Disclaimer and author's note:
5-12-04: I came back to this bit of fanfiction because of The Chronicles of Riddick (coming soon to a theatre near you!) I actually rather like it, although most of the time when I go back and look at fanfic it's more of a matter of what the hell was I thinking. I can definitely see the points a couple reviewers made; I'm actually revising along those lines because towards the middle I think it just jumped the shark. My only excuse was that I wrote this while I was at work and really, really bored.
There's a lot more information about Riddick available now, and I've made an attempt to splice some of it in without giving too much away for tCoR. Some of it just had to stay, by freakish coincidence. You'll see if you poke around websites or when you see the movie. Some of it got changed to accommodate his backstory. Some of it I just expanded a little. There shouldn't be any spoilers.
I'm planning a sequel fic for this, actually, that ties in both this and my other three Pitch Black fics. Hope you'll find it as interesting to read as I do to write.
As always, Richard B. Riddick = Not Mine. Everyone else = Mine.
In Slam City, it wasn't so much that no one could hear you scream. It was that no one cared.
There was nothing but the sick, wet sound of flesh slapping sweat-covered flesh; the grunts of men being brutally punched, kicked, beaten; the labored breathing of men too badly hurt to stand. This was a common theme in the nightly event, as was the blood that spattered the razorwire-topped cage that the men fought in. It was a hideous sport, unworthy even of the gladiatorial rings under Caligula, Tiberius, or Nero. But the prison guards loved it.
Richard B. Riddick watched the carnage with dispassionate, silver eyes.
"There's some big money going around tonight," a voice from behind him said. Riddick didn't bother to turn, because the man hadn't bothered to hide his approach. He didn't care about the ones who walked up openly; it was the people who thought they could sneak up on him that he had to worry about. "New catch of fresh fish just arrived a few hours ago. Apparently there were a couple of bruisers among them; they got dumped into the Cage almost immediately."
"Is that so."
"That is so."
The Cage was one of several places Riddick liked to frequent, some others being The Pit or the Ring. Each of the names went with one of those over- used fighting arenas, and each was managed by a bookie (or a coalition of bookies) who milked the violent population of Slam City for all it was worth. The Cage was, as the name suggested, a fighting cage of wire mesh fencing ten feet high and topped with razorwire. It was normally sixteen feet in diameter, but could be expanded to as much as twenty five feet for large, all-out melee wars such as this one. Onlookers would place their bets on which inmate would be the last man standing in the Cage, and there was usually a brisk business going on during these nights. The Pit and the Ring had no such versatility; their structures were created out of ferrocrete and could not be altered. It was for this reason that the Cage was Riddick's particular favorite of the three; you never knew what you were going to get.
"Any of the new guys doing well? I don't recognize anyone in the ring." Riddick watched the Darwinian bloodbath as he fingered a packet of menthols inside his thigh pocket... he might actually make a bet on this one. Few melee-wars lasted past the first half hour, but this one was going on forty five minutes and counting. It might actually be worth it.
"Well, you see the guy over there who has the blonde ponytail in the headlock? The red-head?"
"Yeah."
"Odds on him jumped from fifty-to-one right up to four-to-one. Took down the first three guys just about by himself."
Riddick arched an eyebrow. "Impressive."
"Very."
He waved over a bookie; the weasel-faced man appeared at his side as if by magic. "Five on the red-head," Riddick said, paying the man. "And don't even think about palming any."
If his reputation as a deadly fighter hadn't dissuaded the bookie from grifting off of Riddick's bet, the expression on his face and the low tones of his voice would have. The bookie nodded, scowled, and disappeared back into the crowd to fleece some other prisoner, someone less deadly and disreputable. The man behind Riddick walked up to stand next to him and smirked. "That wasn't really necessary, you know."
"Yeah, I know, Doc... but it felt pretty good." Riddick smiled. It wasn't a pleasant smile.
