Applicant 9023, Dot the knife thrower, wasn't her real name. To be honest, Dot didn't know her real name—the name she was given at birth. She wasn't sure if she had just forgotten it over time or if she never had one in the first place. What she did know was that no one ever called her by anything until she was six years old.
For as long as she could remember, Dot was a homeless orphan that lived on the streets with children in the same predicament as she was. They had nothing and nobody beside one another. Almost every day, that would change, as one of the many children that Dot knew would die of hunger or disease. Some would just vanish into thin air. It happened on so often that a young Dot expected her young life to come to an end.
But her view on life changed when a traveling circus passed through. Dot remembered that day quite well. A balding man wearing a tattered red jacket stepped out of a truck, smoking a cigarette. He walked up to the malnourished, dirty children and eyed them up and down. His face morphed into one of disgust as he rolled his eyes and spat on the ground.
"I guess you'll do," he said in a gravelly voice. "Come now, you little street rats, you're all gonna live with us now. Come on," he said, taking another drag of his cig while motioning his arms towards him. "Come on now, we've got supper cooking."
Hearing that they had food, mostly all the children, without saying a word, followed the man—all but the young Dot. She didn't move until the man looked back. Seeing that she was the only one not moving, his face scrunched up again in annoyance as he called out to her, "Move your ass, Polka Dot," he said, referring to the tattered and worn polka dot dress the young girl wore. It wasn't her name, but it was the first time someone had called her by anything. So, like the other children, she followed the man from the circus.
All the children were rounded up. They were basically adopted by the circus, but not out of the goodness of anyone's heart. They would be clothed, fed, and put to work; the circus needed more crew members, and these children would do. Each child was put under the command of more seasoned crew members. Dot herself was put under the command of a married couple, Punch and Judy. They were disgusting humans, rotten to the core. Even as a young child, Dot knew that, but she couldn't help it. She never knew her birth parents, so she longed for something that many children had: love from their parents. So, even though they were vile people, Dot couldn't help but love them, seeing them as family.
Judy, the woman that Dot would eventually see as her mother, was a knife thrower with tremendous skill. One wouldn't be able to tell by just looking at her; she was a very obese woman who could hardly stand for a full minute without breaking into a full sweat and her entire body hurting. She was blind in one eye and partially blind in the other. Yet, even with all her issues, that woman never missed her mark.
The knives that Dot used were once her mother's knives. Judy's husband, Punch, the man that Dot would eventually see as her father, looked the complete opposite of his wife. He was a very skinny man, terribly skinny, so much so that one could see his ribcage even if he was wearing clothes. That's because, unlike his wife, he didn't consume anything unless it was liquor. He was a nasty, abusive drunk.
Dot was unsure if she had ever seen the man sober or string words together that weren't slurred and disjointed. But even with all of his addiction problems, Mr. Punch was a talented puppeteer. He controlled human-sized puppets that also acted as the circus clowns. He was able to control dozens of them at a single time using a special wire he created. The drunk man was a master at puppeteering, and these special wires he had developed were the same type of wires that Dot had attached to her mother's knives.
With this fusion, combining both her adoptive parents' specialties, Dot had created a dangerous weapon, a lethal fighting style that Applicant 3360 Amethyst was now at the mercy of. After getting back to her feet, Dot lifted her hand, and by doing so, the six bloody knives that had been pulled from her opponent's back were now angled over her, ready to puncture the poor girl once again.
Amethyst seemed helpless, like a fish laying on a chopping board, blood covering her back. It seemed whatever fight she had was gone. Now it looked to be over by everyone watching. The referee, T.K., thought he should step in and call the match, declaring Dot as the winner. But what stopped him from doing so was well the rules, there were no rules saying that killing was prohibited in these matches. Still, he wanted to intervene. He didn't want a shining prospect like Amethyst to die here and now when she could just reattempt the following year. The assistant was having a tug of war inside himself on what action he should take, but before he could come to any conclusion, Dot was moving her hands down. This action instructed the knives hovering over Amethyst to move forwards. T.K.'s eyes went big. "Shit," he thought. "I was too late." Seeing the knives moving down fast made Jake turn his head, closing his eyes. He didn't want to see it; he didn't want to see her die. As Jake was refusing to watch, Zack could only shake his head in disappointment. But as he did, he stopped in pure shock. So much so that he smacked Jake on the back, screaming, "Holy shit, look!"
