I do not aim with my hand.
He who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
I aim with my eye.

I do not shoot with my gun.
He who shoots with his gun has forgotten the face of his father.
I shoot with my mind.

I do not kill with my gun.
He who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father.
I kill with my heart.

--The Gunslinger's Catechism
Stephen King, The Waste Lands


Asimov let his eye open slowly as he exhaled, and breathed again, taking in the arena's acridity, the pervasive stink of smoke and fire burning across towering metal facades. It wasn't his arena-- that one probably didn't exist anymore, but the story was the same. A microcosm remade through a two person war. At least time someone had the sense to put the spectators well outside the danger zone. A huge barricade roundabout the circle gave the impression that the arena was in a pit sunken into the earth, and the crowd was gathered around its lip, looking down through the heat haze and obfuscating black pollution.

It was hot, but he'd had hotter. It stunk, but he'd smell worse. He'd fought across blazing deserts that reeked of blood and poison spilled across the sand and air. That didn't bother him. What did bother him was his opponent.

He beat Talisman. That's not a good sign, he thought. Asimov long ago learned, and his last match had confirmed, that fighting abominations like Alucroas was always less difficult than fighting against men. He'd actually banked his entire military career on that principle, and his rank seemed to validate it. The power of mankind was seldom in physical aptitude, but in ingenuity, and in tenacity, and that is what allowed the Technocrats to dominate their sector of the Multiverse.

He recounted his previous opponents. A monster of magic, a monster of human proclivity, and a monster of science. By all accounts, this newest one, Katana Ashigaru, was none of those. He was a warrior, and agent of combat who'd defeated Ichi-gou. Ichi-gou the Firebrand, Ichi-gou the Talisman, Ichi-gou the Relentless, who killed a whale that devoured suns and turned Forever City into ash.

Asimov distilled these facts into tactical truth. To invoke an old Gunslinger idiom, this was going to be a brittle bullet.

There stood the General amid the flames, fully armed and at the ready. Fully decked out in his Kaiser armor, black and gray save for the orange symbol on the chest plate, right where Watkins had patched the wound cut into it by the electric demon. A glowing gear, and in the center, a glyph like an arrow, a sigil that meant Apex. At his waist, the holsters for his firearms were blank gray blocks of metal, giving them the appearances of geometric scabbards more than gun carriers. Two short ones at his hips held his revolvers, while a long one on his right held his rifle like a broadsword, and two of medium length on his left held even more dastardly devices. On his back, the grenade launcher named Matador, and the machine guns each named Backlash. Laden as he was, he bore the brunt of the weight without effort.

A forest of metal stretched out before him, cut through by burning and boiling white oil like streams of magnesium. An open and clear avenue was cut clear through the arena center, where undamaged tile provided a site for an old fashioned showdown, and that was fortuitous, because in a few minutes the sun would peer over the obscuring barrier. It would shatter the dominant shadows of their pit, cleave through the darkness. If he timed it right, Asimov thought, he could finish this at high noon.

Next thing we know Katana's standing there just outside of the ring, passing through the palisade, inebriated as all get-out. He looks like a walking shitbag, but he's never felt better... well, if you're not counting every other time he's gotten beer-goggle drunk before. His vision is like an Aphex twin video gone wrong and everything is pretty shaky and hazy. In his right hand he holds a not-yet-activated plasma grenade, and on his back is Loyalty crossed overtop of his shotgun, and at his waist is Gomorrah which is mysteriously fully-functional and working for the new match. Just as Katana lumbers up to his end of the field he takes note of the familiar setting, something similar to the previous arena - well, before him and hardhands laid waste to the arena.

At his side is Sodom and across his waistline is the belt of all the stolen goodies he got from Ichi-Gou, tucked in is the spool of what remaining thread is left, there are needles haphazardly patched throughout his hakamas, however his gourd is gone - destroyed. This makes for an angry very Katana when he has no booze to sip at through the duration of the match. He paces slightly, his trademark hat overshadowing his very red and fuzzy eyes. Katana sways in place for a minute before situating himself. He is behind one of the pillars on the opposite end of Asimov, back against it. Really he wasn't too focused on this match, he was just kind of focused on keeping himself from hurling.

