Secret Santa Fic for Kalli
Jan 1, 2014 0:00:22 GMT -5
Post by Roger Vandelay on Jan 1, 2014 0:00:22 GMT -5
Happy holidays, Kalli!
Another Day
Author’s Note: This story is part of my long-running A/U and takes place after The Boy Who Swallowed Fire but before Meta Kombat: Confrontations. Note that certain prose towards the beginning of the story is ‘recycled’ here in order to maintain the interconnectivity of the three pieces. Click here to listen to the theme song for this fic.
The Pilot Ridge arena was filled to the brim with spectators who had come from far and wide to witness the day’s events. Some were meta, others were not. The stadium was loud with chatter and gossip over which competitors would make it to the final round, and which would be left dead on the battle field. Concessions workers roamed the stands, calling out their wares to satiate the hunger of the raucous spectators. Up in an enclosed balcony, the President of the United States himself presided over these grim and boisterous proceedings.
It was difficult to believe that this scene, which seemed like that of an Ancient Roman gladiator match, was actually from 2014. Indeed, the annual Meta Kombat Ultimate Fighting Competition was a fairly new tradition, this being only its second year in existence, but already it had become a mainstay in American sporting culture. Its premise was simple: to find the ultimate fighter among the ranks of the meta humans. Its rules, even simpler: each round, two meta humans would enter the arena, and only one would exit. Over one hundred meta humans joined the competition, and battles were fought bracket-style until ultimately, two fighters engaged in the final round: the Meta Kombat Championship.
It was the harshest, most severe of sporting events in American history, so it was perhaps unsurprising that the event had been started by the harshest, most severe of leaders: President Nicholas Kells, who had two years ago implemented an Executive Order essentially incriminating meta abilities. The Hammel Institute was shut down, children forced to find their way home or go into hiding, and teachers – those who couldn’t escape – rounded up like cattle. All of Pilot Ridge was now under military rule, with Governor Elizabeth Greene, appointed by Kells himself, keeping a close watch over her charges. Not long after the school walls had gone down, stadium walls had gone up in their place. Two years in, the competition was a major draw to the city, with metas and normals alike making the yearly pilgrimage to bear witness to this perverse display of strength, power, and showmanship.
Among the attendants on this, the fifth and final day of the first round of the competition, were Cynthia DeMato and Vincent Meian. They sat in the middle of the crowd, stoic expressions an unsettling contrast from the rowdy atmosphere that surrounded them. But each had more on their minds than mere entertainment. Each had something at stake that day which most attendants could not possibly fathom – for this was the day that Tanner Larson fought his first match of the Meta Kombat Ultimate Fighting Competition.
'META KOMBAT: THE ULTIMATE CHALLENGE'
The words were typed in large, bold print on the piece of paper that clung to the telephone poll. How long the flyer had been hanging there, Tanner Larson couldn't say: he had been down this road every day for several months, and this was the first time he'd noticed it. As it was, the competition was still a few months away, so he couldn't imagine it had been there all that long.
This was the route Tanner took every day from his apartment building to La Maison Magnifique, the burlesque house at which he had performed for three years. The club had shuttered a few weeks ago: he hadn't been there that night - Cynthia had called him at the last minute and told him not to come - and he found out the next day that there had been a particularly terrible raid that very evening. Several of his friends had died in the attack, and the rest were missing, Cynthia among them. That hurt the most. Madame DeMato had meant everything to Tanner, had seen his diamond in the rough that was Pilot Ridge, had nourished his creative spirit and recognized his potential when nobody else did. It was difficult for him to imagine life without her, or without the House, but he was making his way.
He still took this route to the House every day. Just... to check on things.
Deep down inside, he knew why he went. Was it not obvious?
He would walk among the rubble, the ruins of Pilot Ridge's premiere nightlife destination, and look for signs of change. He never found them, but wouldn't one indicate that someone else had been there, perhaps someone who had survived the raid? He had been hopeful at first, but said hope was leaving him.
