Outsiders 21.3

A Dragon in a Fist Fight, Part 3

"I thought you said we were here to relax!" Valerie shouted. This close to the center of the arena, the shouts of the crowd were much louder, and it was a struggle to be heard over the din of shouts, jeers, and demands for violence all being directed at the ring.

At them.

She, Kiva, and List were standing in a short queue of people waiting just outside the cage surrounding the ring. Waiting to go in, and face off against Stonebreaker, current reigning champion of the West End Rumblepit. Two more challengers, and then it would be their turn.

"I said de-stress!" List shouted back. "What could be more stress-relieving than beating the shit out of people without consequences?"

"Tea!"

"You're so boring!"

The line moved up another contestant as someone stepped forward, and a man wearing a boar hide was carried out of the ring on a stretcher, screaming that he couldn't feel his legs. Valerie tried not to look at the angle those legs were bent at. List had repeatedly insisted there was a priest on standby for medical emergencies, but priests had their limits, and most weren't as powerful as Arden.

Valerie seemed to be the only one of them not looking forward to this. Watching the fights was one thing. Participating was quite another. All her life, Valerie had fought for a purpose—to train, to protect, to research. Rarely, since meeting List, she'd fought for fun, typically against List. But doing it to put on a show felt a little wrong. Like she was misusing the skills she'd been given.

But List and Kiva were both itching to go in, and having already let herself be cajoled this far into it, it would only cause a scene to back out now, not to mention trouble for her friends. So, begrudgingly, she was going along with it.

But she would still complain.

"Did we have to do it dressed like this?"

"Oh, hush. We look great!"

Just about every fighter who'd entered the ring that evening had done so in some kind of costume before stripping down to something more baring for their fight. List had more or less had them skip the costume phase.

Kiva was wearing a silk wrap around her neck and upper toro that left her midriff exposed, and loose pants that ended on what would have been the calves of a human, but was technically part of Kiva's foot. And she was the modestly dressed one.

Valerie and List were both down to shorts—their pants after List had cut most of the legs off, boots, and tight cloth bindings around their chests, though List had intentionally wrapped them to show cleavage. She'd also done them both up with hasty accents of silver face paint, mostly to accentuate their eyes. On top of that, she'd thrown up an illusory disguise around herself to make her look exactly like Valerie. She insisted it was all part of making sure they wouldn't be recognized as themselves, in case there was anyone in the audience hostile to the rebellion, but Valerie suspected it was more to give them a gimmick for showmanship purposes.

The next challengers fell to Stonebreaker even quicker than their predecessors, and before Valerie knew it, a referee was ushering them forward while the announcer set up their fight.

The man, wearing a frayed suit that looked like it had been fished out of a gutter, stood in the center of the ring, feeding off the energy of the crowd that had been worked into a frenzy over so quick a succession of one sided beatdowns. With a set of lungs that put the crowd's shouts to shame and filled the arena, he shouted.

"Once again, ladies and gentlemen of Shadefall, your champion: standing at six feet and six inches, with the blood of giants in his veins and the blood of his enemies on his fists, the Gargatuan God, the King of the Ring, the homegrown powerhouse that pounds people into pulp, it's Stonebreaker!"

Stonebreaker looked even taller than the announcer described him up close, with bulging muscles, broad shoulders, and legs as thick as Valerie's waist. He stood, covered in sweat, wrappings around his massive fists stained dark red, but otherwise unmarred after facing down almost a dozen opponents. He didn't look the least bit tired.

"And his latest challengers, seeking to do together what no mere mortal can accomplish alone, hailing from parts unknown, it's the Terrifying Triple Tag-Team Threat: Tiamat, and the Platinum Twins!"

The crowd roared as the iron cage door slammed shut behind them, and Valerie winced. Her window of escape had just closed. She cringed back behind Kiva as her two friends Maybe they enjoyed the attention, but Valerie just felt the next thing to naked and on display. Closer to an exotic dancer than a fighter.

Her only consolations were that this would be over quickly, and that the boys were blissfully somewhere else.

Kaleb walked into Phoenix Gardens's hot spring to find Xigbar and José already lounging in the water up to their chests, their towels resting just outside the pool. Kaleb took a deep breath, and removed his own towel. Years of physical training with the other Whispered Harvest initiates had eroded any sense of shame he had over his body, and he'd only be exposed for the second it took to slip into the water.

At least, that was what he'd thought. And then Xigbar whistled, and he and José both grinned like idiots.

