"Alright! And now for our final match of the day. Let's give an enthusiastic round of pity applause to one of our newer contestants, Pyretic!" Olivia pronounced the name with the same syllable emphasis as "heretic."
Pyretic blinked. Pity applause? Surely he hadn't gotten to that point yet. He'd only burnt himself alive for the past three fights!
The arena patrons were clapping anyway. Well, whatever. He'd take what he could get. He walked out from underneath the bleachers to the platform where the contestants were introduced.
"Pyretic, before he got out here onto the field, was planning to fight Slippy today. I was pretty pumped up. I mean, sure, it's easy to appreciate the skill of those arena veterans, but it's just as fun to watch these low-tiered losers go at it like a bunch of female platypuses fighting over the last incubator on earth.
"Unfortunately, Slippy is, well, he's dead. He wandered out of town for some reason and got killed by some sort of weird flesh manipulator. The corpse was pretty cool to look at, believe me. But, um... anyway, the point is that he's not participating.
"Now, we could just give Pyretic here a bye, but I came up with another idea. Soulcaster has agreed to give Pyretic a treat. He will be fighting a mystery opponent. How do you feel about that, buddy?" Cipher handed Pyretic the microphone as he reached the top of the platform.
"I, um... good."
"Good, good. Now take this blindfold. It's a sparking mystery, after all." She handed him a square of cloth, which, hesitantly, he wrapped around his head. The last thing he saw was Olivia Cipher grinning at him evilly, which was sort of off-putting. They wouldn't just flat-out murder him, would they? Gah! I just don't know enough about this sparking city!
"Now, let's meet the competition" There was a pause, then the crowd exploded with laughter. "What do you think, folks? Can she beat him?" The laughter turned into wild cheering. "Let's give this newbie a good hazing, Salem style! We're a go in a-one, and a-two, and-"
Before, Pyretic could object, everything dissolved into nothingness.
____________________________________________
Everything was black. Well, everything had been black before, because he'd been blindfolded, but now everything was really black. Blacker than printer ink buried in black dirt in the blackest section of Carlsbad Caverns. In a black hole. Pyretic was in limbo, the place people went while Soulcaster configured everybody into the reality.
He'd obviously gotten himself into something bad. The audience seemed to have been half-expecting whatever it was he was going to be fighting. It was a joke of some sort. What did that mean for him? Pyretic just didn't know. He'd only been in Salem for two weeks. He still didn't understand the lingo. Or the ranking system. Or anything. He just fought in the arena and tried to get lucky.
It hadn't worked out so far.
Being an Epic sucked. It was so... conspicuous. People saw it. It made you different. Pyretic had been pretty good at hiding, but then he'd snapped into consciousness a month ago with his family, house, and pretty much his entire village on fire. He wasn't completely sure how that happened, but he suspected that he'd had something to do with it. Rending and whatnot. It was hard to care. Mostly, he just wondered how he'd remained unburnt throughout the whole thing. That was hard now.
Pyretic pretty much had two powers. One was shooting fire from his hands. It wasn't fire, exactly, but some sort of fluid that ignited upon contact with air which he summoned a few inches away from his palms. It was kind of cool. The other one was that he could punch, or kick, or headbutt, or whatever, people with fire. It was pretty much exactly like in one of those sidescrolling fighting games. So yeah. The real problem was that he often set himself alight while using power number one. Sure, he could control the volume of fluid he shot out, but it was like a hose. You know? Like, it's basically just flowing super slowly, and then you turn the nozzle like, one degree, and suddenly it just starts gushing out really fast, and once the fluid starts gushing out like that, a lot of it just went crazy and some shot back at him. Which really, really, sucked. For some reason, Pyretic was able to heal from his burns faster than normal, so, like, in two days, maybe, and he supposed that counted as a third power, but it was just way too slow to help him in the arena. He was still squirming on the ground when his opponent came to finish him off.
A massive timer appeared in front of him, showing five seconds. Soulcaster was done putting everyone into their perspectives. 'Bout time. The arena fell into place around him.
It was... pretty cool, really. A massive, circular, metal platform set in the center of a volcano. A volcano. It had lava and everything! Soulcaster's powers were kind of awesome sometimes.
Out in the distance, maybe 200 meters off, on the opposite edge of the platform, Pyretic could make out a figure. That'd be his opponent, whatever it was. It was running towards him, and... um, crem.
Crem. Crem. Crem.
Crem.
Showstopper, queen of Salem. Pyretic knew of her, even if he hadn't seen her fight before. Highest-ranked Epic outside of the god-tier. No one had bothered challenging her during his tenure here, which, come to think of it, was probably why they'd brought her into the arena now. They were throwing her a bone.
"Alright, folks. Looks like Pyretic is still coming to terms with his fate. Just look at him gape. If I were you, I'd just jump in the lava and get it over with, pal."
If he could get lucky... if he could get lucky just this once, and kill her before she killed him... it could be his big break! Currently, Pyretic had no Dreamstate allotment, which meant nowhere to safely practice his fire-shooting thing. Winning a match that was this unbalanced could mean rising enough to earn a slot. From there, who knew how high he could go?
She had closed half the distance between them already. Wait, already? How?
