Entry Three: Atrocity I

Entry Three: Atrocity I

He walked out of the house, a midnight blue duffle bag clattering at his side.  Inside, the battlesuit and deconstructed Overcompensator waited.  And Garrett waited, too.  He had no idea why he was doing it – but that was fine.  He was used to having no idea why he was doing something.  But he did remind himself that this time, he actually had a perfectly understandable reason – it wasn’t everyday a girl snuck into his room and asked him to do something.

Quint stood by his car.  “I’m cold,” he said.  Garrett raised an eyebrow, but nodded and unlocked the car.  “You need to get a remote unlock.  And starter,” Quint said, not reaching for the door.  “Pop the trunk.”  Garrett went around and complied.  Quint hefted a crate, settling it down in the deep boot of the car.  “This really is a sensible car – sporty but a grocery getter.”

“Yeah,” Garrett said, putting his own duffle bag in alongside the crate “I like it.”  Quint put his duffle in as well, followed by the siege shield.  “How’d they get in touch with you?”

“An e-mail.  Evan Kerellen himself.”

“The Dragonborn,” Garrett asked.  The title was another pop-culture nod, stolen from the Elder Scrolls series, and slightly incongruous for the leader of the Dragons, but once it started getting used, it was pointless to complain.

“Yeah, their smith is moving to South Carolina.”  He shrugged, sliding into shotgun, “It’ll be a change of pace.  Finally get to use the throwers, find out how they make them.”

“They’re useless,” Garrett said, “beyond blinding the enemy.”

“That can be enough.  Pity it looks like diseased bukaki,” he laughed.

Garrett chuckled.  “At least you won’t be getting much on you,” he said.

“In theory,” Quint said.  They drove through suburbia to the highway.  “Gonna be weird without Ian,” he said.  “I mean, even being on different teams, he’s whole vibe is gonna be gone.  I’m the last of the redoubts.  Trevor, Tessa, now Ian…” he shook his head.  The redoubts, a Deathmatch wide nickname for the shield bearing defenders that had forced everyone to carry a melee weapon for the sake of having a prayer of gaining an opponent’s base.  They were useful for maybe half of the matches, and seemed utterly lost without their shields the rest of the time.  The shotguns they used had range, but not much, and they tended to become reliant on cover.  It was something to consider, since the melee would be the worst at Atrocity, where the shield walls, such as they were, would clash.  The Dragons’ throwers would be the second line, trying to kill the visibility of those on the opposite side – provided their vats held out.

The drove on through the last tangles of night, heading north and slightly west along the turnpike.  And when they arrived, Garrett popped the trunk, got out their duffels, and they made their way to the free standing bathroom building.  The squat brick longhouse stood on the clear-cut hill, currently the only really out of place thing in a semi-empty parking lot surround by the woods.  Garrett took a minute to look at the view.  It wasn’t a forest.  There were too many cut and cleaned for the structures hidden by the oak, elm, birch, fir and pine.  Even with autumn having stripped away most of the leaves, the trees were still dense enough to cover the small towns, trenches, half-buried ply wood tanks and planes, and the castle-keep that had been put up.

There were the distant sounds of motors.  Cars and van and a few throaty diesel chugs that were most likely generators.  “A big day,” Quint said, “they’re already setting up the cameras.”

“Eh,” Garrett asked.  He followed Quint’s gesture with his eyes.  “Another fucking web show?”

“They want it to be bigger than the finals,” Quint said.  “Didn’t you read the e-mail?”

“I didn’t get one,” Garrett said.

“How’d you know to come,” Quint asked.  Garrett told him.  “Huh…how come I didn’t get a hot guy coming through my window in the middle of the night?”

“I didn’t say she was hot,” Garrett said.  Quint smiled, saying nothing, and began walking to the bathroom.  “What?”  Quint continued saying nothing, “You know,” Garrett said, “who she is.  You knew they were going to pull that shit!”  Quint went on saying nothing, and slowly opened the door.

The room reeked, the smell caked in by an unthinkable number of summers, and the walk to the locker room portion was an endurance test.  The locker room smelled of the nothingness of odor neutralizers, with the gloom of fluorescent light and poor air circulation that kept the stink of the rest room out, but also kept the fresh air out.  Quint finally said something.  “You’re locker 12,” he said.

Garrett looked at him.

