I Am Invincible Chapter 3 — Becoming Invincible (Patreon)

Enzo Ferrante had spent eleven years building the Colosseum, as he insisted on calling it despite the fact that nobody else did, and in those eleven years he had transformed what had once been a derelict opera house in the garment district into something that made even the old-money families raise their eyebrows when they walked through the doors.

The marble in the lobby was Carrara, imported at considerable expense and laid by a crew Enzo had flown in from Milan because he did not trust American stone workers to get the veining right. The chandeliers were Murano glass, each one a cascading waterfall of hand-blown crystal. The bar served exclusively from a curated list that started at three hundred dollars a bottle and climbed from there, the bartenders wore black tie, and the cocktail napkins were monogrammed with a golden E.

The fighting ring itself occupied the pit where the orchestra had once sat, sunk below the main floor and ringed by tiered seating that ascended in concentric semicircles toward the private boxes on the upper level. The ring floor was polished hardwood rather than concrete, treated with a sealant that made the blood easier to clean between bouts, and the ropes had been replaced with tensioned steel cables wrapped in black leather that matched the upholstery on the ringside seats.

Enzo stood at the entrance to the upper gallery in a suit that had cost more than most people's cars, a charcoal three-piece from a Neapolitan tailor whose name he dropped into conversation at every opportunity, with a silk pocket square the color of blood and cufflinks that were platinum. 

He was a big man, broad through the chest and shoulders in the way that came from pharmaceutical assistance rather than honest labor, the kind of build that strained the seams of even the most generously cut jacket. His jaw was square and his hair was slicked back with grease that smelled expensive and his teeth had been veneered to a whiteness that did not occur in nature.

He was, at this moment, doing the thing he did best, which was making rich people feel welcome in a building they had mostly paid for.

"Mr. Sionis, a pleasure as always, truly an honor to have you back, the usual box has been prepared with the Macallan you prefer, and I've taken the liberty of having Adriana available should you require anything during the evening." He gripped Roman Sionis's hand with both of his own and held it for longer than was comfortable. 

Enzo believed that the length of a handshake communicated the depth of a relationship, a belief that was not shared by the man whose hand he was holding.

Sionis extracted his fingers with a thin smile that did not touch his eyes and moved past him into the gallery without comment.

Enzo's own smile did not waver. He turned to the next arrival with the same warmth, the same energy, the same desperate performance of belonging that he had been giving for over a decade and that fooled almost nobody who mattered but which he could not stop. 

If he stopped he'd have to admit that the suit and the fancy marble and the Murano glass were not enough to make him one of them.

Behind him, two steps back and slightly to his left, stood a woman.

Kira did not have a last name that Enzo knew or cared to ask about. She was tall, nearly six feet, with close-cropped dark hair and a face that carried no particular expression at any given time. She wore a fitted black suit with no jewelry and flat shoes, because heels interfered with her response time.

Kira was a meta. 

Her particular gift allowed her to transform her body, in whole or in part, into dense living wood that she could then reshape at will, her forearms becoming clubs or blades or shields of hardened oak in the space between one heartbeat and the next. She was also, by Enzo's grudging assessment, considerably smarter than he was, a fact he compensated for by paying her an amount that ensured her continued presence at his side.

She was not loyal to him. She was loyal to the number on the check. Enzo knew this so all he had to do was pay the right amount and he'd always be safe. 

He guided the last of the evening's guests, a Falcone underboss and his wife, toward the private box on the upper tier, and he stood in the doorway while they settled in and spread his hands. "We have something special for you tonight," he said, leaning against the doorframe. "A brand-new fighter on the card, fresh blood, completely undefeated in the lower circuits, and from what my scout tells me, something quite extraordinary. So make sure you place your bets early, because I have a feeling this one is going to be worth watching."

...

Meanwhile down on the bar on the middle level Mark was sat in a chair that was more comfortable than most furniture he had ever sat on, with a large glass of water in front of him that he was drinking. 

Dinah was on the stool beside him, leaning forward with her elbows on the bar and a glass of something she hadn't touched sitting in front of her. "Water," she said, looking at his glass. "You're at the nicest bar you've ever been in and you're drinking water."

"I'm about to fight."