With his left hand Katana slowly, silently draws Sodom despite being able to choose from any number of even-closer range tantos that were strapped to his person. He stabs the sword in the ground, leaving it in front of him, then pulls a tanto from his right bicep. Last thing he remembered from the lobby was that stuck-up attendee telling him he couldn't bring drinks into the match and that they enforce some sort of open-container policy.... what a dumb idea. Open container, as a matter of fact, just out of tact, (which is rarely done in Katana's case) he offered to put a lid on it. That was a no-go, and so he was left with chugging the dragon's fire all in one go, this burn was different, however. It didn't burn his mouth, it didn't burn his throat, but once it hit his stomach beads of sweat formed on his forehead, and not even from the heat of the arena, either.

Why had he drank so much? That was a question answered simply, because, he had numerous wounds that surfaced from his last match, wounds that were from his own (self-sacrificial) speed, after all, dodging instantaneous bullets would definitely take him to the upper echelons of celerity. While he was in an augmented berserker state last match, he still suffered the wounds of his own recklessness after the match. Booze made for a great painkiller this time around.

Katana, while holding the tanto, fumbled with the spool he had rigged to his belt for a bit until he got the near-invisible thread and attached it to the bottom of the tanto's grip, making sure it was secure. He was ready for this match - and from the looks of his opponent while he peered out from the edge of the pillar, so was his opponent, big time. The guy was armed to the teeth with all sorts of horrible stuff, just looking at the walking tank made Katana cringe slightly. Round four, let the bullets fly.

I guess this is where i'm supposed to make the first move?

Katana stumbles a bit as Sodom accumulates energy, then Katana rolls off his shoulder and with a shockwave left in his wake he simultaniously traverses the distance between where he was and directly in front of Asimov in speed that doesn't even register to the human eye. His path was wavering and faultering which would make it difficult to get a clear shot on him. That's some major fuckin' motion sickness... ulp.. At this point he thrusted his right hand directly up towards the solar plexus of Asimov, with a much more insidious intention than just hitting him, while his left hand performed a snapping motion sending the dagger flying outwards towards a chunk of soil, anchoring it there.

After throwing the weapon, Katana reaches the free hand down, lowering his stance so that it brushes against the sweltering surface, his calloused palms and dulled sense of touch meant the heat wouldn't bother him too much. In his spin his arm retracts, depending whether blocked or avoided, his left leg stretches out to intercept the back of Asimov's ankles in a sweep.

That drunk mother fucker!
He didn’t even feel the blow to his body armor, though he was damn sure that his opponent felt it. A fist thrust into a block of three inch deuranium was going to leave the fleshy appendage far worse for wear. No measure of martial discipline or inebriation would save it from being ruined by the metal 120 times stronger than steel. Asimov marked the sound of metacarpal bones breaking like bread-sticks. Ouch, he thought.

Now Katana was on the ground, sweeping a leg at his ankle in some kind of drunken capoeira move that narrowed his movement options to the completion of the strike, leaving him prone and at fatally close range. His leg swept in a blur, but Asimov stood firm and his powered armor took the blow, diffusing the kinetic force harmless through its mass and carbon-cell padding, while yielding hardly a femtometer to the swordsman’s kick. The curse of Isaac Newton reared up in response like an angry bear, and presented a special delivery of equal and opposite force to Katana’s left leg, into the delicate and nerve-bound bones of his foot.

Asimov unleashed his quick draw, hands moving in intenful subconciousness to their destinations and back again. The action didn’t seem so much like a set of discrete movements as a manifestation of fact, where one moment his hands were empty and in the next there were weapons, a revolver in his right and a machine gun in his left.

With the revolver, the General fired a round at the knife embedded in the ground. The steel slug struck the blade and let loose a resonating, rewarding PT-WANG! The knife launched from the ground into the air, and rebounded off the barrier wall. A sliver-second later, another bullet caught it in mid-flight, and flung it clear outside the arena, where it landed between the open legs of a particularly exuberant spectator, who promptly dropped his popcorn and soiled himself.

At the same moment, Asimov pulled the trigger of the Backlash, and raked gunfire across Katana’s prone form, less than three feet from the weapon’s muzzle. With a full output of 500 rounds per minute, which the General felt no need to repress, the machine gun lit the air between the two of them with muzzle flashes. Strobing tongues of fire spat out hot steel across Katana’s body, not focused on a single point but instead taking the swordsman’s figure as a total target, where even a single impact could impair his combat effectiveness, or indeed end the match very, very quickly.

