Show me your grit

Eight cubes buried in a dark coat float over grass, soil and water patches of the Playground, avoiding anything that stands on their set route, evading them at perfect 90 degrees angle turns. These were the replacements for the vans, which would just trample everything grown in the crater. Everything inside them was quiet, except the dull sound of the magnetic transportation system.

Even the sudden stop was like a light push, but that wasn’t enough to stop the contestants' stomachs from jitter with anticipation. It was finally time for the round to begin.

One by one, each stepped out of the gloomy cubes into a desert place, filled only with small rocks and a fence forming an enclosed circle. The only out of the ordinary object was a tall, thin metallic pole, with an attached holographic projector on top of it. After the cubes left the arena, the pole transmitted a single, short, message - “10 minutes until we begin, any act of violence done until then will cause points deductions. Over”.

Each team tried to stretch their legs, check out the surroundings and the other competitors. Two of them, as soon as they made eye contact, sprinted toward each other and embraced in the tightest grip possible. They used their names but called each other brother and sister. Same height, same dark hair with golden highlights, short of length, twins, with the only way to tell them apart was by the facial hair and the color of their jumpsuits. 

The siblings were split apart right before the game, just as the Drum's fate was to be the pawns in two CEOs' plans until number 1 foiled it with a swift move.

After the siblings reunited, only two participants remained without a group, the first one being a small man who just stared into nothingness, and never blinked that often. Whenever he did, though, it appeared calculated, and you could set your clock by the intervals. He was standing very close to his C.T.D, who towered over everyone there present, even Azin. 

The other team had a skinny-looking young man, probably in his early twenties, who was grinning and giggling to himself ever since he set his eyes on someone specific. While not exactly buff, he was the closest being there that had a natural, muscular body, with no scars or signs of any enhancements done to him. In any previous era, his face would have made him a superstar, but his childish smile while obvious gawking dropped his appeal by a mile.

-----

Wanting to take advantage of the minutes they had been given, Angie planned to force her imposed, new crew, to meet her old one, but that desire vanished the moment she spotted Savan being carried around, in a lying position, coughing. 

- “ Savan, what happened, are you alright?”

The clopy groaned a bit while turning their head, and while their face was ashen, it was impossible for them to not put on a bright smile and greet their friend in a chipper way. Savan even tried to downplay it a bit, but they became even more bright-eyed when they noticed the hacker.

-“ Ohhhh”, they gasped as if they just met a famous person-” Don't tell me...those googles...they're for accessing the virtual space from anywhere?-” after which they coughed violently, but continued with more technical praise for the gadgets. Syna wasn’t sure how to react around a C.E, so they just nervously laughed and shyly geeked out a bit as well.

It was necessary for both Marc and Angie to intervene in order to stop the party by simultaneously slapping Savan on the forehead with the tip of their fingers. 

-“ Introductions later, explain this”, added Angie.

A short retelling later, Syna and Sovereign were dismissed as suspects as well, thanks to Angie’s vouch for them, so that left 4 other possible candidates. The hacker was curious that something like this could happen before the first round.

-“I should note this down, in case other rules can be broken in future”. She then came up with the idea to scan the C.T.Ds for a possible sonic weapon 

-“ I don’t think that’s necessary”, intervened Marc as he pointed towards contestant number 7- “He’s been laughing and talking to himself ever since he saw Savan. And he has Medusa with him, which I believe used some peculiar ranged weapon, right?”

Vivar nodded in approval, then put Savan in Azin’s arms and strode menacingly towards them, followed shortly behind by Angie, who assured the others that they’ll be careful and only going to have a chat with the two. 

Medusa, as her name implied, had no legs but an elongated tail-like part instead, that allowed her to crawl on any semi-flat surfaces and, if needed, raise her upper body. Mimicking a cobra, she hoisted her torso way above Vivar’s head, stretching a long shadow over him, then hunched low enough for her head to be at a parallel level with his. Just like the robot in front, Medusa’s face also had only had a horizontal stretch, but instead of eyes, heated air was exhausted from it. She also had some sort of control over it, at least enough to have a red stream of light appear across it.

-” Explain your actions at the cave”, demanded firmly, but mechanically in tone Vivar. The serpent C.T.D ignored him, while her companion just smirked and moved his mouth around as if he was chewing gum. 

