It wasn’t my first visit to the Death Rumble. Anyone who entered the superhero business usually learned about it sooner or later.
It was actually where I’d found my first steady work before freelancing became an option, and it had proved to be a pretty decent place for networking.
How the hell it was legal was something I’d never quite figured out, but apparently if enough money changed hands, anything could be made legal. Or at least conveniently ignored.
And putting supers into a cage and making them fight paid extremely, very well.
I’d done it before, honestly. Naturally, I’d done so while wearing another mask and answering to another name.
When my powers first manifested, I’d figured it was as good a place as any to get some hands-on experience. It had certainly served that purpose, and it had also helped me make connections.
That’s actually how I’d first met Patty, years ago, after I tore apart one of the robots she’d entered.
Seriously. What had she been thinking, putting a robot into a fight against someone with magnetic powers? Even back then, people had a habit of underestimating me, and that particular mistake had been rather profitable.
Very profitable, actually. And considerably more dependable than what I earned these days.
So why had I moved into freelance villainy instead?
The basic idea wasn’t all that different, except it was simultaneously less controlled and, in some strange ways, more controlled.
You see, the arena had three tiers.
There were the Low fights, mostly filled with newcomers beating the hell out of each other for some quick cash while providing entertainment for the cheap seats.
Then came the Pros. Those were the recognizable names, the ones fighting for championship rings, with the matchups between different powers followed almost as seriously as any other professional sport.
And then there were the Nights.
Nobody talked about those.
Officially, there was absolutely nothing connecting them to the Death Rumble. Unofficially, everyone knew the Nights had something to do with the RR.
The Nights weren’t shown on any television network. They weren’t sanctioned. According to every official record, they simply didn’t exist.
But I knew better.
I’d attended a handful of them, and if you’d ever seen the kind of bloodsport happening down there, you’d understand why I walked away from the Ring.
The Nights were fights to the death.
Retired heroes, desperate villains, and ordinary people alike stepped into brutal, no-rules death matches, throwing powers at each other until somebody stopped moving.
There was a fortune to be made in it.
But when I was offered a spot as a fighter, I decided my days in the Ring were over.
Freelance villainy might have been tacky, but it was still preferable to what was essentially murder packaged as pay-per-view entertainment.
I’d fight for somebody else’s amusement, sure.
But I wasn’t going to kill for it.
Not anymore, anyway.
The Death Rumble occupied part of the old warehouse district by the docks, though the actual structure extended partly beneath the ground.
From the outside, it resembled a gigantic concrete dome. It had originally been one of those old emergency shelters built to protect civilians during disasters.
Of course, maintaining something like that wasn’t cheap, and once the funding disappeared, Arman Gleam swooped in and purchased the place.
If anyone imagined he’d transform it into affordable housing, they were quickly disappointed.
A building designed to withstand supervillain attacks, invasions, alien assaults, and natural disasters turned out to be almost perfectly suited for hosting no-holds-barred superhuman fights.
Technically, the whole operation was underground.
And not merely because of where the building was located.
The fights themselves weren’t illegal provided they remained contained within the rings, but the people in charge didn’t want the public getting the idea that supers fighting one another for spectators was perfectly normal.
It set a bad precedent, apparently.
I wasn’t entirely convinced by that argument, considering my entire profession involved arranging controlled fights between supers, but that was the official reasoning.
And it was enforced.
No legitimate television network, streaming provider, or similar organization was willing to broadcast the fights.
Then the internet came along.
Arman immediately saw the opportunity.
He started streaming matches almost as soon as engineers had figured out how to make a modem scream, and the money started pouring in.
Everyone wanted to watch heroes beat the crap out of each other, naturally, and before the corps figured out how to properly turn heroes into living GI Joes for the public, Arman’s broadcasts were basically the only option.
When I pulled up beside the enormous concrete dome, I immediately spotted Steve’s van sitting out front.
God, I hated that thing.
It looked exactly like something a white guy who taught karate at a mall would drive.
I had nothing against people decorating their vehicles with Frank Frazetta-style lions and topless women.
