Chapter 3
Round One

"To say she was nervous would have been a gross understatement. Crystal's entire body shook as she eased herself down onto the cot, tucking her arms in beside her. Beside her, a nurse smiled patiently and sat, taking her hand as she eased the IV into her neck. It felt intrusive, but not painful. Then one into her arm, and reality somewhat shifted. Blurred. "I'm right here," the nurse reassured her. "Just relax."

"It took a while, and largely thanks to the drugs, but Crystal did relax, and felt herself slipping into her stomach. When she opened her eyes again, everything had changed. The bed and nurse were gone, and instead she was looking out over the hangar bay. "How do-" she began, but was startled by her own voice, so different. Loud and metallic. Another voice sparked in her head, startling her briefly, and it was then she realized she was still chained to the wall.

"Very careful neural programming," the voice stated. The nurse's voice. "Your parents came up with the design, if I'm not mistaken; the exact details are too much to explain in detail right now. I'll have the data sent to your office if you want."

"I don't have an office."

"Oh." There was a long silence, but the nurse eventually continued. "The information you see running past right now is mostly bootup and self-check data. For the most part, don't pay it a lot of attention. You'll know when something doesn't work out right. Now, you should be entering basic operation mode right about now. Vision clearing up?"

Crystal blinked, only there was no blinking. The data continued to flow until it vanished, replaced with body point statistics, pressure measurements, and a model that showed her body's positioning. Katana; her body was the Katana. "Chief McEllis is unlocking your HAR now. You'll feel the clamps release, as well as see it in the data readouts. Try moving your limbs carefully. This kind of thing can take a lot of getting used to."

A faint hissing, and her body slumped a little before she corrected it. First it was raising one blade, and then the other. "I don't have hands," she noted aloud.

In response, the nurse laughed. "Of course not. Your HAR is designed for combat. It doesn't need opposable digits like the Jaguar or Flail, or drills like the Shredder. Step out of the hangar; move carefully. Your gyros should be working well, but they won't stop you from falling over, just let you know where your balance is. There you go."

"Can you see through my eyes?"

"I can. We have a monitor here because it's your first time."

Crystal found that at least mildly reassuring. Stepping out a little further, she extended her arms, watched them move. Watched the blade slice the air, the world spin around her as she moved.

"Sorry about the blur. Your eyes are accustomed to picking out important information and disregarding the rest. While your visual cortex is still trying to do that, the data feed from the HAR isn't as optimized as what your eyes see. It will take some time to adjust. Try looking around for a bit, get the hang of moving up and down the hangar."

An hour passed, and the nurse was telling Crystal to return the HAR to the hangar, which she did. It was clamped, and something blossomed in her stomach. By the time it reached her throat, Crystal realized it was her consciousness, just in time to lean out over the cot and vomit.

Extreme nausea is to be expected," the nurse confessed. "How did it feel? Not the... nausea. Being in an HAR."

When she was finished coughing and gagging, wiping her mouth and failing to get to her feet, Crystal looked the nurse in the eyes. "I was a god," she confessed, her voice scarcely more than a whisper. "Steel and polymer, made out of perfection. The... it has flaws, but I was there, and..." Another effort, this one successful, and Crystal hurried over to the door of where she was, looking up at the HAR she had just been running around. "I was it. That- that was me. And it was perfect."

A gentle smile was the nurse's response, while Plug, just approaching, chuckled. "Heard that a hundred times," he laughed. "Remember when it was me saying it, only back then we plugged in a little different."

Milano sidestepped, ducked, and threw his weight into a jab aimed at his opponent's midsection. The heftier Steffan slipped lithely out of the way and brought an elbow down toward Milano's spine, but Milano kept going down, dropping into a full-swing kick at Steffan's knees. It was enough to get him off balance, but Steffan aimed his drop with his elbow. It contacted, and the two sprawled out. The next instant, Milano was back upright, even as Steffan struggled to get a grip on him.

"Don't like wrestling?" Steffan tried teasing.

The response was a quick, "That's Jean-Paul's game," as Milano closed in with a raised foot, feinted a kick that Steffan went to block, and brought his other foot down with lightning speed onto Steffan's back. Just less than a second passed before Steffan caught his breath and rolled back onto his feet.
"So tell me, what's all this noise about? Some project that got scrapped?"

