Arena 4

by Logan Jacobs

  The President didn’t seem to be phased in the least by the lewd images of strange, depraved alien intercourse. He strode through the street like a man on a mission.

  I glanced around us nervously. We were totally out in the open and both Fallon’s and Har’Gitay’s words were coming back to haunt me. I had no idea where the hell this Red-Light District was located but I bet dollars to donuts that it wasn’t within the borders of the Champion’s District. The street was crowded with every type of alien imaginable. Male, female, non-binary, tentacled. You name it and it was there. And they were horny. Very, very horny.

  “Hey, Chaz,” I said under my breath as I sidled up to my little blue-skinned buddy, “um, we need to get off the street pronto. And preferably into someplace that does not involve tentacles. Can you make that happen?”

  “Oh, heck to the yeah, Marc,” Chaz effused. “My great-grandfather's third cousin’s best friend runs a fairly tame place up the street. It just went through a major renovation too. Come on.”

  Chaz took the lead, and the President and I followed. The POTUS was too busy taking in all the sights, sounds, and unfortunately, smells to pay much attention to where we were headed.

  “Chaz, buddy, how big is your family?” I asked. He seemed to have no end of relatives who owned businesses.

  “Oh, gosh, it's not that big really,” he replied and scratched his head. “Counting second cousins? I’d say maybe four hundred twenty-five thousand three hundred and two. Oh, nope, cousin Chiz just had another baby so four hundred twenty-five thousand three hundred and three. Pretty small, really.”

  “If you say so, buddy,” I said with a shake of my head. “Here we go,” Chaz said and pointed to a single doorway. An understated, especially considering the competition, sign glowed above the read: CHAPZ’S BAR OF BIG BOOBS.

  The POTUS looked up and read the sign.

  “Chaz, you have done a great, great, job,” he spouted.

  “Thank you, Mr. President!” Chaz held the door open, and we all walked in.

  A robotic bouncer greeted us in the dim, but still very well lit, foyer.

  “Cover charge is thirty credits each,” it said in a deep modulated voice and a small thumb pad slid out from a slot in its chest. “You may also purchase Booby Bucks so that you may show your appreciation to the entertainers.”

  “Booby Bucks,” the POTUS said with barely contained excitement. “Tremendous. Marc, load us up.”

  “Give us the works, three-pee-oh,” I sighed and put my thumb on the pad. It beeped and then slid back into the slot.

  “You each have ten thousand Booby Bucks,” the robot bouncer said and opened the door. “Enjoy.”

  The President, Chaz, and I walked into the “Gentleman’s Club in Space”.

  Unlike the foyer, the inside was dark and appropriately seedy. Other than the fact that we were on a weird planet light years from Earth, it was exactly the same as every titty bar I’d ever been in. There were three small stages set up around the interior with small tables occupying most of the floor space and then several booths spaced in strategic positions on the walls. Groovy techno music blared from the speakers so loud it was hard to think.

  Very scantily clad humanoid females strutted around in ridiculous lucite high heeled shoes and walked up to the various customers to whisper in their ears. Others were seated at several tables and giggled and laughed at whatever the patrons said.

  On the stages were three different mostly naked women of varying heights and shapes. They all had one thing in common. Stupidly big fake breasts. Like Dolly Parton from the Seventies big. So big it made Aurora seem flat chested. Some were round like over-inflated balloons while others were more torpedo in shape. All were gigantic.

  I looked over at the President to see if his reaction was the same as mine, namely, ‘this is lame and can we get the fuck out of here and go home.’ But he stroked his chin and glanced around as if he was deciding the value of the real estate.

  One of the women walked up to us. She was bright green with jet black hair and wore what amounted to bandaids held together by dental floss.

  “Hello, fellas, my name is Destiny, would you like a table?” She asked in a saccharin sweet lilting voice.

  “Yes,” the President blurted out before I could even open my mouth.

  “Wonderful,” Destiny giggled and led us to a table right next to the largest stage. “Here you guys go. Passion will be over in a moment to get your drink order. Have a sexy time.”

