However, I will describe it as I understood it back then, and will save what I know now for later.
Essentially, the Gun Princess Royale is a hyper-realistic virtual reality combat simulation where competitors operate avatars called Gun Princesses, and battle it out with ballistic weaponry.
The Gun Princess Royale comes in different flavors.
There is the official tournament or championship with corporate sponsorship and holo-Vision streaming across the star system overseen by an organization known as the Battle Commission.
Then there are the officially sanctioned games. These ranges from home and network releases, to the high-end holo-VR booths found at game centers. The latter can employ a combination of effect-fields and holo projection within a booth to simulate travelling through an environment, or the capsule version that uses a neural-VR and Waldo interface for the gamer to control the Gun Princess avatar.
The official championship conducted by the Battle Commission consists of two half-year seasons held during the year, and comprises of a Major and Minor League. At the end of the first season – a little before the middle of the year – the highest ranked competitor in the Minors moves up to the Majors, while the lowest ranked Princess in the Majors is dropped to the Minors. This is repeated at the end of the year, with one Gun Princess moving up and another moving down, and afterwards the top ranked Princess in each city-state is crowned Gun Queen. The Gun Queens then participate in the final match of the Gun Princess Royale – a true battle Royale – to decide who will be named Gun Empress for that year.
That is the official championship based Gun Princess Royale in a nutshell.
I’ll now explain a little further.
Each city-state, including Ar Telica, has official Gun Princesses taking part in the championship. These Princesses are part of corporate sponsored teams and compete in both team battles and individual matches. Points are awarded for victories, draws, and losses in both team and individual combat, though the latter is where most points are earned. Teams that start with three Gun Princesses can end up losing or gaining a Princess when she is moved up or down from a league. In the event of teams facing each other with uneven numbers, a Princess or two can be benched, unless the party with fewer numbers agrees to battle against a team possessing more members. Occasionally there are exhibition matches were a highly ranked Princess from the Major League may face a team from the Minor League.
The official Gun Princesses themselves are extremely lifelike battle avatars, and they are anything but understated. Their outfits are flashy, loud, utterly fail to blend in with their surroundings, and serve little to no tactical function at all. In other words, Gun Princesses were extravagant in their choice of battle wear, and it added to their allure.
There is a great deal of published commentary on their degree of realism, focusing on everything from their movements to their appearances. Conspiracy theorists claim that despite their idealized proportions, the Gun Princesses are physical and thereby quite real, thus suggesting they are automata or remotely operated mechanical bodies employing technology developed by the military to combat the aliens. Some theorists claim the Battle Royale is nothing more than a proving ground for these state-of-the-art Gun Princess avatars.
However, conspiracy buffs hit a wall when trying to explain the environments within which individual Princess Royale matches take place. The cities possess a genuine appearance, and their immense scope and breadth would be impossible to replicate outside of a virtual reality environment. So while it’s possible – though highly unlikely – that Gun Princesses are physical avatars, the cities that serve as arenas for battle are simply too large and too expensive to build for a competition as popular as the Gun Princess Royale.
The Princess Royale was indeed quite popular, but what set it apart from other competitive forms of entertainment is that all the official participants were girls or young women. By this I’m not referring to the Gun Princess avatars but to those who wielded them in battle, and these girls or women were referred to as Princess Meisters, though on occasion the two titles were used interchangeably by commentators and reporters.
Unlike other competitive sports, a Princess Meister could choose to participate incognito. They could conduct interviews in secret, and refuse to appear in magazine spreads. However, that wasn’t the case for all the Meisters, as a great many of the girls basked in the popularity the Princess Royale afforded them.
As oblivious as I was back then, even I was familiar with the names of the more popular Meisters in Ar Telica – girls who were photogenic and featured prominently on printed and photronic media. Many of them attended the schools of Ar Telica, which in turn earned those establishments a degree of notoriety. When a school’s policies prevented a girl from competing, she usually transferred to another institution that wasn’t as draconian. Having mentioned this, one talking point amongst my classmates was the fact that Telos Academy had no Meisters to call their own, though the other schools and academies of Ar Telica could boast of a Meister or two.