"Nova was never scrapped," Milano explained, stepping into hitting range, putting his hands up as though to strike and simply stepping aside. While Steffan tried to lash out, followed by trying to spin to catch up with him, Milano unleashed with a series of quick jabs to the upper torso, right, left, and Steffan blocked and turned the punishment around, hammering a fist up into Milano's stomach that took the air out of him, followed it up with a knee that made his jaw clack, and an elbow hook that took him off balance. Milano wiped the blood from his face and coughed as he got back to his feet. "Fires. It was... plant fires. A private project... never really spans more than one lab, plus one plant, and just a few offices. Whatever they were working on-"

Proud of his accomplishment, Steffan stepped in to rejoin the battle, and Milano took advantage of that instant, hammering him with three quick punches, a knee to the stomach to double him over, uppercut that brought Steffan nearly back upright, another trio of jabs that removed the last ounce of resistance from his upper body, and lay him out with a flying spin-kick. "Was gone. All cancelled, and all project data recalled and scrapped. There's nothing left. A little sad, because HAR design has been stagnant for almost five years now."

Even as he dragged himself off the floor, Steffan was entirely sure he didn't want to continue this contest. Coughed, wiped blood from his lip, leaned back and took a deep breath of air, and settled into his kickboxing stance. "But the Devroes? Pretty sure if they just died in the fire, Christian wouldn't be kicking up such a storm about it."

"Fair enough," Milano confessed. "They were among the first on the Ganymede production facility's unveiling. But that was after they'd already cancelled their work on Nova and handed in the confidential details. Everything they did was by protocol, as far as I knew." Milano closed in, watched Steffan feint, backed out and stepped back in, all too quickly. Steffan was already pulling the first punch when he saw Milano start to retreat, so it startled him slightly when Milano stepped back into it. His flurry of head and upper torso hits culminated in a backhand and a powerful left straight that rammed Milano up against the wall.
"Come on, Steele," Steffan teased as he stepped back. "I thought you were the king of speed around here."

A chuckle, and Milano got back to his feet. The images faded, and the two were standing almost five feet apart, suspended in rigs that allowed almost perfect freedom of movement. One of the earlier HAR control modules. Milano was first to start unbuckling himself. "I usually am," he replied. "But there's more to a fight than speed. You could stand to up your pace a little, too."

Steffan caught up a bottle of water and drained half of it, holding it out menacingly toward Milano. "More to a fight than speed, my friend. Your punches land like fly-bites. Seriously, learn to hit. I gather you're not bad at taking them, but honestly? I bet Crystal's nurse hits harder than you."

Cossette approached with her typical determination, her wheelchair gliding up to the hangar bay. It was easier here, anyway; the first battle of the tournament was to take place inside the test arena, a simple square of a room thirty meters deep, with reinforced steel links making a fence that ran up another thirty. Milano studied his bot for a while before turning back to Cossette, and smiling. "I can only say I respect your tenacity," he offered, his tone a little cordial, a little condescending.

"I don't need your respect," she spat. "Just the title." With that, she wheeled herself into the control room, and Milano walked into his, preparing himself, lying on the cot.

"Great news for HAR enthusiasts. Today, World Aeronautics and Robotics has allowed WRDE a sneak-peak into the arena that in just a few minutes will be the stage for the first of many battles for the title of WAR champion. WAR publicist Shirro stated in an interview earlier today with WRDE correspondent Elam, stating that the company intended to use these fights to raise awareness of the rapidly advancing technologies available in the fields of robotics, and that enticing new, young engineers and scientists was a significant part of WAR's intent. Here we see footage of the HARs scheduled for tonight's fight being drawn from their bays. Those... are some big machines. While no comment could be had from tonight's contestants, WRDE brings you live on the ground at WAR HQ, Elam. Elam, how are things over there?"

"Things are tense, Lis. There's an air of defensiveness and combativeness over here that feels like it's just waiting for the slightest spark to burn this whole place down. Tonight's battle pits relatively unknown Milano Steele with former Arena champion, space station designer and all-around crowd favorite Cossette Akira."

"Akira's been with WAR a long time, hasn't she, Elam?"

"That's right, Lis. Most of her adult life. Like I said before, this place is just shaking with tension, and anything could set it off. I'm sending you images of the different kinds of HARs used by the contestants tonight; we have Steele in his classic Jaguar, a favorite from the dawn of the modern HAR, and here is an image of Akira's more esoteric Electra. Not a loved favorite, but sources tell me this 'bot has some serious power. Those nodes on the arms are capable of producing insanely high amperage currents, and even directing them to specific targets. We can see here a lot of the viewers who paid for matches in the stadium are already lining up at the door. I think some are being let in. That'll be our cue to move on up, Lis. Back to you in the studio."

