Mark stood under another morning sun, the angle of light coming in steep across the coliseum, the air smelling like wind and sand and faintly of exertion. It was the second day of Brawny Sparring 101, and people had mostly spread out across the sands of the arena according to wherever they had landed yesterday, at the end. Mark had fought his way up from the rank F area at the entrance of the arena, in the east, to maybe 20% of the way to the west, where the S ranks fought under the view of the instructors’ skybox, in the sun. Many other people took what Mark assumed was their previous position on the field, so people were pretty spread out.
They had had 189 people yesterday, if Mark recalled correctly, and he was pretty sure he had. Today seemed lesser, though. At a glance, there were maybe 150 people? Mark wasn’t sure. The 20-ish healers were the same up there, on the stadium seating to the side of the instructor skybox.
Instructor Badger stood up in the skybox with his tablet. He tapped it and a gong rang out across the field. People came to attention.
Badger’s voice went out across the crowd, “Welcome to Brawny Sparring 101, day 2! I want all Fs to move further back toward the entrance and all Ss to move further toward this area over here. Everyone else can stay where they think they belong! You have 30 seconds to move. These people can stay where they are.” Badger pressed a button.
A golden light appeared above Mark, like a pillar of light.
He was the only F that got a pillar. There were several maybe-Ss that got pillars, though.
… Mark remained where he was, he guessed. He wasn’t sure how he felt about getting singled out, but here he was, getting singled out as the only F that wasn’t forced to move back to start.
It looked like 7 Fs had to move back to start, though, while some S guy, who was only about 10 meters away from Mark and rather darned far from the S-zone, had to practically run all the way across the field, back to the instructor's overlook.
Badger yelled out, “Your instructors today are Charms, Badger, Nifty, Medley! Say it with me!”
Mark felt something on the breeze; it was a gathering of Union from the healers.
The whole arena called out, “Charms! Badger! Nifty! Medley!”
The healers on the stand connected everyone in a Union for healing, and this time Mark truly felt that connection. It was like a soft billowing; an invisible cloud that was thinner than morning mist, and it rested in the wind like a filter-feeding sponge, or like one of those cleaner plants from yesterday. And then the feeling passed into the background.
Badger spoke, “If you have Union, use it to heal yourself and save our healers some effort.”
Mark was going to do a lot more than that.
He breathed in durability and breathed out weakness—
A black mist flowed away from Mark, and he was pretty sure some people nearby could smell it—
With a twisting of social anxiety at everyone near him thinking he had done something wrong, Mark somehow flicked away his miasma into the threads of Union, in his heartbeat, and tucked them away into the world. The miasma slipped away, like blood pumping into the air, to vanish elsewhere when it got too far away.
And then the miasma broke away from those threads, to fill the air again, and Mark made another terrible stink.
Come on, Mark. How did I do it? Let’s… Hmm.
After a moment of concentration and moving his intent around, Mark did it again but this time with purpose, rapidly understanding what he was doing—
“Everyone pair up and square up!” Badger called out, “30 seconds to first spar!”
Three people walked toward Mark but one of them was faster than the others; a woman with black hair, an ashen sheen to her body, and a hardness in her eyes that set her apart from most other people.
“Hi,” she said, very excited.
“Hello,” Mark replied, getting there, too.
She squared up and Mark did, too. Her skin seemed to turn a little darker, a little more metallic. She wanted to fight, for real. Mark instantly loved it. He felt his heart thump hard as he clenched his fists and prepared—
He felt his heart pulse with Union, connecting him to the world without need for breathing. With every heartbeat he felt himself steady as resources got exchanged on a rhythm that was much faster than breathing. Much more solid, too. Every pump drew in good and expelled bad at the same time. Every thrum solidified his body with strength.
The woman glanced at Mark’s chest. “That’s a neat trick you got. What is it?”
Mark glanced down and saw thready veins of miasma flickering out of the left side of his chest, by his heart.
Oh?
It was Union, threading in the air on veins, taking in ‘good’ and expelling ‘bad’. A few veins held below the skin of his arms and hands, too, and those black veins also extended a bit out of his flesh. Mark grinned at that, and then the effect multiplied as Mark understood what he was doing.
