When Jay awoke, most of his pain had vanished.

Most.

The last echoes of a throbbing headache still bounced around his head, but at least he wasn’t coated in blood anymore.

He lay face up on a hardwood floor. No longer staring up at the newbie arena’s artificial sky, but at a low-set ceiling painted in a forgettable beige.

For a moment Jay rested in blissful silence, remembering how the coliseum had fully healed him last time. He still had a headache, but that made sense since it was self-inflicted. Jay enjoyed his moment, a few brief seconds of stillness. Finally.

The moment was ruined the second he tried to move his arms.

It felt like Jay’s forearms had been surgically removed and replaced with cinderblocks. Any attempt to move them was met with nothing, not even pain. Jay craned his neck off the floor to get a better look.

Well at least they’re still there.

Past the elbow, Jay’s arms were swollen, purple and entirely unresponsive. Only tatters remained of his brand-new wraps and Jay's bruised, puffy fingers filled the Conquerors fists with no room to spare. He tried to wiggle them, but the discoloured lumps didn’t budge.

Congratulations Lightning Leonard, you have won your second fight in the Second Chance Coliseum.

You have unlocked new privileges:

You may now replay previous fights, access the leaderboards, access the shopping interface, and view others’ profiles.

Your profile has now been updated. Would you like to view it?

You have been awarded 2400 Contribution points.

Your visa has been extended for 7 days.

Jay's mood was buoyed by the thought of improved rankings, and over two thousand contribution points didn’t hurt either. Remembering he had another fight in a week did put a dampener on his mood, but Jay tried to push through it.

Ever since he’d been told that the rankings were only based off fights, Jay had been itching to see a tangible sign of his improvement. Of course he’d harmonized, he’d trained, he’d just won his second fight and shown the world how good he was. But nothing beat climbing the ladder, looking beneath you and laughing with a sense of superiority.

Alias

Lightning Leonard

Organisation

Second Chance Coliseum (Soulbound)

Grade

E

Rank

823

Offence

793

Defence

901

Strategy

850

Instinct

750

Vitality

931

Speed

701

Jay wasn’t sure what he’d expected, he had no reference to compare the rank improvement to. He did, however, make a mental note to ask Akira or Lyra about the nitty gritty of the rankings later. Another one for the list.

The shock factor of Jay's injured arms died down after looking at his stats. Although he still couldn’t move them, they were now mere deadweight rather than chains tying him to the ground. He managed, still with some difficulty, to sit up and scan the room he woke up in. Jay recognised the same room he stayed in before this fight and after his first.

He crossed his legs, no fight was complete without a post-fight analysis, and Jay wanted to get into it while his mind was still fresh. Jay closed his eyes, shutting off the outside world. Entirely focused on evaluating his fight.

And extracting every last drop of knowledge from it.

Now where do I start?

From the beginning, the fight hadn’t gone to plan. Why? Because his opponent didn’t do what he’d expected. Why?

This one took a bit more time, why didn’t the gorilla act as Jay had planned? Because it just didn’t? It was just an animal, it couldn’t have seen through Jay's plan or developed its own tactic, right?

That line of reasoning was meaningless. Regardless of the how or why, Jay's plan failed to properly account for his opponent. That was the issue he needed to rectify.

His opponent didn’t act as he’d expected. Jay couldn’t put that on his opponent. If he wanted to not make the same mistake again, he had to change. The issue wasn’t with his opponent’s actions, but rather his reliance on them.

The strategy was built on a poor foundation. Getting to the gorilla’s back was a good idea, it had been successfully done before and it was what eventually won him the fight. The issue was how to get there. His strategy relied on the gorilla charging in. While that wasn’t a bad assumption, previous fights had shown it happening almost every fight, it was still an assumption. The base of his plan relied on his opponent, relied on an uncertainty. Next time, Jay had to make sure his core strategy revolved around himself. Not his opponent.

In a way, this was a fusion of what he’d learned from the twins. Jay needed a plan. He wasn’t strong enough to win his fights without one. But he shouldn’t be so reliant on it, and his plans should focus on how to enable his own strengths rather than stymie his opponents. In the fight, Jay was far too reliant on his plan. One of its foundational pillars was demolished within the first five seconds, yet he still stuck to it.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Jay didn’t regret his decision. It was the best one available and it kept him alive. But ideally he wouldn’t put himself in the position to make it again.

