The stars and stripes outfit was the hardest to turn from, as the material had been an age-old gift from her family. The muscular woman also made sure not to use her easily recognizable battle axe. Sinaye, before she upped and vanished, had planned to add artificial intelligence to Mahira's weapon, and Mahira still hoped she'd get the chance to fulfill her promise one day. Lastly, she did a little handiwork around her eyes, coating them with black war paint. Tyne beamed at her friend's new look. "You still look bad ass, girl!"
Mahira had obviously entered the event under a fake name.
Fighting in the heart of Texas would be very dangerous, and having someone or something recognize her for who she really was, could still happen. She was not afraid; not Mahira.
The gladiator adjusted her shin guards, breast plate, and shoulder plates before entering the arena. The large Texas crowd was rowdy and excited.
Carrying her trusty sword, she knelt down on the arena floor, looked to the sky, and performed what looked to be some sort of battle prayer. It was the one thing she'd sworn she couldn't abandon. She spoke to the sky, "I am stronger than I know and braver than I think. Watch over me, Lord, and guide me onward."
She needed to win the money and give her prize to Zaey. The plan was simple; Mahira fights for funds, Zaey cuts a deal for arms nearby, and then they head back home at the earliest opportunity.
The monetary prize offered was too good to not take a shot at, so the Mystical Slayer gladiator had decided to make her first appearance in the arena in several years. The grounds were loaded with cattle ranchers and large-brimmed-hat wearing bigwigs wandering about, all placing their bets like mad men.
It was so nice to have her old buddy back in the mix. Tyne Gem, with a dark sweatshirt hood covering her new blond hair, was watching from behind the perimeter fence. Simply knowing Tyne was there gave Mahira great courage.
This was not a Y-Corp funded event, so today's events would go ahead without the presence of robotic soldiers, drones, or the pesky new dragonfly robot-type things patrolling the skies.
The event was more of a rough cowboy party.
With a recent injection of Starigen, she was more than amped up for a long overdue scuffle in the pit. Like most events, a fighter had to win three times to be declared champion and receive the noted prize money. Out here, though, the Y-Corporation was not in full control, so anything could happen.
"Houston, Texas, let me hear you," yelled the announcer as the fighters prepared for battle.
They call it the "Lone Star State." The entire area was bigger than several countries, and at one point in history, Texas had fought off Mexico for its independence at a great battle known as the Alamo, which was apparently so large back then that the government gave it the opportunity to split into five different states. It never did.
Big money was already changing hands as the event got underway.
Most of the nearby cities were destroyed during the changing wars, yet Houston still remained a metropolis. The crowd today was huge.
Boss Biggs—his actual name being Bobby Biggs—was in charge, and he enjoyed pumping up the crowd by shaking hands with everyone and walking about the arena while shouting and cheering.
With the arena almost ready for action, Biggs found a seat and turned his attention to the upcoming fight.
Chapter Thirty
Mahira looked on as her first opponent charged through the gate. It was an abomination of a bull, jacked up on who knows what at nearly twice its normal size, that was heavily bulging at its seams.
Its demented handler started yelling and screaming as it bolted at the gladiator.
Steam shot out from its nostrils as it picked up speed toward Mahira. She waited until the last second before quickly stepping aside, making it miss its first charge completely.
The bull span about and ran at her once more. Grunting and bucking, the beast was on a mission to skewer Mahira.
Mahira drew a second sword from her side as it came in.
She actually felt sorry for the bull, but she was more enraged that its handlers could make such a monstrosity. Instead of using it to help mankind, they used it to make money out of sheer greed.
She would offer no entertainment as the creature closed in. Moments before the sharpened horns pierced her skin, she dropped low and took its legs out.
The big bull skidded to a stop on its stumps and toppled to its right as Mahira rolled away in the other direction. Once up, she ran at the helpless bull and leaped on top of him.
She spun both her swords about her wrists and then drove each simultaneously down through the creature's thick hide. Even with the blades inserted almost to their hilts, the beast fought for survival. After a minute of struggling and wriggling and tossing his head about in vain, eventually, he stopped moving.
Mahira offered no bow and expected no cheers, even though the crowd clearly loved her and were waiting for her to celebrate. Instead, she headed back to the fighters' waiting area.
In a matter of what felt like no time at all, she was back up for her second fight, which was to be against two men at the same time, both of whom looked fairly tough.
One carried a pair of swords and the other a spear. She knew the number one rule when it came to fighting two people at once, which was to keep both of them in her sight and never let one distract her while the other one attacked from behind.
One of the men, the taller of the two, had a shaved head and a savage looking scar across the bridge of his nose. He called out, "Well, it looks like we have a threesome on the cards." He laughed at his own joke.
Mahira knew better than to let her emotions get the better of her at this statement.
Focusing her thoughts, she found her one spot down by her navel and prepared to become one with her blades. "Breathe, just breathe," she kept telling herself.
The tall man had apparently not done talking yet. "You got nothing to say, little lady?" He looked to his fighting partner and added, "You'd think she'd be begging for her life."
Surprisingly, Mahira was unable to center her focus. It had been a while and she was distracted by this guy's constant yelling. She asked, "Do tell me, why are you two sentenced to fight here in the pit today?"
