Chapter 6: Tournament VI - Broken

Annabelle stared blankly at the damage report on her mech. Her sword was broken. The whole tip of her sword, from the point where the tip of the spear hit, had fallen off. Destroyed with it was her mech’s left hand. 

It was mangled beyond recognition. Part of it was from the edge of her sword being pushed into it, but after the sword broke, the shaft of the spear had slammed squarely into it, destroying whatever was left.

Broken. Her mech. 

The Vasair.

Awakening....

Blood dripped from her hand. Was it really her hand?

She blinked and the blood was gone. All she saw was wires barely holding pieces of metal to her wrist.

Somewhere she heard a female laughter. It was familiar. Belevere, pilot of the Avald. The spearman. The one that broke her, made her unwhole.

The tip of a spear jumped toward her, slowly. She raised her sword and blocked it, pushing it aside and letting it slide past her harmlessly. The metal of the spear shaft screamed as it grinded along her sword’s edge.

 

“I got you, Anne! You’ve always said that a warrior can’t fight with only one hand, right?” Belevere said, laughing. She was just short of jumping out of joy. She quickly composed herself, but she still grinned a little. 

She managed to succeed when it counted most! “I’m sorry, but I’ll be taking this round!”

Before this, whenever Belevere managed to disable one of Annabelle’s arms when she piloted a warrior mech, Annabelle always conceded, stating there was no reason to fight after that.

So now, she waited a bit, but there was no reply from Annabelle, nor did she receive a message announcing her opponent’s concession and the end of the round. She tilted her head in confusion.

Did Annabelle want her to properly end the fight this time?

She shrugged and obliged, thrusting her spear toward the cockpit of the Vasair. As the tip of the spear approached, almost in slow motion from all her anticipation of victory, the Vasair raised its right arm. Along with it came its sword that blocked her spear.

The tip struck the flat of the blade and bounced off the slope.

“What...?”

Belevere pulled back immediately. Her attack had left her open, especially given how half-hearted it had been. She wasn’t ready for Annabelle to block at all.

But the counterattack she expected never came. The Vasair just stood there, stationary, without a hint of movement.

She thought back to the moment Annabelle blocked her spear. At the time, she was so surprised that she hadn’t felt anything else, but after the fact, she remembered feeling apprehension. There was a feeling of wrongness in Annabelle’s movements. It was strangely mechanical, almost contemptuous.

More importantly, the movement lacked the intent that she always felt when she faced Annabelle.

Belevere shook her head. Now wasn’t the time to think about that. She was in the middle of a battle. Another unfocused strike will just lead to her defeat.

“This time for sure...”

She raised her spear and charged. 

The Vasair raised its sword and knocked her spear aside. 

Belevere was about to reverse her grip like she had done before to weaponize the butt of her spear, but the Vasair stuck close to the shaft with a sidestep, its sword tracing a path right at her shoulder.

Crack! Before she could react, the broken sword slammed into her lightly armored left shoulder, the weapon traveling way faster than it should have been given that it was wielded with one hand.

Her left arm instantly lost half its power. “No!”

The Vasair did not let up after its first strike. It raised its ruined left hand and pointed it straight at her face. A flash of white light, and suddenly she could no longer see. Belevere hurriedly switched to her other sensors and quickly detected the residual heat in the undamaged wrist.

Lasers!

Another chop with the sword slammed into her left shoulder, right into the gap in her shoulder’s armor that the Vasair had created before. And this time, the sword shorn straight through the much more fragile muscularature, cracking the skeletal support structure in half.

The arm fell off, hand still gripped tightly around the shaft of her spear, pulling down her weapon with its weight.

The catastrophic damage to her mech reflected onto her own person as Belevere winced as a dull pain flared to life at her real shoulder and her entire left arm numbed, losing feeling.

The Vasair’s sword drew back.

Even in her current pained state, Belevere could recognize the finishing move favored by swordsmen, a thrust right into the cockpit of the enemy. Even with the tip of its sword broken off, the Vasair still had enough power to crush the armor there with a solid blow.

She hurriedly let go of her spear that was now no more than a burden and crouched, placing her remaining arm over her chest protectively. But the blow she expected never came.

A pained scream ripped through the open channel and Belevere belatedly realized that it was Annabelle. For a moment, she couldn't reconcile the image of Annabelle and screaming, and by the time she processed it, the screaming had abruptly cut off.

“Anne!”

The Vasair halted in its movements, its sword less than a meter from her cockpit, then toppled forward, crumpling into the ground like a pile of junk.

