Jones and Kiger made a quick stop by Jones’s place so he could get more formally dressed. The whole time Kiger had to wait. So, of course, he was like a kid waiting for his parents to get up so they can unbox their Christmas presents. When Jones had finished replacing his casual clothes with his formal cloak, long pants, and dress shoes, all black, of course.

Kiger sprung up from the couch he was sitting on and practically dragged Jones to the door and through the portal. They stepped through a gate into a courtyard of a dome-like skeletal building made of marble with rooms clearly visible from the outside. Jones could see other gods walking around inside the skeletal building. Some of them going into and coming out of booths. Jones had a sudden epiphany, the booths the gods used to create, looked like the same booths that men and women on earth used to vote.

The thought made Jones chuckle slightly. Kiger had speed walked a good 10-15 paces before he noticed that Jones had stopped to observe the building.

“Hurry up, ya slow poke.”

Jones just sighed and followed Kiger into the building. As Jones followed Kiger through the marble structure, he noticed that there were a fair few other people in the building, more than normal, at least. Jones was getting a couple of looks here and there. Some were friendly, those were usually the ones newer to the arena or used to rule it, and others were not so friendly. Those were the ones who tend to be in “fashion” right now.

‘The vets are looking for someone to backstab, the rookies are looking for a friend, and the ones with power are trying to keep it that way. But everyone can smell an upheaval in the current balance of power.’

I stopped pondering these thoughts as Kiger walked up to a door of a room with no windows and just phased through the door. This didn’t phase Jones, though. He had seen that trick many times before. Kiger opened the door from the other side and excitedly ushered Jones inside.

When Jones entered, he saw what looked at first glance to be a human. Jones was perplexed, he had told Kiger to change it up a bit.

Jones took a seat on a couch that just seemed to appear and waited for Kiger to explain himself. Kiger cleared his voice and started talking,

“This is your average human, around 5’ 5” (165.1 cm) and roughly around 150 pounds,”

Kiger waved his hand, and the human changed. It became shorter with more muscle and with more hair.

“I took away physical points from their height and added that to their muscles and more body hair. On the mental side, I got rid of the paranoia trait and some other stuff like that and added the Heart of a worker, which makes them derive happiness from working.”

I examined the being, looking over the stronger upper body muscles. I thought of something and posed a question to Kiger.

“So what about magic?”

“Magic? What about Magic?”

Kiger said in a tone that blatantly stated that he had no interest in the subject. Jones sighed. He knew that in the arena, magic is a very great advantage. So over the next few hours Jones convinced Kiger to give his people magic and helped Kiger make a magic system.

____________________________________________________________________________

Walter had gotten back to “base” after a couple hours of hiking. When he got back, he saw Bunden by the fire listening to the radio, which was tuned into the American Forces Network. Walter knew if Harly were here, he would not be happy about the potential loss of the radio just cause they wanted to listen to music. ‘Thank god he isn’t here then.’ Walter thought as he walked up to the fire, put his heavy bag down, and sat on a log.

Bunden gave Walter a look and said.

“Where did your helmet go?”

“Sarge took it along with my NVGs.”

Walter said with the whiny tone of enlisted men everywhere who have just been told no or had something taken away. Bunden just gave Walter a knowing look and a nod before going back to sharpening his Kukri. Walter sighed and started going through the bag of loot.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

After a couple hours of sorting and stashing stuff in the cave, the sky had turned a reddish-orange glow as the sun started to move below the horizon. When Walter had finished impulsively organizing the loot. He stepped out of the cave and into the setting sun's final rays of light. Walter strolled over to Bunden and tapped him on the shoulder with an MRE, then handed it to him.

Walter was carrying another one for himself, so they started to eat together. Walter noticed that Bunden had his L85A3 propped up on a log as he ate. Seeing Bunden’s weapon reminded Walter that he had left his MG3 in the cave, but he still had his P8 pistol on his hip. ‘For all the good that will do.’ Walter thought as he reflected on his past experiences of combat in this new world.

Just as Walter started to get up, he saw Bunden quickly place his food to the side and reach for his rifle. Bunden’s eyes were locked on something behind Walter.

“Contact,”

Bunden said nonchalantly as if he was asking if I thought the food was good.

Walter, not being born yesterday, dove onto the ground putting the log between himself and the potential enemy while grabbing his pistol and ripping it from its holster.

“What’s wrong, friends?”

Came a female voice. Walter looked back to Bunden, who had snatched up his rifle and scrambled over his own log for cover, and was now just barely peeking his eyes over the top of the log. Walter seeing that Bunden didn’t start getting shot at as soon as he peeked out, decided to do a little peeking himself.

Walter slowly lifted his head until he had a good view.

‘Fucken Japs got it right.’ Walter thought as his eyes landed on a woman who looked 18-20 with white hair, green eyes, white cat ears, and a white tail with gray spots. She had a tunic made of animal hide along with a crude pouch. She had in her hands a wooden spear with a stone tip. The stick part seemed to have been wrapped in hides too. While Walter had been giving the lady a once over, Bunden had been formulating a question in his mind.

“Nice to meet you; my name is Bunden, and that stary-eyed kid over there is Walter. Could you please tell us who you are and what you want?”

Bunden said slowly and sarcastically.

“You haven’t been informed?”

She gave them a look which portrayed the unbelievable confusion she must be feeling at that moment. Walter and Bunden glanced at each other and shrugged. Both of them hadn’t heard anything. Bunden took control of the conversion at this point.

“You stay there, Walter. Keep your eyes on her; if she tries anything, drop her. I’m going to push this one up the chain.”

Bunden quickly moved over to the radio and started flipping through frequencies until he reached the one he was looking for. He then grabbed the receiver and started talking into it.

“Papa bear, this is Elite 1-4. We have a person with cat ears and stuff like that saying that we should have been informed about something, how copy over.”

A calm, professional male voice responds.

“Received Elite 1-4, Papa bear is currently sleeping; you are speaking to Tower 1-2 right now. I can wake Papa bear up, but he isn’t going to like it, over.”

“Sorry, Tower 1-2, but this is pretty urgent, so could you wake him up, over.”

“Rog, wait one.”

After a few seconds of waiting, another voice came on the radio. This voice, however, was a lot gruffer than the first.

“What’s the problem this time, Elite 1-4?”

“Papa bear, we have a cat girl here saying we should have been informed about something. Normally I wouldn’t have taken a girl saying that at face value, but that girl has cat ears and a cat tail, which, as far as I can tell, we don't have back on earth.”

A long sigh and a mumbled curse later, the gruff voice replied.

“Shit, Well, I should have told you about that sooner. I have managed to get an alliance with Tatena. No, it doesn’t matter who she is. Just think of her as the ruler of the natural world. You got that.”

Bunden’s voice was slightly gruffer, but that was it as he answered.

“Yes, loud and clear, sir.”

“If they got a plan, then you follow it but not to the letter, I don’t fully trust our new ally, and you shouldn’t either.”

“Got it, sir.”

“Good. If you need any fire support, send those requests to Tower 1-2, I’m going back to sleep.”

With a clack and a split second of white noise, he was gone. But he was quickly replaced with the much more friendly tone of Tower 1-2.

“Wow, how did you guys manage to make him grumpier.”

“No fucken clue,”

Bunden replied.