Stars, Nic thought. They dotted the sky in tiny pinpricks and clusters of light like sand scattered across a black tarp. He wondered which one was Ayrus. Which one was Earth. Which one his mother was orbiting. That really hurt. He decided that if he’d taken a punch like that in real life, his jaw would have broken like a twig. The simulation spared him the injury—at least to his bones. His nervous system, and the irrevocable damage being done to it with every hit, was another story still being written.

Nic came to just in time to dodge the next punch.

The cold ground next to his head crunched with the impact. It reminded him of home. He went to roll back to his feet and realized he was trapped.

Team Malachite’s Matsuno had him pinned on either side, a mechanical boot underneath each of his armpits. Nic dodged his head slightly to the left and to the right, but he had no wiggle room to escape completely. A second fully-powered Berserk punch hit him right on the nose.

NIC [65%]

Ouch. Okay. Gotta get out of here. Nic punched at his captor’s leg to try to destabilize them—no good. Another right hook hit him on the top of his head and cut another chunk out of his health bar. He panicked.

SHANTI [DEAD] SCARLET: 1 | >MALACHITE: 1

“No,” he muttered. “Shanti...” Another blow to his forehead and another step closer to his fast-approaching demise. Get up, man. You’ve got to get up! Get... UP! He reached up and banged the heels of his fists hard against his opponent’s knees—they both hyperextended and Matsuno shrieked in sudden agony. The Malachite foe fell backward and Nic scrambled to his feet.

MATSUNO [78%] >>ACTIVE UPGRADE PAK: BERSERK<<

Free hits, Nic thought, having only milliseconds to consider his next move. Not worth it. I need to run out the clock on that Upgrade Pak—or, better yet, get another of my own! While Matsuno tried to repair the green proxybot’s unnaturally backward-bent legs, Nic took off running.

“Upgrade Activ—” Maqsud said in the team chat—but it was too late.

MAQSUD [DEAD] SCARLET: 1 | >MALACHITE: 2

“Come on,” Nic grumbled into the proximity chat so his squad wouldn’t be disheartened. Then, to his surviving squadmates, he said, “That’s okay! We’re not far behind! Don’t let up!” He sprinted across the battlefield in search of another Upgrade Pak that hadn’t been claimed yet, running past two empty columns where Paks had once stood.

“I almost got one!” Jarek announced. “Got ‘em on the ropes!” A few seconds passed until...

YAROMIR [DEAD] >SCARLET: 2 | MALACHITE: 2

Nic grinned. “That’s it! Back on the board! Keep up the good work, Team Scarlet!” He ducked for cover behind an astrosteel wall and assessed this mode’s downsized map.

From this vantage point, he could see both of the dead red proxies as well as one green one, Jarek’s kill. He couldn’t get eyes on Matsuno or any other Malachite players. However, on the other side of a shallow bed of rocks that may have once been a primordial lake for all Nic knew, there was another unclaimed Berserk. By his math, it was probably the last one that hadn’t been snatched yet.

“Perri,” said Nic, “status report.” He debated giving it to her, tagging it so she could claim it and get the upper hand. In the meantime, he waited behind cover before making any moves.

“Upgrade Activate!” Perri shouted in the team chat. That was the only answer Nic needed.

He jumped out from behind cover and saw another green proxybot gunning for it—Chinwendu, according to his HUD. That Pak is mine, he thought. You’re going down just like your buddy Khris! Nic ran for it as fast as he could, but his adversary was closer, and perhaps a good bit faster as well. His heart sank when his HUD outlined Chinwendu in red. Nic was in the process of skidding to a stop when the Malachite player punched him so hard in the chest that he had the wind knocked out of him. He fell onto his back.

“Didumos belongs to Green Planet Investments,” Chinwendu said matter-of-factly, towering over him. “Goodbye.”

What followed was the most merciless beating Nic had ever taken in his life. He held up his fists to block only to have them punched aside, or through, until finally Chinwendu treated them as targets of their own. It wasn’t a matter of protecting vital organs when two robots duked it out—damage was damage, and with enough of a power boost, a proxybot was able to shred through an enemy’s defending limbs to pulverize everything else. When he tried the trick that had worked on Matsuno, it was too late; Nic’s robotic arms were already battered beyond use, pieces of fractured metal dangling from exposed wires. A few gut punches and an uppercut finally finished him off.

NIC [DEAD] SCARLET: 2 | >MALACHITE: 3

The artificial pain of being beaten to death subsided, and he found himself in the featureless black empty space where normally he’d wait to respawn. Since it was a single-elimination mode, however, he saw only a static, holographic message from RTIFIS: While the physical torment was gone, the mental had just begun.

It’s happening again. I did everything differently—just like Joe said! We practiced so much, and we bonded, and I finally felt like we were in a good place as a squad, and we’re still losing our very next game... No. No, don’t give up on them that easily, man. You never give up on anything else and yet you’re so quick to give up on your friends! We can still win this. I know we can.

