Chapter 109

Merder Stadium, Atlanta - 7:39 AM

Despite Howard’s insistence that we hurry to the manager’s suite, I took the time to eat in my room where I wouldn’t have to worry about being seen without my mask. Sure, I could have lifted the bottom half of it and ate while I walked, but that just seemed like way more work than I was willing to go through.

Besides, I was expecting trouble on the way, and I didn’t want it to distract me from my meal.

Even though I took my sweet time, I was done rather quickly. I left Howard to wait as I looked out over the stadium. The crowds were still pushing to get inside. I was expecting a full house today and what I was seeing reinforced that. Luckily, almost everyone was being civil. Even from here I could see some people use force to push through faster, but it wasn’t common and rarely resulted in injury.

Peeling myself away from the window, I left my room to find Howard pacing back and forth in the hallway. He threw his hands into the air from exasperation before running up to me. “Thank the lord! You’ve finally come out of your trailer! Can we get a move on now, please?” he pleaded.

“Of course we can. Don’t you worry about something as trivial as timing,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. I walked past him to the elevator and waited without touching the button.

In a few seconds, the door opened and we walked inside. We were deposited into the hotel lobby and running across the grounds in record time. People stopped and stared at us as we ran, and I waved at my adoring fans.

“Embrace chaos!” a small girl no older than five or six yelled as we ran past her and her parents.

“Embrace chaos, young lady!” I responded enthusiastically, raising a fist into the air.

“Great,” Howard said, shaking his head. “You’re going to get that stuck in everyone’s heads, aren’t you?”

“Not my fault it’s catchy,” I said before running in front of my manager and opening the door for him. He dashed in, and I followed.

Merder Stadium was full of people, and the crowd was so dense that we were hardly noticed. People were still filing into their seats this close to the administrator’s announcement. I tapped Howard on the shoulder and gestured for him to follow me, and we started heading around the crowd to get to the stairs.

“Okay, now that we’re almost there and not, like, winded,” Howard began to say, sounding winded. His Constitution stat wasn’t very high at all. “I spent most of the night coming up with restrictions. Got them written down. Take a look at these and tell me what you think.”

He pulled a piece of the hotel stationery out of his inventory and handed it to me. You could say a lot of bad things about Howard, but his handwriting was impeccable and easy to read. I went through the list.

“Alright, let’s see here,” I said as we started climbing the stairs. “The Warmonger is only allowed to die twice. Wow, going all in right from the get go, huh?”

Howard shrugged. “You wanted hard, right? I figured not dying at all would be unreasonable, and then I thought one is such a regular, boring number, so I went with the 007 reference. Even if it isn’t perfect, I still like it.”

“Fitting, considering what a show this all is,” I replied as I nodded. “Okay, only allowed to die twice. You’re right that not dying at all would be unreasonable. So next up is, can’t kill with ranged weapons. What? Didn’t like the javelin action from the last round?”

“Aside from the first time, no one did,” Howard said with a grimace. “I mean, it only happened a little bit but the crowd was going wild every time you threw someone off the mountain or slammed them into a rock. This gives them a little more of what they want, right?”

I considered that for a moment. No killing with ranged weapons would have been huge on the mountain, but it was only a minor hindrance here. There was almost no verticality in the event Benedict Merder unimaginatively named Big Time Hoops. A quick glance over the stands showed that the arena was already set up for the game.

The event space was divided into four different sections by tall barriers roughly fifteen feet tall. They looked like they could be climbed and jumped over, but anyone trying to go out of bounds would immediately receive a free death for their troubles. This was something that Howard was supposed to mention to me, but at this point he had figured out that such warnings were unnecessary.

Each of these four sections contained 20 fifteen-foot-tall poles, 7 twenty-foot-tall poles, and 3 thirty-foot-tall poles, and each had baskets on top of them. Beetles carrying heavy balls would emerge from the walls and run around the arena in random patterns until they returned and disappeared. The players would have to grab these balls and toss them into the basket in order to score their team points. The taller the basket, the points you got.

It wasn’t as straightforward as it seemed. Every section had four teams in it competing for a finite amount of balls, and there was a chance to get kicked out of the game at the end of every round. These lasted 4 minutes each, and whatever team had the least amount of points was kicked out of the game. After two rounds passed and only two teams remained in a section, one of the walls would disappear and merge two sections together to have four teams in it again.

This continued until all of the walls were gone and the final four teams fought amongst themselves. It took seven rounds total, nearly half an hour, before the event ended. All in all, it was a fairly fun event even if it wasn’t my cup of tea. Not that I would be adhering to the spirit of the game, anyway.

“Okay, can’t kill with ranged weapons,” I finally said, nodding as I looked back down at the list. “Alright, next up we have… The Warmonger can only steal balls from players, not from beetles. Okay, interesting.”

