Merlin's Furinthian Speed Ball game

**AS SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF A SPECTATOR**

The larger doors for the holodeck opens with a slow swishing noise revealing a short flight of concrete. Walking up them reveals it to be gateway onto a massive looking stadium of stone with thousands of seats all pointed to the field of the stadium floor. Extraordinarily large for an athletic field the floor had an outlined playing field at least two maybe two and a half times as long as the old American football league fields in earth's history, but at least the same width if not a little wider. It took a great deal of focus to be able to see both ends clearly. The confusing thing about this field was the concrete obstacles protruding from ground. They had many different shapes and ranged is sizes from smaller pieces that would make interesting seats all the way up to 10 to 15 foot walls that ran any number of directions along the field. Even though the seats where empty there seemed to be players down on the field stretching and getting ready for some event. As you gaze closer you can see Lt. Mackinaw sporting a red suit that fit snuggly against his thin build. In almost a creepy manner a large hovering box floats in and over the stadium. It has huge monitors places all over it and would be easy for everyone to see and view. It also has different scoreboards and a timer that is slowly ticking its way down to zero.
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With only a few seconds left the teams take their places many scattered around each teams side of the field except for a few that stand in a smaller area that is clear of the concrete formations. As the alarms sounds on the board a small column of light appears and 6 clear hard acrylic spheres, all about the size to fit perfectly in to a hand, fall from it and rain down onto into a center circle followed by a transparent ruby red sphere. The clear orbs are quickly snatched up, even a few spats of hissing and growling break up as they contested over, but the red one remains unchanged almost perfectly in the center. The clears are divided up four to two in the red teams favor. Slowly, Lt. Mackinaw steps forth inching slowly towards the red spot on the field. As he gets close a gazelle, sporting green also approaches it. There is a moment where no one make a move all the furs on the field wait to see what is going to happen.
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It occurs in a flash as Merlin bursts forth taking the red orb in his hand and bolts down into green territory. He's fast, light on his feet, but there are 15 people who need to take him down as soon as they can. The spotted cat runs at one of the shorter walls running along the side of one of the longer. He uses he speed to run up then leap across to the neighboring wall. As he makes his way along balancing gingerly the scoreboard runs up a number in red that keeps going higher the more the cat makes it. It is easy to see that the score is really how far the cat has made it along as it changes speed accordingly, but the cats luck is short lived as two green team members climb up on the wall and have him cornered. But out of the corner of his eye he spots a gazelle on his own team making his way towards him. He dismounts the wall and takes off with best possible speed down a corridor to his team mate. All is in the clear as he reaches the end but the air gets knocked out of him as a lion pounces knocking the cheetah off his feet. His teammate however was close enough to reach out with the clear orb as Merlin spread out his arm sporting the red. The color changed and the gazelle took off with the now red orb as Merlin was left to take the full weight of the lion into another wall. The clear orb he now had whisked out of his paw and back up to the scoreboard. The round was over as his gazelle friend was caught by a panther down field and all the orbs returned slowly to the black box. The players hobbled themselves up and back into position. Merlin wheezed from two broken ribs but hobbled back as well. The series repeated itself with the red orb switching often between red and green hands.
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Almost an hour passed by before the giant board made another alarming sound. Merlin's team had lost by at least 800 meters. The program was over and soon everything evaporates around you, all that remains is the cat clad in red holding his side and limping along on a now broken foot.

*She watched on in interest and horror as people got the pulp beat out of them. As Merlin went down a few times, she nearly called off the simulation. Finally, after what seemed like forever, the game ended. As the hologram shut itself off, she moved from the stands and down to him quickly. As she reached him, she looked over him quickly, scanning the areas he was holding and limping on.* C'mon hun, we need to get you to Med Bay, quickly. *With that, she dragged him off to the Medical Bay.*