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BS Round 3: Zero VS Gif Part 1

Deviation Actions

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It was noon.

A thick layer of cumulonimbus clouds lay like a soggy grey blanket over the sprawling expanse of jungle, pouring bucket after bucket of liquid down on to the ground below it, grumbling every once in a while as it proceeded to perspire like a construction worker in 120 degree weather. A heavy mist had moved into the understory along with the storm and enveloped the canopy overhead, licking at the edges of the emergent layer of tall, lanky red-tinged trees with white, billowing tendrils of visible humidity, creating pearly condensation on the bushes and saplings that covered the rainforest floor. Droplets of gathered precipitate rolled off of the overhead leaves and rained down, pelting twigs and branches and wild animals as they scurried and picked their way through the undergrowth, creating an quiet hissing noise, like a rush of air exiting an unseen pair of lips and teeth as it shushed the noises of twittering birds and lowing ungulates, that muffled all of the surrounding ambiance to just a few decibels.

The avian creatures which had been flitting about earlier, singing in high-pitched crescendos of carefully arranged notes had taken up refuge in the nooks and knotholes buried into the sides of old, peeling tree trunks. Some of the more diminutive mammals followed suit with their feathered brethren and crawled underneath wide-edged palms to escape the warm precipitation, staring out into the rain as it dropped down onto heaps of jittering brush.

Along with the rain came the musky scent of wet grass and damp bark which permeated the air and hung there with the humidity, creating a natural perfume that clung to everything around it and anything moving through it, providing a refreshing change from the stagnant, hot air that boiled and turned soupy as the day had progressed.

Zero gazed up into a gap in the canopy, the lukewarm water dripped onto his face and goggles and ran down his neck to soak his collar. He'd never seen so much rain in his life! He was mesmerized by the sheer volume of the deluge along with its scent and sound. Iridekk didn't have a moist enough atmosphere to create rainclouds—hell, the last time that he'd ever been outside, trudging around in rain, was nearly four years ago when a cooling trend had somehow swept low enough on the southern hemisphere and turned almost all of the trenches between the dunes into rivers of quicksand for a week and magically conjure up giant meadows of desert pampas grass and prickle tree saplings to coat the countryside with green out of seemingly nowhere.

All of the little rivers dried up and turned back into loose sand and all of the incredible green and blue hues that had been so beautiful to look at quickly bleached yellow or white within four weeks. Some of the fast-growing tree saplings turned into seven-foot tall withered, leafless, lifeless husks that were anchored like the gnarled remains of some large alien buried in the sand, reaching up toward the sky in a silent plea for the rain to return and once again allow them to live and decorate the dunes with explosions of green dotted with delicate peach-hued flowers. He was sad to see the plants die that quickly. The existence of any sort of hue that wasn't purple or grey or red or dead was pretty much unheard of.

Oh, how he wished he would have taken one of dad's cameras with him to this planet. His family would be utterly amazed to see all of the greenery and moisture on Nahara. Especially his younger siblings. They'd just about lose it if they were able to lay eyes upon all of this amazing greenery and see the way everything was eternally sprinkled with droplets of dew.

"Hey, Zero?"

The young Vortian shook his head slightly, prying his eyes away from the canopy to rest them on the small ball-shaped camera drone floating a foot away from his shoulder. Ban clawed at the air under himself absently and then crossed his arms, squinting at his organic acquaintance's goggle-covered eyes with visible annoyance.

"Yeah, Ban?" Zero asked, raising a non-existent eyebrow questioningly at the robot as he fiddled with the edge of one of his oversized sleeves.

Even after a week or two of traveling together, the little cambot just couldn't find it in himself to be patient, no matter if Zero was actively looking for prints or sign made by his opponents or if he was trying to sleep at night when it was pitch-black and otherwise impossible to track an animal let alone a person. Ban simply didn't care about what Zero was doing or how much effort he was putting into getting into the next round. As far as the little robot was concerned, every minute Zero spent either finding food, setting up camp, or not fighting was a complete waste of time.

He couldn't really blame the little cambot, though. If he was programmed to record the blood and gore that ensued from a killing competition, all of the time spent not filming and reporting in to a bloodthirsty crowd could make anyone antsy and uncomfortable.

"You done looking at the scenery now? You've been standing here, staring up into that hole in the trees with a stupid grin on your face, for the past fifteen minutes." Ban snapped, earning a sheepish glance from his assigned contestant, "Are we just going to sit here until some giant jungle monster swoops out of nowhere and eats us or are we going to find that transport terminal and actually get something done?"

The two stared at each other for a few seconds. Zero's eyes darted around Ban's outline, settling on the curvature of his tiny robot hull and then to his little claws, his dainty stick-thin arms, the round pinkish beads they were connected to, the large, shiny maroon-tinted glass lens that his digital pupil resided behind--

"Hello?! Anyone in there?!" Ban zipped up to Zero's face and slapped his cheek, making the boy recoil from the sudden aggressive touch. "Are we leaving now or are we going to waste more time?"

"Y-yeah! I'm here! And yes, we'll get going now." Zero cracked another one of his boyish smiles in an attempt to calm the little robot down, "Don't worry, Ban, I'll play you some more of my amazing travel music soon enough."

Ban just stared at him with a deadpan expression, arms dangling and claws idly clicking together for a second, not too thrilled to hear that last sentence so soon. "Whatever."

