Day One: Early Morning

[Hellfighter 17]

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ boomed a voice over the intercom. The sound hung in the air for several seconds, bouncing off the walls of the compartment that Seventeen was held in. He had no idea how to deal with the concept of a disembodied voice, so he closed his eyes, furrowed his brow, and starting shaking back and forth. If it were not for the crazy glue, developed to survive heat stronger than the core of a star and ki from the likes of planetary guardians, an apple would have fallen off of his hat, which nearly reached two feet in height.

When the voice started again with ‘It’s Karl Jak here!’ the android was ready. In his mind, the voice clearly come from a mouth. The mouth opened and closed as would be expected with the host continuing with, ‘I hate to interrupt ....’ A tongue would also dart out periodically—a forked tongue. The head was elongated and flattened to resemble a snake—in fact, it looked exactly like a snake, olive green in complexion and with beady eyes that anyone would grow distrust for, except Seventeen, who felt an immediate affinity for Karl. Below the head there was not much detail, except the beginning of a black suit right at the bottom of the head, with no allowance for a neck. A white shirt and crimson tie were neatly tucked behind the Italian suit. While admiring how beautiful of a person Karl Jak was, Seventeen missed all that he was actually saying, and, before he knew it, a hatch opened up beneath him. He started to fall down, and when he looked, he could see a large island, which had a large array of habitats for so small a space. However, soon enough he hit a kind of portal, which then had him land on the ground below.

Dusting off his shirt so that all could read the saying, ‘Real Men Wear Pink,’ the android gathered himself to his feet. He noticed that he was now donned with a duffle bag on his back and a collar around his neck, prompting him to say, ‘I knew I should have gotten an accessory!’ He started to fiddle with the collar a bit, and found that it was on his neck pretty tight, practically suffocating him. There was a series of lights on it, which would be lit up one by one consecutively, tracing out a circle once a second.

Plop. Seventeen fell to the ground—he was amazed. He did not even brace himself for the fall, but let his butt slam against the ground. His grass skirt, which only reached down four inches, flew up as he did so, revealing a bulging package hidden behind a pair of long johns. The lights on the collar simply amazed him, and he sat for several hours staring at it, as the night sky began to diminish, allowing day to slowly creep into existence. Just as the night would soon be killed off, so would the many competitors of Dante’s Abyss.