“Why, thank you, Master Gilgamesh. Coming from the martial champion of the Eternals, that is an impressive statement.”
“You speak with little pride,” he noted with interest, seeing I had identified him accurately.
“I am very aware of many ways to surpass my meager skills. That people haven’t figured them out or don’t possess the talents to do so is partially the fault of the rules we have been fighting under. Your kinsman didn’t particularly strike me as someone devoted to martial combat, but I believe you’ve found a way to neutralize at least a couple of my little tricks.”
“Little tricks, yes.” He brought his hands up, and there was no hesitation or awkwardness about him at all. If the rumors were right, he was a personal friend of the Great Bear, one of the few people who had unlimited access to him. The story behind that I had no idea of, but it certainly would have been interesting to hear. “Let us see if this fight will be somewhat different.”
“FIGHT!” the referee exclaimed enthusiastically, sensing this fight would be somewhat different.
We came in, and hands began to flash and meet in crashing impacts.
Ho-ho, as expected, he’d figured out how to stop my sticking to him.
Eternals were all energy projectors, but naturally energy assaults were forbidden in this tournament, giving a great edge to purely physical combatants. Nothing said you couldn’t use that energy in other ways, however, and what he was doing was shoving energy bursts out of his skin at every contact with me, interfering with any attempt to establish an Attract and lock his limbs into an awkward position.
The explosions couldn’t do any damage and basically just added to how pyrotechnic and showy our exchanges were. The ref read it for what it was and didn’t say anything, watching closely, appreciating the cunning and control used for the counter-tactic. His scanners were available to the announcers, of course, who rapidly seized on the truth of what was going on and informed those watching as we went through a hundred exchanges in basically one long breath of block, parry, and swinging of hands moving at close to the speed of sound.
His flight-anchor was much more solid than Hero’s, and he wasn’t giving ground, either.
He had, however, made an error, and I didn’t have to tell him about it ahead of time.
After all, if he could use his Eternal energy, nothing said I couldn’t use mine, right? And for some reason, that suit of armor he was wearing was not non-magnetic, although I wondered if he could null the polarity on it.
Combinations of fists pounded into one another and to the sides. I had faster reflexes than he did, but his combat experience/Melee Attack Bonus was so high that it didn’t matter, and he was parrying without difficulty, even dodging anything that wasn’t aligned perfectly.
He was really surprised when the scales rippled down out of my Masspack and formed an open breastplate on me, framing my bust and really not intended for protection. The next second I forced both our hands wide, and lightning circled on the metal as I jumped slightly.
With a clank and explosive burst that did nothing at all, we slammed together, his chest armor locking to my guts, and his instinctive closing of his arms locking down behind my back and freezing there as his face was buried in my cleavage.
My arms were already spread wide, and I sent up a whirl of voltage around them, and a railgun-level magnetic field between them.
The BOOM as I broke the sound barrier with my fists crashing into his ears at the same moment was quite singular, a sound not many Bricks could generate. About to attempt a suplex as he recovered his wits, the impact vacated any semblance of thought from Gilgamesh as my fists came together.
I Replused them apart, the automatic explosions helping, and as he staggered, I brought them together again with another BOOM.
His legs gave out, his arms and chest were still locked to me, and his face hadn’t moved from my cleavage. I was now standing on my own feet, basically holding him up.
The third hit echoed through the ring, and he went completely limp. I stopped the voltage, and he tumbled off backwards as I Repulsed him magnetically, falling backwards to the floor, out cold.
“Uh, KO and Match to Dynamo!” the ref sang out, his eyes flashing at the thought of just how many repeat views this particular fight was going to get.
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“Wow!” Wanda muttered as I walked out of the ring, tossing me a towel I didn’t really need, but used anyway because the cameras wanted me to. “How long have you been waiting to pull off that move? And, uh, what kind of move was that?” she added in urgently.
“You know how I showed you how to use Chaos magic to shift the bonds of my Attract so I couldn’t stick to you?” I asked her, and she nodded quickly. Juiced further, the trick could also force off anything holding onto her, a powerful defensive move, as getting grabbed in a fight was a bad idea for a Caster. “He was doing the same thing with explosions of internal energy. So, I upped the ante by using my lightning to create electromagnets. Going into my cleavage brought me the one second needed to slam him the first time, and then it was all over.” I held up the adamantium fists, lightning crackled on them, and they slammed together irresistibly. “I can juice the Attract up to be stronger, actually, but magnetism is much harder to shear.”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Wanda hissed in appreciation for the tactic, enjoying the fact that we were given a wide berth of respect as we walked away. “I have never seen you use magnetism,” she admitted, going back through all of our sparring.
“I have never had to do so, so why would I?” I shrugged. “Also, I’m not an electrokinetic, so setting up the effect requires extra equipment.” I smiled slightly at the expression on her face. “I’m a Dynamo, Wanda. I power stuff up, right? Not all of that stuff has to be as obvious as my Fists, right?”
“And people keep forgetting that not all your lightning goes into those armbands,” she sighed, nodding. “Oh, there’s a newcomer on the boards. Some guy called En Sabah Nur.”
I frowned. Apocalypse was in on this? Interesting. Champion was confident in battling a Celestial-powered shapeshifter? He could easily go right to the top of the rankings... although neither Hercules nor Primus was going to have a major problem with him.
