The black pyramid was not all party-zone. It used to be one of several gathering places for mage meetings of various sorts, and that would hold true from here forward, but a whole lot better. Eliot hadn’t directly added too much.

  Except for the room ahead.

  Blackvein followed Punchman and Miss Masher beyond a massive set of open doors, into a room of light and surfaces. It was a gymnasium the likes of which Mark had never seen except on certain hero and villain shows that he never really watched—

  And that’s when he remembered about Punchman. Like, really remembered about him.

  Mark grinned.

  Punchman was the gladiatorial villain persona of the superhero Titanfist, which was new information, but the old information was the ‘gladiatorial’ part.

  In the mythos of heroes and villains, some supervillains made lairs that heroes would then assault for various reasons (rescue a person, retrieve a macguffin, stop a threat) and usually end up with their asses handed to them. Sometimes they won those nights, but almost never if they went in for a direct fight. In lesser scenarios, involving heroes versus normal villains, they still had training. That training was often more gymnasium-battle-type training. Sometimes it was real gladiatorial like, with spars and real stuff. Other times it was swords wrapped in foam, and running atop raised platforms over ball-filled pits, and dodging foam-firing cannons as you tried to run from one side of the field to the other.

  That final type was what Mark thought of when he looked at this room.

  He thought of elaborate obstacle courses, all show and all for the camera, with the villains operating all of the adversarial equipment, from aiming the cannons at people, to chucking the foam-covered tree trunks, to throwing boulders made of foam. The heroes ‘assaulting’ the ‘normal-villain lair’ were pretty much normal people themselves, being almost all brawnies, or brawny-adjacent.

  Brawnies made up 90% of all Awakened people on Earth, and so gladiator programs were understandably very popular. The only part of the gladiator shows that were ‘real’ were the fights at the end of the show, where the normal brawny champion got to fight one of the villains to determine if they won the day, or if they were wiped out.

  Punchman was one of those villains at the end of the obstacle courses, firing the foam cannons, and fighting at the end of the program.

  Those final fights often took place in rooms exactly like this room here.

  It was all concrete colored walls and pillars of various heights, but with thin red or blue foam mats on the top of every surface, and hugging every sharp edge of the ground, or on the pillars, or otherwise. Ropes and pillars dangled from the ceiling here and there. A great big bright yellow foam pit yawned in the middle of the room. A few pillars stuck up from that yellow space, and those were normal grey, except for where they were padded with red or blue.

  Mark imagined fighting on top of those pillars, jumping from one to the other with a big foam sword. It seemed like great fun! A whole lot of fun, really… But he wasn’t a brawny.

  Sally had a similar reaction of joy on her face.

  Isoko was utterly appalled and trying not to show it. She was having a deep, hurtful moment right now, of being inadequate. She never wanted to be a brawny. She always wanted to be a Sky Shaper.

  Mark was concerned—

  Isoko flinched, feeling Mark’s concern, her own worries flowing inward, into that box she kept inside of herself where she punched down all of her feelings of inadequacies. Mark had thought those feelings were gone. But no. Of course they weren’t gone. Not yet. Not completely—

  And then Punchman grabbed a foam kaiju sword off of the wall, looking at it as he spoke, “You got a nice look to you, Miss Masher. A competent look.”

  Isoko focused on the show in front of her, ready to shout encouragement to Sally.

  … Mark focused on the show, too.

  Punchman tossed the sword from one hand to the other, his vector flickering to grab it and with truly excellent Tactile Telekinesis, to spin the whole thing on a fingertip, like it was balanced around a single handspan from the grip’s end. It was not balanced like that at all, though. It was balanced like a real kaiju blade, all of 3 meters long and probably made of wood, with a bright blue core and a red ‘cutting’ edge that wrapped all the way to the hilt. His vector touched that red foam line and the red edge held his TT a lot better than the blue core… Which was pretty much what happened with a real kaiju blade, too, with the adamantium edge and the mithril core.

  Mark had not realized that these fake gladiator kaiju blades were manufactured to mimic a real blade, but that’s obviously what was happening here.

  Punchman tossed the blade to Sally and Sally caught it with a surprising clang.

  Mark’s eyes went wide. That was a metal blade, but with thick foam edges.

  Sally went, “Huh. That’s… heavier than I thought it would be.”