CRRCCCKKK

If you guessed that was the sound of his knuckles and fingers bending backwards from the sheer force of his thrust, you were probably right. It fucking hurt, alot. His entire hand went numb at the point of impact, and there was but a shrill shriek as he went on his turn. His leg came in contact with the back of Asimov's but it was really of no consequence, the guy was a fuckin' tank. He had kept his eyes on Asimov, how could he not when this dude had that many guns? The moment he saw him reach for those guns he pushed off his hand, and both legs, one which pushed off of Asimov's, this rocketed his body forwards and to a roll where he landed tumbling behind a pillar, with just enough time to spare to evade. Now of course, a few bullets did nick him, cause he wasn't getting out of this shit unscathed, but his opponent would be far worse for wear.

Just as he pushed off Katana had left Asimov with a nasty little suprise, the same hand he thrusted forwards with was the exactly the one holding the plasma grenade. So the scenario kinda went down like this: Katana runs at Asimov, and looks like an idiot trying to knock around this big armored dude, but it's really not what he's trying to do. The moment he shoves this plasma grenade onto asimov it ignites, and while asimov is so busy shooting the tanto that he threw (Which served as a distraction anyways) the plasma grenade would leave him with absolutely zero time to react. Katana was leaping, but he still didn't particularly make it out of the blast radius (Even with his amazing, bullet dodging speed) the explosion was what gave him an additional push he needed to get to the pillar, whether it would send him tumbling head-over-heels or not, he'd be pushed for cover.

Asimov, however, was not so lucky. Katana was at least a good number of meters away from the blast when it exploded, and counting, and still didn't get out of the full force, what do you think happens to the guy who's directly into the grenade? Well his unarmored head would be blown clean off, which would effectively end the match just after he pulled the trigger. It was pretty satisfying actually, it was like sitting on your couch, eating a bag of chips playing Halo 3 while all the sudden you toss some blind-ass plasma grenade and stick someone dead-on far across the map. Okay, so what, it wasn't really like that, but the explosion and raw heat that could cook asimov's insides, as well as blowing his head off, would suffice. It did come at a price, though, he had fucked up his hand pretty bad - oh and his foot was kinda throbbing as well, he didn't know whether he broke that or not, yet, though, cause he was too busy trying to not be disemboweled by his own grenade.

It was kinda a pity that Asimov had brought ALL this armor, and forgotten the one piece that matters most, the one your mom tells you to put on every time you go out to ride your bike when you were younger, or the one the law tries to tell ya to wear when you're on your motorcycle - a helmet. But hey, it wasn't all bad, now he didn't need one.

Katana propped himself up against a large pillar, coughing and hacking for a moment before he'd steady himself. Shit, that fuckin' hurt. he said looking at his crushed fingers on his right hand. He bit his lower lip as he waved his hand frantically, he couldn't feel the foot he swept with either, so he wasn't sure if it was broken or not, but right now everything felt kinda numb, and it was kinda ringing too. Oh yeah, and the plasma grenade had seared the clothing right off his back. Well fuckity fuck fuck. he says noticing the smoldering tatters that just barely covered his form.

Finals, here I come..

Katana was struggling, he used his good hand to pull himself up onto his good leg and trudged over to the Generals crispy-fried form, dragging his damaged leg behind him. Katana tilted his head back, as the majority of his clothing began to break away in ashy cinders. He looked ever-more miserable right now. I'll be damned if I go into the finals ass-end naked. Sorry, Mr. General, but i'mma need to borrow your fancy gizmo. He said, dualy noted he saw that most of Asimov's weapons were miraculously intact. The backlash and matador he was holding were nearly blown apart, but the Matador, second backlash, rifle and second Matador all seemed to be intact. On the downside whatever sort of combat pack was at his side was destroyed, and all his double grenades blew up from his plasma 'nade.

Katana leaned over to clean out the remains from the exoskeleton, next thing we know he's slipped into the carbon deuranium suit like he's borrowing a pair of his buddies clothes for the weekend. He was laying prone in the exoskeleton after having removed the items from his body, and immediately it seemed to act just with him, it didn't feel like there was any weight on him when he rose, even though he had plenty of gear attached to the armor. As he stood up he struggled to fit the shotgun around his waist, tightening it so it wouldn't fall off, but just loose enough so that he could turn it and fire without having to pull it off him. He had fashioned the grenades, the cuffs, all of Ichi-gou's remaining gear on that very strap, and the spool while he was at it. Katana then takes Gomorrah and what's left of the band he tied around his waist, and ties it around his waist snugly so he can move the shotgun without disturbing the sword, he also makes sure not to touch the scimitar while tieing it around his person.