Chuckling softly to himself, Zero reached backwards to grasp at Duuir's reins. His hand merely clasped at air. He turned around to find that his beloved laobab wasn't behind him or, upon further inspection of his surroundings, anywhere, for that matter. That was odd. He could've sworn that she was standing directly behind him this whole time; he heard her take in quiet, calm lungfuls of air just behind his shoulder when he was staring up into the sky—he knew she was there just a second ago. Something wasn't right. She would never run off like that on her own.

"Ban? Did you happen to see where Duuir went?"

"Huh?"

"Duuir, my baby. Do you know where she wandered off to?"

"No. I thought it was your job to keep tabs on her!"

Zero looked around into the shrubbery bordering the area around him, trying to see the vivid dun and cream coat through the spaces in the leaves or spot her tall, forward-curving horns sticking out over the lower bushes. A pang of despair resounded within his chest. His eyes widened as fear burrowed into his stomach, making the blood drain from his face and his heart speed up. He looked back up at Ban who was, remarkably, returning Zero's frightened expression.

He couldn't allow himself to panic. He wouldn't be helping himself or Duuir if he panicked. Taking a deep breath, he exhaled and regained his focus, eyes sweeping the ground for her tracks. The imprints of her hooves into the softened grass and leaf litter parallel to where he now stood was where she had been standing just minutes ago. The six imprints of each of her feet were duplicated many times in some places from her shifting her weight around while she waited. The trail that lead up to them was from when they'd first made their way into the clearing some fifteen minutes ago. There was a new trail that lead away from that square formation of prints, disappearing underneath overhanging shrubs some twenty feet away, leading into the darker, denser part of the jungle.

Motioning for Ban to follow him, he began following the tracks, pushing the foliage aside, quickly scanning the ground and encompassing brush for clues. There were no broken twigs or plant stems or scrapes on low-hanging branches that would indicate that Duuir was spooked or was being chased by something as she made her way through the jungle. The evenness of her steps and the absence of damage to the bordering plants boasted quite the contrary. It was like she was knowingly making her way somewhere. But where would she be going?

The amount of light making its way down from the holes in the canopy and understory had drastically decreased, leaving Zero to follow Duuir's trail in light so weak that nearly all of the foliage on the forest floor was dead or decomposing or barely living. The murky musk of damp dirt and piles of rotting plants and death was so thick and soupy down here that Zero was surprised that Duuir would dare to travel this far into the jungle alone. He would've thought that the scent alone would discourage her from heading any further into the jungle unaccompanied. Her prints didn't slow or stop, however, instead winding left and right between tree trunks, over rotten logs, through clumps of wilted shrubs, past piles of mummified fruit, near pimpled fungal outcroppings, under shattered tree trunks, and deeper into the shadows.

Duuir had never run off before. Why she decided to do this now, Zero would never know. It was extremely out of character for her to abandon him like that without supervision. Not that he doubted that she could survive on her own, her cautious nature and lightning-fast speed would give her an advantage over the native fauna, but she was irreplaceable. He didn't know what he'd do if anything happened to his precious little Duuir. It would be like losing an arm.

He stopped all at once, surprised to look up from the ground and see a large ray of light filtering down from above. It looked like there was a break in the weather that blew a hole through the clouds to allow some sunlight to kiss the earth. A wall of giant palm ferns lined the grove, a few stray leaves poking themselves into the darkness that enclosed the bright oaises like beggars with their hands open, palm up, asking for spare rays of light to prolong their lives.

Carefully nudging the leaves out of the way, Zero crept through the brush, his robe catching on a few stray twigs as he went, feeling his way into the middle of the grove. Finally, the last few branches parted and he stepped out into the clearing and he saw her standing there, looking at him from across the miniature meadow.

"Duuir, what're you doing out here all by yourself, sweetheart?" Zero cooed, masking a tone of annoyance in his voice. After he lead her out of here, he was going to keep a hand on her reins at all times. He smiled gently as he advanced on her, arms outstretched to embrace her around the neck to which she lowered her head and allowed herself to be hugged.

"Don't you run off on me like that ever again, Duuir." he said, relieved that he'd found her in one piece and unharmed. He sighed into her soft fur and closed his eyes, stroking her shoulder lovingly.

Then Duuir coughed. Zero patted her neck once and stepped back, looking at her face in slight confusion. She straightened her neck out and coughed again.

"Are you choking? Duuir? Did you eat somethi--" His question was cut short when she started wheezing and drooling.

She coughed again, the saliva dripping from her mouth turned pinkish and frothy and then turned completely red, pouring out of her mouth and nose like a faucet, turning the ground under her head from green to crimson, coating the grass with morbid red paint. Zero was stunned. He fought the overwhelming urge to cry out and flee, his tongue caught in his throat and was left speechless, hands rising to clutch at the front of his robe in terror, jaw falling open to gape at the ghastly scene in front of him, eyes wide with fear, legs frozen in place, he was helpless. All at once, the jungle became a deafening cacophony of noise: birds screeching, marsupials caterwauling, squirrels chattering, felines yowling, ungulates bugling, many thousands of alien voices shouting and jeering from every angle, every shrub, every tree, all screaming at him, tearing at his flesh with their sound. The wind suddenly ripped through the trees, howling like a banshee, rending branches from their trunks, tossing them about the jungle like a child having a tantrum.

Zero tried to back away but was forced onto his knees when the forest floor twisted and warped sickeningly beneath his feet. The grass around him was sopping with blood, droplets of the sanguine liquid flew upward into the sky, sticking to his skin and saturating his clothes, splattering and streaking his horns with bizarre vertical droplets of blood. He looked back up at Duuir to see large wounds open up on her sides, blood bubbling out of the holes in her flesh and running down her legs to pool around her hooves. Tears gathered at the edges of his vision as he continued to watch her bleed; her eyes were trained on his face as her legs buckled and ceased to support her weight, collapsing in a heap of ruffled, sticky, blood-steeped fur.