In the circle of wire and blood there were three real contenders left. The red-head, who had just choked the breath (and possibly the life) out of Ponytail, a dark-haired buzz-cut man with a bull-dog face that suggested he'd been in fights like this before, and another new guy in a rare prison- uniform hooded sweatshirt. They stood, each to what passed for a corner, watching each other warily. These, then, were the real fighters. They had been saving their energy and sizing each other up, knowing that anyone who had survived the initial scramble was likely to be a serious threat. Riddick actually felt an ounce of respect for these three. They looked intelligent as well as vicious. The crowd died to a low, excited murmur, sensing something coming. When nothing happened, they started to grow impatient. The chant started to rise... "Fight! Fight! Fight!"
Hooded Sweatshirt jerked at the first shout, looking upwards as though he almost expected something to drop out of the sky. Red-head pushed his sweat- matted hair back from his forehead and grinned maniacally; Buzz-Cut only grunted. All three were either too experienced or too clever to respond to the taunting of the crowd, choosing their own times for attack and for holding position. Good enough, especially since it gave all three a chance to get their breath back. It was a waiting game now, waiting to see who would crack first.
Tempers were starting to flare in the crowd, and a few fights broke out there as well, quickly suppressed by other people who actually wanted to see what was going to happen. Red-head leaned down to watch the other two, which Buzz-Cut took as a sign to think about engaging Hooded Sweatshirt. The third one just started to pace quietly. It would have been a stalemate, a three-way tie if the crowd hadn't been baying for blood.
"Fight!! Fight!! Fight!!"
"You think they're going to do it?" Doc murmured to Riddick, who was actually starting to think that this might really be interesting. One clever fighter in a melee was something to watch; he was wondering if these three might not actually strike a truce rather than obey the whims of the masses.
"I'm not sure... if they don't, though, someone's going to make them."
Hooded Sweatshirt kept pacing, looking more agitated. Buzz-Cut grinned and cracked his knuckles, obviously figuring the smaller man for an easy mark. Red just watched them both. It occurred to Riddick that Red might actually get the best of this deal if the other two beat each other up, and he'd probably counted on that. Buzz-Cut started to advance. The roaring of the crowd grew exponentially. "FIGHT!! FIGHT!! FIGHT!!"
Buzz-Cut advanced, starting to charge the other man, one fist held low and tight and close to his body with other hand reaching out to grab the man by the neck. Hooded Sweatshirt watched, most probably with alarm. Buzz-Cut was building up a great deal of torque and momentum with his position and his charge, and it didn't look as though the smaller fighter had his wits about him; on the contrary, it looked as though the waiting had unnerved him to the point of making a mistake.
And then at the last second he spun to the side, slamming Buzz-Cut hard in the kidneys with clenched fists one-two, one-two, three times in rapid succession. Buzz-Cut slammed into the fencing, startled and in pain.
"He's quick," Riddick said, actual admiration in his voice.
"Huh," was all the doctor said.
Buzz-Cut wasn't too slow himself, pushing off the fencing and aiming a fast punch to Hooded Sweatshirt's back and, more specifically, spinal column. Hoody seemed to anticipate this too, though, or maybe he just figured it was what he would have done. Either way, the smaller man slammed a fist up into Buzz-Cut's nose, spraying blood everywhere. Buzz-Cut doubled over, which resulted in a knee being violently applied to his sternum, twice. He staggered back, clearly dazed, audibly wheezing. The crowd was going wild, so loud that if the doctor was saying anything at this point, Riddick couldn't hear it. He watched the man in the hooded sweatshirt move back, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet, hands relaxed at his sides. There was something about the way he moved, like the star fighter in a bad kung-fu action tri-d but at the same time more familiar. Buzz-Cut glared at Hooded Sweatshirt with bitter hatred in his eyes. Hooded Sweatshirt stopped, balancing lightly on his feet as though he were about to take off and fly.
And then Riddick knew.
He leaned forward just as Hooded Sweatshirt leaped, flying with foot extended and snapping Buzz-Cut's sternum with a mighty kick. Red looked up from where he'd been crouching just in time for Buzz-Cut's head to hit his with another audible crack. He went reeling. Buzz-Cut's head jerked once, there was another crack, and then he hit the floor. The audience roared.
