Astral's Adventures

In the everlasting conquest of life and self improvement.

Few try to make themselves the best they possibly can be.

Be that person.

Ah yes, the sun was shining, Astral and Adam were doodling away on a blueprint for a massive scale building of sorts. Jaimie was relaxing, leaning backwards on a chair taking a sip of the tea that they got from the shop next door. Anders would be talking to the android Astral finally finished, asking it all about its sentience, programming and feelings. Every answer was unique and Anders was gleaming with joy. Meanwhile Astral felt that something was off. With a sip of his tea he set down a pencil and looked at the diagram.

"This is a big project, I am thinking about the bare requirement of materials and energy to power it." Astral jotted down the materials needed for the massive fifty thousand mile project. "Just by the pure ores itself are going to take forever to gather, regardless of the actual making of the parts."

Jaimie looked over to Astral. "You summoned materials from your pocket dimension for your weapons, armor, Astrid and Zeta, so using the pocket dimension couldn't you use it for infinite materials for the project?"

"While at the same time using something of a high density energy such as the cores of suns to power it. If it has enough power to run for a solar system for billions of years its something with a little upkeep? Just have to harness it." Adam spoke while drawing a pseudo design for the core room.

Astral waived his had and a thud was heard inside of the warehouse. He just dropped three tons of stone in there. "So now the materials are sourced from here. Opening our pool of metals, alloys, and mechanics we can use on the build. This is becoming a process now of what we want to do with it. From weapons systems, the outer shells armor, inner ecosystems, spaceship docking? A set of rings on the outside holding nature for preservation sake?"

Anders looked over. "Something this scale that you are talking will be noticed by everyone. It also can pull your attention away from other things." Astrid took a sip from a glass for her fluids as Anders takes a sip of her coffee.

"We already plan on taking you away from here for a short amount of time." A voice spoke from nowhere, causing Astral to put the blueprints into the pocket dimension to fire to life as his armor fires up appearing from this air. In a readied stance he pulled out his sword, Jaimie got into her spartan stance as Adam drew up two quick weapons. Astrid stood in front of Anders in a protective motion.

"Oh did we spook you?" a second voice would speak and laugh.

"Ah can we continue to tease him?" the third voice spoke from behind them, Astrid responded by flipping to the other side of Anders.

"No we are late as it is, but we now have a prize. He will be pleased."

Astral growled, he couldn't see anything talking out to him. "I'd be easier to talk to you three if I could see you. Or are you scared if I see you that I could kill you?"

The three voices all laugh. Before the orbs slowly blow more into color, one orange, one blue, one purple. The blue one spoke. "We are asking you and your friends to participate in the universal versus tournament, the winner generally goes on to rule the universe."

"Usually we skip over the milky way, but for our entertainment you are actually on par with some of the others." the orange one told them.

Jaimie spoke out of turn. "What if we don't want to partake in this tournament?"

"Well then we simply annihilate earth, thats simple enough right?" the purple one responded.

The four of their faces all went pale, no more Earth means no more home. For a base of operations Earth is perfect and has plenty of life for them to protect. Astal tilted his head looking at the Blue Orb. "So how does the tournament work? Or will you not tell us until we agree to the terms of the contest of sorts?"

The Blue Orb floated next to him and spoke. "To start, all of the pulled candidates will be put on a moon with an atmosphere for them to breathe, then after the battle begins, the sixty four final members will compete in a bracket style battle system until one lone victor remains."

"Every match must end in the opponent either not existing or being killed, there is no inbetween. We do not show mercy to anyone." The Purple orb interjected.

Adam looked at the rest of them. "Astral, if Zeta is ready, we could do this. If Earth is at stake then so are billions of other people who will die with no clue what they did wrong. I say we enter it, I will practice speed drills on our way there."

"Wait how many other species are there?" Anders looked up to the Orange orb, wanting to study all the other species.

"Many more than your simple human mind has ever seen." The Orange orb spoke. Astral pulled out a notepad and wrote down a couple of tweaks to add to Zeta on their way to the tournament. "Just remember that everyone knows that they only have one shot at life in this. If you die here, we do not reincarnate you into another life or bring you back."

Astral and the rest nodded. "I guess we have no choice. We will go through this snoozefest and win it handedly." The gods got a little chuckle out of this. From their tone, Astral got a sudden sense of dread that much more powerful people would be at this tournament. His knowledge versus any other competitor may be larger than any others, this is gonna become wild. Looking at one of the orbs, asking. "How are we getting there?"

The Blue orb spoke to them. "This way." The orbs would all fly upwards and pull the five of them with them. Astral used the pocket dimension to store Zeta, Anders would take notes as they all floated to space. Adam started to draw as much as possible on his notepad, meanwhile Jaimie held onto Astrid to keep the young AI safe. As they floated upwards all they saw was the emptiness of space. Once they left the atmosphere they were placed into a cube with two others in there, I guess they had another stop before this. Once the five of them were on the cube the blue orb spoke. "The tournament will begin ten minutes after you arrive, so prepare now if you must. Our journey to the center of the universe will take no more than five minutes." the voice faded as they felt the box move.