  “45 kilos!” Punchman said, grinning for the first time tonight. “You seem to be able to handle that fine, though.”

  Miss Masher smirked. “My preferred weapon is two of these.”

  “Ahhh... Kids these days.” Punchman shook his head. “You should stop fighting like that. Transition to a single weapon. Two weapons splits the focus, and no one ever has enough focus for two weapons.”

  Sally frowned a little, not letting her real displeasure show, but Mark knew she was mad. She was pretty good with two swords, she liked two swords, and she hated being told that she wasn’t good enough.

  Sally returned the barb, saying, “Even you?”

  “Absolutely,” Punchman said, without reservation.

  Sally stated, “Weapons break and a backup is necessary.”

  “Simple solution: Don’t let your single weapon break in the first place,” Punchman said, and then he grabbed another kaiju blade from the wall, followed rapidly by a third. He tossed one to Sally, and then pointed at her with the third one, saying, “We fight in the entire gym. First to touch the yellow area or break a wall or floor, or anything in the gym, loses. You also lose if you take damage to your weapons or your clothes.”

  Sally held one sword in each hand, grinning, her skin flickering with golden vibrancy. She announced, “Sounds fun!”

  Isoko called out, “And what happens when we win!”

  Punchman regarded Platinum Princess, and said, “If you win, I won’t charge you for my services to attack the gate. When I win, the price triples from 20k to 60k.” He casually threatened, “And you will pay.”

  He left the actual threat implied.

  Mark imagined if they didn’t pay then the threat involved turning them in, or something like that. The villain Punchman was still the superhero Titanfist, after all… What was his real name, though? Surely his name was in the public—

  Quark provided that real name, just by tracking Mark’s intent, the narrowing of his eyes as he looked at Punchman, or something like that. Or maybe Quark was actually learning Mark’s own Unionsense? Who knew! Whatever was happening there, Mark knew Punchman’s real name, now, along with a bunch of other facts.

  Quark didn’t know exactly what Mark had wanted, so he did a shotgun approach.

  Ben Daucourt, age 59, 7’4”, 630 lbs. Contemporary of Kraigen Steele, the guy who runs the Hero’s Association of Memphi. Army buddies… And that was enough of that deep dive.

  Mark looked back to the set up for the fight, and the words vanished from his sight. He wondered how easy that connection to Kraigen Steele would have been able to find without Quark—

  The fight kicked off without any further preparation.

  Punchman exploded toward Miss Masher, and though Mark expected the ground to be broken where he had launched himself, the ground remained completely intact.

  He was maybe 25% heavier and bigger than Sally, and a whole lot more knowledgeable about fighting both people and monsters. Perhaps a lesser person would have been sent crashing to the ground by Ben’s forward leap and crash, but Sally wasn’t a lesser person at all. She had leverage.

  Sally TT’d against the gymnasium floor, while Ben only had himself to hold onto, and Sally swung with both kaiju blades up and at Ben like a batter at the pitch.

  Foam-covered metal struck foam-covered metal, and Sally sent Ben flying.

  Ben spun through the air and landed perfectly on the side of a stalactite-pillar that descended from the ceiling, his loafer-covered feet sticking to the red-foamed edge and concrete center of the structure. He was 20 meters up. He had meant to do that. He had used Sally to send himself flying upward, into his new position, and now his vector was intertwined with the pillar under foot, as he stood parallel to the ground, looking down.

  Sally scoffed and called out, “How the fuck are you sticking to that pillar! Seriously! I’ve been trying for months to wall walk!”

  Ben regarded Sally from a lot higher, and said, “Good first showing, but your left blade is cracked.”

  Sally waved her left sword around, saying, “No it’s not!”

  “A hairline crack, but I cracked it for sure.”

  “Come down here and say that to my face!”

  Mark suddenly realized that Sally didn’t know who Punchman actually was.

  His surprise bled into the air, and Isoko caught it, and she was confused. His surprise could have meant anything. Isoko gave him a questioning glance. Then she looked at Eliot.

  Eliot had known who Punchman was from the very start, though, alongside Isoko.

  Eliot softly whispered, “She really doesn’t know that he’s T—”

  Ben, of course, heard this, and his casual interest in the night evaporated, replaced with actual interest. He shouted, “Don’t tell her!”

  Sally paused. She looked at her team. “Don’t tell me what?”

  Mark made the executive decision, to say, “Beat him and we’ll tell you.”

