When the light faded, a small, levitating, red raccoon looking animal appeared. It had a furry head, a bushy tail, and a set of fairy wings. The creature wearing a pair of green Arabian pants and a brown vest was one of Onigen’s familiars, Onigen being the all-powerful fuel source of the Hunger Games, I mean, Hunter Games.

“Hey there, stiffs. My name is Pachi. Not Papa, not Chi-Chi, just Pachi. And I’ll be teleporting you to the arena, where you will play for fame, fortune, and glory!” he cheered, his tiny hands stretching out ecstatically. His voice was a couple notches higher than Rocket from Guardians, and his personality, just as scruffy. “Now, before we get into the rules, we need to go over the complexity of arena diving. First, it is imperative that—hold on,” he paused, scanning the three. Then he picked up his stubby fingers to his face and started counting them. “One, two…three…” He looked up confused. “Aren’t you guys a little short?”

“You’re the short one!” Ash spat.

Felix took a step forward and insisted, “We are all here. Now, quit stalling, before—”

“HEY!” I shouted, waving the fur ball down. “WAIT!”

My team and I made it to the cliff, where Pachi eyeballed each of us, and asked, “Are you the Beta1-UJP team?”

“We are,” Reina said as she panted.

Pachi smiled. “Oh boy! You barely made it. You came just in time for lift off.”

“Hey, guys! Glad you made it!” Felix said with a big smile on his face, as if he just hadn’t screwed us all over! He relocated Reina, he stashed Naomi’s phone, and he turned off my alarm clock just so we would miss the games.

“Yeah, thanks to you, here we are,” I said sarcastically. “That’s a dirty trick you guys pulled.”

“Yah, you’re right. I tried to make you miss it,” Felix admitted with a guilty chuckle. Gun looked away from us shamefaced, and Ash stood right next to him, whistling like she had no part of it. “Look, I did it for my team. I knew we’d get an edge if a team was out, so—”

“But you almost got us disqualified!”

“Oh,” Pachi cooed, summoning a chair and a tray of berries before he reclined himself. “This is gonna be good!”

Felix shrugged. “Hey, as far as I’m concerned, that’s just one less team to worry about. Sorry you didn’t think about it first.”

Reina jumped, snatching Felix’s collar as she began barking at him. “The two of you and your filthy tricks! Do you know how hard it was for me to scale the wilderness in my bare feet, with the threat of monsters around every turn?! I could have been killed!”

“You’re a hunter, Reina.” Felix smirked. “We had faith in you.”

“Calm down, Reina, it’s just some honest, competition fun,” Ash tried to calm her down, but Reina wasn’t having any of it. She was ready to lunge at Ash, the cat girl yelping and hiding behind Gun before I snatched her.

“It’s not worth it,” I said, Reina writhing to break free from my arms. “It’s done.”

“Oh, it’s done alright! This will not be forgotten,” Reina said through gritted teeth.

“Alright, alright. Fine, fine,” Felix said, giving up. “No more dirty tricks from us. But you have to admit, it was a pretty good plan. Almost worked too.”

“That’s no way to win a tourney,” Gun sighed as he rubbed his nape. I could tell his team’s cheating made him uncomfortable, but it was two against one. “We should all get fair game. And these guys, they are our friends. I don’t care about customs. We are better than that.” He turned to us and apologized. “Sorry about all of this….”

“No point in holding grudges. Let’s just keep this incident in the past, alright? I don’t want this to get out of hand,” I said, Reina finally relaxing a bit.

“Of course,” Felix said. Ash mumbled her apology, prompting Naomi to step up to Felix.

“So, can I get my phone back?”

“It’s safe, tucked away behind your wall clock,” Felix said.

“How ironic….”

I gave a curt nod and turned to Pachi, who was grinning and eating all his berries throughout. For him, I bet he’d seen this stuff happen all the time. But like Gun said, I didn’t want this incident to come between us. Quite honestly, I didn’t think that they had it in them to fuck us up like that. But I could tell that Felix was the mastermind behind that plan, and he had convinced Ash to go along with it. I’d heard about teams being disqualified in the games, and for some reason, tricks like this had never crossed my mind.

I guess I was too naïve.

Reina was big time upset about it—Naomi, not so much. It gave me perspective on how much winning this tournament meant for them, which had me thinking again about the real reason Reina wanted her hunting license so badly.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“That’s it?” Pachi asked, a hint of disappointment in his voice. “No scrapping? Name calling? Hair pulling?”

“Sorry to burst your incredibly small bubble,” Naomi said sarcastically.

Pachi sighed, getting up from his levitating seat just for him to fold it and have both the chair and the empty bowl of berries disappear in thin air. “Best part of my job, but all right…” he mumbled to himself, before he turned toward us again with a different energy.

“Okay, I’ll go over the rules as quickly as I can, here. We are short on time. So let’s just jump right into it! Allow me to introduce myself again since you’re all here now. My name is Pachi, one of Onigen’s familiars. His favorite familiar, by the way. And I take my job here real seriously.”

As he introduced himself, I turned my head over my shoulder to wave goodbye to sensei. He waved subtly and went back into his portal, where he’d be going back to his dojo to see the broadcast from his TV. Unlike the other mentors who would be in the arena’s seating ring in the sky, Hayashi voted not to participate live. He was never an advocate for the games, but by watching it, he was still supporting us, which meant a lot to me.

