I faced death in that toilet stall. The furious horror of Versai, concentrated on fingers that could pass as industrial clamps. She managed to lift me off the ground by my throat. Not my neck- her fingers had cinched around my esophagus and lifted from there.

She was very obviously deciding what the most suitable way to kill me was.

“Ghhhakk CCGGhhhhggk!” I pointed desperately at her cheek. This did not seem to have the desired effect, as she started carrying me, one handed, toes well clear of the ground, towards an empty stall.

I jabbed with increasing urgency towards her cheek. The holes weren’t big enough for a whole person to pass through. Somehow I knew that was a plus for Versai.

“Ah. Perfect.” Yes, she had seen the wooden latrine seats.

“Gheeek! Gheeek!” I gave up on persuasion and started clawing at the thing stuck to her face.

My fingers scrabbed against it, then I managed to hook around them. With an obscene squelch, I was able to wrench it off her.

“OW! Oh I’m going to STOMP you to fit you through there-”

I got it in front of her face, jabbing my fingers to make her look at it. Whatever it was, I had to hope it could save my life.

“All that, to rescue your… dentures?” She cocked a head who’s perfection managed to be elevated to an almost spiritual level with the contrasting floor-sludge-horror stuck to her cheek.

“You defiled yourself, God, and me, to rescue your false teeth. I can remember a time when I would feel bad drowning the mentally infirm in the excrement of the Floating Quarter. Long, long time ago. I was a different person, then.”

Her eyes went misty. “A happier person. More naive. ‘Just hang them,’ I’d have said. ‘Behead them if they are nobles. No need to get creative.’”

Icy blue lasers bored into my skull. “I get it now. Really. I see that I was wrong. I didn’t take into account the moral satisfaction.”

I waved the dentures urgently, my mind racing a mile a minute. I had the barest outlines of a quest structure, one that might just get us out of here alive. If only I could tell her!

She gave me a calculating look, then the hole in the boards. “Some folding may be required.” Her eyes narrowed slightly more. “Or rolling. Rolling into a narrow tube. Speak. Use your last seconds with an intact spine to explain.”

“Ghhhkks,” I said.

She relaxed her fingers fractionally.

“We need a lot of cash. More than they can cover. We need them to throw us out, but not kill us. And we need all the information and loot we can get before they do.”

“And what does that have to do with…” She gestured broadly towards the other stall. With the hand that was holding me up. I was miserably flailed, then, when she was done, I tried to explain.

“It’s the same prizefight over and over. Vinnie Gustin versus Sam Pershing. Vinnie gets killed every time. Glass jaw.”

“AND THAT HAS WHAT. TO DO. WITH ANYTHING?!” She shook me around. The phrase ‘like a terrier with a rat’ unfortunately did leap to mind.

“Loot from Sebastian’s place! The betting slip!”

That got her to pause. As well it should have. The bet was forty thousand guilders, with three to one on Vinnie winning. One hundred and twenty thousand sure sounded like a hell of a lot in a dive like this.

“Alright… but… dentures?”

“Guessing these matches don’t allow mouthguards and gloves?”

“What’s a mouthguard? And no, bare knuckle. Fewer headshots means the fights go on longer.”

Ah. Alarming to know that random bit of knowledge was correct. Well, let’s see if Baki The Grappler came through for me on the teeth thing.

“If his bite’s messed up, it’s going to affect how well he can clench his jaw and take a punch. I didn’t know specifically this would be specifically here, but I knew something would be somewhere, and this was pretty well hidden. So I figure, odds are excellent this is related. A quest item, even. It’s also why we need to find him and talk to him.”

“To confirm your insane theory.”

“Yes.”

“You realize the logic is completely bizarre, right? He lost his dentures in the bathroom, somehow, didn’t pick them up again for some reason, and now he has a glass jaw?”

“Maybe he didn’t lose them. Maybe someone took them. Not that I am slandering the good reputation of this place, I’m sure it was an honest accident.” I tried to see if my doll body would let me roll my eyes harder than normal. Results were inconclusive.

“And they wind up in this utterly disgusting latrine, hidden under a burnt former Tower Master. Or Summons or whoever.”

“Basically?”

“Insane.”

“And yet, there was actually something hidden in the toilets when I went looking.” And please GOD don’t let it be an easter egg!

Versai shook her head. “I saw a water barrel and soap in a storage room. I’m going to clean myself up, and you can clean up… that. And yourself. Although you really should just drown yourself, for everyone’s sake.”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“I wasn’t doing anything weird! Also… can we drown?”

“You were, and yes. Happened to me a couple of times when I was on a ruins expedition.”

Well that’s horrible.

“Funny. I thought the breathing thing was… cosmetic, for lack of a better word.”

“It is. You can hold your breath basically forever.”

“Wait, really? Then how did you drown?”

“Damned if I know. I’m a good swimmer. I fell in the water, sank, then I was standing in front of a new Tower Master. So. Drowned.”

She dropped me and made a point of staring at her hand like it was filthy. I didn’t mention the goop on her face. I was certain she knew.

“So why did you come looking for me?” I asked.

“Because I found the proprietor. Crusher Jim.”