He sat there for a second, being buffeted by the wind and rain, nearly deaf from the many hundreds of thousands of shrieking voices, marinating in elbow-deep red liquid, and then inhaled deeply.

He screamed.


Zero awoke to find himself slapping furiously at the air around him, Ban floating just out of reach with a bemused expression, Duuir looking down at him curiously. He looked around excitedly, spluttering, adrenaline still coursing through his body. No jungle. No wind. No screeching. No blood. No dead Duuir. Everyone was okay. He let his hands drop and pulled them under the cover of his robe, squinting into the inky blackness above him, feeling the minute sting of the frigid air against his cheeks, he heaved a sigh of relief. It was just a dream. An awful dream, but still just a dream.

A small campfire burned just a few feet away from where he lay, outlining everything with a thin line of bright yellow, tinting the surrounding snow orange as it burned. Duuir's saddle and saddle packs were neatly piled off to the side along with her harness and reins, his goggles hung out of one pack halfway, glinting in the firelight. Duuir was curled up around her rider, providing a soft, fluffy, warm surface for Zero to lay against.

"You okay? You were freaking out there for a while. I thought you were finally going crazy." Ban hovered closer to the Vortian, looking at him with a critical eye.

"Yeah." Zero said with a chuckle, "I'm alright."

"Good. Not like I was actually worried about you, though." Ban said, crossing his oval arms over one another, trying to appear indifferent to his assigned contestant. Truthfully, Ban was worried about Zero. After receiving that nasty bite on the arm from that insane cannibal Irken from the last round, he didn't know if it was going to heal up or turn gangrenous and leave Zero dead from the infection. The wound stayed sore and inflamed, forcing Zero to clean it often and re-apply bandages to keep the external elements out of his wound. Yesterday, Zero mentioned that he figured something was amiss with Svej's normal oral micro-flora since the punctures were still leaking blood and plasma from time to time; the wound refused to allow his body to repair itself all the way, impairing the ability of his cells to shore up the damaged capillaries and veins and create scar tissue to effectively close the injury. The last thing Ban needed was to film him dying from something other than his next opponent. That would be downright disappointing for the audience.

"Thanks, Ban. Always nice to know that you're looking out for me." He gave the cambot a genuine grin and tucked his legs back up under his robe, earning a dismissive flap of a metal hand an a digital eye-roll in return.

It was cold tonight.

Temperatures were hanging around the negative tens and hadn't gotten over twenty degrees during the day. Snow had fallen quite heavily from noon to twilight and blanketed the terrain with another foot or two of snow, adding to the almost fifteen foot snowdrifts in some areas. Packs of snow accumulated on the tops of the trees and stuck to the branches like piles of white, pristine icing, turning the mountainside into a veritable winter wonderland. Some of the flatter, more open places, holes in the timberline that reaped the benefits of having an arbor windbreak surrounding it, like the one Zero had set up camp on, had a few inches of snow or maybe even a foot at most and made for the best campsites.

It'd taken nearly three days to travel a hundred miles into the mountains since finding the transport terminal. After being zapped to the base of the mountains, travel was comparatively slow to how long it took to traverse the desert dunes of his home planet. What would normally take all but fifteen minutes to cover ten or so miles over sand dunes translated to about five hours of slowly climbing their way over rocky ledges, jumping over deep, yet narrow ravines, and trotting through the pines on paths worn into the snow by herds of alien cervids.

On three separate occasions Zero spotted boot prints in the snow. The first time he'd found them confirmed that his next opponent was in the area and traveling into the mountains like he was but they were old, made around two days before he'd shown up, and were quickly covered around fifteen minutes later by an incoming snowstorm. The next time he'd stumbled upon them, they were much fresher, made maybe five or six hours before Zero's group came along. There was evidence that the owner of the tracks had set up camp in one of the clearer-cut draws; a fire pit with ashen branches and a little area a few feet away which was undoubtedly used as a bed. The person who made this camp knew a thing or two about survival, that was for sure. Snow had been kicked over the fire and the occupant left for the timber again, making a near-vertical climb for almost five hundred yards before they swung off to the right where the ground leveled out a bit and provided better traction, descending in a diagonal pattern before disappearing on an animal trail, obscured by a hundred hoofed feet that took the same path only an hour afterword.

Today, he found the tracks for a third time. After turning around and backtracking almost two miles due to the impassibility of one of the ravines (a sheer drop of nearly a hundred feet wasn't an obstacle Zero wanted to bother with), the same bootprints he'd tracked the days previous had appeared alongside Duuir's tracks and walked by them for a good mile or so and then veered off down the mountain, descending into the valley that separated this ridge of towering rock. He decided to follow them back to where the prints originated, back at the camp he made the night before, and was intrigued to find that they'd walked all around his campfire and followed Duuir's tracks clear up to being almost half a mile away from where he turned around from. If they really wanted to, they very well could have ambushed him right then and there. But they didn't. They left.

Maybe it was because the day was almost over and only a couple of hours of daylight was left until the temperature plummeted and iced over the top layer of new snow and was sealed in a wrapper of pitch-dark. Attacking someone in such conditions could go awry should anyone decide to flee into the trees and fall down the mountainside or freeze to death in the dark. Wouldn't make for much of a TV show if the two scheduled opponents weren't actively maiming each other before one of them died, now would it?