Riddick shrugged. Five menthols was a small price to pay for that kind of discovery.
He waited until the fight was over, until most of the crowd had filtered off to one of the other arenas or to the canteen or just to bed. It was pretty late in the so-called evening, after all. There wouldn't be any more fights today, not after that performance. Tradition dictated that the winner of the melee fought the first on the list of the night, and no one wanted to take on the newcomer without seeing what he could do one-on-one first. There were different tactics, different procedures for a one-on-one than for a melee, and a person who survived well in one sort of fight might not fight well in the other. But no one was willing to take the chance with the small fighter who might be clever as well as quick and strong. No one wanted to be the next person to lose to the newcomer and suffer the resultant drop in status. Not after that performance.
The bookies made the rounds (Riddick's smirked at him as he went past), collecting money and cigarettes and other trade goods and making out the rare payment to some lucky winner. From what it looked like very few people had actually bet on the sweatshirt kid, and most of those had probably been towards the very end. That made the mysterious fighter all the more impressive, and dangerous. Riddick had a healthy respect for people he found both impressive and dangerous. It was a short list.
Hooded Sweatshirt Guy was leaning down to wrap his ankles, also fixing the wrappings on his fists. Riddick was reminded of the few pictures of racehorses he'd seen, genetically engineered to eliminate the flaws of inbreeding and enhance the benefits of bloodlines. Their legs were wrapped, as were the hands of professional fighters in more elite arenas than this, because it was their greatest asset. He decided that the image was not far wrong. This person was born to and bred for fighting, and trained well. Most of the fighters in the arenas went bare-knuckle, not knowing any better and too dumb to figure it out.
Now, what the fighter was doing here in Slam City, he didn't know. Even most professional fighters had the sense to stay out of the worst prisons, if they did get caught for whatever transgressions they might commit. He couldn't think what this person might be doing in among the worst of the worst. But it was going to make things a hell of a lot more interesting.
He approached the fighter when just about everyone else had gone. Doc lurked in the shadows, making sure Riddick didn't get himself into trouble or maybe just indulging in his curiosity. But that was Doc. The Doc was safe, trusted with most of Riddick's secrets. Anyone Riddick didn't want to see in the background when he met the fighter was gone from the immediate area. Everyone else was too far away to see or hear clearly.
"Impressive fight," he said, leaning casually on the door of the cage. The fighter tied a last boot-lace and stood up slowly, looking at Riddick, sizing him up. No response.
"Do you usually go for the kill, or is that just a first-night kind of thing?" Riddick said after it became obvious that the other guy wasn't going to say anything. It was a safe enough guess; it didn't look as though Buzz-Cut would be dancing any jigs anytime soon, at least. The fighter only shrugged.
"You got a name?" Shrug. "A nickname?" Shrug. "You do talk, right?" Rude gesture. The fighter pushed past Riddick and started walking out, moving easily as though he hadn't just been in a grueling forty-five minute pit fight. "I know who you are." He whispered it as the fighter went past, sure that the other person would hear him.
"How the hell do you..." she snapped angrily, turning and glaring from beneath her hood, realizing only after the first few words were out that he'd tricked her. "Sonofabitch," she shook her head ruefully. "You got me. You're the first person so far to notice. I am impressed."
Riddick chuckled. She wasn't taking it hard, which meant she'd probably expected to be found out sooner or later. That was also smart of her, not to believe in the invulnerability of her disguise. "You're very good. It was the way you were jumping around... your ankles, your feet.. that kind of thing... that gave me the first clue. I can see why you use the disguise, though... you're not exactly the usual thing around here."
That was an understatement. Women were very rarely dumped in Slam City, and the ones that were had committed crimes so violent that it was thought they'd actually survive in a highly male-dominated prison population. Some of them actually did survive on their own, by violence. Most of them, the average girl, found a protector or group of protectors, becoming joy-girls for a prison gang in exchange for protection from the rest of the inmates. Most of the rest didn't survive even remotely intact. Some just withdrew and committed suicide shortly after being dumped in, some were meat for anyone stronger and were eventually killed. The guards didn't exactly prevent rape from happening, although they would tend to break up the gang- bang fests. The upper echelons pointed this out whenever someone challenged the roughly co-ed policy of Slam City. They also pointed out that having women around took some of the sexual pressure off of the men, made the prison population more docile. Most of them, anyway.
