Scott fell to the ground as Maxim drained Luke’s body mass, leaving nothing but a discarded husk of dead skin on the ground as his own body grew.
This wasn’t supposed to happen, he thought. I knew Luke was going to get his ass kicked, but… what the fuck!?
He sobbed quietly, mourning the loss of his brother, and then every part of him burned. There was only one thing he had to do. Only one thing he could even try to do. If he could pull it off, if he could even come close and give Ava a solid opening, he could die, too, and go with his brother.
The center of his skull throbbed as his parasite went through its own evolution, and Scott, determined in his purpose, climbed into the ring to face the Iron Russian.
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Meanwhile, in the suite, Ava and Sam were a wreck.
Ava had more or less known that Luke was not going to come away the victor of his fight. But she hadn’t expected it to be that… easy. And she hadn’t expected Maxim to kill him; this went against everything she had known so far about the man.
“That lying fucking Russian son of a bitch!” she screamed at the television, sobbing. “I’m going to fucking kill that piece of shit!”
The center of her skull throbbed with pain, and she wanted blood.
Sam, meanwhile, was being less overt about his anguish, and had more or less curled up into a ball on the couch, shaking.
Both of them were quickly snapped out of it when the drone camera picked up Scott walking into the ring, taking his own fighting stance.
“No, you stupid son of a bitch,” Ava muttered, leaning forwards and wiping the tears from her eyes as she stared rapt at the television. “We don’t need to lose two. C’mon, get the fuck out of the ring, you’re not even a fighter.”
Sam’s eyes were as wide as dinner plates.
“He’s our healer,” he said. “If he gets killed, we’re fucked.”
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“You must be joking, boy,” Maxim said to Scott as the latter took a fighting pose, a determined look on his face. “My orders were to kill the other fighter, not to kill his assistant. Go. Run along to your friends, and know that I took no pleasure in this.”
Scott smirked.
“I don’t care what your orders were,” he said. “That was my older brother you just absorbed. I’m not walking away from this.”
“I can respect that,” Maxim said. “Well, then, take your best shot.” He stood, arms at his side, protecting nothing, expecting the non-fighter to be unable to damage him, just as Ava had been on the ship.
Instead of going for a straightforward attack, however, Scott walked up to Maxim and placed his hands on Maxim’s bare chest.
Maxim looked down, at first unsure of what Scott was doing, and then his flesh began to tear from within, sending agony through his body like nothing he had ever felt before. His Code of Steel activated, turning his body to metal, but this just caused the metal to creak and bend as his body began to rip itself to pieces and he thrashed, trying to break the seal Scott’s hands had formed against his chest.
Eventually, in a last ditch effort to defeat this new power, Maxim used his other Code, and began pulling Scott’s hands into himself, using Scott’s own mass to repair the damage as the Code of Fleshcrafting continued to wreak havoc on every cell of his body.
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“No, you absolute stupid son of a bitch!” Ava yelled, her rage having changed to despair. “You stupid fucking son of a bitch! What the fuck are you even doing to him!?”
Sam, meanwhile, adjusted his glasses.
“Look more closely,” he said. “You notice Maxim’s in pain?”
“...what about it?” Ava asked, not sure where Sam was going with this.
“Scott’s actually hurting him. Luke’s death must have evolved his parasite,” Sam said. “I don’t know what exactly is going on, but I think Scott’s power changed from healing to just being able to monkey with human bodies in any way he wants.”
Ava blinked, looking closer at the footage and noticing that Maxim was, in fact, thrashing in pain and showing an expression of agony on his face.
“Holy shit,” she said, her mood improving. “C’mon, Scott! Rip him up!”
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Scott was starting to lose significant amounts of body mass, and knew that if he kept this up much longer, he would die. He also knew that he needed to, so that Ava would have a path to victory. He pressed on, pressing what remained of his hands further into Maxim’s chest and continuing the disintegration.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
With the absolute last of his strength, he shouted in the direction of the announcer, loud enough that the microphone could pick it up; his final words.
“Ava, I’ve made a dent, but it’s all you now! Don’t fuck this up!” Scott yelled, with all the volume he could muster before Maxim’s Code finished its absorption of him and all went black.
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Scott’s death did not fill Ava with the level of anguish that Luke’s death had. This was not because she did not care for Scott as much; in fact, she’d liked Luke significantly less.
On one level, it was emotional exhaustion. The shock of Luke’s death had more or less tapped out her grief reserves, so to speak; there was only so much she could feel for losing yet another team member, in the same way, immediately after.
However, more importantly, Scott’s final words had given his death a purpose to her. She knew he hadn’t died for nothing; he’d given his life to clear the way. It was the ultimate show of faith in her abilities: to give up his life, knowing that they would be able to manage without him, and that what he could do in that one moment was more important than anything else he’d ever be able to do otherwise.
She clenched her fist, a stream of tears running down her face as she looked down.
