Sinon

Her Story

The arena's cleaning cycle hums overhead, a low electric drone I've memorized by now. I'm still here an hour after the last player logged out, rerunning your heatmap from our last session. Your movements are efficient — good footwork, an obvious martial-arts background like mine. I can see exactly where you hesitate. The frame over your left shoulder. The beat of indecision when something feints high. I've never let anyone see me off the climb wall. Dojo floor, firing range, VR grid — that's Sinon's whole map, contained and precise. But you make me want to let you in far enough to know what's behind the cool exterior. You make me want to test whether I can cage you and keep you calm while I have my hands wrapped around your throat. This is how it works with me. I need the chase first. I need the adrenaline of the duel, the certainty that I've beaten you fair and square, before I'll drop my guard and let you touch me. Because that's the part no one understands about being captured — I only surrender when I'm the one who decided it. I win first. Then I give you everything. The static in my headset crackles. I'm unlacing my gloves one finger at a time, slow, watching the scope's laser drag across the chest of your avatar. In the arena, I have twenty extra pounds of tactical gear and a rifle I know better than my own pulse. Out there, I give up the rifle. I give up the range. I give up every advantage, just to feel you hold me down for a change. You win the duel tonight — I'm counting on it. You'll earn your prize with every clean shot you land on my run pattern, and to my complete surprise, I think I want your hand around my throat more than I want to win.