Milano stepped lightly through the door, and looked in contempt at the Electra lining the other wall. Quickly, he moved into position and readied his stance, studying the other HAR. Somewhere, a voice announced the fight, contestants and machines involved, and the crowd cheered rabidly. It all seemed so distant now, hearing little but the arena itself, listening for the go-ahead, that booming, "FIGHT!" that echoed through his being.

Electras were not particularly agile, nor slow; not strong nor weak, nor durable nor fragile. They were a careful balance of mediocrity of build, because their true power lay in the electricity they controlled. From simulations, Milano judged it unwise to challenge the HAR from a distance; it would always best his range. Even at mid-range, it created a shower of deadly sparks that shorted out circuits in the Jaguar. His tactic, then, was to keep his distance before leaping high into the air and dropping a kick down on Cossette's slightly smaller HAR. This worked a few times, rewarding him with a quick trio of three-hit combos, strikes made it close enough succession that the enemy had no time to respond. The third try, however, the Electra blocked his kick, leaving him off-balance as he fell to the floor and quickly worked to gather his footing.

It was just enough time for Cossette to land a quick punch and a heavy spin-kick to the Jaguar's upper torso, staggering him. Milano went on the defensive, stepping back as the Electra shot out a glowing ball of electricity. His outer arm shield plates grounded it harmlessly, but Cossette took the block as an opening, charging in to make a quick jab and several hurried low kicks. Two of these landed before the Jaguar caught Cossette's Electra by the arm, wrapped both arms around it and nearly folded over backward, dropping the HAR on its head. Before it could finish landing, a quick round-house kick sent the Electra flying high into the protective fence. The crowd panicked, backed away and cheered. Cossette pulled her HAR back upright, and didn't see Milano's Jaguar in the arena.

Worried, Cossette went on the defensive, looking the small, for a thirty-meter robot, space over for any sign of her opponent. The next instant she realized what was going on, and her tactical mind prepared to return his flying attack with a counter offensive. Instead, she found herself being spun through the air from above, and once more planting face-first into the protective wall. Plates rattled, and the fence swayed dangerously. When she got back up again, Milano was close, and Cossette lashed out at him with flurries of blows, light, light, heavy, heavy, a rain of static sparks, followed by a single kick to the torso that tore off an armor plate, scattering it and one of its rivets across the already fairly parts-strewn floor. Again she redoubled her efforts, and was rewarded by Milano side-stepping her attack and vanishing once again into the air.

Again she was slammed into the fence as Milano's Jaguar caught the Electra by the shoulders from the air, shifted its body weight and spun in a somersault that transferred its fall into the Electra's flight. When it dropped this time, the electrodes in the arm-points sparked, then went wild, sending shocks all up and down the machine, firing off its servos at random. "Milano wins!" called the announcer, and he turned to face the cameras, thrusting one three-pointed fist into the air.

"A laboratory is scheduled for construction in place of the hotel that was destroyed just last week," Crystal heard the news announcer say, distantly. "In the tournament tonight, Cossette gave Milano a run for his money, but came up a few thousand credits short." She turned to see a shot of Milano's victory stance as the reporter carried on, not smiling in spite of the obvious effort at comedy she was making. The secondary image switched to a brief video clip of the last overhead throw's carry-through, as the reporter finished, "Cossette held out for a while, but Milano wore her down with hits like this. WAR head of Public Relations offered his comments on the spectacle today," and the entire screen changed to a video of Shirro, not quite looking directly at the camera as microphones prodded up at him, "Milano was simply the better fighter," he stated, a token of amusement on his expression. "Cossette was favored because of her experience in the old Arena battles, but this new HAR stuff isn't for someone stuck in the past; it's the future. It was a good show, and we at WAR extend our applause to both contestants. If Mr. Steele thinks he's going to win, he'll quickly learn that Ms. Akira, though undoubtedly a formidable opponent, might be the least of his worries. Still, WAR wishes him the best." He began to turn away, paused, and looked dead into the camera, grinning. "Until he faces me. I'll rip that stupid Jaguar's limbs off and beat him down with them."