Chapter 13: Vemana
The name, as he learned in the following days of his debt payment, meant 'sacrifice' in the ancient Nahuatl language of the Aztecs. The reason for the name was obvious, given the cheapness of life in the underworld. He had made it abundantly clear to Santana that killing was not his business, being careful to phrase it in a way that did not paint it as a lack of will. An unnaturally white grin told him he had failed.
Only seconds into making the decision to rush out of his hospital room to make good on his debt early had he realized how grave a mistake it was. He was not cursed by the same phantom weight in his bones he had felt after a hollow point had punched through his skull, but even he understood that walking into a fight only hours after surgery was beyond stupid. Worse still was his reason for doing so was simply to boost his own ego, to have one win under his belt after failing so spectacularly. He knew he could not face Alejandra with the weight of that failure in his heart, so he kept walking, cursing at himself with each step.
Poraz avenue, this corner of it, in particular, was as seedy as Brian as expected. There was more graffiti than paint on the buildings and not a trashcan insight that wasn't being used as firepit for the legions of homeless. It was as if it had been skipped over during the great reconstruction, and skipped in many places during its construction as well. They came to a run-down yard full of storage units for rent, all of them warped and dented from multiple break-ins over the years. They walked past a security booth housing a lethargic nightman who regarded Santana with a casual nod with so much as looking up from his holoscreen.
"Are boothers always this crap at their jobs?" Brian thought in reference to the many 'security agents' he had met in his time, this one ironically being the most competent by virtue of willful negligence rather than pure incompetence.
The gangster and the courier walked through the barren lot, the former far in the lead on a route etched deep into his memory. They were not alone, bodyguards, likely the same ones he had seen at Bertorelli's, had stayed twenty paces behind them ever since they left the Hospital. There was little point in them following, Brian had no intention of attacking the gang leader now. He wanted to, and he knew he ought to, but it would be a pointless death to uphold a pride that had just been dragged through the dirt. He followed along now only to wash away the stains on his pride.
They came at last to a unit that was, apparently, their destination. It bore no distinctive marks that differentiated it from the dozens of others they have weaved through, save for the lock still being intact. At Santana's mere presence, the lock was undone and the metal sheet door slid back up into the roof. With unmistakably false curtness, he gestured inward.
"Right this way," he said with snide.
The would-be hero begrudgingly obeyed and the guards followed them in only moments later. In contrast to the exterior, the unit had not a scratch on it, and Brian quickly deduced why. The door fell back down with a loud clang and left them all in darkness. He could see the obvious setup and how he was expected to react, giving no reaction to deny Santana that small amount of satisfaction.
The floor beneath them began to shudder with a wrenching mechanical whine as Brian's suspicions were confirmed. The roar of a crowd seeped through the cracks as they descended, slowly eclipsing the grinding mechanism in volume. Light finally pierced through the gaps as Vemana was revealed to him through a protective wall of glass. Brian could not hold back his fascination despite his early resolve.
The arena below him was more akin to a professional fighting ring then what its name suggested, in many ways being more impressive than anything he had seen on Holovids. The arena was surrounded by glowing golden light, leaving not a single detail unknowable to the hungry eyes of the audience. The clientele was also no surprise to him, desperate dredges with too much loose change and Los Muertos grunts in the front rows and their superiors, along with the more sociopathic members of Dorado's upper class, at the high rises.
Two aspiring champions battled in an iron cage with gauze wrapped fists as their only weapons. The first fighter was a tall young afro-Mexican man who wore no shirt as he fought. He held a traditional boxing stance, but Brian doubted he had been properly trained by the way he threw each punch. He put too much weight into each hook and straight as if he were trying to punch through his opponent. Jabs were few and far between which irritated Brian as they had been his most effective attacks against the challenger, who had been dodging his clumsier throws.
The other combatant was someone he recognized almost instantly, despite his already flawed handsomeness still being marred by the new bruises he had left him with. Cesar was clad in the same rough-cut jacket and loose jeans, apparently not caring for the advantages his opponent gained by refraining from most clothing. But those details were almost meaningless when compared to his stance, or rather, Brian's.
His adaptation was sloppy but no sloppier than his opponent's fighting style, and far more refined than the courier's attempts at copying his. Regardless, he still struggled with it, as his movements suggested he was reeling from a liver blow he was unable to deflect as he normally would. Brian held no ill will toward Cesar, despite his profession and how they had met because of it. There was nothing he saw as a higher mark of quality than martial prowess, and Cesar held that in ample supply. Perhaps it was foolish to assume his imitation of the would-be hero's fighting style was done out of respect, as the latter had with his, but he could not interpret it as anything else.
