It was a damn ugly thing to see on the way to work, unsightly enough to make Sydney pause at the mouth of an alleyway. Four burly men, jeering and kicking a scrawny man who had curled up into a foetal ball in a desperate bid to protect himself. Not that it seemed to be doing him much good. As it turned out, curling up into a ball wasn’t much help unless you were an armadillo.

She stared down the alley and reached up to remove one of her earbuds, muffled Eurobeat music throbbing from her pinching fingers. A breeze rolled over her, tussling her wild mane of dark brown hair and tugging the open collar of her blouse.

Probably not a good idea to get into a fight before she even reached the gym but… to hell with it. She could call this a warmup. Sydney pocketed her buds and started down the trash strewn alley, unnoticed by the men taunting their chosen victim.

“Hey, come on, I think you’ve done enough damage to the guy. Leave him be, yeah?” Now she could at least say she tried to be diplomatic about things.

One of the burly men turned to face Sydney, a sneer plastered on his face. "And who the hell are you? Mind your own damn business before you get hurt," he growled, taking a step towards her. Sydney stood her ground, her jaw set in defiance.

"I'm someone who likes a fair fight, one on one. Something you pussies wouldn’t understand," she retorted, her voice steady despite the adrenaline coursing through her veins. The other men paused in their assault, sizing up this unexpected challenger.

She was rather tall for a woman (her high school basketball coach had wept when Sydney flatly refused to join the team), and her blouse and jacket did little to disguise her strong build. Certainly, she cut a more imposing figure than the guy cowering on the ground.

“So, what? All of us versus you? Would that be a more fair fight?” one of the punks, a scrawny man in an ill-fitting varsity jacket, mockingly asked.

A broad grin broke out across Sydney’s face. “Nah,” she bluntly replied. “You’d need way more of you bitches for this to be fair.”

The gathered men bristled with anger, all their smugness evaporating in an instant. Yet, for as furious as they were, some of the group were gripped with uncertainty. Sydney was too confident for her remark to be just baseless bluster.

The man in the varsity jacket found his nerve first and rushed toward her, and his men quickly loped after him with their fists raised.

Sydney's eyes gleamed with anticipation. She deftly side-stepped the first attack, grabbing the charging man's wrist and flipping him onto the ground with a deafening crack. The other three quickly realized that the feisty woman before them was no pushover.

She quickly weaved around the next few punches, her attackers flat-footed against her. With how much time she spent down by the boxing gym, it was all too easy to tell when she was going against people with no formal training. These were just assholes who relied on numbers and brute strength to get their way.

Handy against scrawny people who couldn’t hit back. But against Sydney, those strengths meant little.

A blow barely missed her chin. Sydney grinned and struck back with twice as much speed and first, mashing her fist into one man’s face with a resounding crack of impact. Blood coated her knuckles, his nose buckling under the pressure and his head snapping away from her fist.

“Like I said,” she huffed, kicking another attacker away when he got too close. “Not a fair fight.”

The rest of the brawl, if it could even be called that, did not last much longer. A few well placed blows clobbered each man in turn, until they were all beating a staggering retreat from the alley with busted noses and split lips.

“This bitch is crazy! Move, move!” the ringleader in the varsity exclaimed, leading his cohorts away in a mad dash.

“The fight ain’t as fun when you’re the one getting your shit kicked in, is it?” she called after them. She grunted and spat onto the ground. “Little bitches,” she muttered. A few beads of sweat dappled her brow, her heart racing from the rush of excitement. It was a bit more fun than simply pounding on a heavy bag, she supposed. But, generally, Sydney preferred bouts where her opponents could put up some sort of fight.

A small voice coughed behind her. “Um.. Th-thank you. I thought those guys were gonna kill me.”

She spun around sharply, a flash of fury still lingering in her emerald eye. The sight of it gave the scrawny man pause, drawing his hands up to his torn and dirtied shirt. For a moment he feared her was trading one asskicking for another.

Sydney snorted. “Don’t worry about it,” she replied, tucking her hands into her jacket pockets. “Word to the wise, though? Learn to fight your own battles.” She coldly examined him for a moment. From his slicked back blond hair, his cracked glasses, and semi-formal attire, she had him pegged as an office drone of some sort. Maybe a year her senior, at most.

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“I’m not… a violent guy,” he admitted, darting his eyes away from her. He recovered quickly, clearing his throat. “I didn’t even do anything to those guys, they just decided to jump me!”

“Yep. A risk you gotta deal with some times.”

“I… I don’t think society should operate like that,” he murmured. “I’m Joshua, by the way. Figure I should give my name to the woman who saved my life.”

“Sydney. Don’t worry about it.” She turned and went to leave, figuring she’d likely never see the man again. But, like a touch-starved puppy, he hastened after her.

“S-so are you like, an MMA fighter or something?”

She gave him a curious look from over her shoulder. “Nothing that fancy. I’m a bouncer. I’ve just spend a lot of time training at the gym down by 7th is all.” Fighting had been a large part of her life for as long as she could remember. She was good at it, she liked doing it, so why not find ways to indulge in it where she could?

