Tired and aching, despite the lingering effects of the painkillers, Angelico completed the long walk to the mayor's office, where he was to meet for the next fight. Standing outside, talking casually, were two sea creatures. He first thought that they were a type of minion, but closer inspection revealed they were humanoid and spoke the common language.
One was frog-like: bulging slit-eyes, orange, bumpy, watertight skin, webbed feet, and hands. He was scrawny, standing just under five feet tall, with little meat on his bones. When he spoke, his mouth opened wide, as if his head was on hinges, and his sticky tongue danced about his toothless mouth. His voice sounded as if he were burping as he spoke.
The creature that the frog spoke to was actually a human in an elaborate disguise. He was sleek as if covered in aluminum foil. The top of his head looked up into the sky with eyes so life-like that Angelico believed them to be real, even after he saw the man below the disguise. His arms were clad in fins; his legs joined together like a tail, except when he walked and they were revealed as independent from one another. The man below, who took the head of the suit off occasionally to cough and hack up something unhealthy, had rusty-colored skin, wrinkled and rough with age. He looked as if he had seen a lot of sun, which made Angelico think he had not spent his whole life on this dark moon.
Angelico interrupted their conversation about the foreign people they had recently seen, rating parts of their bodies, unconcerned by the gender. "Hello, I'm Angelico." He bowed gracefully, no longer trusting handshakes.
"I'm Amphib," burped the frog. "This is Eel." He gestured his three-toed hand towards the man in the silver costume.
"Pleasure. Do you know what this new arena is going to be like?"
"Yuh, and you would too if you had bothered to show up to rehearsal," Eel huffed.
"Rehearsal?"
"Yes," croaked Amphib, "when they choreographed tonight's fight, ensuring no one else will be killed."
"Oh," said Angelico, perplexed.
The silver-clad man pointed off into a dark recess, "You might want to talk to your partner over there, let him fill you in."
Angelico looked to where the fin pointed, unable to see Shadowed, but guessed he was hidden. He left Amphib and Eel to resume their conversation.
"They're choreographing our fights now?" Angelico said, thinking he saw an outline of Shadowed.
The responding voice came from that general area. "Yes, the agents think it'll cut down on the fatality rate. Why weren't you there?"
"I was never told to go." Then Angelico thought a moment. He had received a note to meet the agents early in the day but took care of other business before he went. Perhaps it was his own fault. "So, what are we doing?"
"There are chains in the top, bars in the middle, and water in the bottom. They'll swim around in the water, we'll jump around on the bars. They want us to catch them and hang them up on the chains."
"Sounds lame." Shadowed attempted to shrug, but it was not visible through his pitch-black armor.
The sun descended at a visible speed, causing the shadows to jump. Angelico's mind, not fully cognate due to overexertion, thought Shadowed was attacking him. He responded with amazing reflexes, grabbing Shadowed and pinning him against the nearby wall. "What are you doing?!" Angelico slammed Shadowed's face into the wall. Shadowed tried to retaliate, but Angelico positioned himself just right so he could not be touched.
Suddenly, Angelico realized he had made a mistake. It was like he woke up and realized he had been sleepwalking. Still, he had some questions he wanted to be answered; he could ensure an answer and not admit he acted irrationally. "What's your name and where are you from?"
Shadowed's voice became almost too staticy to hear, like a speaker at a drive-through window. "You know...Shadowed, I'm a prisoner from Morten."
Angelico had to trust the atlas he had read that day, that did not list Morten in the index. "Try again." He slammed him into the wall.
"Ok, ok. My name's Mitchell. I'm local." Angelico recalled the newscast he had seen on TV. It described Shadowed as a local demon.
"What are you? Demon? Human? What?"
"Half-demon, half-spectral." Broken microphone or not, there was an audible fear to his answers.
"What's your connection to Viv?" While Angelico had been in a hallucinatory state, Vivarine and Shadowed had looked the same to him: an amorphous mass of darkness. Vivarine knew things only Angelico and Shadowed knew. Angelico suspected they were one and the same, which would make Shadowed's previous answers false.
"She's my sister." Angelico wasn't expecting that response. Taken back in a moment of shock, he lessened his grip on Shadowed, allowing him to free himself forcefully. "What's the matter with you?"
Angelico shook his head, feeling his brain shake around inside. "I don't know. This moon is taking its toll on me."