"I know you're about to fight. I'm the one who spent the last week trying to make sure you don't die doing it. I'm just saying, one drink wouldn't kill you." She pushed the observation aside with a wave of her hand and leaned in closer. "Okay, listen. If they're a kicker, you need to close distance immediately and get inside their range. Don't try to check the kicks, you won't be able to trust me, just get inside and clinch and make it a dirty fight from there. If they're a striker, a boxer type, you've got the advantage because your reach is longer than almost anyone's and your power is—"

"Dinah."

"—dangerous if you can land a clean hit, but the key is not to overcommit on the big shots because that's where you get countered, and if they're a grappler, a wrestler type, then whatever you do, do not let them take your back, because once you're on the ground with someone who knows what they're doing you are in their world and your size stops—"

"Dinah."

She stopped.

"I'm going to be fine," he said. "I can handle myself."

Dinah exhaled through her nose. "You are so pigheaded. You know that? You are the most stubborn, infuriating, impossible—"

"Your friend is right, you know."

The voice came from the stool on Mark's other side, and both of them turned.

The woman sitting there had not been there a moment ago, or if she had, neither of them had noticed her. 

She was perhaps twenty, perhaps older, with the kind of face that did not give up its age easily. Her black hair was pulled back from her face in a way that was severe and elegant at the same time, she wore a simple dark dress that fit her perfectly. Her hands were folded around a glass of red wine that she had not yet sipped from. She was of Asian descent and was white beautiful, enough so that even Mark, who tried to not let himself get distracted with women noticed. 

"Preparation is valuable," the woman said, her 

 eyes moving from Dinah to Mark. "But your friend is overcomplicating it. You are large and you are powerful, those are genuine advantages, but in a ring like this one they will only carry you so far. The fighters here will not be intimidated by your size. They will have fought large opponents before and they will have beaten them. What they will not have seen, if you are smart enough to give it to them, is patience."

She took her first sip of wine, a small one, and set the glass back down.

"Do not be the first to move. Let them come to you. Let them show you what they have. Every fighter, no matter how disciplined, reveals their habits in the first thirty seconds. And when you do move, move once, move completely, and do not stop until it is finished."

Mark looked at her for a long moment, studying her face.'"Thank you," he said. "That's good advice."

The woman inclined her head a fraction and she picked up her wine and stood from the stool and moved away into the crowd.

Dinah watched her go with an expression that Mark could not quite read.

"Who was that?" Mark asked.

"I don't know," Dinah said slowly. "But she's right."

Mark drained the last of his water and set the glass on the bar and stood up, "I'm going to go get ready," he said.

Dinah stood up with him and reached up then took his jaw in her hand and turned his face down toward hers.

"Be careful," she said.

"I will," he replied with a grin.

"I'll be cheering you on."

"You better," he said with a wink. 

She let go of his jaw and he turned and walked toward the stairwell that led down to the fighter's preparation level. Dinah watched him until the crowd swallowed him and then she sat back down on the stool and picked up her untouched drink and finally took a sip of it.

...

The preparation room was nothing like the locker room at the bowling alley.

Each fighter had their own suite, which was the only word for it, a private room about the size of a generous hotel suite a leather massage table and a full-length mirror and a private bathroom with a shower. A man in a white uniform stood near the door with a towel folded over his forearm, and beside the massage table a young woman in a silk robe sat with her legs crossed and her chin resting on one hand. Next to her was another woman dressed in an outfit similar to the man, she had her hair up in a bun and some gloves on. 

Mark glanced at her then back at the room itself.

He had come from a place where they wrapped the dead fighters in plastic beside the lockers. Now he was in a room with a butler and a masseuse and a woman who was likely an escort.

He didn't care, he didn't need any of them.

He crossed to the far side of the room where a bench sat against the wall and pulled his phone from his jacket pocket before sitting down.

Mark: Hey Eve. I'm at the place. Sending you the address now.

Eve: Got it. Give me a few minutes. I'll try to get into their server and pull up the camera feeds. If they're running anything on a network I'll find it.

Mark: Be careful.

Eve: You too. I mean it.

Mark: I know.

He set the phone down on the bench beside him and stood up and stripped off his shirt and began working through his warm-up, starting with the shoulder rotations and moving through the progression of stretches and activation exercises that had become as automatic as breathing. He threw combinations at the air, watching his own reflection to check his form, the way his hips rotated, the way his shoulders turned and the way his guard came back to its set position after every exchange.

He was midway through a sequence of kicks, the ones Dinah had spent the last week hammering into him, when a knock came at the door and it opened without waiting for a response.