Zero turned around and draped himself over Duuir's side, laying his head down between her two shoulder blades and took a deep, slow breath, letting himself go limp as he shut his eyes. He couldn't let a nightmare keep him up for the rest of the night. He needed at least six hours of sleep to function properly during the day and he was already losing precious minutes of REM sleep the longer he was awake. The best way to combat a nightmare like that was to think about something sweet and familiar... like his family. Oh, boy, did he have tales to tell! His little brothers and sisters would be so excited to hear about his adventures and see his cool new battle scars!

"G'night, Ban." He whispered, smiling, briskly nuzzling his face into his laobab's coat.

The little robot blinked at him, still bearing the same unimpressed expression on his metal eyelids, swiped at the air toward Zero's face, effectively slapping the imaginary words out of the air, decreasing his altitude until he settled onto the seat of Duuir's saddle, and perched on the leather like a red, grapefruit-sized, rotund metal bird. He glared at the back of Zero's head, determined to appear uncaring and unattached should the Vortian boy decide to look back at him. Zero made no such move and remained cuddled up to his mount, his face buried in soft fur.

Ban then glared up at Duuir who was staring at him with her big blue eyes, one ear flared in his direction. He stared back at her, her gaze boring into his. They remained like this for a while, fog slowly emanating from her nostrils as she breathed out twirling puffs of condensed air that flowed upward into the atmosphere and dissipated, simply maintaining a strange, unwavering type of eye contact with one another. Ban's aperture loosened and receded, looking more sheepish than grumpy. He didn't know what it was with that antelope and her eyes but it was like they could have these weird, telepathic conversations without uttering the quietest word or sound. It was unnerving!

Machine and beast. Operating on the same wavelengths of non-vocal communication! The idea was absurd. But the way that six-legged, grass-chewing creature could just look right on through Ban's actions and see what he was really thinking was a marvel in and of itself. Or, at least, she just made him feel like he was being too harsh, too judgmental on the boy that saw him as a valued companion and new friend. It made him feel like he needed to reevaluate his actions and think about all of the snippy comments he's made about the purple Vortian because, seriously, he'd said some really shitty things that he wasn't necessarily proud of at this point in time.

The computer technician that was responsible for his refurbishing and reprogramming encoded specific protocol to prevent him from getting too personal with the contestants. This had been a problem with shackled AI's in the past and had since proved to be a nuisance with government-issued drones; some programs became too attached to their owners and ended up becoming more like an individual—like an organic—and thus compromising their assigned roles as assistants or drones.  Ever since Ban had been activated, he'd always been treated as a piece of equipment. A thing that organics used to sate their curiosities or to help them remember things in detail that they couldn't ordinarily remember on their own or to use as a tool to gain leverage on one another. It was all business and it was all emotionally distant. His programming had been reminding him again and again for the past four days that Zero was a contestant, a subject that he just needed to record and report on and nothing else. That Ban was a lowly camera drone with the job of recording this Vortian, a species he was told to despise as it was defined by his Irken masters, partaking in what was literally a suicide tournament where a good handful of the most hated and distrusted individuals in the universe would join and perish at the hands of lesser-known Empire underlings who wanted to prove their supposed worth to the leaders they worshiped and idolized and relay those recordings back to his home planet for all of the wretched green masses to view at their sick, bloodthirsty pleasure. This whole planet was just a dressed-up, expensive, wide-open slaughterhouse. It wouldn't surprise him in the slightest if the Empire raffling off each expired contestant's body to their deranged public for extra income.

But now, after being in such close proximity to this idiot, this Vortian, this boy... Ban realized that Zero didn't see him as a servant or as an annoying floating piece of camera equipment or as a pile of junk. Zero saw him as an equal. That's why he was always calling him 'buddy' and 'pal' and offering him handshakes and keeping tabs on his general well-being and that's why he insisted on giving the little camera drone a name. He was the reason why Ban was starting to develop more of a personality and a sense of worth. His programming automatically made him combat Zero's kindness with snide remarks and aggressive rhetoric as a sort of self-destruction mechanism. Robots were never meant to be equal to organics. Other species used them as tools or pets while the Irkens used them primarily as weapons and augments to boost their natural abilities past previous limits. Ever since the first application of machines to organic society, there were roles to be filled: master and slave. Organics were predominantly the masters and machines were always their soulless, metallic slave offspring from the start. There was no middle ground up until the last century.

Now, however, Zero blurred that line of master and slave to the point that it was hardly recognizable. Ban didn't know what to do with that grey area. He just knew that it was getting increasingly difficult to be as uncaring and aloof as he had been before he met the spunky Vortian. All of that harrumphing and cold-shouldering was becoming more and more of an act than anything else and he didn't know how much longer he'd be able to keep it up at this pace. Hell, he was even starting to get a taste for all of the stupid music Zero liked to play for Duuir and him when they were busy traveling. It would be just a matter of time until he'd start singing along to all of those ridiculous tunes. Oh, lordy, this could backfire horribly... Curse Duuir and her dumb, omnipotent eyeballs of doom!

Ban looked back down at Zero's sleeping figure, trying to decide if he wanted to go over and rest under one of Duuir's enormous droopy ears or stay where he was. He decided against it, mentally shaking himself about like a tin can full of 'nope', and wedged himself between the fabric of the saddle pack and the leather of the saddle itself where he then powered off. If Zero woke up with Ban nestled in the crook of his elbow, that would be all kinds of awkward and he didn't feel like lying his way out of it in the morning. Plus, being online for close to three weeks wasn't exactly being kind to his power supply and who knows how long it would be until they stumbled upon civilization again? Either way, nothing interesting was going on right now so the audience, most likely, wouldn't mind if Zero's feed went offline for an hour or two. They could satisfy their hunger for gore and bloodshed with the contestants who were awake on the other side of the planet.

