by Jamie Hawke
He dropped the knife, fell to his knees, choking. Someone ran forward to help him, the others nearby shouting, and Generva frowned. Twitch and Gale weren’t looking too happy about it either, but at least Twitch only shrugged when I looked her way. It wasn’t my fault—there’d been a knife coming at me!
After a moment, the man fell, limp. Two figures in green robes appeared and dragged him away as the crowd fell silent.
“Right, that would mean you pass,” Generva said, standing from her stool and making for the exit. “Only, we’ll have to talk about your showmanship.”
She left, her crew in tow, and I started after them.
“Are we supposed to follow?” Twitch asked.
“Be at the arena,” one of Generva’s guards said. “When the sun passes the lip of the dome.” He gestured, and then walked off to join the rest.
“And how the fuck long is that from now?” I asked, walking over to join my ladies. “We’ve wasted enough time.”
“Maybe it’s not time wasted,” Gale said. “I mean if we can do some intel. Find out who’s who there, what sort of fights and opponents you’ll be facing.”
“Right,” I said, seeing her point, but wanting to get right to it. I excused myself to change and had just taken off the strange fighting underwear when Generva pulled the back curtain aside. She stood there with pursed lips, looking me up and down.
“Do you mind?” I asked, starting to slide into my boxer briefs.
“I forgot to say,” she motioned for the fighting underwear, “bring those. You’ll be fighting in them.” I nodded, my cock now covered but my bulge clearly still visible. Her eyes were very focused on it. “And also…”
She stepped in, letting the flap close behind her. “Since we’re… here. I wanted to say, that was some punch.”
“Thank you…?”
Her eyes darted up to mine, then back to my body as if exploring it, as if her eyes could feel my muscles. “Maybe we could come to an agreement on something. You want easier fights, I can make that happen.” She stepped forward, the frown she’d worn almost the whole time fading as she reached out and grabbed my cock and gave it a squeeze.
I frowned, moved her hand gently aside, and said, “Why would I want easier opponents?”
“You’re missing the point here,” she said, then took a corner of her orange dress and lowered it so I could see her shoulder. “But to answer your question, so that you can win, of course. More spoils.”
The top of her breast was visible, to include a dark line at the edge of her areola, but I reached out, covered her back up, and said, “No thank you.”
“To me or the fights?” She stared at me, eyes focused on mine, finally. There was such a dark ferocity there that I almost wished she’d go back to staring at my dick. I even considered whipping it out to get her distracted, but no, I couldn’t.
“I’m going to fight, but I want the best you’ve got,” I answered. “In fighters, that is. Sorry, but as for this?” I nodded to my dick. “It’s spoken for.”
“You’d reject me?”
I wasn’t sure what else to say other than, “Yes.”
She cringed, took a moment to process this, and then spat at my feet. “You’ll regret this. It might be better for you to turn and run, coward. Because the foes you’ll face in there, I’m going to make sure they don’t let you walk after today. Then we’ll see if you come slithering back to me. Fucking snake. Piece of fucking horse shit.”
She stormed off, leaving me both confused and worried. Should I have made a different decision at that moment? It was weird, but I now had this loyalty to my ladies. Even though there was more than one of them, it was like I owed them a loyalty specifically, as a group, and going outside of that wasn’t cool.
Whatever she was going to throw at me, I’d just have to up my game and be ready for it.
12
It was eerie, walking around in the open when we knew this supervillain of supervillains, Ranger, could possibly be on planet by now. When we’d last met, it had been brief and he didn’t know I was someone worth paying attention to. By now I imagined he knew I was one of Apollo’s sons, to say nothing of the fact that I’d just helped steal one of his main guys and attacked another.
The streets of the bazaars were what I imagined Tunisia to be like, based on tourist sites I’d checked out when planning my graduation trip with some friends. We’d ended up going to Canada instead, which was still interesting, but not exactly what I’d been expecting. Since I didn’t see myself getting to Tunisia any time soon—let alone Earth—I made the most of it, enjoying talking with the shopkeepers, smelling some of the local spices, and sampling some of the fried meat dumplings they sold.
