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“It better be good, or else I’m not forgiving you.” You let her know that thanks to her awful attitude, she raised the expectations.
“Don’t put expectations on me.” Esperanza dislikes what you’re doing.
“Too late.” You won’t refrain from being petty.
“Serve yourself.” Esperanza drops her hand and opens up a portal. It has some kind of watery texture, twirling from the outside to the inside – colors seemingly random and ever-changing. It’s nauseating to stare at. “It’s in there.” She goes through it.
You share a glance with Philonune, then follow the irritating girl to wherever this strange gate leads you to.
For a long moment, it felt like everything stopped, you were conscious for all of it – but couldn’t do, say or hear anything. Like waiting for a loading screen to finish. You hope that’s not literally what happened.
You find yourself in what could be considered the bastard child of an old-timey colosseum, a courtroom, and a martial arts stadium. The dreamy feeling of the Distant Frontier is absent, it’s difficult to articulate, but your body has its weight back, and all your senses have fully returned as well. You’re by the combination of a juror stand and a balcony, it has a great view of down below, which contains a combat ring. This place seems to be a VIP section.
“Woah.” You try to sound enthusiastic, but it doesn’t come out strongly.
“This is what I’ve been working on.” Your attitude goes over Esperanza’s head and she continues talking. “With what I’ve learned from the anomaly, I’ve been able to create a battlefield for players like you to duke it out unrestricted.” Esperanza puts a hand on her cheek. “It was the only use I could come up with for now.” She wanted to do something better with this. “I have a show ready for us. There’s some vermin that crept inside the anomaly that I decided to use as test subjects.”
“Test subjects for what?” You know where this is going and you don’t like it one bit.
“A showdown.” Esperanza snaps her fingers.