Mark looked to the woman, and said, “It’s Union.”
“Looks like Poison Body.”
Mark was kinda offended and worried at the same time. Poison Body was a dangerous skill that Mark didn’t know much about, except that it should not be used in a sparring match, at the very least. It was a great monster killer, though. Being accused of that sort of honorless behavior threw Mark for a loop.
His Union with the world broke.
Mark began to stay, “Of course it’s not Pois—”
Badger called out, “Begin!”
Mark started on the back foot as the grey woman came for him, fists flying like pillars of steel. Mark tried to angle a punch away and go in for a kidney counter, but the woman was impossible to move and Mark almost lost the fight in that first exchange as she went in for an elbow to his chest.
Mark retreated.
The grey woman pursued, her feet crashing into the sands of the arena like metal poles, her body turning even more grey, and then silver. Ah. She had Metal Body, then. That was a rank B or C Talent; Mark wasn’t sure. He was still studying that stuff in his Understanding Curtain Protocol studies. She looked pretty darned advanced with her Metal Body, though, so maybe tier 2 already? Mark wasn’t sure. What was she doing in Brawny 101?
Mark learned the futility of fighting a brawny with his fists. She punched and Mark blocked with his forearms and he heard cracks in his bone. He healed those cracked bones before he could truly feel the pain. She kicked, and Mark got thrown a few meters, so Mark rolled with it, getting back up, healing himself fast. Punches sent Mark reeling. Kicks sent him flying. Mark managed to slide away but elbows and fast turnarounds sent silver-tinged fists into the parts of him that couldn’t get away fast enough.
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At least Mark was learning how to keep his Union going through the pain and the fight.
At 5 minutes in, the now-silver woman stopped, looking almost bored as she said, “Use it offensively on me. Union. Do it. I know you can.”
Union dropped as Mark was thrown for yet another loop. He frowned, and then glared and he almost scoffed. “What the fu— No! I exploded plants the other day. What an incredibly reckless request!”
The woman had looked bored, but she developed a grin at that moment. “You won’t explode me. I promise.”
Mark scowled. “No fucking way.”
The woman laughed. “Okay fine! Then I’m gonna beat you up now. No hard feelings.”
Mark felt his anger evaporate. He grinned. “Give me what you got.”
Mark got pummeled for the next 4 minutes and then he sat down at the end of the fight, because even though he hadn’t lost, he clearly hadn’t won, either. The woman sniffed, and then nodded at him.
“Good stamina. I’m Isoko. Nice to meet you, Mark.”
“Mark,” Mark said, brushing over the fact that the woman already knew him and that she had probably planted herself next to him at the start of the arena in order to fight him. “Good fight. Nice to meet you.”
Isoko nodded and walked west to find another winner to partner with—
“Losers! Partner up!” Instructor Badger called out.
Mark got up and got to finding someone else.
Soon, he squared up with another woman.
Two fast exchanges later and Mark was standing over the woman. She had gone down like a sack of potatoes, gasping for air. And then she gasped more deeply, cleanly, and Mark heard a distinctive POP as her ribs got back into the proper configuration. Mark’s stomach dropped. The healers had connected to her and fixed her up, and Mark felt ice cold as he realized he had gone too hard.
Mark said, “I’m so sorry for punching that hard. I was… I was thinking about the other fight.”
The woman shook her head, saying, “Don’t worry about it. This is what it means to be a frontliner. Thanks for the lesson. If you don’t mind me I’m going to collapse down here and close my eyes for a moment.”
A ripple of hot shame traced up Mark’s guts. He slowly nodded, and repeated, “Sorry.”
Mark won all three of his next bouts, and then he came face to face with Isoko again.
The silver-woman smiled as she walked up to Mark, saying, “I lost against a morpher, or else I would have gotten closer to the S’s.”
Mark said, “I just fought one of those. It was freaky. Informative, though. I probably should have lost that one.”
Isoko grinned. “You’re gonna lose this one too unless you use those freaky black lines offensively.”
As Badger called out for the losers to pair up—
Mark leveled his eyes at her. “That’s just irresponsible, you know.”
“Well yeah, but it helps me work on my resistances to the other Power categories, and Natural Powers are always going to be my weak point, so I need to work on them now.”
