Cyclopean walls, mismatched and full of Contestant gore, heavy droplets fall, rounded ovals on the extreme temperature of Ohros. The low gravity of the planetoid and the seas of magma are all covered by a blackness of space beyond, that so starless seems to naked eyes.
The arena is quiet only a moment and the gray, golden layered piece of flesh that makes a human, it is glimpsed away into a resurrection pod.
Jorj passes anew to this familiar process. Jolts of nerves return between his fingerprints and so breaks the pain of a new body being woven onto him, another iteration of the plex that makes him. Neurons branch themselves out amidst metal needles and silicone brands, bones become real through pressure sockets spewing pure calcium and noble minerals. Sinews are grafted to the expanding flesh, magnetized, drawn to where they should be.
Habits return well enough on their random lapse of judgement. Every respawn, he does the usual stretching open of his left hand and a tight fist on his right. Last, after all his organs become bound and pumped with blood, his sight and hearing returns to him. He cannot witness anything other than the light of the pod and out he is pushed with a new plate of gladiator armor, forged ontop of his skin. It covers barely anything. Two breastplates, a light tight second skin, two thigh-plates, gloves and grafted devices.
Whisper sleuth and growling, the Claimant that sits besides him, he is running in his ear, tightening logic in the light Gymnete armor, making the currents, circuitry and hydraulics obedient.
The first breath is always hell. Jorj's flesh sweats instantly as if the previous death was mere lapse wherein no time had passed at all and the accumulated fatigue and dehydration, they too have been copied as they should be at the ending stretch of a long duel in the arenas of Ohros.
Here, heat, uneven gravity, pure industrial grade oxygen and nitrogen breathing mix, the atmosphere itself makes the matches that more demanding and interesting. No relief is allowed on the Contestants other than random pickups on the steel platforms, or high into the battlements of the uneven, pieced together wall of bedrock.
No relief can come from the Claimants either. The other person who is there along and after, in-between the ears and sometimes infront of a stimuli, he can not bring coolness, or some other decrease of what burden the Contestant has to carry. The flesh alone has to made due without support and the abstractive magic of a Claimant can not push silicone or chemistry, microscopic fans to rotate and assist that moving, two legged mass of sweat and skin. There are only hints of logic, masquerading as help, where the Contestant's body asks for coolness.
So is known to Jorj and so knows his Claimant Maras.
The place is set close to an end and what has passed, calls for ordered judgement. That too, is given by Claimants but it seems that an ethereal mind is slower than Contestant’s thundering mania. Jorj moves faster than the whisper in his ear.
Dashing on the dry gravel around the wall's outer perimeter, a shock lanza expects him there. Hand finds weapon as weapon itself seeks out a hand to wield it, by way of Maras. The dried out blood from Jorj's previous death remains there and he steps on top of his old broken body while the shock lanza returns to its azure color, deep cobalt reflects on the many vertical coils around the blue core. On the tip of the shock lanza the muzzle brake is shaped as an arrowhead, still fuming from the previous time it was fired.
Unbearable. A hush of timing, there is no sound but a soft sizzling. To where ear might beget movement, there is only stillness.
Another advice breaks a that stop. A distraction among the moments, Jorj digs into his ear and pulls out the small earpiece that was grafted to his eardrum. Where there was that hush of sound, therein now rests more, deeper, introspective joy of the moment and the streak of blood that runs down his side of the neck, it evaporates and stiffens. Jorj smiles. Clots become a cracked row moving anew as it mixes with evaporating sweat.
Tiny a gap. Tiny a passing place. Manic, infinitesimal chance crowns the Contestant. On the ecstatic nudge beyond pain, one strong push of the wall sends him sprinting away. From above, a flak round the size of a human head explodes behind Jorj and shrapnel follows along the fleeting of his foot. Between the torn eardrum, a torrent of gravel and hot metal resounds. A cacophony that nears and consumes a rubber-booted shin. Flickers and lodestone, superheated bullets pass, eating through soft and hard.
Beyond prayers, beyond the tight woven plex of experiences and other abilities that define prowess, chance, pathways of blood working in habit, a certain aim happens that is empty of thinking. The manic thundering collapses, falling in a hole within the gray. Then and thus, the trigger of the shock lanza is pulled.
Fired from the hip, with the long cobalt rod staring upward, the streak of blue light powers instantly through the air and there is nothing left but a swirling void that vacuums within it sizzling particles of air. Jorj feels the recoil pull his shoulder off as every hypertrophic, tightened part of his core and arm musculature pushes against the handheld horror of physics.
The other body opens up. The shape is unmade, from that of a five edged humanoid, to that of a gaping nothing, an absence of silhouette where there should be a left shoulder and the rest, stretching out and around the hole.
Jorj falls on his side. From a glimpse into the overhead score superimposed into the starless sky above, he understands it so that he has grasped victory. The score is five to four. All the tightening unwinds, the body relaxes and he remains there a minute enjoying through that empty moment of aim, trying himself not to think of anything.
Detached pain breaks that void. He turns on his back, chin to breastplate. He thinks it might take a while for the cleaners and other services to take him away. Much more so now, he imagines Maras, with his many bronze neck-rings, firstly discussing internally within the company and then deciding about the care of their Contestant.
From one of his pockets a strip of cloth finds itself tangled around his hands. Once straightened, it goes round the mutilated leg and Jorj pulls it tight to a makeshift tourniquet.
The pain is there, but muted, from the many and more, exalted moments that had been way worse. And to his mind, this is but all attuned to, to be manageable pain, normal a shock to his body. Before passing out and understanding that he stands at good odds to wake up healthy in a few hours, Jorj recalls that it all one last time. Bleeding eardrum, missing leg, strained shoulder and perhaps a few other broken things within him, they are all cloaked in a membrane. A thin, see-through plastic, a dampening coating, that makes pain horrible, but overall not important.
The limbs stop itching. Within him now is no death, but worry. Worry on whether he might not make it the cheap way out and he might be pulled into another resurrection pod. Worry of debt for the extortionate rate of these machines. How much more so now, with an angered sponsor.