A Whateley Universe/ Loose Cannons Story

VEGAS, BABY, VEGAS!

by

Bek D Corbin

Part 4

DATE: Damn Good Question

I snapped to full awakening again. Not a good sign.

I got up and looked around. It was not comforting, not in the least. It wasn’t the hotel room this time. Or the practice yard. Or even that stupid greenhouse back in Sacramento. The only word that fit the chamber I was in was ‘Cell’. It was your basic 10x10 poured concrete box. The bed was an oversized sponge of temper foam on a concrete slab. There was a dingy metal basin and toilet stuck into the wall. There was a pipe that ran the length of the room, just below the ceiling, with a hangar on it that suggested that that was the closest thing to storage space. No TV, no window, nothing to sit on but the toilet or the bed. The door was a handle-less slab of metal inset to the concrete wall. There was nothing that suggested any level of comfort, or any privacy, or any weakness. Nothing softened the inescapable fact that I was stuck in a poured concrete box.

Okay, looking back, I can see that it was a dumb thing to do, but when you wake up in a box, your first reflex is to get out of that box. But they knew that. The second that I formed my blade in my hand, I was washed in the purest, most agonizing, ‘Mommy make it stop!’ PAIN that I have ever experienced.

But the second that I dropped the sword, the pain cut off. Clear. There was no lingering of the pain. The only sign that the pain had ever happened was my thundering heartbeat and ragged breathing.

Oh. Right. Brigand. He thinks of everything. Crap.

I was wearing a set of eye-raping neon-green scrubs with yellow numbers on them.

I sat down, and for some strange reason, I tried to remember where the hell the phrase, ‘I’m not a number, I’m a free man’ is from.

I was well into the third stage of cabin fever- namely, trying to figure out how to get out of that stupid collar- when the door opened and a guy in heavy duty personal armor stepped in. He simply said, “Come,” and tapped a very nasty looking shock-prod looking thing in the palm of his off hand. I’ve seen enough prison movies to know that he’s looking for an excuse to zap me, just to show off how tough he is.

I was added to a line of the other kids, also in those fugly green scrubs, guarded by two guys in the same kind of armor with serious firepower. They gave me ‘okay, what do we do now?’ looks. I just got in line and we went down the narrow hall to the next cell, where Eddie was added to the ranks, and down and so on until the entire gang was in the line. We were marched down the hall through a series of doors that opened without any cue. We finally came into a very large open area. The general effect was a sports arena, only without all the pimped-out logos for teams and sponsors and like that. There was oval seating surrounding three end-on-end circular areas littered with scattered blocks some of them in piles, some in stacks and some by themselves. Our door opened directly onto the middle circle, where four women and four men were waiting for us. The four men were just more heavily armed ‘shoot-you-if-you-look-at-us-strange’ guards. Three of the four women were Ginny, Marly and Yvonne, also wearing those collars, but wearing dark red overall jumpsuits. Both Ginny and Marly were carrying clipboards and had massively uncomfortable expressions on their faces. Yvonne had the same look of serene obliviousness as usual. No sign of Sparky.

The fourth woman was dressed to send the message, ‘why YES, I AM a badass; fuck with me once, and I’ll grind your bones into meal’. She had a kittenish face under a poofy black not-quite bouffant, not-quite pageboy hairdo, full lips, and a tiny little nose. She had a porn star body- IF said porn star was a serious gym rat on the side. She was wearing a ‘sexy super villainess’ outfit that was basically a strapless bathing suit in vivid green over lighter green tights, with a short dark green cape over that, very dark, almost black, green opera gloves with triangular red jewels on the backs of the hands, and black high-heeled boots. Instead of a mask, she wore a reddish visor. She wore two crossed belts across that insanely narrow waist, with a holstered pistol on her right hip and some sort of truncheon on the other. In her hand, she held a riding crop. Reading the description, it looks sort of cheesy silly-kinky. But there was an element of hardness, of coldness that completely put the kibosh on any sexy thoughts.

She looked us up and down like suspect sides of meat on hooks. “*I* am Madam Vicious,” she said with a thick cosmopolitan European accent in one of those throaty, gooey voices that are supposed to be sexy, but just sounds like she has a stuffy nose. “I am the hostess for the dreaded Las Vegas Mutant Death Matches. YES, they are real. YES, the stakes are Life and Death. And YES, if you wish to live, you will fight and kill in those matches. And NO, you don’t have a choice in the matter.’

She snapped her fingers, and a double-row of men and women in various colored scrubs filed into the room and lined up side-by-side. Some of them looked like normal, if pretty dang fit, men and women. Some looked like stone-cold killers. Some had obvious cybernetic implants. Some didn’t look really human. And one guy looked like a cybernetically augmented demon, with gleaming metallic horns and scaled skin. Some of them had harnesses or chains on them, but they all wore the same nasty collars that we did. “THESE are your fellow gladiators. You will fight them, and compete with them, and most certainly, you will KILL some of them. And NO, I don’t want to hear anything about you not wanting to kill! Each match you are in factors into your standing on the roster of these gladiators. When you reach the point where you are at the top of the list with five kills, you will be given your freedom. However, we can only afford to house so many of you in this hidden complex in the desert. When you fall to the bottom of the list, and new gladiators come into the mix- such as you eight- well…” With a nasty smirk, she looked across the lineup, until her gaze fell on a slightly heavyset guy in maybe his thirties wearing yellow scrubs, who looked like he’d been in a nasty fight and lost. He had a black eye that was swollen shut, a splint on his nose, and a cast on his left forearm. He was one of those with a harness with cuffs connected to the backpack unit by cables. “CANNON,” Madam Vicious said with sadistic relish.

“WHAT?” the guy ‘Cannon’ yelped, his eyes popping open (even the swollen one), and flinching badly in barely restrained panic.

“Cannon here was heading to the top of the list,” Madam Vicious said smugly. “He was in the black with four kills to his credit. Then, last month, he tangled with Death Ghost and lost badly. He hasn’t won a fight since then, and last night he was beaten badly by Ogre. Well, Cannon, you’re at the bottom of the list, and now we have not one, not two, not even three, but eight, ‘Loose Cannons’. It looks like you’re expendable.”

“NO!” Cannon pleaded, “Please, Madam Vicious! Death Ghost! He stole my power! But I can recover it, if you give me some TIME! Please! I was only ONE KILL away!”

Madam Vicious smirked nastily and fiddled with a knob at the end of her riding crop. Cannon gave a last bleat of fear, held up us hands as if to hold off something, and suddenly his head blew clean off his neck, showering the man and woman on either side of him with gristle, bone, brains and gore. A brief spurt of blood pumped up from his neck and his body fell. The two who’d gotten splattered were grossed out but not freaked out; they’d seen it before. “In case you were wondering, all of your collars are loaded with explosive charges. Well, except for those of you who could survive such a blast; for you, the pain induction charge will be increased in intensity and duration to the point where coronary seizure will be triggered. AND, there is a proximity detector, so if you wander far enough away from a signal generator somewhere in this complex, the charge will go off. And NO, we’re not going to tell you where the signal generator is. And tearing off the collar will set off the charge. And- well, children, let’s just say that we’ve seen every possible trick and maneuver you could possibly think of, and adjusted our tactics accordingly. The only ways you’re leaving this complex are covered in victory- or your own blood.

“We hold these matches twice a week, on Wednesday and Saturday nights. You have three days to prepare for your debuts. You will train and show our trainers what you are capable of. Signature outfits will be designed for you. You will be given new stage names to fit those outfits. You will answer to those new names. I don’t CARE what your names are! From now on, you are who I SAY you are! If I dress you in a frilly pink party dress with a wig of blonde sausage curls and name you ‘Little Missy Prissy Sissypants’, then BY GOD, you’re Little Missy Prissy Sissypants and you will answer to that!”

And the truly sad thing is that there are guys who’ll pay good money to be dressed up and treated like that.

We were introduced to a cadre of five trainers, and run through a Hogan’s Alley on PCP, with a hefty jot of Prof. Xavier’s Danger Room set on ‘eliminate the unfit’. As slippery as he is, Billy barely made it through, and the only reason that Eddie survived was that healing factor of his. Even Rachel in her ‘mandroid’ form was twitchy after her fifth nasty electric shock. Roxie and I were put through the wringer badly enough that we unconsciously switched sexes again. It was a little weird to be a girl again without being in a crisis situation. Okay, it wasn’t NICE, but it wasn’t a crisis.

A trainer stopped us and screamed in our faces to explain what had happened. When we did, he made out like we’d done it just to make his job harder. We were provided with a sports bra and an athletic supporter- but we had to put them on right there.

Please! I grew up watching Drill Instructors who made R. Lee Ermey look like Little Missy Prissy Sissypants.

Not that I was fool enough to tell them that. There’s tough and rebellious, and then there’s stupid.

From there, it’s cut-and-paste a ‘boot camp’ montage, with lots of strenuous exercise, combat training and getting yelled at.

After hours of this, we were allowed to take a break and get fed. It was boot camp standard, with lots of bland but nutritious food and cafeteria seating. Of course, as the new guys, we sat by ourselves. We were joined by Ginny and Marly. “What’s going on with you three and Madam Meaner’n a Sewer Rat?” Mack asked softly but very intently.

“Skank-Lady likes the idea of having personal assistants she doesn’t have to say anything to,” Marly explained.

“Any chance of turning that around on her?” Roxie asked, “Like, maybe rummage around in her mind, and find out what the release protocols for these fucking collars is?”

“No chance,” Ginny said with a frustrated glower. “Madam Vapid may not be telepathic, but she knows how to get around telepaths. I tried, y’know, to get past her guard and I got zapped big time!” she tugged at her collar.

“What does she have you doing?”

“Oh, we’re just gofers,” Marly snarled, “y’know: gofer this, gofer that, gofer coffee, why isn’t this coffee just the way that I never told you I like it? It’s like working for a bleached-out Naomi Campbell!”

“My ass bleeds for you,” Billy snarled. “And speaking of telepaths, why didn’t any of you pick up on us getting jumped? And where was Brigand while all that was going down?”

“Brigand was what was going down,” I said in a low disappointed drone. “Rachel was right- Brigand zoomed us from Day One, and none of us saw it coming.”

