The fresh meat and I circled each other for a while while the crowd grew in intensity. I knew he was in no hurry, he'd sent his babysitter in white off to go look for his friend while we fought, and I was content to wait, knowing that word of a new fighter would reach the surface soon, and the crowd would easily double in size.

It was a mixed bag, having a bigger crowd. The regulars were definitely the bloodthirsty ones and fed the most energy into spectating...many of the late arrivals would only come out of curiosity of a newcomer's powers, but still, more eyes. More people to watch me fight, watch me win. My heart was already racing with anticipation of the rush.

The kid seemed unphased by the crowd, which was weird. Most who came down here had a hard time with this many eyes on them. Maybe he was a performer or something in his before-life. I really didn't care. If he couldn't outrun the shadows, he was done for before the fight even started.

We circled the ring again, and then again, as more and more people trickled in. Soon, everyone was beyond restless, and as one, from all sides, I could hear nothing but the booming chant from the crowd: Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!

"Are we doing this?" he asked. Looked like his nerves did get to him eventually. I laughed to myself and let him stew in it a while longer without answering. But, he didn't seem to be sweating or worrying, and I wondered just for a second what tricks he had up his sleeve. Surely he wasn't confident he'd win? Against a completely unknown opponent? He was just another cocky, stupid kid, right?

He'd been stupid enough to show me his powers earlier, on the surface, he'd lit up swords made of light, which I thought was a funny parallel to my own powers, but it gave me enough info that I was confident I'd beat him.

Soon enough, the entire stadium was full, most of two-hundred out there, banging their feet as one, chanting as one, all eyes focused on me and the fresh meat. He said he was just visiting...maybe I could get away with killing him. Nobody in here would miss him, except his missing friend, and it's not like the XPCA cared if idiots who were stupid enough to come in never came out again. I doubted he was anyone important enough to matter if he disappeared...and the crowd would love it, and love me for it.

I swallowed hard at the thought and focused back on the moment. I could worry about that when I got there. The only way I was going to lose is if I got stupid and distracted.

"Are you ready yet?" he asked again.

I was, in fact. If the crowd was getting any bigger, it was just people packing in the tunnels, and I was antsy to go. Without wasting any more time, I bent down and touched one of my long shadows cast from the harsh lights up above.

He was sharp enough to already be moving. Away from me, smartly, and with his little swords out again, six of them in between us. I rose, and as I did, brought my shadow with me in my hands, feeling familiar and right, feeling thirsty for action. It was like cloth in my hands, but with a thought, became as iron, and warped and grew until it was as long and piercing as a lance, but weightless as the dark.

The kid jumped towards me, darting in with the reckless speed of youth, his blades spinning and slashing in a way which looked flashy but didn't serve any real purpose. My lance shimmered and struck out, hitting the blades in the air and tearing right through them like they were made of clouds, shredding them into sparks. He jumped back before the lance did the same to him as well, and looked at me with new eyes.

"Don't you know?" I goaded. "The brighter the light, the stronger the shadow."

He resummoned his weapons and threw a handful of lightning at me, but it just dissipated into my shadow lance, and he resumed circling, but defensively, nervously now. He was beginning to realize that my powers countered his, as they seemed to counter many.

I knew I didn't really have the ability to banish his powers or dissipate electricity. It was a trick of sorts, not of mine, but of shadows. People had such notions about shadows, irrational fears, strange phobias. Shadows were what people did not understand, they were the movements in the corner of one's eye, they were concealment and banishment.

And somehow, my powers enhanced the shadows I controlled so that they were those things. The moment a person's powers went into my shadow, to that person, they were lost. Their mind gave up on trying to hold the power together, and it dissolved.

Just a trick, but a wonderful one. Shadows were such a delight.

I had to be careful of course. Some powers held themselves together even without the owner concentrating on them, and some, like his thrown handful of lightning were just hurled energy. I could trick him into thinking it did nothing by making sure it passed through my shadows, but that was just a trick.

But he hadn't seen through it and hadn't tried again. Instead, he kept darting in, trying to get a hit on me around my weapon.

