As the gladiator stepped out into the arena, arms raised, he could hear the chanting shaking the entire building. His armor was a dull grey, covered with spikes, dozens of rusty knives and daggers scattered about his form; and dried blood evident on many of them; and unlike many combatants, his face and long dyed-red hair were readily visible.
"Rip-Per! Rip-Per! Rip-Per!" shook the air, as he stopped in the middle of the arena; and lowered his hands with a grin. He usually entered the arena clean, and left bloody. But never his blood.
"Ladies and gentlemen! Once again we present Ripper, last year's Arena champion. Former DMA assassin and current reigning butcher of the arena, we'd like to remind our opponents that Ripper has the highest kill count of any surviving gladiator, and that while we'll be upset to miss the fight, you can still withdraw up until you step out onto the sand."
The cheering grew louder. The arena didn't like high body-counts. It made for good viewing; but it also rapidly reduced the number of contestants that could join in next year. They'd made increasing attempts to stack the deck against the former DMA mutant, and even instituted a rule penalizing contestants for excessive kill counts; and even heavier penalties if they'd already given up.
Ripper didn't seem to care; and the audience loved it.
The door opened up on the other side of the arena, and out stepped a trio of opponents; all of them, amusingly enough, tall, and furry; one of them looking more like a lion, complete with mane; over seven feet tall, with bulging, powerful muscles, wearing a simple loincloth. The other two, both women, looking like twins; and a pair of cheetah-girls, wearing chest-wraps and loincloths as well; clearly going for a primitive motif.
Hilarious. More speedsters. Those were always the ones that had the best odds against him.
Ripper smiled; and as the starting buzzer sounded, inhaled deeply; the cold flow of Reflex filling his veins as he watched one of the two girls charging him head on, as the other ran... on the wall... off to his left. Her movements, at first, had been so fast as to be impossible to make out; but as the reflex flowed into his brain, they slowed down to something more normal. He watched her claw lashing out, seemingly too fast to intercept.
He flickered, becoming ethereal for just a moment. The cat-girl practically exploded around him as he re-emerged partially embedded in her body; her head and upper torso hurtling forward at hundreds of miles per hour, as he braced himself for the spray of blood and debris that erupted.
The other cat-girl was already almost to him; her focused face filled with horror as she tried to back-pedal over the last few meters; based on the similar appearances, it was probably a sister, or cousin. Maybe even a twin. He smiled, releasing a handful of daggers in her direction; letting a few of them breifly flicker into the ethereal as they flew; and when she flew by him, she rolled to a stop in the sand, choking, gasping; at least one of the blades had reappeared inside her torso.
He turned to the massive lion-man, smiling, face covered in blood, and lifted a dagger. The audience was cheering, and the lion hesitating; and as the reflex began to wear off, Ripper could see that the Lion was fast... but not as fast as the girls. He casually tossed a dagger at the advancing beast, walking forwards to meet him; and saw it bounce off of the man's fur. Speed, armor, claws? Useful.
Not -that- useful. He casually dropped back into the ethereal as the lion passed through him; dropping a dagger back into the real world as he went. When he re-emerged... he was abruptly slammed forward onto the sand, a claw slamming into his armored back, rending metal and coming away with several spikes embedded in it; as the lion dropped to a knee, wheezing; clutching his chest, coughing up blood.
The second cheetah-girl was abruptly there. She was obviously greviously wounded... but already recovering; and reached forward; tearing open her partner's chest to remove the dagger as he roared in pain.
Both regenerators? Very nice. He glanced around to look for the first one he'd taken out; but no. She was laying still, immobile. Must've taken too much damage to recover.
He laughed, flicking some of the blood off of his hands, and charged towards them; cracking another false tooth full of reflex as he ran. By the time he arrived, the cheetah-girl had managed to pull the dagger free, in a grisly display of battlefield medicine; only for Ripper to abruptly grab her by the back of the neck; and phase just part of her out with him, as he took a step back; the girl's body falling onto her wounded companion as he held up her grimacing head and part of her spine, waving them at the crowd before tossing the mass aside.
The lion's chest cavity was already sealing back up as he pulled to his feet, screaming in pain; and lashing out with his claws with dizzying speed. Ripper simply stabbed the massive paw with another dagger, backing away a step; and with dizzying speed, the beast hurled the blood-soaked implement at Ripper with enough force that it shattered on the armor plate and sent Ripper flying.
As he lay on the sand, momentarily winded, he started laughing; leaving himself seemingly vulnerable as he lay down, catching his breath; and watching the lion charge forward, lashing out with his claws as he tried to pounce on the prone assassin.
Ripper... went ethereal again... and pulled to his feet, restoring himself to normal.
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He was abruptly pushed back; he'd emerged partway into the lion-man's chest cavity; and with a few abrupt shoves, he left the powerful metahuman severed in half; the beast's head, torso, and arms dropping to the ground, the legs falling back; and a horrific roar of agony filling the stadium once again.. drowned out by the cheering of the crowd.
He could see the skin starting to knit itself back together even as blood and... a kidney.. fell out onto the sand. The lion was slashing around with one claw; he wasn't just incredibly tough, even more resistant to pain. He had determination. The sort of can-do focus and drive that likely took him far in life.
