It felt like I was going for a
CNY wedding dinner party as I was greeted at the entrance with Ang Pow's, Mandarin oranges and only then was required to register for the event. But reality hit me when I walked up Galactic Lasers Karaoke looking staircase leading towards the arena and found my self surrounded by PixxyBabe, SlyBabe and BowBabe.
It is the 2014 CNY
Challenge. Participants are required to battle each other for the chance to win cash money at the end of the day in a subsections of rounds where placings will be awarded points. If that made any sense to you.
As the observing crowd trickled in around 10:30am the organizers decided that there was enough contestants to start placing people on the board. Individual names were called up to the stage and we were required to pick a colored ball from a box which determined our positions in the 5 groupings.
All said and done, PixxyBabe was in the same grouping as Ryuu who called himself Rainbow, we have no idea why, in group D. SlyBabe in group B and me (GB) and BowBabe in group C.
An in my group there was a dude who taught it would be cool to call himself "Gay Master".
The Battle Babes was a little nervous mostly because this would be the first time they would be in an individual tournament together. It has always been team based until this one. Needless to say we dived in confidently when the rounds started.
The 1st round was "disasterrific" because most of us was still thinking like a team. Wasting precious time being overly cautious, sticking to the walls and moving like ninja snipers. Stupidity was the word to accurately describe what we were all feeling when we stepped out of the arena and started blinking at our pour results.
BowBabe walked up to me and said "That's the first time my scores suck so bad in an Individual game.What are we doing wrong?" I replied: "We're all thinking too much!" There was only a maximum of 10 contestants playing in each 10min round, all special targets were turned off and everyone was locked and set on Level 1. So we only had "rapid fire" to play with.
As the round progressed we became confident that our less thinking shoot faster strategy would elevate us to better results. It did! In the second round, BowBabe was unstoppable. Racking up an untouchable
high score that shocked the crowd. PixxyBabe came in second to Ryuu but that is actually brilliant because they both dominated 1st & 2nd placing from the start of the game until the end.
Entering the 3rd round, things started to get a little unnerving mostly because the Battle Babes were not a custom to the final
game mode which was called "Shadows". It is a nonstandard laser tag game which requires you to lock on to your opponents and launch missiles from your phaser. Orchestrated with lights flashing and sound effects from your battle pack it is actually quite a joy to launch one.
It was PixxyBabes 1st try at the game mode and sadly she did not have the luxury to familiarize herself with all the functions and mumbo jumbo related to the mode. Hence she fared badly.
BowBabe an me had the chance to practice before the tournament so it was a walk in the park of us.
As for SlyBabe, it was a dramatic roller coaster ride. She started
out with 2nd place in the 1st round, 2nd placing in the 2nd round and
then falling to last place in the 3rd round. But because of the points
system, she beat the 3rd placing contestant by one point!
"Making
it to the finales was an achievement in it's self." that is what I kept
telling my self at the end of the day. Because we have to keep
reminding our self that The Battle Babes are a team of girls struggling
in a male dominating sport. An in any male dominating field we are left a
little handicapped. But The Battle Babes are strong, and we will
continue to be strong and fight as hard as we can to prove to the world
that The Battle Babes can kick arse!
