[01] City Sector FIGHT

[Kaden]

The only sounds that filled the bunker were the scrapings and scratching of forks on plates. All of it, fortunately, was disposable, so none of the noises really grated the nerves, but the otherwise silent space almost felt awkward. Maybe there just wasn’t too much to talk about. At the very least, Kaden knew his mind was otherwise preoccupied with relentless ponderings. The idea that sitting down to eat might ease him of that… well… it hadn’t worked out.

“You’re not very talkative,” Ashe commented after swallowing a bite of delicious waffles.

“Hmmm?” Kaden looked up from his plate, having just stuffed the last of his meal into his mouth. Upon finishing, he dropped his flatware on the now-empty plate and pushed it a couple inches away. “Yeah, sorry about that. I guess I’m just… nervous? That’s a pretty good word for it.” Without realizing it, the courier had cast at least three glances towards the door to the bunker. “I just hate to see them go.”

“Yeah? You didn’t seem to mind watching them leave,” Ashe joked.

“Ha! Yeah, well, I’m only human,” the courier played along, though there was very little humor in his voice. “It’s just… I dunno. Feels weird.”

As Ashe ate, Kaden pushed his chair back from the card table they had been eating on, slouched into a more comfortable position and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jacket. As he adjusted himself, the courier watched his companion eat. Upon reflection, it probably seemed a little creepy, but that was what he did. Not act creepy… just, observe. Ashe seemed like a nice enough girl and Kaden getting all dreary and self pitying wasn’t going to help his situation.

“Back when I was in school,” the courier suddenly began. “I had this friend. His name was Aaron, though we all ended up calling him Sheets. Like a bed sheet. I had enough friends, but I didn’t really get along with most of them the way I got along with this guy. We just kind of… complimented each other. Know what I mean? Anyway, he wasn’t a dumb guy, but he did some of the stupidest shit I’d ever heard of. You know what a bungee cord looks like? Not the big ones you go jumping with, but the ones that are a couple feet long and have metal hooks on the end?” Kaden used his hands to demonstrate both the length and the hooks. “Well, Sheets had figured out how to get onto the roof of our school a while before this happened. One day he thought that it would be funny to get up onto the roof and lower himself down to the windows of one of the classrooms to freak everyone out.”

Ashe winced as Kaden spoke, already seeing where the story was headed. Kaden couldn’t help but laugh to himself. No matter how many times the courier thought about it, he couldn’t understand how that seemed like a good idea. It really was astounding what some people were capable of.

“So he gets maybe a dozen of these bungee cords, hooks them all together, and actually thinks this plan will work. He hooked on end under his belt and the other into some… vent thing. Well, of course it doesn’t work. The metal hooks bend and he ends up falling three stories. People in the classrooms thought someone had jumped. Luckily, there was some grass directly below him. He ended up with a pretty serious concussion and his leg broken in two places. All-in-all he got off pretty easy, if you ask me.”

“And you were friends with this guy?” Ashe asked as she finished he food.

“Yup. And here’s why. The first people to get to him said that, even though he was rolling around in agony, he was laughing. At himself. There aren’t many people out there who can just laugh at anything that’s thrown at them, but when you’re around them, you know it. They make even the worst situations seem easier just by being there.” As he finished, Kaden cast a last glance at the entrance to the bunker and sighed.

“How very profound.”

“Yeah, well, that’s just how I roll.”

With a grin, Kaden hopped up from his chair. Scooping up his and Ashe’s used plates and flatware, the courier disposed them and took a wide, sweeping look around the bunker. There was plenty to look at, too. All kinds of supplies, including bottled water, food, bags, random survival gear – including grappling hooks like Ashe had described – and a stack of booklets describing the tournament and its rules.

“Hey, check it out!” Kaden snatched up one of the little books and held it up towards Ashe.

The bunker itself was basically separated into three sections. The front half held all the survival stuff as well as the table upon which Ashe and Kaden had been eating. The back half of the bunker was further split into two sections. Along one wall was a row of small, very uncomfortable-looking cots, and along the other was a series of bathrooms set into the wall. With the booklet in hand, Kaden dropped himself onto a cot.

“Of course…” Kaden groaned after a minute of reading.

“What’s up?” Ashe asked as she took a seat one cot down from the courier.

“So these collars explode if we don’t ‘reset’ them in a bunker, but we can’t use the same bunker twice in a row. Shoulda figured as much. That wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining.”

“So we just go find another one,” Ashe replied. “There are some maps over there. Shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Yeah, I guess not,” Kaden’s mumbled. He had only been half listening as he continued flipping through the book. “That’s lame. We’re put in a ‘stasis’ field during combat days. I have no idea what a stasis field is, but apparently we won’t be able to get out of it.”

“So much for passive resistance, huh?”

“Looks like it.” Kaden set the book down on his chest and frowned. “Maybe Sage was right. Maybe I need to take this more seriously.”

“It’s not like you’re treating it like a joke or anything,” Ashe reassured him.

