XSYS Arena
Because balance is overrated.
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Preshow July '26: Going Downhill Fast - 2026-07-24
Title card: December 2024
- MARLOW: You punched through DIMENSIONS just to get a god damned Thanksgiving TURKEY?!
Open in the Polaris Building, in the study at the top we’ve seen before: Marlow’s office. Rich wood, art, bookcases full of old tomes, the works. She’s slamming both her hands on the table, and despite the fact that her entire body is obscured in robes and cloth wrappings and a mask, she is very clearly seething.
Magus, for his part, is refusing to give in to the framing of “being called to the principal’s office”. In full techwear regalia, he’s pulled his headset’s visor down over his eyes for the first time, partially obscuring his expression. Loa the racing synth (and de-facto arena engineer) is beside him; Exime the combat synth (and de-facto arena security) is standing on the sidelines between the two, her arms folded.
- MARLOW: May I remind you that your so-called arena runs in this city under my permission. Which, may I further remind you, was given under the condition that you wouldn’t start recklessly exposing Blue Arcadia to other worlds. …What the HELL were you doing?!
- MAGUS: [cautiously choosing his words] I performed an experiment.
- MARLOW: [derisively] An experiment. An experiment is a controlled test to prove something. What exactly did you prove here? Whether Rathalos meat tastes good with sriracha?!
Exime glances at Marlow, not seeming to entirely understand. Magus steps forward and tosses a holographic datapad onto her desk. It’s displaying two images of a woman: one pixelated, like a 3D model rendered through a low-res screen, where she’s sitting on a bench of red wood, and the other a very similar shot, but photorealistic, her pose more natural, less stiff.
Marlow picks up the holopad and examines it. Even from behind her mask, her loose grip communicates disdain. Exime is craning her head around, and Loa is looking up at Magus with his monoeye, concerned.
- MARLOW: Explain.
- MAGUS: That is Ayame of Kamura. Approximately six months prior to the start of the Rampage, while hunting a Rathalos, she is supposed to suffer a major injury to her left leg. She never fully heals, and her career as a hunter ends there.
- LOA: [putting the pieces together] So the Rathalos you had the heroes fight…
- MAGUS: A very specific Rathalos, yes.
- EXIME: …What do you mean “she’s supposed to”?
- [MAGUS opens his mouth, looking meaningfully toward MARLOW as if checking with her, but he doesn’t get a word out–]
- MARLOW: [loudly, pointedly, cutting him off] I see.
- MAGUS: [annoyed, but not contesting her implicit command here] I’m not convinced you do. It’s been three weeks now, and the only change here is that she’s still up and about.
- MARLOW: And how long do you intend to monitor that for unintended consequences? A month? A year? A decade? What are you going to do when something goes wrong, because she wasn’t in the right place at the right time? [it’s clearly hitting a sore spot] Who the hell are you to decide for an entire world what’s better than normal?
- MAGUS: [finally snapping] Who are you to decide that whatever happens first is the “right” path? If we can help, don’t we have an obligation to?
- [EXIME and LOA trade a confused look. This seems to be over their heads. We can’t see MAGUS’s eyes, but his visor is glaring.]
- MARLOW: I have an obligation to the synths here, and no one else. Especially not you.
Marlow straightens up, picks up the holopad by the corner, and tosses it onto the floor, clattering in Magus’s direction.
- MARLOW: Get the hell out of my city. And take your hole-punch with you.
The two stare at each other for a long moment, visor to mask. Magus doesn’t exactly back down, but does turn.
- MAGUS: All right, then. It’s been a pleasure. [walks out]
- LOA: [chasing after him and down the hall] Magus? Magus, you can’t be serious, what about the arena? Magus?
Cut to black.
Title card: July 2026.
Open on the arena floor. Loa is in the audience, leaning over the railing. The stands are mostly empty, lightly peppered with synths; they’re watching a fight between two other synths. One is Exime, de-facto arena security; the other is a large orange-and-yellow cargo-loader synth. The two seem about evenly matched– when the loader lands a hit, it sends Exime flying, but she manages to tech the landing and launch right back in.
And off in that section of the stands, behind Loa, several heroes are sitting together.
- DRAGOSHI: I’m not gonna lie, chief, I’m gettin’ real tired of 1v1 fistfights every week.
- HERRINGWAY: It’s certainly not as dramatic…
- LOA: I know, but without Magus’s RCP, I can’t get the Hero Drivers to authorize… [chuckles weakly, a mechanical blooping noise that only vaguely resembles it] I think the only one having fun like this is Exime.