A message from the tournament system built into the cockpit sprang into her vision. “Congratulations. Your opponent <Annabelle Florent> has disconnected from <her> mech, and victory goes to you by default.”

After a few seconds, the world abruptly turned black, leaving her alone in the darkness of the still-shut remote pod with its lethargically blinking lights.

“I...won?”

But she couldn’t be happy about it no matter how much she tried. The winner should have been Annabelle—she was completely crushed in that last exchange, and that scream... 

With the press of a button on the side of the cockpit pod, she opened the lid, squinting at the harsh natural light of the building. Annabelle’s scream echoed in her mind. It had been laced with a primal fear and pain.

She feared the worst for her friend. No matter how painful the feedback from being damaged was, nothing should have made her cry out like that. Unless there was a problem with the neural interface used to connect Annabelle to the Vasair.

There was a huge commotion in the Mech Hall, specifically, over at the corner of the room where the highest ranked people in their brackets were. Lots of people in white bomb suits were gathered near one specific pod. 

A small girl with honey colored hair was laying on the cold ground, with no one tending to her.  

“Anne!” 

Belevere scrambled out of her pod, running over. One of the men in the suits turned at her cry. Then he stepped in front of her, blocking her from going any further.

“I’m sorry, this area is off limits right now. You’ll have to stay where you are.” The man’s voice was heavily filtered, emitted from within the suit through speakers.

“But she’s my friend! How can you just leave her there like that!”

The man, whose face she couldn’t even see thanks to the face shield covering his visage, shrugged. “It doesn’t matter who you are. We’re part of the Bureau of Mech Enforcement. There is a possibility that the neural interface has been tampered with and the evidence must not be contaminated.”

“But she might die!” Belevere protested.

“Helping people is out of our expertise. However, our medical branch will be here shortly. Now run along.” He turned away before Belevere could say anything, pointedly ending the conversation.

Belevere’s face fell, but there was nothing she could do. With one last look at the girl lying on the ground, she turned and stood next to her pod, watching the seconds and minutes tick away for her break time. Will she have to fight without knowing what has happened to Annabelle?

The intercom system of the Mech Hall suddenly crackled to life with a loud beep.

“This is an official announcement. There due to unforeseen circumstances, the Knighting Tournament is being put on hold until further notice. All students, please disconnect from your mechs and and step away from the Remote Cockpit Pods. Again, please disconnect from your mechs and step away from the Remote Cockpit Pods.”

When Belevere looked around, she saw a bunch of previously closed and active pods open as their pilots stepped out in confusion. That is, until they looked around and saw the gathering of strange people in white suits. 

Since Belevere last checked, the BME specialists have begun cracking open the newly vacated pods to get at the internals. They were likely checking those for tampering as well, Belevere assumed.

Shortly after the announcement, a few of the bomb suit people broke away from the group and gathered the students, making them all stand near the walls. A few of her classmates even began gossiping, at first furtively, but when nobody rebuked them, they began to freely talk.

“What do you think happened?” one girl asked.

“Are you stupid? Look, that’s Annabelle over there,” a boy replied. “If that monster fainted and the rest of us are told to get out, then obviously there’s something wrong with her neural interface and they’re making sure we’re not in danger too.”

“No way, that’s horrible!”

The girl’s eyes were full of fear.

As if to confirm the boy’s words, the guys in the suits finally began to take apart Annabelle's pod. 

One of them had hooked up a computer to the electronics in the machine, scouring through the software while the others were doing who knows what.

Belevere swallowed hard. If Annabelle’s neural interface really had malfunctioned, then her future as a pilot might be over even in the best case scenario. In the worst case, then Annabelle might fall into a coma, get brain damage, or even die.

Faulty interfaces were a pilot’s worst nightmare. While dying in combat was bad enough, at least that’s the path they chose and they could prepare themselves for that eventuality. Not so with a neural interface that might instantly fry their brain, or worse, brainwash them.

Belevere watched, entranced, as the specialists went about their work. Yet, her gaze still constantly flicked over to Annabelle’s still figure that lay neglected on the floor, when someone tapped her on the shoulder, and she jumped.

“Belevere, we were talking to you! Didn’t you hear us?” a girl said, shaking her. Belevere struggled to remember her name. Kisara, or something.

“What?”

“I said, weren’t you the person Annabelle was fighting before this whole thing happened? You did something to her, didn’t you?” Kisara demanded.

Belevere’s jaws dropped at the accusation. “How could you think that? Anne is my dearest friend! Why would I mess with her neural interface?” 