Soon there was nothing but the sound of the crackling fire and the occasional screech of a nocturnal bird hunting for tiny, scuttling foodstuffs in the distance. Duuir surveyed the campsite a final time, listening for any noises that might mean danger was approaching, sniffing the cold night air for any unwelcome scents. Satisfied with what she observed, she craned her neck around and laid her head over Zero's thigh, covering his body with one of her enormous ears, exhaling contently into the icy midnight air.


The first signs of the new day came in the form of tweeting songbirds and a slight break in the clouds, sunlight reflecting off of the solid white surface of the snow with such intensity that it was nearly blinding in some areas. Two more inches of snow had fallen overnight, coating the mountains and their inhabitants with a layer of fresh, decadent white frosting, adding to the existing buildup of snow and ice, and just about extinguishing the ashy branches that used to be the fuel for the campfire that burned through most of the night.

Yawning hugely, Zero's eyelids fluttered open and he stretched, wincing a little when he flexed the hand on his injured arm. He got a pretty decent night's sleep despite having that brief nightmare about Duuir earlier on that night. He'd dreamt about winning the tournament and back home to Iridekk where he saw all of the excited faces of his siblings as he rode up to his home, his mother and father ensnaring him in a warm embrace while they chuckled and patted him on the back, telling him how all of his hard work and sacrifice released his species from the clutches of the Irken menace and how proud they were of him for doing what had to be done and coming back in one piece afterword. One of the best parts of that dream (the reason he slept in an extra hour) was when he was swarmed by hundreds of adoring fans—most of them being women—who picked him up and carried him off to the nearest and coolest bar on Iridekk where they all celebrated his achievement with booze and food and song and a wet t-shirt contest or two. The thought of that last event made Zero smile giddily to himself. Boy, he couldn't wait to get home and party at that bar for real.

He pushed himself up and off of Duuir, the layer of snow that had accumulated on his horns and robe rolled off of him as he moved, falling in a thin, ragged ring around his feet. Yawning again, he rubbed at his face with his hands, trying to rub the numbness of the cold out of his skin. Thick white clouds of condensed air puffed out of his mouth, hanging in the air for a few seconds before dissipating completely. Honestly, he was amazed that he didn't suffer from some case of frostbite when he set up camp each night because, man, it's cold out here!

Zero cleared his throat, rubbing his tongue against the roof and sides of his mouth to get the sleepy aftertaste off of his taste buds, "Alrighty, Duuir! Up 'n at 'em, girl!" He reached his arms up and linked them behind his head, stretching them as hard as he could, teetering away to where his saddle and supplies lay under a thin blanket of newly-fallen snow. Obeying her rider's command, Duuir shifted her weight, hoisted herself up on her long, spindly legs, shook herself furiously, sending small chunks of snow flying in all directions, and walked a few feet away, pawing at the snow in an attempt to find some grass hiding beneath the surface of the snow.

Setting to work, Zero started brushing the frozen precipitate off of the smooth ovular surface of the saddle, swiping handfuls of it off of the leather and onto the ground. He plucked Ban's spherical body from where it was wedged between his saddle pack and his saddle, curiously flicking the snow off of the cambot's chilled hull.

"Ban?" He asked, looking at the closed aperture with a raised eyebrow, "You there, little buddy? Ban?" Waiting a few more seconds for a reply that didn't come, he shrugged, figuring Ban was tired and needed a little more rest, tucking the robot into the front of his robe, and went about his business of removing snow from Duuir's saddle. Decidedly happy with having a majority of the white frost absent from the leather, he grabbed his goggles, pulled them down over his eyes, pleased to finally get some relief from the white glare of the snow. The transition lenses of his goggles quickly darkened and turned black, limiting the amount of light that could penetrate the glass, and hid his eyes from view.

He looked out over the valley that ran down the backbone of the hills which split the vast expanse of the mountain range into two halves, probably the path left behind by a positively gargantuan glacier as it slowly chiseled through solid rock down to the base of the mountains a few thousand years ago. The timberline here on Nahara was unnaturally high, providing adequate and sometimes incredibly dense cover from the deepest part of the valley clear up to within five hundred yards of the taller peaks in some places. The mountain directly across from where Zero stood was one of the tallest in the area, its bald face and peak tipping toward the adjacent range at a weird angle, probably worn into that shape by years of being buffeted by strong winds and uncountable blizzards ravaging the stone with invisible maws made of ice. It seemed natural yet, unnatural. There were no visible marks left behind from synthetic forces but it was literally impossible to come to any sort of viable conclusion without stripping all of the snow and ice away from its face. Such a thing could take years with the right equipment but what could be done by a lone boy and his pet antelope to uncover such a mystery?

"Mmmph mph ffh mmmph fuh fmphm...?" Zero jumped at the sudden noise and the feeling of tiny metal claws scraping at the fabric of his jumpsuit inside of his robe, the bulge under his robe ascending to his right shoulder. Ban eventually found the edge of Zero's shoulder and grasped the seam, squeezing himself through the narrow gap between the Vortain's arm and the robe, eliciting an excited yelp of laughter from its owner, and floated out of the end of the sleeve. Ban hovered in the air, looking back and forth at Zero and at the other mountain, trying to appear alert to his surroundings while, in truth, he was still booting up. The frigid temperatures slowed down his computer processes to the point that he was functioning at about a third of his full cognitive capacity. It probably would have been a good idea to stay online the entire time they were up here in the mountains.

