In the end, Aim’s help came in handy.

Initially, right after I said I pretended to join the Tournament, she looked really scary and angry, shouting how it was a stupid idea and would never help me to “kill myself”, but after I told her that my first option was even worse, that this second one at least granted me a chance of surviving when the other did not, that I almost sold my body to a human butchery, she sighed and said that I was being unreasonable, but in the end, agreed to help me to get in the right shape.

“But, man~, you’re really crazy, hu?”, Star laughed, swinging from one side to the other while sited on back. “You know that only one person leaves this Tournament alive, right?”

“Yeah…!” I answered with difficulty. “The name is pretty clear in this aspect…!”, and, 299… 300!

I felt to the ground.

“Uh? Already? Besides crazy, you’re pretty weak too, uh?”

“Usually I can do more, push-ups, but...” I needed a quick break before concluding: “Its harder when there’s someone sitting on you…!”

“Man, I wished Aim sitting on me...”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“No it was you the one who mentioned have someone sitting on you in the first place, why are you confused?”

“I meant you sitting at my back!”

“Uh?! Sorry: I’m not into guys!”, he hurried to answer, shaking his hands from one side to another with a serious expression.

“...Yeah? Whatever” I gave up. “Hey, why am I even doing this? We fight with weapons a the tournament, right? I should just keep a low profile and shoot”

“Man, when was the last time you watched this Tournament?”

“Hm… I stop to like violent shows a couple of years ago” after I almost died and my sister saved me.

“Well, it’s true that you will shoot, but it’s not like you guys will be equipped with Divine Level weapons you know? Like, it just wouldn’t be fun to the audience if, with a push of a button, ban! The entire arena vanish, it’s atom structure itself rearranged into pure air, or whatever, sent back in time? You probably will fight with the cool but weak weapons, like, last year there was a bunch of empowerment suits!”

“….We can send things back in time?” I was still impressed.

“Well, Aim says that, most of the City technology is way behind what we can really do”

“Why?”

“The same reason because we don’t just clone organs to sell them instead of buying from despaired Workers, I think?”, the woman herself answered, entering the room above her store, where I was training, her property being surprisingly big; and to have all those guns, she must be really rich… “All the matter that was left by the Genesis is right here, right now. All the rest was devoured by the Devil” taking the smoke pipe away from her lips, she exhaled the gray cloud out of her mouth before concluding: “besides, you, disposable Worker, piece of shit that exist only because we had a few problems with A.I., can be oblivious to this, but the really important people have everything, you know? They live forever and have access to levels of pleasure that you can’t even imagine. We did it: we conquered the universe, mixed or DNA with aliens’, saved the world from the Artificial Intelligence menace, created God itself and stopped the entropy; and, now, we rest. We plug our minds into virtual worlds where we’re Gods for billions of years that happen in just one second in real life!”

“But… Why don’t these ‘real import people’ seek more? Even if they can do a lot of fun things now, they could do even more fun things if our technology advanced, right?”

“I think you’re underestimating VR, but… we already reached the roof, Heavy. We created a true God. Now, we rest”, she replied.

...Wait, if Aim listened to our conversation, did she…?

“Ah, you came here to sit on me, right!?”, Star jumped up, excited, his smile crossing his clean face from one ear to another.

This guy… what’s his problem?! I just couldn’t believe how he could be so relaxed before someone so higher up in the social hierarchy (and so more powerful than him or myself).

Aim, again, hit Star with her smoke pipe, this time harder than before and with a seriously scary face.

“Anyway”, she said, after coughing. “Star was right” He was?! I thought before I could help, immediately regretting, noticing how Aim half disappointed, half disgusted read my thoughts as soon as they came to me. “You probably will fight with pretty anachronistic weapons, even for Police standards”, she referred to those who enforced the district laws. “Otherwise, it just wouldn’t be entertaining enough, so you can’t just install an App, run it and see the head of your enemies explode, but will demand a lot of your body, and how it is now, isn’t enough… Now, normally, when turning a civilian into a Soldier, we would just put you into a something-blablabla-tub and see you get thrice as big, install combat commands into your brain and send you, equipped to your teeth, to a real but easy battlefield, so you could have a taste of blood, but...” Wait, who would be “we” in this situation?! You and who?! “We don’t have these resources, nor the necessary time for this. When you said the Tournament begin again?”