I turned back around to our teleporter and continued to listen to his instructions. “Now, it should go without saying that there is no swapping teammates. And if you attempt to side with a team, you will be automatically disqualified. Worse yet, your sponsor count will drop to zero. That’s how much the corp hates doubling up. Remember, the strength of our operation is teamwork. The games are designed to test your mettle, not your ability to form alliances. If you’re smart, you’ll keep that in mind. So if you find yourself with a little imp on your shoulder telling you to do something sneaky, don’t do it!” he warned, his last words coming off as a teacher schooling a bunch of five-year-old kids.

“Something else that will get you disqualified is trying to break the arena’s barriers. The way that the arena is laid out from top to bottom goes like this: big timer ring in the sky, tiered stadium seating, game elements within, arena and the outlining arena barriers. They are red lines on the ground which indicate transparent walls that, once touched, bounces the participant back in the ring. There have been cases where some of our participants thought it was a good idea to break down a wall. We at the Hunter Games take sponsor and guest safety seriously. Outside the box is for them. Inside the box is for you guys. So not only will you be put down if you attempt a stunt like this, you-will-be-arrested. Your hunter license will be stripped, and your shameless antics will be forever remembered in the history of Organization VII. So, don’t do it!” he repeated, wagging his little finger.

“Also, there is no swapping items in the games between other teams, no time-outs, and no sponsor shout-outs. They are barely able to see you if it weren’t for the floating big screens up there, anyway. So they are definitely not going to be able to hear you. Any questions so far?”

“Just one—when do we get to access the items that our sponsors gave us?” I asked.

“You’ve all been told to bring your H-Tecs with you, right? Once you enter the arena, total immersion will initiate. Your items will appear on your system board, and they will become accessible to you. You’ll also be able to see the HP of your teammates, but not their location.”

“And our personal items?” Gun asked.

“Absolutely no personal items allowed in the arena. I will show you where you can store your phones, and keys, and all of that good stuff.”

“I have a question!” Ash asked, urgently raising her hand up nice and high. I could already tell by the childish expression on her face that this question wasn’t as important as she was making it seem. “Why are you so short?”

Really?!

He turned his back to us and crossed his arms over his chest smugly. “Now, since we don’t have any serious questions, let’s—”

“Hold on,” I stopped him. “You forgot to mention arena diving?”

“Huh?” Pachi said, and then a light went off in his head as he pivoted back to us. “Oh, right! I almost forgot. I got so caught up in the drama, but that’s the most important part of our short introduction. Arena diving is a quick but dangerous process. We must all hold hands and remain holding hands the entire time. I get that nerves are high, and your sweat glands are all over the place, but if we break the link, then you’re risking getting lost in the vortex. My nose is sharp, but not that sharp. It will take me days, if not weeks to find you in any one of the dimension pockets you could have fallen through. It’s not worth it. It creates more unnecessary work for me. So—”

“Don’t do it,” Gun mocked playfully with a grin. “Yeah, yeah, we get the picture. Now, let’s get to the ring already! I’m all fired up and ready to roll!”

We were all set with the rules, so Pachi turned back around and assumed the position. The raccoon clapped his hands three times, and a blinding light flashed before my eyes. Silly Ash whipped out her phone and started taking pictures once the light started to swirl and change all types of translucent colors. Then Pachi started doing these stretch exercises, before he finished prepping off with a quick set of squats.

He clapped his hands together and rubbed them. “All right! Had to get warmed up!” He had one hand in the sphere of light, and the other reaching out to us. “Come on. One of you man up and take my paw.” He wiggled his fingers enticingly, Ash running to the opportunity.

“Aww, they are so cute and small!” she sang softly as she caressed the back of his hand lovingly, only to be rewarded with a firm slap. “Ouch!”

“I said grab, not pamper!” Pachi hissed. “I’m not a pet!”

“You sure do look like one,” she mumbled, taking his hand and starting the chain.

“All right. This weird one here is your anchor,” Pachi said in a louder voice as the sphere of light began to warble and churn. “If you break off beyond this point, you’re as good as gone!”

Gun took Ash’s hand, and Felix took Gun’s.

Reina was the closest to Felix, but she turned to me and refused. “I can’t look at that man after what he did,” she whispered to me. “He bribed Ashley to pin Gun down and have her clones haul me away!”

“Reina, squash all of that, all right?” I smiled. “We aren’t going to hold grudges against our friends.”

“Friends? It was 100% intentional!”

“He promised he won’t do it again. This game is important to me too, so I know how you feel. I do. But we need to move on. Learn to forgive and forget.”

“I’m not like you, Nero… it’s not easy for me to brush something this serious off like that.”

“It’s okay if you need time. You’ll get there. Let’s not let one incident ruin what we have with the other team. Besides, that’s your boyfriend’s best friend!”

She blushed. “Boyfriend?!”

“So you at least have to try to like him!” I teased, wedging myself between her and Felix. I grabbed his hand, trusting he wouldn’t do something as cold as release mine. He had all the tools in the world to do it, too, his wind being able to slip between his grip and simply blow me, Reina, and Naomi away.

Once Reina and Naomi locked hands, it was time to head into the arena and show the world what we got.