His hand and leg are still badly damaged, but the armor compromises this flaw greatly by holding his bones - especially the ones in his hand together. While Katana begins to walk to the exit he takes his hat off, brushing it against the kneecap of the armor and suddenly the helmet goes up, causing him to jump. What the shi- how the hell does this thing come off! Katana places the bulky fingers around the newly-emerged dome that is his helmet and pushes against it, pulls against it, and generally claws the surface of it to absolutely no avail. It's stuck "HEY." Katana screams waving his arms like a madman, Loyalty clacks against his back as he frantically waves his arms and runs around like a chicken with its head cut off. "HELP!!! GET THIS THING OFF OF ME!!" He says, lumbering around, the visor suddenly tints which cuts off view of his face as he stumbles in circles. "Does ANYONE know how to work a robot suit?!" He shouts, and out of the corner of his eye he catches what looks like Sodom still faithfully stabbed into the ground, still faithfully absorbing thermal energy. He clunks on over to it and grabs the sword, sheating it and somehow fits it through the sash that he recovered from his previous garb.

He itches between his legs, This really is uncomfortable, I feel like it's starting to ride up. He was stuck, though, however way he managed to weasel on into that suit he couldn't find his way out. In his right hand he clutched his hat, Figgers, all this time i've been fighting robots and now lookit me - i've become one. The irony is killing me, ah well, 'spose I should get the hang of this doomahicky fer the next round. It'd suck if I went in and this thing ended up grooming me instead'a helping me fight.

Mid-though Katana was transferred to the bar in a brilliant blue light...

Beer and wine flowed across the Lobby as Katana's growing fanbase celebrated his success over the Technocrat. Ladies fanned over his shiny new suit of armor, and with its waldoes, it was more than capable of supporting their embraces. Not to mention another couple bottles of booze.

The Kaiser was a marvel of technology, a masterpiece of war. Splattered as it was with plasma, it still held up admirably, save for a slight scorching of its enamel covered surface. Its dueranium plating and synthetic carbon-nanocell musculature was designed to conduct heat into a number of heat sinks throughout its interior, which could be released in a controlled manner once the danger was past. Moreover, the thin plastic that formed the plating layer between outer- and inner-armor and protected the armor's processors and motors was a space-age insulator that kept the operator safe and comfortable even in the most inclement of conditions.

Needless to say, it was quite the triumph, and it was mirrored for all to see on the leaderboard at the center of the Lobby. It announced: KATANA ASHIGARU, ADVANCING TO FINAL ROUND, accompanied by a play-by-play of his all too brief bout. There lay the General, head scorched half black and stripped down to his undergarments. Though the rest of his form appeared unaffected by the plasma's heat thanks to the Kaiser's insulation, it lay motionless and devoid of the spirit and fire that animated it moments earlier. There lay but a man, an agent of war and strife brought to nothing by speed and craft.

The display continued for some minutes as the celebration continued, and then something strange took place. The screen flickered, cut through by lines of static and white noise. It wavered and broke continuity, and the color commentary was swallowed up outside interference. Onlookers suddenly started diverting their attention from pickling themselves to the anomaly. The final flicker was zoomed in on Asimov’s apparent corpse. His red eye opened.

With a jolt, the leader board lost its feed and turned totally blue. Scrawling across the monitor came lines of computer code, terminating with the phrase "ERROR 505."

At that moment, a voice boomed across the lobby, indeed across the entire Tournament universe it seemed. Thunderous, it was like the decree of a God falling in deafening peels from heaven. It brought the celebration to an instant stop.

"ILLEGAL OPPERATION," the voice boomed, in the recognizable tones of the Tournament administration. But now rather than imbued with positive and hopeful overtones, it was stern and condemnatory, yet without affect or anger to infringe upon objectivity. "PREMATURE EXIT FROM COMBAT ARENA. INVOKING ALTERNATIVE MEASURES." It sounded like nonsense, or if not nonsense, then managerial jargon, but with a baleful weight of meaning. Something had gone wrong. A mistake had been made. A dire mistake. Pandemic confusion swept through the crowd.

"RESTITUTION COMPLETE. RESUME COMBAT."

