Kessie's Short Stories

[MNo9] Confined Nightmare

Originally posted 9/2/2021

Beck could feel himself tremble as he walked out to the main arena. He was instantly greeted with heart pumping music and the crowd beating their feet in time to it. From the other side of the Colosseum arena was his opponent; a female bot named Tremus. The older bot (in both appearance and experience) calmly waved to her fans as they screamed to get her attention.

Tremus always had an air of being well in control of the environment around her. It was something that Beck had always admired about her before he started competing in the colosseum's one-on-one duels. Even out of the arena, Tremus refused to be pushed around by anyone. Her soft side was a hard one to crack, indeed; much like the boulders she was made to crush for construction use. It was no wonder that Aviator (another one of the Mighty Numbers) tried at every chance to flirt with her.

A siren rang out through the battleground, indicating that the match had begun. Beck jumped at the sudden noise. If Tremus had flinched, she hid it behind her charge toward Beck. Her hands, once normal looking for any other xel bot, transformed into separate drills. They spun in high velocity as Tremus attempted to hit Beck with them. The squeak he made in dodging the blow was the dumbest sound he could have made- someone back at home was going to make fun of him for it later. At the moment, he had to figure out how to attack Tremus. He couldn't stay on the defensive for too long.

She did not make it easy for him. Every now and again, Tremus would transform her hand drills into a single drill, then dive to trail along the ground toward Beck. Beck tried over and over again to calculate a way for him to get a buster shot or two on her. He found that she had enough of a recoil time after each lunge for him to get something in if he was fast enough. Even then, if he wanted to do any damage, he'd have to charge his shot up before Tremus recovered. The next time Tremus performed a drill charge, Beck started to reroute more power to his buster. He waited until Tremus made another drill-based punch at him, then released all the power in his buster before she could defend herself.

Tremus stumbled back from the hit. She looked down at one of her hand drills and realized that xel was drifting off of her. Her body was becoming destabilized. Realizing what was going on, she took a hard look up at Beck. The young robot was already rushing at her to absorb the xel she was losing. Tremus didn't have time to react before Beck collided into her- almost phasing through as he absorbed the loose xel.

It felt worse than any punch Tremus had ever experienced during her time as a competitor. A part of her now felt permanently empty. She ran a quick diagnostic of the xel Beck had absorbed. Her artificial heart nearly stopped in realizing that Beck had taken over 20% of her total xel count. The loss wasn't anything she couldn't make up for, but if he kept that rate up? She'd be completely assimilated by the end of the match; if she wasn't lucky, of course.

She wouldn't allow this to become a reason to slow down, though. Tremus made sure she kept Beck on his toes. This wasn't his first fight on the battlefield, but you should still see the green behind his ears. It wouldn't take much to disorient him in some way. At the same time, she tended to forget that Beck was still powerful under the right conditions.

Tremus got careless enough that Beck was able to steal more of her xel. Another 20% of her overall xel count gone. She gave herself an annoyed tsk- this wasn't going to work.

Using a backspring to allow herself enough room, Tremus melded her feet together into a large drill. She then used the momentum to dig underneath the Colosseum floor for an underground advantage. Beck immediately panicked. Tremus dug down far enough that he couldn't feel the vibrations of where she was until she started to come back up. By then, it was a bit too late- Tremus popped out of the ground with enough force to nearly drill Beck in half had he not gotten out of the way. He did take a good amount of damage, though. That much was obvious.