From both sides, swords sliced in at me, but with a twist of the lance in my hands, I cut both out of the air at once, and he fell back for a moment, regrouping his weaponry before trying again, and then yet again.

On the third time in, I cut his weapon out of the air, and then with a twirl impossible for a weapon with weight and inertia, spun the lance to slice through his arm. His instincts were good and he got out of the way before it could do more than graze him, but first blood was still mine.

And the crowd saw it. As one they screamed and cheered, and I felt my heart swell and a grin crossed my face. Drops of blood fell from the blackness of my weapon, and I snapped it sideways to flick the rest of him off of it. He backed away, checking his wound while I did a flourish for the crowd, bringing on another wave of rightful exultation.

This is why we fought. This is what we were about. Sure, there was something to be said for smacking idiots around, but it really was the crowd, it felt like an intangible pressure poured from them and into me. It was the only time I felt alive since coming to this shithole.

I stalked towards the boy, flicking towards him with my lance and making him back further and further away. He was still probing at my weapon with his, frustrated every time one vanished but still trying to think. I had to commend him for that, even if it was futile.

I cleaved through two more of his weapons, purposefully leaving room for him to escape while showering him in sparks of his own failed powers. I was just toying with him here, but the crowd loved it, watching me pursue him slowly and take him apart. Someone--probably my ever-thoughtful boyfriend--began chanting my name, and soon it spread through the stands like wildfire.

I drank it in, giving the kid another cut on his other arm to thank the crowd for their worship, and the roar rose to another climax. I felt so full, so...so loved. I wanted to draw this out forever, but I had expectations to fulfill. I couldn't be the girl who always dragged out her fights. This boy had brought me a lot of enjoyment, but his time was almost up.

And then I noticed something.

While I'd been harassing him, he'd been throwing swords at me, almost pointlessly, as I destroyed them before they ever got close. I'd been doing it for the spectacle, but I realized, so had he. This whole time I'd been playing with him, he'd been backpedalling carefully, making new swords when he could...stacking them up with the two which never left his side…

But looking closely, I realized...there weren't just two at his side. It was hard to tell with the pure-white of the blades, and the insubstantial power of lightning, but...he was hiding something. I didn't like that. And I had a fight to end, so I thought, before he finished whatever he was doing, I would strike him down. I could worry about what he was planning and whether or not to kill him after that.

I kept up my slow, calculated advance, and then suddenly lunged forward, spear aimed at his chest. He barely dove under it to his chest, and then to my surprise, took two loping strides towards me on all fours and then rose while running right at me.

While he did, he unfurled the swords he'd been stashing away, and I felt my breath catch for the moment it took to get my feet under me and take a few running steps back.

Hundreds. The air was white with swords, between him and me was like a standing thunderstorm, crackling and blazing with energy. I swung my lance back and forth behind me as I ran, and destroyed twenty or thirty of them effortlessly, but more just hung in the air, moving at me and closing the gap as he did. I swiped at him recklessly to buy time, but he just rolled, still somehow closing the distance as he moved.

As one, the crowd seemed to take a breath, all mention of my name in their cheers gone.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

Well I was fucking pissed. This little shit thought he could upstage me?

It was time to stop playing around. And in producing his greatest weapon, this kid had also handed me the keys to victory.

He was chasing me with his swords aflame, all in front of him, between him and me. And what that meant was the shadow they cast behind him was uniquely intense, a shadow cast by a hundred lights, all pointed the same way. This was a shadow I could do incredible things with. And so, even as I continued to run and dodge the blades which came into range, battling them away with my lance when I couldn't evade them, I began to focus a corner of my mind on that shadow, willing it to life, willing it upwards.

I was being beaten back hard, but only had to hold on for a couple more seconds. I saw the shadow creeping up his back in my mind, as my eyes saw only the white of blades and my thin sliver of dark holding them at bay, an impotent eclipse.

I took a blow to my leg which hurt unbelievably, and made my body twitch and shudder, the damn thing collapsing under me. I rolled on my back and fought off more swords which came in to follow-up, but within moments, I was surrounded, and my arm holding my lance utterly pinned.

