A female wearing a half rebreather slammed her hand on the table, alerting the guy sitting there. “Alrighty newbie,” she said smirking, two other girls stood next to her. Their appearances weren’t quite as extra as the main female. “The logs say…” One of the two girls at her side handed her a tablet. “Nikos Peres, aged nineteen.” She looked up at him “Power, unrevealed. You’re zero and zero right now.” Most of his face was obscured by a hood. She couldn’t tell exactly just what his emotions were.

“Yeah. That’s me.” He said nonchalantly, drinking from a juice pouch.

“Around here, you either lose or you win.” She said.

“Yeah, that’s the whole reason this place exists.”

She slammed the tablet on the table. Being angered by the interrupting man. “And since you have no wins or loses. I doubt you’re good enough to have many sponsors backing you.”

“I have one.” He said once again just interjecting.

“...Once you lose all your sponsors, you get kicked out.”

He took another sip from the juice pouch. “I’m aware of the rules.”

She sighed. “You’re infuriating… Well since you don’t have any battle points. You cannot pay to refuse any challenges. So guess who just challenged you.”

“Is it the girl on your left? I hope so. She looks kind of strong.”

The girl with the rebreather pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. Out of anger, she grabbed the juice pouch. She took the straw from it turned it upside down and squeezed, the sweet blue liquid drained from the container. Nikos’ watched in horror as the drink he paid for had its contents dropped over the floor. He stood up to face the offender.

She tossed the container to the side of the room. “Ah! Looks like I’m finally getting somewhere.”

“You wanted a fight, huh?” He asked. “Name your setting. You can even make them into your favor. I don’t care.”

By now the entire room went quiet as the occupants watched the two. “Oh? So you are aware of the rule that the defender gets to choose settings?” He did not answer her. So she continued. “Tomorrow. The location will be a simple urban environment. And just for giggles, It’ll be live-streamed. I want to make sure my fans see me eliminate a noob.”

“No,” he said. “It will start today. That’s my only request.”

She shrugged. “Your funeral. Be ready in thirty minutes.”

She walked off, but before leaving, he shouted. “When I win. Buy me a new juice pouch.”

She laughed. “If you win.”

Nikos sat right back down, a moment of silence was being held for his lost property. That was until someone approached and sat down next to him.

“Dude, I know your new and all, but are you aware of who you’re fighting?”

“No, and I don’t really care.”

“Amy Williams.” The man said. “She’s known to be a very cheap fighter. Since her ability is passive, she often leads her -”

“I told you. I don’t care, I’m going to win.”

The man backed off a little. “I like your spirit. If you’re still here after your match, my name is Chuck Bennings.”

Nikos sat there in silence until the thirty-minute time limit came up.

~

Two announcers sat behind a desk, with a massive screen behind them. A brown haired man and a blonde haired man. They both wore sunglasses that hid their eyes.

“Ladies and Gentlemen!” An announcer said. His voice was filled with an enthusiasm that could only he could manage. “Today we have a surprise match tonight!”

“A surprise match?” A second announcer asked.

“Yes, my fellow battle caster! A surprise match!”

“Well, could you fill me and the audiences in with some details?”

“Certainly!” He shouted. “Today at three this afternoon Amy Williams challenged an unrevealed fighter to a match.”

“Ooh, scary! Can we see some stats for both fighters?”

The screen behind the announcers turned on and switched to a detailed view of both Amy Williams and Nikos Peres, splitting down the middle.

“Wow. Would you look at that? A Zero-Zero fighter taking on a c-tier fighter that has multiple wins. Either this guy has some brass balls, or he’s incredibly stupid.”

“I don’t really care which one honestly I just want to see this new fighter and apparently so do our viewers!”

“Whoa, would you look at that! For an offseason match. This number of viewers is I.N.S.A.N.E!”

“Alright everybody, Boys, and girls! We are going to cut to the battle in just a moment as it's about to begin.”

The feed changed to a detailed image about the conditions of the map, including the stage, The time limit, and the victory conditions, which was settled as a deathmatch. The timer started at five and began to count down.

Once it hit zero the screen cut to a feed with Amy Williams. She was standing at the starting point. A gate that leads to another dimension, a computerized one. Once she went through the computer would record the battle in multiple ways. It’d show a data map that would mark their individual movements, confronts and how long they stayed in a specific area.

A miniature air drone flew down to her height. She struck a pose before entering the computer generated city. The feed jumped to Nikos. He showed nothing for them as he went through the gate.

Inside the use of drone cameras were prohibited as it was a way to tell the combatants were the other was hiding, potentially disrupting any kinds of plays that they could do. So the entire computerized geography was a computer. It could record from any angle, any height and not impede with any of the combat.

Amy emerged from the gate, the entire area was a vast city. The streetlights illuminated the ground, She picked the most useful area for her, which happened to be tight areas and darkness. She rolled open her sleeves and began emitting a colorless gas she walked down the streets spreading as much as she could.

Cutting to Niko wasn’t exactly the most exciting. He was just walking. And only walking. He knew where the other gate was so he went in that direction. To save the viewers from any sort of boredom they switched the feedback to Amy, she was already halfway done creating her kill zone. For a second Amy stopped in the middle of the street. The camera showed that Nikos had already arrived at Amy’s side of the spawn. He had appeared in the short amount of time that Niko wasn’t in the frame.

“You really are an amateur!” She laughed at him. “You honestly just made this extremely easy for me. If you read my file, you’d know that I’m a toxin type. And that the first thing I’d do was make this area unplayable for you.”

Nikos reached up to his hood, the moment his fingers touched the edges. The camera froze at the side view of his face, cutting the feed short.

“Uh-oh. Looks like we lost connection to the cameras. But don’t worry it looks like the battle map is still active!”

The map showed up in a simplified version of the city. Two arrows represented the players. Yellow was Amy, and blue was Nikos. They stood directly in front of each other. Until Amy’s indicator began to retreat from the side.

“Looks like Amy started her lure technique folks!”

That was until Nikos arrow reappeared in front of Amy. “Hang on. What was that?” One of the announcers sounded shocked. “There was absolutely no movement in between when he was standing and moved.”

Amy’s arrow flew from one end to another at an incredible velocity.

“Whoa, what’s going on down there!?” The announcer’s voice became heightened. “The logs said that Amy was just thrown forty feet!”

“Whaaaaat! It seems that this blackout also tripled the number of viewers from the start of this stream! Things have really started to heat up now.”

Just as that was said, the video cut back in. The screen had Nikos standing twenty feet from Amy. She was cowering underneath a light post. Tears streamed from her face. Her mask was ripped from her face and laid in the middle bridging the distance between the two. Blood was dripping from the top of her head and her mouth.

“P-Please...You Win.” She coward herself in a ball. Trying to maintain eye contact and as much distance as she could. But she honestly only felt safe in the light.

“...Amy lost. Amy Williams lost! I don’t know what happened, but Amy Williams lost!”

“Looks like Nikos will be taking home a win tonight!”

On the feed, a medical team could be seen rushing to Amy’s side. Nikos walked out through the gate.

“I don’t know about you guys, but I will be watching this newcomer personally.” With that, the stream was turned offline.