2270-06-15_reg_v_emp.rec

Mantis delivered the final blow to Dreadnought, an arm-blade flickering out to puncture his neck where the armored scale had been pulverized and stripped away. This late in the fight, both of them were so depleted that replacements were hard to come by, and Mantis had been doing neck strikes the whole fight. The attack punched through Dreadnought's flesh like tissue paper, and the crowd went wild.

All things considered, it had been a damn impressive fight, especially since this was both of their first times in a real tournament. Mantis was— or at least had used to be —Cacren, using a body with the four-legged, two-armed body plan of their original species, and adding in a pair of wicked folding arm blades. Valentin suspected that they'd eventually drop the quadruped build, those never managed to do well against grapplers. But the blades, those were novel. They had some interesting combination of keratin-bone base and bioceramic edge that kept them flexible enough to not snap when hit at odd angles like pure bioceramic did, and the serrated edge certainly seemed to be pretty effective at ripping up armor plates.

Dreadnought was also interesting in his own way, purely because he wasn't. His chosen form went straight up to the weight limit with a humanoid build, absolutely covered in muscle and armor without any natural weapons besides bony brass knuckles and knee plates. Popular sentiment held that a bruiser was middling in both combat potential and crowd-pleasing. Dreadnought hadn't lived up to that expectation. With armor thick enough to no-sell half of Mantis's attacks and jabs that sounded like a whipcrack when they landed, he'd gotten no small share of crowd support, and so rapidly eroded Mantis's armor that the fight had gotten messy. And the crowd loved messy.

But now there was a victor, and a showy one at that. Mantis finished their strike with a full decapitation, the arm-blade forcing its way through flesh and bone like a pair of shears as it pulled back. Dreadnought's tank-like head tumbled to the ground with the rest of his body, the impact inaudible compared to the ding ding of a boxing bell signaling his surrender.

"And that's the bell, folks," Valentin called out to the arena, "Dreadnought's tapped out, and Mantis takes the match!"

"I dunno Val, maybe he'll get back up from that one," Velimir joked, "he sure did the other six times!"

The pair of announcers shared a laugh. "Well, it's a fantastic first showing for both of them," Velimir continued, "even if it's a loss for Dreadnought, he's certainly made an impression tonight. It's rare to get two instant crowd favorites like this, you know?"

"Absolutely, Vel," Valentin answered, "this one is— ooh, I don't know about that." Mantis was holding Dreadnought's severed head aloft for the crowd. A little gauche, considering that Dreadnought was still in there. Or perhaps he and Mantis were having a chat while playing it up, it was always hard to tell if the attitudes were real or an act, especially for newbies.

"Maybe they're trying to get a face to show up and put 'em down. Parading around like that... hey, it's good TV!"

"Well, they might have picked the wrong match to do it. A little birdie told me we've got a special guest here tonight." The crowd murmured in response, an undercurrent of curiosity building among the cheers and jeers.

"You sly dog," Velimir said with a grin, "did you get your claws on the guest list?"

"Perhaps. I'm told our guest takes particular interest in knocking the egos off of cocky winners."

"Are you— she retired, Val!"

Music blared, and the crowd lost their minds as the spotlights went crazy, tracking around as if searching for a target.

"I've heard some rumors that her retirement was greatly exaggerated."

The spotlights found their target: a woman pushing her way through the crowd towards the ring. There was nothing to indicate she was anything out of the ordinary until she turned to one of the orbiting cameras and winked, her yellow slitted eyes shifting into purple cross-pupil ones.

Mantis didn't seem to panic, or perhaps simply didn't understand what was going on as a near-baseline human woman climbed into the ring. They towered over her, a bioengineered monstrosity more than double her height.

"Um," they asked, voice multiplied by the speakers, "Who are you?"

She shifted, a blur of folding space enveloping her as if she was throwing off a jacket. "Who am I?" six hundred kilos of grey-and-white armor answered, as Mantis realized suddenly what was happening. "I am jealousy, I am hatred, I am the serf that chafes against the master's yoke. I am the inevitable fate of tyrants and victors. I am death," she spoke, a calm cadence magnified by the sound system. Then, with a roar mimicked by the crowd: "I. AM. REGICIDE!"

To their credit, Mantis understood the assignment, sinking back into a fighting stance. If anything, it was impressive that they still had enough left to piece together a fully-functioning body.

Regicide held up a single claw. "Draw one drop of my blood while you still breathe and you'll have my blessing. Consider it a test."

The announcers joined in again as the two fighters settled into ready stances.