Corsetti entered and walked with his hands behind his back. His suit tonight was navy, darker than the one Mark had first seen him in, and he stood in the doorway for a moment before stepping inside and letting the door close behind him.

"Invincible," he said. "Good to see you again. I trust the accommodations are to your liking."

"They're a significant upgrade," Mark said, lowering his hands from his guard and turning to face him. "Thank you again for the opportunity, Mr. Corsetti."

Corsetti waved the gratitude aside with a small motion of his hand. "Think nothing of it. You earned your place here. I'm simply the one who opened the door." He paused and his expression shifted into something more businesslike. "Now I'll cut to the chase, as you can guess I'm not here just for pleasantries."

Mark nodded. 

"There are certain rules governing competition at this level, and I want to make sure you understand them before you step into that ring."

Mark nodded again. "I'm listening."

Corsetti clasped his hands in front of him. "There are two hundred fighters on the roster of this establishment. No more, no less. That number is maintained deliberately, and when a vacancy occurs, as it did recently, it is filled through the scouting process that brought you here. However, I want you to understand something fundamental about how this works."

"The positions are not ranked, there is only ever one champion. Which means the difference between the second-ranked fighter and the two-hundredth-ranked fighter is, in practical terms, nothing. Both of them are subject to the same rules, the same expectations, and the same consequences for failure."

He held up one finger.

"First. If you lose three fights, not including your debut tonight, you are removed from the roster and sent back to the circuit you came from. There is no appeal and there is no reinstatement. You get three chances to prove you belong here. If you cannot win often enough to stay above that threshold, then this is not the place for you."

A second finger.

"Second. You must book at least one fight every three months. This is not a retirement home for fighters who want to collect a paycheck without stepping into the ring. If you go three months without competing, you are removed."

A third finger.

"Third. Every fight you win earns you ten thousand dollars, paid in cash within twenty-four hours of the bout. For every consecutive win beyond the first, you earn an additional ten thousand on top of the base. So your second consecutive win pays twenty thousand. Your third pays thirty."

Mark did the arithmetic in his head without trying. "So if I win ten in a row, the tenth fight alone pays a hundred thousand."

"Precisely," Corsetti said, with the small nod of a man who appreciated it when the people he was speaking to could do basic multiplication. "The system is designed to reward sustained excellence. A fighter who wins occasionally will make a comfortable living. A fighter who wins consistently will make a fortune."

"And the championship?"

"To earn the right to challenge the reigning champion, you must win five consecutive bouts. Not five total. Five in a row, without a loss between them. Once you have achieved that, a challenge bout is arranged at a date and time of the champion's choosing, and the two of you fight under the same rules as any other bout. If you win, you become champion. If you lose, your streak resets and you begin again."

"What does being champion get you, besides the title?"

Corsetti's expression shifted into something that was almost a smile. "Status. Recognition among the families and their associates. The knowledge that you are the strongest among two hundred of the most dangerous men and women in this city. The pay scale for the champion is considerably higher than what I've just described, and the connections you make at that level, the people who come to watch you fight and who want to be seen speaking with you afterward, those connections have value that extends well beyond the ring."

Mark was not sure how much of that would be useful to him. He was not here for money or for status or for the privilege of shaking hands with underbosses at cocktail parties. He was here because the Falcone family had their fingers in this operation and somewhere, through some chain of names and favors and debts, those fingers connected to the hand of Luca Falcone. But he kept that off his face and nodded as though the incentive structure interested him.

"I understand," he said.

Corsetti studied him for a moment, and whatever he was looking for in Mark's expression he appeared to find, because he gave a final nod and straightened his cuffs and took a step back toward the door. "Good luck tonight, Invincible. I have a feeling you're going to make quite an impression."

He turned and left, pulling the door shut behind him.

Mark turned back to the mirror, already settling into his stance, he threw three more combinations at the air, bounced on the balls of his feet and threw a powerful hook. 

He was ready.

The knock came ten minutes later, "Mr. Invincible, you're up."

Mark pulled on his fighting shorts and his hand wraps and walked through the door and down the corridor toward the light at the end of it, as he stepped through the entrance and into the ring the announcer's voice rolled out across the Colosseum. 

"Ladies and gentlemen, making his debut this evening, standing six feet and seven inches tall, undefeated in the independent circuit, please welcome to the ring."

 "Invincible."

