Arena 4
Page 4
Feeling proud and satisfied, I watched as they all did what I wanted of them with no complaints.
Aurora bent over to dust behind the loveseat which gave me an all access view of her fantastic, black lace clad ass.
The shelf that was set up for Artemis to put the books on was about a foot too tall for her, her skirt rode up when she stood on her tippy toes.
Nova rubbed my shoulders, played with my hair, and fed me delicious morsels while PoLarr sucked on her lollipop and bent over the coffee table to show me her homework.
“Hail to the king, baby,” I said as I flipped on Evil Dead and watched my super sexy alliance mates cater to my every whim.
Chapter Three
I only kept my sexy alliance mates busy with their slave-tasks for the first hour or so of Evil Dead, then we all sat on the couch and watched the movies while we ate. I still made them wear their costumes however, but all four of them seemed to be really into the roles, and they continued to act in character until the end of Army of Darkness. The sexual tension in the air was ridiculous the whole time, but the Evil Dead trilogy is also pretty awesome, so we ended up watching them all until it was just too late to engage in whatever sort of build up I had got rolling for the night.
Part of me was a bit disappointed, but it didn’t last long. I was sleeping with everyone but PoLarr, and it wasn’t like I went more than two nights without making love to a beautiful woman. The blonde Valkyrie was actually the last one awake with me after the movie, but before I could try to make a move on her, she stood from the couch, tugged down her skirt a bit, and then glanced over her shoulder before she walked to her room. The way her hips swayed made me think there was an invitation to follow her, but then I heard her door lock as soon as she closed it. I realized that she knew I wanted her, and she was just teasing me.
Or maybe she was just teasing herself.
The next morning we were all gathered in the gym preparing for a day of training when a green light began to flash.
“All champions and their respective teams please make your way to the main auditorium at once,” the calm, smooth, female computer voice said over the loudspeakers. “There you will await a very important update to the Forge of Heroes from the Aetheron Ozusti.”
“Wait, what did Marge just say?” I asked excitedly.
“She said… who is Marge?” Artie responded confused.
“Oh, that’s what I call the cool chick voice that always comes over the loudspeaker,” I answered as I stood up. “Marge was the name of my assistant principal in middle school. She always did the morning announcements.”
“I… don’t… Okay,” Artie stammered and then composed herself. I often had that effect on people. “We are being summoned to a General Assembly of Champions. This is very rare. It means there is going to be a change to how the Crucible operates. The last one was over a decade ago.”
“Assembly?” I asked almost beside myself.
“Yes.”
“Sweet as freaking pie!” I exclaimed. “I love assemblies.”
We walked as one big group through the Hall of Champions. The inside of the giant building that resembled a big Apple Mouse was busier than I had ever seen it. I mean, it was usually full of a melange of various champions, their trainers, friends, and hangers-on. But this was like the beginning of Warriors when all the gangs of New York meet at Van Courtland Park. Everyone was behaving, but there was definitely an undercurrent of barely contained aggression that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
I’d never seen so many of my fellow champions all at the same time, and it was more than a bit overwhelming to see how many of us there were. Team Havak and I made out way through the massive hallways and through the big foyer of the building, just one team among many, as we continued through a large opening in the wall that I had never been down before. I realized that I’d really only seen a very small portion of the building. Mainly our gym and the commissary. That reminded me that I was actually kind of hungry, actually.
We fell in line with a relatively friendly looking group of other champions from the Bronze Tier. Some of them waved at us. Other’s whispered in each other’s ear. Like it or not, Team Havak had a bit of a reputation.
“Leroy Jenkins!” An avian alien yelled from across the hall with a laugh. A few of his buddies laughed with him. From the looks of his jumpsuit and his hope-filled eyes, I could tell he was new to the games.