Unfortunately, every issue from the fight came down to just one.

Jay was weak.

He was weak and needed to become stronger.

Jay's weakness held him back, limiting what he could and couldn’t do. If he had better acceleration, he wouldn’t have been so reliant on timing to create his opening. He’d have a larger window of opportunity for everything he tried. If he had more durability, he wouldn’t have been almost killed by one attack.

A one-on-one fight was like high stakes chess. Each movement in battle shifted the balance of the fight whether it was threatening, attacking, or defending. There was one major difference however, between fighting and chess.

Chess was fair.

Both sides had the same pieces, and victory was solely dependent on the skill of the players. Fighting never worked out like that, Jay faced the gorilla with an army full of pawns up against fifteen queens.

He only won because he threw a bomb at the chessboard.

Jay felt he’d made good progress on his two techniques over the last week. Eye of the storm went from a panic button to an all-encompassing battle aid. One that would only become more useful as he grew stronger. Jay wondered how much further he could push the technique. Was he limited by his body, or could he go beyond? Could Eye of the storm transition into something that gave him speed, or would his neurons not allow it?

Thunder strike was a trickier technique to assess. It had won him the fight, but was its potential hampered by Jay’s limited overlap with it? From just a few days of training, Jay already knew he resonated more with lightning essence. His nickname wasn’t Thunder Leonard, after all.

That meant he had to learn a new damaging technique, one that used lightning instead of thunder.

Jay envisioned himself chasing an opponent around the gravel pit, lightning spouting from his hands. A week ago, those thoughts would be limited to daydreams, or nightmares. But now it was his reality.

Jay laughed at how much his life had changed in the last week, and how much had stayed the same. He’d lost everything, his family, his career, his dream. But the core loop of his life hadn’t changed. if anything, it was simpler. More like what Jay thought his career as a boxer would look like. There was no marketing, no media circus. Just fighting. Just a constant pursuit to be the best.

If Jay couldn’t honour his brother’s memory by becoming the heavyweight champion of the world, he’d do it by conquering the Second Chance Coliseum.

Different planet. Different mountain. Same goal.

The very top.

Jay shook off his stiffness and stood up. There wasn’t much else he could get out of the fight, it had only lasted about thirty seconds, even if it felt like much longer inside Jay’s mind. Maybe he jinxed himself by thinking about Mike Tyson beforehand? Although the less time he had to spend with a gorilla the better, so it could have been way worse.

Next fight I’m saying a Mayweather quote. Half an hour of barely getting hit please.

Jay’s arms still hung limply by his sides, not just unmoving but unresponsive. When his mind wandered, Jay almost forgot they were there. The weight pulling down on his shoulders the only thing reminding him they existed.

How do I fix my arms? Skipped the line and inserted itself right at the top of Jay's List of Confusing Shit. The list had come a long way since he made it. He’d answered the simple questions like Where am I? and What’s this golden box? but some remained. He still knew nothing about the coliseum system, or the strange voice behind it during his debut.

How long until I’m allowed to ask about whoever that was?

But he had to tackle each problem one at a time, and first was figuring out what the hell happened to his arms.

Well, after he figured out how to open the door without them.

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The crowd was smaller than last time, and quite a bit more civilised. A dozen people lined up outside the building, some held memory crystals in their hands, others stacks of paper. A tall, scruffy man with a mop of forest green hair stood at the front of the queue. He opened his mouth but was cut off before he could begin his pitch.

“Excuse me sir. Nobody speaks to my client without my permission. Please step back.” Akira said. Desperately clinging onto a straight face while holding two fingers up to an invisible Bluetooth earpiece. “Follow me Mr. Leonard. Your assistant will be with you shortly.”

“You’re having way too much fun with this.” Jay replied.

“No fun on the job for me Mr. Leonard. I just want the best for my client.”

Jay followed his bodyguard, or was it his agent, out of the crowd. Akira took him a different way to last time, so Jay didn’t get the chance to look at the statue that captured his attention the last time he exited the coliseum.

The first alleyway Akira took Jay through was plain, beige, and spartan. Nothing adorned the smooth stone walls, other than the occasional carved or painted rune. As they walked, the buildings became dirtier, but far more extravagant. Minimalist storefronts, barely featuring a name above their door, made way for grander façades.

The only person Jay saw on the first three streets was a woman repainting a doorway red, she took one look at Jay before congratulating him on his fight and going back to work.