The shorter guy, the one with a spear, appeared to be a mixture of Hispanic and Afro-American. He lifted his pole arm in preparation to throw it as he answered her question. "You haven't heard about the virus going around? I guess people think we're responsible for the bad meat, so here we are. All we need to do is kill you and we'll be fine."
The gladiator knew nothing about any flu or virus.
As the men came at her, the shorter guy lowered his spear—his previous threat was just a ploy to irritate her.
The tall guy with the scarred nose came at Mahira from the right, but as he threw his first short blade at her, she knocked it aside, so he charged at her with his other one. She dodged his diagonal cut and sliced him in the cheek with her own sword.
He spun about and held his hand over his face, but the cut wasn't deep enough to drop him. His friend immediately ran in from the other side and thrust his spear at Mahira's chest. Dropping low, she crouched under the stab and sliced across her attacker's legs. The cut almost made the guy do a complete somersault as he flipped forward and landed hard on his back.
The sword wielder rushed back at the gladiator, faking low with his sword before reaching up and trying to bring it down on top of her. Mahira hopped to the right and watched as his blade sailed by her face and missed slicing through her shoulder by mere millimeters. Moving with speed, she angled forward to the right and swung her sword blade across his carotid artery. As he fell to the ground this time, there was no way he was ever going to get back up.
The shorter dark-skinned man, realizing he would have to finish this fight alone, danced about on his toes with his spear in his hand and jabbed out at the woman before him.
He blurted out, "What in the cows balls is it with you
? You're tough!"
Circling her lone opponent, Mahira waited for his next spear thrust.
Then she asked, "Are you really the one responsible for this so-called flu?"
He gave her a smile, revealing several silver teeth. "Ha! Maybe I am, but it don't matter…what the fuck do you care anyway?"
Mahira smirked at his answer and replied, "When I know the truth, it makes this easier." She then twirled one of her swords between her fingers and hurled it directly at his face. As she'd expected, he dodged the throw, but he was too busy congratulating himself on his quick reaction to realize that the female champion had already commenced her next assault.
She was on him in a flash. Cutting from his left shoulder down to his left hip, she then span around and slashed her blade directly across his throat. He tried to muster the strength to talk, but gushes of dark red blood were all that came from his mouth as he fell face first to the ground.
Again without a bow, Mahira exited the arena to the excited cheers and hollers from the crazy onlookers.
***
After a short rest, the championship match was soon at hand.
The final opponent had survived his earlier matches but looked quite worse for wear.
The hulk of a man strode into the arena wearing dark brown leather chaps, leather straps over his bare chest and shoulders, and a large, wide-brimmed cowboy hat.
He tipped his hat towards his opponent as he approached. The audience and big betters went into frenzy as money flowed from one hand to another. This was it, the final match.
Mahira noticed the man's cuts weren't as bad as they first looked. His deep voice came out almost as a growl as he said to Mahira, "You know, it's a shame I have to beat you up. You're such a cute little thing, very muscular, too! Yum yum, I love my muscular women."
She had to admit he was a rather handsome fellow, but she needed this victory, and so she focused on the fight at hand.
The big Texan's weapon was a giant metal axe with a thick wooden handle that he held in two hands. He was too big for her to overpower, even with the coveted sisterhood drug flowing in her veins. She took a calm breath to steady herself. It felt so damn good to be back at it. She screamed out, "Yeahhhhhh."
He returned the scream as he came in for the kill, swinging his mighty axe all around his head and shoulders. She avoided his swings by fading back and circling her opponent to create some space between them.
Stalking after his female prize, he yelled loudly for all to hear, "You're a quick little shit!"
The big man thought he had a trick up his sleeve. As he charged Mahira with his axe, he acted as if to strike her on top of the head, but instead, he dove low for her legs. There were two ways to avoid this attack: she could either jump above it or snap back and pull away from it. Either way, she had to think fast.
There was no time to back up, so she leaped in the air as the head of the axe zipped below her legs, just missing.
As he rose to his full upright position, Mahira was just on her way back down from her leap. She slammed one of her swords down on top of his wrist and drew the blade across his skin, leaving a long, deep gash that oozed with fresh arterial blood.
Crying out in pain and anger, he held the bleeding wrist to his side and switched the axe to his other hand. "Son of a bitch! You blonde hag!" he screamed.
Although his one arm was strong enough to hold the axe, he whirled it at the gladiator in oddly shaped circles, which actually caught some of her hair and just missed her cheek. Under her breath, Mahira said to herself, "Hey, watch out, this is no sparring session!" Fighting through her rustiness, she had to get focused—and fast!
She immediately breathed a sigh of relief when he swung the axe again and she managed to avoid it, this time cleanly.
Next, he surprised her by faking to come down on her head and getting her to raise both her swords up to block the downward blow. With Mahira's body now exposed for the taking, he leaped lower and grabbed the small woman in a bear hug after chucking his axe to the side.
Now squeezing her tight, he left Mahira unable to use her swords to protect herself in this deadly fight.