I smiled back at them and raised my hand in a quick wave that I hoped wasn’t too dismissive. In one of my first matches, I’d fought off a bunch of freaky ass dog-sized spiders and may have screamed out the name of a World of Warcraft player from a very infamous YouTube clip, but most of the aliens took it to be a warcry for a deity I worshipped. Needless to say, it had been a big hit on the Crucible’s interstellar social media networks.
“Why do you scoff, Havak?” Grizz asked as his holographic image walked through some support personnel who were in front of us. “I have prayed to the great warrior spirit of Leroy Jenkins ever since that fateful day. You are still alive, so, clearly, it has worked.”
“You are right, Grizz,” I responded with a shake of my head. I still didn’t have the heart to tell him that it was just one big internet joke on Earth. That there really was no Leroy Jenkins, much less a warrior spirit named after him. “My bad.”
Grizz gave a self-satisfied nod, and we continued to walk down the big hallway. It soon opened into a football field-sized space that reminded me of the Field Museum in Chicago. A large sign hung from the roof in ornate gold letters that read: THE PAST AS PROLOGUE - A HISTORY OF THE FORGE OF HEROES - don’t touch the exhibits.
“What is all of this?” I asked as we walked into the room. All along the walls and in display cases of all sizes and shapes were various paintings, sculptures, artifacts, and weapons that I assumed had some relevance to the Crucible.
“Oh my god,” Artemis said as she practically came out of her skin with excitement. “You’ve never been to the Museum before?”
“Nope.”
“Sugar, I didn’t even know this was down here,” Aurora said barely hiding the boredom in her voice.
“I had indeed heard of it,” Nova acknowledged while she looked around the room. “But had not had the chance to venture down.”
“Yeah,” I added, “what with all the free time we have.”
“You seem to manage your free time quite well for matters of carnal enjoyment, Havak,” Grizz teased. His mood had visibly softened since we had entered the museum.
“What can I say,” I quipped back at him. “I’m a lover, not a walker around of old stuff.”
“Yeah you are,” Artemis whispered to me and took my hand before she kissed me on the cheek. “So, as I’m sure you all saw, this is the Great Museum. Where the history of the Forge of Heroes comes to life. Or, at least that’s what the brochure says. And I would know, because I wrote it.”
“Shut up,” I blurted out as we passed a huge display case of alien skeletons.
“I will not,” she said defiantly and proudly. “When I was a young AI, it was one of my core functions to compile the history of some of the games most fearsome combatants as well as chronicle all the written and verbal histories of the Crucible of Carnage.”
“Cool,” was all I was able to spit out because the next display held slices of aliens. It was like some macabre extraterrestrial deli counter and reminded me of the Bodies: The Exhibit I’d seen when it came through Wilmington in the mid-two-thousands. Some bodies had clearly gone through a process that plasticized the organic material. Others, well, others kinda looked like they were still alive. I shuddered as we passed the case and thankfully the next one had an assortment of bladed weapons. “I bet you were an adorable young AI.”
“Marc, I was a complex algorithm, there was no way to determine if I was adorable or otherwise,” Artie said, confused.
“Nah, I totally would have asked you to AI prom,” I joked and squeezed her hand.
“That gives me a great idea,” I blurted out suddenly. “We should have a Champion Prom. How fun would that be?”
“Um, not fun at all, Marc,” PoLarr answered while she gazed lovingly at a set of antique laser pistols in a display case. “These people all want to kill us.”
“So,” I shrugged. “Sounds just like high school-- Shut the front door!”
I stopped dead in my tracks as we passed by a very large diorama just like they have in the Natural History Museum in New York. Except instead of weird wax dummies of Cro-magnon cave dwellers this one had a fully rendered mannequin of none other than Grizz. The incredibly lifelike figure stood atop a small hill on some sun-scorched alien battlefield. Grizz was much younger than the holographic version I knew and loved but was still hulking and imposing. It was dressed in space barbarian armor and was completely shirtless. Diorama Grizz’s muscles bulged and flexed as one arm held his long sword out by his side while in his other hand he held a howling alien monster high in the air. Around him were the dead bodies of the same type of alien monster that it held in its vice-like grip. Diorama Grizz wore a fierce snarl on his wax-like face and his eyes blazed with fury.
