Day One: Early Morning

[Bujin]

Everything had stayed the same since last year. The employees were still as overly excited and friendly as always, and wasted no time in finding him when he entered through the tele-tube. They began talking to him, but the small warrior was too busy scanning the area to pay attention. It was scary how good his memory was, but then again, this is where everything started, really. A nostalgic shiver ran down his spine as he could practically retrace his steps from last year. With a shake of his head, he finally turned to the person whom he was supposed to be paying attention to. Though she was still smiling, she didn’t look too pleased.

“Please, sir,” she began. “It’s important that you pay attention, even if you were a participant last year.”

“Right,” Bujin scratched his head, still struggling to cling onto a small amount of interest in anything that she had to say. “I’m sorry. Please continue…or start over, I guess. I didn’t hear a word you said.”

The woman cleared her throat, shooting daggers with her pseudo-warm eyes.

“You, Bujin, are number twenty-three,” she continued. “You must be slowing down – you were number seven last year. Regardless, you are to report to the barracks, where the other players are meeting. Although…you may not make it there. The game is starting fairly soon.”

“What?”

***

The next moment, he was on the island.

Bujin blinked as he finally realized what the attendant had meant. He really was slowing down; he didn’t even have time to enter the barracks. What a shame – he could have seen if Celipa was there or not. She was the first step in finding answers; even if fans of the competition found it to be repetitive and easy to figure out. Shrugging at the notion, he looked down and spotted his old, trusty duffle bag. It was the same as last year, more or less, though it was…shaped differently. Opening it carefully, he immediately flipped it over and dumped the contents out. The normal shit was there: food, water, a scouter (which, while useful in its own right, served more to look badass), a map, a compass, and…

Bujin stood up and took a step backwards, examining it closely. He had seen it somewhere before, but he couldn’t place a finger on it. After thinking about it for a while, realization struck him like a bolt of awesome.

“You have to be kidding me,” he said at first, but after thinking about it, tagged on an ending to his sentence. “Groovy.”

Putting it aside for a moment, he picked up the scouter and fashioned it on his face. He clicked the button on the side, prompting it to turn on. He had worn quite a few scouters in his life time, and most of them were better than this stripped piece of crap. Oh well – he sat down and fiddled with it for a while as he tried to come up with a decent game plan for this competition. His initial thought was “Find out what happened without dying”, and while that wasn’t elaborate in any way, he didn’t see himself straying from that any time soon.

“Does this thing have Pong?” he asked aloud, seemingly to himself as he clicked random buttons before he summoned to willpower to get up and travel on