There’s a moment that comes, maybe your fourth or fifth time on a stage where ten thousand people watch your every move, when all the attention in the world starts to mean a little less. It doesn’t kick your heart into gear like it used to. The spotlights stop blinding you. You get so used to being dazzled that all you can feel is the heat, that sweat on your spine, and the detached sense of self that comes with seeing your face broadcast live from thirty different angles. You look out over the sea and pick one of those thirty and make them the audience. You wave to yourself. Smile to yourself. And over time, the stage becomes less of a fright, and more of an act.

I’ve spent my entire life preparing for that show. But tonight? Atop the Metro Blockhouse itself, watched by twenty rivals, two hundred stream cams, two hundred thousand fans, and one champion?

Tonight feels like I’m doing it live.

I stand flanked by darkness and bisected by light. Sister on one side, jittering fingers the other, a wide crimson curtain the only thing keeping me from the sea of humanity waiting just beyond the stage. Dazzling spotlights slash through as a shifting wind of aura plays with the curtain’s hem. I can’t help it. My heart races like it does before every fight. Drumming an adrenaline beat into my ears so loudly I can’t even hear my sister’s words while she types final notes into a holographic screen.

I doubt I would listen even if I could. She’s an orbiting visitor of the world I’m about to storm. Content to remain in the shadow I cast, cool and detached and filling my head again with the most important points of the speech we scrambled to write two hours ago over a handful of energy drinks. She’s immune to the spectacle of what’s to come. All those eyes, all those cheers, all those people waiting to scream their support when I take to the light once again. She’ll never understand what I do: that it’s not about the words I say, but the heart behind them. And I’d have it no other way.

Her fingers work through my tie, fixing the knot I unconsciously loosened, and as they do, they brush against a wooden pendant of a chesspiece that hasn’t left my neck since the day I was given it. She stalls there. Lost in thought, undone tie in hand. The crowd roars behind her while the arena’s golden-tongued master of ceremonies whips them into a frenzy. He feeds them the tales of my exploits. A story of unrivaled conquest that began five short years ago, when I was just a boy and the world was a simpler place of good and evil, young and old, and I made my name fighting against the latter of both.

Enigmatic, that man stokes the flames of the mob with battle after battle, feat after feat, each more legendary and unbelievable than the last. Truth and fiction blur into a tapestry of words, and the people devour every thread. The last bastions of the university leagues fall one by one. Steadfast names of the minor leagues crumble in mere sentences. And at the top of them all, a corporation stronger than any other is laid low to thousandfold applause that laps at the curtain like ocean waves. Calling, beckoning, yearning for me to ignite the passion and dreams that lie just on the other side.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Yet as my sister’s small fingers halt against that game piece, mine close around hers, and neither of us heed that call just yet. The Section celebrates the triumph of my victories tonight. But there, in the dark behind the curtains, we alone are sobered by memories of the person who brought us here.

I remember again the fighter who pushed me to this stage, a boy of golden hair and quiet wisdom who hailed from a land of rice and seaside breezes. He’s been gone now longer than I ever knew him. Yet it feels like every time I turn, he’s only just faded. The world is weaker for his absence. But even if it conspires to forget him, I keep his memory close, because I never will.

I wonder what he would say if he saw me now, frozen in a single slice of the light that I used to revel in when he knew me. Then my sister speaks, and I know for certain.

“You’re next,” she tells me, parting with a smile.

All the tension that binds me leaves in a breath. Certainty replaces it in a skin-tingling inhalation. Long strands of a crimson mane flap over my shoulder as the current of my passion ignites. White flames burn into ignition as they create a shimmering field beyond my skin. Then comes the wind. Furious, kinetic, drawing in the excitement of the stands like the air itself is taking in an anticipating breath.

A dammed flood of human excitement builds beyond the curtain. I roll my neck from side to side. Bounce on my heels. Gotta get the blood pumping somehow. The moment my sister turns and darts to stand just outside the light, I rip out the highest buttons of my shirt and roll my sleeves to the elbows, casting them underfoot.

She’ll kill me when she watches the replay. But there’s a time and place for propriety. And I’ve never liked suits, anyways.

I open my heart to the tide and let the furor take me. My feet spring forward unbidden. Loud brass music thrums beneath my feet, shaking the tower with an omen of my arrival. Rebun’s voice rises into a grandstanding shout. Jolie sees my unbound collar and covers her eyes, slumping against the wall. Again, the roar builds. Again, my heart beats faster, fearing and loving and addicted to the thrill of the stage.

The crowd is ready. The spotlights are on, scorching the sandstone ahead with retro intensity. Everyone is watching. And there’s only one feeling singing through my nerves.

“Ladies and gentlemen, your Section’s newest rising star! The youngest fighter to ever reach the major leagues! Give it up for Mars Mons, the one, the only, SHOWMAKERRRRRRR!”