Arena 3

by Logan Jacobs

  “Yes,” she responded and just continued to stare at me for a very long moment. “Would you like some?”

  “Yes please,” I answered with a vigorous nod of my head.

  “Are you sure?” She said and hit me with a glare of disbelief and authority that both scared and aroused me. “Because coffee is for those who don’t go around disrupting a beloved early morning food bazaar in the Champion’s District with a street fight.”

  “Oh, then I guess I’m not getting any coffee,” I answered sheepishly. “Cause I did that.”

  “Yes. Yes, you did.” She said and held my eyes with her very intense, piercing gaze.

  “Hey, wait a second,” I blurted out as something dawned on me. “Um, where the heck were you guys with the tasers when I got ambushed by a bunch of street gangs a few weeks ago?”

  “That occurred outside of the Champion’s District,” she said as if that was supposed to explain everything.

  “So?”

  “My name is Captain Olive Har’Gitay of the Champion’s District Police Department,” she said officially. “We make sure that there is law and order within the main district of the city, known as the Champion’s District. It is where the Hall of Champions is, as well as most of the residential housing for champions, and those directly involved with the games. Outside of that district, I do not care what goes on. It is a lawless cesspool. But inside the district, well, I care very much what happens there. And I do not like disturbances. I guess you think that because you can do whatever you want in the arena and get away with it, that you can do the same outside the arena, hmm?”

  “Well, no, not really,” I started to explain, “it’s really not my fault.”

  “Oh, it’s not?” She replied with mock disbelief. “So, that wasn’t you that my officers saw in a cutlery and whip battle with several citizens this morning?”

  “Um, that was me,” I tried to elaborate. “But here’s the deal. A lot of people don’t like me.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” Captain Har’Gitay said in a tone that told me she absolutely did believe it.

  “Right?” I said and threw up my hands. Or hand. The one cuffed to the table didn’t get more than three inches of slack. “Those walking wallets attacked me at the command of their boss, Tyyraxx.”

  “Oh, they did?” She answered with a question again which was really starting to drive me nuts. “Because they all say that they were just getting breakfast on their way to a scheduled Tyyraxx the Terrible fan club meeting when you verbally accosted them and then began to maim them with a whip.”

  “What?” I blurted out incredulously. “That is a gross misrepresentation of what actually happened. It’s, like, you know, completely the other way around.”

  “You were on your way to a Tyyraxx the Terrible fan club meeting?” She asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “Yes!” I said with great conviction before I realized what she’d said. “Wait. No. No, I was not. I was out looking for a donut place.”

  “Interesting,” she said and pulled open the manilla folder again. She slid a piece of paper in front of me. It had a picture of a storefront donut shop on it. The sign above the shop said - DONUTS DONUTS NOTHING BUT DONUTS. “That shop is literally two blocks north of your apartment, Mr. Havak.”

  “Damnit!” I cursed under my breath. “I knew I should have gone left instead of right this morning.”

  “Luckily for you,” Captain Har’Gitay said as she slid the paper back into the folder and pushed the cup of coffee in front of me. “We have several witnesses that say they attacked you first. Next time, call G2BP7Q and let the police handle it.”

  “Um,” I murmured as I gulped the now lukewarm, rather watered down, stale station house coffee. It still tasted like mana sent from heaven. Weak as it was, I instantly felt the throbbing fingers of the caffeine headache I’d had withdraw their pulsating grasp on my brain. “I don’t know what G2BP7Q is or how do dial it.”

  “From any communications device, even ambient ones,” she started to explain as if I were a dimwitted child, “you can enter or say that code, which is an all-around phrase for emergency response be it medical, police, or fire related.”

  “Oh, like nine-one-one?” I threw out before I swallowed the last bit of what was in my paper cup.

  “Dear God, man,” she sputtered, genuinely shocked. “Only a lunatic would ask for nine-one-one? Why in the cosmos would you request the emergence of a black hole on a planetary surface? Are you insane?”

  “Jesus, no!” I shot back and shook my head. “It's an Earth thing. Like an SOS.”