Women had never made it into the pit-fights.
She was actually pretty attractive, too, Riddick thought as he walked alongside her through the empty corridors. They had a few hundred yards till they hit the general population, where he anticipated that she'd take down her disguise or at least relax her guard a little. Away from the pit fights, she might figure that no one would match her up with the tiny fighter who'd kicked the melee's collective ass.
He could see close-cropped dark-blonde hair under the hood -- it looked like she buzzed it, like his own preferred hairstyle -- and bright blue eyes that highlighted surprisingly fine features. You couldn't tell from the bone structure of her face how many fights she'd been in, unlike Buzz- Cut earlier in the night. If she'd had any bones broken she'd had them either surgically replaced or they'd mended amazingly straight. She didn't even have the standard broken nose.
"I figured it was the easiest way to establish that I'm not going to be a prison whore," she explained after several minutes. "They'll figure it out sooner or later."
"It's also a challenge," Riddick pointed out, "To anyone who thinks they can ..." he paused, looking for a word that wasn't too cliche. "Tame you," he shrugged. It sounded like something out of a bad porno, but it was accurate enough.
"You mean beat me into submission," she shrugged also. "It happens. And it's better than being attacked every night. This way people at least think twice, maybe even three times, before they mess with me. This way, when they do find out, they'll have some idea of what I can do. Of what I'm willing to do."
Riddick laughed. "Yeah. You're definitely not the usual thing around here." No matter what they might have done on the outside, once in Slam City women tended to become a great deal more passive when faced with the oceans of testosterone. They rarely killed other men, although insider fights in the women's cellblock could be vicious and deadly.
She glanced over at him. "You're not the usual thing around here either. Did the shine-job give you zoom lens, too, or are you just observant? Most people wouldn't figure it out just from a pair of legs. Especially a pair of legs in baggy sweatpants and big shoes."
"Just observant." Riddick smiled his usual unpleasent smile again.
"Huh."
They reached the general population area. She pulled her hood down a little, revealing delicate and tiny ears and tufts of hair where her shaving appliance, shiv or whatever, hadn't gotten quite so close as on top. Her ears were pierced too, he noticed, but she wore no earrings that could be grabbed and ripped out in the middle of a fight. Smart. "Gotta go..." she said. "Got things to do, people to hurt..."
A girl after his own heart. Which reminded him... "I'd like to fight you, sometime..."
She glanced at him, startled. "What?"
"No, I'm serious. I'd like to fight you sometime. When you start fighting without the..." he gestured at the sweatshirt. "Disguise-thing." It was curiosity more than anything that prompted him to make the offer. He'd never run into a creature like her before, in the Slam or outside of it. He'd get to know her in every other way, but he'd probably never get a chance to fight her outside of the pit. And he was intensely curious.
She looked him up and down, sizing him up. Riddick had the feeling she was more careful than the people who usually gave him those kinds of looks -- he had the feeling she was evaluating his speed and intelligence as well as the very visible strength. His respect for her went up a few notches. So did his estimation of her deadliness. What had she done to get thrown in here? Was it as brutal and ruthless as she acted now, or had she changed, been through more systems than just Ursa Minor?
"Tell you what. You get the first fight after I get unmasked."
He arched an eyebrow at the deal she offered -- it wasn't exactly something she could be sure she had control over. Still, it would be one hell of a show, and one hell of a fight.
"Deal."
She grinned, then, a wide and maniacal grin that said she enjoyed a good physical challenge as much as he did. It was startling to see, especially in a woman built like her. She looked as though he could break her over his knee without trying. "I'll see you around, Richard," she said, and dashed off. He stared after her, startled. How had she known who he was? And... wait a minute...
"Hey, hang on!" he called after her, "You never told me your name!"
