Part 2: First Blood
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As the sun rises over the island of Shoda, the still morning air is split by the sound of four low-flying airplanes, each one moving at high speed towards a corner of the island. Below, the four arenas are clear to sight, with sharp lines dividing the end of a city street from the rocks of the tidal pools, or the sprawling, ruined amusement park from the forest that sits on its border. The four planes bank around the six-story tower that acts as communications hub and final goal, before moving towards their points.

“And welcome back! Regular viewers know that this is the point when we typically introduce our Babes. After all, with over a thousand applications, we always manage to find some exciting stories to keep the games interesting. However, market research has shown that no one really likes to sit through twenty introductions before getting to the good stuff, so we’re switching things up. Today’s episode will be following the five contestants of Airplane Alpha, which will be dropping low over the Forest arena and dropping off its cargo. We’ll introduce these five girls, and follow them for a few hours. On our next episodes, we’ll show you what’s been going on in the other areas at the same time.

“So, let’s get a view in to our airplane camera, Joe.” The camera cuts to the shaking inside of a cargo plane, where five women are sitting, their expressions ranging from apprehensive to outright terrified – except for one, who is sitting back with her eyes closed, a slight smile on her face. It zooms in on the first girl, a rail-thin black woman, roughly 5’6”, who looks to be roughly twenty years old, with long, flat hair pulled back into a bun and deep, suspicious eyes. She is wearing a deep green bikini, which manages to cover her B-cup breasts with only slight difficulty, and the same sandals as the other girls. “This is Marie. She’s a whore from Los Angeles who’s been having some hard times lately. One of her friends just died, and she’s realized she doesn’t have many years left before she gets washed up and wasted, or just dies. She’s decided that she would rather have a slim shot at riches than a guaranteed slow, miserable death, so let’s give her a hand and hope for the best. If she does die, she’s leaving her profits to her dear mother.”

The camera tilts to just past Marie. The woman sitting next to her couldn’t be more different – a slightly plump, short, extremely buxom young white woman, getting close to thirty years old, with golden curls that cascade tight around her shoulders and bangs, and soft grey eyes. She is wearing a pale blue dress, and keeps starting to try a conversation with Marie. Marie ignores every awkward overture, and the woman eventually lapses into silence. “Poor Cynthia is joining us from the city of London, where her husband persuaded her that their family really needs the money to grow. You ask me, he’s hoping the family will grow with one less mother, if you catch my drift. Cythina’s leaving her cash to her not-so-devoted hubby, but she seems to think she has a shot. Personally, I hear she’s an odds-on favorite to be out in the first round.”

From here, the viewpoint cuts to the opposite side of the plane, as it banks around the tower. “Now, there’s a saying here at Babehunt that we get babes across the three Ds – Desperate, Delusional, and the ones with a Death Wish. Sonja from Sarajevo here fills the third category. A low-level office clerk, Sonja feels as though her entire life was a waste. She’s at the point where only a very serious chance of death can galvanize her. I’m pretty sure she’ll be plenty galvanized by this time tomorrow, if she makes it that long.” Sonja is a 5’8” Slavic white woman, maybe twenty-five years old, with short black hair cut into bangs, a trim and athletic figure, and gorgeously perfect C-cup breasts – squeezes into a slightly-too-small rock-grey bikini. She is sitting resolutely, looking out the window at the approaching forest.

As the copilot comes back to ensure that the girls are ready to jump, the camera pans to the fourth woman, who is smirking at the others. She is twenty-seven years old, almost six feet tall, with a very trim, wiry build, wearing a brown-and-green striped bikini over small B-cup breasts. Her black hair is cut into a military-style crew cut, and she glances up at the camera with a smile before returning her attention to the rope the plane is lowering for girls to slide down as it slows to its minimum speed over the first clearing. “Here we have Rachel. Rachel is with the IDF – the Israel army, for those not in the know – and wrote us a rather scathing little piece about how we’ve tilted the field by putting loser girls against poorly-trained hunters. She promised to wipe the floor with the competition if we dared to let her compete. Guess she’ll get to find out what’s what, eh?”

Finally, as Sonja jumps, the camera pans to a Japanese girl in the back, twenty-one years old, with her hair done in a traditional ponytail but her nose pierced. She is fighting back tears already, her red dress dotted with marks of moisture and her D-cup breasts jiggling under the sheer fabric as she tries not to show her fear. She hangs back as the other girls start to jump, looking as though she can find an escape, then takes a deep breath and starts forwards. “Finally, we have lovely, foolish Miko. Miko bet fifty thousand dollars that she didn’t own on a Yazuka-owned game, and lost. The Yakuza honorably gave her a choice between paying in the Babehunt, or paying with her life, with the promise of death if we didn’t accept her. A reluctant, terrified, beautiful girl with her life on the line? How could we resist?”

Now, the girls are dropping into the treeline, and the camera cuts, showing each Babe landing with varying degrees of smoothness – Rachel lets go of the rope and rolls easily, while Cynthia almost misses the clearing entirely, crashing to the ground and rolling into a tree, her dress tearing in several places as it catches on a thorny bush. “Ooh. Not a great start for Cynthia. Looks like a lot of small scratches and bruises. Bad way to start.”

