Clash Champions 
Season 2 - Episode 16 - Part 2
Examinations


Rax Talon saw his home on the viewscreen. Sort of. He saw his homeworld. His home was in the planet's shadow and would be too small to see anyways.

The planet soon disappeared and was replaced by the face of one of the Generals of the Space Regiment. It was a new General, since the one that Rax Talon used to report to had been eaten. 

The general greeted the Space Regiment's best soldier with a smile. "Colonel Talon, welcome back." He greeted Rax's companions with confusion. A red ninja was flying the ship, and, "... is that a caveman?"

Rax smiled and introduced his companion. "His name is Thudnar, and he is a warrior of the plains before the ice. They don't have caves." He introduced the ninja pilot. "And this is Jared."

"The ninja's name is Jared?" asked the surprised General.

"Yeah," Jared said casually. 

The General saw no reason not to take his word for it. He continued the debriefing. "So how was your 'vacation'?"

"It is not over yet," Rax informed the General. "They put me into this fighting tournament. I made the playoffs, so I will be going back. I am just here to visit." 

The General asked another question. "And what was it like in the... Gibbs Empire?"

Thudnar chuckled, while Jared corrected the General. "We're not the Gibbs Empire."

Rax answered the General's question. "I would not know. I never went there. The Gibbs Empire is one woman. She was one of their Generals who got lost and is wandering around doing odd jobs. She works for these guys and she happened to be the one who picked me up. They call the place I went the Core Worlds. It is a massive civilization of hundreds of interconnected dimensions, each with its own civilization of hundreds of planets. 

"Wow." The General tried to comprehend such a vast empire. 

Rax continued with a more humble description. "I lived in an office tower in a city named Giallo. It is a big city like any other."


A certain missing General of the Gibbs Empire was elsewhere at the moment. Celestia had wanted to join Rax on his trip home, but she had already made other plans. Those plans involved the young office intern Ember Kirtfin who would be one of her guides. Her other guide would be whoever showed up.

The two ladies approached a dilapidated apartment building that was covered in graffiti. The windows on the first two floors were covered with steel bars to prevent anyone from getting in or out. A police siren sounded in the distance. 

"I will not live here," Celestia said.

"Yeah," Ember agreed. "I wouldn't either."

The salesman hurried over to salvage the sale. "Young ladies! You will find that the apartments in this building are quite affordable."

"Is that their only quality?" Celestia asked. 

"Yes," the salesman admitted.

Ember decided to quit. "Let's go and not waste any more of this guy's time." The salesman was relieved by the suggestion, as he did not want to be in this neighborhood for much longer either. 

Celestia had another idea. "Since we have already determined that I will not be buying, perhaps we could continue on and you may draw my attention to every flaw that you see so that I might know what problems to look for in other places." She looked at the disappointed salesman who knew that he was wasting his time and not getting a sale out of this. "You may help as well."


The salesman led Celestia and Ember into a hallway. They stepped over the chalked outline of a body and then passed by an open door where a sleazy looking man in a trenchcoat leaned against the doorway while smoking two cigarettes at once. He gave the three a creepy smile, then removed the cigarettes to speak to the women as they passed by. "Hey ladies. Do you want to buy some Death Sticks?" He opened his trenchcoat to reveal a small store's worth of contraband in the many pockets stitched into the inside. 

Ember politely refused. "Not at the moment, but maybe later."

Celestia drew her rune-engraved Viking-style sword. "I have a death stick. It has killed many." She returned the weapon to its scabbard and followed the saleman.

The salesman brought the two women to a door that was blocked by rows of yellow tape labeled 'POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS'. "This is the room. I do not know if they have cleaned it yet, but I can get you inside." A police siren sounded in the distance as he ripped some of the tape off, and somewhere someone was firing a laser gun. A woman screamed. The salesman brought the key to the door and began to open it. He turned on the light switch and looked inside. "Oh, dear."