The smack on the back was sudden and came out of nowhere, but Jake was more focused on Zack's excited command than the slight tingling in his back. Jake opened his eyes and turned back to what he didn't want to see. He thought he was about to witness Amethyst being punctured like a voodoo doll. But when he turned back to look at the ring, what he saw was Amethyst kicking Dot in the head.
As the knife throwers' knives were being sent forward with blinding speeds, Amethyst, who had seemed down for the count, had mustered up the strength to hold her body up with her arms then kick Dot in the head. The movement was swift and unexpected. No one, not even Dot, thought that the purple-haired girl had any fight left. She thought she had snuffed out Amethyst's flame, and she nearly did, but she still had a small ember left. And that ember, no matter how small, was pushing her forward.
The kick Amethyst landed helped her dodge a few of the knives, but not all of them. Two of them stabbed Amethyst in her left calf, and one stabbed her in her left arm. But she felt nothing when they pierced her skin. At this point, she felt no more pain. She wasn't sure if it was because of another shot of adrenaline or because her body was now numb due to the numerous damages she received. She felt nothing at this moment, but she knew this was it. After this, she would be done, so she had to end it now.
After Dot was stunned from Amethyst's unexpected attack, her opponent charged at her. While doing so, Amethyst's eyes caught a glimpse of something — her own blood floating in the air, or that's what it seemed to be doing. When she focused her sight, she could see her blood stained on a wire that was attached to the knives stabbed in Amethyst's left arm. And that wire led back to Dot. "So that's how she does it," Amethyst thought, taking another step closer to the stunned Dot. As she did, Amethyst smirked and reached her left arm, grabbing the wire she had seen. Then she wrapped the wire around her arm, and with some of the wire still held in her hand, she pulled the wire towards herself, pulling not just the wire but also pulling in its puppeteer.
Dot was barely snapping back before she was being pulled in. When she laid eyes on her opponent, all she could see was a fist heading straight towards her. Amethyst landed another attack on Dot, but this time it was a strong punch, so strong that it knocked Dot to the ground. Her body seemed to bounce like a ball; it hurt like hell, but Amethyst didn't give Dot a single minute to rest. Still with the wire in her hands, Amethyst pulled Dot towards her again, then delivered another punch to her face. Her head was forced down hard, cracking the ground underneath it. The back of her head was bleeding; Dot's vision was blurry. "Shit," she said through gritted teeth.
As Amethyst was lifting her fist again, Dot moved all the fingers she could in an odd motion. The action commanded knives to spread through the ring, to be flung towards her opponent. But Amethyst was onto her tricks now. She saw the weird finger movements that Dot was making and knew that more of her knives would attack her. But Amethyst didn't stop, nor did she dodge. She couldn't afford to. This was it; after this, she was done. She would have nothing left. So, she let the knives stab her. As one pierced her side, she delivered another punch. As another stabbed her in the back, she threw another punch, then another. No matter how many new knives pierced her flesh, Amethyst kept fighting; she kept going. That small ember that was pushing her forward started to dim.
Dot was getting desperate; her attacks weren't working. All that was left was her trump card. Dot pulled a knife from her sleeve and tried to stab Amethyst herself, but she was stopped by her opponent. Amethyst grabbed Dot's arm right before the knife pierced her neck. Then, with her other hand, she grabbed Dot's other arm and pulled her forward again. Then she gave Dot a headbutt. Blood poured from Dot's nose as she flopped to the ground, the knife she had escaping her grasp. As Amethyst lifted her clenched fist again, she punched the downed woman over and over again. She kept going, never stopping. The purple-haired girl threw blow after blow at an opponent that was no longer fighting back. But this was something Amethyst hadn't noticed; she just kept punching. She kept attacking. She did it until her fist bled and her vision went black. And even when she reached that point, she kept throwing punches; she didn't stop until she was forced to.
Amethyst stopped fighting when she felt herself being pulled away. When this happened, her vision snapped back; she could see Dot on the ground, bloody and unconscious. When her vision came back to her, so did her hearing. Amethyst was so absorbed in winning that she hadn't noticed that she drowned out everything around her. Now that she snapped back, she could hear the voice of the referee T.K. telling her to stop as he was pulling her away. Amethyst was breathing hard as she looked at her unconscious opponent. T.K. confirmed to her what she already knew, "It's over," he said in a reassuring tone. "It's over; this match is over. You… you won."