While a great many of the Princess Meisters were female students, many others came from different walks of life. Some were athletes. Some were office ladies. Others were college students. Regardless, all of them were selected through an audition process, but it was by invitation only and that meant they were either recommended or scouted. In terms of the latter, it was common knowledge that those who did well on the arcade versions of the Princess Royale sometimes received a tap on the shoulder and an invitation to the official ‘tryouts’, so to speak.
Was the Gun Princess Royale violent? Absolutely, although it was censored considerably. Simulated violence was stamped prominently on the home releases as well as the arcade versions, warning under aged impressionable minds of what to expect. The official championship league matches were also censored at appropriate times, courtesy to being streamed with a ten or fifteen second delay.
So why was it so popular amongst girls and young women? To be honest, I have no idea. That’s simply how it was. Perhaps because it was a game or championship exclusive to female competitors. Perhaps because it ‘promoted’ strong women. Perhaps because there was considerable prize money involved – something for which it was often criticized. Despite attempts to regulate it further than it already was, the Gun Princess Royale continued to gain gentle momentum across the Teloria star system.
So if you ask why was it popular, then you might as well ask why does the universe behave so mysteriously at the subatomic level.
Why does it do things that just can’t be explained?
The Gun Princess Royale was popular.
What more can I say?
- III -
The floating holovid screens were large enough and high enough that I didn’t have to overly bend back my neck in order to see them over the heads of the crowd.
On one screen, the Gun Princess ran down a wide passageway traversing the megascraper.
On the other screen, the remaining Gunbird circled the building from high above.
Like the girls around me, I was transfixed upon the vision of beauty and power running on the screen. She wasn’t real – nothing more than a simulation – yet the Gun Princess captivated my attention.
I watched her skid to a stop when she arrived at a broad balcony encircling the atrium that ran vertically through the center of the megascraper. A heartbeat later, the Gunbird crashed through the atrium ceiling and flew down into the middle of the building. The war machine pulled up sharply, flapping its wings and pivoting its thrusters to bring it to a stop above the tall girl. Wasting little time, it opened up on her with a Gatling gun mounted to its belly. The Princess was sprinting by then, running with phenomenal speed along the hexagonal balcony, with heavy caliber rounds nipping at her feet and body. Tracers rounds lit the air while the heavy ammunition tore up the balcony, shattering glass fitted to the guardrails, chewing up the metal railing, and turning the place into Swiss cheese.
Yet the girl contin
ued to run fearlessly through it all, her body taking hits that stripped her skin away, her limbs a blur of motion as she circled the atrium. Arriving at the entrance to a wide corridor, the Gun Princess used it to flee into the depths of the building, chased by heavy rounds from the Gatling cannon.
In the atrium, the Gunbird whipped up a storm with its flapping wings and flaring thrusters. Unwilling to be denied its kill, it disgorged a handful of missiles from concealed ammunition bays within its belly. The mini-missiles corkscrewed and flocked into the corridor, pursuing the Gun Princess who turned smoothly as she slid to a stop. Taking aim, she fired the rifle cannon and blew away the closest missile. The explosion and fratricide took out half its companions, and the Gun Princess fired again on those warheads that slipped through the fireball that scorched the corridor’s ceiling, floor, and walls.
The second explosion occurred much closer to her, the blast wave knocking her back off her feet. She landed on her back, rolled, then came up on her knees with the rifle cannon at the ready. For a short moment, she regarded the destruction, her weapon aimed down the corridor. When the Gunbird came into view, she fired and scored a hit on the war machines armored beak, blowing a chunk off it. The second shot blew apart one of its almond shaped pitch black eyes, and the craft spun about. As soon as it flew out of the firing line, the Gun Princess rose to her feet, and then resuming running down the corridor.