We ended up eating at a square that was basically a series of benches surrounding a statue of a great warrior, sword held high. It could’ve been somewhere in Italy for all I knew, if I hadn’t known we were on an alien planet, deep in the ground. Ships were coming and going overhead, groups of tourists coming for the fights.
As I was watching them all pour in, something hit me. “Didn’t you say that pregnancy was rare here? So how can there be so many?”
“Well, it’s rarer among the supers,” Twitch explained. “However, even among them, there was a time when a certain Tier One super who called herself a goddess would go around and, basically, her powers helped others be more fertile.”
“And I hear there was a time when it wasn’t so rare,” Gale chimed in. “Though, that would have been for people older than us, for sure.”
I nodded, supposing that made sense, in a weird way. It explained why I saw so many fewer children than adults.
“Might not want to eat too many of those before the fight,” Twitch noted, looking at the last two meat pies on the table.
“You’re just saying that so you can have more,” I said.
She shrugged, taking the last one after scooting the other to Gale. “And because it’s true.”
“Truth… a thin line between what’s the truth and what isn’t,” Gale said.
“What?” I looked up at her, waiting for more.
She took a bite, stared at me as she chewed, and then finally swallowed. “I’m saying… when was the last time you got the full picture? The complete black and white truth?”
“Are you not telling me something?”
“Not from me,” she said with a laugh, taking her tea that smelled like a cross between mint and nutmeg—odd, but it worked. “From everyone. I was a bad guy on that prison ship, until I wasn’t. You were a nobody, until you weren’t. For all we know, Ranger could have proper motivations and have some angle here that makes sense to us. What is truth?”
I leaned forward, took another sip of my tea, and then nodded. “Yup, that confirms it. This tea has some sort of strange get-you-high effect.”
My head was feeling a bit light, too, so I leaned back and glanced around, wondering how best to get rid of the effect. I was glad to see that my suit’s water supply wasn’t empty, but it was close.
“You’ve told lies in your day, no?” Gale asked.
I blinked and then frowned as I tried to remember. “Ah, there was… this one time.”
“Go on,” she said, and Twitch was leaning in with interest.
“You don’t… no. It makes me sound bad.” I took another sip of my water, but they were both staring at me, waiting. “
“Fine. It was…” I had to think about it. “Before I graduated from high school. My senior year. I’d been hanging out with this girl a lot, really getting to know her, even kinda falling for her. I remember this one night we were walking through the city, and she leaned into me as if she kinda tripped, but stayed there with her head on my chest, arm around my waist, and I was about to kiss her.”
“How’s this a lie?” Twitch asked.
“That part came in when my good friend, her boyfriend, returned from his month in the capitol.” I scrunched my nose at the thought, kinda hating myself. “I hadn’t meant to
fall for her, and in the end never even made a move, other than letting her hold me like that the one time. But… turned out a mutual friend had seen us and told him. When he asked, I completely denied it, and it ruined our friendship. Kinda…”
“Kinda?” Gale asked. “You have to give us more than that.”
“Well, we stopped talking for a bit, then ran into each other on the job a couple years later, both of us working to put together parts for spaceships and space stations. He invited me to join some friends of his for drinks. He was asking ‘whatever happened to us?’ I was like, sure… and didn’t answer the second part.” I took a sip of water, recalling his face and the hurt expression he’d worn afterward. “Well, we’re getting drinks, right? Three in, and he starts telling me about another friend of ours, saying the guy totally tried to steal his girl the time he was in the capitol. I was going along, like ‘That’s terrible!’ and whatnot.”
“The whole time not knowing if he was trying to get you to fess up in a weird way, or actually had mixed it up in his mind and thought the other guy did it?” Gale leaned back, laughed, and pointed at me. “You sir, are a scoundrel.”
