Chapter 429: If that’s how you want it

It was a long hour before Mason's final match against his brother. Haley and Becky offered to...distract him, maybe even go get Rosa and Lexi to help...but Mason didn't want the oblivion of beautiful flesh.

OK, he did. But with all four girls an hour wasn't enough. And he didn't want to meet Blake feeling anything except the currently cool anger still simmering in his chest. His players all came in support, but once they'd sensed his mood they sat at their own tables and drank and ate and laughed, politely ignoring him.

He paced around the balcony, eventually Calling Streak and walking out towards the promenade.

"Want some company, Patron?" Phuong asked as he reached the stairs, and he smiled in thanks but shook his head.

"I'll see you after."

The man nodded, and a few players raised their drink in his direction, then he was down to the floor level and walking as his mind churned.

He felt the eyes and tried to ignore them. It seemed every player had come down now for the finals and no doubt to see (or receive) their rewards. He walked the winding paths around the artwork and pools, almost none of which had ever seemed to be used by the players. Another miscalculation by their synthetic god, Mason supposed, fighting down the contempt and hate.

"Hard to predict, are we?" he muttered. "Don't behave like good little ants. What'll you do if we all just stop. If we all sit here and refuse to play your stupid game. What then?"

He realized he probably looked crazy as he marched around talking to himself, but he just didn't care. He felt his pace increase, felt Streak's impatience and matching mood beside him, ready to hunt, ready to kill.

"Where's the new objective, you son of a bitch? Shouldn't I get a cookie for killing my brother?"

Mason kicked some sculpture so hard it smashed off its pillar, flying a good twenty feet before splashing into a pool. The system beeped with a gentle sound.

[Please refrain from any kind of violence in the promenade,] intoned a polite voice. [Intimidating fellow players may result in an infraction.]

Mason snorted and kicked another sculpture over.

"Yeah? What'll you do? What'll happen to your big, exciting finale without mean old Mason of House Mason?"

He kicked over another sculpture, and the silence was deafening. He laughed and picked up another, this time smashing it with his forehead, which took two hits and hurt both times.

The thing must have been made of some kind of harder stone. It looked Greek and was probably some famous work. A nearby table of players gasped and one woman literally shrieked.

Mason walked over and set the broken sculpture's hand on their table.

"I'm not scaring you, am I?"

The young woman shook her head slowly, looking extremely intimidated. Mason growled and walked back towards the path, angry at himself, but a lot angrier at roboGod. It wasn't these people's fault. And it wasn't his, either. How could anyone stay sane in this polished piece of hell?

So far he'd been thinking there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it. But as he walked and smashed the occasional piece of art he started to realize, maybe sparked after watching his own image on video: this thing wanted drama.

What could be better than two brothers fighting for first prize? Might versus magic. Brain versus brawn. It was fucking Shakespearean.

But Mason wasn't some mindless, helpless pawn in this fictional game. He could say no. And what the hell could this thing do to force him? Threaten to torture and kill the rest of humanity? At least things would be more plain. At least if it did that, all the gloss and shine would come off and show this thing for what it was.

Blake was getting lost in the fiction and needed correcting, that was true. But almost everything wrong with Blake and everyone else was because this thing was giving them superpowers, immortality, obscene objectives to bring out their worst natures. It was time Mason took back some control.

As he kept pacing around the promenade, and the final minutes ticked down to seconds, he finally stopped and felt a moment of peace.

Go on, he thought, as his vision darkened before the thing sent him to the arena. Offer me things. Offer me power. I don't care.

It was time to see what the machine god would do if its leading champion decided to quit. That its stupid game didn’t deserve to be played. Let it go on and threaten him. Force him to do what it wanted by putting a knife to innocent people’s throats. At least everyone would be reminded who the real enemy was.

* * *

Mason opened his eyes in the holding cell, hand moving to Streak's side reflexively. It was the same as all the others, but he expected the arena above to be something wild, probably timed, designed to make the finalists fight. Mason's first order of business would be breaking it.

He felt Streak's confusion and gave him a scratch.

"We're not doing it this time, buddy. No hunting. No eating. But I'm glad you're with me."

The wolf did his version of shrug, growl/whining as he flopped down and yawned. Mason felt shockingly calm as the seconds ticked away, wondering what exactly Blake intended. If he wanted to put on a show he'd probably make a bunch of constructs and say a bunch of nonsense.