Versai led me to a tiny door wedged in between a pillar and what I was guessing was the dressing rooms for the fighters. The big sign saying “Fighters Only” was the clue there. Through the door was a flight of splintering wooden stairs staggering into the dark.

There was a faint thudding coming from the darkness.

“Come on, it’s actually fine once your eyes adjust.” Versai walked carefully down the stairs. I couldn’t help but vividly remember that she had been killed who-knows-how-many times, and as a looper, probably had zero fear of monster free deaths. And yet, she looked cautious.

I still followed her of course. NPC to talk to.

Versai was right- once you were in the basement, you found that there was enough light filtering through the gaps in the floorboards that you could roughly make out what was down here. Which was barrels, mostly, a few long shelves that probably held bottles once, and an alarming amount of what smelled like rat piss.

We followed the sound of the thumps. Near the back wall was a punching bag that certainly weighed more than I did, and the single largest human being I have ever seen.

I’ve never been in a room with a pro-football player. I’m told that it’s a borderline alien experience. They were born with a physique suitable for football, and then spent every moment since childhood developing that physique to be as perfect for their sport as possible.

According to people who have done it- it’s like standing next to a different species. Even the little ones are bigger than average. Muscular in a way most people have never experienced. Faster, too. Even the slow ones could outrun a suburb's worth of ‘runners.’

Pro football players have a body familiar enough to be recognizable, just better in almost every way than yours.

I mean American Football, of course. Soccer players are shredded, but not what you would call big.

Jim was born to be a bare knuckle brawler, a wrestler. A crusher. And he was damn big.

A silverback gorilla? I don’t know, I’ve never seen one. Big as a football player, muscled like Tyson. Not saying he would give Yujiro Hanma a challenge, but he was sure built on those lines.

Fists the size of my head casually flowed out in jabs and hooks. Each landing with a dull thud. The bag barely shivered. Yet, somehow, I did. It was the way every bit of Jim’s body was completely coordinated. Every speck of him was engaged in the act of punching.

I wouldn’t last a single hit. I wouldn’t even survive a graze. There was something in the sound of that thud. There was something…

“No guests down here. I’ll be seeing you at the end of the night.” Jim’s voice was low, rough.

“You come out to tidy up?”

“I come out to make a mess. Assuming you haven’t died in the pit or to the boys.” He grunted. “Huh. Usually I can’t say that. Wonder if it’s little Versai there that’s responsible.”

“I can’t imagine how.” Her voice was clipped.

“Cause you’re the only thing that’s different. He sure ain’t.”

The fists kept swinging out, steady. Almost relaxed. Thud. Thud. Thud.

“Served under your old man, you know.”

“You… served my father?”

“Mmm. Man at arms, of course. Guards.”

“Which guards?”

That got a punch with a little more oomph to it.

“The Guards.”

Her eyebrows raised, and she reluctantly nodded.

“How many campaigns?”

“Eight.”

That got another, considerably more respectful pause.

“Don’t suppose you know why we are all here, doing this?” Jim’s voice was casual.

“No. No, I do not. And I wish to God I did.”

“What’s the use of wishing?” The fists swung into the motionless heavy bag.

“What else have I got? I gave up hope a long time ago. A faint wish is all I have left.” Versai’s voice was brittle.

Crusher just shook his head and kept punching. The silence stretched. Eventually I asked-

“How, exactly, are you punching that bag?”

That got a snort. “How’s it look like? Not that copying me is going to save you.”

“No, really. How? Because I don’t think I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing.”

The thuds stopped. For the first time, Jim gave us a proper look.

“I was mistaken. He is a little different. Come take a closer look. See what I’ve spent my time working on. Instead of wishing.”

I walked closer. It was terrifying, in a way. Like walking on the very edge of the subway platform. On the one hand, you knew that you were perfectly safe so long as you didn’t slip. On the other hand, that train was awful big and coming awful fast.

I reached towards the punching bag and raised an eyebrow. Jim shrugged. I tried to push it. The thing barely budged- but it did budge. Jim nodded grimly.

“Yeah, that’s the least of it. Here’s a normal jab.”

I didn’t see the punch. It was that fast. I just heard the impact, and watched the bag go flying back. Jim stopped it on the return swing with one hand.

“See. Normal. Now. Watch closely. Very closely.”

The huge fist pulled back, rising in front of Jim’s face. He was moving slowly now. I could watch the muscles move, from the tips of his toes, through his legs, his enormous back, all the way down his arm, to the twisting wrist, to the rigid hand, down to the very tips of his knuckles.

A simple jab that coordinated every single muscle in the huge man’s body. A jab he had thrown… hundreds of thousands of times. Millions, maybe. Who knows how long he had been trapped in this loop for?

The jab thrust forward slowly, and stopped just as it touched the bag. It was hard to see in the dim light, almost impossible to see. But I swear I saw space bend and distort where his knuckles stopped. Straining, like a balloon pulled tight.

“Are you…” I breathed in wonder.

“All I know is fighting. Do it often enough, you get good at it or die. I can’t die here. So I got very, very good.” There wasn’t a flicker of pride on his face. It was just facts.

Water is wet. Fire is hot. Crusher Jim will kill you in a fight.

“About done being in this pit though. So I’m getting out the same way I got in. Swinging. Reckon I can break this place. Reckon I can escape.”