoulder to shoulder, coming from the ground and rising up, sticking to the walls of buildings and emitting a nearly transparent smoke, like thin water vapour, into the sky.

The entrance to the Sato training complex looked rather normal. It was a square concrete building, its construction purely functional, with very little care for aesthetics. Upon entering the building, Haruka and her attendants were faced with emptiness. Beyond the glass doors with the Sato Explosives logo stamped on, there was little more than floor, wall, and ceiling, all in an off-white colour that reflected the bright lights inside. The only remarkable things in the room, other than the fact it was almost remarkably unremarkable, were the two elevators in the wall at the other end of the hall. They were two large metal doors, side by side, with buttons in between them in the wall at about chest height, for Haruka. The doors were huge; even without seeing the inside of the elevators, Haruka could tell a single one would be enough for the twenty people that accompanied her.

Tapping the button, the elevator opened its doors after a couple of seconds. As expected, it was a wide box capable of comfortably fitting in everyone. The inside walls on every side were made of clear glass, providing a panoramic view on their descent. Someone pressed the button with the downwards arrow when they entered, and the elevator began its journey into the depths of the city.

Haruka was surprised by how bright it was. The city beneath the surface was huge, but the almost blinding lights managed to reach every edge and corner. The roof of the city was all covered in a reflective steel layer, while the ground was almost entirely a dull grey concrete. There, the buildings were much closer to what Haruka was used to seeing in other places around the world. They were still shorter than usual, but the metallic construction and the brutal presence of concrete provided a weird sort of nostalgic feeling in her, though there was no reason to feel that way at all, she thought.

All around, she could see those same metal tubes coming up into the surface, but this time she could see them reach into the roofs of restaurants, hotels, factories, and other shops, carrying their smoke to the surface. There were also several square constructions that reached from the ground below through the metal roof of the subterranean city. A few of them were transparent, and Haruka realised they were the many elevators that connected the world beneath to the surface.

As she exited the elevator, she felt at home. She saw people with skin-tight suits carrying the words “Sato Explosives” proudly on their chest, while others, wearing formal attire or sports gear, scurried around the entrance hall.

One of her trainers told her she was supposed to be in the workout room soon for endurance training and left in a hurry, her phone already buzzing, as Haruka found herself alone in the hall, surrounded by players and their staff running around the incessant noise.

She decided to sit on one of the few free chairs. It looked more uncomfortable than it was, the old metal thing was of rather skeletal construction. Regardless, it gave her some time to breathe.

She could feel the eyes on her. Everyone recognised her, but for better or for worse it seemed they weren’t interested in talking, but only in staring for too long. She wore her hair in a ponytail that day, it was rare for her to do anything with her hair at all, other than letting it be free, but she just felt like it that day. She had on a casual T-shirt, the same colour as the walls of the surface hall, great for travelling, as well as grey pants made of a very comfortable material that reminded her of the carpet on the plane, though really they weren’t very similar at all. She pulled out her phone, a little thing of metal and silica that felt like it would break if she so much as breathed on it too hard, though it had not even a scratch on the holographic display.

Haruka wasn’t too comfortable with technology, especially the smaller and more fragile things. She had purchased that model in particular because it was advertised as fall and scratch resistant, which was about as much of a compliment as there was for modern holographic devices, as far as she was concerned. Still, she didn’t like it, and only used it when there wasn’t a more stable and sturdy option available, such as when sitting alone on a chair in the middle of the training complex entry hall.

She typed those same two words that had been filling up her search history for the past few months. She had already seen the interview Zoe had given out the day after the last match, but she decided to look at it again.

Without her goggles on, Zoe looked much more feminine. Women made up a large portion of Demolition players, but the vast majority looked something like Haruka with her calloused hands and her sharp and rugged features. When Haruka thought of herself, she always felt that she looked scary. Zoe, on the other hand, was skinny, and her face looked soft. It looked like every part of her had been carefully put in its place, her freckles painted on one by one with a tiny brush, her eyes carved out of sapphire. Haruka thought she almost looked like she had been pulled out of a high-fashion magazine, if not for her overly casual, ill-fitting clothes. Her voice too, it was light and melodic, nothing like Haruka’s general emotionless demeanour.

Zoe answered the questions with a smile on her face, even as the loss was rubbed in her face by reporter after reporter;she remained strong and kept repeating the typical media-training stuff every other player would spit out when put on the spot. She was confident in her ability. She had been bested, but she would come back stronger. That sort of thing.

Even though she hadn’t really failed. Her machines had failed her, that was different, Haruka thought.

Haruka felt a force come from her left side, a landslide, screaming her name like a lightning strike.

“Haruka! It’s been so long! I’ve missed you!”

The voice sounded sweet and bubbly, like it was dancing in the air. Haruka recognized it immediately.

“We’ll be fighting in the next match right? Oo, I’m so excited!”

Haruka couldn’t help but smile. Furen Xu was smashing her face into Haruka’s as if trying to combine their heads into one single Demolition organism. Her hair was lighter than Haruka’s and carefully styled to frame Furen’s face and enhance her most beautiful features, her large dark eyes, her big mouth with plump pink lips, her little nose that held her thin-framed glasses up. Haruka looked away, trying to hide her blushing. She felt something in her throat, but spoke anyway.

“Xu.” Her voice sounded calmer than she felt, a soft rumbling laced her words. “Yeah, it’s been a while. I noticed your name on the listing, odd for us to be paired so early on… Surely you didn’t…?”

Furen feigned indignation, pulling away from Haruka with a push and slamming her hand in her own chest, holding the other to her cheek, her mouth slightly open as if she had no words to explain how much offence she’d taken to such an accusation.

“HARU! I would never mess with the integrity of our sport, how could you even imply that!?” As she spoke, her mouth turned into a wry smile, her voice crumbling to a giggling speech tied with a knot of glee and a thick coat of joy. “Come on. You’d end up facing your rival eventually! Be glad it’s early, yeah?”

Furen’s words were coated in an intoxicating sweetness. To Haruka, it felt like a witch beckoning a poor wanderer into a house made of cake and cookies.

The other girl looked at Haruka’s phone.

“Oh, that’s that girl, right? You lost to her in Beijing, I couldn’t believe it! But you beat her last round, right?” Furen continued. “Zoe Fern. What a weird one.”

Furen draped herself over Haruka once more, resting her head on the other girl’s shoulder with her arms around Haruka’s shoulders. Haruka wanted to agree, to smile and nod. Instead, she felt a twist in her guts and a pressure on her back. She carefully pushed Furen away, before standing.

“Sorry, Xu. I got practice, got to go.”

Haruka looked at the other girl’s face. Her eyes were widened in a surprise that clashed with her usual playful expressions. She didn’t manage to say anything to Haruka before she left for practice.

Time kept ticking.