>> Turn yourself into a blade. Keep fighting.

  The red mist was upon us once again. I circled my foe and considered all of the bad choices I made that led me here, whilst a nagging voice in my head egged me on and demanded more violence. Bubris charged at me with his trident pointed towards my chest. In an instant my brain calculated the velocity of his attack at the direction of travel, telling me that I could let it hit my chestplate without causing any serious damage.

  I pushed in and took the blow. He used every pound of his strength to try and keep me away so his range advantage could be maintained. It caused the brackets on my frame to rattle from the impact, but didn’t penetrate the metal plate. Regardless he managed to keep me away, preventing me from using my gladius to return the favour.

  “Dubris is controlling the ring. Will London find a way in?” the commentator blathered.

  He thrusted again. This time the hook on the left-most blade found purchase in an armour plate on my arm. Dubris pulled me along and tried to wrestle me to the ground – but I was savvy to his tactics. Pompeii had warned me clearly about what would happen if I let him push me over, so I used every bit of strength I had to keep my body locked in place, even if it risked cracking a joint or snapping an important beam in my leg. He persisted and I skidded back towards the edge of the ring. The spectators closest to us were forced to lean over the barrier to see what was going on.

  Biding my time proved fruitful. There was a split second where Dubris let up on the pressure and moved his heel back. I untangled my arm from the hook and used the buckler to slide out of the way, launching a speculative kick towards his back. It was never going to get through to him, but it did almost send him tumbling down the embankment and into the penalty area. As it turned out there were rules regarding being knocked out of the circle but they were rarely triggered.

  >> This has gone on for seven minutes and fifty-two seconds, I wonder how his battery is holding up?

  I didn’t intend for the fight to go long. Dubris was a challenging opponent to be certain. My arrogance was now being exposed for all in the arena to see. This was the first real test of my ability and good fortune. Dubris responded to my provocation with a flurry of well-aimed strikes. They came so quickly that I couldn’t stop them all.

  >> He can’t do this forever. He’s going to burn through his energy…

  >> He doesn’t need to. He wants to finish this here and now.

  Buckler and trident collided over and over again. The sounds of clanging metal were buried underneath the roar of an increasingly rancorous crowd. A matchup where the two fighters were mostly even was a rare occasion and made for exciting viewing. Dubris refused to slow his assault. I fired back with slashes of my own when I could find an opening, but we were both armoured to the maximum possible extent we could be. The motors in my arms and legs were having a difficult time keeping up with the pace thanks to that extra weight.

  But he was doing the same, measuring me, seeing how I responded when he attacked. I learned the hard way during the next flare-up in activity. He pointed the trident down and cut through my left leg and sliced through the metal using one of his hooks. Again, I locked my joints into place to keep him from dragging me down into the dirt.

  >> System: Critical damage to left leg.

  Not helpful at all!

  “Dubris has sunk his teeth into London! Is this going to be another down-and-out victory? London is refusing to budge, he’s locked those legs to the floor like rebar!”

  The back and forth tug of war continued. He ragged the trident towards his body to try and tear out even more important components, but the metal plate was frustrating his access to the essential parts. No matter what he did I was not going to let him drag me to the floor. Dust filled the air as we danced with one another.

  >> It’s time to fight like an animal.

  If he wanted me to come his way so badly, then I would simply oblige when he least expected it. I unlocked my right leg instead of the leg and pushed forwards, the hook in the back of my ankle came loose for the briefest of moments while he pushed outwards to get more leverage. It seemed that Dubris was totally blindsided by my sacrificial strategy. The tip of my gladius was jammed through one of the gaps in his visor and shattered the eye hiding behind it.

  I jammed it deep, smashing the bottom of the hilt using my buckler to try and cause as much damage as I could. Dubris wisely backed away without trying to hook me a second time. With one half of his vision removed, it would be a lot more difficult to track me. We did not possess the same field of view that a human did, and the movement sensors that were designed as a safety feature for humans were covered by plates of metal armour if they worked in the first place.

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  >> Locomotion compromised, weight distribution has been assessed and adjusted

  >> ERROR: Overweight unit, please locate nearest supervisor for assessment and repair

  Dubris could tell that I was wounded. He slowed his roll and stalked around the ring, keeping his distance so that he could easily track me with his one working eye. The crowd finally quieted down. They were all saving their cries of joy or despair for the outcome that loomed on the horizon.

  >> All or nothing, London. Cut his heart out!

