The platform trembled beneath their feet. Each impact from below sent a faint shudder through the metal. The viewing chamber opened out across the inner ring of the Spire; from this height, the fight between Mark and Thragg was little more than a blur of shapes and sound, but the scale of it was impossible to ignore. The walls groaned each time they collided. Lucan leaned over the rail, his knuckles pale against the silver. "He's still standing," he said. "What sort of trickery is this."
Anissa folded her arms. Her eyes followed the flashes below where gravity bent and light twisted with every strike. She had known Mark was strong, but the force of it was greater than she expected. "That shouldn't be possible," she said under her breath.
Raven stood slightly behind them, her hood down, her eyes fixed on the same place. "It is," she said.
Lucan glanced at her. "And what makes you so srrogant?"
Raven didn't look away from the arena. "He can control gravity itself, a fundamental force of the universe. One of his abilities can erase a person from existence. Even without Viltrumite blood, he would still be able to kill one of you with that."
Lucan's head turned sharply toward her. A small, humorless laugh escaped him. "A human killing a Viltrumite. You've got quite a sense of humor."
Raven's expression didn't change. "You almost died to an Earthling once," she said.
Lucan froze. His jaw tightened, the memory of a trident through his side still somewhere in his body. He moved as if to stand, but his limbs stopped halfway. Raven's eyes glowed faint purple "Sit," she said quietly. "Don't make a scene."
The air grew still for a moment until Nolan spoke. "She's right," he said. "Now's not the time."
Lucan sank back into his chair. His shoulders stayed tight, but he said nothing.
Anissa exhaled slowly, trying to bring the moment back to the fight. "He's doing well," she said. "Better than I thought. Do you think he could actually win?"
Nolan didn't answer. His eyes tracked the movements below, the two figures clashing again and again, one forcing the other back, the shockwaves echoing through the structure.
Lucan gave a short laugh. "Win? He doesn't stand a chance, even if he's doing better than expected."
Both Anissa and Raven looked at him. Raven had a glare on her face, and funnily enough so did Anissa.
"He's right," Nolan said suddenly.
Raven turned to him. "You can't mean that, especially with what you know about Mark." She looked to his prosthetic arm.
Nolan didn't move his gaze from the fight. "It looks like he's holding his ground," he said. "But Thragg hasn't used any of his real strength yet. You'll know when he does." The words hit harder than the noise below. None of them replied. They could feel the tremor in the Spire, the air humming with the force of each collision, and yet somewhere in that... Thragg was still holding back.
Lucan swallowed and looked away. Anissa's face had gone pale; her arms unfolded, hands clasped behind her back. Raven didn't speak. She followed the faint blue trail of energy that marked Mark's movement across the arena. Her hands tightened slightly at her sides. For the first time, her expression broke.
She whispered, almost to herself, "Just don't get hurt."
...
Mark moved first. The air around him tightened, dust lifted, lines in the floor bowed toward him. He cut the distance in a single blur and snapped a jab at Thragg's eye. Thragg tilted his head and the punch slid past. Mark doubled the hand and drove a cross into Thragg's chest like a ram. The sound rolled through the tiers. Thragg barely shifted. Mark spun through with a round kick that cracked against the side of Thragg's head, then he hooked Thragg's wrist mid-spin and slung him away in a hard throw. Thragg turned in the air and killed his momentum with a flick of his shoulders.
Mark folded space again and reappeared at his flank. He thrust his hand out at Thragg's collarbone and ripped him in with gravity manipulation. His left hook landed with a short twist, then he ripped a red sphere under the same hand and launched an uppercut that fired Thragg straight up like a shell. The roof supports groaned. Mark blinked out and caught him during the rise. He yanked Thragg back down with a blue sphere, tossed him, then repulsed him away mid-spin with a red sphere that tore a gash across the far wall. Mark chased and hammered a gravity-weighted cross into Thragg's sternum. The platform under them fractured and fell in chunks.
Thragg grinned. "More."
