Arena 4

by Logan Jacobs

I pulled the first Skull-Goon past me into the wall. He hit with a crunch and a grunt while he struggled to regain his footing. My arms shot down and grabbed his fallen Ravager. I let loose a short burst from the hip which ended the blinded Skull-Goon’s shrieking. My right arm shot out, and I squeezed off another quick burst point blank into the other Skull-Goon’s head. It blew apart in a spray of bone and bright orange gore.

  Without conscious thought, I rifled through the coats of the two dead goons and relieved them of their extra magazines which I shoved into one of the cargo pockets on my jumpsuit. I ejected the mag on the other Ravager, shoved it into another pocket, and then neatly field stripped the gun, tossing the trigger mechanism into the toilet in the bedroom's closet-sized bathroom.

  “Another fantastic job, Marc,” the President said as he stood up to his full height and brushed the dust from his suit. “We should get out of this apartment, though.”

  “On it, sir,” I muttered and pulled him behind me. With the Ravager pressed into my shoulder I edged down the hall to the apartment’s doorway and ducked out quickly. The hallway appeared to be clear. I knew there were three more Skull-Goons out there, I just had no idea where. Hesitation was the enemy of survival, so I hoped for the best and made a bee-line for the elevator at the end of the hallway.

  We reached the small, drab doors with no resistance, and I pressed the call button. Old machinery clanked and banged in the elevator shaft, and a moment later the doors opened. I swept the barrel of the gun left and right but it was empty.

  The President walked in without having to be asked, and I followed him. I pressed the button for the first floor. Nothing happened at first, then two things happened at once.

  The elevator doors began to close with agonizing slowness and a Skull-Goon appeared in the shrinking gap. I leapt forward and drove my shoulder into the goon which pushed us out of the elevator and back into the hall. The doors closed behind me with the POTUS still in the elevator which began its creeping decent to the first floor. Odds were pretty good that if he got down there before I did, I’d find him riddled with bullets and very dead.

  I couldn’t let that happen.

  “Not on my watch, asshole!” I yelled as I struggled with the Skull-Goon.

  “Scharveet kroy!” He cursed back at me in some unknown alien tongue.

  He whipped the stock of his Ravager up and it smacked me hard in the face. The pain was instant and fierce. And it pissed me the fuck off.

  I let my Ravager fall on its sling and used both my hands to jerk his gun away from my body as he pulled the trigger. The muzzle flash was inches from my face, and the sound was deafening in the cramped hall. I let go of the gun with my left hand and shot a knife edge blow into his throat.

  The Skull-Goon choked and released his grip. I yanked hard, and the gun flew across the hallway. We were still too close for me to bring my own sub-gun into play so I threw an elbow at his face. The goon was good, and he brought his arm up to block. I heard the tell-tale snickt of a switch-blade just before he tried to stab me in the throat.

  I caught his arm mid-strike and reversed the momentum while twisting his wrist so that the blade turned back around and sank into his own chest. He cried out in pain and shoved me hard so that I slammed into the opposite wall and smacked my head with such force that I saw stars.

  Skull-Goon stumbled as blood poured from the wound. He attempted to pull the knife from his chest but his hands were too slippery.

  I didn’t get a chance to pay much more attention to him because another of the Skull-Goons came pounding up the nearby stairwell. He tried to bring his Ravager up to bear, but as his foot hit the landing, it slipped in a pool of his buddy’s blood, and his legs went out from under him completely.

  With a roar, I grabbed the goon with the knife in his chest and hurled him down the steps after his cohort, and followed the rolling tangle of arms and legs as it tumbled and finally crashed into the wall.

  “Screw this,” I panted, my lungs on fire, and grabbed my Ravager from its sling and let go a long burst from the gun. Bullets tore into the two already blood-soaked goons. Their bodies jerked like they'd been shocked and then they were still.

  There was a loud ding as the elevator came to rest on the bottom floor. I was still on the second floor.

  “Ah fuck,” I muttered, grabbed the banister, and vaulted over into the air. I landed off balance and wrenched my knee which turned out to be pretty lucky. The final Skull-Goon stood in front of the elevator doors with his gun raised, ready to spray the car.