Billy gave out a ‘what do you mean there’s no Santa Claus?’ whine and was about to ask how in the name of sanity that could possibly be, when Ginny cut him off asking, “Why would Brigand sell us out like that?”

“Hey, he never told us what he was really up to, now did he?” Rachel answered with a low ‘Voice of Cynicism Confirmed’ drawl. “We still don’t know what he was really after at the escrow warehouse, or the testing lab, OR that freaky car auction, OR at Buccaneer Bay! HE says that he didn’t get what he wanted, but how do WE know that? But every step of the way, he makes sure that we’re all obvious, while he stays nice and on the down-low. I think that he broke into Straylight without telling us, using that mockup he suckered us into making somehow, and when he got what he wanted, he made sure that we couldn’t tell anyone.”

“We could tell Madam Vicious or the people here,” Chris pointed out.

“Would she believe us?” Roxie asked rhetorically. “Would she CARE?”

Mack waved that discussion. “Enough of that. Let’s get down to brass tacks: what do we do now?” He looked at me.

I let out a sigh. “First week?”

“Week?”

“WEEK. The first week, we focus on surviving and learning the lay of the land. The key to all of this is the collars. If we find a way of neutralizing them- and neutralizing them ALL- then Vicious is a smear on the wall. Billy,
Roxie? The three of us are the best with electronics and like that- we focus on figuring out where the reserve power for the command links for these collars is at.”

“Reserve power?” Eddie asked. “Why not just take out main power?”

“’Cause Green Bitch knows all the curves,” Rachel answered. “She’d figure that someone would try to take out the power, so the command link either has its own power supply, or it has a backup battery with enough juice to keep these things online.”

“BAD IDEA, Eddie” Roxie added with a low snarl. “Remember what Vicious said about leaving the complex and getting too far away from the signal generator? That’s too simple to not be how it works. Anything, ANY thing, that interrupts the signal, no matter what- BOOM. We need to find the signal generator and either keep it going while ignoring Vicious’ punishment signals, or figure out what the opening sequence is.”

“Well, what if Meg…an…” I looked around. “Where’s Megan?”

“There’s never a psychic around when you really need one,” Billy growled with beetled brow.

“What happened to Meg?” I asked.

“Well…” Marly hesitated uncomfortably, “all you guys got these weird exciting fighting powers, and Ginny and I are useful, but Meg…?” If Brigand dropped Meg off with the rest of us, and told Vicious what we could all do, then an ESPer with psychometric ability was just about the last thing that Vicious would want on her base. And… we lose another one. Why do I get the nagging feeling that that’s going to be like a mantra with us?

“YEAH,” Eddie said with a heavy voice. “But the real thing is still the signal generator or whatever. Ev’s right: we focus on staying alive and figuring out how this place works. Hey Ev- you were raised on Air Force bases; maybe this place is an old Army or Air Force base that got decommissioned or something? You grew up crawling around these places, you’d know if there was something that they put in all these bases that we could use!”

Okay, the big guy’s back on his form. But I let a deep sigh. “Yeah, that would be nice, Ed. But I don’t get an Armed Forces vibe from this place. Military bases are built with an eye towards the long run. Everything, and I do mean everything, has a shell of about a million coats of paint, and- aw, there are a thousand little touches that your average US military base has, that this place doesn’t. It’s just too…. NEW. A decommissioned Army base would go back to the Fifties at least. This place doesn’t. I’d be amazed if it was older’n I am. And that arena? That chamber was designed specifically for that arena. I can’t think of anything else that it could have been designed for, that it could have been retrofitted from. And there is no use that I can think of for an underground arena like that on any American military base.”

“What makes you think this place is underground?” Rae asked.

“It… just has an underground vibe,” I said. “If nothing else, there’s no way this is fresh air we’re breathing.”

“Besides,” Eddie grunted, “if something like this was aboveground, the Nevada State Police would’a spotted it and shut it down months ago.”

“Still, it was a good idea, Eddie,” Mack said. “Keep it up. Okay, again, it comes down to figure out the lay of the land, what’s going on, and who’s who. Ginny, Marly, you’re our big edge.” Marly smirked and Ginny sparkled at being the big noise for once. “Don’t play Vicious- play her people. Just listen in on their thoughts while they’re complaining about this or that, and see what you can find. Take messages that don’t make any sense to the technical guys. Nothing direct, but get as much information about stuff like the Wi-Fi and crap- talk to Roxie and Evan about that stuff. Billy, my first thought is to let you play ninja and crawl around the air vents and shit. But these damn collars just gotta have tracking units in ‘em. If they see you looking for weak spots, it starts at they beat the crap out’a you, and sinks down to BOOM fast.”

“What about bugs in these collars?” Marly asked, looking around nervously, like she realized that we may have given Vicious an excuse to get even more vicious.

Roxie shook her head. “Not with an explosive attached. When you’ve got something like that in a system, you keep the signals it’s reading as simple and few as you possibly can.”

The rest was pretty quibble-some and they didn’t give us a lot of down time. We went straight into many hours of more of the same after lunch. Then there was a dinner of more of the same as lunch, we were so tired that we couldn’t really talk. We were separated for showers after dinner. It says something, that I was so tired that I was taking showers with several attractive, fit young women, and all that I could think about was bed. Alone.

The next day was Boot Camp standard. More of the same, only with more individualized instruction. Roxie and I were worked hard early, so they could check out our alternate forms. Whispered conversations, furtive investigations, and a lot of quiet confusion. Short meals, long hours, exhausted sleep. Thank GOD we had each other; if we’d been FNGs alone, it would have been hell.

The third day started out as more of the same, but after Lunch, we were shown into what reminded me of way too many rec rooms on military bases: couches, shelves of books, a ping pong table, a pool table, a juke box, four Nautilus Machines and a couple of punching bags. Most surprisingly, we went from being the FNGs to the guys who knew what was going on, on the outside. We got bombarded with questions about everything from the stock market to the Superhero scene, to Music and Entertainment, and especially Sports. And the girls especially got grilled about what was going on with various soap operas.

“What’s going on?” I asked this one woman who was apparently an Atlanta Braves fan.

“There’s a match tonight,” she explained. “She gives us a few hours to relax and be refreshed before she sends us out to MURDER each other. We gotta be nice and lively for the crowds.”

“Crowds?”

“Sure! Most of her revenue comes from pirate PPV downloads, but there are people who’ll play plenty to see the bloodshed in person. Hey, it’s not like she can make money off advertising; no corporate sponsor in their right mind wants to be associated with Mutant Death Matches.”

“You guys seem to be pretty relaxed about this.”

“Meh!” she bleated dismissively. “Hey, despite the name, not every bout ends in a death. You go up the listings, you go down the listings, and, yeah, I have personally seen a top ranker make his fifth kill and get his contract sold.”

“Contract sold?”

“Yeah, Vicious sells the ‘winners’ contract to some organized crime outfit or another. What can I say? She hates to miss a trick.” She waved that aside. “Besides, today the pressure’s off a little. They usually throw the rookie out with the Pros to see what he can do. There are eight of you kids, so odds are that you’ll be the entire card tonight.”

“Ah, Pros?” Chris, who’d been listening in on this asked.

“Vicious takes money from supervillains who want to go in the ring with one of us and have a real battle on camera.”

“WHY would anyone PAY to come here and maybe get KILLED?” Chris asked, shocked.

“Oh, newbie supervils who want to make a quick rep, old-timers who want to prove that they still got what it takes, guys who got some sort of upgrade and want to show it off, guys who just got their asses kicked and want to shake it off, guys who just got out of jail and want everyone to know they’re back in business, guys who want an easy-” she paused, and thought something over, “-and there are supervillains who just love a good fight.”

Yeah, good fight, right.

Then we ‘loose cannons’ were called in for the fittings for our fight outfits.

SWIVE

Swive met Haines, the MCO guy on the Sammish case, at the door of the LVMPD Paranormal Affairs Division. “So, what’s going on, Haines?”

“They’ve been cruising some of the Dark Web sites for any signs of the Loose Cannons-”

“The ‘Loose WHAT’?”

Haines let out a martyred sigh. “It’s the handle that HeroWatch talking head Danica Hanson hung on them, something about that Cannon logo they’ve been slapping ev- not the point! They found a very illegal website for a real-life blood-sport gladiatorial event that’s held out in the desert somewhere called ‘the Mutant Death Matches’.”

“Yer Shitting Me.”

“It’s Las Vegas! Do you honestly think that someone wouldn’t try it?”

Swive visibly thought it over and finally acknowledged the point with a shrug.

“Anyway, they say that they’ve found some buzz regarding these ‘loose cannons’ in context with the Mutant Death Match.” By this time, Haines had led Swive to a meeting room with a long table, and a wide-screen monitor set up at the far end. Swive recognized Ranney and a few of the other Paranormal Division cops, and a few new players. Wanting to steal a march on the Boys in Blue, Swive opened up with, “Mutant Death Matches? You guys let crap like this go on in this town?”

“What LET?” one of the Metros asked. “Do you have any idea how much time and money we’ve put into trying to find that slaughterhouse? The ‘cast comes into the Net at some point in the central router through some back door that GoodCast would love to know about. They use some variant on Flash Mob tactics. When we do spot players being picked up, they have some sneaky trick that gives us the slip. We keep following vans that just take nice, leisurely trips through the desert. At night. And we’ve checked every disused military base, research lab, and manufacturing plant in the area. I don’t know what gimmick they’re using, but it’s a pip.”

‘Most likely, the ‘gimmick’ is a couple of thousand in small unmarked bills in a plain envelope on a regular basis’, Swive thought sourly. “Any chance that the freaks working the civilian ‘Mutant Death Matches’ that the resorts hold are double-dipping?”

“Pretty good,” Iglesias, one of the Vegas cops, said. “But try and prove it with those stupid costumes they wear. Worse, we’re pretty sure that a bunch of the guys and girls in the resort matches are wanted supervillains picking up some walking around money, but again: try and prove it with those stupid costumes. Unless they’ve been busted and processed, how can we prove that the perky little thing calling herself ‘Miss Firecracker’ is really the infamous Lady Lava?”