Mark braced his core and dropped his weight into the floor for a heartbeat, then shed it. He shot forward, fists a blur. He smashed a jab across Thragg's cheek, slid inside with a forearm jam, and threaded a short elbow to the ear. Thragg slipped the next shot and cracked Mark in the ribs with a tight counter. Mark clamped Thragg's wrist, stepped across, and raked a heel behind Thragg's ankle. He pitched him through a short trip, rolled with the fall, and spiked a knee down as gravity dragged them both. The floor dented under Thragg's back. Metal spit out from the seam.
Thragg rolled up off the deck without a labored breath. Mark didn't give him space. He formed a thin red sphere in the form of a shield and took Thragg's shoulder charge on it, slid to the side, and hooked a blue coil around Thragg's bicep. He reeled him in, turned his hips, and drove a descending kick into Thragg's clavicle with a gravity spike that ran through leg and spine. The impact punched a crater into the slab and sent cracks racing outward.
"Yes," Thragg almost moaned.
Mark answered by stripping weight from his limbs and using gravity to almost warp them. He slid across the air on that lightness and tore into Thragg with a fast pair to the mouth and heart. Thragg ate them and threw a straight back. Mark cut a red wedge into the line of that punch and let it skate past, then snapped a heel up under Thragg's jaw. He spun with it and hammered a palm across the ear. Blue grabbed Thragg's neck for a blink and dragged him forward into a short elbow that thudded. Mark locked a hand behind Thragg's head, pulled, and sent a knee up through the line. Thragg's head drifted back a fraction.
Mark kept him there with a pull that was more feel than sight. He climbed the pull, wrapped Thragg's forearm with his own, and rolled over his shoulder for a midair throw. Thragg rotated out of the angle and came back with a simple punch that Mark sidestepped by tearing the floor under him sideways with a red shove. The strike missed by inches and blew a chunk out of the wall. Sparks rained across the tier seats and Viltrumites stepped back, some floating, some bracing with arms up as the debris flew.
Mark sank a hook to the body, then another, then lifted a tight uppercut. He pulsed a micro-pull each time his fist landed, drawing Thragg into the knuckles. The impacts stacked. The air cracked like short thunder. He went high with a cross, dropped low into a sweep that cut Thragg's legs, and as Thragg dipped, Mark snared him with a thin blue string around torso and thigh and whipped him into the ground. The slab buckled. Panels sheared. The far railing twisted and tore free.
Thragg pushed up, smile wider. "Good. Harder."
Mark gave it to him. He sent a huge red sphere at Thragg letting it hit him and explode the ground sending thragments everywhere. At the same instant Mark dove into the front and smashed a straight into Thragg's jaw. Thragg's head rocked one notch left. Mark kept the rhythm and alternated pull and push during his hands, drawing Thragg into each shot before the next sent him rocking back. Blue drew the shoulder; red shoved the hip; knuckles found the face. The resonance turned each punch into a piston. The deck rivets sang in their holes.
Thragg laughed between breaths. "Again."
Mark reversed the deck under Thragg's feet with a touch and flipped his frame upward like the floor had become a ceiling. Thragg fell up. Mark was already there, stepping into the new "down," smashing a knee into Thragg's midline, then a right hand across the mouth, then stripping the invert and slamming Thragg down with a hand on the throat and a hard red flash at the base of the neck. The drop shook three levels. A section of the lower tier sloughed off and fell through the open well, breaking against the substructure.
Mark didn't stop. He closed the gap with a burst that tore the air, hit Thragg with a rapid pair, spun a round kick across the temple, and used the spin to hook the forearm and whirl him into a throw. Thragg sailed. Mark was already on him, descending. He caught Thragg under the shoulder, pulled him in a nose-down dive, let him rebound, then split his arm across Thragg's ribs in an elbow as Thragg rose. He grabbed the back of Thragg's neck and popped a knee up the centerline. Thragg's body rose from the knee's track and Mark rode the lift into a twist, wrenched the shoulder, threw him into a falling spin, and met the fall with a tight uppercut that ran through jaw and spine. He finished with a back kick that sent Thragg skidding sideways across open air into a load-bearing rib of the Spire. The brace bent, the welds screamed, and a rain of bolts fell.
Mark circled him at speed. He grabbed Thragg by the wrist, rotated around him in a tight loop, built force, and flung him outward. Then he climbed, cut across Thragg's arc, seized him by the forearm as he reached the top of the swing, and spiked him straight down. A handclap of repulsion hammered him into the floor. The paneling caved. A plume of dust rolled.
