Moon 514 || Blaze and the White Griffon

24 || Jerron

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Last revision: 4/24/2013

Blaze transitioned between pacing and moving through various short stick and short sword katas in a waiting room.  Round one had been almost disappointingly easy.  Part of him enjoyed coming out on top; part of him craved a real challenge; that left him only marginally satisfied with round one.  And being so poorly matched up for his first fight, Blaze felt disappointed over the prospects of the next round as well.  Perhaps, he gloomily considered, the best fighters from the other Orders died in the battle with the natives.  He hoped that wasn’t true but he also knew that this was a real possibility: even prodigious weapons training was insufficient to prepare someone for defending themselves against long range arrows and relatively invisible flying mutant creatures.

The door to his waiting room opened.  A thin framed man wearing a black star on his badge only partially entered the room before making his announcement.  “Jerron won his first round; you will fight him in fifteen minutes.”  The man slinked behind the door, disappearing as unceremoniously as he came, and Blaze was left alone to confront his conflicted emotions again.  He knew this had been a possibility.  He had seen the tournament seeding.  He was somewhat prepared mentally. 

To some degree, Blaze didn’t care who his opponent was.  In the simulator, everything was sport, everything was a game.  He had summarily killed a number of his good friends in the simulator and walked away afterwards with his arms around their shoulders, congratulating them on their improvements, and buying them lunch.  In his earlier years, he had experienced a few grudge matches and he understood how feelings could be used to enhance your performance and how they could lead to your quick downfall. 

Given his strong feelings against Jerron for killing the magic woman and falsely charging Blaze with treason over the death of Dr. Boyd, he readily discerned that his feelings could easily prove a disadvantage in this particular matchup if he did not guard them well – especially given his frustration over how this tournament was set up.  Not allowing Blaze his weapons of choice left him with a disadvantage – albeit a small disadvantage.  The larger drawback was his emotional reaction to that clear violation of standard protocol.  Then there was the first simulated environment.  Creating a terrain that Blaze did not like was a questionable call.  Blaze couldn’t prove it but he suspected that holographic imaging had been captured while he was travelling to or from the native village and that they had seen him struggle with this unfamiliar terrain.  Given the mismatch, the terrain was a good choice to level the playing field a little.  Of course … the terrain choice could have been randomly generated as well but Blaze harbored some serious doubts about that. 

Left only to his suspicions, Blaze brewed over these details for longer than he felt he should have – but he couldn’t shake it either.  If the tournament was rigged, he needed to be especially cautious of every little detail – and reviewing every detail would serve him well.  If these were genuine shortcomings and bad luck, focusing his attention on them would only prove harmful to his ultimate performance – they would be nothing more than a bad distraction.  He was beginning to feel that every facet of his life was becoming one giant catch twenty-two: cursed if you do; cursed if you don’t.  Ten minutes passed as he pondered over these conundrums.

Moving through his favorite form for short swords, Blaze found his movements becoming exaggerated and mentally noted that he needed to check himself.  Besides, it would be wise to cool down a little now – his fight would be starting very soon and he was breathing a little too heavily.  Just as these thoughts passed through his mind, the lanky man opened the door and appeared again.  “Okay Blaze, you’re on.”

No contractions, he intuited but then came to a conclusion he hadn’t considered before: it seemed that other Order members had no rules concerning contractions – they used them frequently – and Dr. Boyd used them frequently.  Perhaps this was only an experiment with Blaze’s own Order.  This made him wonder – although fleetingly – whether or not each Order was an experiment of its own, social experiments overseen by Dr. Boyd, research for some larger achievement that each Orders was independently unaware of, part of some greater plan that only Dr. Boyd knew about.