Status Quo rule no. 12 - Once a year, the syndicates will fight for the privilege of controlling the port.
Skye Allen lived her life by three simple truths.
One - everyone and everything will die.
Two - you belong to a syndicate until you don’t.
Three - there are only five colors to the Hirou.
These truths were the foundations not only for her but for everyone in the city of Bayport. For those who dared to forget them, survival became an elusive prize, slipping through their fingers.
Bayport, the island-metropolis, wasn’t a unique specimen among thousands scattered across the globe, even though it was one of the Big Five. Each of these islands held its own sovereignty, crafted its own code of conduct, and devised ingenious ways to maintain order in the midst of the bustling populace. It was a web of diverse governance, a patchwork quilt of rules and regulations.
The bike purred as Skye drove past the wide and busy streets of Bayport. The traffic ahead was unnaturally calm for a League Day, but she couldn’t bother herself with the number of cars on the concrete black lines.
She was on her way to the UA tournament, Bayport’s main entertainment event. It wasn’t a place for the soft-hearted. There wasn’t a lot of glory in the UA, no, but there was the chance of freedom. Freedom that many craved to have, rarely dared to seek. It was easier that way.
Skye stopped at a red light and glanced at her reflection. Dressed in only black clothes, black helmet and black bike, one could have mistaken her for an outlaw.
At night, Bayport’s streets came alive with a dazzling array of yellows, reds, and whites. The towering skyscrapers acted as mirrors, reflecting the vibrant hues of the streets and billboards, transforming them into a celestial display of stars against the glassy windows. The Hammond corporation’s sign rose tall among every other billboard, only outshone by the tournament’s opulent and sparkling letters. It was hard to miss the Hammond corporation, but even harder to get lost in the riches it promised people.
The main road cut the island in half as if it was a river, where crimson and ivory glistening fish seemed to drift in opposing currents, serving as a stark border between the upper and lower sides of the city.
In the lower parts of Bayport, where love could be bought with a dime, and a bad trip was more common than a good meal, criminals made their living with ease, sponsored and supervised by the UA, also known as the Underground Arena.
Such were the iron rules of the Status Quo.
Inside, she looked for her coach among the Hirou throwing fighters. Special Cages locked them inside, preventing the energy of the Hirou from breaking the interior of the room. She passed them with indifference, her eyes dancing between the fighters. Her presence though was not overlooked. With each cage she passed, hungry eyes of starving animals stared back at her.
She ignored them all. Grant them any attention, and they would only clamor for more, a dangerous cycle where the giver ultimately became the loser.
Hirou was the main force that drove the islands, and the most powerful ones could have it all. And they did. It was nothing close to magic, and no one knew the roots of it, but the sheer power it could give a person could change his fate, for better or worse. Wielding such power, which could on many occasions outshine any man-made weaponry, was dangerous in a way, and early on a system to surpass it was created. The minds behind the UA were far from foolish; their authority was both respected and feared.
Most UA fighters were ravenous for a win, a sentiment that Skye understood all too well, after all, she was one of them. The game was simple - win the UA League and gain freedom, lose, and stay for good. They weren’t fighting to the death, Hirou wielders were scarce these days, and killing them meant trouble, for the killer and the syndicate who owned said fighters.
Skye spotted Amit, her couch, and paced lazily toward him. Her helmet was in one hand while the other slackly held to her bag. Amit turned to face her. His broad shoulders cast a shadow over her short figure. One could compare him to a bear, if looked from afar, with his big frame, long dark beard and hairy hands. He studied her while crossing his large forearms on his chest.
“You’re late,” he said, his voice as raspy as a voice could be.
“I overslept.” She didn’t bother to look at him.
That was a lie, of course. Skye was, in fact, a light sleeper, and even the slightest of noises could disrupt her rest. It was far from an ideal situation especially when living in lower Bayport, where the nights were as loud as a battlefield. Most times the streets even turned into one. Amit would catch up on that lie, but it didn’t matter.
“Change and warm yourself up, you’re fighting a Green today,” he said after a while of staring at her. She nodded back and left for the dressing room on the far end of the hall.
After leaving the helmet and the leather jacket she wore inside her locker, Skye took out her black straps. Carefully, she wrapped each hand with them, from her wrist to her fingers, while letting them absorb her Hirou. Her fists clenched and reopened, then she turned the palm of her hands in circular motions.
A bolt of pain attacked her left forearm, but it’ll soon go away. The UA was not a place to bother oneself about injuries; they were a daily reality for the fighters, even if said injuries weren’t always caused from the fights. Some syndicate leaders were more brutal than others, while some UA fighters insisted on poking the bears in their lives.
