"I smell oily musk. Did you dine on human? I am ready to barf. What the fuck is wrong with you?"
"No. No, it was just an art piece dedicated to the people who died on that tungsten hail."
"Varhas, I swear, if that lingering I smell is burnt human, I am going to throw the match."
"It is not. Do not worry. Besides it is ethically harvested."
Utter silence is broken by this monologue. What Jorj smells is not exactly a scent in the air, but remnants, the entry of his support coursing through the wires on his implants and armor, pointing to a recent sway of memory.
Backwards to the Claimant, goes a hint that Jorj is about to move his hand and rip out the Jacobson alloy-organ that sits flat and paper-thin deep into his nostril.
Varhas plays silence in his actions. Forgetting and becoming one with blank waiting. When the scents, the visions and the need to speak to each other fades, one turns to another in professional manner. Lost in the time before action, the small commonplace of fears, anxieties, idle torment and intoxicating hormones, all stand still for the multitude of happenings, waiting for someone to open a gate.
-
Rotating mirrors make a sideshow of Lanza blue, applying geometry self folding to the ever-pale walls and gray lines of the arena.
The sand is grounded glass, splashed in spots of red. The only color that does not fit the minimalistic display is thus and the corners, the sight of shooting and the action, it is all covered in straight lines, right angles and rectangular slabs. Every surface is such and made of white granite whose gray imperfections are one with the background.
Such corners are the line of sight between the four Contestants. A death match of teams, the score was an even two to two with both sides having returned to the prime of their flesh.
Every Claimant is a different type of voice in the ear of a Contestant. "This is not a body journey, this is a mind journey", whispers constantly Varhas, a background noise that blends in with the flames. Chips off the old Lanza flashes blue. The Starzy Pike flays wall and it all is ebb and flow of destruction, aiming, dodging and surviving. Body and mind. Jorj becomes aware of the names of the other three as a beam of that radiant green Pike passes by his head. Burnt hair and the freshness of a skinless cheek, they are woven to self reflection by the dreamy speech of the voice in-between the Contestant's ears.
Umza and Jorj, Arivet and Loque are locked in battle. Far from sight Arivet respawns. He holds the green Starzy Pike, stepping around cover and with high a leap, he gains an advantage over Umza and Jorj.
The green beam, cackles out of the edged muzzle. Light of speed and flaying at its touch, it is unordered, savage current of irradiated green.
Two green weapons and two blue, the cyan glow goes out the dome and into the displaced and blurred crowd in the distance. One death sends roaring yells from behind the arena's undefined borders.
From above, one beam pushes Umza and Jorj behind corners, while Loque already stands there expecting a target. Unusual was the speed of the next assault, with the two Lanza holders, breaking out of a form, and taking each enemy out with a coordinated, but otherwise solitary, attack.
Jorj shoots Arivet from point blank, making himself a hole expanding to where he crosses through the gore. Umza rushes and reveals himself only to bait a supposed movement towards the idle weapons of the arena. Loque believes him to go after the sniper rifle and as he fires the lance towards where Umza should be, he is hit twice by Lanza shots, both missing by a small margin. One strips away at his armor and the other pulls him apart by proximity force alone.
While the other team is put back together in their pods, Umza runs around, picking up items of the arena, loose stimpacks, enhancers that can give him the vigor Loque had just a moment gone. Anything, to repair the damage he sustained by this infinitesimal error that has let him stand, half-there, more an automated body that is missing parts of itself, missing in a green scalding absence.
Jorj is now on the high ground, remaining close to the spawning point of a shield belt that never manifests itself.
With that misfortune and without future-sight from their Claimants, the two go down on even ground to meet their foes. The other two, recklessly step out into the open where a quick tempo meets all four of firing weapons.
Unlike their opponents the blue team's weapons are only good for two things and either is a manoeuvre of pinpoint violence. Aim and great damage, that slays outright without room for other minor injury, unless properly armored.
This fast back and forth is taxing as the stimuli of lost flesh and screaming neurons of missing bodyparts it should make any Contestant lose some semblance of control. Yet despite all, that second ability of the blue Lanzas, is used by its absence to score two more points for Jorj and Umza.
The Lanza can fire, either a long fast line that breaks apart some cohesion on the space across it, or a slow moving sphere of Lanza blue, radiating and explosive when coming in contact against something solid. With a combination of the two and carefully avoiding that a blue beam may strike blue a hovering ball, their opponents are tricked into moving with carefulness. Awareness and fear that put them in expected paths where they are broken against the blue glow.
The score is six to two.
-
And Jorj cannot help but think it all pointless act.
Where there should be whiplash and a Contestant should be empty, disheartened, so it happens in fact that mere shot comes fast and the next two kills are done so, idle and fired from the hip.
The whispering between the ears is strong, but breath that comes over him is a fault, wind old and second-filtered.
Underfoot is but older remnant and vacant though-streams manifest, in utter silence.
Arivet and short Loque frag Umza. One to each side, they near Jorj who stands there, frozen in a great spotlight that sheds no different a light.
The score is about to be eight to four and there is one among the four who is exhausted and the weight on his shoulders, pulls nine to ninety times anew for idle shoulders.
-
Jorj fires first a sphere. Then he is moving around, dodging the green beams, getting equally hit by their glow. When he shoots at the blue sphere with his Lanza, it has gained some distance and Jorj imagines his body stiff, unable to move anymore.
A void, black with blue imperfections of an implosion fills the whiteness. Sand flows outwards and then in. Flayed to its force, the two opponents lose cohesion of their bodies, unmade to strips pulled towards the void. The sand levitates, patches pure and red and it seems as if a veil has been lifted over the ground, only for a moment, covering the violence, collecting underneath the void and falling down into a granular mound.
The small hill remains as such in white sand. Beams of light from on sunlit a dome, passed all through painful holes, they make it a moment silent, peaceful and without noise, thoughtless an offering of spectacle.
The score is actually ten to three and Jorj has not been fragged, other than that initial fix into the prime of his body. Now however, he stands tall with many injuries, uneven, grotesque and as if a miracle held together by half molten cartilage. Immaterial strings. No bone, no muscle but there.
Idle, tired and empty. An offering of peace to everyone watching. As if half visible, without a stench, dry in his exterior. Collecting all the wishes for violence into his spectacle of pain.