Won't Back Down: Won't Back Down

by Unknown

  True to his style, Yosi bounced off, growling and coming for Kell like a guided missile. The angrier he got, the sloppier he got, so Kell dodged at the last second, this time tripping him as he went past. That earned some boos and laughs from the crowd, who thought Kell was being cowardly. But they'd learn soon enough that there was a method to his evasiveness.

  Yosi was furious now. His scales were starting to darken, which was never a good sign, and his growling had ramped up to a full-throated snarl. He abandoned his game plan for a clumsy lunge, more a tackle than anything, and Kell wasn't fast enough to get away, so he had no choice but to take it, hitting the mat hard as Yosi seethed like an angry dragon.

  But being on his back wasn't so bad, as Yosi had a longer reach than he did, and that put him in close. Kell got his knee up into his midsection, which was his most vulnerable spot, and then peppered his ribs with short, sharp jabs, even as he was trying to regain his breath. He couldn't overwhelm Yosi with his greater strength, but he could wear away at him. That was his only real strategy with the stronger aliens. In his mind, he pictured them as monstrous, towering trees, and he was an axe. One chop at a time, and eventually they would fall. If they didn't crush him first.

  Yosi's fists pounded into him, body blows that hurt but could otherwise be ignored, until he wised up and started hitting Kell in the head. That was when Kell kicked him off and rolled back up to his feet. Kell's head was ringing and his sides ached, but he kept that at the back of his mind. He couldn't focus on it if he wanted to win this match.

  Yosi was back on his feet just as quickly, and back in attack mode. As he came for him, Kell turned into a spinning kick that caught Yosi flush in the jaw. He slammed back into the force field, and the crowd roared, although it was half in encouragement and half in rage. Kell was never going to get the entire crowd on his side. He was a human, after all, and most of the galaxy thought of them as sentient rats, scavengers just barely above farm animals. The fact that he was Champion had enraged a certain part of the galactic populace, and he hoped that one day he'd win them over. But he knew it wasn't going to happen any time soon.

  Although momentarily stunned, Yosi was furious, and he let out a short, sharp bark before swinging one of his big fists at him. Kell dodged one but was unable to duck the second punch as Yosi's first attempted hit was a feint. The true hit slammed into the side of his head, and Kell reeled, hitting the force field and just barely staying on his feet. He could taste blood in his mouth, sour and metallic. Yosi charged forward, making a strangely high-pitched snarling, yipping sound that seemed incongruous with his fearsome appearance. Kell dodged out of the way just in time, spinning into a side kick that caught Yosi right in his rib cage, just above the short ribs.

  The way Yosi stumbled and dropped to one knee, Kell knew his softening technique was working. The only question was, would Kell remain conscious long enough to take advantage of it? He'd have to finish him off soon, or Yosi would rip his head off.

  Kell ignored the fog in his brain and delivered a snap kick to Yosi's face, sending him crashing to the mat, dazed but only partially harmed. The noise of the crowd was background white noise, as constant and implacable as an ocean crashing against its shore. Kell went in for a finishing move, but Yosi wasn't done yet, and he kicked Kell square in the stomach.

  It was at half force, but it still felt as if his abdomen had accordioned, and if he'd had anything but nutritional substitutes before the match, he'd have barfed them all up. He staggered back, grabbing his stomach with one arm as he fought his natural inclination to double over. Kell forced himself to concentrate through the pain as Yosi rolled back up to his feet, still angry but now looking pained, rivulets of pale blue sweat running down his face like tears.

  Yosi tackled him, throwing hard body punches as they hit the mat. Kell squirmed up from underneath Yosi, protecting his head with his arms until he could free his legs, and he wrapped his lower thighs around Yosi's head in a vise grip. This allowed Kell to punch him repeatedly in the face, mostly in his vulnerable snout. Soarai were generally tougher than humans, making it harder to hurt them, but this attack gave Kell a good chance at making a dent in his extremely tough hide. Kell's fist was beginning to ache before Yosi's nose began to bleed reddish-blue blood.