Cesar remained still in the ring but prepared to counterattack, keeping to his standard tactics despite the change in style. It was a viable enough way to make use of kickboxing, Brian himself had more often than not used it this way, even when he would have preferred the direct approach. The defensive option worked in his favor as his opponent had chosen to do the opposite and threw out punch after punch, landing none of them. The one that had managed to meet flesh before Brian was here to observe had put doubt in the young gangster's mind, preventing him from attempting to strike back in the ample fractions of seconds necessary to turn the tide.
Even from his vantage point far above the ring, Brian could tell how frustrated he was in his performance against a comparatively amateur opponent. Weaving past another flurry of blows, Cesar was tiring out faster than his challenger and it was clear to both him and his most adamant observer that it was long past time to go on the attack. With one more dodge in his count of hundreds, Cesar threw a southpaw hook for the said of the other man's jaw. Fatigue had set in deeper than he had realized, however, and he only succeeded in glancing his chin. A shard to tooth flew from his mouth, but this was far from enough to give Cesar victory.
Before the fist had even reached him, the boxer was already swerving to strike back. Ducking down and rushing forward, he shot up with an uppercut to repay his chipped tooth thirty-two times over. Cesar, despite the rigors of exhaustion, was not so addled by it to leave such a massive hole in his defense. Spearing down with his elbow, bone met bone in a painful collision that left both sides gritting teeth and breathing swears. Cesar was the first to gather himself in immeasurably short moments after the impact, running toward his opponent and-
The ring disappeared behind a concrete wall, the elevator had entered the facility proper. Brian had almost forgotten where he was, having grown so invested in a fight he had seen only moments of between two men he ought to hate. For a brief moment, the grey gave way to a glass doorway that revealed a lavishly decorated entryway with two great bronze desks covered in holoscreens and surrounded by half-crazed humanity. Judging by the fistful of pesos some of the horde carried and the visibly armed guards standing at their perimeter, this was clearly the betting station. Criminal and unscrupulous citizen alike clambered and shouted, desperate to be the first to throw their ill-earned money to fate's will. Brian didn't even have the time to sneer at them before grey filled his sight again as they continued to descend.
"Really is a thing of beauty ain't it?" Santana suddenly broke the silence. "We've been building this place for almost thirty years now. Started out as just that metal box back when we were just another street gang. Sure, nothing's ever gonna beat the money the drugs and guns bring in, but Vemana will always be closer in my heart, even if I wasn't making bank off of it." Brian was less than moved by the criminal captain's musings, knowing from the moment he had seen him that he had never set foot into the ring of honor.
"Yeah, I figured you'd be the type to enjoy watching sweaty young boys duking it out." Brian chided. He realized the hypocrisy of such a childish insult, given how violently he had corrected people for falsely claiming similar things about him. He didn't care. If it got under Santana's warped skin by even a fingernail, it more than justified it to him.
"Oh, we have plenty of female fighters, even a few in-betweeners. Not all that many though, so it wasn't easy setting up a fight for you." Santana took the insult in stride, showing no reaction, though that could easily be due to the muscle weakness from his unnecessary biotic use. The silence lasted for far too long as the would-be hero searched for an equal response and they arrived at their location before he could find it.
They stepped out into a lavishly decorated hallway, its walls dotted with massive portraits of champions of the arena's sorted twenty-year history and their moments of greatest glory not far from them. Unsurprisingly, they were near exclusively members of Los Muertos, though Brian recognized Dingo Joe, a now-famous Australian Muay Tai fighter in much younger days and, oddly enough, Leo Hirose, the most infamous bike thief in North America with over two hundred confirmed thefts to his name. Few others were present in the hall as they walked on, most of the other guards and the rest looked to be relaxing competitors.
Two such young men stood in a doorway having an inane conversation Brian hadn't cared to listen to as he peered through the space between them. The way opened to a wide-open room sparsely occupied by fellow competitors and decorated only by obscene graffiti, various gang tags, and the occasional bench. Brian was surprised to see such a place here, the locker room was a place of comradery, yet it existed here in the bowels of a modern gladiator ring built by a cutthroat gang of arms dealers and drug smugglers.
The thought of simple kinship between criminals seemed so obvious in hindsight, yet it had never occurred to Brian before.
"They're still scum, they still deserve it," he repeated in his head several times to try and cleanse the doubt from his mind. It was dangerous for such a simple thing to unbalance his humors so easily, but the idea that his enemies lead more balanced lives than he did taxed him.