  I didn’t want to wait for him to come to me. He had spent the entire battle maintaining his distance, and without one leg that was only going to be more problematic for me. I gripped the handle of my gladius with both hands and limped towards him. Dubris stabbed at me with the trident, but I was carefully angling my chestplate again to keep him from finding purchase with it. He tried over and over. He changed his approach and angle but couldn’t stop me, short of trying to slip it around my waist to push me backwards.

  But I found the space I needed. I charged into him and shoulder-tackled him, knocking him off-balance for a second. The trident was past my body. He couldn’t retract it to protect himself in close combat with his enemy beyond the blade, so he let go and tried to draw his own gladius instead.

  My window of opportunity would close quickly. It was time to take a calculated risk and hope that my mathematical operations were not compromised by internal corruption. I swung for the neck, one of the few places that couldn’t be completely covered in armour plating without compromising visibility and agility. The edge of the gladius found the smallest possible gap and slipped through, which was only possible because Dubris was looking at me from a strange angle.

  It kept going.

  Something wasn’t right. I knew the resistance levels of the materials that were in our necks. This dull blade I was using couldn’t cut through them without a significant amount of force, far more than the consumer-grade arms I was equipped with could provide. The numbers I was receiving in my internal log defied any reason. The attack I launched was amplified by three magnitudes, shearing the motors and hydraulics inside of my arm and causing it to snap like a twig.

  The motion of my body carried me through. Dubris’ head flew from his severed neck and landed in the sand with a heavy thud. The battery connection to his head had been severed by my attack, leaving the wires hanging free from a hole in his neck. Without power – his internal systems shut down immediately. His body was dead on its feet, leaning over slightly with his legs locked into safety position to keep it from falling over and crushing an unsuspecting human.

  It took a great amount of effort to dig my heels down and stop myself from spinning. I forced myself to a halt and looked down at the carnage. In a single blow I had removed his head from his shoulders and ended the fight in the blink of an eye.

  “They say that anything can happen in the ring, but I can’t quite believe what we just witnessed! London takes the win with one of the most incredible knockouts we’ve ever seen! I don’t even know how he did that! He’ll be advancing to the grand final!”

  The crowd loved it. It was dramatic and brutal, and came out of nowhere. They roared and stomped their feet in the stands, causing the entire arena to shake. Those engineers hopefully built it to withstand this kind of roughhousing, but there was no guarantee with the quality of the materials used in most places. It was possible that the Committee used all of the ‘good stuff’ decorating the interior.

  I did my contractually obligated lap of the ring and waved to the crowd, before cutting left and exiting through the curtains. Dubris’ handler and some hired help were already picking up the pieces and rushing him back to the workshop for repair. Pompeii didn’t wait to wrap his arm around me and whisk me away before any of the other handlers could ask questions about the outcome of the fight.

  “What was that?”

  “Did I forget to say? I released the limiter on those arms. That’s what happens when a few-hundred pounds of kinetic force hits a weak-point in our construction…”

  He lifted the same arm up into the air and let it drop limply back down to my side.

  “-And you didn’t half bust the thing up by doing it. Then again, I wasn’t expecting it to survive if it came to this anyway. We’ve got spares.”

  Pompeii motioned a zipping motion over where his mouth would be if we had one. I refrained from asking any follow-up questions until we were safely inside of the workshop with a few walls between us and the nearest pair of working ears. He put us behind a pile of boxes to further muffle the sound of our discussion.

  “I’m getting sick of this, Pompeii. If you’re planning something – I really need to know. What if I went too far and broke my arms before the end of the match? Even if you removed the limiters, there shouldn’t be enough power in the motors to cause that kind of damage.”

  Pompeii closed his eyes, “Listen, I wasn’t exactly sure of how forceful it was going to be. I did a little bit of modification on those arms before you woke up, but I underestimated how much power that thing in your chest was going to output into them.”

  “What is it? Stop dancing around the point, please.”

  “I was telling the truth earlier. I don’t know what it is. Aguntum traded it to me for some junk.”

  “That might be true, but I think you’re hiding more than that from me. Why would she give up such a huge advantage with the finals coming up? Didn’t she anticipate you putting it into me?”

  “I’m not sure. What we talked about hopefully shouldn’t concern you, London. You’re going to get out of here with Venice and his crew.”

  “And you?”

  That gave him pause.

  “This isn’t about killing myself, if that’s what you think. I just couldn’t imagine looking my friend in the eye without at least trying to make things right. I’m gonna’ do what the Committee wants all of their underlings to do. I’m going to gamble. When that time comes – don’t look back. Look out for yourself.”

  >> He couldn’t tell a more obvious set of lies if he tried…