"Come, we have to go." While pinning Shadowed against the wall, Angelico had failed to notice two helicopter-like aircraft, with cages attached to the bottom, landing nearby. Amphib and Eel were already in one cage, Shadowed was entering another.
"That's one, unguided torpedo you got there," said Eel to Shadowed.
"Yeah, he ought to be the one chained up," burped Amphib.
The cages hovered over the newly built, circular arena. It was as Shadowed had described. The chains were loose and sparse around the top and swung in the slight breeze the moon offered. The bars below, a mixture of silver and black, attached from one wall to another, and varied greatly in length, thickness and angle. The water below, clear, reflecting the spotlights that shown upon it, filled more than a third of the arena. The top was stagnating, the breeze not making its way down far enough to skim the surface.
Angelico did not at first notice that the entire arena was made of transparent glass. Stadium seating surrounded the tube and was packed to maximum capacity. There was so much chanting and murmuring that Angelico could not pick out a single, familiar word. Angelico overheard Amphib telling Eel, "There was not enough available water to fill it, so they actually imported the water from other planets."
Eel asked, "Which planets?" Amphib stared back blankly in response.
Swirling all around them came the voice of the announcer. As he spoke, the water rippled just slightly, so only the spectators sitting up front noticed. "Welcome to the new Elite Dogma Arena. You are the first to witness this spectacular marvel, able to be rearranged to better suit each gladiator's ideal conditions. Introducing, two aquatic gladiators who up until today had to endure the disadvantage of fighting on the ground. The quick, the cunning...Eel!"
Amphib pushed open a gate on the cage. Eel walked to the edge, stiffened his whole body with his arms down by his side. He keeled over, never losing his rigid stance, and fell headfirst into the arena. Always stiff and straight, he moved left and right as needed, avoiding every chain and bar, hitting the water with such little splash that he would've been assured a nine-point-something at the Olympics.
"The last of his kind, originally hailing from Quid, the only planet composed entirely of water, the sticky and slippery...Amphib!" The gate still open, Amphib hopped out. He was remarkably ungraceful compared to Eel, his arms flailing as he fell. He caught a chain, seemingly accidental, but he regained his composure and pulled it off. Amphib hopped from bar to bar, then, no more than three feet above the water, cannonballed in. The splash drenched most of the lower bars.
Angelico was kneeling next to the closed gate, watching the activity below. "Ready?" asked Shadowed. Angelico shook his head 'no.' "Strong enough to win this?" Angelico shook his head slightly. "Can you at least fly into the ring?" Angelico shrugged.
"Those more comfortable out of the water, the winged guardian that protects the people of Dogma, the strong and radiant...Angelico!" The crowd went into a unison chant of "An-gel-i-co." That was what he needed, more than drugs, more than sleep, more than choreography. An adrenaline rush pushed him onto his feet and awakened his bloodlust.
"So we're not killing them?" asked Angelico.
"I never cared much for either of them," responded Shadowed. He pushed open the door of the cage.
Angelico suddenly wished he had been there for rehearsal. This fall could potentially kill him. With wings outspread, he leaped forward and down. The chains were sparse enough that he could maneuver through them easily. The bars were denser, and on the way down he bumped his wings a few times, stubbed a toe, and further bruised a shoulder. The last part of the entrance was the trickiest. He needed to turn his descent around and head back up. He pulled up, skimming the top of the water. He had to keep above the surface. Though he had showered since the installation of his wings, he had always minimized the amount of water that splashed on them and had never submerged them. In the midst of a fight was not a good time to find out what would happen in water. He managed to glide above the water, circling the arena three times, until he was high enough to grab the lowest bar. It was slippery and wet, and he nearly fell, but he held on as if his life depended on it. Once he felt comfortable, he took off his toga and sandals, resting them gently on a bar. Despite his best
a balancing act, the sandals fell off and floated on top of the pool below.
The announcer continued, "A prisoner released from the planet of Morten. A killer imprisoned under the watchful guidance of the angel, the dark and ominous...Shadowed!" Shadowed dropped into the arena like a piece of lead. He avoided the chains as if they weren't there, and made it halfway through the bars. Falling feet first, he landed onto a bar, which bent, and almost freed itself from the glass wall under his weight. It probably would have broken completely, but to ease off some of the momentum, Shadowed grabbed the bar and swung around it two-hundred and seventy degrees, so he was perched at the side of the bar, staring face down. He then positioned himself so that he was squatting on the bar, touching it with both feet and one hand. The other arm was raised into the air for balance.