She is, in fact, having a lot of fun dodging and weaving. It seems more and more like she’s toying with this loader-synth.
- LOA: Oh well. Same time next week…?
There’s a general mumble of agreement, more out of boredom than anything. The heroes filter down the stairs to the green room, changing back into their civilian clothes. In the back of the shot, Exime roars and yells, holding up a severed loader-arm.
Back in the green room, Loa is joining the heroes in their ritual. Similarly to one hero washing their face, Loa is imitating it, washing his featureless visor, clearly not understanding the point of doing it.
Midway through, Loa stops, suddenly frozen.
- RUE: Uh… you okay there?
Just as Rue reaches out to touch them, Loa’s speakers blast a burst of static. Loa’s body jolts upright.
- VOICE: …You guys still there? I got a job for you. …You didn’t think you’d be fighting holograms forever, did ya? I’m gonna show you why I made this whole stupid thing to begin with.
The heroes look at each other, confused– but with a loud twisting distorted-synth noise– a ragged hole blasts through the fabric of space-time. On the other side: a sunny city street, and Magus peeks through, leaning across with a shit-eating grin.
- MAGUS: C’mon, you beautiful bastards. Let’s go save a life.
Um, hey everybody! Loa here, cause Magus is a little busy. This month, we’re on our first excursion outside the borders of Blue Arcadia, off into another world! Magus has a plan to fix all this other world’s problems, I guess…? We don’t know exactly what we’re gonna run into, but he says this:
“The sun is beautiful, the sky is clear and clean, and I hope you know how to skate, because today, our goal is simple: get to the bottom of this hill intact!
There’s a lot of things that are gonna try to stop us: big chunky guys, small floaty guys, all of ‘em robots of one stripe or another. Lotsa stuff, but it should be simple for heroes with your level of experience. I’m not super worried.
It might be a little bumpy here and there, but just sit back and enjoy the chaos!”
That’s all he left me, so your guess is as good as mine. Either way, our operation begins on the 26th, at 7 PM your-time!
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Preshow Nov. '24: A Wyvern is a Kind of Bird - 2024-11-22
Open on the arena floor. The whole place is blanketed in nearly knee-deep snow. In the back of the shot, Loa is carrying sensitive equipment out of the arena and off underneath awnings and tarps. Magus walks out into the snow, hands on his hips… and starts laughing. The otherwise-untouched nature of the snow implies no one else is around.
- MAGUS: Holy hell, it really snows here! I guess I shoulda built a roof.
- LOA: [clearly stretching to understand the concept] Does it not, where you’re from?
- MAGUS: …You’ve really never been outside the city, have you?
- LOA: Sure, I’ve been a few kilometers out.
- MAGUS: Bah, that doesn’t mean anything. We should change that, sometime.
- LOA: …I don’t think Marlow would approve of that.
- MAGUS: [claps Loa on the shoulder] You’re right. Which is why we should do it anyway.
Loa seems concerned (through body language, since they only have a camera for a face), but is kinda going along with it.
- LOA: Actually, I was going to ask you about a different kind of project…
- MAGUS: Oh?
- LOA: Well, Unification Day was a month ago, but they had to delay the combat festival, and submissions are due soon! …Exime always beats me, she always comes up with something cooler to fight.
Magus’s eyes sparkle.
- MAGUS: Don’t worry, buddy. I got your back. What’re you thinkin’…?
- LOA: Well, the winner last year was this big gecko with an inverse-kinematic joint system so it could dynamically crawl over uneven terrain…
- MAGUS: Perfect! You want a big lizard? I know exactly where we can get you a nice, big lizard. We’ll run a test fight against it in the arena, even!
- LOA: Oh! That’d be perfect!
- MAGUS: Great! Now, go run out and get me some floodlight fluid, would ya? I gotta refill ‘em before this big fight.
- LOA: Sure thing, boss!
Loa jets off using their natural thrusters. Magus waits for the shutter to clang shut, looks around suspiciously for surveillance, then swings his wrist out– his forearm-mounted RCP snaps open and lights up.
- MAGUS [to himself, quietly]: Someday, kiddo, you’re gonna have to learn how to look your mom straight in the eye and say “no, you’re wrong.” …Your parent? Does Marlow even have a gender under all those bandages-or-whatever…?
