Chapter 6:
By the time they arrived at the Wembley arena, the fight was already in the third round.
"Maybe we should get them to call the fight," Bruce suggested. "I'm sure the ringside doctor would listen to you."
"You don't know Ted," Dinah replied. "No matter what they threaten him with, he's not going to lose a fight."
"Sounds like a stubborn man," Bruce sighed.
"Yeah, you two would get along perfectly," she countered.
It only took them a few minutes to get ringside. Being with the Champ's niece had its benefits; nearly every one of the arena staff knew her by name.
"Give me the vial," Bruce said, holding his hand out to Dinah.
"Bruce, we need to get this to Ted, now!" she replied. "Look at him. He's covered in sweat and moving at half the speed he normally does."
"The Champ's not looking good folks," they heard the announcer say at the ringside table. "No one expected this fight to be a challenge for the Wildcat Ted Grant, but right now it looks like he's going to be lucky to make it out of the third round."
"Dinah, do you remember me telling you that my phone was a lab on a chip?" Bruce asked. "It can check the fluid in the vial and make sure it actually is the antidote and not just more poison."
Dinah looked up at her uncle with worry in her eyes, then back to Bruce, "Okay, but hurry. I've never seen him look so tired before."
Bruce took a sample of the fluid from the vial and tested it for the presence of the venom he'd found in the poison. Anti-venoms were made by harvesting antibodies from animals that had been injected with diluted versions of the venom; the vial was filled with far more antibodies than a normal anti-venom, but Bruce couldn't identify the animal they came from or if they'd even be safe for a human.
"Dinah, I think this is the antidote, but I've honestly never seen anything like this before," he explained. "I don't know if this will help him or kill him. With a few hours in a lab I could break it down like I did with the poison, but…"
"Ted doesn't have a few hours," Dinah finished for him. "We have to try! It's that or let him die."
The bell rung to end the round and Dinah ran to Ted's corner.
"Ted, we've got it!" she called.
"Dinah! Where the hell have you been?" Ted scolded. "I was worried sick about you!"
"Never mind that now," she told him with a glare that said there was no point in arguing. "We've got the antidote! You have to drink it!" She pulled the top of the vial and presented it to him.
"Hey, wait!" a floor side official called, getting their attention. "You can't just ingest something in the middle of the fight. It has to be tested and approved."
"He's dying of poison, he has to drink the antidote!" she hollered back at him.
"If it's really that serious than he can forfeit the fight," the official replied.
"Okay, he forfeits!" she hollered.
"Like hell!" Ted laughed, dismissing the notion. "You just wait by the side of the ring and I'll drink it when the fight's over."
"Ted, don't be an idiot!" she shouted. "This isn't worth your life!"
"Little bird, this is my life," Ted said, gently caressing her face with his gloved hand. "I've never given up in my life, never quit and I'm not about to start now. Kids look up to me, they'll accept it if I lose, but I can't just quit on them. Not now, not ever."
"But Ted…" Dinah protested with tears in her eyes, but the bell rang and Ted Grant turned his attention back to the ring.
"The damn fool is going to get himself killed just to win a stupid fight!" Dinah cried her voice filled more with worry than anger.
"No," Bruce argued as he put his arm around her. "He's not doing this to win a fight. He's doing it to prove that no matter what they throw at him, he'll do the right thing. He's doing it to show everyone that they can't make him surrender. Most of all he's doing it to show them not to mess with his family."
"I can't lose him Bruce," Dinah said in a weak voice. "I can't watch him die. Not like Dad."
"I know, Dinah," Bruce comforted her, knowing all too well what she was feeling. "But like you said, he's a stubborn man. He's not about to die tonight."
"The Champ's come out with renewed vigour this round," they heard the announcer say. "He's putting the challenger on his heels."
Bruce watched in awe as Grant lived up to his moniker, fighting like a wild animal. Bruce had studied the poison Grant was injected with. He knew that the Champ must be feeling exhausted and weak. His joints would be aching and his vision would be swimming. Just standing must have been a challenge, but Ted Grant would never give up. He was going to make sure his attackers got the message; they couldn't get to him through his niece.
The fight was going back and forth for another two rounds, when the challenger finally made a fatal mistake. He missed a punch and left himself open inside Grant's wheel house. They called it "Grant's Tomb, the deadliest chuck of real estate in the ring." If you stepped inside it, odds are you ended up flat on the mat, and this time was no different.
"One. Two. Three. Four. Five," the whole arena counted with the official. "Six. Seven! Eight! Nine!"
The ten was drown out by the sounds of screaming fans and Dinah rushed from Bruce's side, over the ropes and into the ring.
Bruce smiled as he watched her practically force the vial down Grant's throat. Had it been lethal or worsened the virus, the effects would have been almost immediate, so it was pretty safe to assume that the antidote worked, but just in case, Bruce forward his files to the local Wayne Tech bio lab and sent Lucius an e-mail to ensure that it was made top priority, simply telling him that Grant had been poisoned and though the local medical teams thought they had an antidote, he was a fan of the Champ and wanted to be sure Wayne Industries did their part to help out.
He watched for a moment as they celebrated in the ring before melting into the crowd. It was time to get back to his life, and he had one hell of a headache.