The girls are spread out, but are already on the move. Most of them were watching the treeline as they came in, and a few have a rough idea of where to search for the first pylon. They aren’t all ready for the part of the challenge that has nothing to do with hunters, though. Within ten minutes, Cynthia and Miko are struggling, having missed easy paths and stumbled through briars. The sounds of them tearing their way free are audible throughout the arena. The camera cuts to Charlton Cole, wearing camo gear and holding his signature bolo-launcher. “Babehunt rules stipulate that ranged weapons must have a distance of no more than twenty feet, and require manual reloading after each shot.” The announcer whispers, as Charlton slips through the trees. “Charlton is a professional, and will bide his time. Most of his traps are set up near the pylons, which should work out well for him.”

In the forest, Sonja feels a thrill of excitement with every snapped twig and strange sound. Here, so different from her life before, she finally feels a hint of something real. She looks behind her, thinking that she heard something, and presses herself against the ground as the sound is repeated. A moment later, there is a flash of blue, as Cynthia stumbles past. The housewife is clearly unsuited for this event. Her dress – poorly chosen for her starting arena – has been torn badly, hanging in shreds around her frame, and she is sobbing softly as she tries to find her way back towards a path. For a moment, Sonja feels that she should help her. After all, they are enemies, but it’s not as though Cynthia seems like a real threat. She starts to raise herself from the forest floor, opening her mouth to speak.

In that moment, Cynthia steps down heavily on a patch of dry leaves, and screams in sudden pain. Sharp metal spikes have been placed in the floor, with curved hooks that snap out as Cynthia’s weight shifts them. She collapses to one knee, staring in pain-filled incomprehension at her left foot, through which one of the hooks has punched out. Its top has split down like a harpoon, and as she tries to pull her feet up in panic, she only succeeds in momentarily digging those two hooks into the top of her foot. She whimpers again, tears staining the mascara on her face, as she tries to find a way to relieve the terrible pain in her foot without tearing it further apart.

Hidden in the bushes, Sonja is staring in horror. Not at the hook. She’s already passed two of those traps, obvious to anyone who is walking carefully and studying the ground. No, what forces her back to the ground is the figure flitting through the trees towards Cynthia, who is now trying to push the jutting spikes back into the point of the harpoon, scratching her fingers as she scrabbles with the slick blood now coating the trap. She hasn’t seen his approach – not yet. For a moment, he stops behind her, crouching. He smiles, waits a few more seconds as Cynthia tries and fails to pull herself free. As she begins to rock back on her one free knee, Charlton steps forwards, grabbing both of her shoulders and shoving her forwards.

Cynthia screams, her hands spasming out to break her fall. This, of course, is what Charlton was hoping for. Spikes pass through her palms as they slam down, pinning her hands to the ground. Cynthia is left with her face only inches away from another spike. More press their sharp tips gently against her breasts, shaken loose in the fall, now hanging full and loose.

“Mm, tasty.” Charlton laughs, slapping Cynthia’s rump, pulling her dress up so that the camera has a full view of her exposed cunt and ass. He leans over her, fondling her breasts and nudging them in tight circles around the spikes, and she screams again as tiny droplets of blood form in a ring around her nipples.

“Please, no!” She begs, tears streaming down her face to mix with her blood on the soil. “I’m a married woman.”

“I read your file, girly, just like you read mine. Your husband doesn’t care.” Charlton answers. Reaching down, he lightly fingers Cynthia’s cunt, and she cries out again. He takes a step back, and she tries to pull herself up. Her left hand tears free of its spike, and she screams again, unable to force the same to her right. Her hand is now a mess of flesh, and Charlton steps forwards, placing one foot squarely on her neck. “Now, that ain’t right.” He mutters, reaching into his pocket for a cigarette, and lights it. “You’re a devoted wife, aren’t you? You should be seen and not heard.”

Slowly, inexorably, Charlton forces Cynthia’s head down, angling it towards the last of the spikes until it is lined up with her mouth. She fights him with every breath, her mangled hand flailing uselessly, pleading and screaming as the spike slowly draws closer. As it passes into her mouth, Charlton pauses, keeps his foot in place. “Anything else to say?” He asks genially. Cynthia has fallen silent, blood dripping from tiny cuts where the spike has bitten into her lips. She is crying, eyes wide and disbelieving. “Thought not.” Charlton says brightly. With a sudden shove, he pushes her head down, and the spike punches through her back, missing her spinal column by a half-inch as hooks curve down and bite into her head from behind. Cynthia loses her balance then, collapsing forwards, and a dozen spikes punch through her breasts, chest, and legs, leaving a dozen hooks on her back, spread like a pincushion.

Charlton steps back, satisfied, and tosses the now-burnt out cigarette onto Cynthia’s corpse. He moves into the woods for his next target.

In the bushes, Sonja is perfectly still. She stays that way for over five minutes after Charlton leaves, every moment an agony of fear that he has seen her, that he is only looping around to finish her off. Her blood feels as though it has stopped running. She starts to move again, more hesitant.

After seeing not just the fact, but the manner of Cynthia’s death, she is fairly sure that she made a mistake. But it’s too late to back out now.