Thragg rose through the dust unmarked. He rolled his neck once. "Better."
Mark's breath came hard. He kept his shoulders loose and stepped back in.
He set a light jab just to touch, slipped outside Thragg's counter with a red nudge that turned the line, and blitzed. His jab reappeared as a piston, his cross hammered behind it, a hook lanced in tight, then he spun and tore a kick across the head. He latched the forearm in mid-spin and hucked Thragg across the chamber. And before Thragg could right himself, Mark inverted the local field on Thragg's body, reached, and dragged him back into his fist. The punch snapped Thragg's head. The ceiling baffles rattled with the crack.
"Yes," Thragg said through teeth. "Keep going."
Mark bled speed into his bones and then stripped it, the shift turning each step into a lunge and each lunge into a jump. He drove an elbow down, snapped a hammerfist up, and toggled a tight blue band around Thragg's ribs for a fraction to hold him where the next knee landed. The knee hit. The deck warped again.
The Viltrumites on the upper tiers had started to move farther back. Some hovered out from the rows. Some raised forearms to block chips of sheared metal that skittered in their direction. The Spire's inner ribs carried new fractures that webbed from impact to impact. The arena floor lost sections to craters and torn seams. Each time Mark pushed or pulled the air, the walls flexed, seams popped, cables hummed like plucked wire.
Mark shifted to a new angle and threw a red shield into Thragg's incoming straight, skidding it aside. He bolted under the arm and stitched hooks into liver and kidney. He pulsed a blue tug on the last hook and drew Thragg into a short right that landed flat on the face. Thragg backed a half step. Mark reached, trapped the wrist, and jumped his hips across for a clean toss. Thragg rotated in the air and landed on both feet, then took a small step in and cracked Mark with a simple punch that shoved him back across a broken slab.
"Don't slow down now," Thragg said, smiling. "You're finally using it."
Mark wiped his lip with the back of his hand and surged again. He punched in pairs, slid his shoulder against Thragg's chest to gain inside position, and hammered a rising uppercut that shook dust from the roof. He twined a narrow blue filament around Thragg's ankle, pulled, and chopped a kick into the knee from the opposite side. Thragg's leg bent and snapped back into line like nothing had happened. He laughed once, short and sharp.
Mark shifted to defense as Thragg stepped forward with a series of short shots. Mark bled a red sheet out to dull the first, slipped the second with a tiny drop in weight, and caught the third on his forearm. The arm went numb to the elbow. He shook it once, fed the dead weight into a swing, and used his shoulder to check Thragg's chest. That opened room for a knee that thudded. He took it. He wrapped an arm behind Thragg's neck, dragged him down, and tried to spin him to the floor. Thragg posted a hand, killed the spin, stood out of the clinch, and tapped Mark's jaw with a short right that rang through his skull.
Mark hunched and fired back. He went low with a shin to the thigh, rose with a hook to the ear, then hit body, body, head. He toggled blue and red during the rhythm so each shot came into a target that either met it or fled it. It kept Thragg right where he needed him. He poured on speed and let the floor fracture under his acceleration. The air cracked, then cracked again, like snapping glass on a loop.
Thragg started to breathe harder, not from strain but from the high of it. "That's it. Don't hold it back. All of it."
Mark let it go. Blue bloomed across the chamber in half-seen pulses that caught rubble and bent metal. Red flashed in threads and wedges, turning every dodge into a shove and every slip into a leap. He spun a tugline around Thragg's torso, pulled him into an elbow, then snapped a shoulder throw with a red pop at the hip that pitched Thragg into the floor. He followed him down with a heel that smashed into collar and sternum. The plate under them bent like sheet.
He pressed the attack. He drew Thragg in with a blue jerk, hurled him away, then detonated a red blast behind him that slammed him forward again. Mark met him with a gravity-weighted cross that struck with a loud boom and flickered the lights above the arena. He threw again, red on the far wall to bounce Thragg back, blue on the chest to keep him in the pocket, fists filling the space between.