Skye cursed and returned to the training hall. Amit had reserved an empty Cage for her, and she stepped inside. To her left, Mike was grounding his Hirou. If one couldn’t ground his Hirou perfectly, he couldn’t control the flow of the energy during a fight, and would discharge before even handing a proper blow. Just as one should warm up before a race to prevent muscle strains, a discharge during combat spelled instant defeat, occurring as swiftly as a bee flying past one’s ear. In contrast, a recharge, in the worst-case scenario, could take days.
After entering the Cage, she sat on the floor and crossed her legs while resting her palms on her knees. The Hirou flowed from her center to the tips of her body, each nerve accepting the invasion of power. If the Hirou wasn’t equally distributed or centered to a precise point, it would discharge much quicker or harm the body.
When Skye established she was good to go, she stood up and wiggled the palms of her hands. Brief sparks of electricity sprang from her knuckles and fingertips with each shake. Amit glanced down at her palms, narrowed his eyes, and clicked his tongue.
“What?” She looked at him, as if she didn’t know why he was mad at her.
“Skye, I’ve been training you for too many years, since you first came here, since you were a tiny child who knew nothing but being spoiled by her Mom, and for the love of God, stop throwing energy away!”
He loved reminding her that the UA was her lifeboat in a sea full of misfortunes, and she hated it. It irked her that, in some twisted sense, it was superior to the alternatives: living on the streets, being the property of any other syndicates, or dead. Of course, the prospect of death wasn’t as appealing as some might imagine. Considering the options presented to her, this was the lesser evil. She rolled her gray eyes at him and kept her silence.
“I’m tired of telling you that. I’m serious.” He went on.
“Then stop.” She waved her hand at him while passing him by on her way to the main arena. This speech was like a broken record.
As she pushed hard at the heavy door, bright lights attacked her eyes, blinding her for a brief moment. Putting her arm in front of her face, she blocked the intruding light until her eyes got accustomed to the bright colors. With a long exhale, she blew air at her bangs. Her hair, long and occasionally falling into her eyes, remained untrimmed despite Amit’s frequent pestering. She liked her black hair which reminded her of her father.
After a few jumps in place, keeping her body warm and alert, she stopped when a squeeze pushed at her shoulder, and glanced behind her. Mike smiled at her from above.
It was easy enough to glare at Skye. She wasn’t too short, but all the males in the UA League were uncommonly tall. She smiled back at him and wiggled her hands again, letting a few sparks escape from her fingertips.
A growl boomed from behind her. Only then she noticed Amit standing next to Mike. It was less than a surprise that Amit’s growl pierced through the cacophony of chants, shouts, and songs from the crowd that reverberated throughout the arena like a deafening symphony of discordant voices. He was a bear afterall.
“Good luck, love,” Mike said, and they high fived. She had to lift herself on her toes to reach his hand.
Mike arrived at her syndicate a few months before she did. There weren’t a lot of Hirou wielders with them, but later on, more fighters joined. Or rather, were forced to join. Mike was quite a whiner as a child and cried each time he would face difficulties or discharges. However, after enduring a few thrashings from her and the other fighters, he had little choice but to toughen up. The UA wasn’t for the soft-hearted, and Skye was lucky enough to learn it before she stepped foot in this hell-hole.
“So, are you ready for your fight?” Mike asked.
She contemplated it for a moment, her face shifting and brows furrowing with determination. Her opponent was a Green and could manifest bricks. These bricks were not only excruciatingly painful but also possessed substantial weight, capable of easily crushing her. What made them even more perilous was their variable size, with the smaller, denser, and swifter bricks posing the most imminent danger. This wasn’t going to be easy, but manageable.
“I’m fast enough to deal with it.” She concluded.
“Do you know who it is?”
“Does it matter?” She stared at the humongous screen, waiting for it to announce the beginning of the fights.
“No, I guess not. It’s rare to know beforehand, anyway.”
When the UA League was at its beginning, over a hundred years ago, fighters had sought to maximize their odds of victory and gain control over the arena, often resorting to pre-match violence against their rivals. And so, the UA decides to keep the names of the fighters undisclosed. The participants would have to wait for the match to begin to know if they might lose or win the fight. Ranks were unimportant, nor weight or gender, the only criterion that mattered was one’s capacity to harness and control their Hirou.
She fixed her ponytail, her long black hair cascaded down to her middle back.
Today was her fourth fight since the beginning of the season and the second one this week. She had won the last three and didn’t want to lose her momentum before the winter hiatus. Winning as many matches as possible was the most important thing so she wouldn’t have to worry about her spot on the charts, and have a chance in getting her freedom back.
“Welcome everyone to this match of the UA Fighting League. We have five matches today! The first one - Blue vs Green, then Red vs Purple, Yellow vs Green, Blue vs Red, and Purple vs Yellow,”
These were the five colors of the Hirou, purple, yellow, green, red, and blue. The color decided the type of Hirou, each one different from the other. There was no Hirou more powerful than the other, it all depended on the wielder himself and his training.
Five colors.
Five syndicates.
Five big islands.
Wasn’t the world a mysterious place?
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