“I thought up that one after reading through the event information I got sent last night,” Howard explained. “You see, the walls spawn beetles that-“

“Carry the balls we have to obtain and throw into baskets, yes,” I finished for him. He looked like he was about to start pouting, and I chuckled. “You’re doing a fine job.”

Howard was no doubt about to retort with something sarcastic or self-deprecating when we made it to the floor where the manager’s suite was. Standing in front of our room was a group of men and women, around twenty in all. Many of them spotted us immediately, but only one of them stepped forward.

He was a short man, but built like a truck and very heavily armored. One of his hands ran through his curly black hair while the other settled on a sheathed katana hanging from his belt. “Manager suite’s closed,” he called out lazily, stopping about halfway between the crowd and us. “No game for you today, so go on and get out of here.”

“What?” Howard asked, looking from the man to me. “Look, dude, we’ve got to get in there. The match starts in, like, ten or fifteen minutes or whatever.”

“No game for you two today,” he repeated, unsheathing his sword a few inches. “So you best get out of here.”

My manager scoffed. “Are you kidding me right now? You know who this is, right? This is the fucking Warmonger. He’s not going to take kindly to you obstructing his path here.”

“Nah, I don’t care one bit, but it’s not me that they should be worried about,” I said before nodding towards the swordsman. “Already know the answer, but, did Branson send you?”

The cocky man snorted. “We’re all here of our own free will.”

“Well, not for long,” I said ominously before walking towards the railing and leaning against it. With my arms crossed, I motioned for Howard to come do the same and he did. I looked back at the swordsman. “Just so you know, you’re going to wish you didn’t do this. Anyone who isn’t sure of themselves better clear out of here before five til, or you’re going to be sorry.”

“Yeah, sure thing, dude,” the swordsman scoffed before returning to his group.

“What are you doing?” Howard whispered. “You can barrel straight through any of these guys, why are you being so civil?”

“Are you implying that I’m not civilized?” I asked.

“No, I mean- I’m not- Just…”

“Listen, you’re going to be safer once people realize that there are consequences for their actions,” I chuckled. “If these are the scapegoats for that, then that’s that. We still have a few things to go over, so let’s focus on that instead. You’ll need to place your bets and put in the restrictions pretty quickly once we’re actually inside. Just don’t freak out and keep your eyes on the prize.”

“Freak out?” Howard asked. “Why would I freak out? What’s going on that you think I’m going to freak out?”

Instead of answering him, I looked back down at his list. “Not allowed to use the broomstick. Yeah, I could see where that’s problematic, but the broomstick didn’t really let me fly, it just helped. Let’s say I can’t fly and that’ll be better.”

“If the broomstick doesn’t let you fly, then why do you have a flying broomstick?” Howard muttered, but shook his head after. “Sure, okay, no flying at all. Jumping, climbing, all good, just can’t fly.”

“Deal,” I said before looking at the final item, then I groaned. “The meowing thing again?”

“What? You loved the meowing thing! You were so excited for it.”

“Yeah, because it was new and funny, now it’s played out and old,” I explained. “Look, I need an actual restriction, okay? You got something else?”

“Look,” Howard started, running a hand down his face. “I already have a guy willing to do Warmeowger merchandise, okay? We can milk this for more than it’s really worth if you keep it up!”

“The Warmeowger, really?” I asked with a heavy sigh.

“That name’s gold, man!” Howard said defensively. “People love winners, and they love cats, so we just slam two things together and we’ll be rolling in points!”

“Except for the part where I’m leaving after all this, so you’d be rolling in points.”

My manager deflated somewhat. “I mean, I guess. What's the matter with that?”

I patted him on the shoulder. “Nice try, but give me a different restriction.”

“Fine, fine,” he huffed. “I thought you might get this way, so I already have one thought up.”

Taking the stationary from me, he crossed out the meowing restriction and wrote another one down underneath it while using his leg to hold it steady. I took it from him.

“Can’t score in the first two minutes of the match,” I read aloud. Then I nodded. “Yeah, that would mean I’d have half of the time to score enough points to stay in this thing. Okay, let’s go with all that, then. Good work, Howard.”

“Not that it means anything with those assholes in the way,” he said, glaring at the group. They continued to loiter, though many of them looked uncomfortable now that Howard and I were here. They kept glancing back at us and avoiding eye contact.

“Trust me when I say they’ll get theirs,” I said. Snapping open my menu, which caused more than a few of the people to glance towards us, I started transferring all of my points to Howard.

“Fuck, that’s a lot of points,” Howard said as he accepted it. “Is that what you won from the last match?”

“Yep, a bit over five thousand, then I got the rest for defeating a giant cat boss,” I confirmed. “You received a third of that for just being my manager. You ready to hear who’s going to win and lose?”

“I am, but…” He hesitated. “Should we discuss it when they’re right there?”

I waved my hand dismissively. “They aren’t going to matter for a while yet, so don’t worry about them.”

“Dude, are you actually going to kill them?”