Around the chamber, sections of seating broke loose and hung at bad angles. White dust hung in layers. The observation field at the higher ring wavered as it absorbed stray force. Nolan stood with hands on the rail. Anissa beside him leaned forward without realizing it. Lucan had stopped talking. Raven's eyes tracked the rhythm without blinking.
"More, Mark," Thragg said, smiling through blood on his teeth. "More."
Mark growled and tore into him. He bent the rib out of the way with a blue twist and hammered body shots like a drumbeat. He broke rhythm into a high cross, then a snap kick to the knee, then a lock at the elbow that he almost sank before Thragg shrugged it out. Mark accepted the slip and turned it into a knee to the stomach. He followed with a fast flurry—jab, cross, hook, hook, elbow—and then he slid behind Thragg's stance and reaped a leg out from under him. Thragg floated rather than fell. He adjusted his inertia with a small shift in hips and shoulders. He was always at home in the open air.
Mark changed the shape of that air. He laid a blue web across the bay and cinched it behind Thragg like a net. The net pulled. Thragg's flight caught. Mark stepped in and kicked him through the mesh into the opposite wall. The wall caved. The net snapped and rebounded like a sling. Mark timed the rebound, popped a red shock into Thragg's spine, and met him with a rising uppercut that cracked the ceiling above them. The impact threw hairline fissures up three levels.
Mark pressed until his forearms ached. He overlaid blue and red in short beats during a punch string so that each blow dragged Thragg in and the next launched him back just far enough to meet the following hand. It was a rhythm that ignored distance and punished guard. He kept it tight and let his wrists and elbows do most of the travel, feeding the power from his hips and the invisible weight hanging off his fists. The room went loud with the sound of bone on bone.
Thragg took it, eyes shining. "Good. Don't stop. Faster."
Mark flew forward and launched a full sequence.
He dashed in and fired a rapid string of straight shots to occupy his guard. He spun into a hooking pull that caught Thragg's shoulder and dragged him into a tight spinning punch. The blow landed and Mark hammered a red-boosted uppercut that fired Thragg into the open air of the well between tiers. Mark chased and caught him by the forearm, dove with him, and at the bottom of the drop released at the last instant so Thragg bounced. Mark slashed an elbow across ribs as Thragg rose, then cinched the neck and drove a knee that knocked him higher. He looped around the lift and twisted Thragg into a dragging spin, met the turn with a rising uppercut that launched him, then pivoted and snapped a back kick that sent him caroming off a buttress. Mark closed, circled him at speed to build centrifugal load, flung him outward across the width of the well, climbed above, grabbed him mid-arc, and rode him down in a guided drop. He finished with a two-handed slam that cracked the level plate and sent a wave through the Spire like a struck drum.
The chamber went still for a second as the dust rolled.
Thragg floated up out of the crater without a new mark on him. He spit blood to the side and smiled like he had just found a lost blade. "Now we're getting somewhere."
Mark exhaled. He stepped again. He threw a short at Thragg's mouth. Thragg didn't block. He let it hit and answered with a perfect straight from a perfect stance. Mark barely saw it. The punch landed like a rod through his chest. The world jumped. He felt floor, then wall, then another floor, then pillars, then light, then floors again. His body tore a path up through level after level, each deck exploding around him in a spray of metal and dust.
He burst out the top of the Spire into blue light and thin air. He arrested his fall with a jerk of weight, gasped once, and looked up.
Thragg was already there, hand closing around his throat, fingers like a steel collar. He stopped Mark in the sky like he had always been standing there.
"Still alive," Thragg said, pleased. He squeezed just enough to hold him. "Good."
The air around Thragg shifted. His skin glowed faintly as the aura built, the light of that could only be described as a blue star started bleeding out of him. Heat rolled off him in waves, warping the air, curling the clouds around them into shreds. Mark felt it first on his cheeks, then on his forearms, he felt a sting like standing inside a furnace. Then it was everywhere.
Thragg's hand was still on his throat. "You feel it?" he asked.
Mark tried to draw a breath against the grip. He balled his fists, gravity buzzing through his forearms. He coated them in red repulsion field wrapped around each knuckle. He drove the first punch straight into Thragg's ribs. It hit like thunder. Nothing moved. He threw another at the jaw, twisting his whole body behind it, then another, hammering upward. Each one cracked the air like a whip, each one louder, each one stronger, but Thragg's body didn't even rock under the hits.