Magus shrugs and holds out the hand wearing the RCP. With a sound rather like a massive, weighty hole-punch, something tears a ragged-edged hole in spacetime, to a distant tropical forest… and he hops through, letting it flutter shut behind him.
Loa returns to the now-empty snow-filled arena, carrying a large jug labeled ‘floodlight fluid.’
- LOA: You want regular or diet, Magus? …Magus…?
Hey everybody! I’m gonna be gone for a bit, but I left this note on how to start the battle. This month’s fight is going to be a celebration of Thanksgiving– a holiday from back home where we kill and carve birds, and eat their delicious flesh!
And when carving comes up, only one thing comes to my mind… That’s right, this month you’ll be fighting the king of the skies, Rathalos!
This one’s got a tricky gimmick to it– he’s so huge I think we’re gonna have a hard time fitting him in the arena. Make sure to check out the class Blazing Wyvern to see what you’re up against– then Scorching Wing Left/Right and Searing Tail, too!
Our festive barbecue begins at 7 PM!
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Interlude: Strawberry Crumble - 2024-08-15
Previously: Marlow agreed to help repair Doctor Okazaki’s ship, in exchange for removing the world-jumping device from it. After all, in the wrong hands, such a device could wreak havoc. Magus expressed doubt at her strategy– after all, if both he and Doctor Okazaki had independently created devices, couldn’t someone else?
Open on the docks, in the afternoon. Doctor Okazaki’s massive brass-and-gears ship looks out of place bobbing in the waves. Okazaki’s technician, in an oil-stained jumpsuit, is directing several other humanoids and synths in lifting a large armillary-sphere-esque assembly out of the back of the ship.
- OIL-STAINED TECHNICIAN [shouting, distantly from the camera]: Okay, careful, steady, step, step, step, hold…
The group carries it onto the dock, and starts moving down onto the street. Marlow is leading them towards the distant silhouette of the Polaris building, the building from which she functions as de-facto city leader.
The technician leaps down. Doctor Okazaki is standing on the dock, her arms folded, looking understandably cross.
- DR OKAZAKI: Well, there goes my life’s work. I expected something like this might end up happening, but I was hoping to make it more than a few jumps first.
- OIL-STAINED TECHNICIAN [wiping their forehead]: You’re not gonna ask me to improvise a whole new core out of an extra synth-shell and half a pizza, are you?
- DR OKAZAKI: …Is that on the table?
- OIL-STAINED TECHNICIAN: Not unless you can accelerate it to nine-tenths the speed of light, and then get it back.
- DR OKAZAKI: I’ll keep you posted.
Okazaki walks offscreen.
Cut to the arena, near dusk. The floor of the arena is partially pulled up, and Magus is walking around with half his body obscured in that pit, alternately coordinating the synth team and typing on a wrist-mounted cyberdeck-style computer. Okazaki sits on the edge of the drop floor, her lab coat splayed out a little.
- DR OKAZAKI: Anything I can help with?
- MAGUS: [sizing her up thoughtfully] You want to take your mind off it, or you want to blow off steam?
- DR OKAZAKI: I’ll take the latter, if you’re offering.
- MAGUS: Great, I still need to make sure I didn’t screw up the holoemitters. Just bonk things until they evaporate.
Magus sounds a little like he’s telling a white lie. He types a few keystrokes, and a white doll-body sprite materializes atop the drop floor. Okazaki nods sharply and snags a length of pipe from under the exposed floor on her way to her feet– she swings it rather like a golf club, and the sprite explodes into pixels.
- MAGUS: …I think it’s bullshit too. For whatever that’s worth.
- DR OKAZAKI: Not worth much, if I’m honest. Words are cheap.
- Okazaki glances over, waiting for Magus to spawn another. He does.
- MAGUS: Believe me, I’ve pulled all the levers I have. Marlow keeps a tight, tight lid on that kinda tech. And as long as all the synths see her as their leader…
- Okazaki kicks the next one in the chest and jabs with the pipe as a follow-up, though it’s too short for her reflexive stab to connect. It disintegrates.
- MAGUS: …anyway, you’re welcome to hang out here as long as you want.
- DR OKAZAKI: [catching her breath] …Is there even anything else out there?
- MAGUS: The crash site of my last arena, a couple miles out. Nothin’ else, as far as I can tell. To hear the synths tell it, this city’s the only thing that’s ever existed, and the rest is rolling open countryside as far as anyone’s ever explored.
- DR OKAZAKI: How can that be true? Any civilization sophisticated enough to produce synthetic life couldn’t have lived its entire history inside a few square kilometers.