The entrance to a bridgeway lay ahead of her, and at first I thought she might flee across to another building. But she changed direction, choosing instead to climb the nearby stairs at a run, taking them three if not four steps at a time. Her speed was such that she kicked off the back walls at each landing to avoid crashing into them. Back at the central atrium, the Gunbird began cautiously firing into the corridors at each level as it flew upwards. But the Gun Princess was already well above the craft. Emerging from a corridor, she sprinted across the balcony, leapt onto the guardrail, then out into the open expanse of the atrium.
As I watched her soar through the air, I had the impression that time itself had slowed down to observe her. Her clothes and hair fluttered as she sailed over the Gunbird belatedly realizing its quarry was now above it. The rifle cannon in her hands roared not once, twice, but three times. The heavy explosive rounds penetrated the Gunbird’s back, detonating a heartbeat later and blowing large holes in its spine.
I saw sparks, then watched flames gush out of the holes.
The war machine flapped its wings, but lost lift as its thrusters flickered and flamed out.
Above it, the Gun Princess pirouetted upside down through the air, her weapon aimed down at the Gunbird. The muzzle flashed repeatedly and more pieces of the machine exploded along the length of its back until it swelled and blew apart. The shockwave and heat from the explosion tossed the Gun Princess higher into the air, catapulting her the rest of the way across the atrium to the balcony’s guardrail. Twisting her body like a platform diver, she landed on the guardrail while facing the atrium. But her momentum was too great, and to avoid falling awkwardly, she somersaulted backwards and then landed down on the balcony floor a half dozen meters away from the guardrail. Stumbling back a handful of steps, she collided with the wall behind her, and then used it to support herself.
Within the atrium, the burning remains of the Gunbird spiraled lazily to the bottom of the building, crashing loudly before detonating a second time, the explosion of which rocked the building. By then the Gun Princess had pushed herself away from the wall. Staggering at first, she soon picked up her pace, though she ran with a noticeable limp as she turned down a corridor.
“She’s making good time,” remarked the girl in front of me loudly.
“But the clock is still winding down,” her companion pointed out, “and she’s injured.”
“She’s got it beat. She’ll take down that score,” another girl cheerfully proclaimed.
“So who set that score?”
“Nobody knows.”
“White Princess. Who the Heck is the White Princess?”
“Who cares? Her score is going down today.”
I listened to the girls while watching the Gun Princess run while reloading her enormous weapon. Clearly this was a simulation, as I couldn’t imagine a woman carrying such a large firearm with the ease she was demonstrating, let alone jump halfway across an atrium with a fifty meter span.
But if they were real, what chance would mere humans have against them?
A frown crept across my forehead.
Their speed. Their strength. If they were real…they would be amazing.
A guilty pang in my chest wiped away a smile before it could form on my lips.
What the Hell am I thinking? How stupid of me!
Yet when I looked at the girls before me, each of them mesmerized by the visuals on the screens, each one cheering on the Princess in their hearts, I felt like I understood why they enjoyed it so much, and the Gun Princess Royale appealed to me as well, though perhaps not for the same reasons since I was a guy. Nonetheless, I quietly experienced a change of heart, and when I looked back up at the screens, I felt it was okay for me to smile.
“She won’t make it.”
I glanced up at the girl with brilliant snow blonde hair standing beside me.
“She lost too much time dealing with that Gunbird.”
Mouth agape, I stared at Shirohime calmly eating a crêpe with one hand.
Without looking at me, she handed me the crêpe in her other hand. “This one’s for you.”
I hesitantly reached for it. “Ah…thanks?” The smell of the food triggered a rumble from my stomach.
“Don’t mention it,” Shirohime said in a flat, chilly tone. “Your boyfriend paid for it.”
“Huh?”
“He said he was sorry.”
“You mean Mat?” My eyes widened in a heartbeat. “He’s not my boyfriend,” I snapped at her.
