21 Let's Blow Some Stuff Up

Nitro gestured for them to follow with two of his hands while the other two pulled two extremely thick steel doors open. "Well," he pointed to a shooting range that extended hundreds of meters into the distance, "because I'm here to see if you've got what it takes to be a part of our organization." He smiled and then pointed with another one of his hands to the wall they had just passed through. "Jayce, would you kindly press that big red button there next to the wall?"

Jayce glanced around the wall before noticing a huge bright red button flashing dully to his right. Pressing it down he looked around to see what it did. As he was about to ask the floor began to shake slightly and they watched as the walls moved upwards into the ceiling. What came up were hundreds of types of guns, grenades, alien technologies, and a variety of missiles that all had funny decorations painted on their noses.

Ralnas stared at the guns before turning to Nitro, "We get to test these out?" Nitro flashed a smile and then picked up one of the largest rocket launchers on the wall. "Well, we've found here at team Nuke that the best way to determine if people will be good members is how they act around explosions." He hefted the gun so that three of his large purple hands held it steady and the fourth curled around the trigger. "This is my favorite gun here. I never find good situations to whip her out when we play other teams but whenever we have high profile recruits I always have to show her off."

He flipped off the safety and then walked smugly to the edge of the range. Flipping a switch a horde of robots flooded the desert and began moving in randomized patterns. Nitro twisted his neck to the four of them. "Now you might want to cover your ears..."

Fireworks of bullets sprayed from the gun painting the desert like a hurricane of lead. Then Nitro pulled the second trigger and rockets flew out thicker than a swarm of locust towards the robots. The explosions were so bright that Jayce was seeing stars long after they had exploded. Micu looked at the carnage strewn before them. He glanced at his watch, "Nitro that was four seconds." Nitro's deep laugh shook the foundations to their core. He set the gun down on a pedestal next to him and turned to face them. "Yeah, it's only got enough bullets for four seconds. Unfortunately, that's why it's almost totally useless besides being really fucking fun to shoot. Love her though." He patted the gun lovingly and then gestured towards the wall. "Your turn."

Ralnas raced to pick up the largest gun he thought he could hold. A neon green and pink monstrosity that looked like it could shoot bullets the size of small dogs. Ralnas excitedly dragged it over to the edge of the range. The destroyed robots had been cleaned up by huge magnets on the sides of the range. Nitro pressed the button again and a new swarm of robots appeared. Ralnas looked at him, "I'm good?" Nitro grinned and nodded.

Ralnas pulled the trigger and the recoil almost knocked him off his feet. Giant purple balls of energy shot forth from his gun towards the robots. Ralnas released the trigger and watched with bated breath to see the destruction that they would cause. One hit the sands and swirled into a vortex that sucked dozens of robots into its center. After a few seconds, it forcefully ejected the remnants of the robots in every direction. Ralnas ducked quickly and waited for the sound of the robots hitting the walls behind him. Opening his tightly closed eyes he glanced around before he heard his friends laughing quite loudly behind him. He craned his neck to look over the range and saw the robot parts neatly piled before him. He looked over to Nitro with questioning eyes.

"Yeah, we launch a lot of things into the air here. So to make sure we don't hurt ourselves there's a force field in front of us. Thought I mentioned that before..." Nitro looked at Ralnas with a barely suppressed smile on his face. "You definitely did not dude..." Ralnas fumed and pulled the gun up and held the trigger down until the gun clicked from an empty clip.

And thus continued the rest of their afternoon. Each tried out every single item that they could get their hands on. Nitro mentioned the benefits to joining team Nuke in between reloads and did his best to charm Chiron's Chosen. The previously gorgeous desert was equal parts sand, soot, glass, robot scraps, and spent bullets. Jayce wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked to Nitro, "So this is everything we're going to do today? I was hoping we could see some of your facilities."Nitro nodded.

"Don't stress Jayce, you were just doing this one first because you finished third. The teams that finished first and second will get do this part later. We just stagger it so that we aren't competing for your attention." He pointed to the large display above the door they had come in through. "When that screen turns green we're good to go to the main buildings." Just as he pointed it out the screen turned a deep green and Nitro's watch buzzed.

"Speaking of..." He smiled and pressed the third button that caused yet another army of robots to pour into the desert. Instead of just randomly going in patterns they began cleaning the range. Another swarm of smaller robots poured into the room they had been shooting in and started cleaning, polishing, and reloading the used guns. Nitro pointed with all four hands. "After you."

Jayce pushed through the unlocked doors and found a moving sidewalk had materialized that was leading towards a large metal building a couple hundred meters away. He hesitated and waited for Micu to join up with him before they stepped onto the path and were sped towards the main base of team Nuke.