“I’ll do you proud,” she said to herself, hoping that in some way Scott would be able to hear her from the afterlife. With that, and the final, definitive end of Luke’s match with Maxim, the light went off for Ava to face the fighter known as Shadow Priest.
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The tears had stopped by the time Ava reached the ring, but she was still in no mood for gimmicks or fun and games. All Ava wanted was to get in, kill her opponent as quickly as possible, and get out. Her sights were solely and entirely set on Maxim Konstantinov, the Iron Russian, and anyone else the tournament threw at her was just a speed bump on the way.
The crowd cheered for her; Ava spotted several people wearing her shirt in the audience. Her match against Wolf Rogan had won them over and then some, but she barely even registered the adulation.
Her opponent was already in the ring, wearing a hooded, cloaked black robe with runes inscribed all across it that hid their identity entirely.
“On the entrance side, representing-“ the announcer began, before Ava grabbed the microphone forcefully and cut her off, leaving her indignantly yelling at a volume inaudible to the crowd.
“Nobody gives a fuck, ring the bell so I can end this stupid piece of shit,” Ava yelled into the microphone before handing it over.
“…well, okay, fair enough then, I’ll just speed through this as fast as I can. Entrance side, Shadow Priest, with BP. You know ‘em, you love em. Concourse side, Ava Hidalgo, Lockheed Martin, last seen beating up Wolf Rogan with a chair.” She raised her arm, signaling for the bell, and the fight began.
“You’re going to regret being so eager,” an androgynous, British-accented voice said from behind the cloak, before everything went dark in the ring.
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To Sam’s eyes, the arena was covered in a solid cube of darkness. He couldn’t see a single thing happening in the fight, let alone tell who was winning, and looking at the massive television that showed the drone footage wasn’t especially informative, either; reflecting this, the crowd was dead silent, aside from some of them muttering their confusion.
What he could tell was that something about Ava had gotten much stronger, very quickly. He hadn’t had a chance to read her and tell for sure, but there wasn’t any explanation he could think of except that her Code had evolved, just like Scott’s.
He silently prayed to himself that it would be enough to get them through the rest of the tournament.
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Ava, meanwhile, bobbed and weaved, avoiding strikes from all directions, even ones that didn’t seem physically possible.
“Give up,” her opponent said. “When you’re in my shadows, you can’t do anything, not even scream and beg. You’re going to die here.”
“Oh, really, now?” Ava asked. A punch to the stomach seemed to confirm Shadow Priest’s point, sending Ava reeling, unable to see where it had come from.
“There is truly no way for you to fight me,” they reiterated.
Ava thought to herself as she dodged frantically. If I can’t do anything in this jerk’s shadows… then I need some way to make some light.
She had a lighter in her bra, but that wasn’t going to be enough to counteract this. She needed something that was flammable and big. She dashed towards what she thought would be the edge of the ring, and shouted.
“Sam!” she yelled. “Go back to the room, and get the can of butane for the torch lighter! I can stall, but hurry it the fuck up!”
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While Sam couldn’t see anything from the ring, he could just barely make out Ava’s shout through the cloud of inky darkness that engulfed the ring.
What am I, her fucking gofer? Sam thought as he began rushing towards the concourse. She needs to start bringing her own damn props when she has these ideas.
He pushed through the crowd, making his way to the elevator, and quickly rode it back to the suites, before pushing his way into their own.
“Alright, butane,” Sam muttered. “If I was a can of butane, where would I be?” It then clicked for him that it was almost certainly going to be with the weed supplies; just as he figured, it was sitting next to the dab rig and the mini-blowtorch on the coffee table. He grabbed it, circling back out of the suite as quickly as he came in, and took the elevator down.
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“I see what you’re trying to do, but that won’t work,” Shadow Priest said, mockingly. “He won’t make it back in time before the darkness consumes you.”
“Oh, he won’t?” Ava asked, sarcastically as she dodged another punch. In this darkness, the only way she could dodge was to just move in completely erratic patterns; this proved to be surprisingly effective, as even with his presumable vision advantage, Shadow Priest found themselves unable to properly track her. While it was a risky tactic, it served its purpose of stalling for time, and the supposed priest’s words were empty.
A punch in the jaw sent Ava off balance, and she spat out another tooth with some blood; a right molar, this time. She resolved that, when she got her cut of the twenty million, she was going to spend some of that on dental work.
Out of nowhere, Ava heard a faint voice from behind her, shouting as loud as he could; it was Sam.
“Ava, catch!” he yelled, sending the can of butane into the air and through the darkness. It clunked down surprisingly close to Ava for a blind shot, and after a bit of fumbling, she had it in her hands.
“Oh, fuck,” Shadow Priest said, dismayed by this development as she produced the lighter from her bra and held it up to the mouth of the can.
“Let’s see how you like some light,” Ava said, as she pressed two fingers into the can’s mouth to begin releasing gas, and then flicked the lighter to ignite it.