5-12-04: I came back to this bit of fanfiction because of The Chronicles of Riddick (coming soon to a theatre near you!) I actually rather like it, although most of the time when I go back and look at fanfic it's more of a matter of what the hell was I thinking. I can definitely see the points a couple reviewers made; I'm actually revising along those lines because towards the middle I think it just jumped the shark. My only excuse was that I wrote this while I was at work and really, really bored.
There's a lot more information about Riddick available now, and I've made an attempt to splice some of it in without giving too much away for tCoR. Some of it just had to stay, by freakish coincidence. You'll see if you poke around websites or when you see the movie. Some of it got changed to accommodate his backstory. Some of it I just expanded a little. There shouldn't be any spoilers.
I'm planning a sequel fic for this, actually, that ties in both this and my other three Pitch Black fics. Hope you'll find it as interesting to read as I do to write.
As always, Richard B. Riddick = Not Mine. Everyone else = Mine.
In Slam City, it wasn't so much that no one could hear you scream. It was that no one cared.
There was nothing but the sick, wet sound of flesh slapping sweat-covered flesh; the grunts of men being brutally punched, kicked, beaten; the labored breathing of men too badly hurt to stand. This was a common theme in the nightly event, as was the blood that spattered the razorwire-topped cage that the men fought in. It was a hideous sport, unworthy even of the gladiatorial rings under Caligula, Tiberius, or Nero. But the prison guards loved it.
Richard B. Riddick watched the carnage with dispassionate, silver eyes.
"There's some big money going around tonight," a voice from behind him said. Riddick didn't bother to turn, because the man hadn't bothered to hide his approach. He didn't care about the ones who walked up openly; it was the people who thought they could sneak up on him that he had to worry about. "New catch of fresh fish just arrived a few hours ago. Apparently there were a couple of bruisers among them; they got dumped into the Cage almost immediately."
"Is that so."
"That is so."
The Cage was one of several places Riddick liked to frequent, some others being The Pit or the Ring. Each of the names went with one of those over- used fighting arenas, and each was managed by a bookie (or a coalition of bookies) who milked the violent population of Slam City for all it was worth. The Cage was, as the name suggested, a fighting cage of wire mesh fencing ten feet high and topped with razorwire. It was normally sixteen feet in diameter, but could be expanded to as much as twenty five feet for large, all-out melee wars such as this one. Onlookers would place their bets on which inmate would be the last man standing in the Cage, and there was usually a brisk business going on during these nights. The Pit and the Ring had no such versatility; their structures were created out of ferrocrete and could not be altered. It was for this reason that the Cage was Riddick's particular favorite of the three; you never knew what you were going to get.
"Any of the new guys doing well? I don't recognize anyone in the ring." Riddick watched the Darwinian bloodbath as he fingered a packet of menthols inside his thigh pocket... he might actually make a bet on this one. Few melee-wars lasted past the first half hour, but this one was going on forty five minutes and counting. It might actually be worth it.
"Well, you see the guy over there who has the blonde ponytail in the headlock? The red-head?"
"Yeah."
"Odds on him jumped from fifty-to-one right up to four-to-one. Took down the first three guys just about by himself."
Riddick arched an eyebrow. "Impressive."
"Very."
He waved over a bookie; the weasel-faced man appeared at his side as if by magic. "Five on the red-head," Riddick said, paying the man. "And don't even think about palming any."
If his reputation as a deadly fighter hadn't dissuaded the bookie from grifting off of Riddick's bet, the expression on his face and the low tones of his voice would have. The bookie nodded, scowled, and disappeared back into the crowd to fleece some other prisoner, someone less deadly and disreputable. The man behind Riddick walked up to stand next to him and smirked. "That wasn't really necessary, you know."
"Yeah, I know, Doc... but it felt pretty good." Riddick smiled. It wasn't a pleasant smile.