Swive started to make a snide comment when a civilian employee grinding at a laptop told them to shush, that the program was starting. The widescreen monitor flickered to life, and then the screen was dominated by the image of a woman in green, sitting in a throne-like chair. Involuntarily, Swive had a brief flashback to his high school days, when Joan Collins was the MILF that every horndog wanted to boff. “Good evening!” she greeted them with a lush, fruity European accent. “I am Madam Vicious, and these are… the REAL LAS VEGAS MUTANT DEATH MATCHES!” Those words superimposed themselves over the shot in an overblown WWE-type logo. “This is the Real Thing! Nothing staged, nothing rehearsed, no safety measures, no pulled punches. These remarkable combatants are really trying to kill each other, because they both know that the other is all-too willing to kill THEM. The only restraint on this is a strict 5-minute time frame. We DO have a schedule to keep, after all. And with no further ado, here’s tonight’s Roster!” As pictures of costumed persons standing surrounding the arena flashed in the screen, Madam Vicious rattled off their names according to their standing in the rankings: Mr. Z, Techno-demon, Draconis, Blood Witch, Thundergun, Diamond Girl, Glitter, Backbreaker, Retarius, Starstrike, Hellrazor, Wardance, Ultiman, Iron Tiger, Blood Diamond, Vibrex, Stonefist, Ogre, Switchblade, Spartacus, Barbie Q, Ironwolf, Icestorm, Mad Dog, Buzzkill, Deathrace, and Nightwitch. There were also shots of cheering fans, though faces were blocked out with a software filter.

“Is that for real?” Haines asked. “The crowd, I mean?”

“Oh, it’s real,” Ranney said with a weary disgust. “The word is that seats go for a grand a pop.”

Swive did a quick educated guest of the crowd, and figured that there were from 100 to 200 people in the stands.

“And how much are the Dark Web protocols?” Haines asked.

“250 a showing,” one of the plainclothes said. “And a ‘personal appearance’ costs 50 grand, and there’s very illegal betting.” Swive calculated that the betting alone probably underwrote the operation of the base; everything else was pure gravy. A lot of gravy.

“But you came here for some new faces, for fresh blood!” Madam Vicious chided her audience. “And here they are!” the camera shifted to a doorway to the arena. Well, if it worked for Vince McMahon… “The LOOSE CANNONS!” A tall brawny figure appeared in silhouette. “He’s big, he’s bad, and he’s here to prove that he’s the very best! He’s the BLUE MAX!” The figure stepped forth to reveal a tall, muscular African-American young man. Whoever had dressed him had decided to play up the color scheme that the ‘Loose Cannons’ had decided for themselves. He wore a blue ‘Kyle Raynor/Green Lantern’ style mask. He was stripped bare above the waist, save for a pair of silver belts crossed over his chest and a ‘blue max’ cross clipping them together where they crossed. He had a pair of silver metallic gauntlets on his hands. He wore a silver ‘Wrestling Trophy’ style belt with another blue cross displayed on it, above a tight-fitting pair of blue trousers with a silver stripe down the sides, and a pair of black jackboots.

‘Blue Max’ stepped through the door and walked to a place alongside the other gladiators. He was replaced by another silhouette in the doorway, though this one was noticeably smaller and slenderer. “She’s sleek, she’s gorgeous, but she’s deadly as Hell! She’s the HEXBLADE!” This figure stepped forward to reveal a lithe girl of maybe 16 or 17. Swive bridled with recognition. Her ragged hair had been cut and styled into a ‘Joan Jett’ shag. She wore a mask that Swive recognized as the fencing mask that students at Heidelberg had worn while dueling with sabers, to protect their eyes while keeping their cheeks bared for the iconic Heidelberg scar. She was dramatically made up with blush and luridly colorful lipstick, but he still recognized her as the bitch who’d shamed him and spared his life. Madam Vicious’ designers had blended Punk with a Swashbuckler style; ‘Hexblade’ wore a red leather motorcycle jacket with a silver pauldron on her left shoulder and a loop of silvered chain over the right, over a black body-stocking, with a white lace jabot at her throat, and matching gauntlets on her hands and silk sash around her waist. He noted with amusement that while the boots matched the jacket, they weren’t ‘swashbuckler boots’. She swaggered through the doorway and found a spot next to ‘the Blue Max’.

“He’s the mean machine you don’t want to run into in a dark alley- or anywhere else! He’s ROBO-THUG ” The next figure returned to the silver-and-blue color scheme. He was African-American, though he appeared to be made of living metal. This time the designers had gone for Thug Classic. He wore a blue baseball cap worn backwards over a silver do-rag that included a half-mask. A heavy silver chain with a silver-coated padlock hung around his neck. A silver tank top showed under blue bib overalls worn under a baggy blue sports parka with the Cannon logo on the back. He moved with urban predator grace to a spot next to Hexblade.

“He’s the gorgeous boy you don’t want to break your daughter’s heart- or fry your computer. He’s a shock to the system-any system. He’s SHOXX!” This boy or young man had bushy blonde hair and foxy features almost hidden by a silver visor. He wore a breastplate that suggested a classic ‘swimmer’s build’ torso, under a long dark blue overcoat with an outsized popped collar and lapels, with black boots tucked into blousy blue trousers. On his hands he wore silver-tone gauntlets. Instead of walking into the arena, he floated in on a silver metal disk, stopping next to Robo-Thug.

The next figure was another girl. Swive recognized her as one of the two blonde girls who’d gone into the Hofstadter & Cooper lab with Darcel MacArthur. He briefly wondered where the other one was. “She’s the center of attention wherever she goes! She doesn’t just crave the spotlight, she IS the SPOTLIGHT! ” Again, she was tricked out in silver-and-blue, with a blue metallic legless halter-top body-suit with silver-tone thigh-high boots, opera gloves, visor and backpack. There were large, probably high-powered electric lights on her chest, buckle and the backs of her hands. She gingerly made her way to the next spot in the lineup.

In stark contrast to the others, the next figure rejected the silver-and-blue scheme. Rather his outfit was a rosy pink, with a utility belt around his waist and a squid mask over his face. Even though his face was concealed, his body language indicated that he wasn’t very happy with this look. “He may not have a backbone, but his reach far exceeds most people’s grasp. They say that it’s always the quiet ones you have to watch out for- so watch out for… THE SQUID!” As ‘the Squid’ shuffled over to ‘Spotlight’, Swive noticed that the ‘pink’ bodysuit shifted color, and when he got close to Spotlight it gained a noteworthy bluish hue- on that side.

The next silhouette was tall and heavy. When he stepped into the light, he was a slightly kinky figure in black leather chaps over blue jeans, a black leather motorcycle jacket and matching motoring cap over a rainbow T-shirt and a tie-dye scarf mask. On his left arm, he carried a circular shield with rainbow concentric rings on the face. “He’s a big gay badass, with big gay pride, who’s loud and proud and willing to stand like a stone wall for himself! He’s STONEWALL!” When he heard this, ‘Stonewall’s’ face dropped and despite the mask you could see the ‘WHAT?’ His face erupted in a rage that no mask could hide, and he stormed in Madam Vicious’ direction. But Vicious pointed a finger at him and shot a bolt of greenish energy at his feet. But it was the way she fiddled with her riding crop with coy sadism that stopped the big man in his tracks. With a scowl in her direction, he stomped over to his place next to the Squid.

“Innnterestiiinnngg…” Haines drawled with a definite ‘okay WTF is going on there?’ undertone.

The last figure was another portrait in contrast. She was even shorter and more petite than ‘Spotlight’. She was also dressed in the silver-and-blue, with a blue metallic ‘speed helmet’ of the sort that bicyclists wore with a silver visor over the upper half of her face, a silver hard ‘vest’ over a blue unitard, with matching reinforced gauntlets, utility belt, overbuilt boots, and round shield. “She may look cute, she may look sweet,” Vicious purred with a snide irony that her voice was well suited for, “but believe me boys, this girl is FAST! Fast, fast, fast! You can chase after her if you want, but I warn you- she’s TRUBBLE!” Unlike ‘Stonewall’, ‘Trubble’ accepted her nom de guerre with a ‘well YEAH!’ shrug. Then she practically disappeared and zipped over to the last open spot in a silver-and-blue streak.

Then Madam Vicious made a production of adding the Loose Cannons to the roster of Standing, Wins, Losses, Kills and Change in Standing, placing them en masse in the very middle of the roster.

Madam Vicious introduced the ‘special guest gladiators’ (i.e. the paying customers), a large rather shaggy guy working a ‘Conan the Barbarian’ vibe, an even bigger Black guy with stock ‘modern badass’ fighting togs, a guy in a glitzed out set of gladiator armor, complete with the weird helmet, and a sleek redheaded woman working a tiger motif. As she introduced them, Lamont, another LVMPD cop asked, “So, which one of these is the wiseass claiming to be the son of the Air Force colonel who almost got killed in Sacramento?”

“I’m not sure,” Swive said. “He might be the squid in pink. If you can, bring up a head shot of the ‘Hexblade’.”

“Hexblade?” Iglesias said with a wince.

“Energy swords and ‘blade’ names are very popular right about now,” Byers, the plainclothes cop who’d spoken before, said. “Even the Prequels couldn’t kill it.”

The net jockey captured a good face shot of the Hexblade and blew it up into a portrait that took up about one-quarter of the widescreen. “I don’t know where the Evan Ramsey poser is, but I recognize HER,” Swive snarled. “That’s the bitch that almost killed me in the parking lot at the Country Club Mall in Sacramento.”

“You sure about that?”

“You don’t forget someone who opens up a suit of combat-grade power armor like a can of hash- while you’re wearing it- and holds a purple energy blade a micrometer away from your nose.”

“Then why didn’t she finish you?”

“Their top-kick, the big buck in blue, the ‘Blue Max’, the wiseass who claims he’s Darcel MacArthur, pulled her leash. I think that she’s afraid of him.”

“Okay, the little blonde, ‘Spotlight’, could be one of the two blondes that *ahem!* ‘MacArthur’ took into the Hofstadter & Cooper lab,” Ranney said. “But where’s the other blonde, the one who said that she was Roxanne Lockhart, and was making those call-outs to the kids at Martin Sammish?”

“Dunno,” Swive said, looking at the images of the other ‘Loose Cannons’.