“He challenged me already.” It wasn’t a question. He’d immediately go for the weak woman, and progress up from there.
Mr. Hill and Mr. Grimm had been sparring, too, and totally shocked a lot of people when they both handled fighters who thought they’d be able to walk over the pair of them.
Both of them were Earth Avatars, and this was their kind of fight. They both had experience in punching rigid defenses, taking down force fields, Rooting incredibly hard, and knowing when to bounce and when not to.
Why? Because they both knew me!
They also had adamantium gauntlets, not so different from mine, although they weren’t going to be making them magnetic.
En Sabah Nur had naturally challenged them as well, but given my record, they wouldn’t bother with him until he’d tussled with me. He’d probably be cold-bloodedly working up the main ranking line today, proving I wasn’t the only one who could best all the superhuman fighters here.
“Set him up for tomorrow, and Namor later on.” Namor couldn’t reasonably refuse me at this point. The bouts he’d taken part in were successful for him, but nowhere near as impressive as mine.
The Rock and The Mountain had both trounced him solidly, and Hercules had literally been playing with him, much to his indignation. Even he wasn’t proud enough to challenge Primus. Juggernaut had, and Primus had pinned him in less than five seconds, then Ringed him Out thrice in three more. He’d looked like a big oversized baby trying to tussle with an adult.
Primus was giving out practice bouts, of course, being courteous like that, and generally was doing three falls instead of KO’s, just to give his mostly-alien opponents the flavor of going up against a massively overwhelming physical combatant. Superfast and superstrong was a deadly potent combination, and added to his mastery of various combat arts, including definitely Soul magic and Core disciplines, ho boy, was Primus dangerous by any measure.
He was on top of the official rankings List for a reason, after all.
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“Return to us Lilandra, Terran!”
“She is here of her own free will! Fuck off, Imperial!”
“Mind your tongue, pirate! Your reputation will not save you from us!”
“Bring it if you think you’re so tough, and we’ll see whose reputation has teeth!”
Two groups in assorted colors, one a rainbow, the other mostly matching, were facing off against one another, and insults and taunts were flying back and forth. Naturally a crowd was assembling to watch the fun, and Students were gathering with careful speed, prepared to intervene... a fact that looked to be getting increasingly ignored.
“Colosseum Ordnance 21: A warrior’s access to victuals shall not be impeded.”
My voice was still echoing in their ears when I snapped my fingers, and I bumped the first two brightly-uniformed Shi’ar Imperial Guards out of the way. “You are impeding traffic. Student, what has the fine risen to?” I pointed, shouldering another flaming guy out of the way as I pointed.
The big yellow Student with the face of a salamandar looked somewhat disappointed as I came up to the counter to order. “Five thousand two hundred and fourteen credits, and rising.”
“Let ‘em argue!” Dealer protested, zipping up out of nowhere. “They’re making me good money!”
“I’m hungry. Gimme six platters of chichibis, twelve burritos at two, three nacho platters...” I rattled off my order, paused, and yelled over my shoulder, “Get in freaking line, Cyke!”
The watching Cyclops jolted, and hurried over in line. A second later, all the late-coming Terran students with him piled in, then the people in the crowd who’d come to eat all streamed in, forcing the Imperial Guards back outside as the line grew spontaneously.
The Student cleared his throat, glaring at the Guardsmen, who looked around and saw that they were actually out-numbered at this moment. Their eyes converged on the purple guy with the no-grease mohawk all in red, and he just grunted and waved his hand.
The Imperial Guard withdrew smoothly from Dealer’s lower-end restaurant, and the mostly grab-and-go crowd zipped into place.
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There was no combicha at the ‘easy food’ section, which would have been fast food if it wasn’t so good. Of course, when you’ve got magic and TK helping you make the stuff, there’s no way QL 25 is gonna be called ‘fast food’. The servers were still screening the lines, and the speed at which everyone was getting served and the line was going down soon cleared up and kept pace with those incoming.
A bit disgruntled yet curious, several of the Imperial Guards soon sidled up for some food, found themselves gobbling it all down. They ended up ordering five group platters and took some seats out in the nooks of the hallway. The guy who was on fire was particularly raving about his Plasmic special.
The ‘younger generation’ had basically taken a field trip out here, and no, no, it wasn’t just an excuse for Xavier to meet up with the alien princess who had been haunting his dreams for half a decade, nopers. He and Lilandra Neumanri, Imperial Princess of the Shi’ar Empire, were thick as thieves over in the corner, leaving his students to be regaled by the Starjammers who had delivered her to Earth.
Corsair, the Captain, was a native Terran, and Cyclops’ own father, although he and his brother Alex didn’t recognize him at all. He was mesmerizing the kids with wildly improbable tales of his escapades out in space, definitely having a talent for embellishing what was no doubt a harrowing lifestyle.
Hepzibah, the Mephitisoid fox/cat anthro alien, was also getting a lot of attention, and coquettishly enjoying it. Sikorsky, the little alien insectile medic, was perched on a mound of honey nachos, clearly enjoying himself, while Ch’od, a big scaly green guy, and Raza, a cyborg alien, were drinking and keeping watch with the air of old soldiers who’d done this kind of thing a zillion times.