Sam
“You going to eat that?” Sam asked, pointing to a half-eaten veggie wrap on the bench between herself and her left-hand neighbor, a man so drunk he looked about ready to keel over on the guy in front.
He blinked slowly at her, then looked questioningly down at his wrap as though seeing it for the first time.
“Mind if I take it?”
He shook his head.
Sam grabbed the greasy packet and tucked in.
She ate more to still her nerves than anything, watching the small shape that was Ratcatcher walk out into the Hell-3 pit, his larger mirror image on the airborne viewing cube following a fraction of a second later. His opponent—a brutish, bull-necked Laborer—stepped up to stare him down, standing at least a head and a half taller than the Artisan.
To chase away the darkness of the onsetting night, limelights on scaffolds illuminated the arena with stark, pale light that made Sam’s eyes itch. She didn’t want to think about how it had to feel for Ratcatcher down there, all those lights burning down on him.
I guess I’ll know soon enough.
“LADIESSS AND GENTLEMENNN,” Golden Boy screeched as he twirled through the air in an enthusiastic one-man waltz. “TO CLOSE OUT THE FIRST ROUND OF THE B-BRACKET, BOY DO WE HAVE AN INTERESTING SHOW FOR YOU!” Coming to a sudden stop, sweat-slicked and breathing heavy, the gold-plated man had his scepter out to point at the bigger fighter. “IN ONE CORNER, WE HAVE SKULLCRUSHER, A NEWCOMER TO THE PROMOTION! THEY SAY HE WORKED AS A CLAY SCULPTOR BACK ON EARTH, ONLY WHEN HE CAME TO THE FRONTIER HE DISCOVERED THAT HE PREFERRED WORKING WITH A LIVING MEDIUM. WELL, FIVE OR SIX FLESH SCULPTURES AND A DISHONORABLE DISCHARGE FROM THE MILITIA LATER, HERE HE STANDS. THIS IS A MONSTER WITH A CAPITAL ‘M’, PEOPLE—AN ARTIST OF AGONY—AND WE’RE ABOUT TO SEE HIM PRACTICE HIS CRAFT!”
Skullcrusher offered his opponent a nasty, shit-eating grin, eyes wide with an unholy fervor. To his credit, Ratcatcher met the man’s gaze almost without flinching. Almost, but not quite.
I should’ve known this place would attract every psycho in the Frontier. Sam crammed the heel end of the wrap into her mouth; chewed, swallowed, burped against the back of her hand, and instinctively looked around for more. She had to settle for nibbling on a few stray bits of boiled vegetable that had fallen on her shirt.
“AND IN THE OTHER CORNER,” Golden Boy carried on, floating down to Ratcatcher and draping a sympathetic arm over his shoulder, “WE HAVE RATCATCHERRR. HE’S A REGULAR OF OUR LITTLE SHOW, FOLKS, AND WE ALWAYS LOVE TO SEE HIM TRY HIS HARDEST. HE HASN’T HAD MUCH LUCK TO DATE, BUT WHO KNOWS? MAYBE TODAY WILL BE THE DAY FOR OUR HUMBLE FRIEND?”
The laughter from the crowd suggested that they did not find this very likely.
“Woo!” Sam shouted into cupped hands. “Ratcatcher! Let’s go! Kick his ass, man!”
She got a few strange backward glances from other spectators on the benches, and replied with a smile and a shrug, tongue between her teeth.
The fighters were directed back to their respective corners. Ratcatcher rocked nervously on his heels, doing shoulder stretches, while Skullcrusher stood eerily still, hunched like a predator, always wearing that hungry grin.
The horn cried a single, mournful peal.
Skullcrusher shot forward, feet like bricks kicking up sprays of sand.
Ratcatcher planted himself firmly and stood his ground. Through the screen, Sam could see that his face was a mask of focus, tongue tenting one cheek. When his opponent had crossed more than half the distance between them, he held out a hand, palm down, and called: “Tidy Up [Sand]!”