As Ripper made a few more quick hops; pressing his foot through the unfortunate lion, sending steadily more bits into the ethereal; he could see that he'd turned the nearby landscape into a gory mess, even there. Nothing rotted; the blood and pieces of hundreds of former gladiators were scattered about, seemingly floating, immobile.
Finally, after removing part of the lion's brain by bringing his fist into being inside the skull, the thrashing stopped; and as Ripper raised his hands to the sky, grinning, casually dropping the chunk of brain that had come out along with his hand, the crowd roared, clapping, stomping their feet.
"And another brutal victory for Ripper, once more emerging relatively unscathed, and with all opponents dead! I've got to say he may well be the deadliest warrior ever to enter the arena short of the Titanslayer himself!"
Ripper waggled his fingers at that comment; the crowd letting out a laugh. It was relatively good-natured; he'd only met the Titanslayer briefly, and the man had immediately grasped exactly what it took to kill him. And, well. Could see the future, apparently. Not someone you wanted to fight.
He stepped towards the arena exit, waving at the crowd, as a clean-up team came out to remove the bodies; and likely check to see whether they could be revived. One more fight for this season, and he'd win for the second season in a row. Granted, all of his kills dropped his winnings to a pittance; but he didn't really need money anymore.
Maybe he was no longer welcome in the US, but he'd been able to loot plenty of valuables on his way out.
***
As Ripper entered the changing room, he expected to find his street clothes, and the most recent couple of fan-girls he'd taken on; Marcy and Steff, if he recalled. Definitely a nice perk of becoming famous. Instead... He stopped cold.
Eyeball was sitting on the bench, an ornate 10-millimeter handgun laid out beside him; carefully cleaning it with a white cloth. He was inspecting each piece, from the handle and barrel, carved with ornate symbols that seemed to glow softly at the touch, down to the magazine; and slowly piecing it back together.
"Hello there, Ripper. Good to see you again."
Ripper frowned; gently starting to remove the blades from his armor, dropping them into a tub of sanitizer he had beside the door. He had an armorer to handle this stuff, but the guy usually came by later; mostly because Ripper usually had the girls in here right after the fight.
"Been a while. No problems between us, I hope?" He could escape, definitely. Just drop right through the floor, come out in the basement. Or up through the ceiling. That'd be unexpected.
Eyeball chuckled. "Actually, I've got a question for you. One moment, you're one of Thomes's golden boys. Reliable, solid, just absolutely deadly. The next, you're out, and there's a warrant for your arrest, without much detail on it. Treason and sabotage on the list. Is it what I think it is?"
Ripper laughed. "Just following orders. He told me to do what was best for the country. Maybe I made things a bit more permanent than he would have liked, but... I'm still doing fine, though. Honestly love this place. Not the first time I've been here, either. And with the money I saved up while working for the DMA... figured its a nice place to retire."
Eyeball studied him for a moment. "I've got a mission. End of the world sort of mission, worse than the Jotun. Actually, the reason behind the Jotun. Either we do it, or everybody dies. And I need you for it. What's your price?"
Ripper blinked, and started wriggling his way out of a blood-soaked breastplate. "Look. I like excitement as much as the next guy. And I was down for giving it the old college try at getting the Titanslayer title for myself back in Mexico. But the arena is all the excitement I need, and I don't owe anyone anything anymore. And whatever it is, I'll survive it. And I bet you've made sure this island will, too."
Eyeball nodded. "You refuse, I'll take the spot of the next team you're facing in the arena. You can either back down and let everyone know you're too scared to face me, or I can kill you on the sand. You take it, I'll pay you fifty million up front, another hundred million when you get back, and give you equipment better than anything you've ever used before, that you can keep when you come back."
The breastplate fell into the same tub of liquid. "Huh. So not quite an offer I can't refuse, but an offer I can either accept, or make myself look bad to my fans...."
"If you care about the fans so much, I'll tell them, in public, before we leave, I needed your help to take out someone so powerful, so dangerous, that not even I could take them out without your help; that not even Butcher, or Valkyrie, or Spike could do the job without you."
Ripper studied the visible indent in the back of the armor plate. "Huh. I'm assuming that's actually true?"
"Even his brain is as hard as neutronium, apparently. Everybody else I recruit will just be there to get you, alive, close enough you can turn his nervous system into swiss cheese, and then get you back home again. I know there's another couple of folks out there with your sort of powers. But to say you're the best of them is such an understatement that I seriously think you're the only candidate for the job. If you refuse, I'll take one of them instead, but I suspect it'll ultimately lead to the end of all life on earth."
"...Even the Jotun just wanted to break us. Leave some of us alive, or enslave us, until we pissed them off by not lying down and dying. What's different about this one?" Ripper started dropping his gauntlets into the tub, carefully working the fingers out of the joints.
"He's why the Jotun wanted to break us. He eats planets; he shows up, consumes all life on a world, and then leaves. He doesn't like having to fight; so he demands tribute. Every race out there has to pacify a populated world for him, every so many years, for him to eat... or he eats them instead. The Jotun were just going to use us as a handy sacrifice so that they wouldn't have to terraform a new world, or have one of their own eaten."
Ripper blinked. "Oh. Yeah, actually... I think I read about that in one of the threat reports back when I was with Thomes. Alright. I'm in. The money isn't such a big deal, but I'd like to have a look inside that lab of yours; some of that gear I've seen you use could be pretty kickass for a killer like myself."