Chapter 3: Death Match
When the blinding white light cleared Priest saw that he was in a relatively small room with a low ceiling, there were two support pillars in opposite corners of the space & next to one of them was a pulse rifle, which he quickly scooped up and loaded into his Weapon compact., on the wall was a scrolling message board and there was only two exits, one lead to a sheer drop the other to a ramp, Priest legged it through that exit, when he reached the top of the ramp he saw that he was on one of three towers, each one was practically identical, they each had two open levels on top, with a smaller chimney stack tower on top of that, they also had a ramp which, Jason could only assume, lead down to a room much like the one he'd just left, the only difference was that each tower was of a slightly different height, not that that mattered much as they were clearly several thousand feet up and well above the cloud line.
On one of the towers Priest could see a battle taking place, but no means of reaching it & that was when he spotted Marksmen making an incredible leap from one structure to the next, then it dawned on him, low gravity of course, they were so high up that it should have been obvious, how could he miss it, but before he could leap to the next tower Priest's own battle was joined, a rocket flew inches past his head, he turned to see a war machine curse his aim, thanks to the HUD Jason could see that the guy was called Zenta.
Once again Zenta fired, but because of the slow speed of the rockets the hunter was able to easily avoid them, whilst performing the series of cartwheels, back flips and rolls Priest equipped the pulse gun & once he gained back his footing began to return fire, but for a man who mostly consisted of metal, Zenta was surprisingly agile & managed to dodge every blast of burning hot plasma, he then legged it up to the second level, the holy hunter snarled and gave chase; no way was he escaping.
Priest flew up the ramp and when he rounded the corner barely avoided a shock rifle blast, the war machine had got himself a new weapon, again battle commenced as each combatant fired, dodged, fired, dodged and fired again, eventually they were face to face with each other firmly in their sights, both Priest and Zenta pulled their trigger at the same time and……. dead mans click, for the both of them, as fast as possible they discarded their current weapons & equipped their enforcers, but Priest was faster, he fired once and Zenta was down.
When the body vanished Jason collected his pulse gun and the cyborgs shock rifle, but no sooner had he done that when a bullet struck him in the back and he hit the ground, he pulled himself back up realizing he was still in the game, the body armor had taken most of the damage, although it still hurt like hell. He scanned the area and could see no-body, then there was another shot, this time though he heard the rifle go off first giving him a split second to narrowly dodge the bullet, he kept scanning the area then spotted what he was looking for, the tiniest glint of light as it reflected off the snipers scope, it was atop one of the stack towers, Priest fired a few shots at the location forcing the shooter to move & move he did, impossibly fast, but from that brief glimpse the hunter knew he had spotted a Shadow Beast; next time he'd frag him.
Jason leapt up to the position and found that it had a sniper rifle and extra ammo, he picked up the gun and looked through the scope at another of the towers upon which a battle took place, there were four fighters, Thomas was one and he fought the female Rawsteel by the name of Barbed, Talon and another War machine called Xatox. He watched the fight for a little while then shot Tom, Barbed and Xatox in the head, but he only shot Talon in the knee cap, the Rawsteel hit the ground and Priest could hear his roar of frustration even from where he crouched; he then activated his vocal connection.
"Hey Talon, remember what you said about having my head."
"Fuck you Priest, you blown apart my bloody kneecap, I can't F'ing move."
"Yea, you may not be able to feel it, but it's still effective, now about that other point."
"What about it?"
"I'm having your head, just thought you'd like to know." With that he pulled that trigger and Talon dropped like a sack of potatoes, there was a moments silence as the body disappeared then the Rawsteels voice opened up on the V.C.
"You are such a dead man Priest!" Jason laughed.
"Heard it all before."
The match continued on & each warrior got their share of frags, Priest had lost his sniper position early on as someone had snuck up behind him and taken his head off with a Flak Cannon, but he was quickly resurrected & back into the fray. From here on it was absolute manic carnage, bullets & bio gunge, pulse blasts & rockets plus everything in between flew left, right and centre forcing the hunter to use every ounce of his skill just to survive, but even that wasn't enough and he found himself riddled with bullets, melted by bio gunge, blown into lots of little pieces and his brains blown out the back of his head, that's not to say that he didn't respond in kind. He had fragged Tom at least four times, the three war machines had got caught in his crosshairs numerous times as had the Rawsteels, but he never did see head nor tail of those two Shadow Beasts again. Of course the one person who gained most of his fire was Talon, he'd fragged him more than twenty times, at one point he was taking him out as he re-spawned, such was the power of a direct rocket hit. On more than one occasion he had achieved the rating of 'Unstoppable', but the fact that annoyed him just ever so slightly was that Talon had managed 'Godlike', only once mind, but that was one time too many.
The battle raged on until eventually all stopped as the combatants froze in their positions & the announcer's voice spoke.
"The match is over, the winner with 105 frags is Jason Priest," Priest smiled, he'd won his first proper round, not bad, for a guy who had no idea why he was here, "all warriors will now be returned to camp."