I laughed as I saw Howard’s wide eyed stare. “No, my friend, of course not. They’re going to deal with someone else. What do you think is going to happen when Benedict Merder realizes that one of his managers is outside of their suite right before game time? Who do you think is going to get in trouble for that? Us or our roadblock? Do you think he cares more for them than his petty game?”

“Is Benedict Merder going to kill them?” Howard whispered, panicking slightly.

“No, otherwise I wouldn’t allow it. Administrators can’t kill players themselves, but they have their ways of keeping people in line. Like I said, we’re sending a message about what happens if you’re messed with. Just let it happen.”

“Alright, if you say so,” he replied, but he didn’t sound convinced. That didn’t matter much.

“Good, because I do say so. Now, do you know what teams are starting where?”

“Yup, give me a minute,” Howard said as he opened his menu again. While he didn’t have access to most of his manager screens like bets and restrictions since we weren’t in the suite, he did have access to some things. After a minute or two, he shared his screen with me and I looked it over.

[[Manager’s Notes]]

Section 1: The Warmonger, Team Trouser Snake, BYOB, Best In Show.

Section 2: Dunbar Runners, The Thunderstealers, Four Best Friends, Diamond Breakers.

Section 3: Team Titans, Most Valuable Prisoners, Atlanta’s Worst Team, Tag Team Champions.

Section 4: Summer Breeze, Adrenaline Junkies, The Jugglernauts, Sherwood Forest Knaves.

“Oh, nice, I get to bully BYOB some more,” I stated with a chuckle. “The hardest part is going to be fighting with Summer Breeze for so long, but I have a plan for that.”

Once each section was down to two teams, then two of them would merge together. The wall separating sections one and four would disappear just like the one separating sections two and three. Aside from the fourth set of teams, which had two MVP teams in it, betting was fairly easy for this one.

“If you say so, man.” Howard took the stationary from me again and raised his knee so he could use his leg to keep it steady. “Alright, go.”

“So out of section one, BYOB is going to be out in the first round, no issues there,” I said.

“You really have something against them, don’t you?” Howard asked, shaking his head even as he wrote it down.

“Nah, but they keep showing up near me so that makes them easy targets. After that, though, is Best In Show.”

“Really? You can’t keep those hot chicks, Olivia and Ava. around for longer?” he whined.

“Focus, Howard,” I said, flicking him in the back of his head. “Both BYOB and Best In Show are Branson teams, so yeah, they get to go first.”

“Oh shit, are they?” he asked, surprised. “Damn, okay, yeah, I’m all on board, then. I’m guessing that means you’re going after Summer Breeze once your sections merge? Since that’s, like, Branson’s actual team and whatnot, I mean.”

I shook my head. “No, not yet. I have to mess with Jamie before she gets knocked out of the game. I have plans for her, but let’s not get into that now. Switch to the other side with winners. I am, obviously, going to win.”

“I already have that written down,” Howard said, showing me where he had written my name.

“So you have, you learn quickly,” I chuckled. “But, if I’ve accurately read these teams, then the last four that should be standing are myself, Dunbar Runners, Summer Breeze, and Most Valuable Prisoners.”

“What makes you say Summer Breeze over Adrenaline Junkies?” Howard asked. “I mean, sports are kind of their thing, right?”

“While true, Jamie is going to be gunning for them specifically. Both literally and figuratively, actually,” I said, frowning. “She’ll want them out of the way asap. They’ll either be gone at the end of the first or second round, which is good for me because I really don’t want to deal with an angry Lucy now that I’ve thrown her and Noah off of a mountain.”

“Good call,” Howard said, nodding.

“So, by that time, I should be okay with knocking out Summer Breeze, then Most Valuable Prisoners go next, and Dunbar Runners as runner up.”

Howard chuckled at my words and wrote it down. “And you’re sure about this?”

“Eighty percent,” I said, raising a hand and shaking it back and forth. “I am very confident in my ability to destroy any particular team’s chances so long as I’m not screwed over by the Wheel of Chaos. Which is entirely possible, but that’s just part of the fun.”

“I think you’re enjoying this too much,” Howard stated, but he smiled regardless.

Before I could respond, a system message popped up in front of me.

[[Chaos Cup Notification]]

You have 5 minutes to enter the manager’s suite. If you do not comply, this event will be considered a loss.

“Alright, Howard, best buckle up,” I said. “About to get a visit from the big man about what could possibly ruin his tournament.”

The sound of heels clacking on concrete reached my ears, and the High Roller turned around. “Man, I hope that’s not the big man,” he whistled. “Cause he just got really, really hot for no reason.”

His words caused me to freeze, and I received a second message. This time, from Sara.

[[Patron Message]]

Ant, that is NOT Benedict Merder. Frastina is coming! Be careful, be safe, and don’t mouth off!

You’ve got this, I hope.

Sincerely,

Sara

“Fuck.”