  He got up on his knees, pulling Kell up off the canvas, and slammed Kell down on his back, using nothing but his superior upper body strength. They certainly weren't one of the weaker races. With pain reverberating down his spine, Kell unlocked his legs and managed to kick Yosi in the face as he drove his fist down towards him. Kell blocked it with his forearm, and even though it felt like he might have broken a bone on impact, he grabbed Yosi's arm and rolled, taking him along for the ride.

  Kell wrapped his arms around Yosi's neck and locked his arms in a sleeper hold, as it was the only chance he'd have to knock him out. Yosi tried to squirm out of it and couldn't, so he began throwing hard elbows, many of which hit Kell in his tormented ribcage and gut. But he kept holding on, as he knew he couldn't take much more of a beating from an alien this powerful, and Kell wanted him to submit, as he didn't want to kill him. And death or submission were the only two things that brought a match to an end.

  For nearly a minute, Kell feared he was going to lose his grip and surely the match. But he held on with all his strength, and finally Yosi tapped out. The bell sounded through the arena, along with a chorus of mixed cheers and boos. Kell staggered to his feet as the announcer boomed, "Winner and still Champion—the human, Kell McHale!"

  He raised his fist in acknowledgement, panting for breath, and even gave Yosi a hand up, though every movement sent a sharp, screaming pain through his side. Yosi took it and stood up, still clearly woozy, and said, "Good fight, human. Next time, I'm just gonna rip your arm off."

  "You can try," Kell replied. No alien liked losing to a human. For most, it was a new experience, and he'd learned a long time ago to take none of the bitterness personally.

  The force field around the ring snapped off, and he saw Layne waiting for him at the edge, concern etched on his face. Although Kell gave him a faint smile, it was all he could muster. Every step was agony, and he was pretty sure he was going to pass out soon.

  As soon as he was within reach, Layne slipped an arm beneath his shoulders and helped hold him up. "How are you?" he whispered.

  "I'll be lucky to make it to the table," Kell whispered back. He leaned his weight against Layne gratefully, although he had to be careful; his sides ached, and pressure made it worse. Cameras hovered around them like especially annoying flies, and Kell knew he had to retain his poker face and keep from wincing. No matter how much it hurt, showing pain was considered a weakness.

  It felt like it took forever, but the walk back to the locker room couldn't have been over two minutes. They left the cameras behind as the door closed, and only then did Kell sag his weight entirely against Layne, who almost tipped over but managed to keep them upright as he helped Kell to the diagnostic table. One of the show's doctors, a Moltrias named Zrhen, was standing at the ready, but she made no move to help him onto the sensor device. She was happy to let the fighters have whatever dignity they could manage, if indeed they had any left. Kell was no judge. He wasn't sure he had dignity to start with.

  Moltrias were hairless humanoids with skin like melted wax and big black eyes that looked pupilless, but were really just incredibly dark. It was like looking into the heart of a black hole. Their skin tone could vary from storm cloud gray to a kind of eggshell white, although Zhren herself was caught somewhere in between the two, either a very pale gray or a sort of cloudy white. For some reason, their hands always seemed cold too, or maybe that was just a doctor thing, regardless of species. Her cold fingertips skated over his body, sending tiny lightning bolts of pain straight to his spine, where they subsequently rode his nerves to his extremities and tingled like the stings of angry insects. It took all of Kell's willpower not to squirm.

  "Four cracked ribs," Zrhen reported,
her voice carrying the slight metallic tinge of the translator unit. "Some internal bleeding. Two broken fingers. Hairline fracture of the right occipital bone. You need to stop taking these beatings, Kell. You're not getting any younger."

  "No one is," he pointed out, fighting himself to keep awake. He really wanted to sleep now, just close his eyes and hibernate for the next eighteen hours or so. But that was generally not advised. "Just patch me up, okay?"

  Zrhen's lipless mouth thinned until it was barely seen at all, and she slapped a medi-patch on his arm. "You men never listen to me. I don't know why I bother."

  "Because the show keeps you in kzleck?" the director's voice suggested.

