3MA

3MA | Chapter 2

SIX YEARS LATER

2
DOUBLE BACON CHEESEBURGER

"Rogues, villains and nefarious citizens of Camelot! Welcome to 3MA's Fists of Fire Touuuuurnament!"

Soggy Dempster's voice booms across the six-thousand-seat stadium, clear and smooth. It's not the kind of voice you'd expect to come from the mouth of a man with as many mustard stains that he has speckled down the face of his tuxedo shirt.

But this is 3MA.

And if there's one thing I've learned from fighting over the past two years it's that, especially in this sport, what's on the inside of a man and what's on the outside can often be two entirely different things.

The Iron Cauldron is the hottest 3MA arena in Camelot, and tonight it's jammed to the gills with every kind of misfit you can imagine: the sad, the hungry, the rich and the powerful. And they're all screaming their lungs out for the same thing.

Blood, mostly. But they would settle for the sound of a broken rib or two.

Well, it's their lucky day. I plan on giving them both.

Towering posters hang around the arena's illuminated perimeter displaying fighters of all shapes and sizes, their fists sizzling with webs of rainbow-colored static. In one, Death Penalty points at the audience, his infamous heart-stopping crimson static engulfing his clenched fist. In another, Black Heart turns his muscle-packed back to the arena, his trademark Black Lightning creeping up his forearms like slivers of night.

There's an empty spot at the end where Dad's picture used to hang. A long time ago.

I turn around and leer through the metal cage at the audience in back of me. In the front row is a man dressed in a silver suit worth more than the average family in this city spends on food for the entire year. His eyes slide over my body, moving from neck to chest to fists, like he's calculating how much I'm worth, part by part.

Next to the rich man, shuffling nervously from foot to foot, is the soot and sweat-covered form of my best friend, Fisher. Judging by the slump of his scrawny shoulders and the beads of sweat still rolling down his lined forehead, he just got off his shift working in the dank tunnels of Camelot's subway system.

"Let's DO this," Fisher shouts. His eyes are wide and bloodshot and ravenous, just like Mr. Filthy Rich next to him, but in an entirely different way.

It's like Fisher's been stuck in the dark for a century and I'm a pinprick of sunlight.

I'm not sure which set of eyes unsettles me the most.

My gaze slips across all the hands in the audience exchanging wads of crumpled crowns as the black market bets are wagered. I look away in disgust.

I don't fight for any of these creeps.

I fight for my little brother, Mag. To put clothes on his back. To put food in his ungrateful mouth. To keep the radiator pumping static-heat into our pathetic excuse for an apartment. So far, I've done a pretty lousy job accomplishing all of these things.

The ring announcer, Soggy Dempster, a three hundred fifty pound sack of emulsified fat, waddles around the Octagon, grasping the blood-splattered microphone. His hairy fists wrap around it like it's a double bacon cheeseburger.

My stomach moans. Man, I could really use a double bacon cheeseburger. Extra pickles. Extra ketchup. Extra everything. But the pathetic truth is, I would settle for the sesame seeds on the top bun.