The MLG, Part 1: Apocolyptic Future

Authors Note: This story was supposed to be a one-off story solely for this week’s story contest, but the more I wrote, the more attached I grew to the characters. This will be a  4 part mini-series. I hope this series will make up for my very long hiatus due to schoolwork.

Time: 8: 95 pm

Date: 13/42 Year 2087

Planet: Neoward

Location: Mother Location 2

Ok, ok, ok. I need to remember who I am, what I am, what I’m doing, what the hell is even happening. Ok,ok ok, question one: Who am i? I’m, i’m….I’m Darren Markham….aka...Participant K. Question 2: What am I? I’m a Neowardzian, a native to Neoward, a planet 500 light years away from a place called, “Earth”, us Neowardzians are barbaric as hell, and we have been in an apocalyptic state since as long as I can remember… Question 3: What am I doing? Running for my life. Question 4: What the hell is even happening? The bicentury event where a group of 20 Neowardzians randomly get picked to be part of a 5 round deadly competition where 4 people get cut off every round and finally  the winner gets to leave Neoward. This is called the “The Mother Location Gauntlet” (also called the MLG), it reminds me so much of a book I read as a child… I’m one of the “lucky” Neowardzians to be part of this, and well, I’m being chased by A HUGE STONE BALL….HOLY CRAP!

Darren leaped out of the huge boulder coming towards him, he was about to be squashed and made into a pancake breakfast! Somehow, he dodged it but right as he jumped out of the way, the spiked maces that are a huge obstacle in Mother Location 2 made a random appearance. He narrowly escaped it, only losing a sleeve of his leather jacket. Spiked Maces are the main, deadliest obstacles of Mother Location 2  (they killed 15 of the participants in the last MLG. The winner of that one got to leave Neoward relatively easy).

“SPIKED MACES?!?! WHAT THE HELL? This-, this cannot be legal…”, exclaimed Darren. “HEY, QUEEN NEAWORA, WHY ARE WE KILLING OURSELVES JUST TO LEAVE THIS DAMN PLACE?!”, Darren screamed towards Queen Neawora, sitting on her throne finely crafted out of barbed wire and scrap metal and wearing her most beautiful dress made out of weathered black leather, and sporting her beautiful gas mask for her headpiece! No one has actually seen her face, but her gas mask is very iconic at this point.

Queen Neawora holds three jobs; being the queen of Neoward (obviously), the overseer of the MLG and also, the holder of the 4th oldest person in the entire universe! 9.000 years old! Because of this, she is really hard of hearing, which results in lots of miscommunication. When she was told she was to be the new queen of Neoward, she thought she was told she ruptured a spleen. Neoward was without a ruler for 11 days as Neawora was in the hospital trying to get her spleen replaced.

“Eh? Is Participant K asking if he is filling himself with industrial paste?”, Neawora asked in a rather confused manner. One of her advisors told her what Darren actually said, it took...many, MANY tries, but after asking if Darren was drilling the participants with eggnog toothpaste, or jeering himself for a pork souffle, she finally got to Dennis’ real question, unfortunately this whole process took about 7 minutes and Dennis already left the spike maces part of the maze.

“God damn! I need to leave this place...this place is barbaric, it's terrible and our ruler is a vegetable! I need to win this, I just have to! There’s the finish line...I just need to push Garry Arkeles, AKA Participant E, in front of this moving wrecking ball so I can have a guaranteed spot in the next round at Mother Location 3 in 10 minutes! This maze was terrible but I did it, I might not have wowed Neoward with acrobatic moves like many others did but at least I survived! Just need to push him in front of this final obstacle and-”

WOMP!

Garry dodged out of the way and Darren lost traction and ended up getting slammed by the wrecking ball, he got knocked 10 feet, .alongside Garry right in front of the finish line! It soon turned into a pathetic race of army-crawling towards the finish line where the group of 11 finalists waited for the 12th. Would it be Dennis? Or Garry?

Yeah it was Dennis, Garry did not have a chance...the spiked maces tore him into bite-size pieces. Dennis kept inching towards the finish line, when the last person out of the allotted number of people reach the finish line, (in this case it would be 12 people), poison gas would fill up the maze, slowly killing all the participants left inside. Dennis made it, Neawora snapped her fingers and cue the poison gas!

YES! I made it, next area is Mother Location 3, a dilapidated office building full of falling debris and flimsy floors. I still cannot believe that us as a planet decided that this would be a sporting event...

Neoward might have seemed barbaric and very not sophisticated at all, while that is 100% correct, it also has a huge sense of futuristic tech, although it is very sparse because of the planetsfolk destroying some of it during biweekly apocalypses. However, there is some used solely for the MLG that is kept in a safe, inside a vault, inside a volcano, Neawora has to go inside while wearing lava resistant gear to fetch the safe. One time, when the advisor told her she had to “Don her protective gear and fetch the safe inside the volcano”, she thought she had to stun an executive deer and preach it into Togo. (How did she know what Togo was? “Earth” is supposedly 500 light years away!) This futuristic tech involves teleportation devices for MLG participants to be teleported to the next round, and also a floating “junkjet” which is used only for Round 3 and is used as a floating stadium so the audience can see everything that goes on in the office building through the glass windows (that are somehow not broken).

The teleportation devices triggered and teleported 11 of the 12 finalists to Mother Location 3. As if anything stranger or more convenient could happen to Dennis, he ended up NOT teleporting to Mother Location 3, it ended up turning into the MLG 2, Electric Boogaloo. Dennis was instead transported to a very strange underground corridor, and Neawora was there!

“Queen Neawora?!”, Dennis exclaimed, “What the- WHERE AM I?!”

Queen Neawora was rather taken aback, but unlike usual, she could hear Dennis just fine

“Participant K, also known as Dennis Markham, Hello. In response to your question, you are un the underground of Neoward, specifically underneath the bonfire park near my abode. This is where I take the lucky winner of our Mother Location Gauntlet to their rocket ship to leave Neoward.”

Dennis was confused, winner? He didn’t win anything! In fact, there were still 3 more rounds to go in the Mother Location Gauntlet, nobody should have won!

“What? Your majesty, I believe you have made a mistake...I did not win anything, I barely scraped by in the 2nd round…”

“If you could keep a secret, which you WILL, I don’t actually take anyone outside Neoward, I actually just take them in here, run brain tests on them and then send them in the rocket ship, where I denotate it, and kill them. All those “meteor showers” you see every half century are actually bits of the rocket ship I destroy. See, Darren, I’m not the helpless old lady that I seem to be…”

Darren turned out to be the only person to see Neawora’s face, she took off her gas mask, showing off a hideous alien looking creature with green skin, slimy complexity and six eyes. Her voice has changed as well, turning from her sweet voice into a monstrous deep voice, Dennis was terrified. He knew the truth of Queen Neawora and the MLG. Neawora is an alien creature that started the MLG, to kill the Neowardzians one by one until the ones that made her perfect society came through. She would not kill these, this is the reason why she did not blow up Dennis. Dennis actually questioned Neawora, and he was not into the apocalyptic scene as everyone else seemed to be. He was the first person to be in Neawora’s “perfect” society in a small planetoid in the middle of the galaxy.

Dennis was lead into the space ship, and transported into space, the MLG Meteor Shower did not happen this time, as the spaceship did not explode. He was on his way to the perfect society planetoid, and Neawora would be coming soon, after she commenced the MLG. Dennis was confused and terrified, but he was finally safe from the horrible apocalyptic planet he was from, only having his ripped leather jacket and weathered jeans as a vivid reminder of home.

To Be Continued Next Week!