The surface beneath Skullcrusher’s feet shifted, upsetting his balance, as the sand crept away like something alive, a knot of snakes slithering to unveil the stone foundation that rested beneath a foot of sand. Coalescing beneath Ratcatcher’s hand, the gathered material made a waist-high barrier that Skullcrusher bulled right into, upending him as he tumbled to the other side.
Another use of Tidy Up piled Skullcrusher’s entire lower half under a deluge of rushing sand. Ratcatcher got in two solid stomps to the back of the head before scrambling away. If the Laborer was affected by either the sand or the kicks, he displayed little sign of it as he rose growling to his feet, scattering grainy substrate as he laid about him with wild haymakers. He was frothing to beat the Artisan down, but his strikes found only air as his opponent continued to maintain a wary distance.
“Tidy Up is one of my favorite skills,” Ratcatcher explained to no one in particular as he kept up a steady shuffle of feet, his amplified voice echoing across a large section of the fairground. “People don’t give it a chance, and that’s a shame. It’s a lot more versatile than you’d think. Of course, I mostly picked it up because trawling for rats in some infested Outside shithole becomes a lot more tolerable if you can clean up first without needing to get your hands dirty.”
“Shut your fucking mouth, worm!” Skullcrusher barked as he kept after the Artisan, clumsy with his great bulk.
“Sorry,” Ratcatcher replied, “I get chatty when I’m nervous.”
A misplaced foot caused him to stumble, and that was all Skullcrusher needed to close the distance. Cocking back his fist, he howled: “Strike!”
Arm a blur, he slammed Ratcatcher’s midsection with the loud boom of a cannon firing, sent the recipient sliding on one knee.
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Sam grimaced with second-hand pain. That hit had looked positively spine-crunching.
Skidding to a stop, Ratcatcher coughed trails of saliva, red-faced and breathless. Sand tumbled from the front of his shirt in sheets and double handfuls as he uncurled fists held in a defensive cross over his center.
He made a shield of sand with that skill to mitigate the damage! Sam realized. It had to take good reflexes to enact that defense in a split second.
Having slipped back onto the roughly six-foot circle of bare flooring he had exposed earlier, Ratcatcher slammed his hands onto the stone and wheezed: “Imbue: Bind!”
Skullcrusher, who had been advancing rapidly, stopped in his tracks.
Shuffling back two steps, Ratcatcher touched the ground again and repeated: “Imbue: Bind.” Then one more step, and: “Imbue, Amp (Two): Tidy Up [Oxygen].”
Sam had no idea what any of that meant, but there was no visible effect that she could tell. Whatever he had done, all five of his AP crystals winked out within seconds of each other, and he winced with the strain of it. The Tidy Up skill he had used earlier seemed to be one of those cantrips that didn’t cost anything to use, but he had gone all-in on this move… whatever it was.
Skullcrusher chuckled and began circling the patch of bare earth. “Do you really think I’d walk into such an obvious trap?”
Ratcatcher staggered to his feet and shrugged with a sideways tilt of his head. “Worth a try, wasn’t it?”
“You’re out of juice. What are you going to do now, worm?” Skullcrusher flexed the corded muscle of his left forearm, showing off the four out of his five crystals that still glowed blue.
“Good thing I’ve got ol’ reliable,” Ratcatcher replied with a shaky grin, though he looked like he wanted to be sick.
Their cat-and-mouse game resumed, with the Laborer chasing the Artisan around the ring as the latter occasionally used Tidy Up to shuffle sand around and buy himself a second of breathing room here or there whenever his opponent got too close.
It was clear where the fight was headed, though. The difference in their physical power was too great for Ratcatcher to make up, made obvious by the fact that even those perfectly placed head kicks had done zero damage. Skullcrusher had to have at least a few points in Toughness, and Ratcatcher evidently had none in Strength.
It didn’t seem like he had any tricks left up his sleeve, either. He was all out of AP, and the best that Tidy Up cantrip could do was delay the inevitable. Even that was taking its toll—Sam remembered Will talking about something called skill fatigue, and Ratcatcher certainly seemed to be suffering from it, staggering about and shaking his head repeatedly as if to clear it.
