Steel Scourge dropped onto all fours, each limb sprouting claws, the droid's maw grinding its chainsaw teeth, while holographic streamers formed a white and black mane, transforming the droid into a robotic lion. Bars rumbled up from the arena's edge to protect the audience, turning the raised platform into a cage-fight.
The pink arm scratched the machine's side, where the steel was crumpled from an old battle. A possible weakness or a potential trap. Satyr smirked in his seat as if the match was already over. Lex almost felt bad for him, coming all this way only to lose.
Hefting her great machine-cut Slab Sword, the blade as tall as Lex was short, she pressed Shadow Dancer to attack. His power core hot with dense plasma, muscle drivers warmed up, Shadow Dancer charged fast as a hovertrain. Falling to her knees, Lex bent back and slid beneath Satyr's opening swipe with a trail of sparks behind her while her sword crashed through Steel Scourge's flank right over the crumpled steel.
The iron lion's back paw hit her as if Satyr had expected the strike, her smaller droid thrown aside, her rusty left arm shattering. Lex gasped as if her real arm had been severed from the bone—her chest shaking in agony, and her eyes watering as glass knives exploding in her brain. They must have loaded her with extra pain circuits, to keep the fight dirty.
Satyr rallied first, his droid dashing forward, the pink arm raised high. Pulling up her sword just in time, Lex caught the first swipe on the flat of her blade and slid away from the second. The pink arm produced a spike and drove it through her sensor-thick head, her cheap parts exploding out the back to rattle across the arena bars.
Lex screamed as pain exploded through her skull. Her hands scratched at her wirehelm in the Real, her vision now entirely reliant on the fuzzy radar. She felt his charge and swung her Slab Sword wildly to the side. Satyr didn't dodge; it wouldn't hit him. It wasn't meant to.
Satyr lunged, and Lex activated the Slab Sword's special ability: embedded emergency thrusters. Her power core drained and her cheap joints burst under the strain, but the propulsion swung her weapon back around to crash through Steel Scourge's arm, jaw and face, to burst out the other side. Shredded steel and smashed parts thudded across the arena.
Lex stole a breath as her Slab Sword glowed a bright red, steam hissing out the thrusters.
The crowd cheered.
She heard Satyr scream, his attack falling to shambles. She danced aside, hoping she'd gotten his optics too. Hoping they were on even ground. Begging.
She froze stiff. Her heart raced. The pain, the stress—she was having another attack not even an hour from the last, and the toll was thrice as heavy. Her droid froze, precious moments slipping away as Satyr settled back into command of his damaged machine.
Fuzzily, Lex noticed Mike freeze, wondering what was wrong. Bell climbed up to the pilot's seat despite angry silver warriors screaming at her, calling her a scaeg, shouting that she was deranged, promising death if she interfered with the Trial of Torment. Even Mike shouted, his words of Empyrean truth lost on her.
Ander blocked Mike's attempt to stop her, the lithe boy unwavering before Mike's mountainous strength. Bell ignored them both while searching through Lex's red jacket and upon finding the auto-injector, pressed it against Lex's neck.
Blessed relief.
"I could kiss you," she whispered. Her vision blurred, she saw Bell's face dart forward, a petal-soft kiss planted on her left cheek. A fire melted the last of her inner ice.
Lex could think and move again, but it was too late to avoid Satyr as he swiped at her with steel claws. From chest to damaged shoulder, she screamed as her junkyard parts exploded from her frame. Her radar crackled, then winked out. She was now blind and deaf.
"Neural cord, highest bandwidth you've got," Lex shouted and pulled off the wirehelm, then the wig, letting her red hair spill free, as Mike threw open his toolkit and pressed the blue-white string of the neural into her hand. She connected one end straight to her damaged slate, the other to the wirehelm. The same way Satyr had with his horn.
The crowd booed as they noticed her Empyre red hair; Lex grinned.
"Let's do this," she whispered, feeling only a faint control of her droid. Grunting, she pulled the droid to its feet, just as Steel Scourge came charging for the kill. Her cooked muscle drivers were failing, her plasma core at 20% charge. Her heart attack and junked sensors had caused her CC to plummet dangerously low. A mere 87.
She laughed hysterically and charged the beast, one hand lugging the Slab Sword.
The beast lunged low; Lex jumped high, very high. She shattered her muscle drivers with the effort. Pulling her knees to her chest, tucking her chin low, she somersaulted over the creature and activated one last plasma thrust.
