Miami, Florida, New American Republic, December 2036
“Isn’t this just a crazy coincidence!” Jayde called out.
The tall man seated at the sidewalk bar and grill table turned.
The smile dropped into horror. “Oh my god! Your face!” Ledge gasped.
“Is it that bad?” Jayde said as she gingerly touched the stitched line going from the left side of her mouth halfway up her cheek.
“Yes! What the hell happened!”
“It’s called the Freedom Championships, Gold Division,” Jayde rolled her eyes.
“You haven’t been watching?” Dayana said.
“No. I liked Bloodsport as a movie. Not as real life and especially not when old friends are fighting insane clowns for the entertainment of the disgusting masses,” Ledge said. “I’ve heard all about it form the rest of my guys. Lots of people have lots of money, gold, silver and universal points riding on you three, you know?”
“Yeah, we were just at your little hotel,” Hayden grimaced.
Ledge raised a brow.
“Keeping up appearances,” Hayden shrugged. “We put down Austin as our hometown and the Golden Eagles as our latest employers until going freelance. It’d be odd if we didn’t go over and say what’s up.”
“I guess that’s how you knew where to find me,” Ledge said.
“Yeah,” Dayana said. “We followed your not so secret bodyguards.”
“Look at you, actually in charge of an entire operation,” Jayde said.
“I had no choice. Drew the short stick,” Ledge shrugged.
“Hello! Will you be joining your father!” a waitress came over.
They eyed the young woman’s collar.
“Er… yeah, sure,” Jayde said.
“We can eat,” Hayden said.
“Put it on his bill, please,” Dayana added.
“Right away!” the enslaved waitress smiled. “I’ll be right back with plates and menus!”
Ledge waited until she had walked back into the interior before speaking. “I’ve heard about this place for a while. Can’t believe it’s real. Like I’m inside some kind of surreal hell.”
“We’ve been here a few weeks and what bothers me the most is that it’s starting to feel normal,” Hayden said.
“Like, I don’t want to think about what those collars mean and what it means for the people, so I’m trying to not even notice them, which is wrong,” Jayde said.
“Then, let’s not talk about it. Especially not in the open. There are definitely ears we don’t want catching us being negative about the whole… slavery thing,” Ledge said.
“You mean ‘essential workers’,” Dayana’s face twisted.
“Might not have to worry about that too much,” Hayden pulled out a small ruby from her pocket before stashing it again. “A little gift from a wizard. Should keep magical eyes and ears off us.”
“What about people just listening in from the next table?”
“Not so much,” Hayden conceded.
“Okay then…”
“Do you have anything to say? In regards to your ‘Boss’ and why the Golden Eagles are here?” Hayden said. “Cause, I’m surprised to see all of you here.”
“Well… I’m here with most of the Austin-based eagles. Vegas has been growing in recent years, as you know, and it’s taking more of us to keep things under some semblance of control. Lots of biker-types, marauders, raiders, wandering adventuring bands, murderhobos coming in and out. It’s starting to be a pain to keep them out of the bat people’s encounter challenge. So, when our sometimes other ‘Boss’ came by with a new Quest, we couldn’t quite go all-in. Still, these championships are a legitimate opportunity to level and get good rewards even in the lower divisions.”
“I noticed that you didn’t have anyone in the Gold Division contests. Too chickenshit?” Jayde said.
“We need all our 40-pluses in Vegas to keep things from devolving.”
“Why not ask the rangers for help or something?” Dayana said.
“We need to show we can handle it ourselves.”
“Fair enough,” Dayana said.
They fell silent when the waitress returned with plates, utensils, menus and drinks.
“Our latest batch! Micro-brewed by the master, citrus sour beer!” she smiled.
“We didn’t order—” Ledge began.
“Complements of the master!” she pointed to the bar where a fat man waved. “For the Heartfuries!”
“Uh… thanks,” Hayden said.
They waved back hesitantly.
“Are you ready to order?”
They ordered quickly to get the waitress away so they could get back to their conversation.
“Fat fuck’s going to want autographs and pictures,” Jayde said.
“You’ve got to play the game you signed up for,” Ledge said.
“Don’t have to like it,” Hayden said.
“You think if I knock out that slaver fatty it’ll stop this sort of thing from happening? I don’t want them to think I’m okay with them,” Jayde said.
“Worth a shot,” Dayana said.
