[04] City Sector FIGHT

[DA 2009]

ASHE VS. SOPHIA

Damon exhaled a heavy breath of air, gingerly rubbing the bridge of his nose with a thumb and forefinger. Knowing he couldn’t afford to stall much longer, he returned the hand to his trousers pocket and leveled his chin with the screen, the one that showed two girls standing, talking, doing nothing. Ironically, it was the same girl from the very first round of the tournament whose fight required more persuasive means of conclusion. The other two fights had finished relatively quickly, the Eliminators fulfilling their jobs perfectly. Perhaps it was coincidence, then, that the skirmish against two players with annoyingly persistent consciences would take the longest. The host could hear the soft whoosh of the door as it permitted entry, and Audric strolled in, whistling.

“Anything yet?” he asked cheerfully.

“No,” Damon said curtly.

The supervisor sat in his chair with an enthusiastic twirl until he righted himself in front of the console. He offered a steaming, flaky pastry towards his boss. “Would you like a Hot Pocket? It’s good.”

“No,” Damon repeated, a little more aggravated.

“It’s barbeque,” Audric persisted in a sing-song voice. Damon refused to reply. With a shrug, the supervisor took a voracious bite, flapping his trap open with small cries to vent the heat and steam that suddenly filled his mouth. After he was able to down the scrumptious microwaveable goodness, he cleaned off his hands and returned them to a resting position on the controls. “Well,” he said in a serious tone. “We have the shock, manual override, or I can write up another mod program.”

Dukes shook his head. “That’s not what the situation calls for. The shock is like a cattle prod, and if the fear of that sufficed more than its actual use, Sophia would have started fighting by now. Neither of them are in a vulnerable enough psychological state to use a mod, and even so, it wouldn’t make Ashe fight any better than she presently can. Manual override would achieve the desired result, but the board is watching, and I’m not so sure I want to use it again.”

“Then what would you like to do? The clock is ticking,” Audric reminded.

Damon closed his eyes to think. His first thoughts simmered around a potential modification program, even though he already ruled it out. Both of them fixated strongly on Kaden, so something to do with the courier might help…if they believed the only way they could see him again was to fight each other. The Syntex employee discarded the idea before reaching a viable conclusion; it required too much manipulation and would arouse more suspicion than anything else. Mentally, he went down the list of his remaining competitors, having memorized their faces and profiles by heart. The other four were willing, unfettered by moral dilemmas that prevented them from fully participating, or in some cases, openly embracing the concept of bringing death. A good chess-master always observed and took into account the most useful pieces on the board, utilizing them to achieve the victory while discarding the rest.

He opened his eyes.

“Re-route the collar protocols. I want you to switch them to manual, and prematurely set them off,” Dukes instructed.

“You’re going to dust both of them?” Audric asked skeptically.

“Sometimes,” Damon replied emotionlessly, “pieces must be sacrificed.”

-----

“You fired at me,” Sophia said matter-of-factly, staring down at the girl below her. Her tone was something of a mixture of incredulity, sadness, and…betrayal?

“I didn’t mean to,” Ashe explained apologetically. She forced out a small chuckle. “My aim’s not even that good anyway. It’s more luck than anything that got me this far. You wouldn’t happen to have a copy of The Hong Kong Book Of Kung Fu, would you?” Before Sophia could even give her startled and confused reply, Ashe waved her off. “It’s okay. Figured you wouldn’t anyway.”

Suddenly, both of their collars started beeping.

“Guess that means we’re done,” Ashe guessed.

But the beeping persisted. It did not increase in pace, as it normally did before a function was executed, but remained at a slow, soft sequence.

“I don’t think so,” Sophia countered. “We would have been gone already.”

“We both entered a bunker…” the pink-and-blond-haired girl reasoned.

“We’re also not fighting,” the priestess pointed out. “You don’t think…?”

“…he’s just going to dust us both?” Ashe finished.

They both fell silent as the grim reality of it sunk in. The pace of the beeping audibly kicked up a notch, and then remained. It was as if the collars were slowly counting down a warning, giving them more time than the other unfortunate souls who were dusted.

“I can’t go back. Not yet,” Sophia insisted sadly. “If what Sage says is true, and this isn’t real, then when you die, you go back to wherever it is you came from. If I die, I go back to Heaven, and I…I won’t get a chance to see Kaden again. I’m not alive, like you. I’m here on borrowed time, and…I can’t go back.”

“Then you better finish it, because I can’t,” the student said, her voice filled with an equal tone of somberness.

“And make a murderer out of me again,” Sophia chuckled, although it was a hollow, bitter laughter. “The choice really isn’t fair.”

“Yeah, I know. I was promised punch and pie,” Ashe chortled. Given the circumstances, it really wasn’t funny at all. “Come on then. Just do it. It’s one of us or both of us.”

As if to accentuate the girl’s plea, the collar blips rose in pitch, becoming more urgent. The priestess looked down on her ‘opponent,’ being placed in an undesirable position for a third time. She had become some kind of perverse angel of death, and upon reluctant realization of the thick irony, the woman touched her halo. Unable to stay, unwilling to go. But she had spared Tamsin before; she had fought, and let the girl go, and no harm had come to either of them. If they could just temporarily give Damon Dukes what he wanted, they could further forestall their fates. Sophia broke out of her miserable reverie, and reached out her hand to the fallen Ashe.

“I won’t do it,” the priestess said firmly. “I’ve been in two fights where both people survived, and we can do it, together.”

Ashe let out a sigh of relief. For all her bravado, she didn’t really want to die, either. The girl reached up her hand and firmly grasped Sophia’s. “Awesome, because I—”

Just as their palms touched, Sophia jerked Ashe forward with resounding force, right into the path of her barreling fist. Ashe took the blow straight on the face, knocking her out cold. The priestess waited and closed her eyes, praying for the beeping to cease and desist. She let out a gasp of relief as the collars finally stopped their deadly ticking. Sophia bent down, checking Ashe’s pulse almost as if to make sure she had not committed sin again. Still alive. They were both still alive. She patted the unconscious girl, as if to gently reassure her that she was safe. More importantly, Sophia was given a few more precious hours of borrowed time.