"I’ll fucking kill you!" he bellowed, charging at me with his horns lowered.
Well, that answered whether the bait had worked.
I waited until he was almost upon me before catching his arm. I pivoted, drove my shoulder into his chest, and used his own momentum against him, throwing him over my body and onto the mat.
He sailed through the air with an almost comically stunned expression before crashing onto the arena floor hard enough to make the entire stage tremble.
I wasn’t some martial arts prodigy, nor had I spent years training under reclusive Buddhist monks in China. But, as I’d told Glacia, having more weapons at your disposal was always better.
Too many heroes and villains became dependent on their powers and trained almost nothing else, ignoring skills that could prove useful when their abilities weren’t enough. I wasn’t making that mistake.
I’d made sure to practice my hand-to-hand fighting, at least to some degree, and that training was paying off now.
I retreated a few steps, although I probably didn’t need to. Manotaur needed a moment to understand what had happened before the crowd’s jeers finally reached him.
He suddenly scrambled upright and spun toward me, steam pouring from his flared nostrils.
"You... you cheat!" he snapped.
Technically, I hadn’t cheated, but I seriously doubted he’d be interested in listening to my explanation. "What? You expected a fair fight?" I said instead.
He bellowed and charged again, moving faster this time. But even without any metal on his body, I still had plenty of my own.
I seized the metal woven into my clothes and pulled myself toward the chain-link fence behind me, my heels scraping along the floor.
Manotaur roared and accelerated. Good. Just like that...
My back suddenly struck the cage, the impact sending a sharp metallic rattle through the links.
I grabbed hold of it as though I’d only just realized it was there. Manotaur, convinced he’d cornered me, roared and pushed himself into an even faster charge, lowering his horns as he prepared to finish me.
Perfect.
At the final instant, I launched myself upward, repelling the metal in my shoes against the floor and sending my body soaring.
Manotaur had no time to stop. He slammed into the chain-links, bounced backward for a moment, and I landed directly on his shoulders before driving my foot into him and knocking him back into the mesh.
Then I had him.
I sprang off his back and landed on the mat, immediately magnetizing the metal fillings in his teeth. Apparently, someone had possessed quite the sweet tooth years ago, and if he’d gone for pure silver or gold fillings, I would’ve had a serious problem.
But even the pricier fillings contained some tin and copper, and there was plenty of both for me to work with.
Manotaur’s face was dragged violently into the fencing.
He roared and tried to wrench himself free, only to howl when the force nearly tore his jaw from his skull. His face slammed against the mesh again.
From the audience’s perspective, it probably looked as though he’d somehow gotten his horns caught in the cage. Just to make the explanation more convincing, I flicked my fingers and warped several links around him.
"How we feeling?" I said, strolling toward him.
"Ah’ll hill hyu!" Manotaur managed to say.
"If I had a dollar for every time I heard that," I said. I looked to the announcer. "We done here?"
The announcer glanced toward Manotaur, who clearly wasn’t getting free anytime soon unless he was willing to tear his own jaw out.
The man cleared his throat before raising one hand, his amplified voice booming through the speaker collar.
"We have our winnnnnnaaaaaaar!" he bellowed, rushing back into the ring and raising my arm above my head.
The Death Rumble erupted with a mixture of boos and cheers as the crowd devoured the spectacle.
I probably could’ve dragged the fight out and gotten more entertainment from it, but I’d never come here to put on a performance.
Though, apparently, I’d ended up doing exactly that anyway.
I gave the audience one last wave before heading through the ring’s entrance and stepping away from the stage.
The moment I emerged, Psyren launched herself at me and kissed me directly on the mouth.
The suddenness caught me off guard, but I couldn’t exactly say I disliked it.
Her lipstick tasted like cherries, and my hands moved around her instinctively, one settling on her rear and squeezing as I lifted her toward me, deepening the kiss.
She finally pulled away with a breathless gasp, her eyes shining with excitement and desire.
I could practically sense the lust radiating from her. A few of the stagehands seemed capable of sensing it too, and several of them were literally drooling while staring at her.
"That was amazing!" the psychic gasped, practically grinding herself against me.
"The fight or the kiss?" I asked, quipping reflexively.
Psyren giggled. "Both. Guess this means you’re stuck with me, bossman," she said with a flutter of her dark lashes.
"Guess so," I said, squeezing her ass again. At this point, I found the idea considerably more appealing than I had earlier. And really, could anyone blame me?
Psyren was practically the embodiment of the kind of girl your parents warned you to avoid, except she came with the added ability to turn a man’s brain into mush using not only her body, but her mind as well. Maybe there was something wrong with me, but the danger carried its own sinful attraction.
"Eyyyy, that’s fantaaaaastic!" Steve cried, throwing his arms around both our shoulders and grinning at us like an overly proud father who had just successfully arranged his daughter’s marriage. "Miles. Miles! My man. My friend. I Can’t tell you how much I appreciate this. Really, my man. I really, really do. You two are gonna make a real pair, eh? Eh?"
It was still incredibly fucking weird that Steve was acting like this while watching me grope his sister, but whatever.
"Er, yeah," I said, leaning slightly away from him. The familiar smell of cigarettes and alcohol clung heavily to him, as always. "Sure. But, I won’t be able to start training her until I finish up this job with Glacia."
"Sure. Suuuure. No problem," Steve said, pulling his arms away and shuffling backward, pointing finger guns at us. "That works fiiiine. Just fiiiiiine. I’ll bring your henchmen along no sweat too. We got this."
Did we?
I had to wonder. Somehow, things just kept growing more complicated by the minute.
Still, I supposed they couldn’t possibly get worse.
And, naturally, I should have known exactly how badly I was about to be proven wrong.