Zero Menace

Ten years ago, everything changed.

The world had always been truly.. odd. Since the days of the Greeks there existed a powerful race of humans, later nicknamed "metas". For years people shunned them, believed them to be undeserving of the life normal humans live. That stayed like that until 1951, when president Harry S. Truman decided that metas should no longer be outlawed, and so it was, on the first day of January, 1952, metas were no longer allowed to be discriminated against by police or citizens in the United States.

Twenty-three years later in 1975, president Stephen Wing authorized a brand new sport, this sport would take inspiration from the original Roman coliseum, except for friendly sport instead of bloodshed and executions. The coliseum eventually became an international sport by 1982, it allowed all normal humans and meta-humans to fight for sport in custom-built arenas across the globe, killing and severely injuring was completely banned, you could get put in prison for life if you broke that law. The coliseum games were highly popular, people had favorite fighters. There was merchandise and video games. Before 2029, everything seemed perfect, there had only been a few counts of deaths over the course of the 54 years the sport had been running. And then the day of February 8th, 2029 came, and the world truly saw the horrors this world held.

It was the Grand Finals '29, hundreds of thousands of people were watching, millions more online. The arena was packed, everyone wanted to see the best fighter of the year. But a strange man came out before the round started, he wore a mask to cover his face. He had access to the loudspeaker: "I'm sorry folks, but the show is going to have to end. Now." As soon as he stopped talking, the jumbotron showed live footage of massive explosives 10 feet wide, long, and tall across the stadium's ground and walls, and they had only 10 seconds left. The crowd panicked. Everyone tried to leave, many died of suffocation before they even left. Some of the fighters tried to stop the bombs, some attacked the man, but it was too late. The entire coliseum blew, 640,023 people were in attendance, only 82,004 made it out alive.

Later security footage that was recovered from the attack found the terrorist must of been some sort of a sorcerer, as he used strange energy to remotely activate the bombs from the center of the stadium. The terriost's identity has not been found, but many say that, whoever they were, it was impossible they survived.

With so many people dead, from a simple game, humanity learned how cursed this world really is.