“I mean the whole ‘fight or we’ll blow you up’ thing. Can’t say I’m a huge fan of having to fight period. Being forced to do it doesn’t make me any happier. I’d rather not put people’s lives at risk.”

“Well maybe we should just worry about getting to a new bunker instead of freaking out about who you might have to fight. I can’t say I’m a huge fan of being forced to do something, either, but if these collars can blow us up, I think it’s best not to argue with the dude holding his finger on the button.”

Indeed, Kaden had to agree with her logic. The idea that the collars could only explode if they didn’t go into a bunker was naïve, to say the least. Damon Dukes definitely struck Kaden as the kind of guy who liked to have an insurance policy in case things weren’t going his way, and that he was willing to trick people into entering his tournament definitely said something about his character.

“Ok! We should probably get a move on, huh?”

Swinging his legs over the edge of the cot, Kaden hopped off and walked over to the shelves of supplies. Various sizes and shapes of bags hung on a series of hooks. True to his nature, Kaden snatched a courier bag and slung it over his shoulder. It wasn’t the largest bag available, but it was comfortable and the limited space would keep the courier from bringing along more than they needed.

After consulting with Ashe for a moment, they decided on some rations and several bottles of water. Initially, Kaden wanted to only take one canteen per person, but Ashe made the very good point that they didn’t know how often they’d have access to water supplies. That he hadn’t thought of that himself made the courier a little concerned; it seemed Kaden was more distracted than he realized. After throwing in a rules booklet and a map, the two were off.

“So… which way are we going?” Ashe asked.

Instead of responding, Kaden looked at the map in his hands. Confusion spread across his features as he looked up from the map and cast a glance to his left, then his right. They were only a few steps out of the bunker, but Kaden had no real way to orient himself. Instead of admitting this, however, he folded the map, nodded, and began walking in a random direction.

“Do you have any idea where you’re going?” the pink-haired girl asked as she jogged up next to Kaden.

“More or less. As long as we get out of the city, we should be golden.”

It made sense to the courier. The different regions were all different and once they crossed the proverbial threshold, it would be easy to tell which direction they had been traveling. That and Kaden was feeling in a particularly random mood. He didn’t really deal well with aimlessness. Casting a glance to his side, he saw Ashe fiddling around a small device she had pulled from her pocket. The attached ear-buds led the courier to correctly guess it was a music player.

“Oh, you, uh… want to listen, too?” Ashe extended one of the ear buds towards Kaden when she noticed his gaze.

“Heh, that’s alright. I don’t usually listen to… music.”

“Ever?” Ashe shot the courier a double-take.

“Rarely. I’d just rather pay attention to the stuff around me than music.” Looking around, Kaden realized that they were in a creepy empty city with no one else. He quickly amended his statement. “Or I prefer to practice with, uh, my… energy. And that usually takes concentration.”

“Oh yeah? How do you usually practice?”

Having piqued Ashe’s interest, to some degree at least, Kaden considered the question for a moment. It was much easier to just manipulate his ki than explain how he went about doing it. As the two marched down the street, the courier ran a hand through his hair before coming up with an idea.

Trying to do something too complex while walking seemed like a bad idea, instead, Kaden came up with something that should have been relatively simple. Extending an arm, the courier held an open hand in front of him, palm up. Extending his other hand, Kaden slowly traced a wide circle in the air above his open hand. The first time he did this, nothing happened. The second time, the finger with which he was drawing a circle began to glow. The third and final time, Kaden’s finger left a trail of cerulean light. When the third circuit was completed, Kaden was left with a circle of ki floating in his hand.

While that might have been an interesting enough display on its own, Kaden felt it to be rather mundane. More than once he had been told he had a gift for manipulating energy, though he couldn’t really say one way or the other. He just did what he needed to do. It never really crossed his mind that something might be too difficult. It was his energy, after all, why shouldn’t he be able to do whatever he wanted with it.

Taking the circle of energy in his hands, Kaden reached up and let go of it directly over his head. The circle of ki hung in the air over the courier like a bright blue halo, following him around as he tilted his head from one side to the other. When he started shaking his head too fast, the halo would quiver and almost droop towards the ground. Returning his head to a more… sane position made it easier to keep it where it was supposed to be.

Tilting his head up, Kaden caught a glimpse of his… accessory and frowned. It didn’t really look like a real halo – and the fact that Kaden could say that from experience was awkward enough on its own. The glow from it was harsh and cold in comparison to the warmth of a real one. Sighing, Kaden snagged the ring off of his head with a finger and flicked it into the air.

With a thumb-and-forefinger pistol, Kaden took aim at his own faux-halo and blew it into a shower of cerulean sparklies. It was a little flashier a display than he intended, but he wasn’t going to lose sleep over it. He didn’t think of himself as a braggart, but it couldn’t hurt to make oneself look a little better in front of a cute girl. That was Kaden’s motto, at least. One of them, anyway.

“Not bad,” Ashe commented as she watched the twinkling flecks of bright blue energy.

