The bar exploded with noise as one of the fighters onscreen was sent flying by a thunderous punch to the stomach, before his descent came to an end against the metal plating of the arena floor. The boy, clad in a suit of white armour, scrambled upright in time to lock horns with the girl who’d just launched him through the air.

Jacob Barrow took a swig from the current beer and watched the fight unfold. True to his personal promise, he hadn’t missed a shred of the Gauntlet coverage since the Mayhems had finished. However, the viewing had not always been pleasant. In particular, watching Codi come face to face with Bruno Varlin in the group stage had been a bitter pill to swallow.

That being said, he marvelled at how far she’d come in the weeks since the friendly tournament. The group stages impressed him immensely, although he admitted a moment of alarm when she nearly throttled the life out of Cassandra Riven. Still, by Gauntlet standards that had been nothing out of the norm.

His attention turned back to the screen when once again the male fighter went slamming to the ground after a perfectly executed arm throw from his opponent. The girl from Battlecast skipped out of range of his retaliatory kick, as nimble and uncatchable as smoke. Her white hair gleamed in the light as she darted forward again and delivered a precisely placed kick to her adversary’s ribs when he rose again. The impact fired him backwards.

To his credit, the boy rolled backwards smoothly with the momentum and came to his feet, but Barrow could see the outcome of the fight already looming. And it seemed the real-time commentators could see it to.

“And that’s another hard fall for Arvaughn,” the man said, and Barrow could almost hear him wincing at the fighter’s misfortune. “It looks like Ripple Thawborn has started the knock out as she means to go on.”

“You couldn’t be more right, Jason. This girl means business. She’s making light work of one of the fighters many experts picked out as a title contender.”

Barrow was forced to agree with the sentiment as Ripple drove on. The hulking male simply wasn’t built to keep pace with her stinging, fast paced attacks. It would probably only have taken one square hit from Arvaughn to flatten her, but Ripple moved with the grace and ease of a hardened veteran, effortlessly gliding around the scything haymakers and frustrated jabs. Then she suddenly slithered inside his guard and drove the four outstretched fingers of her right hand into his windpipe like a knife.

Arvaughn went down to his knees, choking for breath, but instead of finishing him there and then, Ripple took a step back and looked around. The noise from the Gauntlet crowd burst forth like an erupting volcano and as the camera zoomed in Barrow could see the vulpine smile on the girl’s features.

In a move perhaps engendered by rage, frustration, or both, Arvaughn suddenly surged forward with a powerful thrust from his legs. Ripple couldn’t get out of the way and took his shoulder square in the stomach. For a moment Barrow thought that this might be the turning point.

But the Battlecast fighter adjusted her footing in the blink of an eye, absorbed the considerable force of Arvaughn’s body weight, and then shoved him backwards, simultaneously bringing her knee up hard into his face. He dropped like a log.

The screaming from the crowd swelled again as the announcer’s voice boomed out the name of the victor. Barrow took another drink and slouched back in his seat, regarding the girl grimly. This was what Codi had to look forward to if she made it as far as the quarter finals, and that thought made him less that optimistic. As far as he was concerned this girl, Ripple, was the most dangerous fighter he’d seen in years.

He brooded over this fact as the other opening knock out fights continued. At this juncture the immense Gauntlet arena was split in half and matches went in pairs. The entire first bracket of combat played out before his eyes over the afternoon, and the atmosphere in the local pub on Kantha was nothing short of ecstatic. However, their reactions to the fighters from their own academy were oddly mixed.

For the most part people had cheered appropriately when Codi and Max had progressed into the knockout, but he couldn’t help noticing some sour faces amongst the watchers. Mumbles about thieves, glory hunters and lawbreakers could be heard in their conversations. It annoyed him, but he avoided butting heads with any of the louder dissenting voices. Whatever these people thought, the fighters from Brax-Delta were doing their home planet proud. Some still banged on about luck. He’d seen enough know that luck hadn’t lifted the two rookies into the final stages.

Codi’s first knockout fight didn’t take long. Barrow watched with a mixture of amazement and consternation as his former pupil hammered the other competitor into submission. The match took ten of the thirty minutes allotted. The cheers in the pub far drowned out the grumbling, and he could see the glee and relief on Codi’s face when the camera panned around with a rotating close-up.

Days passed. He cashed in on his accumulated untaken holidays at the school and watched every scrap of coverage of the Gauntlet he could. Occasionally he would watch from his own home, but something about the atmosphere of being part of a real crowd drew him back to the local bar where he and Drake Vasco had spent many world-weary nights.

Max also made his way through the opening knockout rounds, notably eliminating a wily girl from Orion named Chalyze Bamber. A four to one underdog, the lanky teen was beginning to make just as much of an impact as his team mate. Codi’s second round was a simpler affair, taking out a boy from the Atlantic academy, Battlecast’s metaphorical younger brother. Alongside them no-one failed to notice Bruno Varlin, who lived up to expectations and then some, smashing aside a pair of male fighters in a stunning time frame to reach the quarter finals.

As things unfolded the dwindling number of competitors found themselves more and more exposed to the public eye. Interviews with coaches, fighters and sponsors were interspersed with the actual fighting as the business end of the competition began gathering more and more weight. Barrow found himself surprisingly taken with some of those interviews, when he realised some of the big business tycoons were casting a serious eye over Codi. Words like ‘gifted’ and ‘potential’ were common in their descriptions of her.