And now, without an income - or, for that matter, a real purpose in life - the blonde found himself at a dead end. So when he stumbled into this flyer for Meta Kombat, he looked at it differently than most might. Tanner had nowhere to go, nothing to do, and so very little to lose. And with competitors standing to win a million dollars – not to mention the bragging rights and whatever other opportunities that might arise from such a feat – Tanner decided that perhaps it was worth checking out.
And so he took the flyer, folding it in quarters and stuffing it into his jean pocket. Soon after, he was back at the House - as had been his intended destination - and he allowed the door to creak eerily open as he stepped inside. He made his way gingerly down the hallway and into the main hall. It was a wreck; columns had collapsed, as had some of the roof, and the stage was splintered, the wood rotting.
It made Tanner sick.
"Tanner?"
Hearing a familiar voice, the blonde whipped around, coming face to face with Madame Cynthia DeMato herself.
“Cynthia…” He breathed; it was as though he had seen a ghost, or had stepped into some kind of dream. Was his boss, lost and presumed dead, truly standing before her?
The woman could scarcely believe her eyes either; in front of her stood a young man she thought she would never see again. Frankly, she was still surprised she was alive to see anyone at all. Kells' army had been stronger than she had anticipated. She had, before the fight, accused the pigs of being cocky, saying their arrogance would be their downfall. The same folly could have been applied to Cynthia, though: it was her fatal flaw that she believed so strongly in herself. So when Kells' army picked off her girls one by one, she considered it not cowardly, but wise to flee the scene. She would have an opportunity to bide her time, rise up again, and fight back - for her girls, and for all metas - but it would be a while before she could reemerge.
"Tanner, I can't believe you're here!" The woman cried, running to embrace the young pyrokinetic in her arms. "I told you not to come..." She took a step back, wondering how much he knew.
“I didn’t,” Tanner replied earnestly. “At least, not that night. What happened, though? I was so worried-“
"I know, Tanner, I know," she said, putting a comforting hand onto his shoulder. "But it's over now, we're okay, aren't we? Hey, we can get outta any scrape." It was in times like this, particularly in front of Tanner, that she dropped her faux-French facade and slipped back into her Italian American, Brooklyn-born roots. It broke her heart to know how deeply in the dark he was, and that she couldn't explain what had happened. But the less he knew, the safer he would be.
Looking down for a moment, Cynthia caught sight of the flyer in the younger man’s hands. "What is this?" She asked, though she knew what it was, as she took the flyer into her hands. "Meta Kombat? You can't mean... You want to do this??"
She read the flyer carefully. A million dollars. Her eyes widened. A million dollars could do a lot of good.
"Follow me," she said, quickly pulling Tanner by the sleeve down the hallway leading to the backstage area. "And don't say a word!" They left through the side door, ducking into the alleyway and taking a series of backstreets into the heart of the city. Eventually, they came upon an old oak door, which Cynthia knocked on exactly four times.
"We are friends here."
After she spoke these words, the doors opened, allowing Cynthia and a very wide-eyed Tanner inside. It was down a dark staircase that they eventually found themselves in a large underground room, where there were several people standing about. It was obvious that this was not everyone.
"Is Vincent here?" She asked someone, anyone who might know. "I need Vincent."
The crackling of a loudspeaker brought both Cynthia and Vincent to attention.
“On the northern end of the arena,” came the booming voice of the announcer. “Hailing from New Jersey, Pilot Ridge’s Golden Boy, the all-star pyrokinetic... Tanner Larson!”
The pair turned to see Tanner walking out of the northern gate, the crowd erupting around them as the young man made his way towards the center of the arena. He looked confident; Cynthia would admit internally that this surprised her. Tanner had grown up while she wasn’t looking.
“And on the southern end, hailing from Nova Scotia, a probability manipulator… Sherry Terwiliger!”
More cheers from a crowd who cared not for the lives of these two young individuals. It made Cynthia want to wretch with displeasure, though she maintained her even composure.
