Mike spent the morning trying to keep his mind clear. It reminded him of his two amateur MMA fights, of the nerves that took hold after weigh-ins and lasted until the walk to the ring commenced. All that restless energy and nowhere to direct it. He had gotten the shakes both times. Hitting mitts held by his coach had helped a bit, but you couldn't warm up for six hours straight. Before the first fight, the one he had lost, Mike had thrown up in a garbage can. The vomit jokes at the gym hadn't stopped until he won his second fight.
He avoided breakfast so that he wouldn't have a repeat of that long-ago embarassment, which left him feeling both queasy and hungry. Not the ideal condition to enter a fight for his life. Mike just hoped his head start in training would be enough to overcome whoever Nallit threw at him. From what Cassandane had said, Nallit didn't provide what one would call quality instruction. When there was just an hour left to go, he came out of seclusion to wait on the balcony with his hostages.
Srinivas greeted him with a nervous smile. "Good day for winning, Mike?"
"I welcome winning every day, Sri. Try not to feel too bad for the enemy."
Jess linked arms with Srinivas and squinted at Mike. "Sam says this is going to be a walk in the park for you and there will be almost no risk for us."
Mike shrugged. "Can't be any worse than picking up a lunch order."
"Religious nuts trying to kill us for having devil powers," Jess muttered.
Joe kept his back to the rest of them, scowling down at the street below. Mike raised his voice. "How you doing, Joe?"
"I'm not thrilled about being voluntold for this detail, Ski."
Mike grunted. "Did anyone volunteer?"
Joe shook his head without looking around. "In my opinion, the ditzy duo should be sent out instead of me."
"Ditzy duo?"
"Sam and Erica," Joe said.
"In case you hadn't noticed, Joe, those are your superiors in the chain of command. I imagine they are going to be running the show while I'm performing for Nallit."
Joe spat over the balcony. "I applied to the EDA to serve under the man who caught a skyscraper, not a couple of bimbos who think they know more than a veteran of fifteen years."
"Your opinion has been noted," Mike drawled. "We'll see how that works out for you in the long term. Fortunately, you get to walk into trouble side by side with that building catch fellow today."
They fell into silence after that exchange. Mike sat cross-legged and stilled his mind as much as he could given the circumstances. Joe continued to brood in silence while the other two cuddled in a less-than-professional manner. The minutes seemed to leap past. Every time he checked the time, it was closer to noon than he had expected to see. Finally, fifteen minutes before, he gathered his hostages and flew downtown towards Point Park. He had attuned as a paragon in that park. Maybe the place was lucky for him. Or maybe his time as a paragon would be book-ended by it, starting there with his attunement and ending there with his death. He shook the negativity out of his head.
Minutes later, they arrived to discover the media present. News vans swarmed the end of the park farthest from the actual point, cameras trained on the sky.
"Well, shit," Mike said. Fingers were already pointed at him and the cameras swung around shortly after that. "Looks like it's gonna be a circus. Let's all try not to make the EDA look bad." A powerful corona overwhelmed his in an instant and pulled the four of them to the ground just inside the media perimeter. Mike resisted with his own corona too late to do more than cushion their landing. Nallit stalked forward to meet them, a predatory smile beneath his dead eyes.
"Hiya, Mike. We're going to have a press conference before the televised match. Bet you're suprised!" Nallit gestured to the press and microphone booms were extended in their direction. A man in a sleek suit with a cross tie pin stepped up next to Mike as if the entire thing had been choreographed. Mike imagined his own expression to be somewhere between slack-jawed befuddlement and dimwitted distress. He hardened his brain and kept his corona at the ready.
The sharp-dressed man began to orate without prompting. "Fellow children of God, we are here to witness an epic contest between the forces of good and evil."
Nallit began to chuckle on Mike's other side.
Sure enough, when the suit continued his address, clarification came that this was not being spun in favor of the EDA. "Mortal man has sinned greatly! Like at the Tower of Babel, mankind has reached towards the heavens and sought to become greater than God. These sins, of taking demonic power, have been committed by the foreign Angmari and those calling themselves the EDA, which we now know truly stands for the Earth Devil Army. So great were their evils that God sent an angel of destruction down from heaven to bring divine punishment to the most evil of cities, New York. Their deaths were to be a necessary tragedy, a catalyst to ignite a religious revival and turn this nation and this planet back to worship of the one true god!"
A simmering rage began to build inside Mike. Had this man been involved in the attack on Sergeant Spencer earlier in the week? Even if they hadn't been, they were obviously part of the same cultural war driving the EDA to move far away from settled lands.
"Yet that holy plan for redemption was turned aside at the last moment! Empowered by the devil, that foul serpent, the Earth Devil Army rose up to stop the angel of destruction. They spoke to him in New York and laid a curse such that the angel may not carry out his mission until human warriors have defeated the EDA. Which is why holy warriors have been raised to combat those of the devil. Our Heavenly Christian Army shall bring the battle to the Earth Devil Army this very day! They will tear these false idols from the sky! They will return this nation to the service of God! They will repudiate Satan in combat!"
Mike reached out with his corona and squeezed the man's intestines. Gently but firmly, he mashed them together until the preacher's sermon ground to an involuntary stop. The man made an obvious effort to remain upright and not clench his guts or his ass-cheeks. Into the silence, Mike spoke. "You're an absolute idiot. This Heaven Army or whatever you're calling it is just another batch of terrorists. All I hear is whining that not enough people died in New York. Well, fuck you, buddy. Is it time to fight yet?"
Nallit clapped his hands. "Good speeches, both of you. Now it's my turn to talk. What we have here is a multi-party cage match. The perimeter of the 'cage' is outlined by the sidewalk. If you go outside of the cage once, I kill one of your hostages. If you go out of the cage again, I kill another. A third time, a third hostage. Don't try a fourth time. I'm also not fond of you going to far skyward. This is televised, so you have to be close enough for the ground to have the action caught on camera."
Nallit looked back and forth before pointing at the man in the suit. "Drumroll, please." After a moment, a glint came to his eyes. "Not a fucking request."
The preacher swallowed and began to smack his hands against his thighs to approximate a drumroll.
"There we go," Nallit said. "In the dumb corner, we have Mike Dombroski. He's a badass demon choker who likes long walks on the beach and jerking his salami to the Hanson Brothers. In the numerically advantaged corner, we have a hundred churchy folk who like wanking off to a deep sense of shame. It's a battle royale for our entertainment. The list of illegal moves is as follows: leaving the cage before all your opponents are turned into grotesque corpses. Everything else is not only legal, but encouraged. The time limit is fifteen minutes or until I get bored. I'm not actually going to start a timer, so keep it lively in there. Oh! If you win, Mike, come back to where I'm holding your hostages for another surprise. I know you just love my little surprises. Well? Get the fuck in the cage."