  Destiny turned and walked away to her position at the door. Not a moment later another hot alien woman, this one bright fluorescent pink with a tail and tiny devils horns poking from her temples, walked over with a small black tray in her hands.

  “Hi, I’m Passion, here are your Booby Bucks,” she said and laid down three giant stacks of paper currency. The Booby Bucks were roughly dollar shaped and had a picture of big boobs on the front.

  “Inventive,” I mumbled as I looked the Booby Bucks over.

  “What can I get you all to drink?”

  “Diet Coke,” the POTUS answered without a thought. “And keep them coming.”

  “Um, sure thing?” Passion replied. I could tell she had no idea what a Diet Coke was, but she had to roll with the punches.

  “Bubble Nubble for me, Passion,” Chaz said with a goofy smile.

  “Um, whatever juice you got will be fine,” I said. My two beer buzz from early was long gone, and I wanted to keep it that way. I could already feel the stares from the other patrons. I’d become somewhat of a recognizable figure as of late, and the POTUS, well, he drew attention wherever he went.

  “Right away, Champion Havak,” Passion smiled and went to go fetch our drinks.

  The President was transfixed with the buxom beauty on the stage who gyrated and undulated to the music which slowly faded as the song ended.

  “Alright, alright, alright, guys,” a smarmy voice came over the speakers. “I’m DJ Libido, laying down the tracks for your sultry ladies to tease and please you with tonight. On the main stage is the one and only Intercourse. Show her some love with those Booby Bucks, she’s working hard up there. Here’s her second song, Genitalia Gyrations.”

  A hardcore bluesy rock anthem began to play and Intercourse came back on the stage without her top.

  The President took a giant stack of our Booby Bucks and tossed them onstage.

  “She’s a ten,” he said back toward us. “Alien ten. She’s hired.”

  Passion came back with our drinks. She set the flute of Bubble-Nubble down in front of Chaz, a glass of turquoise juice that imitated puffs of white dried ice like smoke, and a can that said DIET EARTH BEVERAGE in front of the POTUS. I gave her some Booby Bucks as a tip. She smiled and then went to look after another table. Chaz took a big sip of his drink. I didn’t touch mine.

  “Chaz,” I leaned in close and whispered in his ear, “dude, we gotta get out of here soon.”

  “Oh, we just got here,” he replied and clapped his hand in time to the song. “The President looks like he’s having fun.”

  “Yeah, so, here’s the thing buddy,” I said, “apparently there are a whole bunch of people who would like to kill him after his last appearance on T. Vou and Friends. And you didn’t teleport any of the security bots.”

  “Oh!” Chaz exclaimed.

  I took a quick peak around the bar. Most of the clientele was glued to the gyrating hips and behinds of the dancers but there was a table in the back, near what I assumed was the Champagne Room that was very interested in what we were doing. Three pairs of eyes peered from the dark recesses of the booth and none of them screamed: “good to see you”. They were more of the “let’s murder those guys” variety.

  I also caught a couple of guys bellied up to the bar staring at us in the reflection of the mirror behind the rows of booze.

  My combat mod sparked to life in the back of my brain and instantly started to bark orders at me. Most notably “Havak, you need to get the fuck out of her
e now!”

  The Krav Maga and Glima fighting mods weren’t far behind and a surge of adrenaline hit my bloodstream like a shot of fight-or-flight cocaine.

  I turned to say something to the POTUS, but he was no longer in his seat. My head whipped up, and there he was at the stage with most of our Booby Bucks in his hands while Intercourse played with his bright hair and shoved her battleship boobs into his smiling face.

  “Ah, fuck,” I sighed as I watched him reach up and grab her around the waist in a grope-y hug.

  Two big bouncers immediately emerged from doors on either side of the stage. They weren’t very tall, but they were built like juice heads who spent all their time at the gym doing upper body which caused them to have wide chests, bulging biceps, triangle traps, and tiny, pencil legs. The bouncers moved to the President and gently removed his hands from Intercourse’s waist and moved him away from the stage a bit.