“Registrations is open until just one day before the start of the event, and the participants will be announced when the inscription period com to an end, but the Tournament starts in one month”, I had already gone to the company headquarters, read and signed the contract to the tournament (the only real reason to why I was there, at Aim’s shop, and not at work is that, once I had become a competitor, I had gained an entire salary at once; with the condition that I had to show up at the arena in the right day if I didn’t want to get arrested and forced to slave labor until the compensation of the debt plus interest, what would take around…. my entire life).

“...Then, you have no choice: Star!”

“Yes, honey!”, she didn’t hit him this time, but just sighted.

“Transfer to him your apps: start by the auto-movement and put him to train his body while you teach him how to really fight. And kill”, she instructed, going back to the store and letting us alone.

“Yes, honey!”

“Ando you better don’t start to call me this way just because I forgave you once!”, Aim shouted from the stairs below.

“...Why didn’t we did this from the beginning?” I had to ask, seeing the download bar filling up really quick in the corner of my eyes, the programs, the apps, being copied directly to my Angel, and to inside my head.

“…You know, even though we have all of this, it isn’t like we are reach nor nothing, she just brought all of her things from when she was in the army back with her. Actually, we probably will never sell most of the things we have here; like, who is the gangster or weapon enthusiast that have the money to buy a fucking battle spaceship?”, Star said, as if it was a common thing to have a space ship (it’s even less common to have a battle one! The army just let her bring these things back?!). “And, while she has pretty great combat apps, she can’t copy it to anyone, but have to make shittier versions by herself. And she is awful in it. So, if we just start it from the begging you could have died”, he smiled, looking to me and concluded: “well, it’s not like there are no risks now though!”

In a flash of light and in a single second, then, I saw myself transported to some kind of forest: I couldn’t see the sun, only spears made of his light piercing thru the thick treetops, but its heat was palpable, my skin immediately starting to secrete sweat beneath the simple light clothes I was wearing. Mosquitoes buzzed around and dead tree leafs crackled under my boots.

“Now, listen to me”, Star’s voice came from… somewhere at my right, but I couldn’t see him anywhere. “First, you need to know that your body is training your muscles in the real world right now, but, as I said before, Aim’s programs are pretty shit, so the real you won’t stop even if you come to have a heart attack, and the time here runs just 15 times slower, so we have a really limited amount of time to train you, and if we end this one-second latter, you will die out of exhaustion, but if we end finishing this too earlier, you won’t have a chance at the arena”

“So, are you saying that, if we do this right, I will have a chance to win?”

“...You got me there, haha!”

“Don’t say that I’ll unavoidably die and laugh!”

“I’ll be direct: you have no chance of winning in a direct confrontation. If we do this right, you can kill one or two despaired Workers like you, but, if they gang up on you, or if you bump into one of those former police officers or worse, winners, you’re definitely dead. And, definitely, they will be there, after all, this Tournament is, in the end, just an excuse to richer people have some fun killing us; it doesn’t even have this much audience, it receives it’s money mostly from its most important participants. There are guys who participate every month!”, his voice, then, came from my left side.

How could he have moved so fast?!

“You better avoid them… But, well, can’t you say the same for every other participant? I mean… Can you kill them, if necessary?”

There it was again. I’ve been avoiding thinking about this, but I knew the question from the beginning. Finally, I answered:

“…Yes”, I said, and the image of the girl I tried to help a few days ago immediately came to my mind, her reaction, and my sister’s answer. “Like you said, this is just a facade so upper classes can have some fun killing us, they’re already all dead man an woman”

“I see… Well, you don’t need to win, right? So there’s no real need for killing”, he continued. Attacking me.