“Hey, I didn’t exactly get all the ladies growing up,” I argued. “That was my brother. So when a girl had feelings for me, and I felt the spark—I mean a major spark—yeah, what do you expect.”
“But you could’ve fessed up,” Twitch said. “Instead of letting him think it was this other guy.”
“I know I should’ve,” I admitted. “But, at the time I was thinking that it wouldn’t do any good. We were pals again, working together even. He’d probably never even see that other guy again, so why ruin a good thing?”
Twitch pursed her lips while Gale made a tsking sound.
“Come on, that’s so bad?” I asked. “It’s not like I slept with her.”
“Maybe you should’ve,” Gale said. “At least then your lie would’ve come with a benefit for you. You really got nothing out of that whole situation.”
“Guilt,” I countered. “And guilt has played a large part in my upbringing. I wouldn’t be who I am today without that guilt, and plenty more.”
Twitch laughed. “Your turn, Gale.”
“Hmm.” Gale leaned back, then grinned. “That guy who I let do me in the,” she lowered her voice, leaning forward, “ass. Told him he had a big dick.”
“That’s not a lie,” Twitch said. “It’s a requirement.”
“What?” I asked.
“Come on, everyone knows women have to tell guys they have a big dick, no matter if it isn’t. What woman wants to be responsible for crushing a guy’s ego like that? Body shaming, right?”
“Wait, so you’re all like, trained to say that a man’s junk is big and beautiful and all that?”
She shrugged. “The beautiful part, no. Just big. But come on, it’s not like you have to worry about it, so why do you care?”
I frowned. “Because how would I know if that was even true right now. What you just said.”
“For one, you could just open up your pants and have a look. That’s no redwood, but it’s certainly a manly manpiece.” She grinned. “But yeah, you wouldn’t. Does it matter, really? Every man would rather hear it, even if they know it’s not true. They at least want to think their women believe it’s true. Maybe they can convince themselves that the woman they’re with has never seen a normal sized dick, so they think theirs is actually huge, even when it’s clearly not.”
“Never the actual case,” Gale chimed in. “But yeah, we gotta say it.”
“Holy shit.” I leaned back, processing this, then adjusted myself just to remind myself that it did feel good sized.
Twitch chuckled, watching me. “Nothing to worry about.”
“Again, not that I can trust you ever again.”
“What I don’t get,” Gale said, leaning forward, “is how even a man with your natural size can still even start to be insecure about that.”
“I’m not,” I quickly said. “But… maybe it’s like money? No matter how much you have, it never seems to be enough.”
She laughed, and so did Twitch.
“It’s the same with you and Charm, no?” Gale asked. “I mean, her chest, it’s—”
“Hey,” I said, waving her off before she said it. “I find her and her chest sexy as hell. No lies there. Men can appreciate those things in all shapes and sizes, as long as there’s at least enough to play with.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding. “Men are less shallow than women then.”
I laughed at that but agreed. “It’s true. Twitch, your turn. Lie?”
She furrowed her brow in thought. “And we can’t use the penis thing?”
“Nope.”
“I… I’m honestly not much of a liar.” She took a bite of her meat pie, contemplating. After a swallow, she said, “I think there was this time when my friend broke into one of the local shops, and when asked about it I covered for my friend. That’s really the only time I can remember.”
“Wow,” I said.
“Yeah?” She sat up, as if proud of that.
“No, I meant ‘wow’ as in I can’t believe how tame you are. It’s cute. Admirable… and kinda depressing.”
She laughed and threw a flaky piece of crust at me. I caught it, ate it and watched as people around us started to head out.
“Must be about that time,” I said. As I watched them finish up, I thought about my brother. He’d been the one to lie in our family, at least as a kid. Always saying he was going off to play with a friend, then caught somewhere else getting into trouble. Then he’d joined the Marines, and all of that had changed. They’d really whipped him into shape. For the first time since these adventures began, I found myself missing him. If I got a chance to see him at all, maybe at the Citadel, I’d be ecstatic.