Alright, you're a smart guy. Think! What were the technicalities of her powers, again?
Epic power cancellation was the big one. As long as she understood that an Epic was around and within sight, she could negate one of their powers. Also, she had maybe some sort of strength boost? That was important.
Aaand she was almost on top of him. reflexively, he raised his hand up and tried to blast her with fire. Nothing happened, obviously. Moron.
"Moron. C'mon, really?" Olivia Cipher.
Pyretic readied a fist, but Showstopper came to a halt a few meters in front of him and sized him up in a way that made him distinctly uneasy.
Showstopper was 25-ish, skinny, of medium height, and sported a really goth look. Or maybe it was punk. Well, same thing. Anyway, it was pretty threatening. A ton of black makeup, a buzz cut, and more piercings than Boromir. After, you know, he was pierced by all of those arrows. Piercings. Bad metaphor? She still had those in, by the way, which was weird, because they probably counted as weapons. Sort of like brass knuckles. Eh.
Get a lucky hit. Get a lucky hit.
Pyretic charged forward, readying his secondary. His right hand began to leave a trail of fire in its wake as he ran. Once she cancels my secondary, I'll have my primary back, and I can blast her.
But he never felt the power leave. What was her game, exactly? She was just standing there all mock casual, with her hands behind her back and everything.
As he swung, she struck out. Faster than his eyes could follow, her hand dodged the fireball around his fist and grabbed his forearm. His fist stopped inches away from the side of her head, and the fireball dissipated.
She smiled wryly. "Dismal. Your skills are absolutely dismal. Don't telegraph your movements so much next time."
"Ooh. It's over, now."
Pyretic tried to come in with a left hook, but Showstopper just jabbed him in the gut. Her hand came in so powerfully that it actually broke through the skin, embedding itself just underneath his ribcage. Suddenly, it was hard to breath. The hand came out and he doubled over on the ground.
He heard Showstopper speaking above. "Okay, guys. This time, I'm taking requests. Though first I'd better..."
She stepped on his forearms, then grabbed his hands and neatly twisted them around a full 180 degrees. The sound of his own tendons snapping was sickening.
Okay. Panicking now. Showstopper was about to torture him to death. She couldn't actually kill him, obviously, but- AIYEEEEEEE!
"AIYEEEEEEE," he said. She'd smashed the heel of her foot into the back of his left knee. Probably fractured the cap or something. Sparks. Holy sparks. And- HOLY CALAMITY! There went the other one. Sparkity sparkity sparks sparks sparks.
He was sobbing now. He couldn't let the people see him like this. It would ruin him! And yet... the pain... oh sparks.
"Please. End it please. Oh, CALAMITY! Spegisadsjefgeh. Look. I'm a coward, okay? I'll admit it, but pleasEFRAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
"Woah woah woah. We can't just end it now, buddy." Showstopper put her hand next to her mouth in mock aside. "Think of the audience. All of these nice people came out here to see one thing: Epics being killed horribly. And I say, darn it if I'm not going to give it to 'em, eh?"
Pyretic sniffled and looked up, intending to plead some more. He stopped flat when he saw the genuine glee in Showstopper's smile. There was something distinctly unhealthy about that.
Pyretic was afraid of bugs. He feared a lot of things, but bugs just scared the bejeezus out of him. Sure, he could handle flies and mosquitoes and whatnot. It wasn't the little monsters themselves, it was the fact that they were always eating each other sparking alive. Laying eggs in each other or liquefying each others' insides. That was sparking scary. Just imagine you're that one bug, and... and... brrrrr. Nowadays, he had nightmares about antlions, those bugs that trap insects in a sand pit, then throw sand at them until they fall into the antlions jaws and get eaten. Alive. Yeah.
One of those nightmares came to him quite suddenly, then. He was in an hourglass, the jaws were waiting for him, clamping down again and again in anticipation of crushing him up, and just before he'd fallen in, the creature had, impossibly, smiled. Just like Showstopper was doing now. Reveling in its power over him, his fear, the pain he would soon feel.
Oh, Calamity. Showstopper was a sparking antlion. Oh, sweet Calamity.
Showstopper took it slow, breaking or fracturing each of his bones starting from the foot. By the femurs, he was still blubbering. By the ribs, he was screaming like a dying hamster, and by the time she was done with the arms, he was choking on his own blood. He should have passed out by then, but he later learned that Soulcaster wasn't allowing him to. Punishment for being a loser. That's what it was. In Salem, excellence was rewarded with pleasure, mediocrity with pain. Had people really complained that pre-Calamity athletes were being pushed too hard? This was... this was awful. He didn't belong here in this... place.
Showstopper planted a hand on his head, something he could barely feel. Snapping his neck? Oh Calamity, please.
Instead, she just stepped back. Gurgling blood, Pyretic turned his head. She had her hands on her hips, as if immensely proud of her handiwork. "Suggestions" were still filtering in through the overhead, most of them horrible things she should do to his genitals. She cocked her head, then shrugged and kicked him into the lava. He was burning. Burning... and burned away.
He snapped back to consciousness, screaming and crying. He didn't wait for Olivia's mocking commentary on the match, he just bolted off, ashamed and embarrassed. The crowd's laughter followed him all the way home.