Of course, most people looked at her like she had three heads if she ever said as much out loud.

“That’s… really impressive,” Joshua said, smiling up at the taller woman. “The world could do with more people like you. Someone to take down the crooks and bullies who’re out to make life hard for the little guy.”

Sydney rolled her eyes. There was no need to be that damn dramatic about it.

She rounded a corner, Joshua in tow, and could see the familiar boxy shape of Flagg’s Gym by the end of the block. “Look, I appreciate your gratitude and all, but you don’t gotta glaze me. I saw someone in trouble, figured I’d help out. That’s all-”

“But-”

She ignored him, took a step forward, and was instantly engulfed by a fireball that tore through the building to her right.

As far as deaths went, Sydney and Joshua suffered blissfully instantaneous ones. Wiped away in the blink of an eye in a deafening explosion. In the days that followed, investigators would chalk the whole thing up to an unfortunate accident. A gas leak in a restaurant, where those two were the only casualties of the incident.

Just a freak occurrence, of which there were hundreds every single day of the week. And aside from those who had known the two, much of the city paid the incident little mind once some bigger news story was picked up by the media.

On Earth, life went on as normal.

————————————-

Sydney opened her eyes. The smoky air of New York was gone, replaced with a fresh pine scent and a level of quiet that was totally unlike anything she was used to.

Gradually, her eyes adjusted to the sharp light of the room. She was seated in a wooden hexagonal chamber, five of the walls covered by bookshelves lined with scrolls. The sixth, right across from her, was taken up by a heavy pair of double doors.

She glanced upward and raised a hand to shield against the light of the chandelier above her.

“How the hell did I get here?” Sydney asked herself, wincing. She’d been heading to the gym for her morning workout, fought some dumb bastards who were hassling a random guy, and then…

Huh. That was odd. She couldn’t remember a damn thing.

And yet, as weird as this all was, she wasn’t really worried or anxious.

The doors slid open, almost silently, to reveal a sleek female form in a flowing white and red robe. Nothing inherently strange about that. Save for the fact that the woman had pale blue skin, and dagger-like elf ears. She looked up from the scroll in her hands and smiled brightly, the kind of forced ‘retail worker smile’ Sydney was very used to.

“Ah, Miss Carver!” the stranger cheerily greeted. “Sorry about the delay, I just had to have a brief chat with my superiors before I could meet you.”

“Uh, it’s okay,” Sydney replied. “Who… are you? And, uh, if it’s not rude to ask… what are you?” She would have assumed it was some sort of cosplay, but as the woman drew nearer it was clearly not the case. Again and eerie sense of calm settled over her head, dulling the anxiety she should have felt.

The strange woman chuckled, taking a seat across from her. “Call me Tulpa. I’m a spirit who’s here to oversee your role in the upcoming Game.”

Sydney gave her a flat look. “You’re gonna have to elaborate on a lot of that.”

“Aha, of course. I’m sure this is all very new to you. Well, full disclosure, you’re dead.” She let that blunt statement hang in the air for several seconds.

“Come again?”

Tulpa nodded. “Dead. Deceased. Your soul has transmigrated the physical realm. An unfortunate accident, as I understand.”

She should have been shocked. Sad. Horrified. Instead a strong and creeping numbness suddenly overwhelmed all other sensations in her mind. Dead. A full stop on her life.

A sad, bitter laugh escaped Sydney. “So, what, this is… Heaven?” she asked.

“Not quite. It’s something of a bridge, between one life and another,” Tulpa explained, tenting her slim fingers atop the desk. “I believe ‘Purgatory’ is a term thrown around by humans? Your body in your old life is gone. But your spirit can be reconstituted into a new one.”

“So reincarnation, huh?” she replied, still trying to digest everything she had been told. It seemed the Buddhists had the right idea of things. Though, admittedly, things looked much more bureaucratic than spiritual out here. “You decide if I get reborn as like… a cockroach, or a billionaire, or whatever?”

“Well under normal circumstances a soul is quickly reincarnated, given a new vessel relative to the sins and virtues of their prior life. You, however, are one of those rare exceptions.”

She leaned forward at that, her attention rapt. “This is about that… Game you mentioned earlier?” Souls were ferried and shuffled around for some weird ‘game’? The thought alone was bizarre. Sydney had never considered herself a spiritual person, never gave the afterlife more than a passing thought. But she had been expecting… fluffy clouds and fleets of angels.

This… all of it was a lot to take in. Yet Tulpa merely kept on, regardless, as if she were giving orientation to a new employee.

“I should stress that this isn’t something frivolous, Miss Carver. What we’re talking about is the greatest of games across the multiverse. A game conducted by some of the most powerful beings in existence,” the spirit explained calmly.

She leaned forward, meshing her fingers together. And for as calm as she had looked up to that point, a manic glint briefly shone in her eyes, and her smile went from friendly to… overly enthusiastic. So much so that Sydney actually flinched away from her, just a bit.

“You’re one of the Chosen, for the Game of the Gods.”