Lord of the Arena-02

Eric brought the powerplant out of its resting state, bringing it to full power and charging the capacitors as he sat through the countdown to the match's launch. He woke up the heads-up display in his helmet, displaying information from the car's computer and through it came a voice along with a situation report.

"Kid," said the familiar voice of his tactician, "the floor runs dynamic obstacles, receding and deploying at unknown intervals, so mind the floor- I'll call out shifts if I can see them. You're looking at compacts and mid-sizes, most running rocket launchers or small cannon and looking to do maximum burst in snapshot attacks and slicks or smoke on the rear to break contact. Laser Larry, of course, has his Ginsu Beam arrays instead up front but even he's likely to have them set up for burst over beam fire."

"They're wanting the higher ratings that come from crashes, without doing a demolition derby event." Eric said, "Typical."

The map came up, indicating where he rested in the arean- in the Northwest corner, next to Laser Larry. Well, that settled his launch strategy.

The doors opened, and the light turned green: the match began. Eric didn't rocket out of his bay, knowing Laser Larry's bloodthirst would let him ignore this moment in the hopes of an early kill from across the way, and Larry did not fail to deliver. Eric saw the lasers burst forth in a big blue-white flash, and then again, as he lay on the throttle and the hum of the powerplant picked up as power moved through the transmission to get his car going. Larry rushed out the bay, hoping to quickly get that kill and not thinking that he had an opponent right next to him, and Eric hit the fire button; the miniguns spun up while Eric moved the reticle over the nearest tire. A short, but loud, burst of fire later and the armored tire fell apart- something Larry did not register until he attempted to turn and lost control, striking one of the obstacles and immobilizing him.

"And the 30 Second Ace gets the first kill! Laser Larry can't move, and with no offensive weapons available he's out of the fight!" the arena announcer said.

Eric rolled his eyes, knowing that it should never be that easy, but it is so often just that- and he hates it. He rolled out of his bay and got out into the larger fight.

"We have our second and third kills! The Cornfield Princess popped English Harry square in the rear left quarter with a volley of rockets and got his powerplant, and it looks like he's hit also. Winnnipeg Greg T-boned The KC Kid and then blew through him with that anti-tank cannon; I hope The Kid backed up his brain before the match, because his clone's going to need it."

Eric locked on to Winnipeg Greg and came up around his rear, catching the Canadian off-guard as Greg backed up and turned around. Eric timed when to fire just right, spinning up his miniguns and unleashing a burst that pierced his weakened front-side armor and tore through Greg's compartment.

"Kill #4 goes to the hometown boy! Goodbye, Greg!"