“’Robo-Thug’ might supposed to be Isaac Montgomery, and ‘Trubble’ might be able to pass for Susan Kim, but the big guy, ‘Stonewall’? The only one he even vaguely resembles is Edward Ramos, and I don’t recall anything in his file about him being openly gay!”

“No, I don’t think they’re trying to pass ‘Robo-Thug’ off as Isaac Montgomery,” Byers said. “They claim that Montgomery died in that mad science thing they’re trying to sell, along with Wanda Blocker and Ramon Gugliamo. Still, Billy Curtis is supposed to sometimes be called ‘Squid’, but where did ‘Shoxx’ come from?”

“We’re not supposed to figure out if they’re the Martin Sammish kids,” Ranney said firmly. “That’s total bullshit. What we need to figure out is if these ‘Loose Cannons’ are the Unsubs who took the Martin Sammish kids, tried to kill Col. Ramsey, blew up that building in San Francisco, and raided the Hofstadter & Cooper lab.”

“And Why,” Haines added.

“They’re mercenaries,” Swive said definitively. “They were hired to take the Martin Sammish kids and confuse the trail. Why? I have no idea. The reason they hit the PFAR building and the Hofstadter & Cooper lab is they were hired by other outfits, and they’re using that to further confuse the issue.”

“You’re building a big case on some mighty flimsy evidence,” Byers said.

“Doing the best with what I got,” Swive shot back. “BUT, two things I am absolutely certain of: Hexblade IS the woman who jumped me at the Country Club Mall, and Blue Max is the leader of that crew. Still, they have a light-blaster, an electricity-thrower, a giant, a speedster and if that ‘Squid’ guy is who I think he is, they’ve got a guy with weird arms. What the hell all that means, I’m as confused as you all are.” Swive was profoundly conflicted. On one hand, this could be the perfect solution to his problem: unlike those bogus ‘Mutant Death Matches’ the resorts ran, these outlaw matches really were to the death. This ‘Madam Vicious’ would run them until they dropped, and just toss the bodies in an incinerator. Their deaths would be explained, and not only wouldn’t he get blamed for it, but he wouldn’t be anywhere near when it happened. It would be rubber-stamped ‘Inexplicable Super-Crime Violence’, filed away and forgotten.

BUT. There were three problems with that. First, the story that he’d cobbled together to cover his ass required that he be the resolute hero who tries to rescue the Martin Sammish kids at all costs. Besides covering his ass, so far it was doing wonders for his standing! The Media was eating it up. Second, he didn’t trust this ‘Madam Vicious’. There were too many ways that it could go screwy, up to and including the bitch coming out of the woodwork and blackmailing him somehow. Besides, tracking down and busting a real mutant gladiator ring would look fantastic on his record. And third, there was a part of him that needed, really NEEDED to pull the trigger that scattered that ‘Hexblade’ bitch’s brains.

Then Swive had to focus again. They’d gone through all the inane posturing and interviewing, and they were ready to get down to the real killing. The first ‘special guest gladiator’, the yahoo with the ‘Barbarian Warrior’ act, ‘Congarr the Conqueror’, was standing in the center, checking out his options. He was wearing the heavy metal idea of barbarian garb: a mish-mash of furs, draping panels of mail, chains and a horned helmet, with a pair of double-headed axes in both hands. Yet for all that, Swive’s trained eye spotted some boobytraps that might be built into the ensemble. The horns on the helmet begged to be grabbed and used to control Congarr. But a savvy combatant might rig the horns to simply pop off if grabbed. Or they could be rigged with a shocker or an explosive. The furs and chains could also be rigged somehow. It depended on what powers he had, and how savvy he was.

Then ‘Congarr’ had made his choice.“YOU!” He pointed one of his axes at Hexblade. “Woman, you DARE to mock the dress of a WARROR? Then CONGARR the CONQUEROR, will show you the real meaning of WAR, and take out his pleasures on your battered and bloody body!”

Hexblade gave a brattish tisk of ‘whatever’ and strolled from her spot to a circle in the arena without comment. Turning her back to the camera, she showed off an elaborate silver Thoth’s-Eye design within a stylized black rose-burst interlaced with a silver triangle on the back of the jacket. Once there, she just cocked a hip, crossed her arms and made a production of strumming her fingers on her biceps, giving Congarr a ‘Well?’ look of annoyed impatience.

“Foolish Woman!” Congarr stormed as he stomped to his matching circle in the arrangement, ‘You MOCK Congarr? You spit on Congarr’s HONOR?” As Congarr ranted and a countdown sounded, the image of picturesque ruins littered with shattered walls, broken pillars, and toppled Greco-Roman statues rezzed into existence around them.

“What’s this?” Haines asked.

“Probably Hard Light imaging,” Swive answered. “Coherent holograms, the latest big thing out of Silicon Valley. A new firm called New Detroit Industries says that they created it, but Industrial Light and Magic, GKI,Sony, Intel, Texas Instruments, and a few other players claim that they’ve had projects just like it on their drawing boards for years. It’s not very efficient, power wise. At commercially feasible levels, all you can do is create a surface that has the hardness of, say, water. But it registers being interrupted. There’s talk about hard light interface replacing screens and keyboards eventually, but not yet. You can make more substantial structures with hard light, but the power costs rise exponentially with the degree of hardness, so it’s not commercially viable yet-if ever. If those ruins are anything more substantial than stage dressing, then they are burning some serious power to do it.”

“I’ll lay you odds that Vicious offers the hard-light backgrounds to paying customers who want to jazz up their fights,” Iglesias said. “That must cost muy dinero. Congarr must really want to make an impression, to pay for that on top of a 50 K gate fee.”

“Rookie,” muttered everyone else in the room, even the computer jockey.

As they were saying that, Congarr was ranting furiously, working himself up into a berserk. As he screamed and hacked at the air with his axes, he grew in size and mass, and his eyes and the blades of his axes and the horns on his helmet started to glow with power. Finally, he had almost doubled his height and tripled his width. His armor hadn’t grown with him but rather slid and unfolded to accommodate his new bulk. Before the armor had been rather thick on his body; now it barely covered large parts of his frame. The two great axes that had been overlarge for his hands now were perfectly proportioned for them. When the starting klaxon sounded, Congarr finished up his oration by stepping over to overbear Hexblade. He leaned over her and screamed down into her face, “YYYAAAWWWRRR!!!”

Hexblade showed only a stifled annoyance at being screamed at. Almost negligently, she thrust forward with a short silver dowel. At the last second, a purple lightsaber emerged from the dowel, and sank into Congarr’s center mass, slipping past the over-worked armor and poked out the back. Congarr froze and the glow in his eyes died, his face falling into an ‘oh crap’ expression. He let out a choked ‘urk!’, deflated and fell. Hexblade managed to sidestep him. Hexblade watched as Congarr continued to shrink, and when he stopped shrinking, did not move. When she was sure that Congarr wasn’t getting up again, she gave another annoyed tisk, looked up at Madam Vicious, and spread out her hands in a ‘WHAT?’ gesture.

The camera shifted to Madam Vicious, who was utterly nonplussed. Finally, she said to the camera, “I don’t know whether to be impressed or appalled.” But she waved Hexblade back to her spot.

Back at NVMPD HQ, the men around the table broke out in snickers. “Well,” Lamont said around a guffaw, “Now we have a foolproof way to find people who were spectators there tonight: all we have to say is ‘Congarr the Conqueror’, and they’ll bust out laughing.”

When Hexblade had strutted back to her spot, Madam Vicious stifled her snickering enough to address the camera again. “Well, that was… unexpected… But don’t worry, I have no intention of cheating you out of any of your entertainment. We will provide value for you. It will just take a little doing. BUT! In the meantime, we have a fight with a gladiator of proven grit! Give a rousing Death Match welcome to… HARD KNOX!”

In stark contrast to the bluster and bombast of Congarr the Crumpled, Hard Knox was all business. He was tall and thick, well over 6 feet tall and 300 pounds, none of it fat. He could have been a statue of Ogun Feray, the Orisha of Iron, Discipline and War. His complexion was a shade lighter than ‘skillet’, his close-cropped hair was receding into male pattern baldness without conceding to weakness in the slightest, and his mustache was the only thing even slightly decorative about his appearance. He had a powerful bull-necked, barrel-chest, ham-hand physique, but it was the build of a man who worked long hours loading sacks of cement, not someone who assiduously cultivated muscle groups in a gym. His shades of gray-and-black outfit was armored, but only in certain key areas, such as the neck, the collarbones, the small of the back and so on. He wore eye and ear protectors, his wrists were wrapped, and he had reinforced fingerless gloves. He gave the air of a man who’d seen a lot of dirty tricks in his day, had a lot of them used on him, and learned from them all.

When Madam Vicious called him to the arena, Hard Knox unfolded his arms and strode to the center position. He made no production of picking and choosing. The second that he hit the position, he pointed and said, “YOU. Blue Max. Get Ready to Die.”

As Blue Max stalked from his spot into the arena, the area rezzed into a nightmarish tangle of brick and concrete and iron bars. “What’s the matter, boy?” Hard Knox sneered at Blue Max, “Nobody ever tell you that you was gonna die in JAIL?”

“Lookin’ for the home court advantage, Old Man?” Blue Max sneered back.

They glared at each other as there was a pause to let various bettors get their wagers down. Then the countdown sounded off, and the second that it was Go, they charged at each other like two One-Man-Armies. “And we have a nice opening exchange of blows,” Madam Vicious commented from an inset. “Nice of them to make up for that unfortunate first act. And it’s heating up. Hard Knox takes a punch to set up a haymaker. WELL! That was a good one! Blue Max has gone flying through the scenery. Those walls may only be hard light, but we’ve bolstered them so they’re as tough as real bricks and concrete. And Blue Max bounces off the Safety Wall protecting the crowd.

“But Blue Max rebounds up into the air! He does a diving pounce on Hard Knox and sends him flying. Knox manages to brace himself from penetration, so he doesn’t hit the Safety Wall. Blue Max has the advantage of mobility, so Knox is bridging the gaps by bringing out a few collapsible throwing irons, which my notes tell me are available from Syn D’Rome, purveyor of fine covert ops gear.”

“Madam Vicious does Product Endorsement?” Swive groaned.

“Hey, she hates to miss a trick.”