  I let out a grunt of pain as I landed and rolled forward to distract him. His rounds went wild as he spun to face me. The Ravager in his hands came back around, and I thought I might actually buy the farm.

  Then a big, meaty fist flashed out from inside the elevator and punched the Skull-Goon in the side of the head. He dropped immediately and lay completely motionless on the ground.

  The President stepped out of the elevator and helped me to my feet.

  “He’s fired,” the POTUS said like he was in a movie without any sense of irony.

  “With no severance package,” I added as I changed mags on my gun and readied myself to go back outside. “Come on, sir, I think we’ve overstayed our welcome.”

  I flung the door open and came face to face with another Skull-Goon. Damnit! I’d forgotten about the driver of the hover-van. I started to pull the trigger on the sub-gun but the Skull-Goon fell toward me. I stepped aside, and the body slammed on the floor. There were four nasty looking shuriken throwing stars embedded in his back.

  The short, yet capable form of Baba-Tadao sat on the saddle of his hover-bike on the street. One hand held a short ninja sword while the other hand revved the engine.

  “Did you call for a ride?” The rat alien said with a grin.

  “Baba, you kick Uber’s ass,” I replied as I helped the POTUS into the sidecar and then climbed on the bike behind Baba.

  “Marc Havak, I kick everyone’s ass,” he said, and we sped up into the night to leave the Red-Light District bathed in blood and spent bullets.

  I was about to breathe a sigh of relief when crimson plasma blasts flew past the bike. We wove back and forth as Baba dodged the blasts. My head spun around, and I saw a sleek hover-car shoot up from the streets below on a course to intercept us. The passenger of the car leaned out the window and fired blasts from a semi-automatic plasma rifle.

  “Can we lose these guys, Baba?” I shouted to be heard over the roar of the wind.

  “I do not think so, Marc,” Baba shook his head. “The hover-bike is severely hampered by the extra weight it is carrying.”

  “How far are we from the Champion’s District?” I asked and risked another quick glance behind us. Another sleek hover-car sped in from behind a high rise to join the chase.

  “Not far,” he replied and put the hover-bike into a roll that I thought for sure was going to dislodge us and send us falling to our deaths. Miraculously we held on. So did the cars on our tail. More plasma blasts splashed against the buildings as we sped by.

  The closest hover-car pulled up thirty feet behind us. I heard its massive engine growl deeply as it shot forward to close the gap.

  “Baba, hit the brakes!” I shouted.

  “Are you insane?” He replied with a shake of his head.

  “Just do it,” I implored and to my surprise he did.

  As the hover-bike slowed I spun around on the saddle and stepped up onto the hood of the hover-car as it attempted to ram us. The Ravager filled my hands as I leaned in and unloaded a full, seventy-five round clip into the windshield which shattered the glass into a million spiderwebs. Purple blood splashed from the inside, and the hover-car lurched. Just as it started to dive to the ground I turned and jumped back onto the back of the hover-bike.

  “Punch it, Baba!” I cried and wrapped my arms around the rat’s waist. He twisted his wrist, and we shot forward like a rocket.

  Not to be deterred, the other hover-car put on a bur
st of speed and was on an angle to cut us off which was when its passenger would riddle us with plasma shots. But just as it was about to move into position, it literally exploded in a ball of bright orange flame and fell to the ground like a meteor.

  Baba let off the throttle, and I saw a police cruiser float down from above us. The smoking barrels of a giant gatling gun spun to a stop and then the gun slid back into a slot on the underside of the cruiser.

  We came to a stop and hovered in the air. The cruiser floated next to us. The window slid down slowly.

  “Those speed traps can be a bitch, huh?” Captain Har’Gitay said with a smirk. “Welcome back to the Champion’s District Mr President, champion Havak, Baba-Tadao.”

  “Good to see you again, Olivia,” Baba said warmly.

  “As it is to see you,” she smiled.

  “Wait, you two know each other?” I spat out in disbelief.

  They both just gave me this sort of sly nod without answering.