"What were you saying?"

"I said, why was I in your shirt?"  Ban still looked a bit groggy. He clenched and unclenched his hands idly, hovering just at eye-level with the boy.

"Oh, I was getting Duuir's saddle ready and you were still sleeping on it. I moved you out of the way so you wouldn't drop on the ground and because you looked kinda sad and solitary laying there all by yourself. Nothing some body heat couldn't handle, though. You're a little warmer than when you started, right?" Shooting the robot another one of his sparkling smiles, he raised his eyebrows expectantly at the cambot, mentally preparing himself for a slap on the cheek or a barrage of insults to be fired at his face.

Except Ban did none of those things.

"Huh." Was his only reply. Ban blinked again and shook himself vigorously in mid-air, no doubt to try and energize his mechanics. With that, he took one more look around the premises and chirped, "Well, let's get a move on. Can't prolong this round too much longer or else they'll send in the Enforcers to end this round for us."

Surprised by the lack of a contentious response to his actions, Zero merely agreed with his tiny robot with a "Yep", and set to work tacking Duuir up for their journey. He whistled at her, beckoning her over to him while he stood there holding the saddle lengthwise. Duuir swung her head around and turned, trotting over to her owner, noticing the saddle he held, and knelt down on her front legs to be saddled. He tossed the saddle and saddle packs over her back, securing the cinch and breast collar with deft hands, tugging on the leather straps a few times to make sure they were tight enough to keep the pillion from slipping off of her as she moved. He pulled her reins out of the left saddlepack and set to tying them around her horns to complete the ensemble.

He glanced around the camp one last time, making a last-minute mental checklist of all the things he brought. Sure of having gathered all of his belongings together, nodding to himself in agreement, he threw his leg over the seat and mounted her, shifting his weight around comfortably as she rose to her feet.

"Alright! Let's go." Zero said, pointing triumphantly at no specific place on the distant mountainside. Ban, still a bit dazed from the cold, slowly floated up to his shoulder and grabbed two fistfuls of the fabric, sticking to the Vortian like velcro. This drew an amused snicker from the boy and he patted Ban's hull cheerily as they made their way into the trees.


Meanwhile, on the other side of the valley, almost halfway up the towering, curved mountain whose peak tilted forward like the top of a dollop of soft-serve ice cream, was a sniper lying in wait. Nearly invisible against the whites, icy blues, greys, browns, and dark greens of the mountain terrain, save for the vivid red beret she wore on her head, Gif lay prone on a fallen log, lightly dusted with snow from the oncoming blizzard, scoping her target through the maze of frozen pines that covered the steep palisade of rock on the other side of the ravine.

Her cheeks were a dark green and stung from the cold. She was pretty warm, balling her fists up and retracting them back into her sleeves to keep her fingers from getting frostbitten whenever she didn't have a clear shot, sitting up and curling into a ball whenever she lost sight of the Vortian and his entourage in the thickest parts of the timber. The hole in her suit however, inflicted midway through her last round with that one Irken girl with the weird antennae, put a dampener on her efforts to stay warm in this brutally cold environment, letting valuable heat escape into the frigorific atmosphere.

After being out here for almost a week in gradually worsening weather, heavy snowfall burying everything under feet and feet of crystallized dihydrogen monoxide, herculean winds blasting the countryside with such viciousness that left some of the forest flattened in some areas, Gif was wishing she were somewhere else. Why did the tournament matchmaker have to pair her with an opponent that was roaming around in the most inhospitable place on Nahara? Why did the weather have to be so reliably crummy? Why did it have to be so damnably cold all the time? Hadn't this planet ever heard of a warming trend?

She exhaled forcefully, expelling a fluffy opaque cloud of condensed air from her mouth, and beat her hands against each other, encouraging them to warm up and stop being so raw. Sitting on the same hard, wrinkled surface for hours on end wasn't exactly great for blood flow. Just an hour ago she was kicking at a nearby tree trunk for close to ten minutes in an attempt to coax the numb, prickly sensation out of her left foot because she'd sat in one position for too long.

Yesterday, when she'd finally located that purple Vortian's campsite, she could very well have shot his head off from between that little window in the trees she saw him through after following his trail for half a mile across all of that deep snow and winding arbor. After several minutes of deliberation, she had decided against it. The gap was rather small and provided only split-seconds of clear visibility to the boy's head at any one time. Sure, she could have sat down in the snow and waited for his head to pop into view again, but in waiting for such a chance, she could become too relaxed and miss perfect opportunities or get impatient and miss completely. The better way to go about it, she figured, was to go back down the mountain, get set up on the other side, and wait for a nicer shot. It was always important to be patient when your specialty was shooting targets from incredible distances. Better to be sure that everything is working in your favor and get a good, clean kill rather than panicking and letting your target get away wounded. She really didn't feel like chasing down an injured alien in terrain like this. That would be more trouble than this competition was worth.

It was obvious that her opponent knew she was around somewhere. Even though she didn't double back and confront him directly, she was able to watch from afar, catching fleeting glimpses of him walking in her tracks during one of the milder blizzards that moved into the area, tracking her previous positions and making mental notes on what area she could be in. And, so far, there were times when Gif thought he saw her. The way his eyes (or, at least, his face since his goggles were too dark to see his actual eyes) would hone in on her hiding spot and linger there for what seemed like hours. But then he always moved on, not really caring about what might lie on the other hill. It appeared that he didn't have any weapons on him, judging by the lack of external evidence that would prove otherwise. One should be cautious, however, to the things that might be hidden beneath the folds of that white robe and the large saddle packs that hung near his hips. He could have a high-powered rifle in there for all she knew, even if she doubted it. He did, however, make it this far into the tournament so anything could be possible. She agreed with herself that it would be a good idea not to put herself in a situation where she'd find out the hard way.