In the circle of wire and blood there were three real contenders left. The red-head, who had just choked the breath (and possibly the life) out of Ponytail, a dark-haired buzz-cut man with a bull-dog face that suggested he'd been in fights like this before, and another new guy in a rare prison- uniform hooded sweatshirt. They stood, each to what passed for a corner, watching each other warily. These, then, were the real fighters. They had been saving their energy and sizing each other up, knowing that anyone who had survived the initial scramble was likely to be a serious threat. Riddick actually felt an ounce of respect for these three. They looked intelligent as well as vicious. The crowd died to a low, excited murmur, sensing something coming. When nothing happened, they started to grow impatient. The chant started to rise... "Fight! Fight! Fight!"
Hooded Sweatshirt jerked at the first shout, looking upwards as though he almost expected something to drop out of the sky. Red-head pushed his sweat- matted hair back from his forehead and grinned maniacally; Buzz-Cut only grunted. All three were either too experienced or too clever to respond to the taunting of the crowd, choosing their own times for attack and for holding position. Good enough, especially since it gave all three a chance to get their breath back. It was a waiting game now, waiting to see who would crack first.
Tempers were starting to flare in the crowd, and a few fights broke out there as well, quickly suppressed by other people who actually wanted to see what was going to happen. Red-head leaned down to watch the other two, which Buzz-Cut took as a sign to think about engaging Hooded Sweatshirt. The third one just started to pace quietly. It would have been a stalemate, a three-way tie if the crowd hadn't been baying for blood.
"Fight!! Fight!! Fight!!"
"You think they're going to do it?" Doc murmured to Riddick, who was actually starting to think that this might really be interesting. One clever fighter in a melee was something to watch; he was wondering if these three might not actually strike a truce rather than obey the whims of the masses.
"I'm not sure... if they don't, though, someone's going to make them."
Hooded Sweatshirt kept pacing, looking more agitated. Buzz-Cut grinned and cracked his knuckles, obviously figuring the smaller man for an easy mark. Red just watched them both. It occurred to Riddick that Red might actually get the best of this deal if the other two beat each other up, and he'd probably counted on that. Buzz-Cut started to advance. The roaring of the crowd grew exponentially. "FIGHT!! FIGHT!! FIGHT!!"
Buzz-Cut advanced, starting to charge the other man, one fist held low and tight and close to his body with other hand reaching out to grab the man by the neck. Hooded Sweatshirt watched, most probably with alarm. Buzz-Cut was building up a great deal of torque and momentum with his position and his charge, and it didn't look as though the smaller fighter had his wits about him; on the contrary, it looked as though the waiting had unnerved him to the point of making a mistake.
And then at the last second he spun to the side, slamming Buzz-Cut hard in the kidneys with clenched fists one-two, one-two, three times in rapid succession. Buzz-Cut slammed into the fencing, startled and in pain.
"He's quick," Riddick said, actual admiration in his voice.
"Huh," was all the doctor said.
Buzz-Cut wasn't too slow himself, pushing off the fencing and aiming a fast punch to Hooded Sweatshirt's back and, more specifically, spinal column. Hoody seemed to anticipate this too, though, or maybe he just figured it was what he would have done. Either way, the smaller man slammed a fist up into Buzz-Cut's nose, spraying blood everywhere. Buzz-Cut doubled over, which resulted in a knee being violently applied to his sternum, twice. He staggered back, clearly dazed, audibly wheezing. The crowd was going wild, so loud that if the doctor was saying anything at this point, Riddick couldn't hear it. He watched the man in the hooded sweatshirt move back, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet, hands relaxed at his sides. There was something about the way he moved, like the star fighter in a bad kung-fu action tri-d but at the same time more familiar. Buzz-Cut glared at Hooded Sweatshirt with bitter hatred in his eyes. Hooded Sweatshirt stopped, balancing lightly on his feet as though he were about to take off and fly.
And then Riddick knew.
He leaned forward just as Hooded Sweatshirt leaped, flying with foot extended and snapping Buzz-Cut's sternum with a mighty kick. Red looked up from where he'd been crouching just in time for Buzz-Cut's head to hit his with another audible crack. He went reeling. Buzz-Cut's head jerked once, there was another crack, and then he hit the floor. The audience roared.