First I saw the world spinning all around, blurring before everything stopped at once, part of my back, neck, and head hitting the ground and putting me looking right into Star, who kept the same low posture as when he executed the sweeping kick.

It hurt

“Gah!”, I screamed, my eyes rolling inside my head, my body falling to the side.

“Oh, yes: we’re installing a pain resistance into your Angel, but here you will feel things, actually, worse than they really are: to get used, you know?”, he explained while violently kicking me. “But, it’s really sad, you know? You’re kind, like few people are, but you will suffer, and die, and probably for nothing in the end”

There’s no way I will see she smiling ever again

“SHUT UP!”, I shouted, grabbing his feet and pulling it, immediately after it executing one of the immobilization movements out of the 12 that the “Certain kill methods 2000! Buy, now with 15% discount!” (What the fuck? What kind of name is this?), Aim’s app contained, I having just installed it, and locking Star.

Or at last, trying to: wile I, definitely, pulled his foot, he reacted without reluctance and in just a second and freed himself, emending his movements with an elbow strike right at my neck, breaking it.

I respawned close to my dead body, crying in pain, drooling, and falling to my knees, scratching my own neck so hard I tore my skin and took blood out.

“Come on man, get up: you want to save your sister, don’t you?”

At the first end of the first day, I left the simulation and a pile of hundreds of my own dead corpses, only to, after feeling more pain than in my entire life during those almost endless hours, return to a body so tired; drenched in sweat, with the knuckles and shins in raw meat; that, in the second the auto movement app shut off, it fell to the ground and just refused to move for the next four hours.

Once that my father had really sold the house, I had no place to go back, Aim let me stay in her house and share Star’s bedroom (because, yes, even though she supposedly wasn’t rich, her house was immense). Of course, I was paying with the money I got from the subscription.

The next day, I fought with Star again, but, this time, we were in a desert even hotter than the previous forest: mountains in the distant west, sand dune in the east, a canyon to the south and an old town where I was hidden, mostly made out of wood. This time, though, we both had weapons.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck...! Was everything I could think, even with the thought acceleration program being executed as intensely as it could, almost burning my brain inside out. Star was rough when fighting with his fists, and killed me dozens and dozens of times, but, even though the pain of having your neck broken, your ribs trespassing your lungs and heart, and your brain damaged by a pair of thumbs piercing your skull thru your eyes were as bad as any other during that hellish training, there was something, a big difference in seeing a boy that must have just turned one year old with his fists up, and the balcony you were hiding behind exploding in a thousand pieces, from left to right, and the green points that were causing this destruction approaching you.

“FUCK!”, I shouted, in the end getting hit and having first my right feet, then my right and left knees, crotch, belly, neck, and left shoulder overheated and it’s molecules decomposed into a type of hot gas, exploding.

“No, no, no, you aren’t using the thought acceleration program correctly! Think about it as a thought multiplying app… Because is what it was built to be, but it’s hard to do these things”, taught Star thru thee voice-chat. “Anyway, you can’t divide your mind, but instead of focusing in a single perfect shot, or the precise movement at the right time, you need to simplify the situations, put them in a loop and keep checking them, like: ‘I don’t listen, see, smell nor feel nothing in the north, now south, now west, now east, now north again, I find him! My right side will explode, but I already started to avoid, so I’ll already start to shot at his most vulnerable point’, kinda feel!”

“...I don’t understand!” I complained, finally able to move again after a long minute absorbing the pain. “This thing is fucking confusing: my head seems to get hot and I quickly lose control above my thoughts...”, I concluded, taking the auto rifle that I was using as my main weapon; a slim, black and with nice lines machine that displayed an intricate pattern of neon lights. Looking up to the bright sun, I activated one of the programs Aim had given to me, “Rapid Eyes Adjustment”.

“Maybe it will be easier to show then instead of tell”, I heard Star. Right behind me.

Running the thought acceleration program at its maximum capacity, I concentrated on listening to the air being moved by the weapon he had in hands, assuming where its barrel would be at the end of the movement and jumping to the opposite side.