“Come on, Ratcatcher!” Sam called, hoping vainly there was still some way for the Artisan to turn it around. “Kick his butt, come on!” He probably couldn’t even hear her over all the racket going on around Hell-3, but she couldn’t think of any way to help beyond cheering him on.
The sinking feeling in Sam’s gut reached a queasy boil when Ratcatcher tripped over his own leaden feet and fell heavily near the center of the pit. He scrabbled back with heels and elbows to keep out of his opponent’s grasp, but Skullcrusher did not waste a moment capitalizing on the Artisan’s misfortune, storming over with murder in his eyes.
“Tidy Up [Sand],” Ratcatcher panted, raising both hands.
Sand rushed up around his legs and arms, pulled out from the patch of ground Skullcrusher was standing on like a yanked rug. At this point, however, the Laborer was well-accustomed to that particular trick, and stepped onto the bare stone without missing a beat.
“Pathetic!” Skullcrusher roared as he advanced, furious at being denied his prey for so long.
“You said it, friend,” Ratcatcher shot back with a tired laugh. “Interact (Three).”
Skullcrusher’s brows knitted in confusion, then shot up in surprise as he went to take another step and found his foot stuck to the ground. Pulled along by his own momentum, he fell face-first, only barely catching himself with his hands. His angry snarl soon dissipated as he attempted to lever himself back up, only to find that his hands, his chest, and even his cheek were fused to the ground. He thrashed and raged, but with no leverage to push off with, he was caught like a…
Sam could only think of a rodent caught in a glue trap.
Skullcrusher tried to roar something, but only a hoarse croak came out, and he seemed to be struggling to find his breath, mouth working uselessly.
Pushing himself to his feet, Ratcatcher waded free of the sand that surrounded him, approaching the big man on unsteady legs. “Holy shit,” he gasped. “So tired… I think I need to rest for a minute.”
Without any fanfare, he plopped down on the Laborer’s back, ignoring the feeble movements beneath him.
“I knew I could hit you all day and accomplish nothing but breaking my own hands,” Ratcatcher said, waving hello at some confused-looking spectators. “But even a big fucker like you’s gotta take a breath every once in a while.” Looking down at his opponent, he thumped the man’s back apologetically. “What you’re feeling right now is the Tidy Up I set earlier sucking the oxygen from the air around your head. I expect you’ll lose consciousness in a minute or so.”
Ratcatcher sat in silence for a while—chin resting in his hand, elbow propped on his knee. The roar of the crowd had quieted into a speculative murmur as folk tried to figure out what was going on. Then Ratcatcher chuckled to himself and said: “You wanna know something funny?”
Skullcrusher gave only a panicked gasp in reply.
It was taken as assent. “Rats are actually pretty clever. They’re wary of anything new introduced into their environment, and if they identify something as a trap, they’ll avoid it for weeks afterwards. Makes my job a good bit harder, but you have to admire their resourcefulness. I guess that whole object permanence bit was a little too advanced for you, though. Which, of course, means that you’re actually dumber than the average rat. How’s that feel?”
Skullcrusher’s desperate attempts at getting air were growing weaker, and his eyelids were beginning to flutter shut.
Soon after, he was completely still.
[Ratcatcher wins.]
As she went over the entire chain of events that had just transpired, Sam realized that Ratcatcher had set up that whole thing. He’d planned it all, perfectly predicting how his opponent would act.
“WOOOOO!” Sam shouted at the top of her lungs, the echo of her voice cutting across the fairground. “GREAT MATCH! YOU DID IT! WAY TO FUCKING GOOOO!”
There were scattered cheers and a round of lukewarm applause from those who decided they agreed with her assessment. Most still looked confused, and a little miffed at not getting the result they’d expected.
Sam descended the bleachers in leaping bounds, taking four steps at a time, to congratulate her new friend in person.