Sam

Staying conscious was quickly becoming an exercise not unlike holding onto a bar of wet soap—constantly wanting to slip away from her. If not for Tenacious, she knew she would have been out a while ago.

Blows continued to rain down on top of her. Her body was all pain and numbness, and it was mostly basic reflex that kept her moving through all the tumbling and staggering and slipping and falling and rolling.

Little by little, Gorebag's sadistic glee faded away, sandbagged by the fact that Sam had rudely decided to not die when she was supposed to. He became more serious with every punch she ate as it slowly dawned on him that he would actually need to try if he wanted to close this one out.

"Stubborn bitch," he snarled in his oddly squeaky voice. "Fine. Let's see how you like this. Strike (Five)."

His arm blurred as it pistoned out five straight jabs in impossibly fast succession. The first three caught her over the shoulders and face like a shotgun blast, but the last two missed as she'd already been sent flying out of range.

Ending up sprawled on the ground, it took Sam an unreasonably long time to work herself back up. Luckily, Gorebag gave her that time. He slowed just a little when his Rush ran out. Shortly after he started up his offense again, she noticed that his knuckles were no longer cutting into her face quite so diamond-hard keenly as Defend also expired on him. She allowed herself a tired, burbling laugh of relief at that. He was now out of AP and only had his cantrips to fall back on.

Unfortunately, her celebration was short-lived.

The pit boss backed off and began repeatedly trying to cast Rush even though he didn't have the AP for it. Sam couldn't understand the point of it—though to be fair, she wasn't doing much understanding at all right then. Obviously, just saying the skill command over and over wouldn't do him any good if he didn't actually have the AP to cast it, so why bother?

Then his empty sheet was suddenly crackling and flashing with sporadic light, eventually coalescing to fill ten of his AP crystals with angry, pulsing red.

Sam blinked.

He'd gotten his AP back somehow. That seemed a whole lot like cheating to her, but there it was. It was as though by whining enough, his body had eventually just conceded and given him what he wanted.

He funneled all his fresh AP into a single Strike, the muscles in his arm and chest and shoulder coiling unnaturally as they knotted tight, compressing, before unleashing all that stored-up energy in one go.

One second, Sam was staring down the bloodied fist careening toward her face. The next thing she knew, she was on the ground somewhere and staring up at a crazily wheeling sky.

She tried to stand up, but her left leg buckled immediately and she fell on her side. On the second attempt she managed to get up on one knee. Her left eye had completely swollen shut. Both her nostrils were clogged with blood, forcing her to breathe raggedly through her mouth, and she felt as though her nose had been completely flattened. Her face was hot and throbbing like it was all one giant bruise.

She tried to blow her nose to clear it some, which turned out to be a big mistake. She felt the bones in her cheek click and shift, and something popped, and all of a sudden the area under her right eye was inflating with hot blood, quickly narrowing what was left of her vision down to a small, blurry strip.

"Aw, shit."

Meanwhile, Gorebag seemed to be dealing with struggles of his own over yonder. "Why… do you persist?" he called across the barren ground, voice tight with frustration and—could it be?—a note of fatigue. Finally. "We both know how this must end."

"At the bargaining stage, are we?" Sam rebutted with a twitchy grin that tasted of iron. "You wanna give up, just say so."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Gorebag scoffed. "Quit your grandstanding, 'hero'. You cannot hope to accomplish anything except make this more tedious for everyone. You have no way of harming me."

"Oh, yeah? You might be right, who knows. Hey, unrelated, can I see those pretty nails of yours real quick? No reason."

"Fucking what? Are you actually out of your…?" Gorebag trailed off as he brought his bloodsoaked hands up to look at them.

Not all that blood was Sam's.

His fists were completely ruined—knuckles popped through the skin, fingers bent at awkward angles, his right hand hanging limp off a broken wrist. "What… is this…?"

Sam couldn't help but laugh. "You think you've been hitting me in the face with your fists? WRONG! I've been hitting your fists with my face, stupid!"