The applause that rolled out across the Colosseum as Mark stepped through the archway was unlike any sound he had ever heard from a crowd watching him fight. There was no roar, no stamping of feet, no whistled obscenities or shouted bets. The clapping was polite... almost casual, the kind of applause one might hear at the conclusion of a violin recital.

Mark walked along the narrow runway that descended from the entrance toward the ring, and for the first time since the announcer had called his name he allowed himself to actually look at the place he had been brought into.

It was enormous for a start. He had been expecting something the size of a regulation boxing ring maybe a bit bigger, but what he was looking at now was twice the size of a basketball court. He let his eyes drift upward and saw what hung above the ring, and that was when his step actually faltered for a fraction of a second before he caught it and kept walking.

The ceiling above the arena was a complicated machine. He could see the edges of structures suspended high in the rafters, platforms and frames and what looked like sections of wall and even what might have been a staircase, all of it folded against the ceiling on tracks and cables that ran across the entire span of the room. Whoever had designed this place had built it so that the environment itself could be lowered and changed between bouts, transforming the open hardwood floor into something else entirely if the card called for it.

'Pretty interesting...' he thought, as he climbed the three steps up to the ring floor and ducked between the cables and walked to the center.

The announcer's voice came back over the speakers,

"And his opponent this evening, fighting out of the southern provinces and trained in the ancestral styles of his lineage, with a record of twenty-two victories and only two defeats in this house, please welcome to the ring, Master Wei Lin, the Iron Brow."

The applause rose noticeably. Where Mark's reception had been polite, this one was much louder. Several of the men in the front rows actually rose to their feet, and one of them whistled through his fingers.

The man who walked through the curtain on the opposite side of the arena was perhaps fifty years old. He was not a large man. He stood maybe five feet and seven inches, slim through the chest and shoulders, with a body that was wiry rather than muscled in any obvious way. He wore a traditional Chinese kung fu uniform in black silk with buttons running down the front and white along the sleeves and the collar. 

Wei Lin stopped about ten feet away and brought his right fist into the cup of his left palm and bowed.

Mark reciprocated the bow out of respect, though he wasn't quite sure what it meant.

The announcer's voice came again. "Fighters, take your positions. The bout begins on my mark."

Mark stepped back to his corner of the ring. 

Wei Lin did the same.

"Fighters, ready."

Mark raised his guard.

"Begin."

He came off his corner at a circling pace, his guard high and his weight balanced across the balls of both feet, and began working his way around the perimeter of the ring with his eyes locked on the older man across from him. The advice from the woman at the bar was sitting in the front of his mind. Let them come to you. Let them show you what they have.

Wei Lin did not move....

Mark continued circling, adjusting his angle now and then, shifting his lead foot, cutting in slightly to test whether the older man would react to a closing distance. 

Wei Lin simply stood there, as though Mark were a pigeon walking around the ring. 

Mark watched him trying to get any details of his style or how he might fight, but the way the man held his hands gave away nothing. His feet were positioned in a manner that did not commit to any particular direction of movement. His breathing was so controlled that his chest barely rose and fell. There was no shift of weight, no flicker of the eye toward a target, no minute tightening of any muscle group that would have suggested a forming intention. Mark had been training with Ted long enough to know that every fighter telegraphed something, no matter how subtle. 

But Wei Lin gave him nothing.

He kept circling. 

Twenty seconds passed. 

Thirty. 

Wei Lin still did not move.

'Fine,' Mark thought. 'If he won't start, I will.'

He pushed off his back foot and closed the distance, and as soon as he was inside his own range he opened with what he had decided in advance would be his testing combination; a hard jab aimed at the chin, followed by a cross, then by a left hook. 

The jab found nothing. 

 Wei had moved his head so fast and so minutely that Mark could not even fully identify what part of his body had moved first. The cross came through the air after the jab and went through empty space. By the time Mark had recovered his weight to throw the hook, Wei Lin had already retreated two steps backward.

Wei Lin had not even raised his hands yet. 

That kinda pissed Mark off. 

Mark followed him and used his reach to snap a long jab toward Wei Lin's face that was meant to occupy his attention while Mark's right hand came forward to grab the front of the silk uniform and drag him into clinch range where the size advantage would matter.

The jab missed by perhaps an inch as Wei Lin's head slipped sideways. The grab arrived where Wei Lin's chest had been, and Wei Lin's left hand came up and made the smallest possible contact with the underside of Mark's wrist however that contact was enough to redirect the entire grabbing motion past the older man's body in a way that left Mark's arm extended and his shoulder turned and his ribs exposed.