  “Are Earth humans genocidal monsters?” She said and stood up actually enraged. “For all that is holy in the universe, Havak, why would you ask for death by orgy?”

  “I think we have a misunderstanding,” I tried to explain frantically. “Those are just--”

  The Captain began to laugh.

  “I’m just jerking your chain, Havak,” she admitted as she gathered up the manila envelope and moved toward the door. “I’m familiar with over two thousand distress acronyms and signs that span the megaverse. I just wanted to see how you’d react. I find the death by orgy prompt a good indicator of character. You passed.”

  “Oh, thanks,” I blurted out and smiled. “I think…”

  “Keep the rough and tumble for inside either the arena or the bedroom, Havak,” she said as she opened the door and turned back to me. “Your bail posted fifteen minutes ago. You’re free to leave. But I do not want to see you here again, Havak. Trust me. I won’t be as nice next time.”

  “You too,” I said eagerly as she closed the door behind her. “You too? That made no sense, Marc. No sense! God, I need more coffee.”

  A moment later, the same guard came in and undid my slap-cups without a word. Then he gestured for me to walk in front of him as he lead me out into the hall and through a door that said “Processing.” There was a large room full of people on the other side of the door and a raised desk area with a very old, wrinkled female alien that looked like a slug in a sweater and glasses. The guard walked me up to her, nodded, and then walked off.

  “Place your palm on the scanner,” the slug in a sweater said in a deep, gravelly voice.

  I did as I was told and saw the beam of red scanner lights pass up and down on my hand.

  “You’re free to go, hope you enjoyed your stay,” the alien said with a chuckle. “Next!”

  I was going to say something witty and retortful but was too hungry and too tired to bother and just started to walk through the crowded room. A few feet before I was about to walk through the large revolving door exit Artemis revolved in. Her face lit up the moment she saw me, and she bolted through the crowd and jumped into my arms.

  “Thank god I found you,” she squealed in between furious kisses.

  “Wasn’t aware I was lost,” I said and kissed her back. No matter how shitty a morning I’d had, and make no mistake it had been super shitty, Artemis made just about everything better.

  “Why on Alpha Beta Gamma Theta Six did you get into a fight in the Mowgwi Food Faire?” She asked as she unwrapped her legs from around my waist and stood back up.

  “Donut run gone wrong,” I said and shrugged.

  “Sounds right,” she agreed but then got very agitated. “Shit, Marc, we have to get back to the gym right away. While you were out they announced the next match. It starts in fifteen minutes.”

  “Wait, what?” I uttered. “I thought we were supposed to get more warning now that we were in Silver Tier?”

  “You do,” she answered as she grabbed my hand and drug me out into the bright morning light while she waved frantically for a hover-cab. One zoomed down to the curb. “The rest of us found out about three hours ago while you were getting arrested.”

  “All I wanted was a donut,” I muttered to myself as Artie and I got in. “Just one donut.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Marc, hurry up!” Artemis yelled at me from the matter-tra
nsport tube area.

  “I’m coming!” I yelled back as I hopped into the gym from the locker room while I tried to pull on my heavy winter jacket and put on my right boot at the same time. I also had half of a Woodhouse Special breakfast sandwich dangling from my mouth.

  Bright red warning lights flashed throughout the gym.

  “Next match will start in twenty seconds, all champions to your mat-trans tubes,” a sterile, female voice said across the PA system.

  I finally got my double-lined winter boot on my foot and felt the laces self-tightened as I shrugged into the left sleeve of my jacket and shoved the remainder of my breakfast sandwich into my mouth just as I got to where Artemis stood with Grizz in front of my mat-trans tube. Aurora, Nova, and PoLarr were already ready to go inside their respective tubes.

  “Put this on,” Artemis said as she placed a big, wool scarf around my neck and started to tuck it into my barely zipped up winter coat.

  “Aw,” I grumbled, “It’s scratchy.”

  “I would think the minor irritation of coarse fabric against your apparently delicate skin would be outweighed by the need to keep your core temperature as warm as possible, Havak,” Grizz said as he looked over the display screen that had info about our fast approaching next match on it. “All we know about today’s match is that it is taking place on the frozen ice planet of--”

  “Hoth?” I interrupted as I stepped into my tube.