  She made a rude Moltrias gesture to the camera his voice had come from then went on giving Kell dermal patches and sub-dermal nanite injections. The pain subsided in waves, even though he could feel the strange, tingling burn of the nanoscopic robots knitting his bones back together. He'd heard from some old timers that you got used to it, but he couldn't imagine that ever happening.

  The cameras already in the locker room hovered in a loose cloud around the table, although they weren't in record mode. This was behind the scenes stuff they didn't want to show to the general public. They didn't want the audience to know how badly injured the fighters got, although they seemed to like a lot of blood in the ring. That didn't add up to Kell, but the producers seemed to think it was perfectly logical. Of course, there was much about the broadcast angle he didn't understand and probably never would, and he never would have done it if he were able to be a part of the UFL without being a part of the show, but that wasn't how it worked. It was a shame too, because he wasn't exactly known for his gift of gab or magnetic personality.

  Once she was done with her treatments, Zrhen grabbed her small medi-kit and said to the cameras, "I'm gonna need a raise if you keep bringing humans in to be slaughtered. It's cruel."

  "I'm okay, Zrhen," Kell said, sitting up. He could breathe without hurting now, the weird tingling feeling in his extremities fading away like the barely visible bruises on his dark skin. Every now and then, he wished he was one of those alien races with protective scales or armor plating.

  Zrhen gave him a look that was hard to interpret, but he was relatively certain it was scathing. Then she left, the door shutting swiftly behind her.

  Layne came up to him with a small smile, giving him a soft blue towel. "Tub's ready."

  "Great." He padded off to the far side of the room, where a metal curtain retracted at his approach and showed a steaming tub sunk into the floor.

  Kell stepped out of his shorts and into the hot tub, which was opaque with a pearlescent color scheme that revealed the water was tainted with spicer, a mild painkiller and muscle relaxant absorbed through the skin. As he lowered himself down into the nice, warm bath, he sighed as the painkiller made him feel ever-so-slightly numb, leeching out the residual echo of pain that the nanobots could never quite remove. It also made the fighters look content and relaxed for the cameras, which was probably the main reason the show used the stuff.

  They allowed him a minute to relax and let the spicer work its magic before the camera cloud came to hover about two feet away from him at face level, and the show's host did the standard post match interview. There was nothing new, even though they tried to think of new ways to word the same questions. Yes, he was happy to be the human Champion, and he was glad he inspired others, but he was just a fighter doing his job and no more. Boilerplate stuff, the kind producers liked to hear. In theory, they liked their fighters "showing personality," but in truth, the more fighters deviated from script, the quicker they were kicked off. Kell wanted to be there as long as he could keep fighting, although he feared he could see the end on the horizon. The aliens were getting bigger and stronger, and he was simply outmatched. Strategy would only get him so far before superior strength crushed him. But he intended to stay ahead of it as long as he could, as long as his skill, his will, and his body could hold on.

  Finally, the cameras flew off like a flock of mechanical birds, and as soon as the door shut, Layne undressed, revealing his chiseled musculature, and sunk his lithe, naked body into the tub beside him. Kell was a little sorry to see it disappear, as he could stare at Layne's crystal-cut body all day. "How are you feeling?" Layne asked, sinking down until his chin was just above the softly bubbling water.

  "A lot better than before, thank you." The spicer made him feel warm first, like the water was heating up, then it would level out, and a feeling of contentment would sink into his bones. Drowsiness came soon after, but by that point, he didn't care.

  Layne's leg brushed his beneath the water, and Kell used his foot to trace down Layne's well-defined calf. Spicer made it difficult to get fully aroused, but no one said he couldn't enjoy a little bit of physical intimacy beyond that. Layne leaned his head against Kell's arm, and he was content to lean right back into him.

  After a long, enjoyable minute relaxing in the warmth of water and spicer, Kell asked, "Who are you fighting next?"

  Layne sighed, apparently not wanting to break the tranquil mood. But he did, because they didn't keep secrets from one another. As Layne had once joked, it was really hard to do that when they shared a locker room. "M'rAyta, tomorrow night."

