"This is my decision," Lex said and yanked her arm from Bell's grasp. "Just like it was yours to lie about working in First. That you were busy serving drinks. That you were too busy to ever go out like I've wanted for orbits and orbits!"
"Lex, I'm sorry," Bell said, her eyes so large it broke Lex's heart. "It's not like that. This is still my job—I just … you're Empyrean, and I thought you'd think less of me if you knew what I had to do for credits. You're always so conservative ... I thought … I don't know."
"Unfortunately, tonight's champion was found dead in his bath," Ajax grumbled, his eyes flashing with yellow text. "But I have orchestrated a replacement to pilot the White Lion's droid, courtesy of the Eros Union, our new sponsors." The ceiling lit up with pink love hearts, along with the words 'Together, we are strong!'. "Never fear, worshippers of Ares, the Trial of Torment will continue as planned."
In the ceiling, visual optics zoomed in, intent on capturing every shred of the bloodthirsty atmosphere for those who wanted to watch the battle unfold from the comfort of their own home.
"Lex you can't—"
"Alex, we don't have the time to waste," Mike said, gesturing to a pilot's seat that towered over the crowd. Above it, a wirehelm dangled ready. Mike's green suit formed a wall between Lex and the crowd. His eyes looking anywhere except at Bell.
Lex nodded and climbed in.
"The pain modulators are strong," Bell said, straining to get past Mike, but beneath that suit, Mike was all muscle and, although his eyes glistened at her touch, he held the line. The dancer caught wind of their struggle and stalked through the crowd without any expression at all—the frightening focus of a predator. "It'll strain your heart—damn you, Michael, let go of me!"
"Bell, please, don't make this harder than it already is," Mike said choking on the words. "This is our decision. We didn't even know you'd be here."
"You care about family, don't you Michael Vulcan?" Bell hissed at him. "So why not stop your sister from getting herself killed. Poseidon's pride, you've got to do something!"
"I can't do that, Bell." He held her back. "Don't use my feelings for you against me— it's our duty to protect our family from poverty. We needs this money just as much as you need yours."
Bell stopped struggling and pressed her head against his chest.
"You idiot," she sniffled. "You and Lex, you're both idiots."
Lex felt terrible for laughing, but she knew better than anyone how overwhelming Mike could be when he was 'in love'. Ever since they were children, Mike had been great at attracting girls, and even better at driving them away.
It seemed that even with that ugly suit and uglier tie, Mike could still melt hearts. Lex's chest hurt, not from betrayal or her damned Deployment Damage syndrome, but something about seeing Bell in Mike's arms made her nauseous.
"Get your head in the game, Mike," Lex snapped.
Mike stiffened, then gently pushed Bell back the proper distance.
"Tonight's prize is 10,000 credits and an exotic Tengokuan jacket imported from the distant island-holdings of the Tengoku Megacorporation! With inbuilt holographic displays and the latest in carbon-fibre armour, this jacket is of a quality that only the space-faring Tengokuan peoples can produce!" Turning to the black jacket, the priest pulled out his snubpistol and pumped an entire clip of lead into the cloth. All ten smoking blasts failed to leave a hole. "That's high-end carbon fibre, bulletproof and guaranteed to protect you better than anything made in the Graexian Alliance. As an exclusive offer to the devoted zealots of Ares, you can show your devotion on the streets and the arena for the low price of only 30,000 credits!"
The crowd cheered, many swiping the air with bright red hands.
"Ander can take your place. He's the best fighter I know." Bell pulled on the arm of the ice-eyed dancer as he arrived through the crowd. "I can fix this, just hop out of the pilot's—"
"Bell, you hid your job from me because you didn't want me to know how you got the credits, right?" Lex said. "And you dumped Mike because he didn't give you enough personal space, right?"
Bell paused, then nodded.
Lex sighed and pulled down the wirehelm to squish against her wig. "10,000 credits can do a lot for us. I respect your work, I respect your decisions, so please, respect mine. Because Mike didn't drag me down here—"
[ Cerebral Connection: Complete. Connection Coefficient: Stable ]
"—I dragged him. Usually, I drive the truck down on my own."
Although this was her first time in the Crimson Arcade, the jewel of slaughter, the icon of violence, the sacrificial altar to Ares the Bloodyhanded. Having calmed from the Empyrean's execution, Lex found her blood pumping, hands shaking and an endless supply of adrenaline pumping through her veins.
"Introducing the pilot of our champion machine Steel Scourge, give a hand for Satyr!" Led to his pilot's seat by six silver High Spartans, the boy from the train sat on the other side of the arena.
His purple eyes narrowed upon seeing Lex.
Instead of putting on the wirehelm, he pulled off the end of one horn. The cable within slithered out and connected to the cerebral cord. Lex pulled her wirehelm over her head and wired the cable into her slate, her vision replaced with a 360° view of the room.
Fuzzy, imprecise, but she had trained for this. Mike stepped into the arena, and pulled the sheet off the droid to reveal the tall, red glory that was Shadow Dancer. Lex engaged the droid's patchwork of neuroptics to hear the cheering crowd. Her vision came next, filled with static, holes and interference. Lex focused her mind and pressed her will onto the code bank. She activated its rear modems, and Shadow Dancer's poorly painted backside opened to reveal the blue processor shard inside.
"What's she doing?" Bell shouted. "Lex, put the shard back!"
"I need to hear the song," Lex strained to say while direct-coding over the corrupt data. Without a keyboard, without ones and zeroes. Using only the direct link between her mind and the crystal shard.
"Lex is the best droid pilot around," Mike said, confidently. "Her CC is a monstrous 148. But if she focuses, Lex can break 161. If she says she needs to 'hear the song' then I trust that doing so helps." Mike chuckled awkwardly, his CC a respectable 104, well above the average of 80.
He was right about the song too.
And what a song it was—forlorn and neglected. Without Shadow Dancer's pre-fight checks, he was hurting inside, his code muddled, confused and looping. Lex sang a silent song of sealing to fix his hurts and pressed her mind hard to form a deep imprint onto the processor shard's synapses.
It didn't help that his code was as scrappy as his parts.
Shadow Dancer's left arm was from an old Tachanka mining droid. His thin right arm from an outmoded android painted electric yellow, and both bent legs were harvested from a scrapped wasteland droid. Buying the parts had drained her inheritance and putting them together had eaten up her free time for the past two orbits.
Plugging the touch-sensors into the Crimson Arcade network, Lex downloaded the pain-modulation program. It would make the droid's damage feel as real as the black market could code. No one wanted to watch a fight without consequences; the Bloodyhanded himself would smite them all for tantalising him with a feast, only to lack all forms of suffering.
Her saviour's droid stamped forward to stand on a patch of blood left over from the slaughtered Empyrean. Steel Scourge was a modified white and chrome Tachanka, a humanoid mining droid, with an extra pink arm on the back. The rest of the beast was bound in thin plates of steel, its facial optics given the addition of a lion's jaw filled with chainsaw teeth.
"It's clean and mean versus scrappy and scared!" Ajax said and hit the air, a holographic gong clanging overhead and the ancient markings of a sacrifice flared on the walls.
Lex controlled Shadow Dancer as if it was her own body, hefting her giant two-handed Slab Sword to rest on her shoulder. Despite owing Satyr a pricey debt, despite wanting to pay him back for saving her life, she wasn't foolish enough to throw a fight while the gods watched. She just hoped he took her seriously, or else his fancy machine might be in for a nasty surprise.