Scene: The Death Box
Jill took a breath and turned her gun toward Alex.
Alex cautiously looked toward Jill and lowered her arm cannon. Her right hip pocket opened, revealing shining slim missiles packed together like sardines. The missiles loaded themselves onto the six extensions on the rotating metal ring near the base of her weapon.
Jill smiled with sudden enthusiasm as she decided to begin with her most powerful attack. The barrel of her gun widened greatly and began to glow blue.
Alex waited for Jill to make the first move.
Jill fired a great burst of blue plasma. The gun's kickback knocked Jill off her feet and onto her back. Alex stepped out the way and watched the attack pass by, bursting in a large explosion on the far wall.
Getting to her feet, Jill apologized to Mick in the unseen control center. "Sorry. I haven't fought in a while."
Mick was not upset. "Not a problem. This is a training arena. You’re here for training. Now see, you didn't blow up the wall. That's the most important thing. How about you try that again? Alex, can you go easy on her?"
"No." Alex stated this as if it were an immutable law of the multiverse and not merely a decision of hers.
Mick shrugged. "Well, good luck Jill."
Jill aimed and fired a cluster shot at Alex. Alex stepped away. The shot burst next to her, two of its smaller bursts impacting Alex and exploding. Satisfied that the damage was relatively insignificant, Alex went on the attack and began running in a wide arc around Jill while firing blasts of energy into her opponent from her arm cannon.
Jill reflexively tried to block the first energy blast with an arm. It stung, but it did not hurt. She aimed her gun and returned fire, trying to match quick shots for quick shots. Alex dodged most of Jill's attacks, while most of Alex's shots were direct hits. They were starting to sting more and more. Jill felt compelled to take a step back after another hit, and again after another.
From above, Mick gave a suggestion. "Jill, you may want to try dodging."
"It's hard to move." The arena had made movement difficult for Jill. On top of that, her concentration was so occupied by trying to aim and hit Alex that she was not thinking about dodging.
Alex followed up a shot with a missile, then another, then another. Jill saw the first missile coming in and instinctively tried to block it, crouching away and shielding her body with her arm. The first missile stung like one of Alex's energy shots. The next stung a little more. The fourth pushed her backwards, sliding on her feet. The fifth and sixth missiles hurt a lot, knocking her to the ground. She felt an electric twitch inside her as her nanites activated her defensive field, but she did not feel it absorb much from either hit. She quickly got to her feet.
Alex walked directly toward Jill and fired four shots directly into her, taking the hit that Jill returned. The fourth shot knocked Jill back as if a train had hit her. She slammed back into the wall. She kept ahold of her gun and she landed on her feet as she fell, but the sudden experience shook her up.
Mick called a halt to the match. "Okay, that's the arena telling you you're done. I'm ending this round. How are you feeling?"
"I..." Jill started, unsure how she felt. "I don't hurt anymore."
"Good, that's how it's supposed to be." Mick was pleased that there were no unexpected side effects. He began a few lessons for Jill. "Okay, let's talk this over. First, you need some practice but that's what you're here for. Second, learn to dodge. Move. You stand in one place, you're going to get hit a lot. Also, if you can maneuver around, you can control the fight. "
"Next up, blocking the missiles was a good choice. The arena detects when you are trying to block something and it makes attacks do less damage, although it doesn't help as much if you just stay there and keep taking hits. They want you to move around. I'm sure you noticed that the last missile hurt more than the first one." Jill nodded. Mick continued. "You ready to go again now that you know what it's like?"
Jill paused to take a deep breath. She put her gun down on the ground and answered. "No, not really."
Mick was completely surprised. "No?!? Are you sure?"
Jill explained. "I... I need to practice moving in this. I'm going to run around the arena again, do some stretches, and just..." She shrugged, at a loss for words. "... move."
Mick was happy with that answer. "Okay. That'll work. Get used to this. Go do your jogging thing."
Jill began doing her jogging thing. Mick looked down at the console which showed No Name with a score of 167 and Alex Smith with a score of 45. Mick typed in Jill's name and reset the match, bringing both scores to zero. He then looked down into the arena to see Jill standing inside the area of the orange cones. "Uh, Jill? Nuh-uh. Get out of there."
Jill leaped into the air, not nearly as high as Alex had leaped but higher than was humanly possible for the ordinary human. She landed with a loud clap, then spread out her arms and stretched her back. "It feels good in here," she remarked.
Mick wasn't happy to have to inform her. "That's because it's broken. You don't know what it's going to do to you in there. How'd you get in there, anyway? Is the shield not up?" Mick checked. "I never put the shield up. Boy, I'm glad none of you knocked yourselves into that corner or you'd be a splatter. Death Box is supposed to just be a brand name, not a description." He sighed. "I really need to get that fixed."