-“ Listen, robo-knight or whatever you're called, I have no idea what your deal is, but you better go back and leave us alone, you hear me?”, he said while trying to appear tough and pounded his chest in a standoffish manner, but he took a step back the moment Vivar turned his head towards him.

The sight of the knight C.T.D made them forget that someone else approached, and she made herself recognized by asking a question.

 -“ Vivar, how much time is left?”. Five seconds after finding out, she sprints on the spot, toward Medusa, and once she got closer to her, stretches her left foot to stop her body's momentum. Her right arm follows from a quick swing, flying towards the C.T.D, and punches her hard enough to push back the robotic snake a few meters, unbalancing her and leaving a dent in the armor. The loud thump, though, was the first thing that drew everyone’s attention to the incident, The rest happened too fast for a human's eye to fully comprehend what happened.

She then got closer to the man, who entered in a panicked state the moment he saw her raising her arm as if to slap him. He instantly curved his spine, and covered his head with his hands, murmuring to himself, begging "the Lord" not to hurt him. She wanted to, but once she saw how easily he broke, how he started to pray for forgiveness, followed by rambles- " wait, Lord, no, I'm sorry. Please, I'm not tired, I'm not tired, I swear, I'll do as the Covenant demands of me", she only felt pity for him.

Angie decided to leave the boy in his state, as she recognized something in him.

-" Let's go, Vivar. I'm guessing he had enough humiliations in his life so far".

Once there, Syna was the most flabbergasted out of all of them, just said - “You're a deep miner, right? Sorry, this is…surprising. I, well, I never thought I'd meet one of your kind. I thought your group never leaves that…”

-” Pit? No, those are just children's stories. We come up from time to time, but we never or rarely leave our commune towers. Takes too long to get back in the mines, you know, and that would mean…”

-” Points deducted”, Angie and Savan said in unison, while having a chuckle about it.

-----

Before they could continue chatting, the voice of a mousy woman came from the speakers, who fumbled a bit at her introduction as the Eighth CEO, but regained composure while doing the traditional song and dance of each round. With each phrase, the arena changed little by little, taking the appearance of a target practice field in the middle of a void. 

White at first, it was slowly muddied with other nuances when the shadow of a giant mouse formed in the background. It looked like a hard-working one, that picked up stones and stacked them together in a giant pile. Once Elina ended the speech, so did the mouse and it just stood still like a statue. 

-“ The game, dear viewers, is a simple one and is called - Show me your grit!”, after which she stopped and waited for the unheard cheers and applause to be done.

Elina was a quick learner for someone who was forced into the job by her familial connections, which wouldn’t accept anything else from the only traditionally conceived daughter of the family. But once up there, mistaken failures or mistakes & failures were the only things that defined her time as the CEO. She adapted to others, stood around them, copied and looked, and hid whenever she could, only to be like her peers. In this case, she knew the rules couldn't be bent in her favour, but maybe reading rules in a certain way might help her.

-” This lovely holographic vermin will hurl some of their rocks towards a duo, between 5 and 10 pebbles, depending on the order. Oh, and there will be a small perimeter in which you can move, going outside of it will mean point deduction. And we only want to see how you react, so the pointing method will be shown at the end. The only thing that we wish is for the C.T.Ds to use both of their abilities/ equipment, so that there won’t be any secrets between each other, ok? So, at the end of this sentence, I want one of you to enter the circle and show me their grit!”, she yelled out in her highest intonation possible.

The last part left everyone in self-imposed shackles, as neither expected to be compelled to show their ace so soon, except for one group. Elina was squealing with joy when she saw that her little maneuver worked- her team was the first to sprint towards the perimeter. 

Right after she finished her speech, Savan whispered a slow command, “Run, Vivar”, which he followed before he could even finish his internal calculations for the correct action. While the rest of the humans were still pondering the last rule, which slumped the C.T.D’s as well, the clopy was half-set to run from when ‘order’ was mentioned and fully set after ‘abilities’. They knew that everyone was aware of what Vivar was capable of, so they didn’t have any secrets to keep:

-“ I don’t think there was something else to think about”, said Savan to their companion after they reached the goal.

After them, Syna and Sovereign were the second to sprint, followed by Billy and Serviceman, with the final order being set as: 8- 2- 1- 6- 5- 3- 4- 7.