“What,” Quint asked, almost laughing.

“How much of this is planned,” he asked.

Quint shrugged.  “To be fair – this part was in the e-mail you apparently didn’t get, so everyone knows you’re locker 12, and I’m 15.”  He went to his own locker, and opened the door.  He pulled out the red battlesuit of the Dragons.  “I haven’t declared for them yet,” he said, “but it’s tempting.  They like the Overcompensator.”

Garrett forced a laugh.  “Everyone does,” he said, and faced the unpainted grey locker.  He opened it, and removed the Wolves uniform.  It was white with blue sleeves and shoulders.  He sighed, and opened his duffle, taking out the suit-lining and impact recorders.  The original battlesuits had been an attempt at cyberpunk that had failed in such a remarkable fashion that, five years on, no one wore them under any actual Deathmatch related circumstances.  They had looked like gimp suits with internal padding, with the fiber-bundling only at the joints to signal a loss, and only the original paintball mask for head protection.  After a single season, the suits had undergone a redesign.

The battlesuits were now all fiber bundling, with some additions taken from the body armor worn in motocross.  The suits were bulkier, with the fiber bundle muscles able to take the force off of the melee blows, and causing the lockdowns to be less jarring and painful if the combatant was in motion when it occurred.  The helmets were added to keep the skulls intact, and the addition of the lighting to warn of incoming lockdown and short-range communications channels had also allowed for the matches to become less a videogame death match and more…nuanced wasn’t the right word, but it seemed to make the most sense.

Garrett slipped the impact sensors into the fiber bundle musculature, and sealed them with the lining before stripping to his underwear and getting into the body glove.  The Revenant body gloves extended from the toes to just under the eyes, with a skeletal pattern on the half-mask.  Then he slipped into the battlesuit.  He had to wash the lining twice to feel comfortable in it, and was a little uneasy about using someone else’s battle suit, but he kept his shuddering down.  He had the sensors fully charged – they had a 72 hour life span, in theory, and once connected to the helmet, the whole suit would hum slightly, sounding like the fans in a computer.  He kept the helmet off though.  More people were entering – he nodded to them, and greeted those he knew.  The walls began to echo with conversation, a few playful taunts and boasts, and few unkind words – it was too early for the bile that would be unleashed in time.  Garrett too the pieces of the Overcompensator and locked the locker, then made his way through the stench of the bathroom, and back into the real world.

“A good day for it,” said a female voice.  Garrett turned.  Kylie Innsman was tall and thin, with long brown and purple hair, and sculpted features topped by eyes the color of sea ice.  “Think the chill will burn off in time for the main event?”

They hugged, which Garrett smiling.  “Possibly – couldn’t really say.  Weather’s been a bit odd, of late.”

“True,” Kylie said.  Her Angels’ uniform was designed in the same manner of the Wolves’, save for the color swap of Angel red for the Wolves’ blue, and the addition of a red cross on the chest and on the side of the thighs.  “Not that you care,” she smiled at him.

“The war will happen, regardless of the weather,” Garrett said.  He cocked an eyebrow at her.  “So…why are you sending strange women through my window in the middle of the night?”

“What?”

“One of the Furies paid me a visit this week.”

“Oh, man,” she said.

“Yeah, full armor, just came in the window.  I mean, she was very nice, considering, but,”

“Nyle, I’m sorry, they’re overseeing the merger between us and the Crusaders.”  She shook her head.  “I thought they’d just send out an e-mail.”

“Well…wait, you and the Crusaders?  But they’re a Delaware chapter.”

“Yeah, there won’t be enough of them after this season.”

“Oh,” Garrett said – “I thought you guys were disbanding?”

Kylie sighed.  “We’ve been on the fence about it, but there’s enough of us who want to stay to form up with the Crusaders, the ones close to Philly, anyway.”

“Huh,” Garrett said.  He had decided to ignore her use of his first name – she had gone through Black Iron with him, and anyone who was there for that held a lot of space in his heart.  “Well, I guess that might be for the best – still, aren’t they a bit…grrr for you guys?”

Kylie nodded.  “They’ll fit in with the Angels that are staying on.  This is a lot less…we’ve changed.  As have the goals.”

“More focus on the matches,” Garrett asked.

“And less on team building.  Andy’s not happy about it, but he left us after one season, so he can’t complain too much now.”  She chuckled.  “Well, he can.  And he does.”