It was watching these interviews that Barrow realised his long shot those months ago had actually paid off. Codi was going somewhere. Whatever happened to Brax-Delta and the rest of the tournament, if she didn’t get a shot at a bigger academy spot next year he would be shocked. Seventeen years old, entering in her first year and reaching the quarter finals, she was a Gauntlet scout’s dream come true.

Nine days after the knockout brackets began Barrow sat at home, his morning cup of coffee in one hand, tele-screen remote in the other, and he turned on the Gauntlet coverage once again. It had crossed his mind that the word ‘obsession’ could easily have been applied to the way he followed the events with an almost religious fervour. The two presenters shimmered into prominence, giving a round up of the previous day’s events and the final contenders reaching the knockout stages. He took a long sip from the steaming liquid and watched with excitement and apprehension in equal measure.

“For those just joining us,” Lisa said, beaming a smile at the camera. “We have our finalised match-ups for the quarter finals ready to see. It’s been a tough week of competition between the remaining competitors and we’ve seen some outstanding displays in both brackets.”

“It really has been a pleasure to watch,” her companion interjected. “But now we’ve arrived at the final proving grounds for these remarkable young men and women. These final rounds will put on show just what makes a Gauntlet champion; the real grit and determination it takes to win.”

“Well we have a special treat today,” the woman replied. “Former Gauntlet winner Arbedan Garrick is in the studio to walk us through the quarter final brackets.” At that moment the camera panned to the right, revealing a broad shouldered man sitting off to one side at a small desk of his own. His features were weathered and Barrow could see that his nose had been broken sometime in the past. Surgical procedures could correct the irregularities, but perhaps the former fighter had decided it suited his mystique more to keep the evidence.

“So, Arbedan, give us your thoughts on this closing stage.”

Arbedan inclined his head to the presenters, before looking at the camera. When he spoke his voice was rough but warm. “This whole competition’s been a proper powder keg, no mistake. I’ve got to tell you, every one of these quarter finals is going to be a no-holds-barred piece of one to one warfare.” His image faded out and two portraits came spinning into prominence. “First of all, we’ve got Chris O’Leary against Mia Waters. I’ve watched this Battlecast kid the second he stepped into the arena and I like him. He’s young, fit, and he’s got the drive to go far. If not this year I’ll be surprised if we don’t see him win it next time round. Waters, she’s definitely the underdog in this clash, but I wouldn’t count her out. She’s come this far and she’s got more Gauntlet experience under her belt.”

The images disappeared, replaced by two others, and Barrow instantly recognised Bruno Varlin on the left. He dimly recognised the other male but couldn’t place him from memory.

“Next up, Bruno Varlin and Kye Recktor. This one’s probably an open and shut case I’m afraid to say. Recktor’s done well to get this far, but I don’t see him causing an upset here. Though, there are some rumours flying around about some behind the scenes altercations involving these two. That might make this encounter a little more fiery than usual.”

Barrow sighed heavily, took another pull of coffee and leaned forward in his seat. The next two fights had to contain the Brax-Delta competitors. Sure enough Max’s face spun up alongside the hulking form of Dustin Morto and Barrow couldn’t help grimacing at the prospect. Arbedan’s prediction of the outcome was grim. Morto had bludgeoned his way into the quarter finals and everyone was predicting a semi-final clash between him and Varlin.

And that left only one pair. As the faces of Codi and Ripple spun up onto the screen he listened intently to Arbedan’s analysis.

“This one is probably the hardest to call,” he said. “On paper, Ripple has the advantage and her form has been outstanding so far. But Codi James has already beaten fighters the ‘experts’ wrote her off against. The thing about her is that she’s completely unpredictable. I’ve never seen someone this awkward to read and that is what’s been her saving grace so far. People struggle to adapt to the way she fights. Top that off with one of the most aggressive temperaments I’ve seen in a long time, you’ve got a nasty combination.”

The presenters thanked him and then the coverage flicked over to a replay of an interview with Codi, Max and Vasco. As they were quizzed on their progress so far, Barrow spotted a look in his old friend’s eye as the coach glanced to Codi. It was unmistakeably pride, and he knew exactly why. He knew how much he’d asked of Vasco to take Codi in as a late entrant. Dodging those rules was no light matter, and Vasco himself had been the first fighter in the Gauntlet to avoid them.

In the second ever Gauntlet he fought for the Knossos City academy out of Titan, but didn’t go through the full training process. As a kick boxer in his younger days, Vasco was called at the eleventh hour to fill up a vacant team slot, and had a grand total of four days preparation. Fake identification, forged signatures and every other form of subterfuge threw him into a different world of competitive fighting. However, the mandatory conditioning period was not arbitrary. The six week timeframe was designed to ensure Gauntlet fighters were given the same course of training to prepare their bodies and avoid serious injury.

And here he was again, this time the coach who agreed to put an under-trained fighter into harm’s way. Barrow remembered vividly visiting his friend in hospital after the disastrous semi-final and the grim prediction that Vasco was finished with fighting.

He watched the interview unfold and smiled to himself. Maybe he was, but he still had his chance to make a mark on the Gauntlet, through Codi. Barrow finished his coffee with one long gulp and settled back into his chair. He would be here watching and willing her on, every step of the way.