Here’s how the scene happens.
An end of a fight. Not the end, and not the fight. She pants as she looks forward, ignoring the downed opponent in favor of the new one. Her wrist got tipped back and she thinks it’s broken -sloppy form, she mutters. But she’s tired and her muscles ache from the lengthy brawling, her lungs burning. Her left eye is swollen shut, which she knows makes her vulnerable. She keeps her guard up.
Here’s how the story goes.
She’s good. Not just good, the best. KOs half the time, winning on points the rest. Or maybe she’s just brutal enough to scare them. Or, heck, maybe she just won’t stay down. But then she’s desperate for cash, or her trainer/manager/agent/mentor is, so the mob owns her now.
So she throws one here, one there, until she’s desperate for a real match, for recognition, not the mediocrity that’s been handed to her as they milk her for every ounce of her self respect. So, the real story begins when she says fuck it all and refuses to throw a match, the big one, and the boss loses big time, and she’s got to fight for her life.
Or maybe that’s just the story she tells. After all, she’s not stupid. Maybe she never got involved with the mob at all. Maybe this just started out as a way to blow off steam with strangers. But when you’ve done two tours of duty, eight years after the draft was reinstated for all citizens regardless of gender, politics, or ability, sometimes the lines between here and there, then and now get… blurred. What started out as a way to trade bruises and share drinks turns into something worse, and those who walk away will never forget the beast that snapped it’s leash.
That’s closer to the truth.
The truth is she’s a killing machine. She didn’t set out to be, but the little part that tells you to stop when they’re down just never screamed loud enough for her to hear it. She has no regrets. She does what she’s paid to do, which is a lot, and then she does it for fun, because there are certain things you just can’t walk away from. The combat never broke her the way it did most others. She never walked into a house just to burn it down, but she doesn’t cry for the school children she bombed either. She wears her dog tags, not out of pride but just in case somebody remembers who she is.
The people she fights with noticed. They found out. And they didn’t like it.
She thinks that’s what it is at least.
She’s not really certain, actually. Some things just seem to fall away when she fights, things like reality and her sense of self. It’s the nanos in her brain that fix her up when she goes off; they make the stories she tells others about herself seem true. They’ll call a clean up squad if things get too serious. She’s not a slave to them -it’s important to remember that, or else it will stop being true -but for now she does need them.
The scene begins again.
She bends her wrist back to where it should be and hears a cracking that does not bode well. Her front knuckles are bloodied all to hell, with probable fractures to two of her first joints. She waits for the buzzing in her skull and the release of dopamine to find out if she did well. The owner of the nanobots, who she has never met but who knows her inside and out, is quick to release it. It’s a good thing he can’t read minds, or he’d know what the ending looks like.
We’ll skip a few steps. They’re technical and boring anyway. Her wrist was indeed broken, as was her first metacarpal. The rest was just bruises and dislocations. She rarely throws punches that poorly, and has resolved never to do so again. She has found out that her eyes are her own, but that the nano owner can track her, and because he can track her she can find out where the remote that holds the key to her new neurochemistry is and that when she finds it she can find the truth about herself.
She murders a few people who were just there for the paycheck. Poor schmucks didn’t have a chance. Bulletproof is all very well, but blunt force trauma is blunt force trauma. She finds the remote, and a little note that says Have at it. She finds that she does, in fact, enjoy fighting. It is not just the nanos. She even tests it by sending little happy triggers to her brain a few times. Very addicting. Was she born with the nanobots in her brain? Probably not, but she gave up caring about such details a long time ago.
The scene ends. Her knuckles crash into the face of another opponent. Blood splashes across her once-white shirt, and she smiles. Victory is always sweet.
Written for this prompt.
Reading Cactus 