"What do you think so far?" Jayce whispered to Micu. Micu put his hands behind his back, "I think this is probably the most laid back of the teams. Our team would certainly fit in with the culture here." Jayce nodded thinking about this. "I guess I didn't think about team culture. I was just thinking that team Nuke is usually a playoff team so if they want us then we should consider it." Micu smiled, "You know the odds of actually winning the team competition are impossibly small right?" He patted Jayce on the back, "Focus on our happiness first. If we're on a championship team but miserable will the trophy be a good memory or a bad one?"

Jayce was stumped by this line of questioning and decided not to answer until he had decided how he felt about it. He glanced back at Jenira and Ralnas who had their watches picture mode activated and were snapping pictures like first-time tourists. Jayce sighed, "I think no matter what you and I decide to do those two will be 100 percent behind us." Micu looked at him for a long second, "I don't think that at all." Jayce was again surprised by his friends thinking and was about to ask when Nitro zoomed past them on an oversized hoverboard.

Coasting to a stop just ahead of them he waited until they had all stepped off the path before opening a side entrance and ushering them inside. "Alright, folks pay attention because this is the home base. Also, this is much cleaner than it normally is, I have to confess that up front." The four laughed and followed after him. Nitro walked past a large trophy room that stood mostly empty. "One day we'll fill that up, until then it's the best motivation I've ever seen. Every morning I walk past this trophy cabinet and wish so desperately that we could fill it. This season I feel good about us, better watch out. Unless you join us of course." His grin had a far more murderous aura to it than before on the shooting range. Jayce knew this was the real Nitro, the newest core member of team Nuke.

Jenira peered into the trophy room, "Mr. Nitro you do have one trophy in here though, what's that from?" Nitro's purple face turned a shade of pink and his intense aura dissolved in a flash. "Oh uh that's from the first season that team Nuke was established, it's a joke trophy for coming in last place. We bear it as a mark of shame and a reminder that we've come a long way." He motioned for them to continue and then went deeper into the structure.

Team Nuke's base had been based on their imagining of what a human aircraft hangar would look like as far as Jayce could tell. Unpainted steel beams crisscrossed the roof while large windows eliminated the need for lights during the day. There were few actual rooms and numerous open spaces with tactics on holoboards, guns strewn on the ground and quite a few floating TV screens with last years matches being replayed. Jayce looked around with wide eyes, this very much reminded him of his room back at Chiron's in terms of atmosphere and he felt that Micu's observation of culture was correct.

Micu's voice cut through his musings, "Nitro, why is this built like a 1950's airplane hangar?" Nitro arched his thick eyebrows, "What do you mean?" Micu stumbled over his words for a bit before figuring out what he was trying to ask. "I don't understand why an advanced society such as the one that exists in this simulation would build their main base like something from Earth." Nitro looked even more surprised by this. "Why wouldn't we venerate the only race to have won the grand prize three times?" Micu didn't have a response to this and Jayce noticed him write something in his watches notepad.

Jayce decided to take Nitro's words at face value and ask Micu about it later. Nitro pointed to a door in front of them. "The team leader and team boss are in there waiting for you. Ask them all the questions you may have, this is a rare privilege. Oh, and mention I did a good job showing you guys around." He said with a wink. Nitro then turned and headed towards a few other team members who were playing some kind of game that involved horseshoes and hand grenades.

Ralnas' eyes bulged out and he grabbed Jayce and Micu's shoulders. "You think C-4 is actually in there?" Jayce was just as excited at the prospect of meeting the legendary leader of team Nuke. "Remember when we watched him against team Templar? I've never seen one person carry an entire team to victory before..." Ralnas was already lost in his memories just mentioning that match. Micu looked at his two friends and groaned. "Jenira and I will do the talking in there so that you two fanboys don't say anything stupid."

Ralnas and Jayce looked like their hearts had just shattered in a million pieces. "But Micu!" Ralnas began. "No buts." Micu shook his head sternly. "Unless it's a question you know needs to be asked you two will remain quiet." He looked at Jenira, "ready?"

The two boys pulled the doors open for Micu and Jenira to enter through first then followed closely behind. Their hopes would be rewarded today and sitting at a large table with the nuclear symbol carved into it sat C-4. Beside him was an equally famous member of their team, Dynamite. C-4 was an imposing figure. His body was covered in the kind of scales an Aligator would find familiar but his face was much more lizard-like. Thick spikes protruded from his muscled arms that were a quarter of an inch thick. It was rumored his scales were originally a dark green color but having so much ash and soot sprayed across his body had turned it black. He wore orange overalls with only one of the straps connected. He was reading over a document as they entered.

Dynamite was much thinner than Nitro or C-4. He had a slender body that resembled an elongated human, other than the thin webbed fingers that rapped on the desk. He had bright orange tattoos covering the majority of his dark blue body. A thin tail wrapped from his back around the chair he was sitting in. He looked quite bored and his notes were full of scribbles.

"You've finally arrived!" A wide grin spread across Dynamite's face and he tapped his boss on the shoulder. C-4 looked up and also smiled. His smile sent shivers down the backs of the four humans and they felt like prey before him. C-4's robust voice broke the silence, "So, shall we begin?"