  “All of you are in on it?!” Sally exclaimed.

  Isoko said, “We lived here for three months!”

  “Just tell me!” Sally said.

  Ben chuckled once, and then he dropped off the ceiling and landed on the ground, completely silently. It was an impressive drop, for the whole maneuver seemed effortless. It was not effortless at all, though. Mark imagined that he and Isoko might have been some of the few people in the area who sensed as Ben’s astral body flashed through the floor, spreading his shockwave across tens of meters and deep into the ground, with his Tactile Telekinesis.

  Sally also did the same all the time whenever she moved strongly.

  It was kinda weird watching high-Powered brawnies fight. It kinda made Mark think of light going off inside solid, inanimate things, all the time, with every step that a brawny took. Actually striking a surface with the intent to break that surface, or not care about that surface at all, looked a whole lot less chaotic to Mark’s Unionsense.

  Mark was reminded of this ‘flashing floors’ fact constantly over the next two minutes, as Sally got her ass kicked from one end of the gym to the other, and Ben got sent flying time and time again. Mark and Isoko, of course, supported Sally with Union, so she was perfectly fine. The gym was fine, too.

  Ben was alone because Mark and Isoko were not drawing from him, but he had wells of strength so deep that Mark was pretty sure he was basically a kaiju in human form, so he was fine.

  Sally held on the ceiling, one foot on the front of a stalactite pillar, the other hooked behind that pillar, holding herself parallel to the floor. She hadn’t managed the same wall walking trick that Ben had pulled off at the start of the match, but it was close! She was also grinning a lot. Her skin flickered gold, her dress doing fine except for maybe a few missing sequins or sparkly bits. She was good.

  Ben was unbothered and having a great time.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Sally stared down at Ben, her two swords holding out to her sides as she said, “Just who the fuck are you, dude! You are certainly not a fucking two-cent villain.”

  Ben smirked as he rested his sword over his shoulder, saying, “Beat me and find out!”

  “I don’t think I can! You’re not even in the Chosen System, are you!”

  “I am not, this is correct.”

  “Just tell me your fucking secret, dude!”

  Ben grinned wider, showing off bright white teeth with incisors the size of fangs. The guy was filling out his suit a bit more than he was in the beginning of the night, as well, so he was surely letting his Titan’s Strength Power come out into the open. Quark had kept track of his estimated weight a few times, and he was topping out at 800 pounds right now. Almost double Sally’s normal weight. It was probably not intentional, though, because in the very next moment, he shrunk. His clothes turned baggy again.

  Quark put his weight at 600 pounds, and then a little lower to 580.

  Sally was at 450 last Mark heard, and she was pretty stable at that weight.

  Sally pointed with one of her swords, saying, “That! That right there! What the fuck are you doing, able to shrink like that! I want to be able to shrink like that, too!”

  Mark startled. He looked up at Sally, and he saw something about her that he did not recognize until that moment. Mark asked, “I thought you liked being big?”

  Sally’s face turned red. And then she dropped to the ground, right outside of the yellow zone on the inside of the gym. Her vector flashed in the ground, absorbing her weight. She said, “Of course I like being big.”

  Ben cut to the heart of the matter, saying, “It’s tough when you’re so much larger than everyone else. I get it. Sorry, kid; I can’t help you with that.”

  Sally looked away from Mark, focusing on Ben. “There’s no way to change sizes?”

  “… Sorry, kid.” Ben lifted his sword, saying, “Let’s stick to a Curtain-Protocol-script, okay? The AIs are already going to have to scrub this fight a lot.”

  Sally flinched. “Ah… fu— fudge popsicles.”

  Ben looked from Sally to Mark as he said, “Tell your friends to stop supporting you and I’ll stay at Punchman size, and you can win this one all on your own.”

  Sally scoffed. And then she glared at Mark and Isoko, saying, “Well! You heard the man!”

  Mark reluctantly pulled his Union back.

  Isoko scoffed, saying, “Good luck, then!”

  And then Sally announced at Ben, “Fight me, Punchy!”

  Sally launched at Ben like a whirlwind of foam-covered steel. She slammed with one sword, and Ben deflected with his, and then she whipped that first sword down to the ground while she lifted her other one upward, coming in from below with a backhand swipe that Ben avoided by leaping away.

  Sally pursued, tapping on the ground with a foot and then launching forward.