They walked past a pair of children playing with wooden swords on the fourth street. They begged Akira to let them hold his real one, but he told them weapons weren’t for playing with and barely slowed his stride.

The fifth alleyway had eight people lying on the floor. Half were visibly drunk, half were asleep and presumably drunk too. A young man stood over them, head in hands, deliberating how to get them all back home.

“Man, I always love the walk back to Reveller's.” Akira said, as soon as they were out of the unfortunate young man’s earshot. “The E grade exit is in Gladiator's Octant, so the journey always starts off plain and uninteresting. But the closer you get to Reveller's Avenue, the more weird shit you start seeing.”

Akira pointed to a window on the third storey of the building to their left. A man wearing nothing but his underwear clung for dear life onto a windowsill, and Jay could hear two voices arguing from inside.

The eccentric sights and sounds of Reveller's Octant provided Jay at least a little break from the fears of his future. His post-fight review helped him visualise a path going forward, and Jay was beginning to feel good after the abject terror that was his second fight.

As long as he didn’t think about his arms.

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Akira kept up the agent act even when there was no one around to watch them. He pulled open the metal front door to the celestial swords with a quiet “After you sir.” Standing to one side and waving Jay in.

Lyra was the only patron inside this early, she scratched the back of her neck and idly had half an eye on a fight projected onto the wall. When she saw Jay walk in, she set her hands on her lap and greeted him with a smile.

Oh shit.

“Congratulations. It’s good to see you alive.”

The necklace.

“Thanks… and uh, sorry about your gift.”

Jay didn’t want to let it stew. Lyra didn’t seem like she held grudges, but she didn’t seem forgetful either, better to address it now. Jay watched her smile fade from brave to bittersweet as he spoke. Losing a memory of home was always painful.

“I wouldn’t have given it to you if I didn’t want you to use it. It’s sad to see it go, but that’s what it was made for. Besides, I don’t live in that world anymore. It was a relic of a life lived and lost.” Lyra paused for a moment, staring off into the distance, tapping her fingertips together before returning her focus to Jay. “I’m glad you used it; it’s better than the alternative. I’d rather have it embedded in the gorillas back than hanging round the neck of your corpse.”

Jay nodded gravely and returned Lyra's subdued smile.

“Two and O baby! Two and frickin O. Did you know every fighter who’s ever gotten a statue outside the coliseum also had a two and O record at some point?” Akira, freed from his role as bodyguard-agent-door opener, broke the seriousness in a way only he could.

A wrecking ball smashed through tension far more effectively than a knife. Both Jay and the usually stoic Lyra couldn’t hold back their laughter as their friend joined in the conversation.

“Now that may be because everyone who didn’t go two and O died… But we don’t need to talk about that. Celebratory drink anyone? Care to treat us Mr. Victorious?”

Jay took seconds to order; he was beginning to get used to the coliseum’s various systems and the one for ordering drinks was delightfully efficient.

“So, how was it?” Lyra said.

“Well… It was fucking terrifying.” Jay's opening statement earned a smile out of both his friends. He began telling them about the fight from his perspective. They’d already seen the fight, so he focused on his thought processes’ rather than giving them the play by play. He’d just about finished when their drinks came. Jay's verbal victory parade was rained on by his attempt to pick up the glass.

He had enough control over his upper arms to drag his hands onto the table. There was no response, regardless of where he placed them. Jay paused his storytelling to focus, pleading at his fingers to show any sign of life.

They refused to listen.

“Guys, can I ask you for two favours, one big, one small?” Jay said, looking desperately at his two friends. “I can’t move my forearms. Like, at all. Do you know where I can get them fixed? More importantly, can you get me a straw? I need to finish my drink.”

Lyra appeared to go into her thoughts, probably thinking about something useful like where the nearest hospital was. Akira chuckled and muttered something to himself, all Jay could make out was “British people” and “alcoholics”, before he got up and brought back a straw.

“The coliseum heals most injuries after every fight. I don’t know why it didn’t do that for you. I know a few people who might know more. If the coliseum isn’t healing you, this could be serious. We should see them as soon as possible.” Lyra said. She took one look at Jay hunched over, using every cubic centimetre of his lungs to slurp beer through his straw, before letting out a sigh.

“We should see them as soon as you finish your drink.”

Jay nodded and went back to slurping.