Mark roared and swung again, both fists slamming at once into Thragg's chest, the red glow bursting outward. It still didn't budge him. The heat from Thragg's aura flared brighter and Mark's skin started to blister where the light touched him. He tried to wrench free and drop the gravity under his own body to slip the grip, but Thragg's fingers only dug in tighter, holding him like a hawk with prey.
Thragg's smile widened. "My turn."
He drew his fist back. The glow around him flared so hot it seared the inside of Mark's nose. Then Thragg drove the punch forward and the world went white. The impact broke the sound barrier three times over, each one a hammer of air around them. Mark's body folded around the blow and shot away like a fired round. He felt his ribs shatterl all at once, a sharp wet noise inside his chest, obliterating most of his internal organs. He pushed a red sphere into place around his heart with the last of his focus and felt it take the brunt of the blow there, without it he knew that part of him would be gone.
He smashed through the air, a comet trailing blood, and fell. The world spun into blue and then green and then a flash of water. He hit the lake so hard the surface erupted like a depth charge and then closed over him. Darkness swallowed him. Despite the coldness of the water engulfing him his body still burned, infact he could see the water bubble and boil around his body.
Above, Thragg cracked the sky open with a sound like a rift tearing as he appeared above the lake. He hung in the air, his aura still burning like a piece of the sun, looking down at the lake. He raised one hand. Between his fingers, a point of light gathered; small, but bright enough to cut through the water below. It swelled into a sphere no bigger than a man's fist, but inside it swirled the color of a star's core.
Mark's eyes widened. Even under the water, even broken, he felt the danger in it. He forced his hands up and dragged a red sphere around his whole body, a cocoon of force thick enough to press the water back. Then did the only thing he could do.
He braced.
Thragg flicked his fingers. The tiny star dropped.
It touched the lake and the world went white again. The water boiled instantly, then evaporated in a wall of steam. Mark's red sphere shuddered under the blast, ripples running across its surface like glass under strain. The heat punched through it in waves, baking his skin, searing his burns open. He held it as long as he could, gritting his teeth, but the shield cracked, the heat scalding him until he could barely remain conscious.
When the flash finally cleared, the lake was gone. Nothing but a steaming crater remained, mud bubbling at the bottom. Mark lay there at the lowest point, half-covered in muck, his skin almost peeling off and blistered, his breath coming in short, wet gasps. The red sphere around him flickered and died.
A shadow fell across him. Thragg descended slowly, his aura dimming back to a faint glow. He rolled his shoulders, like a man loosening up after a workout. "That was good," he said as his boots touched the scorched earth. "I liked that. I haven't enjoyed a fight like that in years." His eyes gleamed. "It makes my blood rush at the thought of what you'll do in a thousand years. How strong you'll be."
Mark coughed and blood came up, against the pale stone. He tried to push himself upright but his arms barely answered.
A pulse of darkness hit the air behind Thragg. Raven appeared, shadows swirling around her, her Soul-Self unfurling behind her like a monstrous raven with wings that reached the scorched edges of the crater. Its eyes burned purple, its beak open in a silent scream. She stood over Mark, every inch of her body trembling with contained fury. "Get away from him," she hissed.
Thragg turned his head and laughed. "Have no fear, woman. It was just a spar. I would sooner hurt myself than kill my own kin."
Raven's eyes narrowed. She didn't lower her hands. She crouched by Mark, touching his burned cheek, her heart hammering at how still he was. His skin felt like a furnace under her fingers.
Thragg watched, his expression unreadable now. "Don't worry," he said. "Our medical technology far outstrips anything on Earth. Come I will lead you to where he can be healed."
Raven didn't believe him. Not completely. But Mark's breathing was ragged and his ribs were a map of angles under his skin. She had no choice. She wrapped him in a purple sphere, lifting him off the steaming mud, and rose into the air after Thragg. The Soul-Self circled above them like a sentinel as she followed him back toward the Spire, her eyes never leaving the back of Thragg's head.
(AN: Thraggs power has been revealed and its pretty strong, who could've guessed huh? Anyway hope you enjoyed.)
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