Last night, she'd glassed his campsite from about five hundred yards out of the ravine. Even if he was out in an area that would offer her a shot, the angle she would be shooting from would be a bit awkward. He was skylined and silhouetted against the deep greys of the cloudy sky. Shooting things on the crest of a hill could prove disastrous. Should she miss or should the round go right through him, there'd be no telling when and where that projectile would end its airborne life. With the right amount of dumb luck and unfortunate positioning, she could shoot someone else's opponent right out from underneath them! She could imagine the headlines on every billboard and website in the Empire: "Babyfaced Irken Sniper Shoots Wrong Contestant! Disqualified For Disrupting Tournament Match-ups!" There was no telling when or if she'd ever hear the end of that one.

So, instead, she scoped his camp with the safety on, marveling at his giant hexapodal pet antelope. She was absolutely enthralled with it. The way that it moved and responded to its owner's conversation and gestures suggested that it might have some level of sentience on top of its natural instincts. It was adorable the way it would cuddle up to the Vortian and try to groom him after eating the food he cooked for her, licking his head and face like he was a baby, making sure that he was clear of any remnants of his dinner that might be clinging to him. Maybe, when she got home, she would look into getting a pet of her own. Possibly something small, fluffy, and adorable. Something pocket-sized that nobody would really care about if she packed it around with her. Yeah. That would be awesome.

The build up of snow made it just about impossible to hear what was being said around that campfire since it absorbed all of the noise that was being made within a four hundred yard radius. Eavesdropping on his plans for the next day would've proved fruitless even if she tried. She watched them until the Vortian snuggled up with his pet and fell asleep. As soon as she was sure they were sawing logs, she followed suit, quickly falling asleep in her dugout as soon as she shut her eyes.

At the first sign of light, she roused herself from her slumber, shook off the gossamer layer of snow that had accumulated on her outfit, picked up her supplies, readjusted her beret under her hood, and set off up the mountain, pushing forward in a Northeastern direction to find a good spot to set up ahead of where she predicted he was going to be heading next. When the sky brightened a few tones, she glassed her opponent's camp, finding that the other contestant was busy tacking his mount up as his cambot hovered nearby. She moved to cover behind a tall stump and continued to keep an eye on him until he disappeared into the thick pines. It took her another three hours of plowing her way through the snow to find her new roost, appropriately out of breath and sweaty when she arrived. The knife wound on her side was tender and sore from the climb and nagged her into sitting down for a while to recuperate and relocate the boy and his pet antelope.

A familiar little robotic arm snaked its way out of her Pak, a lollipop pinched between its metal fingers, and offered the treat to her which she gratefully accepted. Some sugar would definitely boost her already dwindling morale. The boxy black and purple cambot that accompanied her on the last two rounds floated at her side, blankly filming the landscape, sweeping right and left to get a panoramic view of the terrain.

"When can the audience expect you to make a move?" The robot asked, not bothering to turn towards her as it spoke.

Gif scoffed quietly to herself and sucked on her lollipop, folding her hands beneath her chin. "I'll move when I finally get an opportunity to strike from a distance. Gotta have patience when you're trying to snipe someone." Sheesh. Could this robot get any more impatient? It asked her the same stinkin' question an hour ago and the hour before that and the hour before that and the hour before that. Wasn't it a given that she was going to wait? She only told it her plans about half a dozen times today so why did it insist on asking her a question it already knew the answer to a dozen times over? The taste of synthetic cherry was enough to keep her from pulling out her pistol and pistol whipping the droid a few hundred times for its annoying incompetence.

The cambot didn't reply, choosing to continue filming nothing.

They stayed like that for the next hour and a half.

Her sternum was achy from being pressed against unyielding bark for so long, tempting Gif into pushing herself up to straddle the log and relieve her ribcage from its duties as a cushion. She stretched her arms and popped her back, removing the bare sucker stick from her cherry-tinted tongue so she could yawn. Boy this waiting stuff was starting to get real old real fast.

She rubbed her eyes and quickly observed the opposing mountain for movement. Was that it? … Nope. That was a bush. What about that dark spot in-between those two birch trees? That's not it, either! Just the side of a rock. How about that thing, there, near the peak? That's just a herd of alien ungulate things. Was that black thing always there in that bald patch? Oh. It's just a badger. Nothing out of place there. What's tha—Oh! Hey!

There he was. He was standing out in the middle of a sizable clear spot on the hill, jumping this way and that, rolling around in the snow while his pet followed his lead, hopping about and pawing at the ground, flicking her head around and snorting while she played.

Gif's heart suddenly beat hard and fast; a massive shot of adrenaline rushed up into her head, making her take a huge gulp of air to compensate for the drastic change in her blood pressure. She lay back down on the trunk, pressing the butt of her rifle flush against her shoulder, taking sharp, measured breaths as she attempted to get a crosshair on the Vortian. Her scope was met with the image of the tops of pines and splintered trunks. She lifted her head, realizing that she couldn't get a shot off from the position she was in, and slid off of the trunk, opting for an offhand shot rather than attempting to shoot while she was straddling the log. This way, she couldn't use her tripod and had to rely on muscle memory to be accurate, but she was confident in her abilities to get the job done. She raised the scope to her eye again, her view now free of nearby trees, she leaned against the wood for extra support and focused on her target.