“Thanks. Anyway, doing stuff like that is good practice and keeps me from getting bored. It’s—“

“Oh hey!” Ashe suddenly cut him off. “I recognize this. This is the direction I came from. I started in the… uh… Mountain Sector, I think it was called.”

“Well…” Kaden pulled out their map and took a look. “That certainly makes things simpler. Mountain Sector here we come.”

“Searching…searching…” a computerized, feminine voice spoke.

“Searching? Searching for what?” Ashe thought aloud.

“Signal located. Beginning combat protocol,” the voice answered.

“Combat? There’s…” Kaden began. His red eyes widened as realization suddenly dawned on him. “…nobody here but us,” he finished in horror.

“Stasis field engaging.”

“Yeah…” Kaden looked around at the stasis field he and Ashe had suddenly been thrust into. “Why not?”

There was always that tipping point. That magically second where an emotion comes full circle and just… loses all meaning. For Kaden, it was right then. He felt like he had recounted a million times, the different ways he had been fucked over since he first received Damon Dukes’ invitation. Instead of going through it again, he simply rode the wave of borderline insanity and laughed. That really was all he could do.

“I, uh, I really don’t see how this is funny.”

And indeed Ashe did not. The expression on her face was anything but amused. The courier tried to apologize between fits of laughter, but it did little to help the situation. He felt bad, without a doubt, but it took him a few moments to compose himself. Intellectually, he understood that the shit had just hit proverbial fan. The best part was that there wasn’t much they could do about it.

“At least we have plenty of room to work with,” was the first thing Kaden said as he looked around.

The only really visible part of the stasis field was high above them, stretching across the sky as a shimmering blue dome. The idea that there was really anything positive to be taken from his situation was laughable enough, but Kaden managed to keep himself under control.

“Do you… need a lot of room? I’ve seen people fly around before…” Ashe’s voice sounded nothing short of abysmal.

“Me? Hahaha… not a chance. I, uh, don’t handle heights that well.” Kaden found it embarrassing to admit that he could blow apart entire buildings, but the idea of hopping on an airplane made his stomach flip.

Ashe gave him a curious look, as Belle had when he found out, but it quickly passed. She looked panicked and confused. Kaden could sympathize, though he was more emotionally numb at that moment than anything else. He had absolutely no desire to fight the girl. They had been paired off so they would be safer wandering around the island, not so they could make nice with their executioner.

“I… I don’t even know how to fight. There’s no possible way I can do this. I…”

It was a sad sight watching Ashe slump to the ground, looking as numb and defeated as Kaden felt. What were they supposed to do? Fight or be ‘dusted’? Given the choice, the courier would prefer to be dusted every time. No question about it. What was odd, and Kaden didn’t notice it until giving their situation a second thought, was that Ashe didn’t know how to fight.

Most people, normal everyday people, didn’t give off much a vibe, so to speak. They were all but invisible to Kaden’s Ki Sense unless he focused particularly hard. It was rarely worth doing. Ashe, from what Kaden could feel, was definitely not an average everyday person. There was definitely power inside of her. It would be bizarre if she had never had occasion to use it. Kaden turned this thought over in his mind for several minutes.

“You don’t know how to fight at all?” was the first question Kaden settled on.

“Well, I mean, I know how to throw a punch, but…” Ashe shook her head and just looked at the ground. “Not really.”

“You know about ki, right? I know you’ve seen people manipulate it.”

“Yeah, I know what ki is. I get the general idea but I just don’t know how to do it.”

“Well how about I teach you?” It seemed like a reasonable enough suggestion. “This is the perfect place for it. Plenty of room, no bystanders to hurt, and we’re stuck inside some giant bubble anyway.”

“… but we’re supposed to be fighting. You think they’ll just let start giving lectures?” Ashe looked doubtful.

“Chances are I’d start lecturing anyway,” the courier joked. “Ok, so you can use me as target practice. It’ll look like a fight, you’ll get some practice, and everybody wins. More or less…”

“Wait what? You want me to practice… shooting you with some magical energy?” Ashe shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Fact of the matter is that that’s probably our best option, Ashe.” Kaden tried to sound as compassionate as possible while he took a seat next to the girl. “If we don’t do anything, even money says they’ll dust us for being boring. I really, really, don’t want to fight you either, but we don’t have much choice in the matter.”

Kaden paused to take a deep breath and look over at Ashe. The girl was still more interested in the sidewalk she was sitting on than anything else. Truthfully, Kaden abhorred himself for what he was trying to do. Getting a teenage girl to fight him by throwing around blasts of potentially lethal energy… and that was the best option he could think of. As much as he hated himself for doing it, though, he hated Dukes that much more. The courier slid a few inches closer to Ashe and put a hand on her back. He hoped she found the gesture reassuring.

“Back in the bunker, when we split up with Sage and Sophia, we did it to keep everyone safer. So far it hasn’t worked out exactly like we wanted, but that doesn’t mean anything’s changed. I’m still here to keep you as safe as I can. And, right now, the best thing I can do is keep both of us from being killed and help prepare you for the next time you’re forced into a fight. How about it? Will you let me help you?”