Rolling and quickly getting up, the ground where I was just a second ago exploding in the typical green fog, the area around it turning into glass, I responded with a blast of stalking, shiny ammo: Star avoided each and every one of the shots with impressive precision.

Awesome…! I thought pathetically admiring him, my attention being easily stolen, and without realizing that Star was already firing.

I died again, respawning in a different location. Taking a deep breath, I said to myself:

“Simplify, start the action but don’t wait to see what happens next, loops. Understood”

After the shooting training, and another thousand deaths, I proceeded like the last day and immediately fell to the ground and slept.

The next day, I woke up, gulped my pills, took the shower of the week, and went back to training; this time: sharp and blunt weapons; we were in a simulation of a generic industrial area of the City, with enormous metal walls crowded with buildings above buildings, latticed bridges, and catwalks, endless falls and advertising in letters and images everywhere.

“The basics aren’t too different, but don’t get too confidant”, said Star, throwing his knife up and grabbing it again, with precision, by the handle.

“You don’t need to worry, I’m pretty aware of how weak I am”, I interrupted, shrugging; having chosen a magnetic nano readjusting sand, and molding it into a spear, opting to keep Star as far as possible.

“Haha! You’re completely hopeless, knows about it, agree with it, and, yet, give one more step forward: it’s so cool! ...I kinda hate it”

“Wait, what?”, the knife pushed my spear away and came straight into my face.

I dodged in the last moment, immediately changing the shape of my spear into a type of round shield and blocking Star’s following attacks.

“What do you mean?!”, perfect straight red lines started to open on my arms, face and all of my upper body: he was fast, and only seemed to get even faster for each thrust I managed to avoid.

“I mean that it’s useless!”, Star threw himself against me and slide beneath my shield “When I heard you arguing with your father, I identified myself with you and felt pity”, with a well-applied strike, I lost strength on my right leg, the limb going numb and bleeding too much. “But I’ll be direct: you’ll fail!” Star got up and grew above my figure on my knees. “You will just suffer!” he pushed the knife down and against my skull.

Not strong enough, though.

“There’s no hope? I will suffer?”, I clenched my teeth: the hand I used to stop his blade was dripping blood into my face, right above my head, pierced by the knife, and it was hurting a lot, so much that I just wanted to die and respawn again, or cut it out. I tried to laugh, but the air got out of my mouth in a strange way and I sounded half sighing, when I continued: “Yeah, you’re right. Everything is darkness and my body and mind are vanishing in a swirl of despair” Star was already trying to get free, but the hand nailed with the knife was holding tight his pulse and a few punches and kicks wouldn’t make me let him go. I slowly got up while forcing my right leg to stay in the right position. “But! ...But, if I will suffer anyway, why can’t I do whatever the shit I want?!”, I concluded impaling Star with the lance I had re-made and looking him in the eyes.

He tried to scream, but the nanomachines that constituted the “sand” were already ripping him inside out, and only blood came out of his mouth. I saw him trying to take the lance out of his body and slowly losing strength, until he had none left. Then:

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuck!”, I heard Star screaming in the distance.

I… I killed him. I did it. I DID IT!

“...You know, Heavy? I thought we were the same. I was wrong”, Star said thru the voice chat, finally back to his senses. “I was wrong: you’re way cooler”

Then, having, for some reason, lost my will to celebrate my first victory, I looked to his corpse: his shirt all ripped, and I could see the dozens of scars all along his body, marks of cuts, bullets, burns and everything I could imagine more.

“What, he defeated you?”, Aim said, surprised; we were in her kitchen, she feeding me with a bunch of supplements and medicine with unknown effects. The place was big enough to have a six people table and a few cabinets filled with a bunch of other remedies that, usually, no Worker would ever see.

“It was only one time! And I, soon, killed him, like, three thousand times!” It was true. “He defeated me only once, and he almost died to do so, a kind of strategy that would be useless in the Tournament!” Star replied more agitated than I thought he would be. “And I wasn’t even serious!”

