Number: 23 Title: Clash of the Gods Type: Original fiction ---------- Synopsis: ---------- Premise: In 2019, the UN formally adopted the National Alliances Plan. The NAP formed a single world government under a new United Nations banner, while allowing countries to keep a measure of their sovereignty. The countries could make war in limited fashion, keep some different laws and currencies - to an extent. They could also form alliances against other countries or pretty much any organization they wanted to - including the new UN. That was two years ago. The world is once again on the brink of war, a twisting series of alliances and powerful armies have been risen, and now the unstable network of you-watch-my-back-and-I'll-watch-yours agreements is beginning to fall apart. Mankind's advances in weapons and modern warfare make this a totally unacceptable turn of events. And the pending environmental crisis has everybody pushed to their limits. Enter Project Mobeus. Project Mobeus is a simple clause built into the NAP in case this sort of thing happens. If a large enough group of countries formally endorse the Mobeus plan, they will be bound into a tournament of elimination fought in the form of single combat. The ultimate winner becomes the absolute, utter ruler of the participating nations. And just so no-one can bend the competition to their whims, a number of self-operating safety checks have been placed in the rules. What the public doesn't know, however, is that the world governments have been _planning_ for the Mobeus operation since the World Economic Collapse of 2001. Now, an entire generation of super-warriors is about to take the front lines to compete for a daunting prize on the most harrowing, most challenging, most vicious battlefield ever devised. One person will change the course of our history. The only question remaining is, who will it be? ---------- Dramatis Personae: ---------- 01 Trixie: The debutante of the bunch. Cute widdle cuddly Trixie, the cold blooded mercenary. 02 Max: Projecting an 'ordinary guy' image, Max is a hatred-ravenged maniac inside and won't hesitate to show you why. 03 Timmothy: A most dangerous assassin who wiped out his own existence by killing anyone that knew him/knew of him. A truly ruthless fighter. 04 Galacus: A military experiment gone awry, Gal is the tall silent type with a fetish for large weapons. He's got a lot of debts to collect on... 05 Tirah: A 'Newtype' fighter searching for a meaning to her life. 06 Ikari: A mysterious, emotionless assassin from the far east. Look up 'precision' in the dictionary, and there you'll find the only known photograph of him. 07 Kibbs: A martial artist who's no longer sure he wants to be here. 08 Solomon: A middle-east land pirate and mercenary who's out to win one for the gipper. 09 Beechum: An ex-special forces Canadian national with a 'walk softly and carry a very, _very_ big stick' complex. All around nice guy. 10 ______: A person (perhaps a clone), that seems to have no soul at all. He is led into battle strapped into a cage like a dangerous animal. 11 Kassana: Perhaps Indian, perhaps Native American, perhaps something else entirely. Kassana's personality is practically non-existent, like his manners are a complete frabrication, a fact he doesn't bother to hide. 12 Dan: A hired gun from Detroit with the fastest trigger-fingers in the west. The concept of killing seems to escape him, even though he's so damn good at it. 13 Eta: Rurikan's partener, Eta is the large Thai fighter turned street enforcer. 14 Rurikan: Eta's partener, Rurikan has basically the same job as Eta and fights in roughly the same fashion, but knows a whole lot more about guns from his early days as an arms dealer. 15 ? Okay, there was supposed to be more, but I got lazy. Marcus: The mastermind behind Project Mobeus and the only man who has any idea what is happening during the course of the story. Smart, suave, and surprisingly ethical, given what he's set in motion. Latex Man: A shadowy figure, pulling strings from behind the scenes and being a general pain in Marcus' ass. Probably a member of the Illuminati. Carbon: A self-styled computer hacker, rebellion leader, polical reformer, anarchist, and sex fiend. The very definition of a cunning bastard.