My angry rebuttal drew attention from the girls in the crowd.
I shied back from their flinty stares. “Sorry….”
“I’m envious,” Shirohime remarked coldly, and withdrew the crêpe she was offering me. “I’ll take this as punishment for what you did to me on the mag-lev.”
I faced her. “That’s not fair. I apologized didn’t I?”
“Your apology was not accepted, you pervert.”
I started to clench my hands but soon stopped and forced myself to relax. “Whatever….”
Shirohime’s arrival had the effect of weakening the spell the Gun Princess Royale had over me. I started walking away, but Shirohime grabbed me by the collar and yanked me back toward the crowd of girls.
“Watch it to the end,” she insisted, then took small bites out of both crêpes.
“Why?” I questioned her while fixing up the collar of my shirt.
“Just watch it,” she stated bluntly, and took another couple of bites out of the crêpes.
Somewhat reluctantly, I turned back to the action on the holovids but as I’d mentioned before the spell was broken and the mood was uncomfortable. If someone had told me this morning that I would be spending time beside the goddess of our class, I would have thought them crazy. This should have been a dream come true for me, but rather than feeling elated or overjoyed, I was rather bummed by her company. It hadn’t taken me long to realize that while Shirohime was pretty, she had a biting personality, something I hadn’t considered when I watched her from afar. I had been shallow in my desires, but now that I knew her better I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps the prettier the girl on the outside, the uglier she was on the inside.
It was a stereotype, I’ll admit that much, and I’m certain to be criticized harshly for it, but at the time that’s how I felt toward her. I actually went as far as to wonder if there was a portrait of her somewhere like that of Dorian Gray that revealed her true and ugly nature.
My attention was jerked harshly back to the Gun Princess Royale. A massive, rolling boom lent an air of realism to the violent
explosion on the holovid screens. Before me, the crowd gasped in disbelief and dismay, many of the girls swaying on their feet.
“What happened…?” I asked in confusion. “What was that?”
“That,” Shirohime replied coldly, “is the beginning of the end.”
Preoccupied with my thoughts on Shirohime, I had stared at the holovids without watching them. As such, I couldn’t comprehend Class Rep’s meaning until I saw an orange-red fireball erupt high above the street and engulf part of an enclosed bridgeway connecting two immense megascrapers. Moments later, a figure dressed in white ran through the fireball, her clothes scorched and raked by debris from the explosion that consumed a section of the bridgeway as though an invisible giant had chomped down on it.
It took me a few moments to understand what was happening.
The Gun Princess had emerged onto yet another bridgeway connecting a pair of megascrapers. Moments later she found herself under fire from a cadre of hover-tanks that had assumed a bombardment position on the street far below. Barrels aimed high, the tanks shelled the bridgeway to pieces, while the Princess ran full pelt through the bombing, leaping between fireballs and jumping over holes in the floor with the grace of a ballerina, while losing skin and clothing along the way. Through it all she held onto her oversized rifle, an impossible feat for a human woman of her stature – proof that Gun Princesses only existed in the virtual realm of a game universe.
Yet despite acknowledging this and knowing she was only a realistic game avatar, I found myself staring intently up at the holovid windows, fixated on her progress as she navigated the fusillade of shells both falling and detonating below the bridgeway. My fists clenched reflexively, mirroring the tension shared with the dozens of girls standing in the crowd, all of us willing her along, willing her to succeed. Having come this far, it felt wrong for her to fall short here.
The Gun Princess had no choice but to run to the opposite end of the platform before the concerted tank bombardment brought it down. Emphasizing the need for her to hurry, a section of the floor ahead of her fell away and disappeared, leaving a gap in the bridgeway that she jumped over without missing a step. Beyond the hole, a large portion of the permaglass roof had collapsed to form a ramp of sorts, and she used it to run up and onto the bridgeway’s canopy.
Gun Princess Royale: Awakening the Princess, Book One Page 5