Mason would break them, or ignore them, until the idiot ran out of mana. Worst case, he’d make him say uncle like they were kids again.

The gears clicked, and the metal slid with greased precision as Mason rose up into a well-lit, roofed arena. It was far more open than he expected. It looked like a half sphere, with a high roof maybe a few hundred feet in the center.

Covering damn near every piece of it except the floor looked like plastic grips, the kind you might find at a rock-climbing place. Platforms were scattered above, connected to the roof with metal bars to hang a good hundred feet up and more.

Mason could see a variety of things on those platforms, though he couldn't make out exactly what. All he could really identify was what looked like floating blue spheres.

It wasn't a natural environment. Of course. In fact everything looked metallic and dark, a bit like the sci-fi ship Mason had watched in Alien with Lexi and Rosa. Though that event wasn't a very helpful thought in this particular moment...

As he turned and scanned the arena he saw Blake on the far side. Or at least he saw Blake's work.

Two big constructs and a square metal...wall were blocking the view. Mason sighed and walked towards them, no intention now of hurting his brother now that the anger had gone. At least not if he could avoid it.

"I'm not doing this shit, Blake," he called. "I'll kick your ass for Carl back in the 'real' world. On our terms. Without all this horseshit. So let's just...not. OK?"

For several seconds nothing much changed. Mason kept walking slowly towards his brother's constructs, no weapons summoned, Streak loping behind him thinking about sleep. And possibly barbecue.

"OK who's been feeding you?" Mason turned and hissed then shook his head. "You'd better not be used to it. Back home you're eating dry stupid bird like the rest of us."

The wolf quirked its head and licked its lips, simple brain desperately fighting the image of a tall, blonde woman that slowly formed no matter how it might try to hide or cover it...

"Haley." Mason narrowed his eyes. "You cunning bastard. She's the only one I won't punish, and you probably know that. But I can still..."

"Are we going to put on a show, or do you need to talk to your dog some more?"

Mason winced and turned at Blake's voice.

"Didn't you hear me? We're not doing this."

"So you're surrendering?"

Mason rolled his eyes.

"Don't make me smash all your shit. You have no chance. Constructs? Please. And your Arcane Blasts are going to be like..."

A half dozen whistling sounds came from above, and Mason leapt and swatted at least one spear away with a Sleeve before another hit his shoulder. One re-directed, probably with Telekinesis, and managed to clip Mason's cheek, scraping a bloody line before it bounced off his armor and stuck in the ground.

The pain focused Mason’s thoughts even as he felt the wound closing.

"I'm not joking, Blake. I don't care about your plans. I'm done with this shit. I just wanna go home."

"You never did care about my plans, brother. And I'm tired of explaining them. So just surrender," Blake called again.

Mason could smell the stink of more arcane magic.

"Stop it. I'm not kidding. I'm not playing your stupid game and I'm not playing it's stupid game. Surrender out, if you want. Or we can just sit here and see what it does. But piss me off and I'll hold you down and make you look like an idiot."

The floor thumped as Blake's two big constructs came lumbering forward. Mason balled his hands into fists, the cold anger he'd been pushing down glowing again as his brother dropped ember after ember. No one could get him riled quite like Blake.

He activated Aspect of the Cheetah and charged, still not bothering with his Claws. The first clumsy construct reached out to grab him, and Mason weaved past its grip and smashed a fist into its hip.

The crack echoed around the coliseum, followed by the sound of thousands of fake, roaring people bouncing around the walls. Mason hit twice more, dodging the arms before he fell back and grinned at the stumbling construct. He glanced at the walls as he realized they'd grown transparent.

It even looked like the stands were filled with people, though Mason assumed it was all as fake as the applause. Now that he was looking around he also realized Blake was creating more platforms, rising all the way up to the ones above. Something like cables were growing and connecting them, and at the same time Mason could see his brother was vaporizing some of the hand-hold grips on the sphere.

"God damnit, Blake," Mason muttered, no idea what his brother was up to.

But whatever was up on those platforms was probably an issue Mason was going to have to deal with. And the longer he screwed around down here the worse it was likely to get.

So now the son of a bitch was going to make Mason climb around like a monkey in roboGod's zoo.

"OK," he said, gesturing for Streak to keep on the constructs. "If that's how you want it."

He raced for the sphere's closest wall, ready to climb at full speed.