Frozen Soul, and other works: Chapter 133

(Zero Zero Club, Keen-arra City, kisArra)

Vizk loved fighting.

Ask anyone who knew him, and they would all agree that Vizk loved fighting, even more than was usual for an Ihm male. If he wasn’t working, drinking, sleeping, or fucking, he was usually fighting. And he was very good at fighting, able to take a hit and keep hitting back.

Vizk also enjoyed gambling. His game of choice was the roulette table. His hands weren’t shaped right for card games, and he tended to crush dice unless they were specially made. And no one let him bet on fights, since he was usually in at least a couple every night, and that just wasn’t going to happen.

Unfortunately for him, Vizk was not as skilled at gambling as he was at fighting. He tended to lose more than he won when he was at the tables, but he couldn’t get enough of it, just like he couldn’t get enough of fighting. That meant he tended to owe people money, and he kept owing until he won it back during a fight. Or at least won enough to keep people from sending leg breakers after him. He might be tough for an Ihm, but if you roughed up the leg breakers too bad, they tended to do worse than just break the leg. Last time, they’d retaliated by stunning him, and then taking a sledge hammer to him, and they broke all five limbs, even his tail!

That was why he was at the Zero Zero tonight, because he needed some money to pay the interest on his latest loan. He was a little late, but that wasn’t anything he needed to worry about, because tonight was a fight night, and he could win it all back. Plus, he had a buddy make some bets on the side for him. Buddy got 10% of the winnings, but it let him bet on the fights, so he’d be rolling in dough at the end of the night.

That was the plan, anyways. But somehow it had all gone wrong. A newcomer had entered the ring, and beat every one of the fighters that he’d bet on! And because he was a fighter, he couldn’t get to his friend to get him to change the bets. Now, he was needing to win his fight as the pit champion just to be able to pay Ehyu’s interest!

He’d be fighting the new guy, but there was something about him. He was good, yeah, but his skills weren’t THAT good. Or else he wasn’t showing everything he had. But his eyes, he was too perceptive by half. Somehow, he always seemed to know what the guy fighting him was going to do, and always had a counter or was able to dodge the nasty shots. Even when Barley tried that sneak move he liked where he looked like he was going to punch, and then rolled back to catch the guy with a kick to the jaw. He’d never seen ANYONE catch that unless they’d seen Barley fight, and this guy was definitely new to the pit. You don’t get those reactions by someone just telling you about a move.

Walking into the ring, Vizk nodded to the newcomer. He’d earned some respect, at least, for coming this far, but he’d figure out what his secret was, and beat him. Then he’d pay Ehyu, and life would go back to how it was supposed to be. And then the newcomer did something completely unexpected. He walked over to the Challenge stand, and pulled the black cord.

The rules of the ring were simple. There were four levels of fighting, and the rules changed depending on the level you were fighting at. Challenger got to say what level he wanted to fight at, and the Challenged had to either accept, raise it to another level, or forfeit the match.

White was the lowest level. You fought for points, like that Terran sport called ‘mixed martial arts’. You could win by a knockout or submission, sure, but if you that didn’t happen, you could win by impressing the judges. That was the most common level of fight in the ring, since most people were here for fun and money.

Blue was next. You chose blue, you could only win by making the other guy give, or knocking him out. You had a lot of tough matches in this level. But the bets were doubled, so a 1:2 odds fight would be paying out 1:4 if you bet right. The pot for the fighters got 50% bigger, too. But if you lost, that 50% was coming out of your pocket.

Red was the third level. This went beyond simple brawling, to being a knife fight. First blood from the torso won the fight, but knife fights were nasty things, and accidents definitely happened. You chose red, though, and the betting would go from 1:2 to 1:6, and the fighters’ pot was up 200%. Loser either paid the difference, or was sold off as a slave to pay for it.

Black, though, that was the real deal, the kind of match all these people secretly hoped would happen. Black was a knife fight to the death, each guy getting to use their personal weapon, rather than one the ring provided. Black, the bets were going ten times higher! 1:2 became 1:20! And the pot for the fighters? Well, it was still only 200% bigger than the normal pot, same as the other one, but you got your pick of the loser’s property, and anything you didn’t want was sold by the house, with you getting 3% of the sale as a ‘commission’.

In the thirty-year history of the Zero Zero Club, there had only been four Black fights. And not one of them had been called since Vizk had become Champion. He’d had a couple Red fights, sure, but most people weren’t that stupid, or that desperate, and they picked white or blue. Come to think of it, this guy had been picking blue all night, up until now. What was going on here?