“Knox is waiting for Blue Max to commit to a dive. The Blue begins his charge. Knox waits for the proper time… and lets fly! Blue Max dodges the irons, but he didn’t notice the placement of the obstacle blocks, squares of concrete shod in 25mm steel sheet. He flew face first into that block! As Blue Max recovers, Knox is charging, hoping to take the fight back to hand-to-hand. But Blue Max just throws the obstacle block up into the air! As Hard Knox is trying to keep track of that block, Blue Max tears into him. Hard Knox breaks and recovers, but he forgot about that block!

“Now Blue Max is breaking through the hard-light obstacles, trying to find another obstacle block that he can use. Knox has recovered from that block landing on him, but he’s not going after the Max. Instead, he’s deploying his fighting line, a 20-foot long ‘belt’ of a material that reacts to being in contact with Knox by becoming as hard as he is. It’s not monomolecular, but it is as sharp as a good knife.

“Knox gets in one, two good slashes on Blue Max. He’s herding the Max… he clearly was studying the layout of the obstacle blocks while the Blue was watching Congarr lose all his credibility. And Knox strikes… but Blue Max dashes in past the fighting line’s striking point! Now he has both hands on the fighting line and- OH! He’s using the line to throw Hard Knox around the arena, smashing him into anything with real mass. Well, that’s one way of finding out where the obstacle blocks are, I suppose.

“Knox releases the fighting line and charges the Max. But the Max steps in and stops him with a palm smash to the face. Humph, not the most- NO, Knox is staggering back and his eye projectors were shattered by that. Knox is warier now that his eyes are vulnerable. They’re dancing around, with the Max focusing on Knox’s head. And Knox goes on the offensive, with a set of short punches that pushes the Blue back. And he’s finessed Blue Max into stumbling over an obstacle block! As the Max recovers, Knox launches himself for a high vaulting jump. But the Max recovers too fast for Knox and launches himself into the air! He catches Knox by the ankle, and comes down, throwing Knox into a block.

“No wait! As Knox is reeling from that, Blue Max goes for Knox’s fighting line and…

“And he’s using it to strangle Hard Knox! He’s got Knox from behind, he’s got him by the neck, slipped the line past Knox’s neck guard and it doesn’t look like Knox’s ace-in-the-hole invulnerability is doing anything! Well, but of course! The fighting line taps into whatever Knox uses, so it can’t protect him from the line. But Knox is tough, and he’s fighting it as best he can.”

The larger man tried to buck ‘the Blue Max’ off his back, but the fight devolved into a tussling match, which ended when the 5-minute bell rang. The Blue Max let go of the belt and stepped away. Hard Knox got to his feet and looked like he was gathering himself to jump the younger man, when Madam Vicious gave him a minor ‘mind your manners’ blast of energy that tapped him on the temple. Knox collected himself and stood beside the Blue Max, awaiting the judging of the match. “Well, this one will be decided on points,” Madam Vicious drawled. “Judges?”

All attention turned to three figures that were obscured by a frosted glass window. Behind each figure was a scorebox reading ‘Home: XX.XX/ Visitor: XX.XX’. There was a pause and the boxes displayed: Home: 08.75/ Visitor: 07.50; Home: 09.30/ Visitor: 08.75; Home: 08.50/ Visitor: 08.75. Then below them another box read out ‘Total Score- Home: 08.93/ Visitor: 08.30. Winner: Home’

“Very well,” Madam Vicious said, “Congratulations, Blue Max! You are victorious in your debut combat!”

“WHAT?” Hard Knox bellowed, “LOOK. I-”

Knox was cut off as several pillars shot up out of the rim of the arena and turned dark slots in his direction. There was a ratcheting sound of machinery and more conventional weaponry descended from caches around the arena and trained themselves on him. Knox froze, took all of this in and hastily amended himself, “I apologize for the outburst.”

“Of course, you do,” Vicious gloated with royal smugness. The weapons returned to their caches, and Madam Vicious gestured for the two to make the rote ‘good fight’ handshake. Hard Knox and Blue Max bumped fists, but they looked at each other with glares that suggested that they were both looking forward to their next fight with nothing vaguely resembling good sportsmanship.

“I’m surprised that Madam Vicious didn’t give the victory to her paying customer,” Haines said.

Byers made an unimpressed snort. “She’s just servicing her main gig: if she just gives away the win, it screws with the betting, and no matter how vicious she is, she’s not fool enough to fuck with the bookies.”

The focus shifted from the arena that Hard Knox and Blue Max had damaged to the center arena. The two remaining ‘visiting’ gladiators begged off for a bit, so Madam Vicious said, “Very well then, let’s get one of our new warriors blooded against an established gladiator… Blooded? Well, of course! Blood Witch, step into the arena!” A slender feminine figure in a ragged dark red cloak with a high peaked hood and a screen of gauze that made her features indistinct, over a long white gown with draping bell sleeves stepped out. As she moved in the arena, she left a slick trail of redness behind her, and the long pale talons that extended from those bell sleeves dripped red.

“Very good,” Vicious purred. “But who to pit against you? Ah! But of course! Who better to fight a fairy tale witch than a fairy tale Prince? SHOXX, step up, and let’s see if you’re MAN enough to defeat this terrible monster?”

As ‘Shoxx’ strode forward, he looked around as the jumble of blocks the last fight had left disappeared into a fairy tale wood. It was just dense enough to provide tactical advantages and disadvantages, while being sparse enough to not occlude the spectators- or viewers’- sight of the carnage. Shoxx entered the starting circle and visibly studied the Blood Witch, who just stood there, her cloak draping her as to conceal whatever preparations she was making. The countdown started, and when the Go buzzer sounded, the Blood Witch exploded into a thick dark-red mist. Shoxx lifted off, crouched on his disk, focused for a moment, and then sent a wide-area dispersed electrical surge through the mist that burned off most of it.

But even as Shoxx ceased his electrical surge to recoup his power, a red figure on what appeared to be a red cloud surged out of what remained of the mist with a large gleaming red sword in her hand.It charged straight at Shoxx, who unfurled an expanding mesh whip that glittered with electricity. He waited until the Blood Witch was at the very point of his best strike chance and the outermost distance where he could still dodge if he missed, and let out with a cleaving downward slanted lash. The lash literally sliced the red figure in two, and the halves fell apart and dissolved into mist.

“Oh DEAR, Shoxx!” Madam Vicious jeered, “What HAVE you done?”

As Shoxx reacted to that, a glistening red whip lashed up from the ‘forest’ and wrapped itself around his neck. He managed to raise his own whip, but not before the Blood Witch pulled him off his flying disk and he fell a good ten feet to the arena floor.

“Well, that knocked him off his high horse,” Madam Vicious sneered.

Aside from a near-reflexive pulse of electricity that cushioned his fall a mite, Shoxx didn’t manage the fall very well. As he struggled to collect himself from the fall, he sensed something coming up on him quickly, he gave out a reflex wide-area electrical zap, not very powerful, just enough to give him a second’s breathing room. Looking up, he saw a large powerful beast of vaguely feline configuration.

“Oh, you DO wish that you knew what you were dealing with, don’t you, gorgeous boy?” Vicious smirked.

Shoxx managed to power-jump over the cat-thing’s pounce and magnetically drew the flying disk back to him. When his footing was secure again, he got his whip ready. Well, his whip was ready, but Shoxx wasn’t. A flight of birds flew up at him and pelted him, covering his long coat with gore. Shoxx pulled off a backwards loop that confused them and got him out of the flock. Crouching low, he zipped his disk around the circumference of the ‘wood’, trying to get sight of the Blood Witch. Then he spotted her, trying to move stealthily from tree to tree, looking around for sight of him. Shoxx stopped in a very dense copse of ‘trees’ and readied his whip again. He was so intent on the witch that he didn’t notice the ‘trees’ behind him merge and form into of a fantasy movie’s image of a dragon.  Without a pause, the dragon opened up its maw wide and swallowed Shoxx whole.

“I think that Blood Witch is taking the whole ‘fairy tale’ thing a bit too much to heart,” Madam Vicious said dryly. The ‘dragon’ melted away, leaving only an irregular lump of red roughly the size of a young man. “AH,” Madam Vicious said in the tones of comprehension. “The Blood Cocoon. An effective way to get an opponent down.” Madam Vicious sighed. “Effective, but not spectacular. Let’s see if we can’t-”

Whatever Madam Vicious was going to try was set aside as the blood cocoon exploded in a spray of red and a surge of electricity. As the spray dispersed, Shoxx was shown, alive and breathing. Breathing hard, but still alive and breathing. And strangely clean.

“Now THAT’S more like it!” Madam Vicious said with a tone of amusement, “It looks like we’re going to have a real FIGHT!”

Back at the Division of Paranormal Affairs, Lamont drawled, “How much you wanna bet that it wasn’t just PR that they hung the tag ‘Madam Vicious’ on her?”

Blood Witch barely ducked Shoxx’s whip, and rose up on a cloud of roiling blood. She produced a long glistening red whip of her own. With a snap, she put Shoxx on his guard, and they launched into a tangled whip duel, with both sides landing telling blows on each other. Madam Vicious watched this with a gleam in her eye that her visor did nothing to conceal.

But finally, the time bell rang, and both combatants returned to the arena floor to hear the decision. The hidden judges waited, and showing their scores, settled on a Tie. “The judges’ decisions are final, even I can’t overrule them,” Madam Vicious sighed.“Oh well, at least there was BLOOD, wasn’t there?”

Waving that aside, Madam V turned to her third paying guest gladiator. “THRAEX! the Golden Gladiator! Have you chosen your opponent?”

The figure in golden armor nodded and gave a thumbs-up. He strode into the arena and pointed at the gladiator in a black sleeveless bodysuit bisected in the middle with a dark purple vertical stripe and a gold Z on the chest. He wore gold-tone bracers with a matching cape and mask. “Mister Z!” the Golden Gladiator spoke in orator’s tones, “You stand at the very head of the list, with four Kills to your name. Are you willing to be a worthy adversary, and risk EVERYTHING to gain your FIFTH kill?”

“Mister _Z_?” Haines asked in pained tones.

“I think they just couldn’t come up with anything for him.”

‘Mr. Z’ looked to Madam Vicious and asked in similar theatric tones, “MADAM VICIOUS! I have FOUR kills! If I win my FIFTH kill, will I win the Wooden Sword?”