"Well folks," Velimir started, "looks like we've got a bit of a treat. Regicide coming out of retirement to bestow her blessings upon a first-time entrant—"

"Butt out of it and start the countdown, big guy," Regicide's voice interrupted Velimir's. "Or do I have to come up there and redecorate?"

"Ooookay... fighters, are you ready?" Mantis gave a thumbs up in response; Regicide simply glared at the announcer's booth. Her grudge with the announcers was legendary at this point.

"Three... two... one... FIGHT!"

The pair leaped towards each other. The difference in physicality was obvious from the jump; Regicide was simply faster in forward motion than Mantis's build, but like any Cacren, they were just as fast sideways and backwards as they were forwards. Mantis let Regicide attack first, flicking her tail around to spear them in the side of the torso. The blade bit deep, puncturing through the gaps between armored scale, but Mantis lashed out with an arm-blade the moment it sunk in.

The intent was obvious: Mantis knew they wouldn't win a fight with this much disparity in reserves, even ignoring the skill difference. They only needed one drop of blood, and any attack would expose Regicide to the point where she could be cut. Their slash went for the unarmored section of her tail, only for it to no longer be unarmored at the precise moment of impact as she rotated the entire appendage via shifting, briefly replacing the unprotected line of compound heat pits with bone-white plating.

Regicide took the opportunity to leap onto Mantis's torso as they attempted to deal with the retracting tail-blade, an uppercut with her left claw tearing off what remained of their chest plating while the right pressed back on their shoulder in an attempt to get them on the ground.

It almost failed. Mantis had a stable build; their body plan made them difficult to knock over. But then that tail whipped around again, and the blade jammed itself into a hip joint. It hadn't even been damaged in the fight against Dreadnought; Mantis had a half-dozen replacements on deck. But it was enough to send them toppling backwards, another pair of hits from Mantis's scythes scraping over her scales as they fell.

Shapeshifting knitted their hip back together in a fraction of a second, but Regicide was already setting up the kill, digging her rear claws into Mantis's chest and leaping over them as she wrapped her tail around their head. With a twist of her hips, she pulled, and Mantis's head snapped free, fully severed from their body. They immediately attempted to form another body from their reserves, muscle and bone unfolding from their exposed vertebrae like a strange plant, but gave up when Regicide brought their head around and dug her claws into the back of their regrowing spine.

"This one has earned my blessing!" she shouted to the world, physical body roaring while she spoke digitally.

<Wait, what?> Mantis sent her privately.

<Hey, you did a great job teeing me up, too. We should chat after.>

The crowd reacted as usual to the disembodied head being tossed into the stands, with a combination of cheers and jeers. This time the jeers were a bit stronger, to nobody's surprise. Regicide typically fell somewhere between heel and antihero, and picking off a seriously injured newcomer was certainly more on the heel side of things. But Mantis had shown no small amount of skill and composure— managing a single scratch in what was basically an execution was impressive, and the crowd knew it.

"Villain!" A new voice rang out over the arena's sound system. "You call yourself the death of kings, and yet you act a tyrant!"

"Hello old friend," Regicide replied, "Have you returned for one final match? One last attempt to put me in my place?"

"I have," the voice answered, "and as I recall, I won our last match."

"Then talk shit to my face, princeling. Surely you're not scared of breaking our tie."

A man in the front row stepped forwards, hopping down into the ring as he shifted in a golden flicker. "As you wish," Emperor replied, standing tall in his true form as the crowd cheered.

Much like his rival, Emperor was an innovator in his own design, even if the basics were simpler than Regicide's. Similar to Dreadnought (or perhaps the other way around; Dreadnought was similar to him), he was a tall, bulky humanoid layered in armored scales. But what distinguished Emperor was the weaponry. The rules prevented bringing in any weapons that weren't part of your body, so Emperor had made them part of his. Rather than building blades into his physiology, he'd built them to detach: a pair of knives, each made out of a single sharpened scale, grown on the side of his thighs, and an entire sword, grown from bone and scale as a second spine.

The rivalry between the two had begun the first time they'd met, if for no other reason than their respective choice of name. Emperor, the self-styled "King of the Ring", gracious in victory and humble in defeat, against Regicide, murderer of victors, equally enthused with shredding someone on their first win as she was with taking on a tournament champ. The pair had traded championship titles for the last decade, and Regicide had "retired" with a tie of four wins to Emperor's four.

"So this was your surprise, Valentin? And here I was, wondering who the headline act would be!" With the two fighters circling each other, the commentary was back in action.

"Hey, everyone loves a mystery headliner. This should be a pretty drawn-out— oop, there they go." Regicide had already lunged for Emperor, ignoring the lack of countdown entirely. Not that it would really have mattered; razorclub fighting was a marathon, not a sprint. The first blows were mutual, with Emperor landing a nasty right hook to Regicide's jaw as she stabbed with her tail, deflecting off armor at the last moment.

