Arena

by Logan Jacobs

  Chapter Sixteen

  I was in a Mexican standoff with a CrossFit bodied female space knight and a 36-24-36 white-skinned space vampire on a junk planet where everyone was trying to kill me. Or, as I liked to call it, Tuesday.

  “Okay, ladies, we have a decision to make here,” I said as the cannon thumped again in the background. It left swaths of molten metal and death in its wake, and I still hadn’t figured out how I was going to get up there. Oh, and there were about forty or so Champions that were still left on the playing field according to my HUD display. Finally, I was pretty sure that walking nightmare devil thing was still around and eating people whole.

  “We can stay like this, and while I’m sure it looks cool, it is going to make us sitting ducks,” I continued. “We could also just shoot each other right now and maybe one of us survives. Or, we can form an Alliance and figure out how to survive this scrap heap. What do you say?”

  Nova and Aurora looked at each other then back at me. I gave them my best ‘what are you gonna do’ smile over the barrels of my pistols. It was a surreal moment to say the least.

  “I agree, human.” Nova finally broke the stalemate and holstered her pistol.

  “As do I, Champion.” Aurora lowered her arms, and the purple energy faded as she did. She put a hand on her hip and looked us over… or dry humped us with her eyes, I should say. “What now?”

  “Yes, Havak,” Nova reiterated. “You are the man with the plan as they say, so, what is the plan?”

  I slid the pistols back into their holsters and looked around.

  “You know,” I said with a shrug, “I hadn’t really gotten that far. To be honest, I never thought you guys would go for it.”

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Nova sighed as she rubbed her head with her hand. “I have teamed up with a jester and a jezebel. If my word were not a bond as strong as Paladian steel, I would shoot you both right now.”

  She turned and picked up her machine cannon. After it clicked home on its balance points, she began to clean the gunk it had accumulated while it sat in the junk water.

  “I am intrigued by your flight of fancy, Marc,” Aurora said as she sashayed over to me. Her hips were mesmerizing as they swayed back and forth with each step she took. She stopped right as her very full and very large breasts brushed against my chest and leaned in close enough for me to feel her breath on my neck. She smelled like dark gothic sensuality; a mixture of dried leaves, cardamom, anise, and red wine. Her lips whispered next to my ear, and it felt like every nerve ending in my body stood at attention. “But make no mistake, if you go back on your offer, I will very slowly drain the life force from your soul. It will be an agonizing pleasure that you will hope never ends... and that is exactly when I will end it. Understand, sweetie?”

  “Yup,” I eeked out, “totally.”

  “Good,” Aurora brushed past me and leaned languidly on the same junk tree she had been hiding in before. “Now be a peach and come up with a plan.”

  Just then, the Hadron particle cannon blazed to life again and blew a molten swatch of destruction through the ridgeline I’d rolled down just a few minutes ago.

  “Okay,” I said with purpose. Nothing motivates a man quite like atomic artillery aimed in his direction. “The blasts from that fucking particle cannon have been getting closer and closer together. If we stay out in the open, we are not going to last another twenty minutes. I say we take the fight right to the source. We take control of that cannon, I blast whatever the hell that weird dinosaur-demon thing was, and see what happens next.”

  Both women looked at me for a very long moment. Aurora looked bemused while Nova scowled. They then turned and looked at each other and then back at me.

  “Pretty good plan,” Nova said, her lilting, slightly Eastern European accent rolled off the words like drips of honey.

  “Sounds better than melting in an ionic maelstrom,” Aurora added. The way she spoke in both vernacular and formal speech made me think she was in a transitional generation that was trying to bridge the gap between tradition and progress. “Wait, did you say a demon? What did it look like?”

  Her sudden seriousness took me by surprise.

  “About nine-feet tall, leather like skin, freaky ass horns,” I rattled off, “oh, yeah, and it ate some lady whole. Just shoved her into its mouth like a damn marshmallow.”

  The look Aurora and Nova shared this time was neither bemused nor scowly. They looked afraid.