  “Oh nevermind, I want to go home,” I sighed. Now that the danger was over the adrenaline faded like the receding tide, and my limbs began to weigh a thousand pounds.

  Baba-Tadao steered the hover-bike the rest of the way to my apartment with Captain Har’Gitay escorting us.

  “Thanks, Baba,” I moaned as I got off the bike as he pulled it up to my balcony. The canopy of the side car the President rode in opened, and I helped him out and through the sliding glass door of my apartment. “Once again, you arrived just in the nick of time.”

  “It seems to have become my sole purpose in life, Marc,” Baba said with a nod and a chuckle. “I am always glad to be of service.”

  I waved to Har’Gitay and walked into the cool confines of my apartment.

  “That was tremendous, Marc,” the President gushed. “Great, great time. We Americans know how to party. We should do that again tomorrow, but maybe with less shooting and more alien hard bodies.”

  “Uhh, I’ll have to check my schedule for tomorrow, sir.”

  The second we were inside the security bots sprang to life and floated around the President like scolded dogs who’d been caught sleeping on the job. He started to talk to them, but I didn’t pay any attention. I was exhausted.

  I walked into my bedroom, and the President’s Daughter lay across my bed in a sheer negligee.

  “Oh, Marc, I’m so happy you are back,” she purred as I crashed into my bed. My head hit the pillow and I felt its feathery comfort envelope me. “I’ve been waiting all night…”

  And that was the last I heard as the Sandman wrapped me in his warm embrace and I passed out.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I woke up in the exact same position that I fell asleep in, with my face pressed firmly into the pillow and my arms down at my sides. A Skull-Goon’s face flashed across my closed eyelids, and I startled, rolled over and sat up with my fists ready to rumble.

  Nothing greeted me but my bedroom and the morning moonlight. It had been the last remnant of a bad dream fueled by the previous night's mayhem.

  I sort of remembered arriving at the apartment with Baba-Tadao and Captain Har’Gitay, stumbling to my bedroom and…

  “Oh shit!” I muttered. “I feel asleep with a half-naked President’s Daughter on my bed. Oops.”

  I glanced around my room. Nope, she was nowhere to be seen.

  “Ah well, Havak,” I yawned. “Easy come, easy go.”

  “It doesn’t sound like much about last night was easy,” Artemis said from my doorway. She had on a set of Batgirl Underoos underwear and carried a tray with a carafe of French Press coffee and a big plate full of some kind of egg scramble that smelled out of this world. The early morning moonlight made her eyes sparkle like gems. Her chestnut hair was done in a loose ponytail, and she wore no makeup other than some cherry Chapstick. She looked like an angel of redemption… with coffee. “How about some breakfast somnolent cranium?”

  “Yes please,” I replied without correcting her. I loved the way she struggled with English idioms of speech. I secretly hoped she never ever figured them all out.

  Artie walked in, set the tray down on the bed, and then scootched next to me. Before she began to press the plunger on the Frech Press, she leaned over and kissed me very tenderly on the lips. The slight taste of cherry filtered across my mouth, and my heart skipped a beat. Like it always did when she kissed me. I had to struggle to keep a wave of emotion from washing over me. I had started to think that Artie might have been the only reason why I hadn’t gone completely bat shit insane. No matter how fucked up the circumstances, how strange the experience, how much blood and violence, she always brought me home. Her touch, her laugh, her breath on the nape of my neck, they were like cleansing waters for my soul.

  She broke the gentle kiss after a few moments and looked at me.

  “What is the matter, Marc?” She asked, concerned. “Are you injured from last night? My scans showed that there was major damage.”

  “Artie, when you’re with me, there isn't a single thing that is the matter,” I replied and struggled to keep the tears that had welled up from spilling. I had a strict no crying like a little bitch first thing in the morning rule. “I love you.”

  “I know,” she shot back with a rakish smile, gender swapping one of the all-time greatest moments in movie history. “Now, are you going to eat your breakfast or does your female genitalia hurt too much?”

  “Female genitalia?” I asked quite confused, and then it hit me. “Did you just ask me if my pussy hurt?”