Without further ado or introductions, the fight started. Eel leaped out of the water at Angelico, who was still close. Angelico avoided the attack and started scrambling upwards to converse with Shadowed. Shadowed started, "This suit's dense, and swimming is not a needed skill on this moon." Angelico nodded in understanding.
"I'm not too sure how my wings will hold up underwater. What's the plan?"
"I've thought up a maneuver I call 'Fly Fishing.' You will fly down to the water to entice them to come up, I'll hit them with a disc."
Angelico was reluctant, remembering how he almost sunk upon his entrance. "What's plan B?"
"There is no plan B." With a heavy sigh, but a willingness to do what was necessary to win the fight, Angelico dropped and glided over the water.
Eel popped up for an attack but missed. However, he had remained under Angelico, and Shadowed could not get a clear shot at him. Angelico clamored up onto higher bars to wait and rest. Shadowed tossed a few spiked discs into the water, but Eel and Amphib showed off their speed and agility, dodging each one (except the one that hit and sank one of the sandals). The crowd was starting to become restless as Angelico and Shadowed each sat motionless, waiting for a better time. Angelico dove at the water a couple more times, and Shadowed threw a few more spiked discs, but nothing new happened. Finally, when Angelico returned from one of his dives, the bar he landed on came out of the glass wall. In a moment of embarrassment, he fell, catching a bar after ricocheting off another. The sharp, pointed end of the pole gave Angelico an idea. He climbed up to Shadowed and said, "I have a plan B. I'm calling it 'White Whale.' "
At Angelico's instructions, Shadowed climbed to the top of the arena and started yanking the chains out of the wall. Angelico, meanwhile, started kicking and pounding the bar he had knocked loose. He bent the middle of it, and twisted it back and forth, over and over, hoping it would separate. At last, Shadowed, with a long chain hung over his shoulder, threw a spiked disc at it, splitting its weakened spot.
The following moment of the fight moved a bit slowly, causing many of the audience members to leave for restroom breaks or to return to their jobs. Shadowed worked on attaching the chain to the back of the pole, while Angelico tried to make the sharp end more arrow-like. The two working at the same time hindered the progress of the other. Eel and Amphib were growing restless swimming around below, waiting. At last, the makeshift harpoon was ready.
Shadowed climbed to a higher bar than Angelico, wrapping the chain loosely around it, and held the end of the chain so that it would not be lost below. Angelico watched the two of them swimming below, waiting for the right moment, occasionally shifting his wings to maintain balance. He threw the harpoon, missing them both. He pulled up on the chain, grabbing bit after bit, to bring it back up. He threw it again, closer to Eel this time. When it returned, there was a bit of blood on it. He steadied himself and threw again. This time, it dug into Eel's leg.
Angelico brought the chain up again, expecting Eel to come with it like a hooked fish. However, the jagged edges Angelico had produced did not hold against the soft flesh of Eel's leg. He slipped back into the water. A trail of blood billowed wherever Eel swam. This made him easier to spot at the moment. However, soon it would cloud the water, and then all accuracy would be gone. Angelico pulled the chain up as fast as possible, took better aim than before, and threw it again. This one struck dead center.
The jagged edges held against Eel's chest. The problem was pulling up the weight while not falling. Shadowed aided it pulling the harpoon back this time. An unfathomable amount of blood leaked from his chest, off of his sleek eel-suit, and dribbled into the water, turning it a rusty-crimson color. Once they had brought him up to their level, Angelico started to pull the homemade harpoon the rest of the way through the front. "What are you doing?" asked Shadowed, stopping him.
"Removing it."
"You can't pull it like that; you would have to pull the whole chain through."
"Look at the teeth holding it there. They slant backward, so you have to pull it forward 'cause they'll cause more damage if you pull it back."
"No, it's fine," Shadowed gripped an armored hand around it and yanked it back. A splatter of blood burst forth. Angelico thought Eel had lost more than the eight pints the body was supposed to hold.
"Lay him down," instructed Angelico. There was no level surface to hold him. There were, however, two bars close to one another, coming to almost the same point in the glass wall. Eel was laid across the two bars as the third leg of the triangle. Angelico fluttered down to his toga, still hanging over a bar, while Shadowed held Eel in place. Angelico climbed back up and started tying strips of the toga around Eel like a tourniquet. It was immediately drenched in the vermilion liquid.