"Now, that's some real experience on display, Vel. That punch wasn't meant to injure, just throw off her vision enough from the impact to deflect that penetrating strike, and it worked."

"Sure did," Velimir continued as the two fighters lightly sparred. "These two have fought enough that there's some real strategy going on. Emperor's going to try and crack her armor plating with blunt force and then switch to blades, Regicide's going to fish for a penetrating strike or a grapple."

"Two very different styles on display, that's for sure. Emperor's got a history of wearing down opponents, relying on his armor design to trade better over—" Valentin cut off as Regicide made another attempt at a tail strike, but Emperor anticipated it, letting the blade scrape off his armor and then grabbing the tip with his hand. The other ripped the knife-scale off of his thigh, ready to slice the whole length of heat pits on her tail, only to be interrupted when it wrapped around his forearm and pulled.

Emperor got a brief second of air time as a hundred and fifty kilos of tail muscle flung him against the wall of the pit, shortly followed by Regicide pouncing on his back, claws hooking under and ripping off scales as she struggled to keep him face down. Even in a disadvantageous position, Emperor constantly shifted in new armor, maintaining the protective layer while he fought Regicide off of him.

"Brutal grapple from Regicide, absolutely taking advantage of that extra limb!" Val exclaimed. Grapples, especially early on in a fight, were always vicious as both fighters struggled to outdo each other at stripping their opponent's defenses.

"She's staying in it! Very risky, she—" Vel was interrupted by Emperor managing to flip over. Regicide reacted, immediately breaking her pin to get range again. "—or maybe not. Emperor's definitely got an advantage for armor breaking, as long as he can get the right angle, Regicide's being careful here."

The skirmishing continued while the announcers discussed recent improvements each fighter's engineering teams had made. Regicide's recent updates had pumped up her raw strength by a few percentage points, and improved the bone backing of her boron nitride armor. Emperor had redesigned blades with narrower edges and better shear lines, and a more optimized armor layout with better weave patterning for his dermal aramid. Little technical details, but the initial stages of a fight were slow, and amalgams had a lot of armor to work through.

Eventually, though, the fight moved on to bigger and better things. Regicide was faring better, at least from a glance, but that was because Emperor had shattered a large fraction of her smaller scales while leaving the major armor plates intact. He, on the other hand, was visibly missing armor. When Regicide ripped off a scale, she took the whole thing, leaving raw basal lamina exposed. It would be extremely painful and a severe infection risk for anyone else, but for amalgams who would both be done with these bodies in the next twenty minutes... not so much.

The first serious cut to flesh came from Emperor, drawing and throwing a knife-scale with uncanny precision. The blade sunk through the crushed scales on Regicide's shoulder, where the heavier armor plates couldn't protect her. Emperor attempted rushing her in the split second she spent pulling the blade out, only for Regicide to notice him with her tail heat pits and sink eighty centimeters of knife into his ribcage for his trouble.

But this, too, was a feint. Just like how Regicide had baited Emperor into attacking as she appeared to look away, he'd baited her into a tail strike. He immediately grabbed the tail, drawing a knife with the other hand and shoving the tip into the strip of unarmored flesh where her heat pits were, attempting to cut up her tail like he was unzipping a pair of pants. Regicide stopped him from fully ripping up her tail, shifting in place and re-armoring, but the trade had already been completed, at least from Emperor's perspective, and he was already backing up to disengage.

The two had very different fighting styles, though. Emperor was a master of winning trades and feints, preserving just a little more flesh and armor than his opponent, enough to add up over a long fight. When he won, it was because he could still stand and his opponents could not. Regicide was the opposite. When she went for it, she went for it.

Regicide went for it. Even though she was out of position, with just a little too much distance to go, she must have seen some opening. She leapt forwards, jackhammering her freshly reformed tail-blade into Emperor's chest cavity like a gory woodpecker. Ignoring his attempts to get another knife into her joints, she dug in deeper, shredding his torso with her talons, then his forearms as he tried to block. The onslaught only ended when Emperor met aggression with his own, shoulder-checking her to the ground. Regicide took the opportunity to sweep his legs and start again.

"This is an insane level of aggression we're seeing from Regicide tonight, Val," Velimir said as the two wrestled on the floor, slick and red.

"She's normally one of the more aggressive fighters, but, agreed, this is something else. Let's get the damage chart up there." Valentin motioned, and three-dimensional figures of each fighter popped up, orange and red blotches indicating how much of each's reserves had been depleted and where. Neither were undamaged, and more blinked yellow and orange every moment, but there was a distinctive edge in favor of Regicide.

