Before You Life and Death, Blessing and Curse.

*Chirp chirp*

*Chirp*

…

Peik moaned and wrestled with his heavy eyelids. They simply would not open, and he instead tried diagnosing his entire body for any injuries, pains or ailments. Nothing, but he felt heavy, and struggled with lifting his arms at all. "Maybe I am dead, and this is the afterlife - or the lack of it?", he wondered to himself, and yet he could not open his eyes much. An intruding and disturbing, intense light made it even harder as he finally managed to open his eyes a little, and he cursed internally at the bird that was chirping away directly into his ear. All he could see was dark and misty shapes, contours, indiscernible ghosts that could be anything, as he tried stumbling to his feet, raising himself up by the support of his powerless arms. The shapes seemed to move and make sounds, but he could only hear low and drugged noises as if he was looking at a talking ink stain moving around in slow motion with an immense backlighting - it could probably be the sun.

"Congratulations, contestant!", the shape said. Peik tried refocusing, but fell down and blacked out for what seemed like half an hour to himself. "Shall I help you stand to your feet?", the voice said, but Peik was unable to open his mouth properly or make sounds that were not guttural or otherwise intelligible mumbling. He felt like he had been drugged with a tranquillizer meant for an elephant, and blacked out as he fell down again, this time on his back. He opened his eyes again to look straight up at the light that had been bothering him, and then he could tell what the moving ink blot actually was - the killer robot thingy that had been chasing him and Ingrid around before, and he crawled backwards fast to distance himself from his adversary. "Welcome back, contestant! You won this round magnificently well, and you are through to the final round", the robot said in its metallic voice and, to Peik, resembled a nasal sounding announcer of the kind you could hear on an airport when calling for a passenger late for the boarding of their flight - a weird association for times of questioning reality or if he even was alive, and while he was on the ground, he tried grabbing for something around him he could throw at the metal man towering before him.

He found a rock bearing some weight and threw it at once, and it hit a shield on its shoulder joint. "Mister Peik, stop it! You have won a place in the final round!", it exclaimed in surprise of being attacked. Peik was still in a dazed shock and kept fumbling for other things around him. He grabbed a dead, dry sunflower and threw it at the metal man's face shield. "Stop it! Ok, relax, I will reveal myself", he reasoned to make Peik relax. A loud exhaling sound came from its face shield depressurizing and the hydraulics lifting it up and outwards over its head, and a human face appeared in the middle of all the wires and motherboards. Peik got even more freaked out and was taken aback as he covered his own face with his hands and arms in fear, ready to be impaled by the blade of his superior opponent's katana or by a bullet from a hidden cannon.

"Please, I do not want to be stabbed again!", he cried, totally exhausted and immersed in total confusion and in a state of shock and horror at feeling like he had died and come back to the place of his brutal death, and joined by the executioner once again. He thought maybe he had been caught in some terrible, looping nightmare to punish him by making him experience his own demise again and again. The chest plate split in two, and a ladder clicked out from the insides of the hollow metal man. The puppeteer loosened his safety belts and climbed out to reveal his whole self for the first time, yet Peik laid there in a fetal position - still covering his face and eyes.

"No, listen. You won by displaying a will to give yourself for another person! Arise, finalist", he said chivalrously, approached Peik, and reached out with his hand to help him up. Peik dared to have a peek through his fingers and quickly removed his hand to look at the man before him. It was that radiant man from before - Peik recognized the broad chin and otherwise big personality and enough charisma to go around, but this time he was wearing a strange looking unitard with the 'SuRuST" logo on it. Peik sat back up but reclined the friendly gesture from the stranger. He remained seated on the mulchy ground.

"Sorry, I have to sit down for this", he sighed as to relieve some of that nervousness and exhaustion to make room for being relieved to not be stabbed again. "You stabbed me with a sword larger than myself! Why in the world would you do that, and why am I still alive?", Peik asked him, baffled by his jolly behaviour, seemingly oblivious to the fact he had tried to chase Peik down for hours to try make it off with his life. He laughed in a loud and thin, ultimately uncharacteristic manner, chirping like the birds that had awoken Peik.

"The entire blade is a hologram - here, I'll show you", he said, still cheerful, turning around to his electronic, mobile armour. He conjured up a remote controller and made his robot companion raise its arm and present the massive katana - bladeless. He pressed a button, and the blade emerged from the cross-guard. He signed for Peik to approach it and told him to touch the blade with his hand. And surely, his hand went through the blade as a man passing through a visible ghost. "That, and the cross-guard is laced with just a teeny tiny bit of a toxin that makes you go limp and lifeless for a few minutes", he explained thoroughly, to Peik's further bafflement and shock. He looked at the guy, still with a ton of unanswered questions. He reached out his hand to Peik again, now wanting to shake his hand. "I am Arvid, by the way", and this time, Peik met his hand with a sturdy shake.

"Well... You seem to know my name already", he said, smiling while Arvid chuckled to confirm Peik's question. "Where do we go from here?", he asked Arvid, who had now stepped over to remove sunflower stems and other debris from his robot. He began tinkering with a part of its knee joint.

"Well...", he said. "We will soon be collected and transported to the Manor. Once there, I and you will team up to fight the other finalist", he explained to Peik, who had begun feeling demotivated and uninterested in partaking in even a further step of a huge competition he had not expressed any interest in, to begin with. "We will get the prizes you heard about at the beginning of the competition and a permanent place in the Manor. You will also be immune towards being entered in future 'SuRuST' competitions for a full year", he told Peik, who was wandering around tirelessly while kicking sunflowers and small rocks, anxious to be done with the whole competition, and still dreading to compete anymore. He wanted to be done immediately. " … and, here is what I imagine probably is the motivating factor for you: We will have a meal fit for kings and other royalty. Speaking of royalty, you will then get to meet the others who are still living in the Manor, those who have won an earlier 'SuRuST' competi...", he said, Peik eagerly interrupting him.

"Say no more! I could eat my own leg at this point", he said, erupting into joy at the promise of filling up his insides with good food.

"Good! Or... Please do not eat any of your own extremities", he said, chuckling in a concerned tone. "We are ready!", Arvid then exclaimed out aloud, to Peik's surprise. The ground they were standing on, transformed into a platform that took the two men down, where large men in suits grabbed a hold of their shoulders and led them through a long hallway. It transformed into a passenger boarding bridge similar to those leading passengers onto aeroplanes. This one brought them to an open vehicle that looked like a heavily armoured limousine. They were made to sit in the backseat of the driverless, electric vehicle. Arvid straightened his hair and wiped his forehead in one motion, Peik trying to get a glimpse of what was outside of the Dome.

"Can I ask... Where Ingrid and all the others go when they go out of the competition?", Peik asked him, genuinely wondering about the people he had met along the way. Arvid looked away for the first time since they had met.

"They... Are returned to their life in the Dome, of course", he said while smiling a rather slim smile, not showing teeth. The car got to the edge of what looked like the city centre, and began its climb up a steep, winding road that would likely end with arriving at the fabled 'Manor', Peik assumed.