The Game 500-1

Cassiopeia could hardly stand.

She hunched over, clutching the laz-sword for all she was worth. She held the weapon so the blade was behind her, not necessarily to hide it, more to counter-balance her body with its weight.

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Exhaustion like she’d never experienced before swamped her and she succumbed to it for a moment.

All she could think about was The Game. It was all she’d thought about for the past four months.

Once she was notified that she had been selected, Cassiopeia upped her training regime.

“You have no chance of winning this, but the higher you get, the better off your family will be. If you make it into the top 10 games, they’re set for life. You’ve just got to make the audience love you or loathe you,” her trainer said.

Love had never come easy for Cassiopeia; she was awkward around affection. Maybe this was all she could hope for, providing for her family while taking herself out of the equation.

Cassiopeia set out to make the audiences and the other players hate her.

She set herself up as an ego-maniac, placing massive bets on herself to win and posting images of the holo-betting slips on her personal blog.

She smack-talked each opponent and caused a riot of public opinion – some for, most against her.

The blog traffic had hit the roof and advertisers were also vying to pay for ad space.

She grinned to herself. One last game. One last match. 499 behind her, 499 defeated opponents. One last opportunity to make a name for herself as the MOST HATED player in The Game in its history.

The news channels were filled with holo-images of her snarling face, speculation on how The Game would go for this season’s final.

Despite attempts at making herself the most loathed player ever, she had her fans. They dressed up in torn clothes splashed with fake (or sometimes real) blood to mimic her victory dance.

But Cassiopeia knew she had no chance of winning this one.

She had bet against herself for the first time. When she lost, the holo-betting slip paid out straight into her sister’s account – damn her mother, she wasn’t getting any of it!

She had set her blog to upload the final holo-betting slip when the result came in. The server searched for buzz-words: “Slaughter”, “The Game”, “Cassiopeia loses” and the blog would go live, showing everyone that though she’d lost, she’d also won more than any other bet had made since gambling had been Nationalised.

Her opponent came to the arena. Cassiopeia studied her, she looked as nervous as any opponent Cassiopeia had faced. That meant nothing. She’d come up against raving idiots and serene meditation students and the results had all been the same.

When the lights went down as Cassiopeia made her usual entrance, the audience would hush and the tension would rise.

The opponent set herself in the middle of the arena and looked around. She’d not seen Cassiopeia yet and she wouldn’t.

The lights went off. Cassiopeia ran to the centre of the arena. She knew exactly how many steps she needed to cross to her opponent. The laz-blade lit the arena and she saw the terrified face of her opponent before her head went spinning across The Game board, splattering her life-blood across the pieces.

Screams from the audience started almost as soon as the lights went up. Cassiopeia’s fan club’s chanting faded and died as they saw the carnage before them. This time, the blood on Cassiopeia’s clothes was real.

Headlines on all News channels read the same:

Carnage at the final of The Game! Cassiopeia loses her mind and slaughters her opponent.