  “If what you have told us is the truth, Havak,” Nova said gravely, “then we have more to worry about than that tower. The creature you described is called Amohot. He is an ancient lesser chaos being.”

  “Basically a demigod.” Aurora cut in, “He has been in the Crucible since its inception and never lost. He is so powerful that he was allowed to go into seclusion. He is permitted to pick and choose which matches he wants to participate in. He has not been seen in almost a hundred years.”

  “Amohot is one of the most feared Champions in the Crucible’s history.” Nova jumped back in. “He is the last of the old Demonia Jinn. A race of beings birthed in the maelstrom of the universe’s creation, hewn from terror itself. They used to roam the galaxy in search of souls to torment. Which they would achieve by swallowing them whole and digesting them slowly over decades in the hell dimension contained within their bellies.”

  It was my turn to just stare at them.

  “You guys are fucking with me, right?” I asked in complete and utter seriousness.

  “No,” Nova said as she held my gaze.

  “I swear on the souls of all my ancestors, what I have said is the truth.” Aurora added.

  “Okay,” I said as I let out a little laugh, “why the fuck not, right? Hell dimension in its belly? Sure. Who the fuck comes up with this shit?”

  I started to pace as I continued to laugh. Man, if this was in a movie no one would believe it.

  “Well, then I guess my plan is even better than I thought it was before,” I bragged. It was either get cocky or get scared shitless, and I was fresh out of scared shitless.

  “Let’s get out of this putrid trash puddle,” I said and took off toward a break in the ridge. Nova and Aurora followed reluctantly. I had to slow my gait for Nova. I remembered Artemis telling me about Paladinians having a higher mass which made them slow but incredibly stout and powerful.

  Aurora apparently got bored walking and started to float six inches off the ground, her back slightly arched, and her chest poked out as her feet trailed a few inches behind her center of gravity. Her hair and sentient cape flowed out behind her as she did. It was quite the sight.

  I just put one foot in front of the other.

  We reached the pathway and began to make our way through a series of small caverns in the junk piles. Once inside the raging battle outside became muted, almost like an afterthought. Hopefully whoever or whatever fired that damn Hadron cannon wouldn’t decide to start disintegrating junk mounds.

  The trash caverns meandered, and it got eerily quiet. After a few minutes of silence, I needed to break the ice.

  “Okay, tell me something about yourselves, ladies,” I said slightly exacerbated. “Likes, dislikes, abilities, turnoffs, you know, the usual.”

  I glanced at each of them out of the corner of my eye to see what their reaction was going to be, but, they took me at face value and just started to answer the questions.

  Nova was first.

  “I like staying alive. I dislike dying. I can bench press almost a thousand Earth pounds, and my cells absorb ambient radiation and turn it into kinetic energy blasts that can take out a small hill. I am turned off by weak creatures.”

  “Hold up, hold up,” I said as I waved the air in front of me with my hands, “Can we go back to the part where you are essentially a radiation absorbing human bomb?”

  “There is not much to tell really,” Nova said with apprehension. “I was working on a salvage freighter in deep space, and we had just stumbled upon a huge
abandoned tanker carrying old nuclear fission canisters. I was part of the team that went in first to reactivate the ship’s reactor core. Well, when I did that, it set off some kind of chain reaction with the canister, and I was caught at the center. Other than a concussion, I hadn’t been harmed at all. Then I discovered the energy blasts. The bigger the blast the longer it takes me to recharge. In the downtime, I am wiped out and at a distinct disadvantage, so I only use it in small doses.”

  I didn’t think she realized she’s said so much because when she finished her mouth closed with an audible click as we walked through cavern after cavern.

  “Okay, big force blasts that wipe you out, got it,” I said as if taking inventory, which I kind of was. “Aurora, what have you got for me, lady?”

  “As Nova so eloquently pointed out earlier,” she said sweetly with an undertone of venom, “I was bitten by a Shriike, a mindless creature that is consumed with devouring other beings’ life essences, a space vampire, I believe you called it. Due to an odd twist of fate and the devotion of my nurse, I was able to retain my consciousness. While I still must ‘feed,’ I do not kill unless I must.”