“’Wooden Sword’?” Swive asked.

“The Romans used to give gladiators wooden swords when they’d won their freedom,” the net geek said. “Part of their PR is that their regular lineup of gladiators are slaves, forced to fight or be killed out of hand. If they get five kills, they’re supposed to let them go free.”

“Do they ever really DO that?” Swive asked, a touch of worry tickling down his spine.

“Hard to say,” the net geek admitted. “That gladiator is dropped from the roster, but who’s to say that he was set free, or just taken to a room off-camera and cacked? I mean, everyone’s seen so who knows?”

“Then again, who’s to say that the ‘gladiator slave’ bit is on the up and up?” Swive groused,“They could just pay well!”

Madam Vicious sat on the edge of her chair, clearly digging on the ‘imperial authority’ she was being given. “Yes, of course Mr. Z! THIS is the sort of battle that we’ve all come here to see! Not just two men fighting to stay alive, but two men eagerly looking to KILL each other! So be it! Winner Take ALL! But know this: if, by the time the time bell rings, one of you hasn’t killed the other… YOU BOTH DIE!” She sat back, a wide vicious (well, what would you call it?) grin on her face, but both men just looked at each other with looks of predatory interest.

There was an extra amount of time allocated for the betting. While this was going on, men with forklifts came in and added to the battered obstacle blocks, stacking several of them high, creating a circle of pillars. And they added something new to the equation: a large spiked metal ball that swung by a chain from a beam over the arena. There was a pause as the spiked ball built up some swing momentum, then they walked to their starting positions, and the countdown started.

At ‘Go’, they both launched themselves at each other, and they were rewarded with a lusty roar from the crowd. The Golden Gladiator produced a yellowish energy sword and matching round shield. Mr. Z’s bracers glowed with energy. They met, clashed for a moment, squared for another go, but had to break as the spiked pendulum swung between them. Mr. Z took to the air and blasted at Thraex, which the Golden Gladiator was able to bat away from him with blade and buckler. Then the pendulum swung between them again. But when the huge ball passed, Thraex wasn’t there.

Mr. Z looked around frantically, and then he spotted the Golden Gladiator hop off the spiked ball. He’d held onto one of the spikes and ridden the ball out of the zone of Mr. Z’s fire. Thraex quickly stepped behind one of the columns of blocks. Mr. Z flew in close and started to circle the pillar. But then the column tipped over, spilling the blocks over on top of Mr. Z.

Mr. Z landed hard and pushed the block off him. Then another block came down on top of him, followed by the Golden Gladiator.

Mr. Z was able to blast Thraex off him before the swordsman could use that energy blade, but he couldn’t acquire any real firing distance. So, he pressed the battle into very close quarters, where the sword wouldn’t be as much of an advantage. Mr. Z was stronger, and his close-in moves were battering the hell out of that shiny armor.

Thraex seemed to be taking the worst of it. But then, just as Mr. Z was prepping for a smashing overhand double-handed blow, the Golden Gladiator ducked in close and made what seemed to be a minor glancing blow. But Mr. Z’s shocked expression said otherwise. Taking ruthless advantage of the caped man’s reaction, Thraex shield-bashed him into the column of blocks and plunged his sword deep into Mr. Z’s gut.

Mr. Z reacted with a kick that was more to get that sword out of his stomach than hurt Thraex, but it still managed to push the gladiator well away from him. Mr. Z immediately launched himself at Thraex. The two grappled, and while Mr. Z was weaker, he was still the stronger. Mr. Z held onto Thraex and kept his eye on the spiked ball. As the ball crested its arc and began to wrestle the Golden Gladiator into the return arc. But at the last second, Thraex leveraged Mr. Z’s grip into a throw, and put his opponent into the path of the ball, as he ducked out of the path of danger. Mr. Z tried to fly up out of the path of the spiked ball, but that merely meant that he was completely ungrounded when it slammed into his back.

The impact sent Mr. Z flying. Thraex hauled ass and got into Mr. Z’s path in time to redirect his arc with his shield. The redirect sent Mr. Z slamming into one of the columns of blocks. He hit hard, and the impact brought the blocks tumbling down on him. Mr. Z frantically tried to struggle out from under the blocks, but Thraex was on him again almost immediately, using Z’s own efforts to set him up for another stab in the belly. Mr. Z let out a sharp yell and collapsed. Thraex grabbed him by the hair, pulled his head back and raised his blade.

But he stopped and looked to Madam Vicious on her ‘throne’.

“Aaawww… MAN… she isn’t gonna….”

With a big lopsided smirk, Madam Vicious leaned forward and thrust one fist forward, thumb down.

With that ritual permission given, the Golden Gladiator brought his golden energy sword down and ended the fight.

“So much for ‘she isn’t gonna’.”

As the Golden Gladiator basked in the approval of the crowd, Madam Vicious gloated into the camera, “Now THAT’S the kind of action we came here to see! That’s why we call this ‘Mutant DEATH MATCH!”

“The worst thing is that he just committed cold-blooded murder,” Iglesias growled at the screen, “but his asking price for his services just got a big shot in the arm.”

The fourth ‘special guest gladiator’ begged off for a bit. “Very well then! Whose turn in the spotlight should it be? Well of course! Spotlight!” Madam Vicious paused to consider. “So, who should we pit against this young beauty? But of course! Beauty against beauty! Step up, DIAMOND GIRL, it’s your time to SHINE!”

A girl who looked as though she was carved from living crystal stepped out of her spot in the circle. She wore a strapless ‘bathing suit’ of black velvet cinched by a silver belt with a large faux-diamond buckle, and boots and gloves of some shiny black material.

“She’s… a little young for this, isn’t she?” Byers asked.

“I’ve learned two things about mutants,” Swive said sourly. “First, you can’t tell their age from how they appear. And second, just because they’re young doesn’t mean that they can’t- or won’t- kill.”

This time, there was no boasting, no-chit-chat, no byplay at all. The two girls just looked across the span between their starting places, studying each other. “Someone call Rome, a miracle is happening,” Madam Vicious said sourly. “Two teenage girls who aren’t trying to talk each other to death.”

The countdown ticked off, the ‘Go’ buzzer sounded, and Diamond Girl charged right at Spotlight, who lifted off, wheeled around and shot off a blast. The blast hit Diamond Girl square on, but not only wasn’t she hurt, but she erupted in a brilliant dazzling burst of light. As Spotlight reacted to that, Diamond Girl hustled over to one of the scattered obstacle blocks, raised it over her head with both hands and threw it at the first girl. The block was designed with being used as a throwing weapon in mind, but it still wasn’t very well balanced for it. Still, it managed to catch Spotlight on the hip with one of its corners, knocking her out of the air.

Reeling, Spotlight picked herself up from the floor. Apparently, she heard more than saw Diamond Girl charging at her. She let off a wide-area burst of dazzling light. Diamond Girl’s crystalline carapace protected her body, but it didn’t protect her eyes. This gave Spotlight a chance to put some distance between her and Diamond Girl. The rest of the fight was more along the same lines: Spotlight’s light powers were mostly useless against Diamond Girl’s armor, but she never let Diamond Girl get close enough to get hands on or use the obstacle blocks. There was a moment where Spotlight was flying close to a column of blocks stacked high, when Diamond Girl rammed her shoulder into the column, knocking blocks onto Spotlight. There was another moment as Spotlight lured Diamond Girl into the path of the swinging spiked ball. Diamond Girl chased Spotlight across the arena for several minutes until the timer buzzed an ending. Madam Vicious looked sourly into the camera. “I know, I know- I could have planned that better. Judges?”

The enigmatic judges deliberated for a moment, typed out scores, which averaged out to a win by 0.6 points for Diamond Girl. Spotlight received this with a look that mixed severe annoyance at having lost with profound relief at still being alive. She was still working over the conflict as she returned to her spot on the sidelines.

“Not bad,” Madam Vicious said. “Both sides pulled their weight. But still, it did lack the Mutant Death Match zing. So, I’ll have to choose more carefully this time… Let’s see… of the newcomers, who shows promise? Yes, Robo-Thug… And we have a perfect opponent for him! THUNDERGUN, step up!” The spotlight shone on a figure that looked like someone had tried to redesign Robocop. He was an obvious cyborg whose body appeared to have been mostly replaced by machinery. As with the movie character, the only part that wasn’t covered by armor was the bottom half of his face. The ‘line’ of the Cylon-like eye strip had a large red dot that moved back and forth, occasionally settling on something. The end of his left arm was taken up by a large energy weapon with cables that lead to the small of his back. He walked with a mechanical stomp over to the staging area in the arena.

Robo-thug stomped with equal menace over to his staging spot, and on some answering reflex, formed an energy weapon on his own left arm. The two considered each other with a barely contained machismo.

“MUCH better,” Madam Vicious gloated. “THAT’s the spirit!”

Very quickly, stagehands used forklifts to move four tall pillars into the arena, supplementing the obstacle blocks. As the countdown proceeded, the hard light played over the pillars and blocks forming a cyberpunk urban warscape, half Ginza, half Battle of Stalingrad. There were thuds and clicks that came from the arrangement, and lights and neon signs began flashing and flickering, quickly enough to be a distraction for the combatants, but not so fast or bright as to confuse the spectators. There was no motion from the swinging ball, but there was nothing to say that Madam Vicious might not start it up again.

The countdown started, and the second the ‘Go’ klaxon went off, Robo-Thug fired a sweeping strafing line of plasma fire at Thundergun’s position. But instead of trying to beat Robo-Thug to the draw, T-Gun ducked to his left, jumping into and past the line of fire. He let off an explosive round of whatever it was that his gun shot that tattered Robo-Thug’s parka. But that was just a distraction as T-Gun clambered up a pillar. But Robo-Thug didn’t follow him up into the maze of scaffolding. Instead, he charged into the pillar, hitting it with his shoulder with a loud clang! The pillar shook, and Robot-Thug gave it two more body-checks. Then he sprinted over to the next pillar, did something with his legs, and sprang up into the scaffolding just as a burst of energy hit where he had been. From there it evolved into a game of cat-and-mouse in the framework, where both Tom and Jerry had phasers. T-Gun knew the layout of the catwalks better, but Robo-Thug had a wider bag of tricks, which he seemed to still be learning.

