Time to Hit the Gym!
by Crossroads ID 11004
Crossroads looked at the schedule on her BADGE communicator. League Wars were fast approaching and she needed to get some gym time in to make sure she was in top condition.
“Hmmm...Renaldo’s Gym, Juice, and Yoga Sports Complex, in Kissimme Florida, eh?” Crossroads looks up the facility on Gaggle.com and finds a current picture of the place. “Wow...looks brand spanking new...well, let’s get this party started!”
Crossroads opens a portal to the location indicated by the picture and steps through. She is immediately assaulted by the cacophony of horns beeping from what appears to be hundreds of cars jamming the street in front of Reynaldo’s. The gymis even bigger than it looked in the picture! All steel and glass front with a great view of all the treadmills, stationary bikes, and weight machines to can imagine in one place. People are lined up at the front doors gym bags over their shoulders and phones in their hands as they wait for their turn to enter.
Crossroads checks the instructions on her communicator, again. “Oh the entrance is....there!”
Looking up at the third story, she sees a small open balcony with a sign that says “Hero Entrance.” Opening another portal to the balcony, she steps through to a tastefully appointed waiting area adjacent to a juice bar. Comfortable chairs and couches litter the area with large television monitors along all the walls, half of them showing world news, local news, music videos, or reruns of popular sitcoms or crime shows. The other half of the monitors were showing what Crossroads was here for today – Fight Club matches.
Many heroes, some familiar to Crossroads, some not, mill about, talking about this match or that, drinking custom made juices, holding ice packs up to their eyes, or just generally hanging out. Crossroads steps around several groups of heroes, greeting those she knows with a nod or a wave and approaches the registration desk. The desk was being manned (“roboted”?) by one of BADGES command robots. Chase decided that having the robots run the night clubs eliminated the favoritism some of the humans who ran the clubs engaged in. They would load some of the Fight Club Rooms with heroes who would be easy matches for their favorites. So now, when Chase set-up a Fight Club, she had one of the command robots sent down to run registration so that Rooms would be filled up on a strictly first-come, first-served basis. The robots also seemed to enjoy the time off from the space station.
“Greetings Allyson Robicheaux, designated ‘Crossroads’. Would you like to register for fight club?” intoned BADGE Robot 475756. The BADGE Robots also knew every registered meta-human, hero, and villain in the BADGE database, so registering was both easier and more secure than before and ensured no unqualified person entered a match. Insurance rates for these Fight Clubs were nothing to sneeze at!
“Yes, please,” answered Crossroads, placing her hand on the palm reader when instructed to do so.
“Excellent. You are assigned to Fight Club Room 6. You are the twentieth person and final to be assigned to that room. The matches will begin upon your arrival. I have sent the contestant roster to your communicator. Please follow the Kelly Green line to your Room.”
A green line (the exact shade of Kelly Green, to be exact) light up and led down a long corridor with doors on either side. It finally ended at a door with a gold number ‘6’ and a aplm scanner glowing blue beside it. Crossroads placed her hand against the scanner and the door slid open to reveal another tastefully decorated waiting room with twenty chairs, several vending machines, and a counter with stacks of towels and an attendant with a change belt and a first aid kit on duty. All the chairs except the one nearest the door were occupied.
Crossroads sat in the chair and the attendant greeted her and addressed the room.
“Good evening ladies and gentlemen! This Fight Club is now ready to begin. Before we start, I will review the rules and code of conduct....,” the attendant droned on while Crossroads checked out her competition.
Zanazola Merio, Magnificent punlork, Demon Dragon, ChaChing, TomiHindri....She has fought most of these heroes in the past and felt good about her chances, thinking she may get a second or even a first place out of this. Nothing like the heat of battle to work out strategies and attack patterns for a League War.
Heart racing, Crossroads stood with everyone else and filed into the Battle Room. This was going to be fun!
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Three hours later, Crossroads stepped through a portal directly into the bathroom in her apartment, stripped off her hero costume and stepped into the shower, setting the shower head for "Pulsate" and the water temperature as high as she could stand.
"Ohhh...Dear God, I am sore!"
"It was obvious to her now that she wasn't the only one using the Fight Clubs to get ready for League War 12. Magnificent punlork was always tough to fight and ChaChing, too. But she expected that and although she did lose to punlork, she was bale to eke out a win against ChaChing. That was rewarding. But Zanazola totally dominated her. That was surprising as Crossroads has been steadily getting stronger and had beaten her in several sparring matches, Fight Clubs and KOTM events in the past few months.
"Obviously," she thought, "Zanazola wasn't fooling around anymore. Damn, I'm gonna have to really knuckle down if I want to do better at League War 12 than I did last time."
Stepping out of the shower and drying off, Crossroads picked up her BADGE Communicator and checked for the start time for the next Fight Club.
"I can't slow down," she vowed, "because they aren't slowing down, either!"
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