Another apartment's door was already open. Inside, a teenage boy worked a drum set. Loud noises emanated from the room as he pounded the drums and smashed the cymbals. 

A different salesman brought Celestia and Ember to the neighboring door. "This is the apartment that is available." 

Another heavy beat came from the next apartment over where a young man stood outside with a booming boom box on his shoulder. Another sat beside him in the hallway with a can of beer in his hand. Several others mingled inside. One might have been able to hear conversation, laughter, and cheers if the music were not so loud.
 
"Are you having a party?" Ember asked with interest.

"We are always having a party," said the seated man.

"Nice!" Ember smiled. She turned to the customer. "Maybe you'll want to live here. They have parties next door!"

Celestia bit her lip and chose not to respond.


A kind-faced lady introduced Celestia and Ember to another apartment. "Let me open the door and turn on the light."

The light revealed a layer of brown cockroaches carpeting the floor. They ran away in all directions until they had disappeared into the walls.

The three were shocked. Ember had a foot raised, ready to smash one if it came close to her, but since they were gone, she calmed down. Celestia turned her head to speak to their host.

"Would you like me to burn the building?" Celestia offered.

"I am not allowed to say 'yes'", the saleslady declined.


Celestia and Ember returned to Ember's apartment where they relaxed on the bed with their shoes off. Ember swung her hose-covered legs off the edge of the bed while she talked to her new friend. "No one's in the next apartment over. Why don't you get that one?"

Celestia considered it. "This does seem preferable to any room that we saw today, and I would remain close to Sarveti and his resources. However, if I am to remain in the same building, I may as well stay with Sarveti."

Ember encouraged her to move. "Well, there is something to say about having your own place."

Celestia dared Ember to take the figure of speech literally. "Ah. What is there to say?"

"Well..." Ember smiled. "I can bring guys home, and my parents will have no idea."

"Ah. Is that something that happens often?" Celestia asked.

"Not as often as I'd like!" Ember said with a wider grin.

Celestia carefully hid her disapproval. "If it happens more often, then perhaps I may not want the next apartment over."

Ember laughed. "Yeah..."


Mick walked up to the third floor of his residence and looked around. Most of the floor was this one room that took up the northern two-thirds of the floor. It had been a meeting room where people had gathered at the kidney-shaped table to his left. Then it had been a nursery since there was no better place for Eleanor to keep her child. The crib was still there. They had left it behind. Mick thought about bringing it as a gift the next time he was in their dimension. It was just taking up space now.

Past the table, the eastern wall was a window with anti-glare treatment that kept the room brightly lit in the morning hours. The control center for his training arena was built into the western wall. It was part of the outer wall of the Death Box. The house was an attachment to the arena, not the other way around.

Mick walked to the southeast corner and opened the door to the bedroom. His bedroom had not been his bedroom for half of a year. He had given the room away to Eric and Eleanor since other candidates had filled up the dorms. He slept in the bunks on the Farseeker. That was not nearly as comfortable, but he had made his choice and lived with it.

Now most of those people were gone, and his bedroom could be his bedroom again. And what he saw inside surprised him. It was spotless. "They cleaned the place up before they left," he noted with a smile. And the bed was tucked in. "They even washed the sheets."

Mick looked in a few of his drawers. They were just as he had left them. He continued on to examine the restroom. 


"He travels between worlds," Eric said of Mick, "so he picked one and made his home there. The world is otherwise undeveloped. His house is large, with three levels, but barely fit six of us."

"Seven," Eleanor said with a smile.

Eric recounted the number in his mind before remembering their child, who was presently at the nursery. "Ah, true." 

Listening to this story was King Romanov, two of his guards, and the King's cleric and private healer. King Romanov had chosen the cleric's bedroom to hold this conversation since there were foreign ears in his castle, and he did not know if anything overheard could be acted upon by hostile parties.

"The facilities are quite extraordinary," Eric said. "Clean water is available at any time, but there is also a box that can produce any kind of drink one can imagine. Food is kept frozen within another box, and it is shrunken. It is heated within another box. It takes only a minute. And they have another box that can create food by... painting, apparently, upon a plate."

