Games without Frontiers, Chapter 2:
By LadyRivka
Zyzyx went to a large machine, typed in a few codes and pushed a few buttons…
"What are you doing?" asked Becky.
"I'm calling their minds out of their bodies. Very soon, this computer will duplicate their bodies here via that matter-generator over there." The three-foot-tall alien pointed to a small, domelike machine.
"Oh." Becky crossed her arms. "And when are you going to finish the Slaughterhouse-Five?"
"Shut up about that damn arm, already!"
He stood alone in the wilderness, eerily calm, waiting for his chance to flush out a rabbit with his .23-caliber. Or, better yet, any Kami-forsaken human trespasser that happened to pass by him. Kami, he hated humans. So full of idiosyncrasies. He wondered why the hell his sister had fallen for that monk…
He saw a rabbit and cocked his rifle. He was about to shoot, but, suddenly, a devastating pain, a pain he was unused to feeling, gripped him. His head ached; he couldn't explain why it hurt so, since he, as a "creation" of Dr. Gero, had an amazingly high tolerance to pain, almost so he couldn't even feel it most of the time.
Collapsing to the forest floor, he heard one word echo in his mind before he passed out.
"6ixball…"
It was 10 AM. Juuhachi had slept in late after the night of passion with her husband; hell, a night of sex taxed even the reserves of a cyborg.
She just lay there, fatigued, Kuririn laying next to her. She felt an incredible headache surge up upon her; she wasn't used to feeling it. She writhed and cried out in agony.
"Juu-chan, what's wrong, honey?" asked her husband, sitting up.
"Head…ache," she sputtered out before she fell unconscious, the mysterious word "6ixball" whispered in her ear.
"Oh, Kami, You're dead!" Kuririn screamed and rambled around the bedroom like an idiot, thinking only of his deactivated wife, just lying there.
He went to her side and sobbed; this may be the last he saw of his wife…
She sat beneath the floating city of Tiphares, listening to the shuttle tubes that eerily resembled the sound of human screams. She hadn't seen Doc Ido in quite a while, especially since he was working on that damn motorball champion, Jashugan.
She looked into a piece of scrap metal and sneered. Why did the good doctor, the one that had rescued her and rebuilt her, abandon her? For that no-good, egocentric bastard? He must have a reason…
But what?
Before she could finish her thought, she developed an acute headache. She grabbed her throbbing head and lay down, looking up at Tiphares…so beautiful from the vantage point of the Scrapyard…
She closed her eyes, as if by reflex, and fell unconscious, the sound of a strange word filling her head…
6ixball.
He lay on Doctor Ido's couch, drinking a warm, revitalizing glass of tea.
"Hey, Doc, you'd better fix me up so I can stay the motorball champion in the first league…unless you care too much about that Alita girl," he sneered.
"Don't worry, Jashugan," said the doctor. "I'll have your body improved in no time. It is a very strong civilian cyborg model, after all."
Then a startling thought crossed the doctor's mind.
How could have he abandoned Alita? His "daughter"? Just to gain chips and fame by being an arrogant champion's lackey?
"Hurry up! The next race is in five days, you know!" hissed Jashugan.
"Don't worry, I'm working on it."
All of a sudden, Jashugan began experiencing a very sharp headache. He dropped his teacup and fell to the floor as he heard one word echo in his brain…
6ixball.
Doc Ido ran into the room as fast as he could, finding an unconscious champion and a mess of tea and porcelain shards on his pristine floor.
BACK AT THE SPACE STATION…
"Don't worry, Rivkeleh, they shall arrive soon."
"I'm ready to fight for my life, Zyzyx," the girl reassured the alien. "And I will fight."
TO BE CONTINUED…