"We done here? Ready to tell me about Steffie?" he said, still holding his bleeding arm and breathing heavily.

I looked him in the eyes. "No," I sneered, and felt my shadow finish crawling up his back.

At once, his swords disappeared as the shadow entered his eyes. He groped out forward, even willed a blade into existence and slashed at the ground where I had just laid, but he was blind now. I laughed as he carried out his attack, moving towards the wall of the stands, slashing more at those in the first rows than at me.

"What the fuck!" he shouted. He created more blades and spun them in the air hopelessly, crashing into the wall of the arena and falling down to a round of laughter. "I spared you! You lost!" he shouted.

"No, you lost!" I said, and he turned towards my voice. I didn't care, he was nothing without his eyesight, and I pulled a new lance out of the ground from my shadow.

"Should I have just run you through then?" he shouted in my direction. He sounded so frustrated, I loved it.

"I don't know guys, what do you think? Run him through?" I yelled at the crowd. They echoed my sentiment by starting a chant of run him through! These were my people and I loved them.

Meanwhile the boy was busy...shocking himself, it looked like. Electrocuting his own hands. Probably trying to figure out if his powers still worked. They did, of course, the shadow was in his eyes, not his brain, but it was still an adorable little moment. He would die confused and unsure. Probably how he lived. A grin crossed my lips as I walked silently towards him with the lance upraised.

Any chance he had of hearing my approach, hearing my attack was neutralized by the crowd. One swift strike and he'd be done for. I inched ever-closer, moving into range.

And then...I struck.

And…

He rolled sideways like he had done so many times before. That was impossible, how had he gotten his vision back? I checked and confirmed my shadow was still in his eyes, but how? He wasn't striking back, and he wasn't looking at me either, his head tilted in my direction sideways. He couldn't possible hear me over the screams, could he? A lightning powerset combined with super-hearing? Possible, but utterly bizarre.

I stabbed at him again, and again he moved, and then one more time. The crowd was laughing at me now, and I swore. Next time, I'd just cut him down. I pulled another lance from the ground and prepared to swing them in swiping cleaves, no room for him to move, just back him into a corner and eviscerate him.

But this time when I approached, he was smiling. It made me hesitate, made me nervous. He'd already surprised me twice now, and I had little desire to fall into another trap.

"What the fuck are you smiling for?" I shouted at him, from beyond the range of his powers.

"Oh, I was just thinking about what you said," he said back, a lot calmer now than when I'd first blinded him. He had a plan of some sort, and I didn't like it.

"Yeah?" I sneered, trying to goad it out of him. "And what was that?"

"You said, the brighter the light, the darker the shadow." His brown hair was floating upwards like he was in zero-g, and arcs of electricity were now jumping all over his body, in his hair, the air around him crackled ominously.

I crept forward as I kept him talking. "Yeah? And what of it?"

"Just makes me wonder," he said, and held his arms out to his sides. They crackled with energy, and small arcs of electricity traced up and down his arms. Was he going to throw them at me? I moved my lances defensively, keeping the between us. If I could get in range, I could just cut off his arms, but his attack was already primed...he'd been able to see me coming before, if I tried again now, I'd be caught in the middle of whatever he was doing.

"Wonder what?" I said, backing up as much as I could, slowly.

"Wonder if your shadows worked without lights," he said, and clapped his hands together.

There was an explosion without fire, just thousands of bolts of lightning firing between his collapsing hands, and a shockwave that knocked me flat and made every one of my hairs on my neck and arms stand on-end. When the shockwave reached the lights in the ceiling, they simply exploded, dying in a shower of sparks and dropping the entire cave into blackness.

The damn idiot! Even if he won now, he'd get no exultation, no recognition, no praise, nobody in the audience could see a damn thing! What the hell was he playing at?

I stirred and sat upright, trying to blink away the blackness by reflex. I'd spent a lot of time with my shadows and the dark didn't bother me. What did bother me was that he was right...without light, there was no shadow for me to manipulate, and without shadow--

I never finished the thought. I heard a noise in the dark, and then a foot, veiled in darkness snapped out and cracked my head back against the rock.