- MAGUS: Could’ve been seeded by another society that moved on.
- DR OKAZAKI: That’s a funny thought. I wonder how long world-travel’s existed. How many people have independently invented it.
- MAGUS: The answer to that question terrifies me.
Magus looks up to the sky. Night has fallen, but the sky is completely starless, given the light pollution from the surrounding city.
- MAGUS: If you look up at the sky, and you think about every star you can see, and every star you can’t… and, what. Maybe one in a trillion has people around it. And one in a trillion of those survives long enough to make something that lets them reach out and touch another world…
- DR OKAZAKI: Then where the hell are the rest of them?
- MAGUS: [laughing] Yeah. Where the hell is my audience, more like. …It wasn’t always like this! It used to be easy, you’d have people stumble in all the time from weird distant places.
- DR OKAZAKI: [resting the pipe on her shoulder] Right. Six years, or so?
- MAGUS: Closer to seven, now. [shakes head] I just hope Marlow sees reason. The tighter she crushes down on this kind of tech, the less prepared we’re going to be. Hell, there might be someone already in the city, and they’re just smart enough not to announce it.
- DR OKAZAKI: [staring up at the sky]
- MAGUS: …Doc?
- DR OKAZAKI: You raise some excellent points. I’ll see you later, Magus.
- MAGUS: Gonna get some shut-eye?
- DR OKAZAKI: Something like that.
She walks out of the arena. Magus, meanwhile, returns to working on the arena.
- MAGUS: …God dammit, I needed that pipe.
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Recap 6/2024: To the Moon and Back Again - 2024-06-10
Heroes: Herringway (Arbiter), oakandlinden (Arcanimist), Rue (Wrathguard), Dragoshi (Profaner), Amara as Aerith (Rosecutter), Misty (Decider)
Wait, is this a shmup segment?
Aeris supported the heroes with the “Seven Force” skillset, granting them a Star-Fox-style lock-on combo shot to deal with the waves of weak enemies.
The heroes had a different strategy, however. Most of the hero party softened up the mook Weapons one by one or stacked debuffs on the boss, and some coordination between Aerith’s Target Lock and Dragoshi’s Black Hole allowed Aerith to sweep through most of the field, chain-devouring Weapons to stock up an absurd amount of materia. oakandlinden also did an excellent job keeping the damage dealers upright, burning through Anima at just the right times.
As soon as the mid-boss of the shmup stage (Nightmare Zeromus) appeared, the entire team was able to race through it– a Marisa/Kirby callcard fusion, a few sword-smashes from Rue, a bunch of bullets from Misty, and a flurry of rushdown punches from Dragoshi, and the heroes smashed it down before it could get a turn!
Then, Jenova appeared, from within the moon…
Aaaand Aerith unleashed all those materia with a 100% L-Groove Unmake that deleted 73% of Jenova’s HP.
…So, uh, since we still had a few hours left, I whipped together “Moon-Heart Soul OS,” a more powerful version to give even this a run for their money!
For whatever reason, Herringway kept drawing Mr. Famous, and wound up combining two of them to make GateMan. Summoning GateMan tripled the hits of Aerith’s Stonega Shatter, chunking off a third of True Jenova’s HP, and after eating more mooks, she unleashed a hyperboosted 300% Devour that finished it off in a single blow.
I awarded the standard 250 pyroxene, 250 tomestones, and 1000 nuyen for the victory, and an extra 50/500 for beating both the boss and the True Arena version. Thanks for playing Final Fantasy 7!
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Preshow 6/2024: 7 Grand Finale - 2024-06-08
You’ve already seen the story, at the end of the last recap.
To close out Final Fantasy 7, you’re headed to the moon, to stop whatever Sephiroth’s put into motion! But in order to get there, you’re going to need to punch through the waves of monsters falling from its surface.
This is going to be another Rush Battle, like the train sequence all the way back on Disc 1. You’ll have some support from Aeris, but you’ll also have a lot of enemies to clear out! And once you wipe them out, you’ll still have to deal with what awaits you on the moon…
…the eldest and most powerful of primals, Jenova.
Time is of the essence! Be ready to break through, at 7 PM tonight!