  “Flamaganathor,” Grizz finished. “I don’t know what a hoth is.”

  “It’s not important,” I shrugged as I zipped my jacket up the rest of the way. “Gah, it's so hot.”

  “Well, it won’t be for long,” Artemis said and handed me a rather nasty looking pump-action shotgun with an over-under mini-grenade launcher and an ammo belt. “The ambient daytime temperature on Flamaganathor is nineteen degrees Fahrenheit.”

  “Artie, please,” I said to the cadence of ‘bitch please’. “I’m from Delaware, I eat cold for breakfast.”

  “Well,” she said as she gave me a little kiss on the cheek, “you only had one Woodhouse special today, so you may indeed be eating cold for breakfast. Don’t die.”

  “I won’t,” I said and winked just as I felt the tingle in my body as my molecules were blasted apart and beamed to the arena.

  A millisecond later those same molecules reformed waist-deep in a giant snow drift. A brisk wind whipped at my face, and it felt like a million-billion tiny little needles were being jammed into my cheeks and drawn down into my lungs when I took a breath.

  “Holy fuck nuts it's freaking cold!” I yelled to the white tundra that stretched out for as far as I could see. I seemed to be in the middle of a valley surrounded by low-slung mountains that looked like jagged dark granite teeth as they burst from the snowy ground. The tundra was peppered with smaller outcroppings of the black rock that ranged from hip height to thirty-foot tall crested buttes. A strong, bitter cold wind swept in off the mountains that blew trails of snow from drift to drift. Above me, the sky was a brilliant blue filled with huge pure white clouds and a bright yellow sun. I instantly had to squint my eyes from the glare of the sun and snow. On the horizon, a bank of dark gray storm clouds rolled toward me at a slow but steady pace as they rolled in from over the mountain tops.

  At the base of the mountain steps there was a glinting medieval castle that would have made the largest castle in Europe have tower envy. I couldn’t tell if it was made from some kind of slick stone or if it was actually an ice castle. I was pretty sure I’d probably find out before too long.

  “Very astute, Marc,” Nova said from just behind me. She shook powder fine snow crystals from her auburn hair and pulled the white, fur-lined hood of her jacket up to cover her head.

  “It is cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey,” PoLarr echoed as she landed with a soft snow crunch under the soles of her white combat boots. The blue exhaust of her jetpack was barely visible against the blue of the sky and the white of the tundra.

  “Huh, I forgot I even knew that term,” I shrugged.

  “I dislike this tremendously, sugar,” Aurora said as she brushed snow from her black and red cloak. She had pretty much her standard bustier-underwear combat uniform on except everything was lined with white fur. It looked zero percent warmer, but she seemed to be fine. Well, except that her nipples were like hard little diamonds that tried to poke through the double lined fabric of her corset.

  “Well,” I said as I kicked myself out of the snow drift and motioned for the gang to join me near a leeward side of a small outcropping of dark granite rock, “let’s figure out what the hell we are supposed to do in this frozen hellscape and get the fuck out of here.”

  “What happened to ‘I’m from Delaware, I eat cold for breakfast’?” Nova asked with a smirk.

  “Oh, you heard that, huh?” I asked back more to myself than to Nova. “Yeah, I was full of shit. This is fucking cold, and it sucks.”

  While I talked, I pulled out a pair of green-tinted winter goggles and a white and gray watch cap out from one of my jacket pockets. I brought the watch cap over my head and tight over my ears which had gone completely numb in the sixty seconds since we’d teleported in. I fit the goggles over the cap and put them up on my forehead for the moment.

  My team was all decked out for the bitter cold as well. Nova had on her white Paladinian armor but instead of a black undersuit, she now wore a bright white one with a matching bright white winter coat with said fur-lined hood. Darry had also painted her plasma cannon and harness white so that she would blend into the white surroundings. PoLarr’s normal dark green flight suit armor was now alternating blobs of gray, white, and light blue. Instead of her normal sharkfin hairdo, she had on a white leather flight cap with cool as hell mirrored aviator lensed goggles like a snowy Catwoman.