Actually, I enthusiastically approved of anything Frazetta.
I simply preferred not having to meet the people who drove those vehicles, much less conduct business with them.
Steve was an exception, though.
He usually left the van behind whenever we went out on a job, so we’d managed to make the arrangement work.
Thankfully, I wouldn’t have to deal with him beside it.
He was sitting on the steps leading toward the Death Rumble’s entrance, hunched over as he waited. The moment he spotted me getting out of the car, he stood, wearing a crooked grin.
I knew exactly why.
For roughly the past year, Steve had been trying to convince me to take his sister under my wing.
Apparently, she’d dropped out of college less than six months after enrolling.
According to Steve’s version of events, she’d been the victim of an unfair system determined to punish independent thinkers.
Knowing Steve, I suspected her college was probably fortunate the building was still standing.
After that, she’d found work in the Ring, and Steve had always been strangely vague whenever the subject came up.
"Eyyy! You made it," Steve said, jabbing some finger pistols my way, slouching where he stood. "My man. My friend. My bestest of buds."
"Uh huh," I said, looking at the bulk of the Ring. "She’s here?"
"Ey! Sure thing. Sure thing. C’mon. Got us some tickets. VIP, baby," Steve said, waving me after him as he swayed up the stairs.
Glacia and I followed behind him.
Steve exchanged a few words with the bouncer, and somehow that was enough to get all of us past the ticket counter without any trouble.
The interior was mostly deserted, with cold concrete walls covered in cheap paneling and floors buried beneath thick carpeting.
It had a very distinct WWF atmosphere, right down to the scent of spilled beer that had probably soaked so deeply into the floor that it would outlive civilization.
Steve led us toward a staircase climbing to the event hall. With every step, the roar of the crowd became louder, until we finally emerged into the main arena.
The seats were packed with spectators, while the dim lighting kept most of them little more than silhouettes.
They wrapped around the arena and dropped downward in tiers toward the fighting pit below.
A humming protective field surrounded the ring, projected by several pillars positioned around it. Beyond that sat a chain-link cage, which I’d always suspected existed primarily for appearances.
There was no way anyone seriously believed that thin steel mesh could protect the audience from the powers being thrown around inside.
Maybe it had worked during the early days, when the competition consisted mostly of beast mutants and people who were good at punching each other.
But the Death Rumble had a far more impressive selection of combatants these days.
And tonight happened to be lady’s night.
As we stepped into the stands, I glanced down at the ring.
One woman had the spotted fur and razor claws of a cheetah. Opposite her stood another woman wearing a spandex leotard that left remarkably little to the imagination.
The woman in the leotard had a pair of cybernetic arms, and my powers instinctively reached toward them.
Feeling them was difficult with so much other metal surrounding me, but I managed to get a rough impression.
High-grade steel and...
Zinc?
No.
Gold.
That kind of enhancement definitely hadn’t been cheap.
I wondered whether Patty had been involved in building them.
The cat-woman let out a furious yowl and launched herself at the cyborg.
Her opponent raised both arms to intercept her, but the feline woman caught hold of the metal limbs, kicked against the mat, and used the leverage to throw the cyborg off balance.
The woman crashed onto her back.
The cat-woman landed gracefully atop the chain-link wall, which groaned beneath her weight and bowed dangerously under the strain.
Then she launched herself again.
She flew from the wall like a missile made of fur and claws.
The cyborg spotted her coming, raised an arm, and caught her.
But it was a feint.
Using her superior feline speed and savage momentum, the cat-woman twisted around the mechanical limb. Her legs hammered into the other woman’s chest as she wrenched violently at the arm.
The audience went absolutely insane.
They screamed and cheered as the two women strained against one another, chests heaving and powerful bodies trembling with exertion as each fought desperately for the advantage.
Then came the horrible sound of something tearing apart.
The cyborg screamed.
Her mechanical arm had been ripped free at the elbow.
The cat-woman sprang backward and landed neatly on her feet, raising the severed limb above her head like a trophy as she basked in the crowd’s roar.