  “Do you retain all the life essence you siphon?” I asked.

  “Yes, but I can also transfer it if I wish,” she answered

  “That’s freaking awesome!” I said excitedly. “How bad does it drain you when you transfer?”

  “Only a little,” she answered as she bit her lower lip. “The bigger the job, the more it takes from me and the more I must fill the hole.”

  “Usually the way it works, eh?” I quipped back. She certainly wasn’t subtle. “What was with the purple glowy hands earlier?”

  “Another weird twist of fate, Marc,” she said. Everything she said seemed to be tinged with innuendo, sexual undertones, and over all provocativeness like a Moll from a forties noir detective story. “I am able to summon amounts of anti-matter to use as I see fit. Those in particular were dark matter blasts.”

  “Thank you, ladies,” I said as we started to make our way out of the caverns, “that is awesome info. Little bit about me, a week ago I drove a truck in a shitty town for no money. A few weird days later and here I am. Oh, and I am good at killing freakshow spiders with a flaming chainsaw on a chain.”

  As we came out of the caverns, we had a great view of Junk Tower that was about two hundred yards ahead of us. The cannon still blasted away. Around the base of the tower were about twenty heavily armed Champions from the other side of the tracks that most certainly did not look like they were the good guys in this scenario. My HUD blipped as two more Champions bit the dust. I scanned the tower and then the surrounding area. According to the display, those were the last twenty Champions left, excluding Amohot of course. His blip on my HUD was nowhere to be found.

  Still, the way to the base of the tower looked relatively obstacle free with a large empty area off to the side.

  “Can we could just make our way through that free zone there?” I pointed to the obvious hole. “Or is it filled with kung-fu pandas or something?”

  “That is the anti-gravity field, and while it is unlikely that there would be any kung fu pandas there, everyone is avoiding it because there is no way to tell how powerful the field will be.” Nova replied matter-of-factly as we skirted the mounds of metallic trash until we were about a hundred feet from the edge of the anti-gravity field.

  “What happens if we try to cross it?” I asked as I scanned my field of vision.

  Before anyone could respond to my question, a lone Champion who apparently had the same idea that we did broke from his hiding place ahead of us and hauled ass toward the free zone.

  He must have been some kind of speedster racer because he got himself up to about what must have been sixty damn miles an hour before he crossed the barrier of the anti-gravity field.

  As soon as he did, all forward momentum stopped, and he shot three hundred feet in the air in about a second and a half. When he reached the top of his arch, the gravity kicked back in, and he was slammed down toward the ground. This went on for a good three minutes; up, down, up, down, sideways back and forth, up, down until finally he got shot out of the field like a missile.

  The limp body was headed for a crash landing in a large junk pile. A few seconds before he hit the pile, a medium-sized, spider-like robot with a long body and six segmented legs scurried out from a trapdoor in the trash and scuttled over to where the speedster’s trajectory was going to put him. It unfolded a large net on four vertical arms and caught the alien as if he were a pop fly in right field.

  Just as the alien was waking up, the net upended him into a funnel near the robots hind end. A loud whirring started as the alien was dropped into the funnel. A second later, a spray of blue blood and gore flew from where the robots mouth would have been and covered the trash. When it was done the little robot scuttled back to its hiding place.

  “That is what will happen,” Aurora said completely deadpan. “I might be able to summon enough dark matter to shield myself and make it across. But I will only be able to shield myself.”

  “Typical,” Nova said under her breath.

  “Play nice,” I scolded. “Did you guys happen to come across any crates before the melee started?”

  “No,” Aurora answered simply, “I do not waste time with such trivialities. I have all I need with my dark gifts.”

  “Okay, Morrissey,” I said sarcastically. “Next time pick one up in case the rest of us could use it, okay?”

  “Ah, yes,” Aurora said as if it was the first time she’d heard of the concept. “I shall do that.”