There was a small placard on the railing that wound around the display. It read:
Grizz: The Doomslayer during his very first match as the champion for his homeworld Ar-X’ans-Oturi.
“Doomslayer?” I said with barely concealed awe.
“That is indeed what they dubbed me, human,” Grizz responded with not at all concealed pride.
“Okay, that is fucking cool as shit,” I continued.
“It is,” Grizz nodded, and we moved along.
I wanted to ask a ton more questions, but we passed a giant, two-story-tall statue-sculpture of two white-robed aliens. They were tall, thin, and completely ethereal even rendered in stone. The marble was pristine and so white it practically glowed. Each figure held out a robed arm as if giving something. Their hands were delicate with long concert pianist fingers. Their heads were covered by the robes and as hard as I tried I couldn't peer inside the stone folds of the hood.
“In combat, there is peace,” the calm female announcer voice said as we passed the statues.
“I’m gonna guess that’s the Aetherons?” I asked.
“Look at the big brain on Brett,” PoLarr shot over to me in a very odd Samuel Jackson impression. “You a smart motherfucker. That’s right.”
All of us, and several other champions, turned to look at her, and I swear I could see her blush a little.
“Excuse me,” she muttered. “I have a moron in my brain.”
“That’s ‘handsome moron’ to you,” I winked at her.
“Yes.” The color faded from her cheeks a little, and she winked back.
“Yes, Marc,” Artie piped up as we finally walked down a long, downward ramp into a corridor that reminded me of the isle entrances to basketball or hockey arenas. “That is a representation to what we all believe the Aetherons to look like, although, no one knows for sure because we have never seen them.”
Again, I wanted to ask more questions, a trait that had driven my CCD instructors absolutely mental when I was studying to get confirmed in high school, but they died in my throat as we emerged from the tunnel into the auditorium.
It was as if the Galactic Senate room from one of the Star Wars Prequels had filthy dirty sex with the Coachella mainstage and this room was the offspring from that unholy union. A huge stage rose thirty feet from the center of the room with rows upon rows surrounding it in a theater in the round style for at least five stories. Each of the seats was sectioned off like boxes at a baseball game, and all the various aliens milled about in long lines as they made their way to their assigned sections.
“This way guys,” Artie threw over her shoulder and began to lead us up a very steep stairway toward one of the higher rows of seats. We followed and passed by dozens of various champions and their crews. A strange hush came over the rather raucous group as we walked up the steps. It wasn’t a total silence, but I could feel a lot of eyes on us. I glanced at my alliance mates, and we all held our heads a bit higher and walked with our backs straighter. My patented Havak cocky grin pulled at my lips, and I didn’t even pretend to hide it. I wanted everyone in this joint to know that Team Havak was here to fucking stay. Nova, Aurora, PoLarr and even Artie, walked tall as well with more than a smidge of “yeah, come fuck with us and see what happens attitude.”
Finally, we reached our little box seats and filled in. There were only five of the crushed blue velvet folding theater-style seats, and I looked over at Grizz as we sat.
“No need to worry, Havak,” Grizz reassured me. “Trainers, especially holographic ones, congregate together in a separate area of the auditorium.”
“Oh, how come?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“I have no answer for that,” Grizz shrugged. “It is just the way it has always been. I will meet up with you all in the gym after the announcement.”
And with that, the hulking hologram of the former Doomslayer shimmered and disappeared. The little metal orb with the bright red eye that was his holo-projector zoomed off into the crowd.
We settled into the surprisingly comfortable seats. Artie sat on my right and PoLarr took the seat to my left. Nova and Aurora filled the seats on either end. I just watched the strange show as aliens found their seats, chatted with friends, yelled at enemies, or kept to themselves while everyone got comfortable.
