Because balance is overrated.
26 Jun 2023 - XSYS Team
Open on the main arena floor. The stands are empty. There’s still a fair amount of construction debris, and humanoid mechanical entities (synths) with wild creative designs are helping put the finishing touches on the construction, welding here, sealing up a panel there.
Magus sets down a crate and dusts off his hands. Slow pan up, and we see what he looks like now: a longcoat, some kind of headset-display with an angular earpiece, and a military softcap. He looks a little out of place here: near-future, as opposed to the far-future-Apple or industrial look of the synths.
A significantly larger blue synth– half industrial loader, half mascot, with a smooth black visor instead of a face– is helping him carry a few crates of leftover building materials off the arena floor, and into a dark storage area underneath the seats.
A synth with booster engines built into its back walks by, waving to Magus.
Magus turns his attention back to the crate, and pushes it into place.
The loader synth tilts its head, too far and too slow, like it’s only ever heard this gesture described.
Magus sets the crate down and pushes it deeper into a small alcove.
The loader synth takes this deflection as its answer, nods politely, and drops the subject.
A few moments pass. Magus reaches up, grabs a roll-down metal shutter, and pulls it down until it clicks shut, securing the crates.
Magus realizes perhaps this random synth isn’t quite ready to hear something so metaphysically earthshaking. Instead, he walks closer and tries to reach up to pat it on the shoulder– but it’s tall enough that he has to settle for a pat on the forearm-plating instead.
Magus starts searching through his longcoat’s pockets, looking for something.
Magus finds a small translucent-yellow acrylic-plastic rectangle, and hands it to the synth.
Magus folds his arms, not sure what to make of this.
Horizontal wipe to: A building, a tower of coiled ribbon around a silver core. Large bay windows allow fading evening light to pass through, and show fragmented glimpses of a massive alien-cherry-blossom tree in the center of the building, in full bloom. Slowly pan down; Magus is outside, walking towards it. A sign identifies it in some alien language, but it’s subtitled for us: “Polaris”.
Magus pushes the doors open, with a gentle mechanical whine that implies you’re supposed to let them automatically open. Full shot of the tree, petals falling; the tree is surrounded with enough to imply it’s stayed in this state for a while. Inside, this is half a library and half a workshop– there are smaller-frame synths tucked into alcoves with books, or bent over tables and tinkering with small machines.
Magus walks up one of the two curved staircases, sparing a passing glance over at one table, where a rusted and grease-coated synth with a humanoid face is sitting across from one with gold trim on pearl plating. At the top, there’s a small synth sitting at a dark wooden desk, and matching doors behind it. It’s wearing glasses over a featureless matte white faceplate.
Magus casually steps around the desk and just opens the door. The glasses-synth stands up from its desk, trying to interject a word, but Magus just says something like “look, I’m late for my appointment” without even pausing.
The room beyond is cluttered, but clean– stacks of books litter the floor, pushed to the side to make a small path to the desk at the back of the room. In front of the desk stands Marlow– she’s wrapped in either robes or desert-wanderer-style bandages from head to toe, and her face is a smooth plate with unmoving glowing yellow eyes that pulsate faintly when she talks. She’s anxiously fidgeting with the corner of a book.
Marlow waves off the glasses-synth, who bows out apologetically. Magus lets the door shut, then tugs on it to make SURE it’s locked, before he says so much as a single word.
Marlow turns briefly away, to set down her book on the corner of her desk.
Magus suddenly understands the magnitude of trouble he’s in.
Marlow pointedly says nothing. She just stares at him, waiting.
Magus pauses, not wanting to dig himself any deeper than he absolutely has to.
Marlow rubs her forehead.
Marlow sighs and turns around. She flicks her hand, as if to dismiss Magus, and the glasses-synth opens the door impatiently.
Magus walks out. We see, from Marlow’s side, the door slam shut. She picks up that book again, flipping through it, but she’s clearly doing it more as nervous tic than actually reading.
Her voice is now slightly but noticeably different, like she’s dropping a lightly regal affect now that she’s alone. She looks out the window at the setting sun, as if remembering something long put aside.
She snaps the book shut, and the screen cuts to echoing black.
Fade in high over the arena. The stands are packed with synths of various colors, eating exotic foods (show a faceplate popped up to toss a red popcorn-like object with blue dusting into a dark gap between its faceplate and chin, with no further detail) and chattering excitedly.
Cut to the lobby, basically a public-transit marketplace between subway stations. It’s organized chaos– synths are sitting in the middle of open floor space to eat, and other synths are weaving and ducking around them. Some are larger industrial models having trouble crouching under the ceiling, and others are short enough that they have to climb up on the counter to talk to the confused synths attempting to help them.
No currency or prices are visible anywhere in this scene. Their absence should be unobtrusive.
Magus dashes through, and the camera turns to follow, so we get a sense of how the rooms connect: the lobby has ticket booths he dashes past, turnstiles being ripped out to allow a tank-treaded synth to get through (and he steps up on their plating to vault over the turnstiles as they’re carried out). It connects to the stadium proper, and we can see nobody’s out on the simple grid field yet. He takes another turn and heads through a staff door into back tunnels with exposed pipes and wiring.
Finally, he turns and barges through the doors of a locker room, and we get our first shot of the heroes.
Each one has a smooth rounded device strapped to a forearm. It’s shaped vaguely like half an almond, with a round glowing button on the top. They seem to have automatically matched the color schemes of their outfits. A synth with angular stripes is helping get them fitted.
The heroes start to look a little concerned. Magus notices, claps, and moves to the front of the room, near the exit onto the field.
This is clearly not playing terribly well with the crowd. Magus thinks it over, takes out something like a Flipper Zero, and cues up a song over the intercom.
[BGM: How to Play - Super Smash Bros. Melee]
THIS is playing much better. There’s some positive chatter.
The heroes… don’t exactly charge, but more casually stroll past him, out onto the field. Magus collapses exhaustedly onto one of the benches.
The striped synth leaves. After a moment to catch his breath, Magus stands up and looks at the lockers.
Wipe to the arena floor, where the fight is just starting to begin…