  “Here is what I have acquired.” Nova had pulled open her large backpack and unceremoniously upended the contents onto the ground at our feet. She had four tall soda cans, three complex protein bars, half a bar of chocolate, a fusion sword, and a smaller backpack harness about the size of a Camelback. A logo was engraved in the center of the pack that had a death’s head skull on top of bright blue wings.

  I smiled wide when I saw it, a chuckle escaped my throat, and I realized I was crazy thirsty. A small, glowing soda can icon appeared in the upper right-hand corner of my HUD. STIM-COLA blinked on and off below the can.

  “Can I have one of those Colas?” I asked, my mouth bone dry all of a sudden. Once I realized I was thirsty, it was as if my body went ‘oh, hey, yeah, we got no moisture dude,’ and my throat turned into the Sahara.

  “Yes, if you are sure?” Nova said with a grimace. “I cannot stand them, personally.”

  I grabbed one of the Stim-Colas and gulped it down. It had a lot of carbonation so it took a good thirty seconds, and even though the bubbles burned like hell I didn’t come up for air until it was done and gone. When I was finished, I let out a huge burp and smashed the aluminum can on my forehead.

  “Why don’t you like these?” I asked very loudly. Apparently they were fast acting because I suddenly felt twelve feet tall, and also felt like cleaning my apartment.

  “Well,” Nova sighed, “they have a very fast acting neuro-stimulant as the proprietary ingredient. It makes me jittery and paranoid.”

  “Yes, I agree with Nova,” Aurora added with a smirk. “They do have some amino acids and electrolytes but their benefit is negligent when you consider how over amped your central nervous system and adrenal system get. Plus, they make me very horny.”

  “Where did you get that?” I asked Nova as I pointed to the Val’Keerye jet pack. What Aurora said registered a second later. “Horny? Like, more horny than normal, cause I gotta be honest, you seem pretty horny as it is.”

  Aurora smiled a cat-who-ate-the-Marc grin at me. “Oh, Earthling, you don’t even know the half of it.”

  “It was a crate labeled Fatality from the Clouds or some such nonsense,” Nova replied with an exasperated sigh when she could finally get a word in. “I tried to put it on, but I could not figure out what it was for.”

  “Oh, I know what it is for,” I said gleefully. “And I think I may just hav
e figured out a plan. Granted, Nova, you’re going to hate it.”

  “Wonderful way to sell your idea,” she replied with an eye roll that honestly made her more endearing.

  “So, this is a jetpack. That I actually know how fly. Long story, don’t ask.” I was excited and probably shouldn’t have downed one of the Stim-Colas so fast because my brain was going a hundred miles an hour. Screw it, what was done was done, and we needed to move forward, and I needed to tell them the plan right now.

  “Okay, here is what is going to happen,” I started in a rush. “Nova and I are going to cause a distraction. Aurora, while that is happening, I need you to get through the anti-gravity field and take up a position on the other side near where all those bad dudes are, okay? Cool. Nova, you and I are going to cause a distraction, like I said a few minutes ago, right? Okay, so, I’m going to put that backpack on, it’s a jetpack with badass wings by the way, and I need you to run as hard and as fast as you can into the anti-gravity field. When it shoots you into the air, I’m going to catch you, and we are going to fly across. Sound good, okay, hit, form, win!”

  I had gotten very animated during my little speech, and I finally turned around to face the ladies. They both stared at me in utter amazement. Or shock.

  “It...” Nova started, and for a moment I was quite afraid of the answer. “... is not the worst idea I have ever heard. I mean, I have no desire to end up as crimson fertilizer, but I see no other way.”

  “I concur,” Aurora smoldered. “What are we going to do once we get across the anti-grav field?”

  “Oh snap!” I said very loudly. “That’s the best part. So, okay, once we are through, Nova, I’m assuming you have amassed quite a bit of radiation at this point, no?”

  She nodded her head.

  “Yes!” I clapped my hands together forcefully. “Okay, so once through, I’m going to drop you into the middle of those jerk-faces, and you are going to let loose with your force blast. Huh? Visionary, right?”