“Both competitors know the rules. When the battle is called, it will be a fight to the death. No holds or powers are barred, but there is no leaving the arena. The winner of this match will move on to face a new competitor in Round Two.”
Oh God. Cynthia wasn’t expecting it, but her heart was suddenly racing. Was this really happening? Had it really come to this? Had Pilot Ridge fallen so far, so fast? Might Tanner die because she had failed to dissuade him – nay, had encouraged him to do this? She had lost too many of her girls; she wasn’t sure she could deal with another life on her hands.
Yet still, she maintained her composure.
Vincent, beside her, was equally calm. She turned to him, attempting to gauge some kind of emotion, though unsurprised when she couldn’t find any.
“How are you feeling?”
Vincent didn’t answer until the deafening call of “FIGHT!” had finished ringing in his ears.
“I feel nothing.”
Tanner collapsed onto the bench, exhaling sharply as his shoulders slumped back, his head coming into contact with the wall behind him as his chest rose and fell rapidly. His bare torso was coated in sweat, his skin flush with exertion and his hair mussed up in all directions. The dark room was choked by a heavy cloud of smoke which hung thick in the air; Tanner was used to this, though most would find it uninhabitable.
Soon after he had sat down, there was a figure standing before him. Tanner’s eyes had initially been closed tightly, as though intent on using every ounce of his remaining strength to focus on resting, but he opened them when he felt the other’s presence. He looked up to see Vincent standing before him.
“That was good,” the older man said with a nod. “Not good enough. But good.”
Tanner had long since accepted the fact that his trainer was conservative with praise and liberal with criticism, but he knew it was warranted. One month in, they were only another month away from the start of the Meta Kombat competition. Tanner had increased in ability at an impressive rate, but he was still severely underprepared for next month’s competition.
And quite a month it had been: since Cynthia had taken him to see Vincent, the two men had been training every waking minute. It was difficult, to put it almost absurdly lightly: it often took Tanner to the brink of his own physical and emotional breaking point, but there had been no letting up since the fateful day he’d miraculously run into Cynthia at what used to be La Maison Magnifique.
The blonde had closed his eyes again, pained expression forming on his features as he let his body come down to temperature. As a pyrokinetic, he easily overheated, especially when using his powers so frequently and so vigorously as Vincent demanded.
He felt Vincent sit down beside him, though he didn’t move down the bench to accommodate him. As it was, he could barely move a muscle.
“I don’t think I’m gonna be ready.”
He was almost surprised the words didn’t come out in some unintelligible slur for all the energy it had taken him to utter them.
“With that attitude, you will not.”
Tanner, in all his exhaustion, was not in the mood for platitudes. “I’m trying.”
“I know,” Vincent replied evenly. “You have progressed quite nicely. But every single meta you will be facing will no doubt have gone through similar training. So I train you ever harder.”
The blonde managed to nod. He had come to respect Vincent, the first meta in history to win Meta Kombat. He trusted the older man’s judgment and had learned not to question him. Similarly, Vincent had come to respect Tanner’s willingness as a student. Though he had been somewhat resistant at first, he had come a long way.
The two had grown quite close indeed. Spending fifteen hours a day together would tend to do that. Vincent saw great potential in his student, and Tanner looked up to his trainer for his wisdom and skill. Still, even though he had arguably the best meta fighter in the world overseeing his training, Tanner still had his doubts. Vincent knew of these doubts, even though they were rarely vocalized.
The truth of the matter was that Vincent had grown quite fond of Tanner, and that had been unexpected.
“You will do well,” Vincent offered, looking out into the dark underground room that comprised their training space. “If you do as I have taught.” He didn’t want to say he would win – it was unfair and unrealistic at this point to say such a thing – but he would surely go far at the rate things were going.
“I will,” the young man responded, sitting up a bit now that he had caught his breath. He thought for a minute, before turning towards the dark-haired man. “Thank you,” he said. “For… everything.” Vincent could just as easily have said no when Cynthia asked him to train Tanner.