  I had on my typical light armor loaded out with my jumpsuit but, like everyone else, it was now all white and gray. The watch cap was as close as I was ever going to get to a helmet.

  “Okay, so, what have we got so far?” I asked as we huddled up against the black granite.

  “Brrrr!” Chi-Chesire’s voice boomed out as if to answer my question directly. “It’s a winter wonderland out there everybody. Welcome to Flamaganathor, a harsh and frozen world that forgives no fools. Today’s match in the Crucible of Carnage is to hunt one of the mighty beasts of Flamaganathor and bring a trophy to the throne room of the mighty Ice Lords of Ayezi. Be careful not to freeze to death. Mush-mush champions.”

  “That didn’t sound too hard,” I said after the cat announcer’s face was out of the blazing blue sky.

  “Which is exactly why I am worried,” Nova said.

  “Yeah, me too,” I added. “I thought it was worth a shot of pretending not to worry. Maybe we can kill like a little ice rat or something?”

  My team did not look convinced.

  “Aurora,” I said as an idea came to me. “Can you reach out with your Shriike senses and try to locate a life force? Is that something you can do? I should probably know if it is by now, but I don’t. My bad.”

  “Yes,” she said as she pulled a pair of very stylish goggles out of a pocket sewn into the lining of her cloak and placed them on her head. Her skin and hair blended almost seamlessly with the snow all around us. “I can do that. Although I don’t really need to, there seems to be something headed this way.”

  She pointed off towards the horizon and sure enough, there was some kind of motion that sent up a cloud of snow. It was also approaching very fast.

  “How about we get up on the ole rock here until whatever this is, passes?” I asked and turned back toward the rock face. I grabbed a hold and started to climb up. Thankfully the rock wasn’t slick and there were plenty of handholds so I made it up the thirty feet to the flat butte top quickly. Aurora and Nova floated up on disks of dark matter while PoLarr soared around for a second on her Val’Keeyre wings before touching down gently. “Oh, yeah, I guess I could have done that too.”

&n
bsp; We perched down and watched as the cloud of snow got closer and closer. About a hundred yards out I was able to see what made all the commotion. It looked like a herd of elephant-sized wooly rabbits. And as they got closer, it turned out to be a herd of elephant-sized wooly rabbits. And they were hauling ass too.

  There must have been close to two hundred of the hopping things. They had fluffy off white fur that fell from them in dreadlock-like ropes as they propelled themselves along at about twenty miles per hour. They each looked to weight about six thousand pounds which is why the ground began to rumble like an earthquake when they got close. Their giant pink noses twitched and bounced as they jumped almost frantically.

  “Those don’t look too tough to take down,” I said as we watched the pack bounce and hop along the frozen tundra.

  “Yeah, and it looks like we aren’t the only one with that idea,” PoLarr pointed out as she actually pointed off to our right.

  A group of three champions burst from behind an outcropping of the dark granite that peppered the landscape at the edge of the heard. One of them shot a lasso from their forearm mounted launcher that caught the nearest wooly rabbit’s hind legs. The three-ton creature went down hard and sent up a giant plume of snow and rock. Its herd mates didn’t pay any attention and just kept barreling forward as if driven by some unseen terror.

  The other two champions moved quickly with practiced skill and coordination. One aimed down the sight of a long-barreled sniper rifle and put the struggling rabbit out of its misery with a well-placed shot right between the eyes. A plume of pink, and I mean bright, cotton candy pink, blood sprayed into the air behind the head of the wooly beast, and it stopped its struggling. All three pulled on the lasso with considerable force and drug the unlucky rabbit by its foot toward them. When it was close enough, the third champion unsheathed a glinting, razor-sharp blade from her back and with one mighty stroke took the things hind leg off at the knee joint.

  She wrapped the foot in a large cloth and slung it across her back, and the three were just about to set off toward the castle we had seen earlier when a giant Wolf-Ram-Hart leaped from the back of the frantic herd and ate them all with one crunch of its bulldozer sized jaws.