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Recap 2/23: Aeris Runs it Back - 2024-02-23
Heroes: Rue (Wrathguard), Herringway (Arbiter), Amon (Bouncer), Lana/Rhi (Decider), Dragoshi (Profaner), oakandlinden (Arcanimist)
Rhi showed up on time, but the rest of us had started a little early, since I decided to let six heroes in. I was especially excited to see Amon in, since he hadn’t gotten a chance to fight in this system yet. Rhi mentioned early on that something seemed off, though– Sephiroth’s HP was going down fast.
And she was right.
When Sephiroth hit zero, his Last Stand activated, and he used Sin Harvest to knock everyone to 1 HP. He transformed into “Safir Sephiroth” (class: Ambassador of Jenova), but Aeris leapt onto the field with a new class: Rosecutter!
…Well, that’s how it was supposed to go. But Dragoshi had dodged an attack with Violence Step, and was temporarily invulnerable, so he was on the field too, harassing Sephiroth and his rogue SOLDIERs Genesis and Revelation. Eventually, Sephiroth cut down a chunk of arena to cut him off from the fight, and that left Sephiroth and Aeris fighting to the finish.
Rhi found a really good DPS option, and burnt through all Aeris’s materia with “With a Steel Chair,” a five-hit combo that deleted the last chunk of Sephiroth’s HP!
I awarded 250 pyroxene, 250 tomestones, and 1000 nuyen for the victory. Thanks for playing Final Fantasy 7!
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…
Sephiroth stumbles back, clutching his chest. Behind him, the mako reactor at Nibelung glows bright. Both he and Aeris are bleeding; because Aeris is being played by a synth, it’s glowing cyan fluid for her. They rush each other and clash, long katana against Aeris’s quarterstaff.
- EXIME as SEPHIROTH: Tell me… What is it you cherish, more than anything? Give me the pleasure of taking it from you.
- DR OKAZAKI as AERIS: You’ll never extinguish justice. And you’ll never outrun the reaper.
Aeris stops resisting the clash, making Sephiroth suddenly overshoot– and she spins around and catches his head with the back of her staff, knocking him into a window on the reactor. The glass cracks, mako starting to leak through.
- SEPHIROTH: Hah… so your desire burns even stronger than mine… If you want to destroy Shinra so badly, then go ahead. I’ll give you exactly what your heart desires.
The reactor glows bright white– Aeris casts Sanctuary again, and it explodes, powerful enough to form a small white bloom on the scale model. When the light recedes, Sephiroth has evaporated.
The barrier fades, revealing that the Avalanche crew is still safe. Aeris puts a hand to her ear. Her eyes are now noticeably blue-green, like something changed in her when she called upon her true power.
- AERIS: Come in, Earthquake Squadron. Are you there?
- VOICE ON RADIO: We read you, Commander. But I’ve got bad news. Something’s happened to the moon.
- AERIS: …Sorry, repeat? I couldn’t have heard that right.
- VOICE ON RADIO: You did. Get outside and see for yourself.
Crawling up through the wreckage of the Gold Saucer, the crew looks up– and finds the moon glowing red-black in the night sky. In the distance, monsters are starting to fall from its surface.
- AERIS: …Could Sephiroth really be so powerful? Turk! Come in, Turk! What’s your status?
- TURK: Turk here. We’re waist-deep in these monsters coming from the moon, but we’re doing what we can to hold them back.
- AERIS: Arm the Juno Cannon. Aim for the moon.
- TURK: …Commander, you can’t be serious…
- AERIS: It’s the only way to stop this. Sephiroth started some kind of spell using the mako in the Nibelung Reactor, and we’re going to have to destroy the materia to stop it.
- TURK: …You can’t mean…
- AERIS: I do. I think the moon is a huge materia.
- TURK: …Roger, Commander. I hope you’re right. Arming the Juno Cannon!
Moments later, a giant cannon raises from the surface of the floating city, and all the lights dim across the disk as it points toward the moon…
The impact scores a massive hole into the surface, shaking off the dust, and revealing the moon’s true form: a glowing blue-green orb. But despite the spiderweb of cracks across its surface, it’s still looming in the night sky…
- AVALANCHE SOLDIER: Damn… it still wasn’t enough…
- MASSIME as BARETT: Hang on. I think… the planet wants in on this fight?
A giant fountain of mako is pouring off into the night sky, making their coats whip dramatically around them.
- AERIS: …Then we’ll take the fight to this thing, whatever it is. Cloud Squadron, prepare to advance!
Aeris leaps off the ground, and the mako current catches her, carrying her and the rest of the heroes, one by one, up towards the shattered moon…
Coming soon… Final Fantasy 7: Disc 4!