I reeled and felt pieces of time jumping past like they didn't exist and found myself in the middle of the arena with the fucking kid looming over me, a dozen of his swords all around us, the only lights in the place, and spaced so that neither of us cast any shadows, and there was nothing else in the arena to cast shadows on.

The crowd, somewhere out there in the darkness was cheering, but it wasn't a cheer I was familiar with. My kick-addled brain tried to understand what they were saying.

"Whitening?" I asked.

"Lightning, I think. Not actually my name, but I'll forgive them since I forgot my nametag."

"You fuck."

"Thanks. Now are you going to tell me where my friend went, or do I have to...what was the phrase, run you through?"

I swallowed hard and tried to turn my head away from him, but I was too weak, and...it felt like I was glued down. I gingerly reached back and felt something gummy between my head and the hard stone of the arena.

"Blood. Probably want to get yourself checked out. If you don't have a concussion I'd be surprised. I'd apologize, but last time I stopped attacking you, you kinda fucked me over, so yeah. Fuck you."

I laughed a little, and choked on the laugh in my throat. Felt weird laughing at something funny. I liked him, in a weird way, just a little more than I hated him for beating me. He was sharp, and ruthless when he had to be.

"Yeah, I can tell you where your friend is," I said. "If I know. Who is she?"

"Steffie. Stefanie Jorgensen. Blue hair, wheelchair. Hard to miss."

"Oh her? I've seen her around. She even fought a couple times. Don't know why, sort of a trash powerset. She did win her first fight though, idiot didn't even try to size her up before he blew himself up."

"So where is she?"

"Not here. She hasn't come by in a while, and that usually means one of two things."

I stopped talking, as did everybody else in the arena at the sound of a far-off siren. In the dark, the kid looked around, seeming confused. Suddenly, everyone was clamoring to get the hell out, pushing each other in the dark, mobiles lit up like flashlights.

"What the hell is that?" he asked.

"Get me up. We've gotta get out of here and into our houses."

"Why? What's going on?" he asked, but that didn't stop him from pulling me from the ground. His arms were strong, even if my head felt like cement.

"XPCA raid," I said. "Something's going on above, and if they find us out, we'll get pulled into it. Get us back to the surface and we can hide out in my house.

From the audience, there was a flash of light and then a pair of red lines joined us in the arena, resolving into the white-armored bitch the kid had come in with when she stepped into the circle of swords.

"Are you quite finished?" she asked, looking irritated at me in his arms. Guess she wasn't his mom after all. I did my best to cuddle up against him obnoxiously, but between the blood, and every movement of my head making me want to throw up and die, I gave up on that pretty fast.

"She says there's an XPCA raid coming."

"A raid? They raid their own establishment?"

"An inspection," I said, rolling my eyes. "The kind that comes with tanks and guns and snatching Exhumans off the street."

"And we cannot simply hide out in here?"

"No, they check in here."

She gave me an odd glance. "They know of this place?"

"Oh they know. They just don't care. Now let's move before we get taken."

"I suppose we have little time to argue," the woman said, looking around at the masses shoving and nearly rioting around us. "There is an exit over there, which is slightly more disused than the others. Let us go."

Apparently the fancy glowing headset wasn't just for decoration, since the exit she'd pulled us towards was almost empty by the time we got there. It took a minimum of shoving and fighting to get us out into the service tunnels, and then he slowly climbed the ladder with me on his back. Again, strong arms on this kid.

"So you said there are two places she might be," he said, breathing heavily. "What are they?"

"One, you probably already guessed, snatched by the XPCA. We don't know why they do it, but those who get taken come back...a little different. No seeming lasting damage, just...odd. Those who get taken insist nothing happened, but nobody wants it happening to them, so we try to stay on the XPCA's good side."

"And the other?" He asked, as we breached the surface and the welcoming rays of sunset burned my eyes.

His question died off as we saw a group of four people in red on the walls, running as they carved through a swath of unarmored XPCA whose gunshots did nothing to the charging squad. Exhuman powers lashed out, fire and smoke obliterating the helpless guards.

"The other...is the resistance," I said, pointing at the four in red.