“Well folks, with the Grand Championship over, and the Network selling off everything, who knows what's coming next - OH, THATS RIGHT WE DO! We've got one last fight for you before they sell off this sound boosting set, and it's gonna be a good one!”
“On the one side, we have Storm Viper - who's been working his way up the gladiator scene and carving a path to the top while he carves up the competition. And facing him, his one-time-partner now turned rival, the monster hunter with a heart of gold who things we should all just be friends with them, Hunch, who is sending in the recently caught B-Lizzard, scourge of the wasteland and almost a myth in the monster hunting community over the last few months.”
Viper is stood in an easy but ready position on one side, heavily armoured, with a giant sword at slung across his back, a bow at his hip, and a long, chrome tube in his hands. Across from him stands B-Lizzard, a hulking quadruped, its huge bulk covered in icy scales. The monster was calm when led into the arena by Hunch, but as soon as Viper stepped in it began snarling and straining at the restraints - as soon as the bell sounds for the fight to start, Hunch pulls the pin and lets the monster loose, scrambling up into the Love's Curse stands.
B-Lizzard's back flexes as it runs, sending the spikes that line its spine shooting into the air. Viper stands, impassive, until the last moment, then whips out his sword to shatter the falling spikes into snowy powder. As B-Lizzard charges through the snow, Viper calmly takes aim with the chrome tube, and a dazzling red line appears, instantly evaporating the snow in its path, and carving a lurid red burn across B-Lizzard's flank.
B-Lizzard roars in pain, veering wide from the charge, but wheeling back around to face Viper. With a huff and a puff, it exhales a cryogenic mist, freezing the arena floor and the hunched form of Viper, who has turned to make sure the armour takes the brunt of the damage. When the breath clears, all that is left is a patch of ice with a large iceberg where Viper used to be, and the crowd begins to count the ten seconds to elimination, and the end of Ultimate Monster Battle Arena.
“TEN!”
B-Lizzard roars in triumph.
“NINE!”
EIGHT!“
Hunch begins to lecture on how this is just payback for Viper's awful treatment of monsters over the years.
“SEVEN!”
“SIX!”
“FIVE!”
The slimmest of cracks appears in the ice, as the bookies begin to count out the winnings for the last time.
“FOUR!”
“THREE!”
The iceberg begins to crack, and the count gets quieter as some of the crowd begin to notice.
“Two!”
The crack becomes larger, and B-Lizzard turns at the noise, rearing up for another breath.
“ONE!”
A bolt from the mag-bow launches out of the iceberg, and into the roof of B-Lizzard's mouth, trailing a cable. Storm Viper leaps from the icy wreckage, shards clattering off his armour, using the cable to boost his jump so that he lands on top of the giant lizard. He unsheaths his sword, glinting in the sunlight, and plunges it into the creature's neck, holding his position as it slumps to the ground, dead.
As the Umpire announces the victory, Viper walks up to Hunch and silently deposits the head of B-Lizzard at his feet, before walking off.
We have discussed the combination of factors that brought the Network to its final crisis point over the course of Season XXXVI. By the time of the Season XXXVI Grand Championship Final, it was no surprise to anyone that neither UMBA nor the Network survived to another season.
If anything about the final days of the Network is surprising, it is how orderly the transition truly was. Already ravaged by rioting, Bastion could easily have collapsed into complete chaos with the downfall of its central institution. And yet, within weeks, a new status quo was taking shape.
Much of this can be credited to Vice Executive Diamond and Junior Executive Trend, who between them successfully orchestrated the winding up of the Network's affairs, and paved the way for its successors to step up to the plate.
As we have seen in the earlier chapters of this book, Diamond played a substantial part in destabilizing the Network, using her position as Vice Executive to air a great deal of the Network's dirty laundry in ways which would likely have undermined the organization substantially even without the concurrent financial crisis.
Had she been a mere saboteur, Diamond might have left it at that. However, she was an idealist, not an anarchist - exposing corruption in the Network served her purposes, leaving behind chaos in which other, equally unscrupulous interests might arise to fill the void, less so.
Before leaving office, Diamond ensured that the Arena itself was protected. While the majority of the Network's assets were being sold off by Trend to allow it to meet its financial commitments, the Arena was secured in a trust, with strict conditions attached. Diamond then offered stewardship of the Arena to Sprocket, Dashboard, and former Junior Executive Ironhide; all of whom she considered sufficiently dedicated to the Arena to devote themselves to its maintenance despite the conditions attached to it, designed to prevent profiteering.
While Diamond was securing the future of the Arena, Trend was overseeing the ultimate euthanasia of the Network. Preventing premature panic and chaos through impressive economic sleight-of-hand, he ensured that despite a terminal lack of capital, the Network survived until the end of the Grand Championship, when it was obliged to honour its commitments to provide prizes to the Champions.
Following Dark Steel's decisive Grand Championship victory, the 300,000 Riel prize owed to Blade as the last UMBA Champion presented the greatest single financial commitment facing the Network.
With no expectation from the Board of Executives that the Network would continue to function, the way was clear for a thorough asset-stripping of all Network property with the exception of the core Arena infrastructure. There was no resistance from the Finance branch; with Junior Executive High Noon an ardent supporter of Trend's efforts.
The reasons for this became quickly apparent, when Blade, despite requesting the majority of his prize money in cash, accepted one third of it in the form of 100,000 Riel's worth worth of Archaeotech, as well as the deeds to a substantial section of the Midseason Mansion complex - hot tubs included, all of which rapidly reappeared in High Noon and Midnight's possession, and along with the material they claimed in fulfillment of their own Double Team Championship winnings, formed much of the foundations of the nomadic settlement of Oasis.
Trend oversaw an exhaustive audit of the Network's assets, followed by a series of auctions that left the Network penniless, but all of its prize commitments - just barely - met.
The rest, as they say, is history.
A substantial proportion of the Creative and Maintenance assets not protected by the Arena trust ended up in the possession of Beetle Circus. Many are still in use today in Ultimate Maximum Battle Circus, which, along with AMBER, soon replaced Ultimate Monster Battle Arena in providing entertainment to Bastion.
Meanwhile, the Arena Maintenance Management Committee began work on restoring and rejuvenating the Arena.
And a new chapter in the history of Bastion began to unfold.
- Excerpt from The Fall of the Bastion Network, by Relic.