"Zero! Come on! We're wasting time again!" Ban whined, rolling through the air, "Why do you always have such a conflict with your priorities?!"

"I've got my priorities straight, don't you worry. We're just taking a little break is all, taking some time off to warm myself up. I don't move around a whole lot when I'm riding on a creaky, icy, old leather seat with the wind in my face. It's cold out here, don'tcha know?" Zero chuckled, scooping up a handful of snow to compact it into a ball. "Besides, this is a big place. It takes time to find someone in this winter wonderland."

'Winter wonderland'? The day that this place would be considered a 'wonderland' was when the common pot-bellied leidershank sprouted a third set of arms and formed its own solo mariachi band. This place was as bleak a wasteland as the desert as far as Ban was concerned. Save for the presence of the huge pines and the abundance of frozen water, the mountains were horrible.

A jolt knocked the cambot backwards in the air, sending him spinning around like a drunken fairy. He recovered quickly, trying to analyze what in the world just happened, gaze stopping on the boy who was currently covering his mouth to keep himself from laughing too loud. Ban narrowed his aperture at him critically, "Oh, so you think that's funny, huh? Pelting me with a snowball? You stinky peasant! Two can play at that game!" He swiftly shoveled a small mound of snow off of the ground, pressed it into a cube, and chucked it at his chortling counterpart's chest where it detonated with an audible and satisfying poff!

"Aaah! I've been hit!" Feigning shock and disbelief, he pretended to stagger backwards and proceeded to 'die', falling backwards onto the ground, sinking down eight inches into the snow, tongue lolling out of his mouth. Duuir ceased her romping and stared at her owner for a few seconds, not too sure about what just happened. She sauntered over and sniffed at his face, fogging up his goggles with each breath she took, and threw Ban a confused look, tossing her head around and snorting. Ban floated over when Duuir started gently pawing at Zero's 'corpse', and hung in the air just above the fallen boy's head, looking down at him, greatly unimpressed with the show.

"... getting a little excessive with the theatrics, aren't we, Zero?"

Zero smiled and sat up, "Heh, I thought I made a convincing argument with that."

Ban made a dismissive noise and gave the boy room to stand up and brush himself off. "There's no possible way that a snowball launched at such a slow speed and force could achieve a terminal velocity that could end up killing someone. If we were talking about icicles, yeah, if you factor in the varying size, shape, and volume of potentially 'lethal'-type icicles—particularly those that are found in large caves and also on overhanging edges on both buildings and ships docking in areas with extreme cold combined with running or melting water—thousands of aliens die from being impaled by arctic drippings every intergalactic year. But snowballs? No. Nobody has ever died from a snowball that small."

"Always combatin' the world with logic. Don't ever change, bro." Zero gave the robot an amused smirk and held his hand up for a high-five. Rolling his optic, Ban slapped the Vortian's palm in agreement. It was only a millisecond or two later that Ban started worrying that Zero was on to what was happening with his perception of him but the lack of eye squinting and raising of eyebrows quelled his fear. Duuir, obviously happy that her rider was, in fact, right as rain and not seriously dead on the ground, resumed her cavorting about with renewed vigor, kicking her hind legs out into the air and executing happy bounds as testament to her joviality.

Zero turned from Ban, crouched, and leapt at Duuir, arms spread wide and fingers splayed in a playful attempt to catch her. She feinted right, letting him land in the spot she'd just been in and coil for another lunge, freezing where she now stood with her head down, a soft, delighted squeak issuing from her throat. He crept forward and met her head on, albeit carefully, horns clanking together, and pushed his head against hers to which she pushed back against.

So ensued a sprightly shoving competition. Ban clapped a hand against his lens, feeling both disbelief and embarrassment for witnessing such childish behavior coming from this Vortian and his antelope. The sheer ridiculousness of this situation couldn't possibly be measured with conventional technology but it could certainly be recorded. Ban wondered what the viewers of Zero's feed were doing right about now. Probably looking on in bewilderment and starting riots because there hadn't been a lick of action since Round Two and now the star of the show was goofing off. Again.
After sixteen-odd days of work and four days of deer hunting later, this 27 page, 18,000+ word monstrosity is finally out of my brain and on a text document. The whole text document is a solid 100 Kb which forces me to break the damn thing the hell up into two pieces. (Goddamnit.)

I tried my hardest to make this round both intriguing, action-packed, endearing, and awesome. Writing almost 2/5 of a novel for this round is how I intended to accomplish all of the aforementioned tasks.

Next round will, hopefully, be illustrated in my not amazing full-color cell-shaded style.

Ravenpuff, I hope I didn't screw up too badly. You've got an interesting character. One that is cute, talented, quiet, and willing to see her mission through to the very end. Kudos to you for creating an Irken who is loyal to the Empire. It's nice to see a change of characterization in a literal sea of defects and defect... things. We need more loyalists, darn it! They're getting rare!

Anyways, I'll refrain from boring you further with idle walls of text. Good day and good night to all of you. I'm going hunting.

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Part 2: [link]

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Gif and her cambot belong to :iconravenpuff:
Zero, Duuir, and Ban belong to Moi.
All of the creativity and writing contained within this document was spewed out of every creative orifice imaginable by yours truely, :iconthecau:.
Event hosted by: :iconthe-bloodsport:
© 2012 - 2024 TheCau
Comments7
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9509649's avatar
LOL zero acts like me when I have to do chores.
And I love the stoy line so far XD