"Look at this. Regicide started out with just this tiny hole in Emperor's defenses, on the right of his ribcage here. She widened it, made sure he didn't have any adjacent armor he could shift to cover it, then dug in."

"Being able to get a blade like that into the chest cavity is a problem for Emperor, that's for sure. He can't risk reforming that muscle without Regicide being able to shred it all over again, but he can't not reform it either, he needs it to get her off of him."

"Emperor's playing his own game too. Look at how he's mostly jelly there, only going solid right when he needs it to move. That's an amalgam classic, let your opponent keep hitting ruined tissue until it matters. And see where he's hitting? It's all around joints and extremities, he's still making sure her armor is ruined for when he can disengage and take out that sword."

"At this rate, though... he's going to need a half dozen or more good dismemberments to catch up, and I don't think Regicide's dumb enough to give them to him."

Emperor managed to get Regicide off eventually with a perfectly-placed knee to her ribcage, breaking a half-dozen ribs and probably collapsing a lung, giving him just enough time to repair his own damage and get some distance. The sword came out— a full meter of boron nitride scale with a bone hilt, grown into his back like a second spine. For a human, it would have been a longsword. In Emperor's hands, it was closer to a gladius.

He wielded the blade with a flourish, then slashed. Regicide couldn't evade, not with the extra reach it gave him. The edge bit deep into her shoulder, passing through ruined scales and bulletproof skin to slice cleanly through bone, and her left arm fell to the ground. There wasn't much blood; engineered veins self-sealed on exposure to atmosphere, and a new arm unfolded from nothingness in an instant. If it hurt, she didn't show it.

"And now he's got the sword out, Val! This is where it gets heated." Emperor seemed to agree, pressing the advantage to take slices out of Regicide. She lashed out with her tail, but Emperor had taken the fight back to trading instead of diving, and he was good at trading.

"Sure does. Regicide's tail is certainly more effective in a vacuum, she's got more reach and flexibility, but that thing weighs over a hundred kilos. Emperor's weapons only weigh twenty, and he gets to spend that difference on muscle and armor." The situation was looking increasingly bleak for Regicide as Emperor sliced her over and over, his bioceramic blade carving through muscle with ease. She managed to catch one strike with intact armor on her palms and rip the blade out of his hands, but he simply shifted in another and attacked again.

Regicide lost more parts. A few fingers, a hand, her tail-blade. Vibrant red blood coated the floor, holding its color far longer than it should have. Replacements shifted in, only to be attacked again, each swing taking advantage of armor that had been strategically broken beforehand.

"Not looking good for Regicide, Val, this could be it if she doesn't get out of that corner."

"Not looking good at all, no, she— holy fuck!" Regicide pulled out the trick she'd been saving for the entire fight. Not reforming yourself required almost perfect self-control, the amalgam instinct to be intact and protected was difficult to overcome. But Regicide had done it.

Her armor shifted, ruined scales reforming into an entire fresh layer in a fraction of a second, as if she had never been touched at all. Emperor's last swing recoiled off of carbide armor to his visible horror, and Regicide dived in. Razor claws found purchase in the scales protecting his neck, pulled to expose skin, and eighty centimeters of bioceramic razor flicked around to sever his spinal column.

The second Emperor went limp, Regicide moved again. The tail-blade stayed embedded in his neck; Emperor wouldn't be able to shift in replacements with something blocking the location. Regicide carved into his neck, talons ripping apart the muscles and tendons that kept his head attached. With a flourish, she ripped it off, the armored, tank-like skull flying up into the air.

But Emperor wasn't done. With more bodies to burn, he reformed himself, an entirely fresh body shifting in all at once and drawing another sword... and Regicide was there to meet him, once again. In a beautiful, hopeless display of skill, Emperor hurled it into her guts as he fell back to earth, the tip sliding right between armored plates. She ignored it. Her tail speared through his neck again as he fell back down, and she flipped to land with a single claw on his skull as it hit the ground, all of her weight focused on to that single point of contact.

Bioengineered bone was tough, but that much weight on a small target was enough to shatter it. She grabbed through the broken skull as Emperor attempted to reform it, reaching for the armored braincase inside, and repeatedly slammed Emperor's head on the ground with all the grace of a rabid animal. When she finally stood, there was nothing left of his head but a bloody pulp splattered over the floor of the arena, and she held the armored cube inside aloft as the crowd screamed.

Regicide's voice roared over the speakers as her physical body joined in searing exultation. "LONG LIVE THE KING!"