Sam

The two fighters came together once more, Gorebag moving in a light trot and Sam a labored trudge. The pit boss wore a demented ear-to-ear grin, rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck one way, then the other.

"You see, there's a reason why I always let folk get a hit in," he mused. "Even those cretins we've got down in the mines. It's so they'll understand exactly how hopeless resistance is. To see and feel for themselves the difference in our potential. It's to rob them of all hope except to avoid my wrath."

"Great story," Sam grunted. "But let me ask you this: are you covered in baby oil?"

That did the trick in reducing the big shiny fucker to indignant silence.

Gorebag pulled short just before they collided, killing his momentum and leaving his guard lowered. He was obviously baiting her to attack, presenting his huge glistening torso as a target with everything but a painted-on bullseye, but Sam was in no mood for mind games. She went in for another left hook just below the ribs to target the liver, then two straights to the solar plexus, a right hook buried right in his gut, and finally a high shin kick to the side of his head before dancing away.

He made no effort to evade or parry any of it, just absorbed it all like a punching bag. He showed about as much emotion as one too; at least until his face split in that stupid, shiteating grin again.

Following her at a relaxed pace, he said: "You see, my build is perfectly suited to this kind of work. Mopping up trash, that is. I've spent years honing my body, turning it into a perfect weapon…"

Sam slowed and waited as the pit boss cocked one meaty arm back. The bulky muscles in his arm and upper torso began to squirm under the skin like writhing snakes, pulling grotesquely tight. "By using Totality, I am not only able to shut off any sense of pain… I can also force my muscles, which are enhanced by the Hypertrophy passive…" He grunted, and cranked his shoulder back a little further, then further still, by slow degrees. "...to contract beyond their natural limits. Coiling like a spring to increase power."

He finally threw the punch, putting his whole oversized frame into the follow-through, his fist coming at her like a cannonball. Despite being massively telegraphed, it was a near thing that she managed to weave out of the way. Her Measured sense allowed her to move exactly as much as she needed to avoid the attack with only a fraction of an inch for clearance, a rush of air hitting her cheek. She caught the brute by his extended wrist and levered herself up off the ground in one go, taking her legs off the ground and wrapping them around Gorebag's shoulder and head while maintaining wrist control with both hands in a flying leg triangle choke.

"Not bad!" Gorebag cackled, sprawling his stance to stay upright with her full weight hanging off him. "But you are still just a journeyman. Still, you fail to comprehend the absolute superiority of my form." She could feel her hold beginning to slip as he spoke, even though she was cranking hard on his arm.

It took her a moment to realize that it wasn't her grip that was slipping, it was his arm that was extending, stretched like a piece of gum pulled from both ends. First his elbow, then his shoulder popped easily from their sockets. The whole time, he was grinning.

"You see, those tunnels down there can be pretty tight," he said. "It would be a terrible dereliction of duty if my worker ants felt they could hide from me down there in the dark—it might give them all kinds of funny ideas about their place in the natural order—so I took the Ideal Self passive to greatly improve my flexibility and allow my pores to secrete a viscous lubricant that helps with tight squeezes. Anywhere they can go, I can follow. There is not a crack, not a crevice, where they are safe. Additionally…"

Expelling a low grunt, he swung his arm like a whip. Sam tried to let go of her triangle, but didn't have time to fully disengage before her back struck the earth with tremendous force, throwing up pieces of shattered rock all around her. Her arms fell away from his, slack and twitching, and she groaned as hot, urgent, throbbing pain lanced through the whole upper half of her body.

She tried to rise, but was met halfway by Gorebag's heel, which caught her in the middle of her chest and drove her straight back down to the earth and pushed the air clean from her lungs. When she brought his leg up with a grunt to repeat the maneuver, she lunged up and caught him by one muscled calf, using his body as leverage to get on her feet while simultaneously keeping him off balance by keeping his leg raised and bent at the knee, forcing him to hop around on the other while muttering curses.

Just as he adjusted his center of gravity to stuff her takedown, she instead transitioned into a complete reverse by pulling on his leg instead of pushing, meaning to yank him to the ground. He was off-balance enough that it would have worked, too; at least, if not for the fact that his leg stretched unnaturally and his slippery skin provided very poor grip for wrestling. He brought a hammer fist down on the back of her neck, then another, and another, driving her double as her teeth chattered against each other.