Finally, Robo-Thug cornered Thundergun and literally cut the boards out from under him, sending T-Gun falling to the ground in a clattering heap. Robo-Thug was on the ground a spare moment later, landing on legs that appeared to be half-shock absorber. T-Gun let off a wide spray of fire to cover himself as he got back to his feet. Robo-Thug ignored that and charged between the shots. He got a grip on Thundergun’s namesake weapon/ appendage and, setting his foot into T-Gun’s chest, literally ripped it off his prosthetic shoulder. Then Robo-Thug stepped back, re-formed his right forearm into an energy weapon and aimed it at T-Gun’s head. He was gearing up to make the coup de grace, when the 5-minute bell rang, ending the bout.

Robo-Thug stepped back with a snap, re-forming his arm back into an arm. Thundergun clumsily scrambled back to his feet, and together they faced Madam Vicious. The Judges decided unanimously for Robo-Thug, though they gave Thundergun good scores as well. “Well fought, both of you,” Madam Vicious said with royal magnanimity. “Pity the clock cheated you of your first kill on your debut, Robo-Thug. Still, you may have a chance at a rematch, Thundergun- once we’ve got that arm fixed.” She waved them back to their places.

“Man-Eater!” she called out to the last ‘Pro’. “Have you made your choice?” the redheaded woman shook her head decisively. “Very well, let’s see who of the remaining Cannons is worth the trouble… well, of course! Trubble! Step forward! Let’s see… Now that Mr. Zed has fallen completely out of the alphabet, the next highest contender is…No, even *I* wouldn’t sic Techno-demon on a rookie for her first fight… So, DRACONIS! Show the new girl how it’s done!”

A tall strapping redhead, wearing a sleeveless green bodysuit with a matching ‘dragon’ half-mask, with red gloves and boots, and a metallic harness over that, stepped out of the lineup and walked over to one of the starting circles. ‘Trubble’ watched her strut into place, and then all-but teleported to the other circle. As Madam Vicious had been musing her options, the construction crew had added another pillar, which dropped another set of crossbars, with yet more draping cables. This time, there was no hard-light backdrop, but the tangled jumble was a setting all unto itself.

Draconis watched Trubble as she did a rapid-pace jig in place, frantically studying the scrambled layout of the lattice of struts, beams, cables and pylons. As the countdown began, Draconis touched a stud on her harness and an odd arrangement of struts popped out of the backpack like unit on her back.

The countdown went to ‘Go!’, and Trubble zoomed off into the tangle of equipage. Draconis flexed and a reddish pair of ‘bat wings’ formed of red energy rezzed into existence between the ‘fingers’ of those struts and a draconic tail draped down her back. With barely a pause, Draconis lifted off. Draconis circled the arena a couple of times, calmly studying the arrangement and Trubble’s movement through the tangle.

“That’s the problem with speedsters,” Madam Vicious confided to the camera, “either it takes forever for the opponent to catch up with them, or it’s over too soon. No wait! I spoke too soon! I should have had more faith in Draconis!” The winged dragon-woman dived at the pile of girders and wire, and melted her way through a curtain of cables. This flushed Trubble out from where she was, but almost immediately there was a loud explosion that rattled the framework. “I, ah, decided to give Trubble a mechanical advantage. A utility belt full of surprises. Some of which she even understands.”

This ‘fight’ became a Tom & Jerry contest with Draconis using the third dimension of height to her tactical advantage, pouncing on Trubble when she could, only to learn that the speedster was luring her into a booby-trap. First it was a dazzle-trap that almost allowed Trubble to dump a loose girder on Draconis. Then instead of trapping Draconis in a foam snare, Trubble found herself slip-sliding around madly on the slick left by the foam so hard she went flying out of the framework, and just barely managed to duck getting pounced on. The smoke trap also turned out to work more for Draconis than Trubble, but she managed to finesse the dragon girl into a tangle-snare. Unfortunately, despite the fact that it was the sort of elastic snare that gave with superior strength without letting the captive free, Draconis turned that around. She simply burned the snares off, and breathed a swath of fire that cut Trubble off from her line of escape. Trubble zoomed up to the very top of the frame with Draconis fast on her heels. Trubble zipped back and forth, but Draconis did a masterful job of narrowing down her options. Finally, Trubble, apparently out of options, ran to the end of one girder and threw herself off into midair!

She dropped, but then it became apparent that she had a bungee cord connected to the back of her harness. The cord just missed getting her to the floor of the arena, and Trubble started fiddling with her harness. But she had miscalculated. Draconis grabbed the bungee cord at the point where it was hitched to the girder and gave a powerful yank up. Trubble was hauled back up, surprise clearly on her face even through the visor on her helmet. Using the bungee cord as a leash, Draconis smashed Trubble into one pile of junk or cables after another. But after the third fling, the cord broke on the whip-crack point, sending Trubble flying into one of the audience protective screens. The screen stopped her with the softness of jelly. Unfortunately, she was a good 20 feet in the air when she stopped, and she was way off balance when she landed. She landed so that her left leg took most of the impact, and she let out a piercing shriek of pain.

Trubble lay on one side, clutching her broken leg, screaming in agony. She spun around in circles, her good leg reflexively running as fast as it could. Draconis swooped down and stopped Trubble with a single hand. The other hand raised and-

-the five-minute bell rang.

“Another one saved by the bell,” Madam Vicious grumped. “BUT, Trubble did give Draconis a _run_ for her money. Maybe she’ll give us more entertainment- AFTER her leg heals up.”

The Loose Cannons hurried from their spots around the arena to help Trubble, but the medics pushed them aside and placed the girl on a gurney.

“I wonder if that’s the last we’re ever going to see of THAT Trouble.” Ranney asked wryly. Swive silently hoped not. It would make things simpler.

The redheaded ‘guest gladiator’ begged off- again. “Let’s see… while that last bout had a certain… Bugs Bunny… charm, I think we need a good old-fashioned straight-up BRAWL. Yesss… Stonewall! Front and Center! Now, who’d be a good opponent for you…”

“MADAM VICIOUS!” one of the gladiators, a man in a red suit with gold trim and a white cape who looked like he wasn’t quite sure whether he wanted to be Superman or the original Captain Marvel, stepped forward from his niche.

“YES, Ultiman?”

“I volunteer to kill this big blubbering offense to common decency!”

“This organization isn’t very big on ‘common decency’,” Madam Vicious smirked with an amused tone. “Or Volunteering.” Her face lost all amusement and her voice went cold and hard. “You do as your damn well TOLD!”

“But you need a big, memorable fight, and I need another kill!” Ultiman pointed out. “And I’ve got a knack for smacking pansies who think they’re tough back into line! Or the Hospital.”

Madam Vicious sat back on her throne and smiled voluptuously at Ultiman. “I like your spirit. And it IS what these people came here to see! SO BE IT!”

Stonewall, who’d been following this with a face that was getting tenser and tenser by the second, started to say something, but he was cut off by, “NO!”

“You have an objection, Hexblade?” Madam Vicious asked frostily.

“Not to the match,” Hexblade said, stepping out of her niche. “I object to THAT!” she pointed at the tangled mess of struts and cables that cluttered up Ring A. “If E-ah, Stonewall and… Miniman here go at it in there, it’ll just be a rerun of the last fight! You want a slugfest, right? A good, old-fashioned straight-up BRAWL, right? So, have them go at it there!” She pointed past the middle ring, which had several stacks of obstacle blocks and a curtain of dangling chains already put up, to the ring at the far end, which was bare.

“Shut yer face, you fucking FREAK!” Ultiman barked.

“NO, Ultiman,” Madam Vicious corrected him, “She’s quite right- dangerously rude, but still right. A slugfest is just what’s needed right now, and an open arena is the best venue for it. Guests!” she clapped her hands, “You may rearrange your seating for Ring C. You may also take advantage of the delay to reconsider your betting strategy.”

A few minutes later, they had all moved to Ring C, and Stonewall faced Ultiman across an open floor. As the countdown ran its course, Ultiman heckled Stonewall in a way that suggested that he had, indeed, a lot of experience in provoking fights with homosexuals. But he was caught flat-footed when, the split second the ‘Go’ klaxon sounded, Stonewall came charging out like a runaway elephant- and turned a shade of granite gray. Ultiman started to lift off, but that only meant that he wasn’t grounded when Stonewall body-checked him, knocking him flying into the protective force screen. Ultiman slid to the bottom of the screen, and was barely able to duck as Stonewall pulled a trick where he grew to his greatest height for the barest of moments, adding that to a jump, shrinking down, riding the momentum to as high a peak as he could, and came down growing again as he came down, adding that momentum again to a kick that shattered the concrete floor of the arena.

As everyone in the LVMPD HQ room watched this wide-eyed, the computer geek muttered, “WOW. This puts a whole new spin on ‘Fag Bashing’.”

Watching this just as wide-eyed, Evan reeled and said to herself, “Oh Crap! Eddie’s gone over to the Dark Side of the Meathead!”

Ultiman managed to get airborne and got up as high as he could. Stonewall responded by growing to what was probably his greatest size and waited for him. Ultiman gathered himself and dived down at top speed, aiming at Stonewall’s head. Just before he was about to hit, Stonewall shrank by about 10 feet, and Ultiman missed his head. But Stonewall whipped around immediately, smashing Ultiman with his shield and sending him crashing into the concrete. As Ultiman reeled on the arena floor, Stonewall did the ‘grow/ jump/ shrink/ regrow’ trick again, and this time, he caught Ultiman squarely in the back. Ultiman flattened, and Stonewall picked him up by the leg and smashed him several times into the concrete. Finally, he grew to his greatest height again and lifted Ultiman up high. He looked for all the world like a gigantic boy about to tear his sister’s doll apart.

The Stonewall paused, regathered himself, looked at the limp, unconscious figure in his hands, and just threw it aside with disgust. He stalked over to the starting circle, shrinking down to 10 feet tall as he went. Once there he glowered at Madam Vicious. Madam Vicious, who had been watching this with sadistic appreciation, curdled her rapt grin into a scowl. “Well!? Go ahead! Throw away your first kill! SPOIL what could have been an EPIC debut! KIDS!”

