Looking For Group (Martin vs. Shadow)

"Oh my God, this is absolute lunacy! I'm in a video game! Fighting for my life! Now I just need that bio-engineered half-goat hybrid abomination and my life's dream is complete."

Martin was eased into the system even as he squealed with excitement, jittering giggling as he was placed into the VR simulation. His fingers tapped excitedly on the cool silver chair's armrests as the machine's goggles were slipped onto his head. He could feel the mechanisms within forming the wireless neural links necessary to run such an operation, and after a moment, a sudden jolt and rush of icy blood signaled that the far-too-excited scientist was being booted in. There was a brief flash of darkness before Martin saw the world begin loading around him, Tron-style. He felt as if he were suspended perfectly motionless in space, watching the world of neon blue lines turn to textured grids and then metamorphose into a full landscape.

The battlefield that emerged seemed alien and exotic. Martin found himself in a vast canyon, hundreds of feet wide and miles long, with the cliff walls above stretching to the sky. It was night time; the canyon was surprisingly well lit by a combination of the unnaturally large and bright moon overhead and the glowing mosses and the groupings of a strange blue liquid, pooling on the ground and pouring from the rocky walls. There was an acrid stench in the air, as some of those liquids were actually acidic reservoirs. A thick mist hung in the air, swirling and spiraling, though it wasn't so thick as to do more than mildly obstruct vision at a distance. The ground level was layered, with ridges jutting out from the cliffs that formed platforms, and with small tunnel openings dotting the area. There were sparse patches of a tall, cyan-colored grass and smoothly curving, lanky trees, almost akin to a palm tree drawn in the style of the Screaming Man.

Still suspended a few feet off the ground, unable to move, Martin's other sensations began to come to him. He could hear the gentle sounds of rushing water and of small wildlife humming and chirping, could feel the soft night breeze on his skin, and could smell the oddly sweet scent of the canyon. His virtual Kinetic Sense was the last to come online; even through the uploading process, his real-world Kinetic Sense still fed information of his surroundings to his brain, and now he was beginning to simultaneously receive input from this new artificial one. It was a strange feeling. While still completely clear, there was a slight static bristle that accompanied the virtual sense, which helped Martin distinguish it from the real one and tune in better.

After a moment, Martin was plopped down to the ground and could move again. With a rush of adrenaline, he leapt into the air and cheered.

"This is amazing! Woo! Just watch me now Pedro, I've played enough Second Life to know I am gonna kick ass and take names!"

Thus the proud warrior did enter the Tournament of Champions.

Martin experienced a very strange sensation with his Kinetic Sense as he felt his opponent load into the simulation. It was a sort of empty ripple; space was there and then it... wasn't. And then there was a person, full realized where the disturbance had been.

Male, tall fella, kind scrawny, wearing a mask? Distortions, bending, rippling, unintended disturbances, but not the air, the light, the lack of light, dark like the 90's.

This guy was weird. He undulated through space. What exactly could he do? Martin suddenly realized that a "tournament" would involve combat against "opponents" and not, say, some vague notion of a challenger. And to have been selected, said opponents would have to be also highly skilled, competent, dangerous, and possibly superhuman. And finally Martin understood why Pedro would have called this whole tournament thing a bad idea.

Well. Crap.

Hi-ho, doom approached! A fight to the death it was!

Martin put a smile on, for if he was to die, even virtually, it would be with cheer. All those funerals he had robbed corpse parts from for his failed foray into organic Legos always looked so dreary, he had no intention of ruining anyone's mood like that. The mad tinkerer decided his best strategy was surprise and efficiency, ending the fight quickly using his speed so that his opponent never had the chance to give him his first-class ticket to the Pain Train, destination Paintown, USA. Martin had visited that place before, their tax code was terrifying and their school districts were laughable at best.

Though the two could not see each other, the discomforting figure was just around a slight bend in the canyon wall, not at all far from Martin's position. Martin bolted around the curve, deftly climbing a rocky slant with his electromagnetic boots and his sheer agility. Peering down at the figure before him, Martin was able to briefly take in the dark and menacing look of his rival, a sight which caused Martin to question the sanity of the other combatant.

I mean, Christ's sake, who in their right mind walks around in that fashion disaster?

As he proudly wore his garish bronze goggles atop his utterly unkempt hair.

His goal was to distract the man to looking towards one canyon wall, see his reaction speed and potentially gauge some of his abilities, before dashing around behind him to clock him in the back of the head with a speed-enhanced punch, which in an ideal world would be enough to end the battle right there.

"So, uh, question," Martin called out, hoping to draw the man's attention, "I was just wondering what the name of your Nirvana cover band was?"

I should double-check I don't have fire powers, because that was one sick burn.