While Shadowed and Angelico attended to Eel, they failed to see or hear their harpoon falling off of the bar, down to the murky waters below. Amphib, who now had to surface more often to rise above the blood, dove for the harpoon. He threw it upwards towards his fallen partner but missed everyone above. Gravity returned the harpoon to him. Amphib threw it once more with greatly improved aim. If the point had been finer, and Amphib could have thrown it harder, he would have been able to skewer both of them at once. As it was, the harpoon's forward movement was stopped when it entered Shadowed's armor, catching his arm as it fell back.
Shadowed turned his attention from the wounded Eel to the tugging on his arm. Before he understood what this meant, Amphib pulled on the dangling chain, causing Shadowed to lose every last shred of balance. "Help!" he instructed as his arm lurched downward. Angelico forgot about Eel and reached for Shadowed, gripping his other arm. Angelico started to join in the fall, let go, and regained his stance. He glanced behind him and saw Eel drop. He looked back towards Shadowed, but he was vanishing in the billowing clouds below.
Angelico did not want to dive into the bloody water, even if it had been free of Eel's spilled life. He waited a moment, hoping Shadowed would bob up, but he didn't. Knowing it was his duty, he leaped headfirst into the murky pool. The blood stung Angelico's eyes, so he kept them closed. He swam in the direction of the oncoming waves. He touched Amphib's bumpy skin, felt around, and came across the smooth armor of Shadowed. He grabbed him with one arm, but Amphib was holding him with two. Amphib's dexterity in the water gave him greater strength. Angelico was running out of oxygen and had to return quickly. Without planning ahead, he gripped Shadowed with both hands. He started kicking but was not moving. In a panic, he flapped his wings. This moved him upwards a short distance. He used his feet to attack Amphib and flapped his wings to resurface. He had set a new record for the longest amount of time he had held his breath. In what he thought were his final few seconds of life, his head found the top of the water. He breathed quickly before sinking. Shadowed was hard to keep afloat, and there was no pole close enough for him to grab.
They bobbed down and up again. Shadowed showed signs of life for the first time in minutes. He extended the claws on his hands and tore off the mask he wore. Water flooded out. Shadowed coughed and gagged before finally breathing again.
Angelico recognized him in an instant. His thick, expressionless face, shaved blond hair...he was the manager of the cafe near Angelico's hotel. Truly every gladiator there did have another job. His head, though perfectly sized for his big body, looked tiny in contrast to the extra girth the armor gave him. Angelico was growing tired flapping his wings and kicking his legs, keeping them both in a position to breathe.
Amphib thought this would be the perfect moment to attack. He popped up behind Angelico, gripped his face, and said, "Looks like I'm going to kill the killers." He laughed a comically evil laugh. Shadowed reached behind his head, and behind Angelico's, grabbing Amphib with all ten claws. Amphib yelped as he was pulled off of Angelico and brought back over their heads. Shadowed shoved Amphib under the water. Angelico knew that he could not be easily drowned, as he had spent most of the fight under there. Shadowed held him down several long moments. The water was a consistent red throughout and hid Shadowed's actions. Angelico could only speculate. After a few moments, Amphib's lifeless body floated up to the top, face down.
The helicopter cages above dropped ropes down to the two of them. They each gripped their own rope and were lifted out. They were flown over to the stadium where gladiator matches were normally fought, being dropped off in the alley behind it. Angelico was shivering. The moon had always seemed warm. However, wet as he was, the breezes that were trapped inside the atmosphere felt like rushing winds.
When the adrenaline of the last match wore off, Angelico realized the pain pills had stopped working. In an immediate flash flood of pain, he dropped to his hands and knees and forehead. "Are you ok?" asked Shadowed, concerned. Angelico dug his head slightly deeper into the dusty earth to say no. When he opened his mouth to speak, he only sobbed.
Angelico was not aware there was anyone else around them, or that someone had brought Shadowed a new, ebony suit, which he dressed in. Angelico was not aware of anything but his own pain until two guards wearing biohazard suits each grabbed him by an arm and flung him to his feet. In a faded vision, more like a daydream than reality, Angelico saw someone move in the shadows in front of him. The person seemed to wear the darkness like a cloak, so there was no way to visually recognize them. However, Angelico would have recognized the fast-talking voice anywhere. In ominous, prophetic words that would echo repeatedly in Angelico's mind, Vivarine said to him, "The agents are trying to kill you." Angelico could not respond while the guards carried him into the arena for the next fight.
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