“… Oh? Ah. Well…”
Mark considered the request.
Isoko raised a questioning eyebrow.
Mark said, “Still not going to do it.”
Isoko squared up, saying, “Looks like I get to advance closer to the S’s, then.”
Mark squared up. “Probably!”
Ten minutes later Isoko walked west, toward the S’s, and Mark ended up on the loser’s path, toward the east.
Mark ended up walking toward the west after his next bout, and then again after that second win. It was easier to win today, and by a lot, compared to yesterday. Mark recognized that his body was just plain tougher and stronger, which he was sure had a lot to do with his wins. He was now tier 1 in Body, which meant that he was naturally more resistant to other body powers, and stronger with his own. That was definitely a reason for his ability to win this far into the rank B’s.
But his progression with blood-Union, his staying power, is really what let him go the distance. Soon enough, most people were tired from doing so many matches, especially those with the rank D, E, and F Talents, but that same truth did not hold when it came to the higher rank Talents; the B’s, A’s, and especially the S’s. The C’s were somewhere in the middle of all that, spreading around based on their own personal martial prowess.
Mark found himself completely outgunned by any brawny who had any real skill with their Power, or actual strength.
The speedsters who had any level of control over their Powers were the easiest to lose to; Mark still tried, but fighting a speedster was like trying to punch the wind.
Brawnies with 2.5x strength were pretty hard, but doable, if Mark got an opponent that didn’t know how to fight. But then Mark went against his first Giant Strength guy, and he knew he was going to lose. The guy was a giant of a man, with brown skin and a bald head. Mark had to reach up to punch him in the chin with what amounted to an uppercut. It felt like punching skin-covered steel, and Mark’s hand was sore afterward. The guy just stood there and took it, and then he looked down at Mark questioningly.
Mark sat down and said, “Thanks for the fight!”
The guy smiled, saying, “Sure thing. You’re Mark Careed, yeah? You got that Union going on? Can you do healing?”
Mark paused at hearing his name… and the other parts. “I’ve not been cleared for that yet. Sorry.”
“Ach, no big deal. Some speedster practically pulped my insides three fights ago and I’m still recovering. This is the first fight I won since then.” The guy winced a little and then sat down on the sands, saying, “Still smarts. I’m Escobar, from Amazonia. Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you… and yeah. I’m Mark Careed.”
“Sorry about your parents.”
Mark felt his heart beat hard and the amount of miasma flowing out of his body increased some. The flow had been almost invisible until then, but now it was back in full swing, pulsing out there in time to his heartbeat. At least it didn’t stink up the world as it flowed away, vanishing wherever these things vanished. Mark had gotten good at controlling that.
Mark breathed in the good, and said, “Thanks. It’s been pretty painful.”
Escobar nodded. “I know—”
Mark was almost furious.
“— because I lost my parents to monsters when I was 12, out on a beach trip.”
Mark lost his fury, and wondered why he had even gotten mad in the first place.
The guy continued, “I did some stupid shit and they tried to save me but they got thrashed by a flying fish that got past the guards. All I wanted was someone to say they were sorry for my loss. I blamed myself for years. And then I learned that it wasn’t my fault; we were supposed to be behind the safe lines the city had drawn, but people were just checking boxes instead of actually doing work.”
Mark frowned a little, then asked, “Who talks about that with someone they just met?”
Escobar grinned. “Someone who wanted to say something meaningful to a hero.”
“… Oh.”
Mark felt his eyes blur and the black veins in the air around him pulse a bit stronger. With a concerted effort, Mark breathed in the good, and threw his pain outside of himself. The miasmic veins in his skin that threaded into the air grew thicker for a moment. The pain retreated. Mark breathed easy.
Mark looked to Escobar. “Thanks, Escobar. I’m sorry for your loss.”
Escobar grinned softly. He nodded. “I’m sorry for yours, too.”
Eventually, Badger called for the next round.
Escobar went toward the S group side of the arena, and Mark went back toward the F group area.
Eventually, the club ended.
“And that’s it for the day’s sparring!” Badger called out, “Those with a marking on them stay in the arena! Everyone else leave! See you tomorrow.”
Arena lights illuminated the space above Mark’s head with another golden glow. He got to stay behind.