“Look, keep your heads down… as much as you can. That’s what I’m doing. We’re here to participate in the Freedom Championships and maybe pick up some contracts for mercenary work as befitting a real life mercenary company.” He lowered his voice, “until the sometimes ‘Boss’ gives the word and hopefully some instructions.”
“So, Ledge, you’ve got quite a bougie setup over at that hotel. Nice pool, restaurant and bar on the ground floor, nice ring of protection around the whole area,” Jayde said.
“Bougie?” Ledge raised a brow.
“She’s trying to impress this guy back in SoCal. So, she’s reading now,” Dayana snorted.
“As in books? Actual books,” Ledge gasped.
“Shut the fuck up, you two,” Jayde said.
“Wow! Things have changed since I last saw you,” Ledge paused to sip the citrus sour beer. “Bit sour… you can taste the orange though… yeah, they set us up pretty nicely. Trying to impress. Got all the different outsider merc groups gathered in a centralized location surrounded by regular and slave soldiers. Seems reasonable. Can’t say I blame them. Some of these groups are just one step above from being raging crazies. Some are literal cannibals.”
“It’s a powder keg though, right?” Hayden said. “I know you’ve been taking the pulse. How much would it take?”
“To get things hot and boiling out of the pot? At this stage? A lot. Everyone’s here for the championships. Those rewards are too good. Even at the Bronze Division level. No one is going to willingly screw things up… at least while the events are still going on,” Ledge said.
“Thanks, Ledge,” Dayana said.
“No prob—”
“You are useful at times,” she finished.
Ledge sighed.
“That’s a bit unfair, Dayana,” Jayde said.
“Please, don’t help,” Ledge put his head into his hands.
“You see, at least he’s mostly not unuseful… most of the time,” she continued.
“I don’t even…” Ledge groaned. “Okay, change of topic. You’re face. Why isn’t it fixed? My understanding was that healing was to be provided.”
“They did. I refused,” Jayde shrugged. “I figure we’ve got at least one more match. Better wait till after we’re done. And maybe I don’t want to be healed by slavers or enslaved people. Makes me complicit, you know. Besides, there’s healers back in SoCal and a bunch of, like, actual plastic surgeons.”
“It’s also pretty intimidating,” Dayana said. “You look at her and you know she’s seen and done some shit.”
“Clowns, huh? Didn’t know that was combat-viable, in retrospect I probably should’ve,” Ledge said.
“I owe that fat freak. Too bad winning means we can’t get into the 1v1’s like them,” Jayde said.
Their food arrived and they ate and spoke mostly about the championships.
The Heartfuries wouldn’t know their next opponents until the random draw later that evening.
“Heartfuries, huh? I got confused when I saw that there was another team called Furies and it wasn’t you. The fact that they’ve got promo packages of you three like you were pro athletes from the old days,” Ledge sighed.
“Yeah, it was pretty stupid having to shoot that,” Dayana said.
“I just added it to my list of grievances with the slaver kingdom,” Jayde said.
“Guys,” Hayden gazed up at the big screen TV inside the bar and grill, “it’s about to start.”
“What is?” Ledge said.
“You didn’t think we came here just to have lunch with you, did you?” Dayana said.
“SwannyP’s got a match,” Jayde said.
“Swanny— you mean Prim?”
“Yeah, she’s in a ranger team doing the MOBA competition, Silver Division. They’re going up against a team from the Meat Parade,” Dayana said.
“What? Why are you letting her do that?” Ledge’s voice got high.
“We’re not. She’s 18 now,” Hayden said flatly.
“But, she’s facing the Meat Parade!”
“I know,” Hayden said.
“They’ve got rules and they’re following them so far,” Dayana said.
“Even if they don’t, Swanny and the rangers can handle this,” Jayde said.
“God damn it. She shouldn’t even be doing this shit. Hell, neither should you three. Fuck! I hate all this killing and dying and getting cut up,” Ledge looked up to the sky, “fuck you, God!”
“If he exists—”
“She,” Jayde corrected.
“God wouldn’t have a gender,” Dayana corrected.
“If, they exist,” Hayden continued, “they don’t give a fuck about us. Otherwise, none of this fucked up shit would be happening.”
“Always and forever,” Dayana nodded.
“I’m not watching this, let’s switch,” Ledge said.
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He swapped places with Hayden so that his back was to the TV.
