I am so fucked

The thought kept repeating in my head, even with Jeremiah giving me the victory lap, hands raised holding my arm in a victory pose as we goaded the audience to cheer even more.

I am so- so fucked

I looked up at where the Pitmaster was, and the sight of him crushing the hand rest on his red - overly expensive chair made me realize that I most likely didn’t even understand how fucked I was.

The Pitmaster seating was a small seating area, enough to hold half a dozen people spaced out decently for comfort, generally the area was reserved for large spenders and personal guests Larrell brought in. You would regularly see women that the guests had brought up with them, either girls from the building for others they had simply brought with them. Far cleaner than any of the people you'd find around here, probably not even carrying any diseases with them. The only odd thing I hadn't really noticed, or cared to notice, was that there were only two others in the seating area today, Larrell himself, a man wearing a mask and a woman who was very obviously annoyed. Hopefully not with me. Unlikely

As the cheers died down Jeremiah led me away from the pit, through the metal cables acting as the ropes and through the dilapidated building that served as the entertainment center for Larrell’s entire operation. Illegal gambling, prostitution, drugs, and of course the fights. Even if I wanted to run I know Jeremiah would catch me long before any of the other actually strong guards got to me, some with the ability to crush concrete with ease, others able to cause my body to implode on themselves. If I had any chance of surviving this encounter it’d be in trying to convince Larrell that we could just do it again, more money, fighter than can actually take a hit as hard as he can dish it out, then go back in two or three days from now and take the fall properly.

It’s not my fault if they guy can’t take the hit, why the fuck would he use a Twitch implant in a rigged game? Unless… he didn’t know it was rigged. Less fighters who know means less people Larrell has to pay, less chances of someone drunkenly admitting at the bar that he made some cash off a rigged bet, and that guy didn’t look very smart bringing in a Twitch implant to an underground ring designated for baselines, he wouldn’t been strung up by his balls before cashing out for the fight if i’d won in a normal game.

“You fucked up bad kid”

The voice brought me out of my panicked thoughts, as we walked, Jeremiah looking back at me over his shoulder.

“You know what the deal was, he won’t be happy about this” he stated before turning his head forward and continuing our march to what would probably be me getting my teeth pulled out for every thousand lost.

I won’t lie, the unfairness was making me angry as well as scared, which isn’t a good combination when you’re in the situation I am, I opened my mouth a bit before being forced to dodge a couple that was obviously plastered on some narcotic as they stumbled in our way. Once they were too far away and we had moved far enough away from the people that no one would hear us I leaned closer to Jeremiah “How was I supposed to know the fighter you brought in to beat me was using a Twitch implant? And to top it off he went down after two damn hits, I wasn’t expecting someone to break the damn rules in this place and still be so weak!” as weak as the protests were for my position, it seemed he at least understood the Twitch implant part, as he replied back to me with “And when we pull him into the ‘nurses station’ we’ll deal with him if he’s cheating, but it’s not me you have to convince, you know that.”

As we were talking we reached a metal grated door in the corner of the large room, just below the Pitmaster seating, and before opening the door Jeremiah turned to me.

“If he has any Implants at all he’ll be dealt with, truthfully Mark I like you, you don’t treat the girls here like shit like most of the fighters and I haven’t had to deal with you stealing liquor or starting fights with any of our customers, so if it was just me who lost cash I'd just tell you to go again and do it properly this time, but it isn’t me, its the Boss, and the Boss’ friends that bet money on you going down with him.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Oh shit, his guests bet on me too.

Before I could argue any more he opened the door, and before it was even halfway opened it was nearly ripped off its hinges as a man easily twice my size and almost three feet taller than me grabbed me by my neck and threw me inside.

To say I was “airborne” wouldn’t be entirely true. I spent less time in the air than I did bouncing off the wall before landing on the concrete beneath me. To put it in perspective, I was already in pain from my shoulder, even if it wasn’t entirely dislocated - moving it was nearly impossible and any touching it practically filled me with pain, however the feeling of the rest of my body after hitting the wall dwarfed it. I felt like most of my back had shattered, the only thing that stopped me from outright stating it had was the lack of a distinct sound of bones breaking. Making matters worse is that I had landed on my already injured shoulder on the way down.

Trying to get to my feet before what I could only assume was a quick struggle before my story ended abruptly I felt two massive pairs of hands grab me by both of my arms before pulling me off my feet in a painful and holding me in the air.

The man, as I learned quickly from getting an actual look at them, wasn’t a man at all but a woman. Standing easily at 7 feet tall and having to at least have 400 pounds of weight under her already massive form, nearly bursting muscle was visible almost everywhere on her body

With a face weathered from fighting and no hair on her head to speak of, if she didn’t have breasts or lipstick I would’ve assumed she was a walking lump of meat before a human.

Ah fuck a Bruiser

Bruisers, one of the most common types of Altered were simple in that they were simply stronger versions than baseline humans in almost every single way, even their blood was resistant to magic and toxins, let alone their bones, muscle, and skin which the strongest of their types could resist low grade tank shells with minimal effort.

If you needed someone's legs broken, a building smashed, or a vehicle stopped in its tracks a bruiser is your best bet, for anything involving magic casting or intelligence however you should look elsewhere. There's a science to it, instead of mocking or superstition like most would think, there are a lot of bruisers with an IQ above 100, hell the smartest man alive at the moment has an IQ of 273, and he also doubles as one of the strongest Bruisers on the planet, however through research done by both him and many institutes around the world it was discovered that while growing up if bruisers aren’t fed proper food or are malnourished the body takes nutrients from other parts of the body that don’t affect strength as much, such as select organs, and the brain. This can’t be remedied unless you’re willing to spend a small fortune on cutting edge implants and a lot of medical treatments, however even then it tends to leave the bruisers on the lower than average rankings of intelligence.

And I had a small feeling that this Bruiser was far below the average intelligence measure for Bruisers, going by their ragged attire and lack of hygiene alone, let alone the tattoos covering most of her remarkable gray face.

“My boss wants to talk to you, shit eater” she spoke, and the vibrations through her body nearly made me shit myself on the spot alone, let alone the horrid smell of meat and acid that was more common in bruisers than most people.

As she probably could tell from the involuntary shaking in my body, from both the pain and how scared I was, I wasn’t going to fight back. This didn’t mean she was going to put me back down; it seemed since she began carrying me by my arms with one hand as she marched up a set of stairs directly opposite of the door, and my only chance of escape was undoubtedly lost, no matter how slim they were previously.

Oh god it hurts so fucking bad The pain kept flashing from my already nearly broken body, possibly soon to be corpse, as he carried me, each massive Thump merely made the pain worse as the vibrations carried from her body to my own, nor did the constant strain and movement help either.

As we went higher up the stairs I could barely make out voices at first, but I soon realized they were yells of anger as we got to the top outside the second, fully armored door, to the Pitmasters lounge. Having been in it I knew it was more of a private bar than anything where Larrell took any girls he was with at the time to get drunk and screw around, or meet with ‘business partners’ as he called them. It also didn’t help my situation that I knew the person yelling was definitely not Larrell.

Whoever is up there is pissed and probably more powerful than Larrell in one way or another, if they are willing to get into a yelling match against him.

I am so fucking dead

At this point the fear was still there, but there was acceptance. On the other side of this door was my fate, which was a beating at the very least, if not a massive debt added on top that I probably wouldn’t be able to pay back in less time than they demand. At the very worst though? Dying was sounding like a reality instead of a fear.

As we reached the top, the bruiser knocked on the door twice before opening it. And all it took was a look inside to know I wasn’t getting out of this one easily.