The universe does not belong to me.

Chapter Six

The crowd roared. The cage fights had always traditionally been the most anticipated event of the night. Forget the dancing, the girls, the music; the blood is what the people came for.

And the blood did flow. It was dangerous to be in the cage, because anything went. Usually the fighter's second was allowed to check the opponent for any sharp weapons and confiscate them, but if they missed something, the match was not stopped; it continued and more often than not the fighter with the sharp weapon won. Usually with the death of their opponent.

However death was luckily not a prerequisite for the fight to end, a knock out was usually sufficient, but it made for a good show, and the audience demanded it, granting respect and admiration to the winner. Respect that all desired in a place where a person could be killed for looking at another the wrong way.

Respect was the main reason Jenette stood at the opposite end of the rusted metal cage facing a boy who resembled a one ton elephant more than a human being.

She wanted respect, and the firepower to back it up. A paradigm shift was occurring in the prison. Power was variable and alliances were changing. And people were placing their bets on other horses, primarily because Morozko Tolstoy was to be released, soon.

For 2 years he had been the kingpin; the pseudo emperor of 500 or so pubescent teenagers, and at 15 his sentence was finally over. The strong were practically giggling in lust over the seat he would vacate. He possessed connections and enterprises, however small, which he wanted to leave to a successor. And for reasons unfathomable to some, he wanted to follow the straight and narrow. It helped that his father was a Russian synthetic tycoon with only a few more years left to live.

Jenette was always the political one.

She wormed herself close to Morozko, doing favors for him, while he returned the assistance with benignity. The fight was the last thing he would ever grant her.

At the final moment the boy set to fight Hāthī, the elephant, marched up to the emcee, shaking to his toes, and proclaimed that he would withdraw because he "knew what was good for him." Jenette could practically hear Morozko laughing. But when the boy proclaimed, angry and through his teeth, that Jenette would take his place in the fight, everyone was surprised.

Even the most hardened girls refused to fight in the cages. When a person walked into that cage, the door locked behind them, rules were forsaken which equaled a lot of foul play, and steroid use was rampant. So only the combatant who knew they had no discernable weaknesses participated in the fights.

And Hāthī knew he had no weaknesses, Morozko originally tried to get him to drop out, but he refused as a matter of dignity, but for how much he preached about honor he really possessed little of it. He was the dirtiest fighter there was, with the most kills under his belt, fortunately or unfortunately he preferred to fight with his bare hands, specializing in ripping throats and jaws. So when Drake searched him for any weapons he could not find a single item on him.

He didn't even bother to have Jenette searched.

Hāthī means elephant in Hindi, because I couldn't resist, picture a bigger uglier Jason Momoa as Conan, and you'll get what I see.