  Only the spicer kept Kell from being upset about this, but he still felt a faint twinge in his stomach. "So soon? Why isn't Ronash taking him on?"

  "You didn't hear? Ronash had to return home; the mother of his clan died. So he's out for the foreseeable future."

  "That's too bad." It was, and not only because Ronash was a decent fighter. He was also one of the rare ones who really belonged in the featherweight category. Some of the aliens, such as M'rAyta, were simply too powerful to be classed featherweight, no matter how much they weighed. But that was an argument that fell on deaf ears in the UFL home office because nearly every intelligent being he could think of was technically stronger than human beings. Those opposed to humans in the UFL would often use that as their main argument. "I guess you'll have to put in an extra training session tomorrow."

  Layne looked up at him, his ebony eyes peering through sodden lashes. "You think I'm not good enough?" His voice was equal parts accusatory and disappointed.

  "You're good enough. I just want you to win the fight with as few injuries as possible."

  Layne rolled his eyes. When he did that, he looked so much like a teenager that Kell got a strange impulse to tickle him, but he never did. Nor did he tell Layne as much because he didn't want to get punched in the arm. "I can be patched up, Kell."

  "It takes a toll, and you shouldn't have to pay it. Besides, it hurts me to see you hurt."

  "Like it doesn't hurt me to see you take a beating? It's just part of our lives."

  "Doesn't mean it doesn't suck," Kell said, followed by a tired sigh.

  The only reason Kell had gotten into the Universal Fighting League was because his adopted alien parents were trainers, and from the perspective of a kid, the fights looked fun. When his parents tried to discourage him by pointing out that humans couldn't compete because they were just too weak, it made him want to do it even more. One might have thought they'd have understood that. That kind of instinctual rebellion was common to all adolescents, even the non-human kind. Maybe they thought he'd grow out of it, or change his mind once he had his first practice fight, but getting his ass kicked just made Kell want to come back. He wanted to keep going until he could do the ass kicking, and that was exactly what he did.

  Not for the first time, Kell wondered if he'd do it again, knowing what he knew now. It was brutal, it was relentless, and his unprecedented reign as a human Heavyweight Champion had brought him far more attention than he had ever wanted. But if he hadn't joined this brutal sport, he'd never have become the vanguard of the human equality movement, and he'd never have met up-and-coming young fighter Layne Ortiz, who was the love of his life. So yeah, he would do it again in a heartbeat.

  He kissed the top of Lay
ne's head and pulled him into an embrace. Layne just leaned into him, their warm, wet skin slick but not slippery. The spicer was making him drowsy, and while the dreams on the drug could be extremely vivid and a bit disorienting, they weren't terrible. "Think I can convince the producers to install a hot tub bed in our quarters?"

  Layne chuckled, resting his hand lightly on Kell's thigh. "Such things don't exist, do they? 'Cause if they do, we need to demand one immediately."

  They allowed themselves a couple more minutes of painless relaxation, and then Kell made himself get out before he fell asleep. Wouldn't it have been something if he died by accidental drowning? All those weirdo fundies who claimed humans were too weak physically and mentally to compete at "regular" levels would use it as proof of inferiority.

  They dried themselves off leisurely and dressed in clean sweats, then headed out of the locker room. The hallway was empty, though he could hear the distant buzz of cameras held back in an offshoot corridor, and the distant rumble of the crowd still filtered out of the stadium. There was a scuffed metal door with maintenance markings on it, but the fighters knew it was a hidden exit that would let them get out of the arena without the press hounding them. Kell waved his hand at the hidden sensor, and once it confirmed his ident chip, the door slid aside to reveal a dark metal lift. He and Layne stepped inside, and the door slid shut silently. The lift began to rise rapidly, but it was so smooth that he only knew it had stopped when the doors slid open on the secret upper hangar. An automated car stood by, waiting for them, and once they were inside, the doors sealed, the windows turned black, and the vehicle hummed off to its programmed destination.