He lifted her off the ground, but this was an attack she had worked on defending many times. She drove her knee into his groin with full force, which caused his arms to come loose as he buckled to the ground. Now free, she backed up a few steps and charged at him, jumping in the air and kneeing him directly in his face.
Her knee crashed into his nose and the Texan staggered backwards. But this big bastard was tough as nails. Mahira had lost one of her swords but still carried a second in her left hand. She immediately reversed its grip and sliced into the side of the man's neck.
As the cowboy howled in pain, she leaped on his back, still with the blade in his neck, and shimmied her body around from one side to the other while cutting all the way around the front, sides, and back of his neck. His eyes began to flutter as a stunned look descended over his horrified face. Mahira never gave him any time to recover; she immediately drove her blade through his heart.
Chapter Thirty-One
With the final victory confirmed, the robotic soldiers of the Corporation suddenly made an appearance. No one wanted a riot now that a grand champion was about to be crowned. The beef boss knew all along they were here.
The robots each carried a hard metal club that had an electric charge running through the shaft. A few patrons that had dashed out to try and get at the gladiator woman had already been zapped back into their seats.
With female branding being rolled out across the major cities and now considered common protocol, all female citizens were held individually responsible for having their unique barcode branded onto their skin at various stations throughout the city. One such station was located outside the gates of today's event.
If a woman's barcode was scanned and verified at the Texas checkpoint, they were allowed to enter the arena.
However, those with influence—Mahira, for one, who had slipped in earlier via a sisterhood ally—or perhaps those with money or something else to offer, could easily bribe their way into any event, barcode or not.
Either way, one Corporation bot made its way over to check Mahira as she exited the playing surface.
The bot hurried at her, but she slammed the gate shut in its face before he had time to grab her. Being one of the taller bots, he simply looked over the top of the gate at her. Tyne, who hadn't yet spotted the bot, rushed over to her friend and patted her on the shoulder. "You were a little rusty!" she declared.
Before Mahira could reply to her friend, the bot called to her. "Wait right there, human," he demanded.
Mahira stopped and turned to face him, looking a tad pissed off. She answered sarcastically, "What, you wanna see my ass?" The bot nodded that he did. Mahira laughed and said, "How about you kiss my ass, you metal piece of crap!"
He obviously didn't approve of her answer and leaped up over the fence to get at her. However, the dumb bot didn't make it all the way over. Now with his long arms and legs stuck in the barb wire topping, he struggled to get free and kept repeating, "Show me your barcode… show me your barcode." It looked as though this gangly bot had suffered a short circuit to his system.
Mahira laughed again and replied, "Why don't you tell your Corporation to go fuck itself." She then chopped his head off.
She looked back to Tyne. "What were you saying?"
Tyne almost answered, but yet another bot appeared, this time on their side of the barrier, yelling at Tyne. "Bare your bottom, hoodie girl," he demanded.
Tyne looked at him and replied, "I am like you. I am not a human, silly." The silver metal robot, holding a thick laser rifle, again demanded even louder now as he noticed the missing head of the bot tangled in the wire, "Show or be apprehended."
Tyne flipped her arm up and a laser pistol appeared in her hand. As the bot came at her with his rifle pointed at her face, she smashed his weapon out of the way with
a right leg crescent kick and kneed him between the legs. He laughed and said, "I have no balls, you dumb android."
Tyne pointed at him with her shooter. "How about this for balls?" She smiled and winked before she pulled the trigger and shot him in the face. The robot slouched to the ground in an explosion of sparks, fire, and smoke. Seeing even more bots on the horizon, Tyne fired one more shot to make sure he wouldn't cause any more problems, and then both women casually walked away.
Mahira tapped Tyne on the shoulder. "Why did you knee a robot in the nuts again?"
Tyne smirked at her sister. "I guess I'm a bit rusty, too."
***
The thing about Texas was it was huge, and it had many spots of resistance here and there. The women knew of one such area, and gathering supplies was part of their trip's mission. Zaey and a few other newer recruits had made their way to a region to the west of Houston.
Zaey was out to get equipment; the most important stuff would be grenades, gas masks, and a decent rocket launcher.
When she and her comrades arrived at a community with a high metal wall, they sat in their large SUV, which had been borrowed from friendly sources, and waited for the gates to open. The population all about this region was mixed with those from Mexico and those from Texas; this was now a new breed state. Once in, they drove down a long road and headed for a more secluded and better protected compound.
As they parked, Zaey instructed the others to wait for her in the vehicle.
She went to meet with the arms dealer inside. His huge one-storey home looked to have been constructed from a dark gray marble.
Elchano Bareki was his name. He was born in Cuba, and through family heritage and lots of drug money, he still had plenty of funds and even more notoriety. Most importantly, he was also a staunch hater of the Y-Wood Corporation. Even though the women of the sisterhood knew him from years ago, as Zaey entered his private compound, guards with rifles still watched her crossing the open courtyard with a keen eye. It was a nice outdoor area with a small lake, which appeared to be home to lots of birds, fish, and other wildlife. She noticed a few odd lizard-like creatures crawling about on the water's edge.
HOPE BRINGERS (Strong superhero women) (Mystical Slayers Book 2) Page 16