Wei Lin did not capitalize however, he simply stepped back again into open space.

Mark recovered his guard and reset his stance. He felt the first thread of frustration come up the back of his throat. He pushed it down though because letting it surface would only make him more predictable. 

He instead launched himself off his back foot in an explosive lunge and drove a straight right hand forward with his hips and his shoulder behind it, the kind of punch he had used to break noses and crack orbital bones of Falcone men. 

Wei Lin's right foot came up off the floor in a small movement that lifted his knee to about waist height and then his shin angled outward and the bottom of his slipper met the top of Mark's fist as the punch was halfway through its arc. 

The slipper simply pressed against Mark's wrist and pushed it downward, and Mark's punch was guided down and away from Wei Lin's face on a new trajectory that took it past the older man's hip. In the same continuous motion his left foot came up and snapped outward in a lateral kick that connected with the side of Mark's jaw.

The kick drove his skull sideways with a force that set off a dull bell behind his eyes and made his vision flicker for a half second. He stumbled backward two steps and caught his balance and shook his head to clear it.

Wei Lin had returned to the place where he had been standing at the start of the round. His expression had not changed, except perhaps at the corners of the mouth, where Mark thought he could now see something that was almost certainly disappointment.

The older man did not press his advantage, he looked at Mark for a moment and then he spoke, "Another striker," Wei Lin said. "Another large young man who has been told that his size and his strength are enough. There is no skill in what you are doing. There is no thought behind any of it. You throw a punch and then you throw another. This is not a sport, boy. This is the place where men come to fight. You do not belong here."

Mark stood there for a moment, he wouldn't lie and say the words hadn't pissed him off, the anger that was his constant companion coiled up and lashed out inside him trying to break free again. He raised his right hand and wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his wrist where a small thread of blood had started and then he made a fist and hit his own jaw with the fist a couple times.

"I'll make you eat those words...." 

Then he moved.

He came forward at full speed without a setup, no jab, no feint, no shift of weight to telegraph the direction. He simply launched himself out of his stance in a dead sprint across the hardwood between them.

He saw a flicker of surprise behind Wei Lin's eyes for the first time that night. 

Wei Lin's stance shifted as if he was preparing to slip whatever Mark threw at him at the moment of contact.

But Mark threw nothing, instead two steps before he reached striking distance he dropped his level and bent his knees and exploded forward off both feet in a horizontal spear that drove his shoulder into Wei Lin's midsection at the height of the man's lower ribs. 

The momentum carried both of them backward across the ring, Wei Lin's feet leaving the floor entirely as Mark's arms wrapped around his waist and locked behind his back, they crashed down onto the hardwood with the older man's spine striking first and Mark's full weight driving him down into the impact.

The sound of Wei Lin's body hitting the floor was loud enough that the quiet in the audience broke with a small collective intake of breath.

Mark did not waste the position, he posted his left hand against the floor beside Wei Lin's head and rose up onto one knee and drove his right fist down into the older man's exposed ribs with a hammering blow. He felt at least one rib buckle under the impact, and he heard the breath come out of Wei Lin in a grunt. 

He brought the fist back up and drove it down a second time, this one angled toward the older man's face, and it caught Wei Lin across the cheek and split the skin under the eye and snapped the head sideways against the hardwood.

He drew his fist back for a third strike, and as he did Wei Lin's left foot, which had somehow come up between their bodies without Mark noticing, planted flat against Mark's lower abdomen and his right hand caught the inside of Mark's elbow and pulled, the pressure of the foot pushed Mark's weight up and over while the pull on the elbow rotated him sideways in the air.

Mark hit the floor on his back about four feet from where he had landed Wei Lin, and before he could roll out of it the older man had completed the same motion and was on his feet again. Wei Lin's left leg whipped around and the heel of his slipper cracked against the bridge of Mark's nose. Mark's vision flared white and then red as his head struck the hardwood. 

Mark rolled onto his side and shook his head to clear his head, the then stood up slowly and grinned with bloody teeth at the man across from him. "You prioritize technique and skill over your own body," Mark said. "Maybe that works for your fighting style most of the time. But it leaves you vulnerable in places you don't expect."