Vincent returned the boy’s gaze, smiling warmly. “It is with great pleasure that I have taken you under my wing,” he said. And it was true: watching Tanner grow as a fighter had been impressive by most students’ standards. “You are a very special young man.”
Tanner smiled at this, and if his cheeks weren’t already bright red from the heat and exhaustion, then they would surely have turned that color now. “Thank you,” he said.
Were this a love story, perhaps this relationship between student and trainer might have taken a turn at this moment. As it was, the story of President Kells’ rise to power, and the ensuing mayhem in Pilot Ridge, was another kind of story. One of triumph in the face of evil, one of overcoming one’s own darkest fears and deepest insecurities, and one of rising to the occasion when no other man was left to stand for you. A love story, it was not. This tender moment no doubt left a mark on the hearts of both men to be revisited at a later time and place, on some other day when time was on their side. But with a most momentous deadline hanging over them, both student and teacher were too occupied to let any kind of frivolous emotion get in their way.
“Vincent?”
The man turned towards Cynthia, unaware until that moment that he had become lost in some kind of memory.
“It’s over,” Cynthia stated, a small smile on her face. She had felt the need to say so, even though it had played out right in front of them just then.
Vincent turned back towards the battlefield, watching his student being escorted out of the arena, leaving behind the charred remains of his former opponent.
“So it is.”
Cynthia was determined that something was preoccupying Vincent, though she couldn’t fathom what it might be and had no intention of asking. He was an enigma to her, and she was content to leave him to his mysteries.
Vincent watched as Tanner exited into the underbelly of the arena, saying nothing as the boy disappeared into the stadium. He had watched the battle, though he had been so caught up in his own thoughts that he hadn’t really seen it. No matter, though: he was confident in Tanner’s abilities and was certain he had done well. He had won, after all. His student lived to see another day, to fight another round, and to continue the mission of the meta resistance in rising through the ranks to become the Ultimate Fighting Champion. Tomorrow, Round Two would begin, and their story would continue.
Anything else would simply have to wait.
Another Day
Author’s Note: This story is part of my long-running A/U and takes place after The Boy Who Swallowed Fire but before Meta Kombat: Confrontations. Note that certain prose towards the beginning of the story is ‘recycled’ here in order to maintain the interconnectivity of the three pieces. Click here to listen to the theme song for this fic.
The Pilot Ridge arena was filled to the brim with spectators who had come from far and wide to witness the day’s events. Some were meta, others were not. The stadium was loud with chatter and gossip over which competitors would make it to the final round, and which would be left dead on the battle field. Concessions workers roamed the stands, calling out their wares to satiate the hunger of the raucous spectators. Up in an enclosed balcony, the President of the United States himself presided over these grim and boisterous proceedings.
It was difficult to believe that this scene, which seemed like that of an Ancient Roman gladiator match, was actually from 2014. Indeed, the annual Meta Kombat Ultimate Fighting Competition was a fairly new tradition, this being only its second year in existence, but already it had become a mainstay in American sporting culture. Its premise was simple: to find the ultimate fighter among the ranks of the meta humans. Its rules, even simpler: each round, two meta humans would enter the arena, and only one would exit. Over one hundred meta humans joined the competition, and battles were fought bracket-style until ultimately, two fighters engaged in the final round: the Meta Kombat Championship.
It was the harshest, most severe of sporting events in American history, so it was perhaps unsurprising that the event had been started by the harshest, most severe of leaders: President Nicholas Kells, who had two years ago implemented an Executive Order essentially incriminating meta abilities. The Hammel Institute was shut down, children forced to find their way home or go into hiding, and teachers – those who couldn’t escape – rounded up like cattle. All of Pilot Ridge was now under military rule, with Governor Elizabeth Greene, appointed by Kells himself, keeping a close watch over her charges. Not long after the school walls had gone down, stadium walls had gone up in their place. Two years in, the competition was a major draw to the city, with metas and normals alike making the yearly pilgrimage to bear witness to this perverse display of strength, power, and showmanship.