“He never struck me as easy-going,” Garrett said.

“He isn’t,” Kylie said.  She eased her rifle from the back maglocks.  “But I’m glad you’re here.  The Wolves might stick together, and if they do, I know Lucy has her eye on you.”  Garrett smirked.  “Not like that,” Kylie added.

“Oh, I know – I work with her boy.  They’re a good match.”

“And what about you?”

“Me?”

Kyle smiled, “How long before you find a nice girl and start living?”

Garrett smiled.  “Some were born to wander alone, Queen of Angels,” he said, hoping it sounded as cool out loud as it did in his head.  And he realized it didn’t.  It just sounded cheesy.  “I don’t know,” he said.  “I’ve other things on my mind, as always.”

Kylie nodded, her smile fading a little.  “Are your parents ok?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Garrett said.  “Mom’s back is going, and dad only keeps moving out of spite for the doctor who said he’d be in a wheelchair by the time I was ten.”  He looked out at the trees.  “They’re still drinking too much and then fighting, and then once they shut up I come out of my room and carry them to theirs – unless I’m working, in which case I go home and carry them to their room, provided they aren’t still up and fighting.  That last one’s a bit rarer, thankfully.”

Kylie bowed her head a little, just once.  “I’ve kept you in my prayers,” she said, “but I’m guessing that’s not much of a comfort to you.”

“It is, actually.”  He smiled at her.

“But I’m guessing you still aren’t going back to the Church anytime soon.  Yours or mine.”

Garrett shook his head.  “But my thanks to you are honest.  Please know that.”

“I do,” Kylie said.  And Garrett wondered if she remembered the respect he had tried to show her and the other faithful at Black Iron.  And how he had said nothing at their numbers swelling in the wake of all that followed, even as some of their louder member had peeled away, and others had…taken other means to cope.

Garrett nodded.  “How do you feel about the cameras?”

“I’m for it,” she said.  “Might have to deal with an influx, though.”

“I’m a bit worried about that,” he said.

“Oh?  Worried about the fifteen year olds?”

“Heh – they’ll be taller than me!”  He shook his head.  “No, just wondering what’ll become from the influx.”

“Everything changes, Nyle.”

“Yeah,” Garrett said, kneeling to assemble the Overcompensator.  It locked into place, and then onto the maglocks it went.  “But never overmuch.”  They hugged again, then gripped forearms.  “Stay safe,” he said.

“And you,” she said, and tapped her helmet against his chest armor.

Garrett smiled as he watched her walk to the group of Angels.  Quint joined him.  “I have to get the crate,” he said.

“Is there some drug deal I should know I’m party to?”

“It’s a commission,” Quint said.  “And it’s…I’m really impressed by my own work on this one.”

“For the Dragons,” Garrett asked.

Quint shook his head.  “My benefactor has requested anonymity until we hit Atrocity.”  Both of the former Revenants had kept their half-masks down, and the cold November air kept them awake as the sky went from orange to blue.  Quint smiled.  “A clear day.”

“Yer lookin’ east,” Garrett said, lighting his cigarette.  He put the pack back into the zipper pocket on his chest, and removed the extra car key from the other.

Quint turned his head.  “Oh…damn.”

“They aren’t storm clouds,” Garrett said.

“It’s cold enough already – it’s not supposed to get colder as the day goes on.”

“That winter for you,” Garrett said.

“It’s autumn,” Quint pointed out.

Garrett shrugged.  “These days?”  He opened the trunk, and Quint reached in, taking the crate in both hands and hoisting it.  “You get paid in advance?”

“Half,” Quint said.  “Saw you talking to the Queen of Angels.”

“Yup,” Garrett said.  He noticed that Quint wasn’t walking away with, what Garrett presumed was a heavy crate.  “What,” he asked.

“Nothing,” Quint said.

“For fucks sake – can I have one non-Freudian day, please?  Sex and violence are all well and good – but it feels like all we’re talking about.”

“No,” Quint said, “I wasn’t alluding to that.  It’s just that she asked about your family.  I didn’t know you two were close.”

Garrett felt his cheeks get warm.   “Oh,” he said.