  Ben touched the ground first, giving him the leverage needed to strike at Sally’s center.

  But Sally touched the ground with a trailing sword, her vector strained to a limit she didn’t know she had, like lightning connecting her to solid ground. She arrested her own forward momentum.

  Ben’s sword swing went through a space that Sally was not yet in.

  Sally’s second sword came down, right onto Ben’s shoulder, and Ben twisted fast, pulling back, but Sally’s sword touched his loose clothes and she contested his TT control of his clothes, like a second lightning bolt of Tactile Telekinesis hitting home. Ben still retreated, tsk’ing in a realized defeat, but Sally ripped the front of his dress suit away from his chest like so much scattered fabric.

  Sally was still in the air throughout the whole strike, ‘standing’ only on her TT control of the ground, through the tip of her second sword.

  Ben landed several meters away, his suit shredding a little, his vector playing up the damage he had taken. Sally had carved a strip into the suit, but Ben made the front of his suit shred with a careful application of Tactile Telekinesis, his vector flashing inside of his clothes like carefully controlled scissors. Fabric spilled away, and Mark was absolutely sure that the camera zipping upward on the guy was getting a good angle for all the horny women online.

  He rolled his eyes.

  Sally landed on her feet, smirking, saying, “Looks like I broke something of yours! That means I win!”

  Ben smirked, saying, “I guess you did.”

  Sally demanded, “Now admit that two swords are cool and valid!”

  Ben laughed. “Never, because they’re not cool, or valid.” And then he touched a bracelet on his left wrist and his baggy suit instantly repaired itself. “I’m hungry, and you probably are too, so let’s get back to the party.”

  Sally eagerly said, “Mark— I mean. Blackvein! Do the feeding aura!”

  Mark kinda smiled a little as he beat his heart with sustenance and deprivation, hooking into the many plants outside of the gym, and also his team. And Ben. Making him a part of the Union and feeding him astrally was not as large of a draw as Mark imagined it would have been, considering Ben’s real size was kaiju-sized… Or maybe his real size was whatever he wanted to be? Mark wasn’t sure.

  But Blackvein ignored that and focused on what he was doing, saying, “There are many benefits for alliances with me and mine. Never going hungry is only one of them.”

  Ben smiled a little, his vector going from cautious inquisitiveness, to actual, fully-enjoyed relaxation. It was a similar reaction to Sally’s own, and one Mark had seen many times already. Ben adopted his Punchman persona though, for the cameras all around, as he said, “You got a neat Talent there, Blackvein, but don’t count on this temporary alliance lasting longer than this conflict you got with gate control. I’m not anyone’s henchman.”

  Blackvein easily said, “I have allies, Punchman. Not henchmen. You can still be an ally and be your own man.”

  Ben, Punchman, or maybe Titanfist, looked at Mark, and Mark wasn’t sure which one he was playing at when he said, “I have some really good allies already, kid, but if I’m ever in the same neighborhood I’ll look you up.” He lifted his head toward the exit to the gym, saying, “I’m sure you kids can find the buffet on your own. You kids should get going.”

  … And with that, Mark took his leave, his team walking alongside him out of the gym—

  Sally caught up fast, asking, “Who is he?!”

  Isoko happily said, “You just got a personal training fight with Titanfist, one of the superheroes of Memphi—” She paused, and then added for the camera, “A popular guy.”

  Sally was confused for a moment. She glanced backward at the doors to the gym, as they swung closed. She asked again, “Okay so… Who?”

  Mark answered, “Titanfist is a pillar of Memphi moonlighting as a villain for gladiator fights in gyms. The guy you just sparred with is someone just below Glorious Man on the global scale… Or maybe on par with the leader of the Hero’s Association of Memphi, Kraigen Steele. That’s a better comparison. Kraigen and Ben are contemporaries. War buddies, though I’m not sure what war Quark meant when he told me—” Quark flashed the answer in front of Mark’s eyes, and Mark’s eyes went wide, as he said, “Oh. Companions in the War for Life.”

  Sally’s skin prickled gold as she shivered and took that all in. “Holy shit.”

  Eliot elaborated, “He and his clothes and weaponry turn kaiju-sized and he fights kaiju every so often. I have no idea how he survives those sorts of fights. Kaiju all have a lot of tricks to them… Probably a lot of buffing?”