"Isabella's ass," Xigbar said as he gawked. "How do you walk with that?"

"With pride, I would guess," José said.

Kaleb gracelessly dropped into the hot spring as quickly as he could, mentally chiding himself at his own embarrassment. He was supposed to be an assassin, not a blushing youth. But he'd only built up callouses towards being seen. As it turned out, he still had no defense for mockery.

The shock of the warm water surprised him, though it didn't hurt. The sensation spread across his whole body as he sank down, sending a pleasant shiver up his back. He dunked his head beneath the water just for a second, and when he came up, he immediately felt better. Now that he had some dignity back, and any redness in his face could be explained by the heat.

"Please stop," Kaleb begged.

"What? It was a compliment," Xigbar said. "Can a man not appreciate the size of his friend's—"

"Please."

"Okay, okay!" Xigbar threw up his hands in surrender, though he was still smiling. "I will say, you and List suddenly make way more sense."

Kaleb's embarrassment retreated a fraction as curiosity took hold. "What?"

Xigbar raised an eyebrow, searching Kaleb's expression and finding nothing but genuine confusion and curiosity.

"Seriously? You haven't noticed?" he asked.

"Noticed what?"

"Court above, you're serious," Xigbar gawked. "My guy, she wants you. I thought you two were already banging, it was so obvious."

Kaleb's next several attempts at words came out only as sputters. He thought of List, and the image of her wreathed in red lightning as she danced around a stone dragon with half a halberd. He pictured that raven dark hair streaked with blood red, those shining crimson eyes, the feral glee that took over her expression in a fight. She reminded him of old legends of demons that took the guise of beautiful women to lure in men and rip out their hearts.

When he tried to think of her wanting him—he couldn't. Not seriously. It felt like an embarrassingly impossible fantasy. The kind of thing an ego several times bigger than his would dream up. He half wanted to tell Xigbar to stop making fun of him.

And yet.

"Really?" He felt like a fool for even daring to ask. Like a rabbit knowingly walking into a snare. He braced himself for the rug to be pulled out from under him, for Xigbar and José to laugh and for reality to come crashing back.

Instead, José just nodded. "I do not live in the hole as you five do, but I also am noticing her notice you. Not that she has noticed."

"Honestly, I'm kind of glad you were oblivious. It makes me feel way less jealous."

It was Kaleb's turn to gawk in disbelief. "You have a thing for List?"

Kaleb was surprised by the flash of jealousy he felt on the backend of the thought, after the incredulity had its turn. Again, he felt embarrassment over it. Not even sixty seconds of imagining List interested in him, and he'd started making a fool of himself over it.

But the feeling passed with Xigbar's response.

"Fuck no." The animaborn shuddered as if to shake the idea out of his head. "Valerie. All the hot, none of the crazy. But it's been four months, and the best I think I've gotten from her is a smile. You having it so easy just isn't fair."

"Does it count as easy if I didn't know?" Kaleb asked.

"Yes," José and Xigbar said at the same time.

Kaleb felt the twinge of annoyance from both of them, and reflexively responded with an apologetic shrug. "So . . . what should I do?"

Xigbar's head tilted, confused. "Her. Unless you don't want to stick it in crazy, which, you know, probably the smart move. Just don't like, piss her off or break her heart or whatever while we're all stuck living under the same roof. That would get awkward."

That managed to sober Kaleb's thoughts quickly. He could all too easily imagine himself somehow messing up an attempted relationship, and the havoc that could wreak on their group's still forming dynamic. At the start, List had been at Kaleb's throat almost as much as Xigbar's—she'd drawn blood from him the day they'd met.

They had just started getting better these last couple of months, since their time together in the ravine. The last thing he wanted to do was jeopardize the team's coordination when they were only a few months from trying to depose Zaman.

And truthfully, he wasn't actually sure how he felt about List. She was beautiful, and exciting, and terrifying, and the thought of her interested in him was flattering to the point of incredulity. But was he interested in her? He had almost no experience in things like this, and what little he had was entirely different than this.

Whispered Harvest had trained him to go into every situation as prepared as possible. He did not feel at all prepared for this.

"Yeah," Kaleb said. "I think maybe I'll just . . . not, for now."

Xigbar shrugged. "Can't say I blame you. Sometimes, I don't know if women are worth the hassle either."

"I tend to think they are, myself," José said with a cocky grin. A thoughtful expression overtook it a moment later as his mind wandered to three women in particular. "You know, I wonder what the girls are doing right now."