Fortunately for him the ambient sounds of the sidewalk traffic and the packed bar and grill meant that he wasn’t going to hear the broadcaster play by play of the upcoming match.
“So, they lost their first match, right?” Jayde said.
“Yeah, but it’s a group stage format, so they’ve got two more matches. Win both and they’re a lock to advance to the knockout rounds. Win one and it’ll depend on tiebreakers,” Dayana said. “There’s a formula using total match time and the team’s KDA.”
“I have no idea what all that means,” Ledge said.
“Kills, deaths, assists ratio,” Dayana said.
It took a while to explain how that worked to the older man.
----------------------------------------
Everglades, Florida, December, 2036
The MOBA-style event was held far to the southeast of Miami in the Everglades.
The national park had been home to encounter challenges and spawn zones after the spires had appeared. It had been a constant struggle for the people in the area until the slaver kingdom had arisen to force it into a mostly controlled region meant for farming levels, universal points and the occasional bonus rewards.
It had been a monumental undertaking to turn parts of it into a handful of arenas for the competitions.
A MOBA-style event required a much larger space than those provided by the sports stadiums and arenas already located in the city and surrounding areas.
So, the slaver kingdom made them.
Through a combination of magic, Skills and good, old-fashioned heavy machinery they had built several battlegrounds roughly a square mile in size with varied terrain within to create three lanes and a small river bisecting the square at a forty-five degree angle. Trees served as walls, creating twisted jungle paths that hid monster camps and ambush points.
Many architects, construction workers, builders, earth mages, geomancers and the like leveled up quite well from the nearly year long project. Beast tamers, monster handlers, wranglers and more leveled up from the work they put in turning all manner of creatures into serviceable creeps and… well… jungle monsters.
In a normal world the cost would’ve been staggering to the slaver kingdom.
After all, just to build a few stadiums for a ball kicking competition you had to sacrifice the lives of a few thousand migrant workers in addition to spending millions. An acceptable amount of blood and gristle to mix into the mortar for the foundations of worldwide entertainment and money. Not to mention the added bonus of reputation laundering.
A time-honored tradition.
Spend money to hide your evil dealings.
Donate to the arts and education to distract from the fact that you gained that wealth through creating a legal drug epidemic that ruined hundreds of thousands of lives that didn’t need to be ruined.
Well… since when did lives need to be ruined in the first place?
Spend a billion on sports teams to hide the abuses and sometimes murder inextricably linked to your fortunes.
Or hold a competition to make collars around the necks of human beings look different from what it truly was in reality.
The slaver kingdom got off cheaply in that regard.
They didn’t have to pay much to their people.
The spires took care of most it.
Quests.
Universal points, the odd bonus.
Levels.
The bit of cash the slaver kingdom threw on top of all that was like extra sprinkles on a five-layer cronut.
The start countdown hit zero.
The siren rang.
Prim, Swanny, SwannyP, Swannysaurus Rex, officially Swan Princess sprinted up the middle lane.
She stifled the urge to slap the small camera drone hovering above.
Her teammates rushed down their own lanes.
She eyed the monsters running in front of her. Waist-high bipedal things she had never seen before their first match on the first day of the championships.
She was leery of the slaver’s assurances that the collars wouldn’t fail. That the monsters, creeps, would do as they were programmed.
Attack the opposing team creeps, unless an opposing competitor attacked her, at which point they’d switch their focus.
Ranger Neckbeard had given the team a crash course on the history of the video game genre this ridiculous event was based on. Along with principles and something called a ‘meta’.
She got it.
She was sharp, quick on the uptake when it came to strategic and tactical combat. Lots of hard work and practice. First, in the ranger academy, then through the brutal grinder that was the undead war.
A stupid game wasn’t something that gave her pause.
Then, why did they lose the first match?
“This is just a game,” she muttered.
She had identified their problem.
The ranger team hadn’t treated it like a game.
It was all so stupid to her.
They didn’t start out with any weapons or most of their armor.
They only had their abilities and their base layer.
To get their stuff they had to earn gold by killing creeps and knocking out opposing players.
The HUD in the AR glasses provided by the slaver kingdom gave her everything she needed to know.
She reached the middle of the arena.
Her melee creeps clawed and bit at the opposing teams melee creeps, while the ranged ones shot out little spines from their arms.
The plan for her was simple, earn gold to get her gear before really engaging her opposing mid.
