Sam

It was dawning on Sam that her only way to win would be to grind her enemy down. With his 30 Toughness compared to her 12, that seemed an optimistic plan at best. And yet, it was the only one she had.

She transitioned to a conservative strategy that focused entirely on evasion, ducking away from the slaver's huge fists while retreating up and down the flat stretch of land, only retaliating with the occasional jab to keep him annoyed.

But Gorebag was unrelenting. He simply refused to let up the pressure he piled on her, moving like a man possessed by some irresistible dark urge to inflict as much harm as possible on another human. She suspected that the almost manic energy in his movements stemmed from that Rush skill he'd used. She simply couldn't keep up with his violent bursts of speed, especially with her ears ringing and stars dancing before her eyes and constantly on the losing end of a battle against her fucked-up equilibrium.

He pushed and pushed and pushed until she slipped up—literally—as a treacherous stone shifted in the soil underfoot and she went down on her ass.

A stray blow caught her over the ear and sent her onto all fours, vision exploding with fireworks. She had just enough sense left to perceive Gorebag's shadow fall over her, and tucked into a sideways roll on instinct, buying time to blink some sense back into her perception. He came after, aimed a kick at her midsection. She hooked his grounded leg, and his added weight from Immovable worked against him as his center of gravity went out and he crashed to the ground like a ton of bricks. She crawled on top of him, caught him in a sloppy heel hook, but she was only able to hold the submission for a few seconds before her grip slid, partly due to the tipsy weakness in her limbs and partly due to his oily-ass skin. Gorebag kicked her away, and she went sprawling with a breathless gasp. He rolled to his feet with the unstoppable fluidity of a mudslide. She tried to crawl away on her elbows, but he landed a brutal stomp on her left knee before she could make it out of range. There was a horrid squelching and crunching that Sam could not quite believe was coming from her own body.

Gorebag reared up to hobble her other leg.

"Peace!" Sam shouted.

The slaver hesitated for only a half second before realizing that he wasn't actually under any compulsion, but that was long enough for her to tuck into a backward somersault that landed her upright, resting her weight completely on her right leg, the other bent awkwardly inward at the knee.

"Cuntfuckshitfuckassfuck," Sam breathed. "Yeah, that hurts all right. Shit."

"Do you see it now—the difference in our abilities?" Gorebag asked, taking his time in catching up to her. "Are you finally ready to give into despair? I am liberated from pain, impervious to harm, while you struggle even to stand in my presence. Your body is trying to tell you something—that you belong on your belly, groveling like all the other ants. That you stand a better chance of survival begging for mercy than continuing to fight me. Evidently, your body has more wits than you do. You should listen to what it's saying."

"Yeah, well, I'm deathly allergic to instructions. Incurable, I'm afraid." She grasped her leg firmly with both hands—teeth gritted against the pain—and gave it a sharp twist at the knee to force the crunchy joint back into reasonable alignment. Reasonably confident, she tested putting a little weight on the leg. It immediately threatened to buckle. She felt shattered bits of bone and ligament shift about under the skin. "Oh, no, wait, that's… wow, that's real broken, huh?"

"You know, I thought this would be more entertaining," Gorebag said, "having someone who doesn't die right away from just a hit or two. But really, this is getting tiresome. Let's stop with the children's games and get this thing over with, shall we?"

"You mean you want me to stand still so you can punch my head off?"

"That would be helpful."

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Sam grinned wide. "Sure thing, Mr. Villain." She'd just come up with an excellent idea for how to deal with the big bad slaver. At least assuming she didn't get her neck snapped in half before her plan got to working.

Letting her arms fall slack at her sides, she slid her left foot out behind her to stabilize herself while keeping most of her weight on the right, and stuck her chin out to make it an irresistibly tantalizing target. "Hey, Mr Villain! Check this one out!"

Smiling her best smile, she said:

"Hero Technique: Hammerhead Stance."

[Note: Not an actual ability.]

Gorebag's silly little tomato face wrinkled in a deep frown. "Hammer-the-fuck-now? What are you on about, you silly bitch?"

"Hit me and find out," Sam replied with a wink, ignoring how that one little movement made her whole skull flare up with fresh pain.

The pit boss appeared to find her proposal a fair one, because he renewed his advance and came at Sam with long, impatient strides. At least she'd managed to get under his skin, so that was something.

The first blow caught her on the side of the chin and sent her staggering, the rotational force spinning her almost completely around. She twirled drunkenly on her good heel and got the right way around just in time for the second punch to land flush with her face, whipping her head back violently.

Ouch.

* * *

Serene

"Are we sure she's going to win this?" Wesley asked, watching the duel through a doubtful frown.

"She'll win," Serene replied, projecting more confidence than she felt.

"Right, right. It's just… she's kind of getting the snot beat out of her. Like, really badly."

"So?"

"So, I mean… is that… part of the plan, or whatever?"

"Yes."

"The plan being…?"

"I think the idea is to let him whale on her until he gets tired."

"But you yourself said that he's got 30 Toughness. Does someone like that even get tired?"

She sped the young man a sharp look. "I never said it was a good plan, okay?"

"Then—"

"She'll win."

Wesley must have heard the unspoken warning in her tone, because he finally shut up at that and allowed Serene to turn her attention back to the fight, which at the moment mostly consisted of Sam getting her face brutally and repeatedly flattened under Gorebag's bloody knuckles. From what Serene could tell, she was letting it happen, too, just offering up her swollen, reddened face for Gorebag's continued beatdown without even making an attempt to defend herself or retaliate. She was getting thrown around like a piece of lawn furniture in a hurricane.

She got back up every time the pit boss knocked her to the dirt, but she got a little slower every time, and even from afar, it was obvious that left leg of hers was all kinds of messed up. The dark-robed slavers at the gates of Wurmhole East were cheering their master on with rude calls and chants, sensing that victory was imminent. The way their words rolled off their tongues with such practiced ease, Serene gathered it was something of a common occurrence to make spectacles of human misery among their kind.

Meanwhile, the militiamen stood silent and grim in their ordered rows. Those who had been goofing off earlier were certainly paying attention now. A few of them winced whenever Sam took another bone-crushing hit, probably imagining themselves in her place.

It was clear that no one envied her—even the right honorable Garrison Captain Jawara, who'd been all duty and bravado a minute before. Based on how green in the face she was looking, Serene doubted she'd make the offer to duel Gorebag if given the option again.

Only Hacksaw and Griff were unaffected, the former packing a new wad of tobacco out of his dented tin and the latter greedily nursing the last embers of a cigarette all the way down to its squished filter. They were fast becoming a charming little duo, those two sour old donkeys.

Sam took another punch to the jaw and tottered back at least a dozen clumsy steps, blood pouring freely from both nostrils of her flattened nose to stain her bright teeth red.

Despite it all, she was still smiling, somehow.

That damn idiot.

At least she only needs to hold out a little longer—just until Buck shows up, Serene thought, unable to conjure up the kind of blind faith in her friend's abilities that she claimed outwardly. She played with the safety of the rifle in her arms, flicking the safety on, off, on, off. If things got any worse…

Sam wouldn't like her intervening one bit, but honorless was better than dead.

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