The blade shot around in an arc. First high, then low, as she passed over the back of the beast. The Slab Sword sawed through the droid's spine, the pink arm, up through the back and sliced through a dozen major cables. She rolled across the ground and popped up to her feet. Everything was broken, her droid was a paraplegic and she was hungry for victory. Her CC dropped to 52.
Her droid arms had popped from their sockets, wires pulled loose, plasma bubbling.
Ones and zeroes trickled down her eyes. She heard a child laughing. The sky shifted to an endless blue. The smell of summer filled her nose. The crowd became a sea of blue flowers. Bluebells. Each petal a laughing Bell wearing a bronze mask that shone like the sun. Lex shook her head and focused, the delusions drifting away. 73.
She dropped the molten Slab Sword to save a fraction of a percent of power and kneeled to handle the strain. She froze all motor functions. Lex settled back into her chair, watching Steel Scourge pump plasma across the ground, a twitching mess, as Satyr snarled and thrashed in his pilot's booth. The guards wrestled him back into the pilot's seat as he howled like an animal.
Lex used the last of Shadow Dancer's strength to bow, appearing sure of victory. She couldn't move him more without collapsing and was forced to watch as Steel Scourge clawed its way closer. Staying connected solely via her damaged slate was excruciating, the blistering fire of the overheating cybernetic roasting her skin, a constant stream of magma hot information pushed right into her mind.
Yet she folded her arms and forced herself to look supremely confident. The crowd took notice. She swore they should be able to feel the waves of heat pulsing from her throbbing skull as black splotches filled her vision.
"Has Nyx claimed victory?" Ajax said, his voice sounding as if coming from the end of a long tunnel. Steel Scourge inched closer. Three feet away. Two. One. Steel Scourge raised a claw, the audience held a collective breath, and then the droid crumbled. Its battery dead. Its eyes drained of plasma. Its holographic mane vanishing.
"Steel Scourge is defeated!" Ajax roared, the crowd going wild, Lex pulling the neural free from the scorching slate.
"She's Empyrean!" someone shouted from the crowd, boos soon following.
"Ugh, well." Ajax squinted at Lex. "As Shadow Dancer is also inoperable, the match has been concluded as a tie. No prizes will be awarded, come back next Aresday, folks, for the next Red Night droid fight!"
Lex stared with disbelief, her vision blurring, and vaguely noticed two Eros dragging Satyr away. They did not look happy with his loss. She wanted to help, and her world tilted as she slid off the chair and into Bell's waiting arms. Mike placed a cold pack at her neck. She could have kissed him too.
"Hey now, it's okay, let's get you home," one of them said.
Lex nodded groggily and let herself be steered out of Crimson Arcade's back door and onto the old leather backseat of the company truck. Her face rested in Bell's lap, as Mike drove silently. To either side, orbs of white and red lights wound down the highway like strings of pearls, the distant prefab towers and bright pylons of Third glittering tall. Between them a patchwork of twinkling stars, the outer districts of Third, a shining reflection of the grey and orderly districts of Second.
Craning her neck higher, she saw what was left of Shadow Dancer in the back, roped down, no crates of prizes to be found. The bastard knew she had won, she had seen it in the Temple Master's eyes, and still he denied her. Bell pressed Lex's angry face back against her thigh.
"Too close," Lex croaked, her cheeks burning. Mike's gaze flickered up to the rear-vision mirror, his eyes filled with longing, worry and guilt. His hands tightened on the steering wheel.
Stuffed beneath lay a crumpled bunch of synth-flowers, wrapped in lilac cloth, with a card titled Dear Bellatrix pinned to the front. Lex squirmed, her eyes glued on Mike's tormented stare, her chest tight.
"I know," Bell said and stroked Lex's hair. "Are you cold?" She spoke so softly, as if not wanting to disturb the tinkling rain and rumbling engine. Lex nodded, too tired to talk, her throat sore from screaming.
"Here, I nabbed this on our way out. Thought it might make you feel better." Bell pulled out the Tengokuan jacket and laid it over Lex's shivering body. Bell patted down the thick black cloth, the carbon-fibre surprisingly soft. It was too big, made for a big brute of a man, but perfect for staving off a chill. Lex was warm, body and soul, and let her eyes flutter closed. Tomorrow's problems were for tomorrow, tonight she smiled as she slept, the golden bead of her victory shining bright in her breast.