“Do yourself a favor,” Quint said.  “Get laid.  Soon.  You’re going mad.”  Finally, after one last meaningful look, he began walking down the hill towards the Dragons, Furies, and Demons.  Garrett removed the last few bits of his equipment from the, and paused, looking back to Quint.  He thought of a few curse words, and closed the trunk, and made his way to the Wolves.

“We started out with the Furies, as the Valkryies.  Some of them still think it was the dyke jokes that did us in, made us form our own team, but it wasn’t – we just got too big to field an army and have people actually having fun rather than half of us going in and the other half sitting on the sidelines, getting drunk and waiting for someone to get sick or hurt,” Lucy said.  Like most commanders, she had a nickname – the Queen Bitch.  And like most commanders, she wore it with pride.  She ran a gloved hand through her black and blond hair.  Her other hand held a thin cigarette.  She seemed to pose in every movement, and had a near freakishly perfect body.  She possessed an hour glass form, and most of the men in Deathmatch had only really begun talking to her normally around the last Atrocity, when her 18^th birthday loomed nearer.  Now, as she crept closer 19, she hadn’t become jaded – and it was a bit of a mild joy to watch her take down the guys who came up to her.  “I mean, most of the lesbians came with us.  Really.  I mean, we’re co-ed, and we’ve got the girls who like girls, so it didn’t really help the dyke jokes for us.  Or the Furies.”

She sighed.  “They’re trying to keep us alive, though.  That proves that there’s no enmity on their part, which is kind of liberating.”  She tapped the hilt of her spatha with her cigarette hand, causing her arm to underline her breasts.  Garrett wondered if she was trying to invoke male gaze, or if she was what she seemed to be – completely unaware of how her actions worked on the men and some of the women around her.  And he knew that, while she wore it as a badge of honor, ‘Queen Bitch’ wasn’t always muttered out of respect.  “And they sent you the e-mail because we have a pre-existing relationship, even if it is through Mal.”

“She didn’t send me an e-mail,” said Garrett, and he set in again on the story of the midnight unlawful entry.

Lucy was grinning a bit manically by the end.  “She’s a strange one,” she said.

“You know who it was,” Garrett asked.

Lucy shook her head, and giggled a little.  “Oh…” she sighed.  “Well, you’ve got a great stalker,” she said.  She began walking towards the gladiatorial pit, with a single, swift motion of the index finger smoothing her hair.  Garrett followed, shaking his head.  The pit was a circle, with a radius of five meters and earth walls seven feet high.  The Judge made its way down the steel ladder, heavy boots rattling down rungs.  Garrett finished his cigarette, pulled up his skull half-mask, and slipped on the helmet that still bore the Revenants’ midnight blue paint job and red visor.  He kept a hand on the Overcompensator as he made his way down.  The dirt was soft under his boots.  Garrett looked across, taking in the Demon.

“Turla,” Garrett said to the Demon.  The Demon said nothing, and avoided looking at Garrett and the Judge.  “Fuck you, too, then,” Garrett said.  He looked the Judge and nodded.  The Judge returned the nod, and Garrett thought there was more to that nod.  Your attempt has been noted, he thought the nod said, or Even if good sportsmanship means fuck all, I am pleased by your attempt.  Garrett took the Overcompensator from the maglocks on his back.  He heard cheers from the players around the barrier above the ring, and the ladder rattling, and looked back.

The man looked like the Red Hulk, the fiber-bundle muscles of his suit straining against the actual muscles of his bulky frame, and the green visor of his helmet seemed the grow darker with every breath.  Evan Kerellen – the Dragonborn – the commander of the Dragons, and the champion of the gladiatorial pits.  He had his massive axe locked across his back.  That bit of work was nicknamed Bone-Shatterer, on account that it had racked up a full half of the hospital visits in Deathmatch history.  It would have taken three Garretts to cross his shoulders, and he was a full foot taller than the Judge, who had to be around six feet tall.

Kerellen had been a shot-put hurler (there really was no other word to do him justice), who had almost made it to the Olympics before the money ran out.  Then he had discovered Deathmatch, and seemed to want to make it live up to its name.  Bone-Shatterer was as tall as the Demon, and when Kerellen leaned on it, the Demon looked over, the black glass of his visor reflecting the axe, and then looking to the boken in his own hand, Garrett clearly heard “Well…fuck” come from the Demon’s helmet.

The Judge approached the Demon, taking him by the bicep and bringing him next to Kerellen.  And Garrett heard the sigh in relief in the Demon’s helmet.

