Match 3

#49 Nimia Altamirano

vs

#48 Jerome “The Raider” Lynch

The sight on the tv was a sudden, bizarre one for most of the world. To those in the know, though, it came as a familiar surprise and, in some cases, a horrible shock.

On screens all over the world, a man was visible, becoming clearer through crackling static. His skin was pitch-black, like living shadows, and his eyes were a bright, solid, ruby red, but when the bald man in the black suit smiled, his teeth were a pearly white.

“Good evening everyone! Ladies and gents, gals and pals, bitches and pricks, binaries and trinities alike, my fondest fuckin’ greetings to all y’all! It’s been thirty odd years since a lotta you last heard my voice, but here I am, as I always am and always have been, the voice of all bloodstained fuckfaces out there, your eternal friend, Nero!”

The man laughed loud, clapping his hands for himself as shot after shot sounded through the room, none hitting the tv. “Ah, and not the ancient emperor, if you’re curious, though I won’t mind if’n you call me king! Or master~. Nehahaha~!

“But, onto more important matters, we’ve got news!” Nero said, beaming wide as a mook in leathers was thrown straight into two of his fellows, blood leaking from the bullet holes spread out all over his body. “Big news, important news, very, very significant news if you happen to have a number on your skin.”

Five bullets slammed home as the Nero paused dramatically. Four corpses dropped and the 48 howled in rage, swinging his axe hard through a wrecked car. “The rankings have officially started up again.”

His low chuckle echoed through the garage as the bleeding brute swung and cleaved right through a steel pillar, blood leaking through his brown leather mask. “You heard it here first folks! Well, plenty of you did. Some might’ve heard it already, spread it around, but my point is, the Fifty is dead and the Forty-Nine followed soon after! So now we got a new Forty-Nine out there, and boy, this bitch is an impressive one!

“Working her way up from Eighty-Six, give or take, a young lady by the name of Nimia Altamirano is our newest and best contender dear plagues and preachers, and by the sounds of it, she’s currently taking on Jerry Lynch, a real piece of work from the southern chunk of Miconti!

“If you’re thinking big-ass bastard who wears too much leather and rides a lotta guzzlers as he raids and rapes his way through wasteland and border settlements, you’d be right on track! Bianca, baby, how about a little history?”

The screen switched to a beaming woman as a rolling rack of wrenches was kicked in 48’s path and another shot rang out and ripped through his eye, sending him stumbling backward and howling in pain as he clutched the ruined socket. “Thanks Near!”

The woman was actually pretty normal when compared to her otherworldly colleague, her skin a natural, if pale, shade of white while her eyes were sparkling blue. Her short hair was white too, with just a few hints of gray up towards the top, but her face was youthful in that artificial way that spoke of a synthetic being. She wore a white three-piece suit, though hers had a black undershirt–and a white tie–and she twirled a white stick between her fingers before pointing it up at the wall behind her.

“Now, as you can see here,” she said as the wall switched to a display of a greasy caucasian man, his brown-black hair limp around his head while his face was covered in a mix of rough patches of facial hair and terrible scars, “Jerome Lynch was never exactly going to be a successful man. No, he was born into the raider life by raider parents and he took to it with reckless abandon!”

The guns were out and a machete, appropriated from the corpses, swung to catch the shaft of the 48’s axe. “Perhaps, if he had a chance, he could’ve been good, you might think?”

“Ha! Don’t put words into my mouth, Bia babe~!”

“Oh, I’m sure I can fit other things in there later~. Now, you, dear viewers, might think that, but no, Near’s as right as ever. Jerry may have been a victim of his upbringing, but he’s not one that’s ever tried to get out of it.”

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“Exactly, Bia babe! He’s lived large all his life, and he loves the murder, the mayhem, the horror on the faces of his victims! So don’t pity the sick fuck, because we sure ain’t!”

“No, we definitely are not. Back with his story, he joined the rankings a number of years ago, and he’s lived large with the benefits that come with it for quite some time. These benefits have allowed him to expand his operations all throughout the South, ranging from Bajate to New Kansas, though his main holding of territory is in a small slice of Old Luanna, right around here.” She gestured at the map of a cracked country on screen as a hard cut split the fingers from 48’s right hand, earning another howl that was rewarded with a sharp, jaw-smashing punch.