A flash of blue in the air. A wisp of smoky atmosphere from a distant landscape ejected into the air from elsewhere. And a form, a human thrown from oblivion. He landed on the Lobby tile twenty feet from Katana and his fans, bare toes catching his momentum and sliding to a stop. He was naked except for a pair of black shorts and a sleeveless, tight black shirt. A symbol on it: an orange gear. The moment he had time for a breath, he spoke. His words were slurred, but intelligible.

"Protocol D-L-4-5-8. 'It was you who broke my mason plate.' Execute." The audacity of the moment prevented retaliation. The seeming non-sequitor echoed through the stunned silence, and found its destination: the Apex-Kaiser powered armor.

It happened all at once, with all the speed of a muscle's tensing. Faster, even, as it was not prompted by the impulses of human nerves but by the light-speed relay of a quantum computer. The Kaiser's external sensors detected the command, and fed them to the processor, which matched them to its (short) library of last-resort command codes as well as to its voice recognition software, which fed them in turn to the armor's motors and muscles. One light-speed reaction in three measures, and in an instant, the armor became a coffin.

270 pounds of carbon nanocell musculature contracted and hardened, restructuring its molecular composition from flexible but nigh unbreakable synthetic tissue to what the nanocells, in essence, always were: diamonds. But where before they were drawn into ductile strands, a mere hint of precisely tuned electrical current converted it to a single solid mass seamlessly enveloping Katana's body as thoroughly as his own flesh. The motors and actuators, all 1700 of them seized and cobalt-tungsten joints froze tight and unmovable by the carbon cell tissue that protected them. 16,000 intercept-bypass sensors that translated the operator’s body movement to armor movements switched. The waldoes too ceased their movement, frozen in their current position by hardened carbon cells and cut off from Katana’s control. The helmet retracted and stayed there, exposing the warrior’s head. Even the supple carbon layer that clung directly to Katana's skin, the layer required to allow him to even move the unit, hardened and held fast to the warrior's body. It covered every square millimeter of flesh on Katana’s body, from the space between his toes to his fingertips. All of it, unbreakable and immutable, and over it, another 300 pounds of deuranium metal plating that now had no support form the suit’s enhanced musculature, and its full weight bore down on Katana.

And as a final coffin nail, the Kaiser’s processors ordered a final command: they shut down the Zero-Point Energy generator that provided power to the suit, and the only thing that could provide the electrical stimulation to revert the armor to its original state.

This web of sudden action, all born from the words of one man was cast upon Katana and entrapped him with the speed of electricity.

Asimov rose fully to his feet, and as he did, hushed gasps spread through the onlookers. His body was unharmed, but the same could not be said for his head. The right side of his face had been burned almost down to the bone. Indeed, where his eye was there was only a patch of scarred tissue, and everything else had been eaten up by claws of fire. The black and red scarring reached across the back of the Technocrat’s head, and ended just before his ear. His jaw was frozen in a perpetual grimace, but the left hemisphere remained largely intact, with its glaring red eye, now bloodshot in addition to bearing the crimson curse. His hair was burned away but for a tuft that formed a makeshift Mohawk.

He forced the pain away. His face still felt the fires that had devoured it, but he had no choice. Normally this kind of injury would be nothing to him. His nanomachines could bring him back even from damage that severe, but here they were in operable. All he had left to rely on was his overengineered physique and the dogged determination of a black dog that bites and never lets go. That had been enough to bring him back from unconsciousness on the arena. It would have to be enough here.

“Watkins,” he growled, and looked over to Trish and Pious, staring open mouthed at the scene. Both had already packed up their gear and were ready to head out. “Do you have my other armor?” he asked. The hybrid nodded slowly and pointed to a suitcase sitting on the table. The Technocrat extended his arm and the metal case fell from the table, and was dragged magnetically to his feet. Asimov opened it with his toes and bent down to pull out what looked like a black lycra body suit, laden with small plastic and metal modules. Asimov quickly slipped into the Apex-Grimmig, and it sealed around his body. Then he turned to Katana.

He raised his left arm, and it split open from the elbow down, exposing it as, in part, a cybernetic prosthesis. A slide ejected an object, and Asimov caught it in his right arm. It was a handgun with a black parkerized finish and grip. He trained it on Katana’s head, aim and eye unwavering through the pain. He pulled the hammer back.

“I want my armor back,” he growled, and fired.