The perfectly uniform darkness gave way to the blinding light of the Simnasium. Nic’s helmet hissed open and he laid eyes on his squadmates. Their faces betrayed the result of the round.

Perri threw her helmet as if to smash it against the floor, but the support cords wouldn’t allow it. Nic was reminded of his own outburst after they lost their first match. “I was so close!” she yelled. “I had Armand down to his last 15% of health when I got killed, and he didn’t even have a Berserk!”

RTIFIS informed them.

“You got a kill, though,” said Jarek. “I saw it before I died.”

“Yeah, and what good does one kill do? We lost.” Perri’s voice cracked slightly under the pressure of defeat. She looked upset enough to cry, but she didn’t. “We’ve been training so hard. So. Hard. For what? Maybe I’m not cut out for this. And Nic, please, if you’re already thinking about reaming us out for losing, I seriously can’t—”

Nic placed a hand on her shoulder. She opened her eyes, looking up at him warily. “You all did a fantastic job out there,” Nic said sincerely. “So did Malachite. We lost. It’s 1-0 now. These are the facts.”

“And I assume you’re thrilled to have lost our first outing after Gwher, right?” Maqsud scoffed. “Come on, Nic, I appreciate your newer, gentler leadership tactics here, but you can’t expect us to believe you’re happy about our performance, can you? We’re not that gullible.”

“I’m frustrated and getting incredibly angry,” Nic answered honestly. “...about the fact that we lost. Not at you guys. And that still doesn’t change the fact that we all did well out there. Fisticuffs was a curveball.”

“Yeah, and who knows what else is waiting for us this match?” Perri argued, showing signs of spiraling.

Nic held up his index finger. “We know at least one of them already. RTIFIS told us last time.”

“Arena,” Jarek remembered. “Every match has at least one game of Arena, but the order of the three modes is always randomized. That’s what RTIFIS said, right?”

Nic nodded once. “We already know that mode. We all passed the Final Exam by playing it. We’ve drilled it countless times now. On top of that, we’ve won it already. We won Arena the last time we played it against live opponents on another planet. And get this... that was the old Team Scarlet that won. Now I want any one of you to look me in the eyes and tell me that the old Team Scarlet was better than we are now.” No one said anything. Maqsud smiled at being rhetorically bested. “That’s what I thought.”

“Still,” Perri contended, her tone starting to soften, “there’s no guarantee Arena is up next. It was first last time, and it could be third this time for all we know. That means the potential for another mode we know nothing about. One that Malachite might have already played on other planets. One they could have been drilling for weeks now before today’s match!”

“I want us to try something different next round,” said Nic, regaining control of the conversation. “Fisticuffs pulled us all in different directions. Separated us. We were all running after Upgrade Paks that were scattered around the map. But most modes—at least the ones we’ve played so far—encourage sticking together as a team and not spreading out so much. Next round, whether it’s Arena or something else, let’s move as a unit when we can.”

“What if there are other pickups available?” Maqsud asked. “Forego them to stay in the group?”

Nic remembered how adamant he’d been in the last match about the objective, the objective only, and how his squad had missed out on good weapons and vehicles... some of which proved to be their undoing. “No. New strategy. First directive is this: I want you all to go with your guts. Perri, you’re the best driver... pilot... vehicle person on our team! Go for a set of wheels this time, if you want.” She smiled at his change of heart. “Shanti, you’re our silent killer. Get an Incognito, or just sneak up on people and knife them if that’s what works for you. Max, same with ranged weapons—go for the Sniper or the Ultravision or whatever is going to help you line up your shot from a distance before they even see you coming. Jarek, well... You’re our demo-man. Our explosives expert. Go for Rocket Launchers, Grenades, whatever goes boom that catches your eye. I’ll pass you guys any relevant pickups, and I’ll use whatever I need to get the job done. Second directive: group up and stick together. Third directive: listen to any callouts or orders I give, as long as they don’t conflict too heavily with my first two directives.”

“I think I’ve got it,” Perri replied, nodding. “That sounds fair.”

Maqsud shrugged. “That is quite the 180-degree turn compared to our last match. Let’s give it a try!”

“I spent all of last match trying to make you guys play like me,” Nic realized out loud. “I tried to force you to do things the way I would do them, and I think we lost out on a lot of your individual talents. But it’s not me going up against Team Malachite out there. It’s us. And I know that we have what it takes.”

“Okay, this is getting kind of sappy,” Perri chuckled.

Nic furrowed his brow at her playfully and grinned. “You don’t like sappy. Got it. Then let’s get out there and go blow some green brains out!”

“That’s more like it!” Perri applauded him, and Team Scarlet laughed, with the exception of Shanti, who smiled while looking down at the floor.