They were done, so we made our way to the coliseum. Apparently, everyone else was heading there too, because the streets quickly became overcrowded. We had to weave our way through, and when we got to the gate a man asked, “Fighter or viewer,” and I said fighter. He motioned us through.
Inside was exactly what I’d expected it to be, only here there were statues throughout the coliseum of what I assumed were supers. Twitch confirmed that belief when she pointed to one of a tall man with narrow eyes and a stern expression.
“That one’s Xin,” she said, then pointed to another, this time a very attractive woman. “Lamb there.”
I nodded, amazed to be looking at their likenesses after having talked to them enough times to start imaging how they might look in my mind. For some reason, I’d imagined Xin as a short, wise Asian man with a top knot—far from the truth. Lamb, however, was a pretty good fit.
Next we walked around toward the area where I’d be preparing with other fighters, but halfway there was surprised to hear an announcement that an early show fight would be starting momentarily. I had no idea what to expect, so I moved to the standing area viewing platform and eagerly leaned forward to get a look.
Thudding music came from the rear of the arena, and I looked up to see large men at even larger drums there, pounding away. Faces of onlookers stared on with wonder and excitement, most of them in their thirties or above. What must it be like to be part of this generation in this universe, where the one super capable of making them more fertile had gone missing? Turning to demonstrations of violence like this didn’t seem too out there for them.
Cheers rose up as two groups emerged from the gates, one of scantily-clad women, the other of men in the battle underwear I’d seen. They carried various old-style weapons, including swords, spears, and maces. One had an arc rod, electricity glowing blue as it sparked form the end. At first, I figured it must be some sort of demonstration, but then the drums picked up their pace and the two groups ran at each other. They were pitting men against women! And now I wondered how they’d hope to keep the populations strong with such brutality, as the groups tore into each other.
A man fell with his throat slit
, blood splattering across the ground. Next, a spear glanced off of a woman’s ribs, taking her top with it, and then she was on someone, and I cringed as she drove two blades down in through the tops of his shoulders, right next to the neck. The man under her collapsed, and she spun, ready for more.
The crowd loved it, but I was starting to feel sick.
“I’m going into that?” I shouted to Twitch. She brushed her hair aside and turned to me with a worried look in her eyes, her face almost matching the green of her hair. “Fuck,” I said at the realization that she was as worried as I was.
“Listen,” she finally said, getting close to shout and be heard over the drums and shouts from the crowd. “You’re tough, you’re a badass… and you need levels. They’re going to die anyway, might as well be at your hand so you can level up.”
A thought hit me. “Will I even level up without the armor on?”
“It’s a bit late to be asking!” she shouted, making it clear that the thought hadn’t occurred to her either.
“Well, fuck, how’m I supposed to be the expert on this?”
She shook her head and ignored the curious look from Gale. “You want to pull out?”
“Pulling out never works,” I said, and cringed at the horrible joke as much as her glare for choosing the wrong time for it. “No, I don’t. Let’s try one, then I can get to my suit and check to see if the experience points had increased.”
“Good plan,” she said. “As long as you don’t die.”
“Yeah, that part’s key,” I replied.
We watched the fight a few minutes more, but it wasn’t pretty. The crowd ate it up, while I imagined every strike hitting me instead of them. The arc rod took one of them in the eye, another in the sack. Soon it was just two women on one man, and now it felt straight up personal. They came at him, one of them the topless lady, the other one with a spear. He had the arc baton now, having managed to take it from the original user. When they lunged, he dodged the spear and caught that lady with a shock that sent her flying back, but that gave the topless one the opportunity she needed. Breasts bouncing, she lunged, took him with a strike into his armpit as his arm was extended for his last strike, then she spun, pulling the spear from the ground where it fell and impaled him through the head. She jammed its base into the ground and left him there on display, turning to the crowd with hands raised.