His axe fell, was grabbed, and swung deep into his stomach as Bianca snapped her fingers. “Oh, Near!”

“Yes my dear?”

“We have something our audience needs to hear!”

“Now what could that be-eer? Beer. Be...fuck. Right, shit, fucked that up.” Bianca giggled as the axe was torn free and swung again, only for 48 to duck it with surprising speed and tackle his opponent right around the midsection. “So what’s the sitch, bitch?”

“Ha! Ah, careful now, or I’ll have to treat you rough later~. Anyways, shouldn’t we explain the rules of the rankings?” A double axe hand smashed straight into his skull, but he held firm and strained to ram his opponent against the wall.

“Hmmm...good point! After all, not everybody knows them! Some people are children, after all!” He slipped on his own blood and a hard knee smashed his nose through the mask.

“Oh, right, parents, don’t let your kids watch our programming. Really, we’re not nice people.” Dazed and bloody, 48 could barely struggle as his opponent walked away from his prone body.

“Speak for yourself, I’m plenty nice! Especially under the right circumstances~.” Nero laughed at his own joke, echoed by a surprised yelp followed by a rough crash when an engine block smashed the 48’s head.

49 -> 48

His foot, the one that had been shot quite early on, twitched once, before his corpse went still.

“But, onto the important shit, the Rules of the Rankings! Shit you’re gonna need to know if any of this will make sense!” The new 48 paused, walked over to a chair, and sat down, scratching at her newly scarred cheek as she decided to see if this was anything worth watching.

“Rule one, the most important rule, the one you need to know if you want to join in the fun and games! ‘A prospective contender must kill a ranked contender in order to enter the rankings! This is the only way into the ranks’! So you got that? If you wanna join up, you need to find someone, anyone, who already has a number and kill them. Doesn’t matter how you do the nasty deed, but fair warning, the higher the number, the harder it is to claim it.

“Rule dos, also important! No kids! ‘Children are not allowed to participate in the rankings’! Got that brats? No underage murder in this shitshow!

“Rule trois! ‘Any sapient being can join so long as they don’t violate rule two’! So if you’re smart enough to think and plan, you too can join up in a worldwide death game!

“Finally, unless something major happens, rule shi! ‘Once you have a rank, you can only lose it when someone else takes it’! That means no backdowns! You join the ranks, you fucking commit to it! Either rise to the top, or wait for someone to claim your number, because once you take that step, there’s no going back!”

The screen switched back to Bianca, who beamed and clapped her hands together. “So really, do be sure that you really, really want to join the rankings before you try anything dumb, kay?”

Then back to Nero. “So for those of you already in or seriously looking to join, con-grat-yu-fuckin’-lations! The main games have begun again and you have plenty of chances to move right on up! So give it your best, work hard, kill hard, fuck hard, and shoot all your bloody rockets for the white moon up in her deep black bed! Remember, even if you miss, you still land in the stars, burning bright and fast!”

He laughed, loud and boisterous again, before giving the viewers a jaunty salute. “So that’s all for now folks! Tune in whenever we come on again for the next killing show! This’s been Nero-!”

“And Bianca~!”

“Signin’ off!” The tv flashed into a black screen.

Nimia scratched her cheek again, then chuckled, still feeling the adrenaline pulsing through her. “So now they come after me too...alright then. It’s officially starting, for real now.”

Her grin was wide and unhinged as she made her way through the bloodstained floors. “All odds against me…”

A manic little giggle slipped out as she climbed onto her brand new monstrous motorcycle, its massive, spiked tires matching the crazed style of her most recent win.

She grinned at the open garage door, out at the night, filled with souls gunning or getting prepared for her. All odds against her. “Ha! Ha ha ha ha! What a better way to win?!”

There was a roar of noise as the newest 48 came blazing out of the ruined garage and through a compound of brutalized raiders, corpses strewing the streets and walls.

The Rankings had already begun. It was only now though, that the Challenge really started.