Aim was facing the cabinets, choosing more drugs, but I saw the sides of her mouth curving up before she turned to me and played, acting (very bad) like a teenager in love:

“Wow, Heavy, you’re really impressive! You evolved so much in just a few days!”

“Well, maybe I went a little too far: sorry, I will take things more easy with Star. I don’t want him to get too hurt after all”, I joined the joke.

Looking back to the orange-haired guy with a child's face, I saw a man dead inside for a moment. Just when I was about to say I’m sorry, he commented, closing his eyes:

“Okay, then...”, Star took a red band out of his pocket and tied it up in his forehead. “Let’s get serious then”, and, when he showed his vision once again, they were completely crimson.

“...Sorry”, Aim whispered to me, looking away and getting out of the room.

Maybe… Did I commit a terrible mistake?

Soon, 28 out of the 30 days I had to prepare myself had gone by, and I was facing Aim and Star at their entrance.

“Are you sure this is okay? Won’t I forget what I learned?”

“This is for the best: you aren’t a Soldier, your body won't be good when needed if you keep this training until the very last moment. You need to rest!” Aim smiled sadly. “…But, sorry, Heavy, this is all I can do for you: a few shit programs, a crap body fortification, and a coward strategy... If there’s anything more I can help with, just let me know”

“No, you treated me well: thank you for everything… But, there’s one more thing you can do for me...”, Star, who was watching us while smiling in silence, arms crossed, proud that after that first time, I didn’t defeated him even once, widened his eyes and started to sweat and shake.

“Just say! I’ll do my best”, his mouth had fallen already to the ground, and was facing me as if about to kill me, this time for real.

“Give Star a chance, he really likes you” I said, and admired both of my closest friends freezing, mortified, then blushing to their ears. “Goodbye then! Cheer for me during the Tournament, okay?”, I concluded and entered in the taxi Aim had called for me.

“Address?”, asked the Worker that was driving, the inside of the vehicle being like just a round sofa, the machine being controlled by the driver’s thought; a privileged, once that for Workers and Leaders, these last ones being really just one step ahead of us, reach the necessary calculating skill, they had to buy really expansive apps (while executives and upper classes could easily do it with their natural capabilities; and some Soldiers too).

“There’s a hospital...”, I said, and explained.

Gear, I didn’t tell you yet, but I subscribed as a competitor in the Last Man Tournament. I repeated for the 100th time inside my head the speech I had planned to explain everything to my sister. Don’t worry, I trained a lot, so I will live for enough time! Outside, the City was flying in a blurred gray field spotted by all kinds of bright colors, dark short-haired people, persons with long multicolored hairstyles. I know that you are angry, but there’s no way for me to give up now, so you better don’t lose your time nor do anything stupid to try to stop me. This is all, bye… No, this isn’t right now that I think about it again. There’s something missing!

“We’re here”, announced the driver.

Not that there’s time to think about now, hu? The taxi, that had already received his money from Aim, went away as soon as I got out of it and stepped onto the catwalk in front of the hospital. Before I could properly enter the building with the giant red cross, however, someone pulled my right arm and grabbed my shirt’s collar:

“Hey, if it isn’t 46”, Asshole said, displaying a psycho looking in his face, his eye widened, skin covered in sweat. “Came to pay a visit to your little bitch, hu?”

“You…!”, I closet my hand into a tight fist.

“Cut the small talk already!” Douchegab interposed, pushing Asshole aside and bringing my face closer to his own. “You hadn’t come to work recently, so, you got it, right? Your sister’s insurance” I was angry enough to punch him, there and in that exact moment. But something inside me, a scared creature, was just containing my hands. “No, even if she isn’t dead yet, just kill her already! We can even help you with it if you’re not man enough, just give us a few thousand Benevolences!”

Even if she actually died, there was just no way I would get more than a few hundred in money. Yet, this wasn’t what was going thru my head at that moment.

“NO!”, I shouted, slapping Douchebag’s hand away and pulling myself away from him. “I will never give any of you anything! I prefer to throw all I will ever have into the vacuum of space, to destroy myself and all my belongings than see you two touching it!” I concluded, facing both of the despaired one-eared Workers.