"No one has to cook," Eleanor said. "In fact, they have no facility to do so. If one wanted to cook, one would have to build a fire outside."

"As for the other facilties..." Eric hesitated before mentioning something unsavory. "One's waste is expelled under the house. There is no smell. Well, hardly any. And to bathe, there is a fountain that produces warm water. One can remove the fountain's head to direct the water."

"We will miss the comforts," Eleanor said.

The King knew that someone else would too. "I fear that the Princess will never stop complaining when she returns." The others chuckled. 

Eric described the Death Box. "The fighting arena seems like magic, but they say that it is not. It appears deceptively simple, as one very large, empty, and plain room, but there is something within the walls that ensures the safety of everyone so that no one is harmed as they fight. It can also create illusions that seem real. You can touch them."

Eleanor had seen. "One day I walked in, and you were fighting golems beside a river of lava on the side of a volcano."

Eric remembered that. "Ah, yes. I remember that. We fought them together."

"After you laid me flat with one strike," Eleanor said teasingly.

Eric had a reason for that. "You had challenged me. You were wearing my armor." The others laughed, and Eric smiled as well.

Eric continued the story. "The arena is attached to the house on its western side. It is much larger than the house." He described the terrain. "Other than the arena, the house is surrounded by waters to the north and west, forest to the east and south. And to the southeast is the resting place for the flying ship, the Farseeker. There is room enough for another like it."

The king asked a question that Eric was ill-prepared to answer. "How does this ship, the Farseeker, compare to the flying ships of the Gibbs Empire?"

Eric tried to answer. "I have barely seen one of those flying ships, but I would say that the Farseeker is much more impressive. The airships travel through the... air. The Farseeker travels above, through the space beyond the air, through the space between stars, and through the space beyond... the collections of worlds that they call dimensions. And it does so in an instant with no apparent mechanism."

Eleanor offered a guess. "The shape of its gold ring might have something to do with it."

Eric had been around the ship's owner more than Eleanor had, and he could produce a slightly more educated guess as to its function. "They call that a stabilizer. I presume that it keeps something stable."

King Romanov asked perhaps the most imporant question. "What is their interest in the kingdom?" 

Both Eric and Eleanor had overheard their conversations and could say that their interest was surprisingly little. It was Eric who said it. "Apparently their only interest is to enter the princess into the Crash Championship. That is the name of the fighting tournament. And when they found that someone else had taken her--"

"Lady Harkness," the King interrupted.

Eric continued. "They chose me as the next best person. They are under the impression that I am supposed to be some great hero of this world."

His wife hugged him. "You're good enough for me." 

Eric smiled. "Thank you."

"So who are they?" The king asked during the hug.

"I am sorry," said the distracted Eric, "I did not quite hear that."

"Tell me about those who took you," demanded the king. "You have lived among them, and I have only brief witness to their visits on one or two occasions."

"Ah." Eric took a moment to think of who he should start with and how to describe them. 

His wife had the same thought. "Shall we begin with Horace or Mick?"

Eric began with both. "Two men are partners. Mick knows the business and Horace supplies the funds. Horace is the man with the false hand."

The King remembered seeing that hand during one of Horace's brief visits. "Ah, yes. He stands out."

"Mick is... the best way I can described him is, a typical man."

"Extremely typical," added Eleanor.

Eric continued with a description. "He is about your age, maybe a little more, with the typical desires and typical faults of any man. He is clever but also short-sighted. Eager but lazy. He is mostly good-natured, perhaps too much so, but can be ruthless and inconsiderate if he wants something. He is like any other man. I ceased to be impressed after a few days of knowing him."

The king chuckled, knowing that he was only a man wearing a crown.

The cleric spoke. "Who else lived in this house? You said there were seven?"

Eric answered. "Besides myself, Eleanor, and Louis... oh. Mick and Horace slept on the Farseeker to leave room for the rest of us."

