Luke squared off against Dissolve, his fists raised. The Brazilian fighter opposite him seemed almost carefree, like he’d already had his whole victory planned out from the moment he stepped into the ring.
Cocky asshole, Luke thought to himself as he rushed forwards, throwing a feint that Dissolve dodged without a second thought, and then a jab that caught his jaw with a loud thud, leaking blood from the corner of the man’s mouth. The man wiped it off, and went for an attack that Luke hadn’t expected.
Instead of a punch, or a kick, or a grapple, Dissolve began retching, and then let loose a projectile flood of green liquid; Luke leapt out of the way out of simple disgust, but still found part of the torrent grazing his face and the side of his body, and it burned like the fires of Hell.
So that’s where the name’s from. Fucker pukes acid, Luke thought as he picked himself up. Great. Just perfect.
“It seems like Dissolve’s decided to show off the trump card he takes his name from: the Code of Acid!” the ring announcer shouted into the microphone over the roar of the crowd, clearly enjoying the proceedings. “I don’t think this newcomer has a chance!”
Luke looked at the announcer and grunted angrily, then charged forwards at Dissolve in a full sprint.
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Meanwhile, in their suite, Sam and Ava were sitting awkwardly on opposite sides of the couch, passing a bong back and forth as they watched a movie neither of them recognized on HBO.
“Do you wanna, like… move closer together?” Ava asked. “This is a little weird.”
Sam blushed, and Ava had a glimmer of realization as to why he had parked himself on the opposite side.
“Seriously, it’s cool, I don’t bite,” she said, scooting to the middle of it. Sam blushed even harder, and then glanced at the bracket, where the match for Luke vs. Dissolve had a pulsating light backing it.
“Hey, Luke’s on in the tournament right now,” Sam said, flipping the channel and attempting to change the subject. “Let’s see how he’s holding up.”
The camera feed, taken by a drone that circled above the competitors’ heads, showed Luke and Dissolve trading punches, neither seeming to have a clear advantage over the other.
“What’s with that guy’s outfit?” Ava asked. “Very… green.”
“I know, right?” Sam said in response. “And what the hell happened to Luke’s shirt and the side of his face? Looks like he got hit with that chemical vat from RoboCop or something.”
“I think this guy’s probably got some kind of acid-related power,” Ava said. “Why isn’t Luke using his Code, anyways? He’s just throwing punches.”
Sam studied the picture for a moment, and then slapped his forehead in frustration.
“Oh my god, that dumb motherfucker,” Sam yelled at the television.
“What’d he do?” Ava asked.
“You know how, when we were out in the woods, he needed to use a stick to use his Code?” Sam asked. “Notice what you don’t see in his hands, or at his side, or like, anywhere in the arena right now.”
Ava burst out laughing.
“It’s not funny,” Sam said. “Dude’s pretty much unarmed. He might get fucked in this match, and then that’s one shot at Maxim gone.”
“Oh, trust me, if he dies I’m not gonna be laughing,” Ava said. “But for now, that’s really, really funny, you’ve gotta admit.”
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Luckily for the group, Luke was making a pretty good showing of himself even without his Code. Dissolve’s Code didn’t affect his regular attacks in any way, so for the most part, it felt like any other fight, and a surprisingly evenly-matched one; every punch or kick from one was immediately answered by the other, rendering it seemingly a war of attrition more than anything.
He was starting to develop a grudging respect for the man in front of him; he’d started to see this whole parasite thing as a crutch that people used to keep from building their proper fighting skills, but Dissolve, the Brazilian man trading punches with him, clearly put the lie to that. The man was almost exactly as good as he was, and he wasn’t shabby himself.
Then, it occurred to Luke that he should probably use his Code, too… and he quickly realized that he had forgotten to bring a stick, or a pipe, or anything that could be used to invoke his Code.
Luke went red with embarrassment, and suddenly realized that he was the one at a severe disadvantage, as Dissolve swept his leg out from under him, mounted him, threw a couple of quick punches at his head, and began to retch yet again.
“Dissolve’s going for an attack with the Code of Acid yet again!” the announcer yelled as the crowd roared.
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“Oh, fucking gross,” Ava said, hearing the noises coming out of Dissolve’s gullet as he prepared his attack. “He’s a puker!?”
“Seems that way,” Sam said, adjusting his glasses a bit. “I, uh… I think Luke’s kinda fucked.”
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“God, I hope he isn’t,” Ava said. “What would we even tell people? ‘Oh, we lost a buddy over there, he got puked to death?’”
“I would think we’re not gonna be doing a whole lot of ‘telling people about this’ in general,” Sam said, a little annoyed. “I get the vibe this is all kinda need-to-know.”
“Sure could’ve fooled me, with the shirts and the Funko Pops,” Ava said, lighting the bong.
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Luke managed to come out of his daze from the sweep and punches, just as the torrent of acidic vomit started to leave Dissolve’s mouth, and drove his knee into the Brazilian’s chest, knocking him away. He wasn’t fully saved from the vomit, however, and a puddle of it coated the left side of his chest, where the initial graze had already melted his shirt away. His torso burned with a worse pain than he had ever felt in his life.
“You’re just delaying the inevitable, gatinho,” Dissolve said, opening his mouth to speak rather than vomit for the first time in the fight. “You’re already burned. It’s only going to get worse, the more you fight; you should just stay down, next time.”
The acid was starting to eat through the flesh of Luke’s torso, making him wince with every movement and every second that passed. He was pretty sure he wasn’t going to survive this… but he needed to try.
“Fuck you,” Luke said, keeping his response as blunt as possible as he staggered closer to Dissolve, closing the gap. There was clearly some sort of cooldown or warmup time for Dissolve’s vomiting, and that meant Luke had a moment before the next attack.