  Sally gasped. “That’s why he grew and shrunk!!” And then she was worried. “Wait… Kaiju would kill a big guy. Is that… Uh. Seems dangerous still?”

  That was a valid point, Mark thought but wisely did not say.

  “An insane amount of buffing goes into him and people like him,” Isoko added.

  Sally went, “Ah,” as she nodded along.

  Mark hadn’t been thinking about that fact at all. Buffing? Mark could do buffing!

  Mark muttered, “Shit. I should have played that angle. I can buff pretty well.”

  Eliot said, “Maybe poaching established heroes is a bad idea.”

  Mark laughed as they approached the main party space—

  And then Frozenfire was standing in the path. He was still wearing his black and white striped outfit, his ‘jailed hero’ thing, as he stared at Mark. He walked toward Mark.

  “Get me out of here and I’ll—”

  Credenza popped out of nowhere, and even Quark did a little fritz on Mark’s eyes as he hadn’t seen her, either. Isoko yelped. Eliot breathed out. Sally oriented for a fight… and then she relaxed. Mark and his team kept their cool, though all of them were wondering what the FUCK had just happened, and if Credenza had just teleported. It reminded Mark of Reeni Thumb and Inquisitor David.

  Frozenfire had a much more extreme reaction. He jolted, ice shattering at Credenza, but the Luck-based villain merely grinned and stepped to the side, angling a little server tray to catch most of the ice and spray it upward. The remaining ice crashed against the stone floor and slipped into a planter, where it rested on the warm dirt. It would probably just melt there, and feed the plants.

  The tray-angled ice, arced in the air along several different paths in the air. Each chunk of ice landed into the frozen margaritas of several different people. Mark was impressed, but the people who had their drinks ‘refilled’ were even more impressed. It was like the world’s best party trick.

  One of them laughed and called out, “That’s why you made them extra strong!”

  Credenza ignored most of what she had just accomplished out there, but she still had a smug look to her. She was maybe 35-ish, with a ‘cool aunt’ sort of vibe, and coming in at Isoko’s height; shorter than Mark. She was lanky and utterly unremarkable in almost every way, except for the intensity of her eyes. Even though she kept a pleasant face, her eyes told a much stronger story. She saw everything. All the angles. And she was going to play those angles for her own benefit.

  Not many others would have been able to catch what she was doing, and Mark was sure he was missing most of it, too, but he saw Credenza’s astral body as something of an octopus of a thousand threads. Ten thousand, maybe. Only a few of them were near her. Most of them were like distant tugs on her astral body; there if she needed them, but mostly inert.

  Credenza playfully chastised Frozenfire, saying, “Is that any way to greet a lady!”

  Frozefire muttered, “Fuck you. I was supposed to win that fight out there.”

  She ignored him.

  Credenza looked back to Mark and them, as she wrapped an arm around Frozenfire’s arm, who was stiff as a board and kinda furious. She easily said, “How about we all go have a little chat about pulling off one of the greatest heists in history; the capture of a working gate!”

  Most of the vectors she was using right now were in a concentration upon Frozenfire. The guy had hundreds of touches to him. Like fingerprints left from every brush against Credenza’s Power.

  Mark had never seen a Power like this. It was nearly as insidious as Union, and it was trying to touch him and his people, but mostly it did not. The threads that did touch them kinda just flowed away from them.

  Credenza wasn’t actively focusing on them with her Power at all. This was just her basic nature, as an Awakened, to casually transform the world into her own personal playpen.

  From Frozenfire’s stillness, his fury, and his reluctant acceptance of the situation, Mark was pretty sure that Frozenfire hated what was being done, he knew everything that was happening, and he went along with it, anyway. Why? Mark could only guess, and only part of that guess was that Frozenfire knew he couldn’t do anything against it, anyway.

  The larger part of why Frozenfire allowed this was that Frozenfire and Credenza were two of the highest grossing earners in the Hero/Villain Program in Memphi and the two of them often took down kaiju together, because Frozenfire, when he really got going, was kinda random and Credenza absolutely loved random shit. But standing here in the black and white stripes of a captured asset was not a part of his plan at all.

  Most plans went out the window when a big enough Luck got involved.

  Blackvein was a little more worried about Kardi, about Luckygun, and about Tartu’s whole group, and the fight to come tonight, but that was for the future.

  For now, Blackvein said, “I would love to have a chat.”