  “Hey, hey, hey ladies and gents,” DJ Libido said from the speakers. “Remember, you all can look, but don’t touch. Unless it's yourself, am I right?”

  I couldn’t hear over the music which was like Godsmack in a fist fight with Disturbed, but the POTUS tried to assure the bouncers that he could touch. The man wasn’t used to hearing no and started to get a touch upset. Like Twitter rant upset as the bouncers moved him away from the stage and toward our table.

  I started to get up to help smooth things over and caught motion from the corner of my peripheral vision.

  “Here we go,” I whispered just as two angry aliens from the bar rushed through the tables. They tossed chairs aside roughly with murderous faces as they closed the distance to the President.

  I reached down and grabbed my glass of juice nonchalantly. The bar aliens didn’t seem concerned with Chaz and me, just the POTUS, and as they passed right by our table, I smashed the glass into the face of the closest alien.

  The juice must have been hot because the alien screamed bloody murder as his face boiled, and he fell to his knees. His buddy whipped around on me and tried to throw an off-balance right hook at my face.

  I dodged easily out of the way and countered with a fast left that hit the alien square in the jaw. He must have been three sheets to the wind already because he fell to the ground like someone had turned his power off, and I hadn’t thrown the punch with much force.

  When I turned back to the President, I saw that Chaz was over next to him. My little buddy pulled at his arm as he tried to move him away from the annoyed bouncers.

  That’s when I noticed that the booth full of angry eyes was now empty.

  “Hey, Marc,” I heard Chaz’s voice from inside my head. His race was telepathic as well as being able to teleport people. “What should I do?”

  “Chaz!” I yelled in my mind. “Get him out of here!”

  Chaz nodded. His antennae began to emerge and glow and then a bottle broke over his bald head which made him stumble forward. To his credit, he didn’t get knocked out, but it broke his concentration, and dazed him enough so that he couldn’t finish teleporting out.

  Mild pandemonium had broken out at this point. Several of the patrons beat hasty retreats toward the exit and crowded the skinny doorway. As well as there never being any guardrails, apparently there also weren’t any fire codes in the universe. Several of the dancers yelped and ran toward the back dressing rooms. Others, clearly more seasoned, shrugged and kept on dancing. Intercourse collected her Booby Bucks, blew the President a kiss, and went backstage.

  That’s when the bouncers brandished eight-inch long metal cylinders from under their jackets. With practiced motions, they each flicked their wrist out and down in unison, and the cylinders telescoped out into foot-and-half long batons that crackled with blue electricity on the ends. They were done playing around. I really didn’t want the POTUS to get tazed. Especially while out with me.

  My Parkour mod entered the fray with the rest of my enhancements, and I took two leaping strides at the stage. I grabbed the brass pole bolted to the floor and roof with both hands and swung myself around with all the strength I had in my arms and core. I did two complete three-hundred and sixty-degree revolutions around the pole to build speed and inertia and then as the bouncers came into view I let go.

  Centrifugal force took over, and I flew out with my legs extended before me. I hit the bouncer on the right full in his muscle corded chest. He let out a gasp as all the wind got knocked out of him, and we crashed to the ground. The bouncer lost his grip on his shock-prod, and I caught it mid air before it touched the ground.

  His buddy spun on me, and I jabbed the shock-prod right into his crotch. There was a crunch sound, and he screamed in agony and passed out. I felt bad. I’d been aiming at his stomach but lost my footing at the last second.

  “Sorry, buddy,” I tossed at the motionless form on the ground as I picked up his discarded shock-prod. I now had one for each hand. They weren’t my trusty space Viking battle axes, but they were certainly better than nothing.

  Especially because I now saw where the sets of eyes from the booth were. They’d used the commotion to surround us. There were three burly bad guys with mean looking serrated knives in their hands on either side of us. Another had hoped up on the stage and came in from behind.

  “Hey, Marc,” the POTUS said without a care in the world, “is this part of the show? I like this.”