The Meat Parade were not as gear dependent as the rangers thanks to the cannibals’ ability to assume an eater form.
And she was fairly sure that they wouldn’t go into a match without full stomachs to power said transformation.
Sure enough her opposing mid went eater transforming into a hulking woman beast with a massively distended jaw, gaping with sharp teeth. Muscles bulged grotesquely all over the flesheater’s body as clawed fingers tore deep furrows into the dirt.
Prim aimed a spell as the woman knocked through all of the creeps like a bowling ball.
The tall grass in the low river a dozen feet to her left rustled in warning.
She was already sprinting back down her lane as a second flesheater burst out of the grass.
This one was much leaner, but no less grotesque.
Prim pointed a hand at each flesheater.
Dual-casting.
“Spectral Chains!” something she gained as a reward from San Diego for the quick, agile flesheater.
Ghostly chains manifested out of nothing to wrap the eater up like Prim’s favorite weighted burrito blanket.
“Fireball!” a classic for the slower, stronger eater.
The flaming ball exploded in the eater’s face.
Time to go for a knockout and send the two eaters back to base for their death penalty.
Got a bit lucky to down two of them so early.
It’d give her enough gold to get some of her armor.
The tall grass in the river to her right rustled.
What the fuck! she thought. They sent three? Goddamnit Neckbeard! I asked you and you said this doesn’t happen!
A pretty, black woman emerged into the lane.
To Prim’s surprise the woman didn’t transform.
“Light Arrow Barrage,” the woman thrust her hands at Prim with a flourish.
Caught off-guard Prim dived to one side.
A few light arrows pierced straight through her padded gambeson to draw blood.
Her HUD flashed red in warning.
How the slavers managed to create something that could track damage was worrisome.
Though, in the moment she was more bothered by the fact that they had decided that she was on the low end of the scale when it came to hit points.
To be fair, she was basically just a normal human in a physical sense, sure she was in great shape, but she didn’t have any passives that made her stronger or tougher like some of her fellow rangers.
A few more arrows and she’d have to head back to base to wait out her knockout timer.
“Fuck that!” she snapped.
One hand thrust at the flesheater mage. Another at the behemoth. The agile one was still wrapped up.
She cast her specialty.
“Spell Orb: Fire.” For the latter. “Spell Orb: Ice.” For the former.
The flesheater mage threw up a hasty magic shield to block the jagged shards of ice shooting out of the white-blue orb orbiting her in an evasive pattern.
The behemoth roared as the orange-red orb blasted her with small bolts of fire.
Prim fell back to her first tower as more creeps appeared.
These ones made a beeline for the lean flesheater. They fell upon the chained up man biting, clawing and spiking.
Prim gasped for air.
Too many quality spells in quick succession had left her winded.
She’d have to wait a bit before casting another one.
For now she was content to wait in the safety of her tower.
The eater mage looked like she had no trouble blocking the ice shards, but with luck the fire orb would finish off the big eater. Or send her into a rage as they tended to do. At that point she’d charge into the tower’s range and finish herself off.
Flesheater Randall, you are out. Return immediately to your base to serve the penalty. Ranger Swan Princess, please remove your root spell, the referee’s voice rang loud and clear through out the whole battleground.
First KO gold bonus on top of the regular KO gold. Prim took it with a feral smile. Just a bit longer and she could finish off the big eater.
“Wow! That was awesome! Way to go SwannyP!” Jayde whooped and cheered. She ran up and high-fived random people inside the bar.
The bar and grill was digging all the action.
Ledge had his head buried in his arms laying on the table.
“She handled that as well as she could’ve,” Dayana said. “So, she can go back to base and get healing? Her gear?”
Hayden merely grunted as the screen shifted to a different part of the battleground.
A young woman with blond hair that trailed into flames screamed while she punched a flaming fist into a creep’s sharp-toothed mouth.
Across from her, the flesheater, a young man slashed a clawed finger across a creep’s throat.
The pair kept a wary distance between each other while they focused on killing each other’s creeps.
Until, the eater suddenly grabbed his own creep and hurled it at the fiery ranger.
Caught off-guard the young woman fell to the ground with the creep stabbing her with the spines in its arms.
“Cheap ass, motherf—”
Monster flesh sizzled and cook as she shoved it off with flaming hands.
The eater pounced ignoring the flames to stab tough and sharp finger nails into her palm.
“I’m sending you back to your base,” the flesheater growled.