As Stonewall walked back to his spot in the lineup, and the medics gathered up Ultiman’s battered body, Madam Vicious addressed the camera. “He’s only kidding himself. Once he gets that first kill under his belt, he’ll be snapping necks right and left. I know a born killer when I see one.”

“I hate to agree with the bitch, but she’s right,” Swive said at the Las Vegas HQ. “This ‘Stonewall’ guy is fucking deadly. Ranney, see if you can get a DFA order on this creep.”

Pulling herself up from a pouting sulk, Madam Vicious addressed the last ‘special guest gladiator’. “MAN-EATER! Have you decided YET?”

The lithe tiger-themed supervillainess copped a pose with her hip cocked and a foot extended. She smirked voluptuously into the camera that she knew was trained on her and said, “Yes! All this fighting has worked up an appetite for Fresh Meat! And I’m in the mood for some calamari! So I’ll take an order of SQUID, and I’ll have it in THERE!” she pointed at the tangled wrack in Ring A.

Even through the octopus mask, you could see the Squid blanche. He was clearly working himself up to make an objection, but Madam Vicious cut him off. “NO, you CAN’T object! She’s a special guest, she can make requests! Deal with it!” Madam Vicious turned to the camera and commented, “That’s the way it always is: you let them get away with ONE reasonable objection, and before you know it, they’re trying to lawyer you over the least little thing!” Then she returned her attention to the Squid and snapped, “Get to your mark, you miserable spineless little SLUG!”

Shoxx silently mused to himself that, while he agreed with her estimation of Billy, there was still no excuse for the sloppy misuse of mollusk taxonomy.

As the Squid walked reluctantly into the starting circle, the Man-Eater looked him up and down in a way that made many wonder how literally she took her nom de crime.

The countdown began, but even before the klaxon sounded, the Squid bolted for the cover of the steel jungle of I-beams and rubble, literally screaming at the top of his lungs. Cameras panned to watch the reactions of the other ‘Loose Cannons’, who were pretty uniformly shaking their heads, rolling their eyes, covering their faces with shame, or some other show of disgust with the Squid’s reaction.

The Man-Eater visibly made herself wait for the klaxon to sound, and then sped after him. She was almost on the Squid, when he seemed to remember his extra ‘arms’. He used two arms to haul himself up into the higher reaches of the maze, but Man-Eater was right behind him. Man-Eater was faster than the Squid, and her ability to leap great distances kept him from getting too far ahead of her, but the Squid was able to use his arms to control his ‘leaps’ better, and he could use them to drag down bits and pieces of gear to block her path. For a while, he seemed to blend into the shades and shadows, but suddenly he turned a vivid shade of red that made him stand out in the gloom of the wrack. The fight turned into a Hanna-Barbera chase cartoon, with Man-Eater chasing the Squid through the jumble, and the Squid all but tearing the framework apart, putting the pieces between himself and the Man-Eater’s claws.

Finally, the Man-Eater had the Squid cornered and was moving in to get her first- and most likely final- strike on him. But the Squid, in a desperation move, pulled out one of the supporting pivots on a major load-bearing beam, causing that beam to collapse, dumping tons of unsupported material on top of both of them. This resulted in a major failure of the framework’s integrity, and the whole shooting match came down. The Man-Eater exited the avalanche like a scalded cat, and the Squid beat her time getting out the other side. The Man-Eater looked across the pile of wreckage with furious loathing, and steeled herself to jump across it at him. But just as she jumped, the 5-minute buzzer rang, ending the bout. She landed, her hands coiled in claws to strike, and glowered at the Squid. She raised one hand, as to strike, but then three pylons popped up, and two heavy machine guns dropped from the rafters. “I empathize, Man-Eater, really I do,” Madam Vicious said with atypical sympathy. “But rules are rules. The bookmakers are going to have full-grown lions as it is; you killing him would only make things worse!”

The Man-Eater spat with frustration and stalked out of the arena. Madam Vicious glared at the Squid, who was heaving and trembling with unspent horror. “That! Was! PATHETIC! You call yourself a supervillain? Even CONGARR did better than that! You’re going to be registered as LOSING this fight! TWICE!”

Madam Vicious sat back with a sulk born of bloodlust denied. Then something occurred to her, and she was all-too aware of the camera, and the commitments that it implied. She looked around frantically, but then she spotted something, and that vicious smirk popped back up on her face. “HEXBLADE! Front and Center!”

Hexblade stepped forward uncertainly. “What?” she asked when she was clear.

“You’re next on the roster,” Vicious purred with snide satisfaction.

“What?” Hexblade bleated, “But I already had a fight!”

“FIGHT?” Vicious sneered, “That wasn’t a fight! That was barely Comedy Relief! MAN-EATER! You were promised a fight, and the Mutant Death Matches deliver!”

“I think that Madam Vicious is pissed about Hexblade lawyering her like that,” Byers snickered.

But the Man-Eater refused to be placated. “Very well!” Vicious snapped. But refusing to be denied her petty vengeance on Hexblade, she looked around among the remaining gladiators. “GLITTER!” A lithe, supple, well-built woman in a gold-metallic sleeveless body sheath that left little to the imagination, a matching visor, black opera gloves and thigh-high boots, long straight golden blonde hair, and a pack at the small of her back that was attached by a cable to a ‘power glove’ on her left wrist, stepped forth.

“Another flying blaster?” Iglesias asked, “After what happened with Spotlight and Diamond Girl?”

“What makes you think she’s a flying blaster?”

“The heels on those boots? Flyer. That energy projector array on her wrist? Blaster. The visor? A blaster with targeting aids.”

Madam Vicious had Hexblade and Glitter take positions in Ring B, in the middle of a ring of stacks of obstacle blocks, with that near-curtain of dangling thick-gauge chains between them. Before the countdown started, the anchors at the tops of the chains began rocking back and forth, sending the chains swinging back and forth. The heavy chains were in full swing by the time the countdown ended, and each carried a lot of force. But the second that the ‘Go’ klaxon sounded, Hexblade scampered toward one chain that had just crested its swing and hung motionless for a split-second before it began its return swing. Hexblade for all practical purposes ran up the length of that chain at a full sprint.

“Okay…” Madam Vicious admitted despite herself, blank-faced, “that’s impressive.”

But Glitter wasn’t just standing there, slack-jawed. Holding her fists clenched before her, she concentrated and a swirl of, well, glittering golden sparks swirled around her in a gaudy whirlwind. As Hexblade was running up the chain, Glitter sent a mini-whirlwind of sparks up the length of the chain. As that raced up the links, Glitter did a half-leap/ half short flight, using the chains as rebound points, hopping up the chains, upsetting their rhythms as she went. Glitter bypassed Hexblade, and came down hard on the chain that the Loose Cannon was scaling. The force rippled down the chain, hitting Hexblade just as she was stepping, sending her flying.

Hexblade frantically turned the momentum into a spin, so she didn’t hit the column of obstacle blocks face-on. She managed to dance on the tumbling blocks and get just enough balance to launch herself back onto the flailing chains before Glitter could get there to make that situation deadly. Passing Glitter in mid-passage, Hexblade latched onto another chain. But she couldn’t just run up it, as Glitter’s hopping had turned the smooth regular swings into jagged shaking. Still, it caused a couple of chains to intertwine, which Hexblade took immediate advantage of. With that meager respite, Hexblade undid the sash around her waist. She gave it a snap, which extended its length to at least 15 feet. Then she used that to swing over from the entwined cables to a cable that was still swinging smoothly.

Glitter wasn’t as lucky on her return to the chaos of flailing chains. She hopped onto one, got enough purchase to jump to another, but just as she landed, Hexblade sliced the chain a good 20 feet above her, sending her falling, with those 20 feet thrashing down on top of her.

Glitter frantically reinforced the sparkling whirlwind around herself, forcing the chains away from her. The second that she was sure that the last of the chain had fallen, she launched herself upwards-

-only to spot Hexblade sliding down one of the lengths of chain that was still swinging smoothly.

Glitter hopped off the chains and dropped as quickly as she safely could. As she landed, Hexblade produced her namesake energy sword and sliced at the bottom of the column that Glitter was trying to trap her against. Hexblade ducked around the side of the stack as the obstacle blocks came tumbling down. But Glitter hopped out of the blocks way, into the tangle of chains. She ran more ‘whirlwinds’ through the chains, but this time the whirlwinds didn’t travel down the links. Rather, they picked up the links, which went slithering after Hexblade like segmented metal snakes.

Hexblade climbed to the top of one of the stacks of blocks and looked at the rotating bar anchoring the chains. She let out a powerful eye blast that shattered the bar, making the pieces fall, sending the curtain of steel tumbling down. With the mad maelstrom of metal whipping all around over her, Glitter realized that there was no way that she could get out from under it. But she could exploit the fact that it was so dispersed. She sent more whirlwinds through the grounded chains, created a makeshift cage of them over her, and kept it up with a concentrated whirlwind over her. The chains came down around and on top of her, clanging against the protective chase loudly, but Glitter managed to keep it up until the very last of them landed with a deafening clatter.

When she was sure that there weren’t any more chains raining down on her, Glitter dropped the cage, and let out a weary sigh of relaxation and relief.

Which Hexblade immediately took advantage of, dropping from the top of the column in front of Glitter, and skewering her with a thrust of the energy sword into the gold girl’s center mass. Glitter locked up for a moment, a look of shocked dismay on her face. Then she shuddered and dropped. There was an overhead ten-count, and Glitter was loudly announced as OUT!

Hexblade looked at Madam Vicious.

“WELL?” Madam Vicious asked coyly as she stuck a thumb down.

“It’s TACKY to slaughter someone who’s out cold,” Hexblade said primly.

“Another one who thinks that she’s too good for an honest kill,” Vicious grumped to the camera. “Still, a rousing fight and an excellent finish to your debut match! Two bouts, two victories!” Vicious added sourly. “No Kills.”

“BUT!” Madam Vicious addressed the camera again. “Let’s see how long those scruples last, surrounded by cold-blooded vicious killers! Kill or Be Killed! That is the credo of… the REAL LAS VEGAS MUTANT DEATH MATCHES!”

The podcast ended with the Loose Cannons’ revised statistics.

Ranney looked at the gaudy logo that ended the podcast. He turned to Swive and said, “I’ll talk to the DA about that DFA.”

To Be Continued