Among the attendants on this, the fifth and final day of the first round of the competition, were Cynthia DeMato and Vincent Meian. They sat in the middle of the crowd, stoic expressions an unsettling contrast from the rowdy atmosphere that surrounded them. But each had more on their minds than mere entertainment. Each had something at stake that day which most attendants could not possibly fathom – for this was the day that Tanner Larson fought his first match of the Meta Kombat Ultimate Fighting Competition.
'META KOMBAT: THE ULTIMATE CHALLENGE'
The words were typed in large, bold print on the piece of paper that clung to the telephone poll. How long the flyer had been hanging there, Tanner Larson couldn't say: he had been down this road every day for several months, and this was the first time he'd noticed it. As it was, the competition was still a few months away, so he couldn't imagine it had been there all that long.
This was the route Tanner took every day from his apartment building to La Maison Magnifique, the burlesque house at which he had performed for three years. The club had shuttered a few weeks ago: he hadn't been there that night - Cynthia had called him at the last minute and told him not to come - and he found out the next day that there had been a particularly terrible raid that very evening. Several of his friends had died in the attack, and the rest were missing, Cynthia among them. That hurt the most. Madame DeMato had meant everything to Tanner, had seen his diamond in the rough that was Pilot Ridge, had nourished his creative spirit and recognized his potential when nobody else did. It was difficult for him to imagine life without her, or without the House, but he was making his way.
He still took this route to the House every day. Just... to check on things.
Deep down inside, he knew why he went. Was it not obvious?
He would walk among the rubble, the ruins of Pilot Ridge's premiere nightlife destination, and look for signs of change. He never found them, but wouldn't one indicate that someone else had been there, perhaps someone who had survived the raid? He had been hopeful at first, but said hope was leaving him.
And now, without an income - or, for that matter, a real purpose in life - the blonde found himself at a dead end. So when he stumbled into this flyer for Meta Kombat, he looked at it differently than most might. Tanner had nowhere to go, nothing to do, and so very little to lose. And with competitors standing to win a million dollars – not to mention the bragging rights and whatever other opportunities that might arise from such a feat – Tanner decided that perhaps it was worth checking out.
And so he took the flyer, folding it in quarters and stuffing it into his jean pocket. Soon after, he was back at the House - as had been his intended destination - and he allowed the door to creak eerily open as he stepped inside. He made his way gingerly down the hallway and into the main hall. It was a wreck; columns had collapsed, as had some of the roof, and the stage was splintered, the wood rotting.
It made Tanner sick.
"Tanner?"
Hearing a familiar voice, the blonde whipped around, coming face to face with Madame Cynthia DeMato herself.
“Cynthia…” He breathed; it was as though he had seen a ghost, or had stepped into some kind of dream. Was his boss, lost and presumed dead, truly standing before her?
The woman could scarcely believe her eyes either; in front of her stood a young man she thought she would never see again. Frankly, she was still surprised she was alive to see anyone at all. Kells' army had been stronger than she had anticipated. She had, before the fight, accused the pigs of being cocky, saying their arrogance would be their downfall. The same folly could have been applied to Cynthia, though: it was her fatal flaw that she believed so strongly in herself. So when Kells' army picked off her girls one by one, she considered it not cowardly, but wise to flee the scene. She would have an opportunity to bide her time, rise up again, and fight back - for her girls, and for all metas - but it would be a while before she could reemerge.
"Tanner, I can't believe you're here!" The woman cried, running to embrace the young pyrokinetic in her arms. "I told you not to come..." She took a step back, wondering how much he knew.
“I didn’t,” Tanner replied earnestly. “At least, not that night. What happened, though? I was so worried-“
"I know, Tanner, I know," she said, putting a comforting hand onto his shoulder. "But it's over now, we're okay, aren't we? Hey, we can get outta any scrape." It was in times like this, particularly in front of Tanner, that she dropped her faux-French facade and slipped back into her Italian American, Brooklyn-born roots. It broke her heart to know how deeply in the dark he was, and that she couldn't explain what had happened. But the less he knew, the safer he would be.