Riddick shrugged. Five menthols was a small price to pay for that kind of discovery.
He waited until the fight was over, until most of the crowd had filtered off to one of the other arenas or to the canteen or just to bed. It was pretty late in the so-called evening, after all. There wouldn't be any more fights today, not after that performance. Tradition dictated that the winner of the melee fought the first on the list of the night, and no one wanted to take on the newcomer without seeing what he could do one-on-one first. There were different tactics, different procedures for a one-on-one than for a melee, and a person who survived well in one sort of fight might not fight well in the other. But no one was willing to take the chance with the small fighter who might be clever as well as quick and strong. No one wanted to be the next person to lose to the newcomer and suffer the resultant drop in status. Not after that performance.
The bookies made the rounds (Riddick's smirked at him as he went past), collecting money and cigarettes and other trade goods and making out the rare payment to some lucky winner. From what it looked like very few people had actually bet on the sweatshirt kid, and most of those had probably been towards the very end. That made the mysterious fighter all the more impressive, and dangerous. Riddick had a healthy respect for people he found both impressive and dangerous. It was a short list.
Hooded Sweatshirt Guy was leaning down to wrap his ankles, also fixing the wrappings on his fists. Riddick was reminded of the few pictures of racehorses he'd seen, genetically engineered to eliminate the flaws of inbreeding and enhance the benefits of bloodlines. Their legs were wrapped, as were the hands of professional fighters in more elite arenas than this, because it was their greatest asset. He decided that the image was not far wrong. This person was born to and bred for fighting, and trained well. Most of the fighters in the arenas went bare-knuckle, not knowing any better and too dumb to figure it out.
Now, what the fighter was doing here in Slam City, he didn't know. Even most professional fighters had the sense to stay out of the worst prisons, if they did get caught for whatever transgressions they might commit. He couldn't think what this person might be doing in among the worst of the worst. But it was going to make things a hell of a lot more interesting.
He approached the fighter when just about everyone else had gone. Doc lurked in the shadows, making sure Riddick didn't get himself into trouble or maybe just indulging in his curiosity. But that was Doc. The Doc was safe, trusted with most of Riddick's secrets. Anyone Riddick didn't want to see in the background when he met the fighter was gone from the immediate area. Everyone else was too far away to see or hear clearly.
"Impressive fight," he said, leaning casually on the door of the cage. The fighter tied a last boot-lace and stood up slowly, looking at Riddick, sizing him up. No response.
"Do you usually go for the kill, or is that just a first-night kind of thing?" Riddick said after it became obvious that the other guy wasn't going to say anything. It was a safe enough guess; it didn't look as though Buzz-Cut would be dancing any jigs anytime soon, at least. The fighter only shrugged.
"You got a name?" Shrug. "A nickname?" Shrug. "You do talk, right?" Rude gesture. The fighter pushed past Riddick and started walking out, moving easily as though he hadn't just been in a grueling forty-five minute pit fight. "I know who you are." He whispered it as the fighter went past, sure that the other person would hear him.
"How the hell do you..." she snapped angrily, turning and glaring from beneath her hood, realizing only after the first few words were out that he'd tricked her. "Sonofabitch," she shook her head ruefully. "You got me. You're the first person so far to notice. I am impressed."
Riddick chuckled. She wasn't taking it hard, which meant she'd probably expected to be found out sooner or later. That was also smart of her, not to believe in the invulnerability of her disguise. "You're very good. It was the way you were jumping around... your ankles, your feet.. that kind of thing... that gave me the first clue. I can see why you use the disguise, though... you're not exactly the usual thing around here."
That was an understatement. Women were very rarely dumped in Slam City, and the ones that were had committed crimes so violent that it was thought they'd actually survive in a highly male-dominated prison population. Some of them actually did survive on their own, by violence. Most of them, the average girl, found a protector or group of protectors, becoming joy-girls for a prison gang in exchange for protection from the rest of the inmates. Most of the rest didn't survive even remotely intact. Some just withdrew and committed suicide shortly after being dumped in, some were meat for anyone stronger and were eventually killed. The guards didn't exactly prevent rape from happening, although they would tend to break up the gang- bang fests. The upper echelons pointed this out whenever someone challenged the roughly co-ed policy of Slam City. They also pointed out that having women around took some of the sexual pressure off of the men, made the prison population more docile. Most of them, anyway.
