Eschaton: the abstraction ends where the balls actually hurt
these little kids can hit balls exceptionally hard. [...] One warhead hits Ingersoll in the neck and another solidly in the meat of the thigh. Ingersoll begins to limp around in small circles holding his neck, crying in that slow-motion shuddery way little kids have when they’re crying more at the fact of being hurt than at the hurt itself.
Context
The instant the game degenerates, the sport's real physics reasserts: "these little kids can hit balls exceptionally hard," and a tennis ball drilled into a neck or "the meat of the thigh" from a few meters is an actual blunt-force blow to an actual eleven-year-old body. The megatonnage-and-INDDIR abstraction evaporates and what's left is a small kid limping in circles holding his neck. The territory the war game was standing in for was always just children's bodies on a cold court, and the balls were always real.