Looking down for a moment, Cynthia caught sight of the flyer in the younger man’s hands. "What is this?" She asked, though she knew what it was, as she took the flyer into her hands. "Meta Kombat? You can't mean... You want to do this??"
She read the flyer carefully. A million dollars. Her eyes widened. A million dollars could do a lot of good.
"Follow me," she said, quickly pulling Tanner by the sleeve down the hallway leading to the backstage area. "And don't say a word!" They left through the side door, ducking into the alleyway and taking a series of backstreets into the heart of the city. Eventually, they came upon an old oak door, which Cynthia knocked on exactly four times.
"We are friends here."
After she spoke these words, the doors opened, allowing Cynthia and a very wide-eyed Tanner inside. It was down a dark staircase that they eventually found themselves in a large underground room, where there were several people standing about. It was obvious that this was not everyone.
"Is Vincent here?" She asked someone, anyone who might know. "I need Vincent."
The crackling of a loudspeaker brought both Cynthia and Vincent to attention.
“On the northern end of the arena,” came the booming voice of the announcer. “Hailing from New Jersey, Pilot Ridge’s Golden Boy, the all-star pyrokinetic... Tanner Larson!”
The pair turned to see Tanner walking out of the northern gate, the crowd erupting around them as the young man made his way towards the center of the arena. He looked confident; Cynthia would admit internally that this surprised her. Tanner had grown up while she wasn’t looking.
“And on the southern end, hailing from Nova Scotia, a probability manipulator… Sherry Terwiliger!”
More cheers from a crowd who cared not for the lives of these two young individuals. It made Cynthia want to wretch with displeasure, though she maintained her even composure.
“Both competitors know the rules. When the battle is called, it will be a fight to the death. No holds or powers are barred, but there is no leaving the arena. The winner of this match will move on to face a new competitor in Round Two.”
Oh God. Cynthia wasn’t expecting it, but her heart was suddenly racing. Was this really happening? Had it really come to this? Had Pilot Ridge fallen so far, so fast? Might Tanner die because she had failed to dissuade him – nay, had encouraged him to do this? She had lost too many of her girls; she wasn’t sure she could deal with another life on her hands.
Yet still, she maintained her composure.
Vincent, beside her, was equally calm. She turned to him, attempting to gauge some kind of emotion, though unsurprised when she couldn’t find any.
“How are you feeling?”
Vincent didn’t answer until the deafening call of “FIGHT!” had finished ringing in his ears.
“I feel nothing.”
Tanner collapsed onto the bench, exhaling sharply as his shoulders slumped back, his head coming into contact with the wall behind him as his chest rose and fell rapidly. His bare torso was coated in sweat, his skin flush with exertion and his hair mussed up in all directions. The dark room was choked by a heavy cloud of smoke which hung thick in the air; Tanner was used to this, though most would find it uninhabitable.
Soon after he had sat down, there was a figure standing before him. Tanner’s eyes had initially been closed tightly, as though intent on using every ounce of his remaining strength to focus on resting, but he opened them when he felt the other’s presence. He looked up to see Vincent standing before him.
“That was good,” the older man said with a nod. “Not good enough. But good.”
Tanner had long since accepted the fact that his trainer was conservative with praise and liberal with criticism, but he knew it was warranted. One month in, they were only another month away from the start of the Meta Kombat competition. Tanner had increased in ability at an impressive rate, but he was still severely underprepared for next month’s competition.
And quite a month it had been: since Cynthia had taken him to see Vincent, the two men had been training every waking minute. It was difficult, to put it almost absurdly lightly: it often took Tanner to the brink of his own physical and emotional breaking point, but there had been no letting up since the fateful day he’d miraculously run into Cynthia at what used to be La Maison Magnifique.