  “Yup,” I yelled as my brain spun. We had to get out of this bar. It was too cramped and would be too easy for us to be overrun if the burly-baddies had called for reinforcements. But first I had to make sure the POTUS wasn't going to get stabbed. “Mr. President, you dropped your money on the floor.”

  “Not my Booby Bucks!” he yelled and bent over to pick up the stack of spilled cash.

  “Chaz,” I screamed in my head. “Get him into the dressing room.”

  “You got it, Marc,” Chaz replied with determination.

  I eyed the three burly-baddies and judged their fighting stances by how they held their weapons. The guy to my right favored his left leg a little and put more of his weight on his right. The one behind me breathed so hard I could hear him over the music, and the fracas hadn't even started yet. The other two looked pretty well used to this kind of thing by the way they held just a bit back and the tight grips they had on their knives.

  “Well fellas, we ain't’ getting any younger, so we gonna dance or what?” I asked, twirled the batons, kicked a chair at the two on my left and then advanced on the burly-baddie to my right.

  Just as I did so, the music changed, and I swore DJ Libido did it on purpose. Earth culture really had been taking the universe by storm because Bodies by Drowning Pool started to blare from the speakers as if this were a movie. Which was just fine by me.

  The burly-baddie I’d advanced on didn’t expect the sudden attack and I watched carefully until he put weight on his bad left leg before I sprang forward and feigned to the right. The leg buckled slightly, and I hit him with the shock-prod right in the knee. He grunted in pain and then his entire leg went out. I hit him in the neck as he fell, and he sprawled in a spasming mess on the floor.

  The stage-baddie ran at me, and I could see he was going to jump and try to tackle me. But he was slow. Before he hit the edge of the stage, I threw my left-handed shock-prod at him. It flipped end over end. Crackling electricity flew from its tip and then spread out in a shower of sparks as it hit him in the chest. His momentum carried him off the stage where a table broke his fall.

  I saw Chaz lead the President, hunched over still, toward the dressing room door. His antenna glowed and little tendrils of black brimstone puffed in the air but that was all. The little dude must have still been a little shaken from the knock on his noggin. The POTUS went along willingly so I bet Chaz had been able to connect with him telepathically to convince him. Plus, the possibility of naked alien ladies.

  A swift rabbit punch in my kidneys brought me back to the fight, and my knees buckled from the white-hot fire that flared up and down my back. The
regen modification that I’d chosen several matches ago was pulling its weight in gold so far. Instead of the blow completely crippling me, I was able to compartmentalize the hurt and swung around with my right-handed shock-prod.

  The two remaining burly-baddies ducked under the fifty thousand watt tip. One of them still had his knife. The guy who punched me must have lost it when I had kicked the chair at them earlier. Otherwise, I’d be on my way to bleeding out. He recovered quickly and tackled me as his buddy made to stab me in the chest.

  My back hit the stage, and I brought my left elbow down as hard as I could on his spine at the same time I parried the knife with the shock-prod. The tip hit the blade of the knife and the burly-baddie who held it made an extended grunting sound as the current jumped from the blade and up his arm.

  The one who tackled me wasn’t too fazed by the elbow to the spine, and I was getting tired of the pummeling hug he was in the process of giving me.

  There was a sudden loud crash from the entrance, and my heart sank a bit as six more bad guys threw the bouncer bot through the glass door where it burst into flames next to the bar. I’d managed these idiots okay, but six on one in this dark, full of obstacles establishment was not odds I wanted to risk.

  The guy around my midsection showed no signs of letting go any time soon no matter how many elbows I delivered and that’s when a very bad idea hit me.

  “Ah, fuck me,” I yelled and then drove the shock-prod into his neck. Since we were skin to skin, the voltage raced through my central nervous system like poisoned blood.

  My teeth snapped shut with bear trap force, and my brain flickered on the brink of unconsciousness for a terrifying second. The bad guy fell flat, and the shock-prod slipped from my fingers.

  The electric pain ceased, and the regen mod dispersed the rest of the energy. I took one more look at the brutes who’d come through the door and decided it was time to make my exit.