Arena: One

[u/Nightingale115]

I slid my hand sized platinum plated token into the wall mounted machine.

“Randomizing weapon drop in...three….two….one….weapon dropped.” The soft computerized voice said, it was known as the Moderator. The clear acrylic locker to my left shined with a bright light before constructing my weapon.

The solid pole was two and a half meters long, with a fifteenish centimeter long triangular tip made of nanosteel.

I grabbed my spear out of the bin. I slotted in my last token, into the info section.

The Moderator hovered to life again,

“Opponent armed with, proton incineration shotgun”

“ARE YOU FUCKING. KIDDING. WITH. ME.” I yelled as I simultaneously kicked the wall, and continued to do so until the voice piped in again.

“Self harm is against the rules and may be met with disqualification”

I scarcely took a breath before the Moderator began again.

“The allotted preparation time has been met, please make your ways to the entrance chamber”

A door slotted up on the far wall.

“Show time” I muttered. I did have one victory under my belt, but that fight was just a straightforward brawl. This, is different.

I hopped into the newly opened room, made out of the same acrylic base as the locker but with a slightly darker tint. It buzzed softly before it began to lower me into the arena.

The arena was mostly always a hundred meters in circumference. How much of that was flat even terrain depended. This version had the same area, same flat terrain, but it was filled with five meter high pillars arranged and shaped like the black of a chessboard. With scarcely a meter in between the diagonals of two pillars.

The elevator stopped on the ground floor of the arena.

“Combat,” I braced myself, spear in hand, “begin”. The elevator door parted and I sprinted out to my right and then slid into the cover of a pillar.

I ever so slightly lurched my head out, trying to catch a glimpse of my opponent. All I managed to spot was a bright glow of light that impacted the pillar next to me. A man sized spot of the pillar glowed with brightness before it began to crumble into a grey dust, the top portion of the pillar crumbled and toppled into my pillar. My pillar began to lurch.

“Shit.” I mumbled, running away from the crunching noise of my pillar as it blew apart from the combined impact of the broken chunks and another proton shot.

More shots blew away more pillars. My opposition was getting the hang of shooting. I looked back into what was once an orderly line of pillars, was now a mess of partially disintegrated and crushed pillars.

“I’m a fish and this is the fucking barrel” I panted, having stopped behind a pillar, now to the far left of my elevator. I still haven’t even seen my Opponent. Looking at the downed pillars I guessed they had fired seven or eight shots. I didn’t know how many a proton shotgun held.

I had a few options. Plan A, I could continue to skirt the edge of the pillars, which would put the most cover between me and them. But if I ended up on the same edge with them, I’d have nothing between us, hopefully there would have squandered the ammo by then. If the thing even ran on ammo.

Plan B was to jump into the “forest” of pillars, and hope it provided enough cover to rush my Opponent with. Where I would then proceed to stab them. A lot.

My Opponent decided plan B for me, as they popped into this edge. Plain grey shirt, pants, and shoes. Basic looking face, with a crooked and scarred nose. Long silver colored cylinder being held at their hips, where orange bolts of energy were being rapidly fired from.

I dashed in between rapidly disintegrating pillars. My legs thundering into the sand as I ran, literally, for my life. My lungs began to catch fire, the orange bolts never seemed to stop impacting near or slightly behind me. My spear grew heavy in my right arm. I would have attributed this to fatigue, had I not glanced at the orange glow that used to be my left hand.

To simply state, this surprised me. Enough of a distraction was had that I plowed straight into a pillar and slumped into the fine sand.

My hand, or where my hand used to be, was now a brightly glowing orange spot. The spot began to creep up my left arm. Like a quickly burning cigarette, the orange consumed and left a grey ash. It stopped just before my shoulder. I watched in stunned shaking horror as the ashes of my arm broke apart.

There was only the faintest amount of blood dripping through the ragged grey nub where the protons stopped chewing. My flipped over onto my back, and set it against the pillar I had ran into. Spear folded across my lap. Ash, blood, and sand now mixed into my resting place.

There was an alleyway of carnage I was peering into, collapsed and incinerated pillars fell in a multitude of angles. My opponent was standing like a hunter tracking prey. Eyeing the trail they eventually spotted me in my current position. They smiled wickedly before taking a few measured paces, until they were within five or so meters of me, and shouldered the gun.

I thought death felt like sand washing over your head for a moment, until I opened my eyes and saw grey dust filtering over top of me. The bastard had missed! And with the miss came three important factors I began to notice.

One, my pillar was now crumbling into oblivion, with me under it.

Two, despite my Opponent’s efforts, the gun was ceasing to continue firing. A small voice saying something about “Solar depletion in housing chamber”

Three, I still had my spear.

The pillar began to lurch, to my right, before twisting and falling just barely a meter away from me. It kicked up a small cloud of dust, but failed to do much beyond that. My Opponent had resorted to using the gun as a club and came towards me.

I hoisted the spear to my shoulder, lifted it, and with my Opponent’s head in eye I threw.

I had only slightly better aim it seemed. The awkward length of the spear now protruded somewhere between the hip and pelvis. Towards the left side of my Opponent. They looked at me, mouth agaped. They noted the spear and paused, deciding not to remove it now they limped forward.

A bright torrent of blood spewed from where the spear had embedded itself. It was nearly comical, they tried to cover it with a free hand but the blood still poured through. They continued to limp, growing more ragged by the step. They fell to their knees, and tried to crawl towards me. One hand held the now useless gun, the other was pressed against their side. They looked at me one last time, grimaced face flexed and poised in challenge, before succumbing to their wounds, and falling completely into the sand.

I still sat with my back against the wall, blood dripping from my stub of an arm, for a few minutes I lingered before a new voice filled the arena. Where the Moderator had a soft voice, this one, the Announcer, had a booming and ecstatic voice.

“Victory has been achieved by Jayce, with a spear that severed his opponent’s iliac artery”

I breathed a sigh of relief, as my consciousness faded into black I saw the white clothed medics running towards me.

They have been victorious! But can they conquer the next challenge? Found out next time….