The blonde had closed his eyes again, pained expression forming on his features as he let his body come down to temperature. As a pyrokinetic, he easily overheated, especially when using his powers so frequently and so vigorously as Vincent demanded.
He felt Vincent sit down beside him, though he didn’t move down the bench to accommodate him. As it was, he could barely move a muscle.
“I don’t think I’m gonna be ready.”
He was almost surprised the words didn’t come out in some unintelligible slur for all the energy it had taken him to utter them.
“With that attitude, you will not.”
Tanner, in all his exhaustion, was not in the mood for platitudes. “I’m trying.”
“I know,” Vincent replied evenly. “You have progressed quite nicely. But every single meta you will be facing will no doubt have gone through similar training. So I train you ever harder.”
The blonde managed to nod. He had come to respect Vincent, the first meta in history to win Meta Kombat. He trusted the older man’s judgment and had learned not to question him. Similarly, Vincent had come to respect Tanner’s willingness as a student. Though he had been somewhat resistant at first, he had come a long way.
The two had grown quite close indeed. Spending fifteen hours a day together would tend to do that. Vincent saw great potential in his student, and Tanner looked up to his trainer for his wisdom and skill. Still, even though he had arguably the best meta fighter in the world overseeing his training, Tanner still had his doubts. Vincent knew of these doubts, even though they were rarely vocalized.
The truth of the matter was that Vincent had grown quite fond of Tanner, and that had been unexpected.
“You will do well,” Vincent offered, looking out into the dark underground room that comprised their training space. “If you do as I have taught.” He didn’t want to say he would win – it was unfair and unrealistic at this point to say such a thing – but he would surely go far at the rate things were going.
“I will,” the young man responded, sitting up a bit now that he had caught his breath. He thought for a minute, before turning towards the dark-haired man. “Thank you,” he said. “For… everything.” Vincent could just as easily have said no when Cynthia asked him to train Tanner.
Vincent returned the boy’s gaze, smiling warmly. “It is with great pleasure that I have taken you under my wing,” he said. And it was true: watching Tanner grow as a fighter had been impressive by most students’ standards. “You are a very special young man.”
Tanner smiled at this, and if his cheeks weren’t already bright red from the heat and exhaustion, then they would surely have turned that color now. “Thank you,” he said.
Were this a love story, perhaps this relationship between student and trainer might have taken a turn at this moment. As it was, the story of President Kells’ rise to power, and the ensuing mayhem in Pilot Ridge, was another kind of story. One of triumph in the face of evil, one of overcoming one’s own darkest fears and deepest insecurities, and one of rising to the occasion when no other man was left to stand for you. A love story, it was not. This tender moment no doubt left a mark on the hearts of both men to be revisited at a later time and place, on some other day when time was on their side. But with a most momentous deadline hanging over them, both student and teacher were too occupied to let any kind of frivolous emotion get in their way.
“Vincent?”
The man turned towards Cynthia, unaware until that moment that he had become lost in some kind of memory.
“It’s over,” Cynthia stated, a small smile on her face. She had felt the need to say so, even though it had played out right in front of them just then.
Vincent turned back towards the battlefield, watching his student being escorted out of the arena, leaving behind the charred remains of his former opponent.
“So it is.”
Cynthia was determined that something was preoccupying Vincent, though she couldn’t fathom what it might be and had no intention of asking. He was an enigma to her, and she was content to leave him to his mysteries.
Vincent watched as Tanner exited into the underbelly of the arena, saying nothing as the boy disappeared into the stadium. He had watched the battle, though he had been so caught up in his own thoughts that he hadn’t really seen it. No matter, though: he was confident in Tanner’s abilities and was certain he had done well. He had won, after all. His student lived to see another day, to fight another round, and to continue the mission of the meta resistance in rising through the ranks to become the Ultimate Fighting Champion. Tomorrow, Round Two would begin, and their story would continue.
Anything else would simply have to wait.