The ladder rattled, and Garrett looked back.  He tried not to stare at the Fury’s ass, but, well, it was there.  She touched down, taking the broadsword from her maglocks and pointed at the Demon.

“Lady,” the Demon said, “You’ll come for me way more after this.”  Then he said “oof” as Kerellen’s Holiday Ham sized fist slammed into his abdomen.

“Thanks,’ The Fury said, “but I’ll take it from here.”  And Garrett sighed as he recognized the voice.  “Oh, don’t act shocked,” the Fury said, “I’m helping the Wolves.”

“Whatever,” Garrett said, watching as the Judge attached the soft plastic covered handcuffs to the right hand of the Demon, and the left of Kerellen.  The Judge slapped a similar set to the Fury’s left hand, and Garrett’s right.  He tried to smile and frown at the same time, and was vaguely happy no one could see the result.  His good arm was free, but the Overcompensator needed both.  He looked over at Kerellen, who hefted Bone-Shatterer like someone holding a rolled up newspaper, ready to dispatch a fly.  Garrett adjusted his grip on the Overcompensator, working the hilt back and forth until he was almost holding the cross guard.  And he had guessed the rules.  Last team standing won.  And he looked at the axe, and remembered that Kerellen hadn’t been beaten in any of his pit encounters.

“Fuck,” he said.  He watched the Judge climb the ladder, locking the entryway.  He looked back to the others.  “Fuck,” he said again.

“Yeah…” the Fury said.

Garrett tried not to think.  He tried to shut the cheers of the crowd, and the feeling that he had made another massive mistake.  He tried to focus only on the weight in his left hand.

And then the buzzer sounded, and Garrett’s thoughts died.

The massive axe swung down, Kerellen and the Demon charging in its wake.  Garrett marked the axe’s movement and flicking his wrist as he said, “Go!”  The axe was arching out and away, the massive shoulder rolling, already preparing for the next swing.

The Fury leapt forward, the broadsword flashing in her right hand, clashing against the Demon’s boken.  The Overcompensator met Bone-Shatterer, Garrett trying to turn the blade and deflect the axe to the side.   He planted his feet with the blow, and felt himself get hammered back.  He moved with the strikes, retreating as the Fury advanced on the Demon, their swords slicing in to meet one another, forcing both teams into a circular motion as they danced to the violence.  Garrett reversed his grip, the green bulb in the lower right of his visor flashing off and on as the sensors in his fingers registered the change, and he began a controlled, frantic defense.  He couldn’t use momentum tied to the Fury, couldn’t turn the jarring smacks of the axe into an attack.

The Fury, for her part, seemed completely unencumbered, turning her wrist, using the whole broadsword as a weapon while the while the Demon attacked with the edge of his sword.  She kept finding openings, and the Demon’s slashes were becoming less focused.  In an almost embarrassing amount of time, the Demon’s suit locked, and he tilted, falling to the ground, and throwing Kerellen’s balance off.  Bone-Shatterer thudded into Garrett’s hand, and his fingers screamed in a sudden flash of pain.

Kerellen leapt back, dragging the demon with him like a cursing mannequin.  The Fury paused, broadsword held in a guard, while Garrett forced his fingers to grip the hilt of the Overcompensator, feeling bones grind.  “Not broken,” he whispered, “not fucking broken.”  He brought the Overcompensator up, and brought it down, aiming for Kerellen’s left shoulder, just as Kerellen flung back his arms and swung them violently in a horizontal arch.  Bone-Shatterer cut the air, while the Demon roared “FUCK!” in his suit.  The Fury dived forward, broadsword leading, as Bone-Shatterer landed with a meaty “thump” in Garrett’s armpit, and the Demon crashed into the Fury.

Garrett screamed, feeling his arm-dislocate and his body rise up on the blade of Bon-Shatterer. The Fury and the Demon collided, the orange armor taking him in the knees and the black armor smashing into his ribs.  The lights in his helmet flashed on, the color of a nova migraine, and the fiber bundle muscles locked, holding everything as it was.  He landed hard, his head bounding off the dirt floor, his body thudding on top of the others, as the buzzer sounded, ending the match.  Kerellen crashed onto him, pulled down by the cord that bound him to the demon, and it felt like an eternity until the Judge re-entered the pit to unlock the suits.