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Rather than let go of her takedown attempt, she went right back to pushing again, which instantly robbed Gorebag of leverage and rendered his hammerfists more or less ineffectual. When he tried to bring his foot down, she stepped into him and hooked the back of his free leg, then drove her shoulder into his chest to tip them both to the ground—conveniently, right on top of a sharp rock that clipped the man right in the nape of the neck. That should have been enough to get a reaction out of any man, but he didn't even flinch.

She crabbed her way into a mount position, straddling his torso, but she hadn't even gotten her legs in place before he somehow squirmed out from under her, slippery as an eel and lithe as a cat. He moved almost like he didn't have any bones, sliding out beside her with his bulky limbs rolled out in an acrobat's sprawl, pulling a pose that should have been physically impossible with his excessive bulk getting in the way. She moved to stay on top of him, and he launched a straight punch at an obscene angle to stop her in her tracks. She ate the hit—aside from showing off his acrobatics skills, he didn't have the leverage to put much power behind the attack—and wrapped herself around the outflung limb, crossing her legs over his shoulders and neck and bucking her hips into his shoulder to hyperextend the joint in a simple armbar.

"You just don't learn, do you!" Gorebag cackled.

She ignored him. As expected, his arm slid out of its socket when she put pressure on it, but she hung onto the armbar anyway, snarling with the effort of controlling his slippery flesh. She brought it well past the point that it would have snapped a normal man's arm completely, twisting his limb around so unnaturally far that it made her sick, but he still showed no sign of discomfort. To add insult to injury, he actually yawned.

"Why even bother?" he asked, sounding bored. "You already know you can't do anything to me like that. I assure you, my body is entirely impervious to this kind of petty jostling."

Oh, yeah? We'll see about that.

Once he got sick of indulging her armbar, Gorebag flipped his body all the way around his arm so he was on top of Sam, his massive Immovable-boosted weight bearing down on her. She let go of her hold and used her enemy's slipperiness against him to wriggle out from underneath, but she was only halfway out when Gorebag reared up with a huge, demented grin and said: "Strike!", which immediately brought his head back down in a speeding blur and cracked the top of his skull against hers, setting it ringing like a bell.

Dazed, seeing stars, Sam managed to flip onto her belly and scrabble her way free of the brute, and yanked back her leg back half a second before his fist pounded the earth in the space it had just occupied. She scrambled to her feet, rolled her ankle, and tumbled over a rock, which she then used to haul herself back up again with a long groan of pain and exertion.

She ducked for cover behind the rock as a large projectile—a fist-sized stone, she realized—hurtled her way like something shot out of an artillery piece. The rock shuddered with the impact, a web of cracks forming along its rough surface, and a shower of broken stone shrapnel went skimming over the top.

Rather rudely, Gorebag didn't give her much time to catch her breath. A growled "Amp (Four): Rush," was all the warning she got that she had a bad time coming her way, followed by the pounding of heavy footsteps. Giving her head a firm shake to clear some of the stupid from it, she forced herself to move. The slaver no doubt expected her to retreat from his charge, so she did the opposite and jumped over her shelter to meet him.

He was on top of her the moment she cleared the rock. She sidestepped his initial lunge, but he whipped around in an instant and kept up the pressure; throwing wild haymakers, moving like a frenzied beast, but maintaining competent footwork that was difficult to capitalize on.

Measured helped her stay just out of reach of his attacks without expending too much energy. Between ducking, weaving, and sidestepping, she sometimes found a window to retaliate, mostly a jab here and a quick-stepping body shot there. In truth, she needn't have bothered. The feedback she got from her Measured sense whenever her fist connected told her she might as well have been trying to crack open a mountain. The thick layers of muscle tissue covering the man's torso were acting as an annoyingly effective cushion against impact; essentially, a natural suit of armor. Add onto that the fact that he would clench up at the moment of impact, forcing his muscles unnaturally tight with that Totality of his, and she could stand there whaling on him all day without giving him more than a few mean bruises. His meat shielding was just too tough for her to bust open.

Okay, fair enough, she thought. Then I'll just have to get nasty.

After all, not every part of the human body was protected by muscle. She moved to target those exclusively. Foot stomps. Low kicks to the shins and knees. She even aimed the occasional high kick at the side of his head, though the angle was tricky due to his bullish shoulders getting in the way, and she wasn't able to land one flush.

The slaver's face did not register any reaction. Even so, she could tell through her Measured feedback that those first few shin kicks did some work. He must have noticed as much too, because he was quick to cast an Amped Defend that steeled his body even more and nearly saw her breaking her own shins when she went to tag him again. She wasn't sure how long the skill would last him, but while it was active, her options for offense were very slim indeed. At least that was the last of his AP spent.

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