Douchebag’s face twisted into a horrendous expression, his face turning red and veins pulsing swollen, his hate almost palpable when he gave the first step. I was, surprisingly, still afraid; but, no! I trained a lot, I’m sure I can take this guy down now! Then, the one-eared Worker stopped. He was looking behind me.

“You had luck this time, 46, but It won’t be like this forever”, he said, giving me his back, a signal to Asshole and going away, vanishing into the crowd: “You’re dead”.

A touched my heart, feeling it’s beating coming back to normal, when I turned to where Douchebag was looking just a second ago, noticing a policeman staring me. Thank you, God, we didn’t fight! We would both die, for sure, I thought, entering the hospital. Of course, there would be police here, fuck, what was I thinking? I can’t put everything to waste now.

...And, why am I here, reluctant once again? I asked myself, facing my sister’s room door. Shaking my head from one side to another, I calmed myself; I must just be still a little nervous from that confront...

How the fuck will I tell her that I’m entering this killing game?! I bit my lower lip. Like, if she was the one doing this for me, my heart just wouldn’t resist the resist, it would break!

In the end, I sighed, put on a serious and determined expression, and entered the room.

“Oh, you came? There’s almost one month since your last visit, so I thought you had finally forgotten about me”, she said, smiling sadly, still all tied in gauze.

“There’s no way I can forget about you, right?”

“That’s a shame”, she looked away and thru the window.

“Why?” I sited at the end of her bad.

“Because this means you must be working too hard to take care of me”

It’s now or never…!

“…Actually, no”

“...What do you mean?”, she asked, the hesitation clear in her voice, almost as if she already knew what I was up with.

“There’s no more point in working hard”

“So, you moved on in the end!”, she said, but it was clear that, more than an affirmation, it was a wish.

“Father sold our house and didn’t let me go back home after all” I omit the part where he asked for her insurance, fearing that she could kill herself. “Being paid that misery of salary, there’s no point on keeping working: I would never save enough to take you out of here while having to find another place to live and other expanses”

“Heavy!”, Gear grabbed my hand; I could feel her warm, her heart beats getting faster. “What did you do...?!”

“...I joined the Last Man Tournament”, I answered, the words leaving my throat with burning pain, scratching it. And saw my sister’s face went pale and felt her grip get loose. Hurting more then any time I had died in VR before, I got up, I looked away from Gear and continued: “don’t worry, I have a plan, even if I don’t win, you will-”

“THAT DOESN’T MATTER!”, she interrupted me, holding my shirt from behind and touching her forehead on it. I couldn’t see her face, but I could very well listen to her sobs. “You will die…!”, I couldn’t reply. “You will leave me alone again…! ...Hey, please, give up, okay? Please”

“...There’s no way back now, Gear. I already signed the contract”, I concluded, freeing myself and walking away.

“Heavy!”, Gear called when I reached the room’s door. “At last… promise to me that you will survive. That you will come back to me”

My eyes went wide, the cold mask I was wearing undone, like as if had being shot by Star's weapon; I opened my mouth, and, for a moment only, I wished to tell her everything, to share my thoughts and plans. To say sorry. But I couldn’t, in the end, do that.

“I promise, Gear. I will always come back to you”, I lied.

“Then, it’s okay”, she, shockingly, wiped her tears. “Stay. Here, at last today. The tournament starts tomorrow, right? You won't have much time for me after this, and I was feeling lonely after all this time isolated in this hospital bed, so… will you grant one more wish for this selfish sister of yours?”

“...How could I say no, right?”

Then, I sited once again at the end of her bad, and we talked, laughed, remembered, and dreamed for hours. When was night already, though, and Gear was sleeping quietly, using my arm as a pillow, I accessed the web and watched the announcement of the competitors. And, of all the possibilities that Aim and Star had brought up, the worst one had taken place:

Of course right? They’re, apparently, the only reason that this stupid Tournament still happens: an old champion, a higher class citizen