Chapter 155: Mercury’s defeat.
The medics were still carting rubble off the stage when the wheel began to turn again.
"We are DEEP into the greatest day this event has ever seen!" Julie’s voice had gone hoarse hours ago and she no longer cared. "Germany avenged, Australia’s tea-drinker DETHRONED, China’s ranks thinned, and Phantom of America standing on THREE straight wins! But the field is not empty yet, folks! Germany’s angel still stands! Australia’s giant-killer still stands! And the machine keeps turning! Match NINE!"
The flags spun across the great screens, blurred, and slammed.
"AMERICA... VERSUS... BRAZIL!"
In the Brazilian alcove, a young man was already on his feet.
He had been on his feet all day, if anyone had been watching him instead of the carnage below. Where Raoi had been calm and Hunter had been still, this one vibrated, bouncing on his toes at the rail, cracking his knuckles, rolling his neck, a coiled spring that had waited eight matches for the trigger.
Veloce.
The last fighter of Brazil.
"Representing Brazil, their FINAL warrior," Julie called, "the fastest feet in the southern hemisphere... VELOCE!"
He didn’t take the bridge. He took the rail, launching off it in a green-and-gold blur that crossed the entire arena in under a second and touched down at the center of the stage in a spray of dust, already grinning, already bouncing.
[Opalion: he crossed the whole arena in ONE step. one]
[yanko_abreu: VELOCE. the man Raoi wouldn’t let fight until the very end. now we know why]
[Marypaz13: phantom’s on his FOURTH fight against a fresh speedster. this is cruel]
[ThePathOfTheHunt: 4 fights and STILL nobody knows his actual power. we KNOW he can cancel abilities. he just... won’t. why won’t he??]
[TruMagi: theory #4,000: the cancel thing isn’t even his real ability. he’s hiding something bigger. why else save it]
[Decato: bro has fought all day and shown us NOTHING. every win looked different. what IS he]
In the American alcove, Selena’s hand was already on Nicholas’ arm.
"You’re at empty," she said, low. "I watched the numbers. You spent everything on Mercury and change. Let Nectron..."
"I earned it back." Nicholas pulled up the screen so she could see it, an old kindness he rarely offered.
{Charm Points: 3,710}
"The fight against Mercury paid me for a month." He closed the screen and rolled his aching shoulder. "The crowd’s still loud. As long as they’re loud, I’m never at empty."
Dana said nothing, but her eyes had narrowed on the bouncing boy below.
"Watch his feet, Nicholas," she murmured. "Raoi buried him behind the whole roster for a reason. You don’t hide your fastest card for eight matches unless the reveal is worth it."
Nicholas dropped onto the bridge.
{Ding!}
{The world’s champion walks again!}
{+280 Charm points}
He crossed to the center of the stage, and up close, Veloce was younger than he’d looked from the alcove, eighteen at most, with a live-wire energy that had nothing to do with nerves and everything to do with wanting this more than air.
"You’re him," Veloce breathed, bouncing. "You’re actually him. I watched you all day. Hunter, Fengyin, MERCURY, man, you beat MERCURY." The grin split wider. "And you never once used the cancel thing. Not on any of them. The whole world’s begging to see it and you just... won’t." He tilted his head, studying Nicholas like a puzzle. "Everyone’s got a theory about what you really are. You wanna know mine?"
"Not especially."
"My theory is you don’t even need it." Veloce crouched low, fingertips brushing the stone. "And now you’re tired. You’re taped up, you’re bleeding, you’ve got nothing left, and you have to fight ME." The grin turned feral. "You have no idea how long I’ve waited to be the fresh one."
"Everyone waits for something," Nicholas said. He set his feet, ribs protesting, and let his hands hang loose. "Go ahead. Be the fresh one."
Julie’s hand went up. "MATCH NINE! THREE! TWO! ONE..."
"FIGHT!!"
Veloce disappeared.
Not a blur. Gone. The stage cracked where he’d crouched, and Nicholas’ battered senses caught nothing but a green streak wrapping the entire arena, once, twice, a ring of light circling the stage so fast it became a solid wall, and from everywhere and nowhere at once the first blow came.
It caught Nicholas across the jaw and was gone before the pain arrived.
Then the second, from the opposite side. The third, from behind. The fourth, fifth, sixth, a rain of impacts from a boy moving faster than Nicholas’ abused body could turn, each hit stinging rather than crushing, but multiplying, dozens of them, a storm of small lightning striking one man from every angle of the compass.
"HE’S EVERYWHERE!" Julie screamed. "VELOCE HAS THE SPEED, FOLKS, AND PHANTOM CAN’T FIND HIM!"
’Fast,’ Nicholas thought, weathering the storm behind a rising guard. ’Faster than anything I’ve fought. Faster than I can currently track with two good eyes, let alone one.’
He tried to fold space and cut off an angle. Veloce was already past the fold, laughing, tagging his ribs and vanishing. He poured gravity into a wide net to slow the boy’s feet. Veloce ran up the gravity like a hill and kicked him off it from above.
’And smart enough not to trade a single real exchange. He hits and leaves. Hits and leaves. He’s not trying to knock me out.’
A cold understanding settled.
’He’s trying to run down the clock and bleed me on points of pain. He knows I’m hurt. He knows a fresh sprinter only has to outlast a broken champion.’
The green ring tightened. The blows came faster, harder now that the boy had found his rhythm, and for the first time in the fight Nicholas felt himself being genuinely herded, his stance breaking down under an assault he couldn’t answer, driven step by step toward the boundary line by a hurricane he couldn’t see.
In the American alcove, Selena’s knuckles whitened. In the Brazilian alcove, the whole nation was on its feet, roaring their last son forward.
Nicholas took a knee under the barrage, guard splitting, blood running fresh from his reopened cheek.
And behind his one working eye, something went very quiet and very cold.
’He’s fast. He’s the fastest thing in this tournament.’ His hand, low and hidden against the stone, curled slowly. ’But he’s still only fast. And I’ve killed fast things before.’
{Charm Points: 3,990}
’Every angle he’s used, he’s used twice now. He circles left before he strikes high. He crosses behind before he goes low. He thinks his speed hides the pattern.’ Nicholas’ breathing slowed under the rain of blows, the way it used to slow behind a rifle. ’It doesn’t hide anything. It just makes it faster.’
Veloce wound up for the strike that would end it, a full-power blow with the whole arena’s momentum behind his little frame, screaming in from the left exactly as he had six times before.
And Nicholas, for the first time in the match, was not there when it arrived.
He had already moved. Not to where Veloce was. To where Veloce was going to be.
****
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