The girl snorted. “Knighthood is at stake. Why not? If it wasn’t you, why would her interface act up right as she was about to win?”

“Just because you’re willing to betray your friends for status doesn’t mean I’m like you,” Belevere snarled. She reached out and grabbed Kisara’s collar, dragging her up. She was a good bit taller than the girl, so she almost lifted her off her feet. “I didn’t do it.” 

Then she let go, practically throwing Kisara down, letting the girl fall on her butt onto the floor.

Her mind spun. Kisara’s words and what they suggested would not go away. 

She had just assumed until now that Annabelle’s accident was just that, an accident. But Kisara was right. What if it had been intentional? Even if she would never harm Annabelle for any reason, she couldn’t speak for anyone else.

Who would deliberately harm Annabelle like this?

Kisara? She had been the one to push the theory and accuse her. But on second thought, though, Belevere didn’t think she was the one to sabotage Annabelle’s machine if it really wasn’t an accident. 

Kisara was already out of the tournament, having lost her first battle. She had nothing to gain if Annabelle lost, and Belevere couldn’t remember any animosity between them.

Alecto? He was the highest ranked pilot in their bracket and Annabelle’s only real competitor. Belevere shook her head at that too. Alecto was way too nice to everyone for that. 

Both she and Annabelle had benefited from his tutoring when it came to pure knowledge, even when it came to the final written exams. If Alecto was that concerned with winning, he wouldn’t have helped.

She went over a list of likely suspects, but she couldn’t bring herself to settle on any one of them. All of them had one reason or another to not be the right person.

The sound of sirens from outside of the Mech Hall interrupted her musing and Belevere snapped back to reality. The ambulance could only be here for one person. The door burst open and a group of people dressed up in paramedics uniforms rushed in with a wheeled stretcher, loaded with medical equipment.

They ran unimpeded all the way to Annabelle, and even the neural interface specialists parted—of course they would, unlike Belevere, they were all from the same organization. Belevere itched to run after them and as she looked on, she saw one of the people in the bomb suits staring at her.

Then he turned up his nose and Belevere realized with a start that it had been the BME worker that had initially prevented her from going to Annabelle’s side in the first place. That gesture... was it an “I told you so” gesture?

Rage surged through her. The man was trying to score points when her Anne's life was at risk! Belevere took deep breaths as she tried to get her flaring temper under control. Her anger won’t help matters.

The paramedics worked to get Annabelle on top of the stretcher and wheeled her out the door. Belevere ran after them. She found them loading Annabelle into the back of a red ambulance. “Wait, can I come with her?”

One of the paramedics standing by looked at her. “Who are you?”

Belevere lifted her chin. “I’m a friend of hers. How is she?”

The paramedic shook his head. “Sorry. Family only. As for your friend, we don’t know yet. Our equipment on hand isn’t equipped for neural conditions, so we have to get back to the labs.”

“I see...”

“Sorry, miss. The tests will most likely be done after two or three hours, though. You can come visit then. Tell the front desk Raymond sent you.” The paramedic, Raymond, waved goodbye. 

They were really efficient and in the time that she and Raymond had been talking, Annabelle had already disappeared into the vehicle along with all the other medical personnels. As soon as Raymond got into the passenger side of the front, they were gone with all the haste expected of an emergency vehicle, leaving Belevere by the roadside.

With heavy steps, Belevere headed back into the Mech Hall.

A loud beep echoed as she walked in. It was the sound that always preceded announcements. Belevere pricked her ears. What could they possibly be announcing now?

“This is a follow up to the announcement. The situation has been resolved and the Knighting Tournament will resume shortly. All students, please return to your Remote Cockpit Pods and connect immediately to your mechs. Your machines will be locked from operating until after a countdown. Good luck.”

Belevere couldn’t believe her ears. “Resolved? That’s it? They don’t even care now that Annabelle was hurt? Is this tournament this important? Screw you all.” She gritted her teeth and stomped toward her pod.

As the countdown ended, the cockpit forged a connection between her and her wreckage of a mech. Her Avald should be barely capable of moving, yet power seemed to radiate off its frame, forming an invisible shield that held it together.

Belevere felt like she was sinking deep into a pool of infinite depth, the mech welcoming her into its soothing embrace. There was none of the distance that she had previously felt when she piloted it.

Something awakened within her then, filling her whole body with a frosty calm. Her breathing slowed and began to even out, without a hint of the anger she felt. 

Yet her thoughts were anything but serene.

“If Annebelle can’t win, none of you will.”