  “Sure did,” she smiled and popped a piece of buttered toast into her mouth.

  “Well played,” I admitted and poured myself a cup of the dark, rich, black coffee from the French Press. “What did Woodhouse whip up this morning?”

  “Not a damn thing,” Artie answered proudly. “I made all of this.”

  “Get the fuck out of here,” I exclaimed and shoveled a big fork full of the egg scramble into my mouth. It was delicious. There was spinach, crumbled breakfast sausage, and chopped potatoes all held together by a healthy amount of cheese.

  “I will do no such thing,” Artie smiled brightly.

  “You’re the freaking best,” I mumbled through a mouthful of food.

  Before I could polish off the huge platter, Artie picked up her own fork and began to eat. A few minutes later the plate looked practically licked clean and the carafe of coffee had only the coffee ground sludge at the bottom. I stretched and sighed contentedly as I laid back down on the bed.

  “Nope,” Artie said and poked me in the ribs. “You smell like body odor and exotic dancer.”

  I took a moment and sniffed myself. She was right. I was gross.

  “Good point,” I agreed and walked into my bathroom.

  “Oh, and get a move on, mister,” she chided. “The match starts in two hours.”

  “Holy shit, that’s today?” I yelled while I peeled myself out of my blood and sweat-stained jumpsuit.

  “Sure is,” she replied. I heard the clatter of utensils as she picked up the tray. “We’re all headed to the gym in ten minutes. Chop chop.”

  “Okay, okay, gah,” I grumbled and stepped into the Spif-O-Matic 2000. It was a vertical tanning bed looking stand up shower device that could take me from hobo to handsome in about ninety seconds flat.

  I felt the tickly fingers of nervousness creep into my full belly as the water and soap washed away the chaos of the night before. Today was a big match. Well, they were all big matches, but today was crazy important. It would be the first leg of a journey that could see my family broken up. I would just have to do everything in my power to make sure that didn’t happen.

  A few minutes later I looked like a million bucks. Maybe not a million, but at least a couple of grand. Which for me, was an improvement. With a fresh jumpsuit and my trusty combat boots in place, I walked into my living room.

  The gang was all there, and they looked ready for action. I could tell everyone was nervous. It hung in the air like old cigarett
e smoke.

  “Morning, John Wick,” PoLarr said as I came into the room. She winked at me and smiled. “What did those guys do, kill your dog?”

  “Haha, very funny,” I answered and grabbed my light-weight aviator style satin jacket from the coat rack.

  “How dare you go to a bar full of sultry, gyrating women, without me,” Aurora drawled and whacked me playfully on the shoulder. “By the way, sugar, you still have some glitter on you.”

  “Damn you, glitter,” I muttered and tried to get the sparkly flakes off a spot she pointed to on my neck.

  “I too would wish to accompany you to the Dancing Wench Hall,” Nova echoed as she grabbed her own jacket. “Knights on Paladin frequent such places often. Especially before and after battles. We have both male and female wenches however so that everyone can enjoy.”

  “Good to know,” I nodded. “We ready to do this?”

  “We don’t really have much of a choice, now do we?” PoLarr answered back with a question.

  “No, we don’t,” Artemis answered her. “So let’s quit vibrating our mouth orifices and get to it.”

  It was hard to argue with that so we left my apartment and caught a hover-cab to the Hall of Champions, which was abuzz with activity. Ours was just one of many head-to-head matchups for the day. Excitement and anticipation buzzed through the air with unseen electricity.

  My crew and I walked through the crowded foyer with purpose, mostly so that no one would bother us. We all wanted to get to the gym so we could suit up and prepare.

  Grizz was already there and paced up and down the length of the gym as we walked in.

  “Oh, finally,” Grizz said and stopped his pacing. “I am glad you are all here. Now I have a purpose other than worrying and pacing. Artemis, why don’t you boot up everyone’s communicators while the rest of them get ready. Were you able to identify any potential weak points on the train that the other alliance might try to exploit?”

  “On it,” Artemis replied and made a beeline for the Command Center. “And yes, I think I was able to pinpoint four major points of a possible attack. Three are defendable. One is not.”