[By first making her face an attractive target for attack, then using Measured to make ongoing micro-adjustments to her positioning, Sam was able to maneuver herself to catch most of Gorebag's attacks on the lower half of her face, which is greatly reinforced by Dental Enhancement, while also aligning so as to absorb as little impact as possible through her spine.]

[Despite his 30 points in Toughness, Gorebag lacks relevant abilities such as Stoneskin or Shock Absorption to increase durability, instead opting to rely on his dense musculature to protect him. However, his hands receive none of this protection.]

[This is the essence of the Hammerhead Stance.]

"You didn't even notice, huh?" Sam mused. "Without Defend active, your hands aren't strong enough to keep up with your own strength. I guess it's easy to miss little things like that, when you can just choose not to feel pain. I'm sure there's probably some kind of lesson in there for you." She got a foot under her, then tried putting some weight on her injured leg with a pained hiss. It held. A minor miracle. "Well, villain? Are you ready to surrender?"

"You fucking… This is nothing! What do you think you've achieved? Nothing! I'm going to… to…" The huge, smooth-shaved bear of a man took a step forward, but his ankle wobbled. He took a small sideways step to stabilize, but his legs lost their strength and he slid to his knees instead. "No… This isn't right… I have… more Toughness than you…"

"See, that's the problem with you villain types." She took one shuffling step toward the pit boss, dragging her bad leg; then another. "You love to take the easy road and pretend that winning that way makes you strong. But you're actually pretty damn weak, aren't you?"

Gorebag tried to stand; failed, slid back down. Steadying himself against the ground with his elbows, he stared at his ruined hands, a look of anguish on his face as he struggled to uncurl his fists. "Why…? My body isn't moving how it's supposed to."

"And no wonder, the way you've been abusing it. Forcing your muscles to contract like that can't be healthy. Even all that grappling you thought wasn't doing anything to you—well, maybe I couldn't hurt your joints that way, but I'll bet your muscles don't appreciate being stretched like so much taffy. Then there's all that skill use. Something tells me even that AP you got back didn't come for free.

"You've been accumulating little bits of fatigue this whole time without even knowing it. And why? Because you thought it was a smart idea to skip all the inconvenient stuff like, y'know, feeling pain. You thought because you have all that Toughness, you couldn't possibly run through it all. But you can, and you have.

"Let me guess—you've never really 'fought' anyone lately, have you? You just get off on bullying those weaker than you. But you've never been into deep waters." She held her arms out, gesturing about herself. "Well, you're there now. And it looks like you never learned how to swim."

"Fuck… you…!" Gorebag screamed. He slammed his broken fists into the earth and let out a loud squeal. "Ow! No! It hurts! It's not supposed to hurt!" He cradled his hands to his naked chest, breathing raggedly. "Why isn't it… working?"

"Bummer, dude." Overcome by a strong wave of dizziness, Sam staggered over to a large rock and sat down to avoid falling on her ass again, and took a moment to catch her breath. "Must be that Totality stuff still takes some focus to work properly. Sucks to suck, I guess."

"I'm going to…"

"But here's the good news, Mr. Villain," Sam cut in as she resumed her slow trudge. "I'm not gonna kill you." She grinned wide. "I'm just gonna hurt you reeeal bad."

Gorebag tipped back onto his haunches and shook his little head violently, as though to clear it. He waited, just watching her while taking slow, deep breaths. Once she got within about fifteen feet, he raised his red hands and said in a triumphant tone: "Well, it doesn't matter! None of this matters! I still have an ace to play, and you walked your pretty ass right into my arms. Prepare yourself, bitch."

Sam got to limping a little faster. Despite the bone-deep exhaustion, she could hardly contain her excitement. Yes. Yes, this is it! Here we go! Say the thing, villain!

Ten feet. Getting closer. Almost on top of him.

C'mon, say the thing!

Gorebag put one mangled fist up to his chest, and held the other out toward Sam like he was about to ask her for a dance. Then he opened his mouth and said:

"Semblance Art: Eye for an—URRK!!!"

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