“I’ve been waiting so long to pay you back for what you did to my family!” she snapped back with a upkick to his groin. She scrambled to her feet and chased after the retreating flesheater with fiery punches.
A KO here and she could go back and buy her sword.
Then she’d cut the flesheaters up.
There was a no killing rule, but they didn’t say anything about dismemberment.
The camera cut away as the next wave of creeps arrived to join the brawl in the top lane.
It joined a ranger notably in his middle years. A stark contrast to the rest of his team young team. The stocky, bearded man bludgeoned dog-sized mutant squirrels with a large rock and a thick branch he had picked up in the twisting forest pathways in the space between the top and middle lane.
It was his second such camp. A few more and he’d clear this section of the battleground allowing him to earn enough gold to go back to base and buy his first piece of gear.
The camera switched to the bottom lane where a lone flesheater stayed close to her tower letting it shoot bolts down at the opposing creeps battling her creeps in its shadow. Occasionally, she darted forward to land the killing blow on a creep.
Sometimes that earned her a low-powered magic missile from the ranger mage standing just outside the tower’s range.
The dark-skinned ranger conserved her mana by doing much the same as the eater. She waited till an enemy creep was close to death before finishing it with a magic missile.
A second ranger stood to the ranger mage’s left placing himself between the tall grass in the low river and his teammate.
Back in the middle lane, Prim gained enough gold, so she ran back to base.
It took her a few minutes.
Normally, she was in great shape.
Now?
She had a few light arrow wounds leaking blood.
“I need healing,” she called out to one of the healers stationed at the back of the base next to the shop, “wait!” she went straight to the shopkeeper instead. “Give me my armor and a mana potion.”
The silent shopkeeper quickly placed the requested items on the counter and the appropriate amount of gold was deducted from her HUD.
Just enough left for healing.
“Healing!” she hurried over to the next station.
The healer said the magic word. His hands glowed as he ran them over Prim’s wounds.
She felt the uncomfortable sensation of open wounds closing.
Neckbeard came running up to the shopkeeper. “My coat!”
“You said it wasn’t the meta!” Prim snapped.
“What?” Neckbeard blinked.
“They ambushed me, triple team.”
“That’s not— do you know which ones?”
“I think it was the jungler coming from the top side river and a mage coming from bottom side.”
“Wait? Who was in mid?”
“Behemoth-type.”
“I have no idea,” Neckbeard shrugged. “I guess they were feeling spicy. You got out of it okay, right?”
“Yeah. Knocked out the jungler and forced the behemoth-type to run back to base. Didn’t see where the mage went. I think she went back into the river.”
“Damn. This is hard without communication. I really need to know how the other guys are doing. If they sent three to mid then bot probably had a man advantage. Wonder why Wichita and Tuxedo Cake aren’t back yet? I hope they didn’t go with a jank strategy and double-teamed Chandra in top,” Neckbeard’s brow furrowed in thought. “Alright, so when you get back to lane shade to the left, see if you can draw whoever their actual mid is to our side of the river. I’ll try to gank them.”
“Okay,” Prim muttered.
The terminology sounded so dumb, but she had to buy in if she wanted to win this stupid game.
Properly armored and back to full mana she hustled to her lane.
Neckbeard, buoyed by his armored and enchanted long coat sprinted back into the jungle. The magic in his coat made it as protective as a thick layer of steel plate while adding extra weight to all his strikes.
He breezed through the smaller creep camps with a big rock in one hand and a thick branch in the other.
The ambush point he had picked out contained a small opening through the thick hedges that allowed him to see into the middle lane.
Just as he had planned, Swan Princess shot low-powered spells aiming to last hit the creeps, while the behemoth-type flesheater inched closer to the young ranger.
Neckbeard moved closer to the open pathway as Swan Princess slowly pulled back, letting the eater kill her creeps. He got ready to spring when a rustling sound tickled the back of his neck.
He turned just as a dark shape hit him hard knocking him into the middle lane a few feet away from the melee.
“No!!!” Jayde groaned. “C’mon, man! Everyone knows you ambush the ambusher! What are you doing? Are the cannibals cheating? Do they have someone watching the broadcast and then feeding them info through their psychic cannibal bond?”
The bar and grill’s patrons cheered.
They were just happy to see violent action.
“Hey, guys…” Dayana said. “Do some of those cannibals look familiar to you?”