"There were four others who slept on the second floor," Eleanor said. "Two of them departed, and two stayed. They also fought in the tournament."

"The woman with black hair--" Eric started. 

Eleanor interrupted. "They both have black hair." 

Eric continued the description. "The light-skinned woman is named Jill. She is extremely strong. It is unnatural. There is something within her body called 'nanites' which causes this strength. She becomes fragile if they are put to sleep," Eric said mistakenly, as his knowledge was limited.

Eleanor gave her own description of Jill. "She is a sad lady. Both of them are. Something awful has happened to them in the past. Jill is... the most harmed by it. She is a troubled woman."

Eric continued with the descriptions. "The dark-skinned woman is named Siobhan. She is a sorceress of the elements: fire, thunder, water, air. She is young and inexperienced, but quite talented."

Eleanor gave the personal decription. "She has a kind heart."

Eric added something that the King ought to know. "Both of them are friends of the Princess. They know her better than I do, from the previous year in the tournament."

The king nodded. The cleric asked another question. "Out of curiosity, who were the two that departed?"

Eric answered half of the question. "Abraham is a boy of about twelve who claims to truly be over four hundred years old. He fights with a thin sword and is very good at it." He tried to answer the other half. "The other was Prince M'Tanz. He was a kith...ka." Eric was unsure how to pronounce the name of the alien Prince's species.

"What is a kith...ka?" asked the cleric.

"He resembles a cat..." Eric started. That was correct, but he wanted to give a better description. He could not think of the words. 

Eleanor raised her hands to her body to focus her magic. "He looked something like this." Within a moment, she had transformed into a cat man who looked much like M'Tanz.

The king, the cleric, and the guards gasped with astonishment. Eric only gave his wife a mild criticism. "He was not that tall."

"I am," Eleanor said.

Eric spoke to the King. "He looked something like that, only this tall." He hald his hand at the correct level. 

"Can you... be the others?" asked King Romanov.

Eleanor-as-M'Tanz nodded. "This is Jill." She transformed into Jill's image and displayed a proud smile. "But, she did not smile that much. She is more like this." Eleanor lowered Jill's head and sulked for a moment, then raised it to continue the demonstration. "This is Siobhan." She tranformed into Siobhan and smiled happily. Siobhan did smile like this, so no corrections were offered. 

The King asked another question. "Can you be the Princess?"

Eleanor-as-Siobhan nodded, and then she was Natasha in the Princess's favorite pink-and-white dress. Not knowing Natasha's behaviors very well, she curtsied as she believed a proper princess should.

The King was too impressed to criticise her. He asked one last question. "Can you be me?"

Eleanor-as-Natasha transformed into the image of King Romanov.

The cleric and two guards gasped. Someone could impersonate the King, and they would not know it was a fake.

The King was very impressed. "Lady Eleanor, you are now in my service. You will receive a monthly stipend."


Mick and Horace sat at the table on the third floor, reviewing job offers on two holographic displays. Mick drew Horace's attention to one. "Hey, Horace. Listen to this one. Experienced dungeon diver wanted. A sword-and-sorcery type to keep an adventuring party alive. Must have healing magic."

Horace suggested a candidate. "Other than the experience, that sounds like Eric."

Mick had someone else in mind. "I was thinking Celestia, but she doesn't work for me any more." He continued looking through the jobs until another caught his eye. He laughed at the thought that came to his mind. "Cat-man wanted to impersonate the Red Rascal, a notorious thief." He showed Horace the image of a cat-man in a fine red suit. "Do you think Prince Mittens would be willing to dress up like that?"

Horace had his doubts. Another option came to his mind. "This might be a suitable job for Eleanor, if you would believe that."

Mick took a moment to think about that. He had seen Eleanor's transforming illusions, and they were very impressive.

Horace made the suggestion. "Should we go back and get them?"

Mick decided not to. "Nah, they just went home. Let them rest."

The two men continued looking for jobs for the fighters that they still employed.