Matched

Matched

    Match officials stuck a syringe into my arm and talked among themselves about the waiting box controls for lighting. I didn’t ask them what they were giving me.

         It kind of didn’t matter anymore – I had been selected to go into the arena, take out my opponent, and hopefully avoid being shiskabobbed by a random bone mutation or blasted by some unforeseen energy mass out of someone else’s foot.
          Also, it didn’t matter that my name was Natalie and that I liked fish not for how they tasted, though that too, but because their silver scale armor made them seem invincible.

         I knew better now. Fish were only pretending to be fighters. They weren’t hoping for power; all they wanted was the kind of victory that would keep them swimming.

         A beefy hand clapped down on my right shoulder. The one the other officials called Bob hissed a word of encouragement in my ear at the same time the chemical reaction started by the injection finally boiled.

         I snapped my teeth closed as heat coursed through me. Bob twisted his lip sideways and pressed his hand further down my shoulder. “Go out there and show’em, Astra. Show them how wrong they were to keep the odds. You’ve got heart. The inside – it’s the inside that counts.”

         Flaky, pink, slightly crisped at the edges. Cooked completely, a fish delighted its chef.

The heat faded into the background of my transformation. They shone a light at my back, where I was just beginning to notice something hanging from me other than Bob.

         “Don’t turn around,” he ordered, turning me to face the lowering gateway. “Just enjoy the spectacle.”

         Easy to spectate when you are a spectator, Bob. Natalie – not Natalie; the spectacular Astra – stared across the pitted arena through the gateway toward the other opening.

         She was tall, rail thin, and radiating a green aura in a radioactive shade. What’s more, she pursed her lips when she saw me and jiggled her head as she kissed the air.

         Newly fledged wings in glossed silver sputtered along my back. With the backlight, they nearly blinded. A bell chimed. My opponent bounded from her gateway, and as she came for me the footsteps pounded between the craters leaked an iridescent green.

         Natalie was done for.