The audience was holding their breaths, waiting on him. Damnit, he didn’t have a choice. With the fights going bad like they had before, he needed to fight, and win. But between the prize and the bidding, he’d be set up nice, maybe even be able to pay off Ehyu entirely! A snarl crossed his face as he grabbed the black cord, and pulled. The doors to the ring shut, and the energy shield cut off the sound from the outside, trapping the two of them inside until one of them stopped breathing.

Drawing his favorite knife, made from the tooth of one of those big worms out in the desert, but long enough that the blade was the length of his forearm, Vizk said, “I don’t know what your game is, ‘friend’, but you made a big mistake picking Black tonight.”

The man chuckled, and said, “Aw, but Black is my lucky color.” As he spoke, he drew a knife from his bracer, and Vizk had to force himself from pulling back at the sight of the blade. That was a Blood Dagger! Those things were incredibly rare, and insanely dangerous in the hand of a skilled user. This wasn’t a simple match any more!

Vizk’s eyes narrowed as he watched the man’s movements more carefully. “Who sent you here to kill me?” That was, after all, the only reason this man, who had never been in the fights before, and was the owner of a Blood Dagger, would call a Black match.

The man shrugged, and said, “Ehyu was very disappointed that you’ve been late repaying him, so I’m afraid he is going to be closing the book on you. Not that it is going to matter to you any, once I’m done with you.”

Ehyu! That backstabbing hind end of a thabrakiz water beast! He’d been set up! The friend he had worked the deal with so he could place bets tonight, he was one of Ehyu’s men! Looking around at the crowd, he tried to find him, but he was gone… No, there he was, sitting near a group of women, a pile of credits sitting there. The traitor had been betting on this assassin, with HIS money!

Vizk roared in anger, and threw himself at the other man. The man ducked under his slashing blade, the move telegraphed as Vizk had intended it to be cover for the knee coming up, to crash into the man’s face, and disorient him enough to get a quick kill…

Vizk roared again as the pain hit. Somehow, the human had turned just in time to let his knee slide past his face, and his blade sunk into the back of his calf, wounding the leg badly. Gritting his teeth, he tested the leg as the man recovered his stance. Not as bad as he feared, and probably not as bad as the man had intended, but Vizk’s scales were hard, so much of the blade’s energy was deflected, the blow blunted. But he probably could use that leg to only about 75% of his strength, and kicking with the other leg would be out of the question. Damn it!

The man darted inwards, and the fight was on in earnest! Vizk was the veteran of hundreds of fights in the ring, and as many or more outside of it. All his experience, all his strength, all his speed, all his skill, and all it did was put him roughly equal to the assassin that had been sent to kill him. His skill was the only reason he wasn’t dead already, he could see that now. If things kept going the way they were, then his death was inevitable. He needed to turn things around.

The problem was, how? The man was good, too good. Vizk had never faced someone who was so quick, able to react to his attacks before he had even launched them. Almost as if he was reading minds! Wait. Mental Psy would account for all this man’s wins. Couldn’t be an outside party, because the shield blocked Psy from crossing it, keeping audience members from cheating. It had to be the man, then. But there were scanners, so how did he activate the power without tripping the scanners in the ring? And how did he keep from running out of PP while fighting like that?

The man darted forward, slashing with his blade. Vizk saw a shimmer form around the human’s blade, and leapt back instead of trying to block or parry that blow. He didn’t know what it was, but it had to be a power of the Blood Dagger. He could not underestimate what kind of effects it would have. Vizk had always wanted to see a Blood Dagger up close, but not like this!

Again, the man attacked, but now the shimmer was gone! Vizk snarled, and raised his own arm, to try and catch the human’s blade hand, and hopefully isolate it, and that damn dagger so he could get in close, and do some real damage to the assassin. But the man pulled back at the last second, his other hand coming across in a maneuver that let him use Vizk’s own momentum to pull him off balance, and actually throwing him to the floor!

In an instant, the man was on top of him, the blood dagger poised at his throat. In a soft whisper, loud enough so only Vizk could hear, “I activated the ability before you even stepped in the ring, as soon as I left the ring after my last fight, I was in your head. But hey, when you get to what ever afterlife or next incarnation you believe in, you can let them know that it was Captain Mollen of the Black Star Company that killed you. Not too many people get killed by me personally. You should be honored.”

Vizk was about to respond with an insult at the man for cheating like this, but the shimmering blade slashed across his throat, cutting deep enough that his head rolled free. As Vizk’s consciousness faded away, he had one last thought. “At least there wasn’t any pain…”