After a few minutes it looked like everyone who was coming was here, and the lights dimmed and a quiet descended like a blanket on the room. The silence stretched on for a full minute until finally, a long light shone from the ceiling on the center of the stage.
A handsome, older, humanoid man stood on in the middle of the light. He wore a black bodysuit with bright green accents that glowed and pulsed like a computer heartbeat. Over the bodysuit he wore one of the robes that had been rendered in stone on the statues out front. He looked a hell of a lot like a young Ralph Fiennes, his dark brown hair pulled into a tight Nineties ponytail.
His image shimmered in the light, and I realized that he was, in fact, a hologram, just like Grizz.
“Um, who’s that?” I whispered to Artemis.
“Tyche,” she responded in a way that sounded like “tie-key”.
“Cool,” I nodded. “Who’s Tyche?”
“He is an AI program,” Artie explained in a hushed tone. “Created by the Aetherons to act as a public spokesperson, kind of. He is almost as old as the games themselves and has lost more knowledge of the games to data creep than most people will even know. Tyche is the public head, no, face, yeah that’s right, he’s the public face of the Aetherons. Whenever there is an announcement about the games, a rule change, something like that, Tyche is the one to deliver it. Oh, yeah, and he’s also, kind of like my father.”
“Um, I’m sorry, what?”
“I was created by a little bit of his core algorithm,” Artemis whispered to me very flatly which was strange. My guess was that the sudden realization that she did indeed have a parent and the requisite human emotion surrounding that had kind of short-circuited her brain. Sometimes I forgot that Artemis was literally four months old. Sure, her core AI program was much older than that, but it was just a little over four months ago when that program had been downloaded into this human body, and she had been “born.” Her complex AI algorithm was still very new to the dumpster fire that was the human condition and all its glorious ups and downs of happiness, anger, sadness, fear, basically, the shit that folks who had been human for a lot longer paid professionals lots of money to help them figure out. Normally, her emotions exploded out of her like a jack-in-the-box. Occasionally, like now, it was all too much for her to handle, and she became emotionless. “He was also my mentor program for many Earth years.”
“Your Occuhancers are interpreting the light frequencies so that you see an image that you are comfortable with,” Artie explained as if reading an instruction manual. “He looks different to everyone.”
“Okay, okay,” I stammered. My mind still spun with all the new information. “What does he look like to you?”
“Home,” Artemis said, and her voice cracked almost imperceptibly. She shook it off very quickly. “Shhh! He’s about to start.”
Whatever other questions I had were going to have to wait because Tyche raised his hands as if to welcome his children home.
“Welcome champions, trainers, and all those who are blessed to be a part of the glorious Forge of Heroes,” Tyche said. He sounded like Alan Rickman from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves which completed the weird cinematic déjà vu I’d been having since I walked into the room. His voice was cool, calm, sexy without the thought of fucking, smooth satin on the skin of my mind. “Or, as it has been so aptly named, the Crucible of Carnage.”
Everyone clapped as if on cue. I didn’t. I just looked around the room and watched. It was almost as if everyone was under a spell the moment he started to talk. He held up his holographic hands, and the room quieted once again.
“Let me begin by saying that the Aetheron Ozusti are beyond pleased at the vigor with which you all fight,” Tyche complimented as he slowly began to walk around the stage. “All in this room have fought bravely and with honor to bring glory, peace, and prosperity to your home worlds. You should be proud.”
Everyone in the auditorium nodded in agreement, enrapt by Tyche’s presence. I seemed to be the only one who wasn’t and I had no idea why. I looked around and saw chaos hardened champions stare up at him in wide-eyed fascination. Hell, I caught a glimpse of Tyyraxx, the bastard who had betrayed Grizz, in a row fifty feet above me, and even he stared at him as if he were some high priest.