A wide swinging door shoved his thoughts away as he realized they had reached the end of the hall. An office more lush and opulent than the way that preceded it was home to towering marble columns and velveteen carpeting leading to a fine camphor wood desk at which sat a man at odds with his environment. His face bore a passing resemblance to one that featured prominently in the pictures of the honored champions, just far older and far, far fatter. He was dressed finely in a pure white jacket studded with gold and amethyst jewelry that must have fit him well many years ago. It contrasted quite well with the dark brown tones of his skin, though any idea of style was lost with his quickly receding hairline. He grinned wide at the sight of Santana, chomping down tight on a sizable stogie that sprinkled ashes into a beard that camouflage them. His voice was as smoky as the stench of the room and as deep as his pockets as he greeted them.
"Hey hey hey, it's the king!", the obese man said in reference to Santana as he rose from his gilded chair. Only now did Brian see the considerable amount of muscle left in the man's wide frame, nearly all of it in his burly arms.
"Come on, Elvis, we all know there's only one king around here!" Santana replied with the first genuine smile Brian had seen from the gangster. He doubted that was the large man's real name though whatever meaning it held was beyond him.
"So this little huevos is the Doomfist, eh?" he said with a chortle as he strode over. He was a massive in height as he was in width, standing a full foot and a half over Brian. He leered over the courier, sizing him up as he took a long drag of his cigar. Taking a knee to come eye level with him, Elvis let out a phlegmy laugh as he blew smoke in his face. "You sure this twink is up to it, boss? He's stringier than a chinaman's breakfast! I doubt he's last a round in the women's league!"
Brian only narrowly avoided curling his fists, more from a need to wave the sicken smoke away than self-control. He was only here because of the trouble listening to his raw emotion had brought him after all, but if this was another attempt to rile him up, what was their end for it? It had to be some form of test, some final gauge of his grit before he was thrown into the meat grinder.
"I came here to fight, not talk. Just set something up" Brian replied with a stern face he fought to keep when assaulted by the unfamiliar stench of tobacco. A slow chuckle rose from Elvis' belly and a quick knowing smile to Santana told him what he thought of Brian's posturing.
"Alright then Mr. Fister, you'll get your fight soon enough. We already set up a dance between you and little Miss Concita, and don't think that's us going easy on you. You get ten minutes prep since Cesar should be done with his match right about…" He trailed off as he sauntered back over to his desk and slid his finger over an inconspicuous button. "...Now." A holoscreen filled the center of the room, showing an exhausted young gangster being bathed in applause over a foe with a visibly broken arm.
Oddly, Cesar seemed unmoved by his own victory and the crowd's adoration, only passively raising an arm to acknowledge them. Brian wasn't quite sure what to take from that, whether they shared the same disgust for the praise of gawking bystanders who saw them as a novelty or if this was a more simple case of disappointment in his own failure to do better or some mix of both. As much as Brian held respect for the gangster for his skill, he preferred to believe the latter. He needed to avoid anything that would make him hesitate, especially now. "Your locker's number 1488" Elvis continued with a self-satisfied sneer at his doubly deep cut to the would-be hero. "I know you won't break any rules; there aren't any."
With that and a lack of cleverness on his part, Brian left for the locker room without another word. The two layabouts from before still blocked the doorway with their inane conversation. Vemana being what it was, he knew he would need to prove himself at every turn. and as such, resolved to make it through the door even if that meant he would have two fights before his first. Mentally preparing himself, he strode toward them projecting all his confidence forward. To his dismay, the two simply moved back to let him through without so much as a stutter in their exchange. There was no factor of fear in their decision, it was simply a natural courtesy and the awkwardness was physically painful for him. Worse still that if further cemented how far removed he had become from normal human interaction.
Avoiding eye contact and ignoring the few comments his fellow competitors shared amongst themselves, the less prejudiced amongst them referring to him as 'fresh meat'. None of them bothered to engage him in direct hazing, few bothered to notice him at all. He would have preferred it the other way, considering all he had done so far, but he caught himself for being vainglorious, that had put him on the ruinous path in the first place. Shaking off what he could remember of The Black, for now, he scanned through the lockers, disregarding all else.
Finding his own, he dwelled on its number, knowing the rough context of it but not the specific meaning, but an insult was still an insult no matter how little he understood it. The locker itself was in shockingly good condition with only a few spots of old glue from a torn off decal as the marks of its previous owner. It was a tall gym locker, top-of-the-line with a holo-interface, far more advanced than the practically ancient mechanical locks they had been forced to use at school. The keypad awaited a new code from him to make it truly his, so he gave it the date he took up the fist.
The door popped open to reveal an emptiness Brian had nothing to fill it with. This would be a no holds barred fight and he would need every tool at his disposal. He had never been in a real fight with a woman before, as he did not truly count his encounter with Widowmaker, but he figured the egalitarian thing to do was treat this Concita with the same taciturn brutality he applied in all of his battles. Regardless, he decided to leave out this particular detail when he confessed everything to Alejandra once he was done here.
He dwelled on what explanation might be even remotely sufficient while the minutes ticked by.