Jill jumped out of the broken area and back into the rest of the arena. She lost much of her forward velocity as she passed by the line of orange cones and re-entered an area where it felt like she was moving through a thick soup. At least this would be good for building muscle tone, she hoped.
Celestia entered the control room behind Mick. "How is the training going?" she asked.
Mick relaxed a bit. "She needs a lot of work but I think there's potential." He pointed to his bag of snacks. "Hey, you want one? Go for it." Celestia reached in and took one snack.
Jill completed a full lap around the arena and returned to her gun. She did some stretches, then attempted a cartwheel and failed to complete it. She stretched again, and attempted a somersault. She exited the spin with a touch of dizziness, needing to sit for a moment before she could stand up.
Alex looked condescendingly at Jill's poor gymnastics. Jill spun around twice and began another cartwheel. Alex opened her left hip pocket and tossed a bomb on the ground. It exploded when Jill landed on it, knocking her on her back.
"Alex!" Mick called her out in a scolding tone of voice. The panel showed a score of 9 for Jill. Mick reset the match. "Okay, enough of that. Let's get round two started. You're going to be doing something different. Both of you, stand under the viewport here –" The fighters could only see the flat gray wall. "Hold on, it’s not visible." A window to the third-floor control room appeared on the wall. "Now you should see it. Stand on on either side, fairly far away from each other. When I say go, you will both begin running toward the far wall, shooting at each other while you are running. Are you ready?"
Jill looked at Alex. Alex was already looking at Jill and reloading her missiles, not taking her eyes off her target. Mick began a countdown. "Three... two... one... go!" Jill and Alex launched themselves forward and began a flurry of shots back and forth. Jill had a little better judgment of how much the arena was slowing down her bullets. She compensated by using more cluster shots that took longer to fire but had an area effect. Alex launched a missile. Jill stopped long enough for it to miss, and continued forward.
Mick looked down at the numbers. Jill was at 58. Alex was at 32. He pointed out the scores to Celestia. "She's not losing as badly this time."
Overhearing Mick's words over the loudspeaker, Jill somehow felt encouraged to fight more aggressively. She launched a cluster shot toward Alex's feet. Alex jumped over it and returned with a missile. Jill dodged the missile and readied a blue energy ball, kneeling to steady herself and firing it toward where Alex would land. Alex fell to the ground as she landed to allow the ball to pass overhead, continuing to fire without missing a moment of opportunity. Jill fired two quick shots into the prone Alex before the armored bounty hunter raised up on her arms and somersaulted across the ground twice, exiting the second spin in a leap that brought her back to a running pace. Jill remembered that she should keep moving and hustled out of the way of Alex's first shot.
Alex fired another missile and began reloading. Jill moved to block the missile. Its explosion knocked her gun into her face and then up into the air. Jill was knocked back on her rump, due more to the confusion than the blast. She quickly stood up and grabbed her falling gun in time to take another missile to the gut, launching her into the air and knocking her back quite far. She held onto her weapon, landed on her feet, and fired another cluster shot. It exploded in front of the next incoming missile, causing it to detonate harmlessly.
Jill kept moving, ducking under one of Alex's missiles and jumping over another that Alex had aimed at her feet, returning fire when she could. Alex tossed three bomblets in front of Jill. Jill took a hard step to turn and avoid stepping near them, exposing herself to a pair of solid hits from Alex's gun. Despite Jill's best efforts, Alex still moved faster, dodged better, and had better aim.
Jill took a hit that was enhanced by the arena systems, forcing her to slide backwards. Seeing herself being knocked back into the bombs, Jill leaped high into the air and fired a heavy shot to use the gun's recoil to knock herself back further, clear of the bombs. The kickback also pushed her out of the way of one of Alex's missiles.
Alex dove out of the way of the energetic blast and the explosion that came when it struck the floor. Alex hit the ground rolling and immediately rose up to one knee and fired another missile before Jill had touched the ground. The missile hit, knocking Jill back to the far wall, though not quite as hard as before.
Jill sighed, accepting her loss as she fell back to the ground. She brushed her hair back with her free hand and looked to Alex. "That was a good fight. Are you ready to go again?" Alex kept a steady aim on her as if the fight was not over.
Mick said it was over. "I'm calling the fight for Alex. Good job, both of you." He looked at the scores which showed Jill with 155 points of damage to Alex's 85 points. That was not really a good job, but it was a definite improvement.
Celestia had a request for Mick. "I would like to challenge Alex after the next match."
Mick allowed it. "Okay, go for it."
Comments (0)
See all