Women had never made it into the pit-fights.
She was actually pretty attractive, too, Riddick thought as he walked alongside her through the empty corridors. They had a few hundred yards till they hit the general population, where he anticipated that she'd take down her disguise or at least relax her guard a little. Away from the pit fights, she might figure that no one would match her up with the tiny fighter who'd kicked the melee's collective ass.
He could see close-cropped dark-blonde hair under the hood -- it looked like she buzzed it, like his own preferred hairstyle -- and bright blue eyes that highlighted surprisingly fine features. You couldn't tell from the bone structure of her face how many fights she'd been in, unlike Buzz- Cut earlier in the night. If she'd had any bones broken she'd had them either surgically replaced or they'd mended amazingly straight. She didn't even have the standard broken nose.
"I figured it was the easiest way to establish that I'm not going to be a prison whore," she explained after several minutes. "They'll figure it out sooner or later."
"It's also a challenge," Riddick pointed out, "To anyone who thinks they can ..." he paused, looking for a word that wasn't too cliche. "Tame you," he shrugged. It sounded like something out of a bad porno, but it was accurate enough.
"You mean beat me into submission," she shrugged also. "It happens. And it's better than being attacked every night. This way people at least think twice, maybe even three times, before they mess with me. This way, when they do find out, they'll have some idea of what I can do. Of what I'm willing to do."
Riddick laughed. "Yeah. You're definitely not the usual thing around here." No matter what they might have done on the outside, once in Slam City women tended to become a great deal more passive when faced with the oceans of testosterone. They rarely killed other men, although insider fights in the women's cellblock could be vicious and deadly.
She glanced over at him. "You're not the usual thing around here either. Did the shine-job give you zoom lens, too, or are you just observant? Most people wouldn't figure it out just from a pair of legs. Especially a pair of legs in baggy sweatpants and big shoes."
"Just observant." Riddick smiled his usual unpleasent smile again.
"Huh."
They reached the general population area. She pulled her hood down a little, revealing delicate and tiny ears and tufts of hair where her shaving appliance, shiv or whatever, hadn't gotten quite so close as on top. Her ears were pierced too, he noticed, but she wore no earrings that could be grabbed and ripped out in the middle of a fight. Smart. "Gotta go..." she said. "Got things to do, people to hurt..."
A girl after his own heart. Which reminded him... "I'd like to fight you, sometime..."
She glanced at him, startled. "What?"
"No, I'm serious. I'd like to fight you sometime. When you start fighting without the..." he gestured at the sweatshirt. "Disguise-thing." It was curiosity more than anything that prompted him to make the offer. He'd never run into a creature like her before, in the Slam or outside of it. He'd get to know her in every other way, but he'd probably never get a chance to fight her outside of the pit. And he was intensely curious.
She looked him up and down, sizing him up. Riddick had the feeling she was more careful than the people who usually gave him those kinds of looks -- he had the feeling she was evaluating his speed and intelligence as well as the very visible strength. His respect for her went up a few notches. So did his estimation of her deadliness. What had she done to get thrown in here? Was it as brutal and ruthless as she acted now, or had she changed, been through more systems than just Ursa Minor?
"Tell you what. You get the first fight after I get unmasked."
He arched an eyebrow at the deal she offered -- it wasn't exactly something she could be sure she had control over. Still, it would be one hell of a show, and one hell of a fight.
"Deal."
She grinned, then, a wide and maniacal grin that said she enjoyed a good physical challenge as much as he did. It was startling to see, especially in a woman built like her. She looked as though he could break her over his knee without trying. "I'll see you around, Richard," she said, and dashed off. He stared after her, startled. How had she known who he was? And... wait a minute...
"Hey, hang on!" he called after her, "You never told me your name!"