Enough of the flesh had melted away from his torso that his ribcage was exposed; this gave Luke an idea, and he reached across with his right arm, getting a firm grip on a long rib.
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Ava was sitting at the edge of her seat, gnawing on a fingernail.
“He’s not about to do what I think he’s about to fucking do,” she said. “There’s no goddamn way.”
“What do you think he’s about to do?” Sam asked, unsure what, exactly, he was looking at, as Luke kept a firm grip on his own exposed rib.
“You know how you were saying he doesn’t have a stick or anything?” Ava asked. This quickly made Sam realize exactly what Luke was doing.
“Holy fucking shit, there’s no way,” Sam said, his reddened eyes as wide as dinner plates. “If he does that, I’m sorry, but he’s officially shot up above you on the List Of People I Don’t Ever Want To Piss Off.”
Ava raised an eyebrow.
“You have a list?” she asked. Sam rolled his eyes.
“Figure of speech,” he said.
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Luke wrenched with his right hand and pulled, as hard as he could, sending agony like nothing he’d ever felt in his life through his body as the rib broke free with a sickening snap. Blood poured out of the wound and he staggered, trying desperately to keep his balance.
“Doing my job for me, are you, meu amado?” Dissolve asked, smirking slightly. “I can appreciate that. It’s always nice when someone makes it easier.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Luke said, as he continued to stagger forwards with the blood-soaked rib bone, brandishing it as a weapon. Dissolve looked flabbergasted.
“You can’t possibly be about to try and attack me with your own bone,” Dissolve said, simultaneously confused and indignant. “Meu amado, those are usually better in a fight when they’re inside your body, not outside of it.”
“You only think that because you don’t know me,” Luke said. “Let’s fix that.” With that, he used as much energy as he could still spare to charge at Dissolve, with as much speed as he could muster. Dissolve began to retch, and he knew he needed to make his strike fast and make it count.
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Ava had dropped the bong, just barely managing to catch it well enough to avoid spilling water on the carpeted floor.
“He fucking did it,” Ava said. “The mad lad actually did it. Holy fucking shit.”
Sam, meanwhile, was in the bathroom, hunched over the toilet bowl. He could take a lot, as far as horrific violence; his mom was a trauma surgeon at Ben Taub, and he’d heard some stories. A man getting horrifically burnt with acid, then wrenching his own rib out to use it as a weapon, however, was a new one, and the disgust, coupled with the anxiety from it being a friend, had caused everything he’d eaten in the past two days to start rebelling against his stomach and trying to come out.
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With every bit of energy he could still muster, as Luke closed the distance and Dissolve prepared to unleash another torrent of vomit, the teen swung the rib bone at the side of his opponent’s head. If his Code worked, he figured, it would be an instant kill; if it didn’t, he’d still knock the man out pretty damn good, given the surprising heft of the bone.
Fortunately, when the bone struck flesh, it met no resistance and tore straight through, splitting Dissolve’s head in half with a massive spray of blood, and causing the vomit he’d been preparing to spew wildly in a rough circular pattern around him, like the world’s worst fountain. The crowd roared with anger and dismay.
Luke barely managed to keep himself upright as Dissolve’s corpse hit the arena floor with a wet thud. The announcer/referee, who had been keeping her distance presumably to avoid Dissolve’s acid, sauntered over to the two and held up her microphone, as boos and chants of “kill Lockheed” rang through the arena.
“I don’t think I need to do a ten-count for this one, boys,” she said, trying to ignore the crowd’s hostility and lifting Luke’s left arm up (to a groan of pain and annoyance from him). “We have a surprise winner! Luke Albright, representing Lockheed Martin, will be moving onto the second round!”
With that, Luke collapsed to the floor of the arena, with his own wet thud, and blacked out.
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When Sam finished vomiting and came out of the bathroom, what he saw on the television was both fighters in an unconscious lump; Dissolve was clearly very dead, but Luke’s fate was less certain.
“What’d I miss?” he asked. “We win?”
“Yeah,” Ava said. “I guess for Luke’s Code, a torn-out rib bone works totally fine as a ‘sword.’”
“I’m still fucking amazed he did that,” Sam said.
“Christ on a bike, I know, right? See, it’s not me you need to be scared of when we’ve got that guy with us,” Ava said, half-facetiously. “And to think I kicked his ass before all this started.”
On the television, Scott rushed to the arena and picked up Luke, carrying his passed-out brother in a fireman’s carry position.
“You think he’s gonna be okay?” Ava asked. “Dude looks pretty rough.”
As if to answer the question for her, Scott set Luke down on the ground and laid his hands on his brother’s chest; the television showed flesh seeming to grow back from nothing as the burns healed themselves, with significant scar tissue (including a rather gnarly-looking scar on the side of his face) as the only remaining sign of Luke’s injuries. He picked his brother back up, hoisting him to a standing position and wrapping an arm around his shoulder, and began to lug him back out of the arena.
“He’ll be fine,” Sam said.
As soon as Sam had said that, the light next to the television began to flash, indicating that it was Ava’s turn to fight.
“Alright, let’s do this,” Ava said, picking herself up from the couch and stretching a bit as she walked towards the door. “Hope it’s not another acid guy.” Sam stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.
“Come back in one piece, alright, Ava?” Sam asked.
“You’re not coming with me?” she asked, quizzically.
“…I mean, I’m not the healer,” he said. “Unless you want moral support, there’s not a whole lot I’m gonna be able to do.”
“Moral support’d be nice,” Ava said, shrugging.
“Well, fair enough, then,” Sam said, keeping pace with her.