Wei Lin's expression had hardened into something Mark had not seen on it before. The corners of his mouth had drawn down and his eyes had narrowed,

"I will not be lectured," Wei Lin said, "by a boy barely out of his mother's womb."

"Let me show you the difference between us!" He shouted a she rushed forward. 

Wei Lin closed the eight feet between them in what felt like a single step. His left hand, held flat like a blade, snapped forward in a thrusting motion that drove the tips of his stiffened fingers into the soft tissue at the base of Mark's throat just below the jaw. The strike was so precise and so fast that Mark's guard, which had been raised and ready, did not even register that it needed to move until the contact had already been made. The fingers dug into the muscle at the underside of his jaw and a dull sickening pain spread through his throat and the upper part of his chest, and the strike stunned him for the half second that Wei Lin needed to follow it up.

The right hand came forward next, not as a punch but as a chopping strike, it hit Mark across the side of the neck with a thud that drove a current of numbness all the way down his right arm to the fingertips. He felt his guard collapse on that side as the arm went briefly dead, and Wei Lin was already inside the gap that the dropped guard had created, his shoulder pressing against Mark's chest as his right knee came up and drove into the soft tissue just above Mark's hip. 

Mark tried to raise his knee to intercept the next strike and found that his right leg had lost some of its responsiveness. He threw his left hand at Wei Lin's head in a close hook that he hoped would create enough space to reset.

Wei Lin's left forearm came up and met the inside of Mark's bicep with a downward elbow that drove the arm wide of its target, and as the hook traveled past the older man's head Wei Lin stepped under it and his right hand came up beneath Mark's armpit and his left hand circled around the back of Mark's elbow, and in a motion Mark could not follow with his eyes the older man had his arm trapped at full extension with the joint locked at an angle that would not bend.

Wei Lin twisted at the hips and drove his shoulder up into Mark's locked elbow and Mark felt the joint scream and then he was airborne, his entire body lifted off the floor by the leverage on his arm, and a half second later he came down on his back on the hardwood with his arm still trapped.

Mark tried to roll into the lock to relieve the pressure and Wei Lin released the lock at the exact moment Mark moved, then the older man's right knee came down on the center of Mark's chest while his left fist drove down into the right side of Mark's ribs in a short hammering strike,

Mark tried to push up, but Wei Lin's hands came down to either side of Mark's torso and his fingers pressed into specific points along his ribs. The older man rotated his palms in a small circular motion and pressed inward and downward at the same time, and Mark felt something happen inside his chest that he had no language for. 

His diaphragm seized. 

The air that had been in his lungs went out and did not come back. He tried to draw in a new breath and his chest would not expand. His ribs would not move outward. The lungs that he had used for eighteen years without thinking about it had simply stopped responding to his commands.

Wei Lin stood up off of him and stepped back two paces and turned his head and spat on the hardwood beside Mark's shoulder, looking at Mark with what can only be described as pure distain. 

"This is the new generation," he said quietly, almost to himself. "Children with the bodies of men. There is no honor in what you tried to do. There is no understanding. You are not fit to stand in this ring." He turned away.

The announcer's voice came over the speakers. "What we have just witnessed, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the rarest applications of Bak Mei kung fu ever seen in this house. The technique is known as the Locking of the Bellows, it is a precise manipulation of the small muscles that surround and control the diaphragm. Once applied, the effect cannot be reversed by the recipient through any normal means, and the body will not draw breath until the manipulation is undone by the practitioner who performed it. Master Wei Lin has demonstrated tonight why he remains one of the most dangerous men ever to grace this floor. It is, regrettably, a sad ending for our debut fighter, who showed promise but who simply was not equipped to face what was waiting for him."

Mark could not breathe.

The edges of his vision were beginning to darken at the periphery. He could hear the announcer's voice as though it were coming from underwater. He could hear the murmur of the crowd accepting the verdict of the bout. He could see, above him, the framework of platforms and walls suspended in the rafters and the bright lights set among them.

He was going to lose. 

He was going to lose his debut fight in front of an audience of Falcone-connected money in the only door he had found to Luca, and he was going to lose it. 

NO!

Not now. 

Not after everything he'd done to this point. 

Not after his mother. 

Not after Luca.

The rage that lived inside of him, the bottomless thing he had been carrying for five years, rose.

It did not come up the way it usually did, in a hot rush through his chest and his arms. It rose differently this time. It came up through his bones. It filled the spaces between his ribs and the cavities of his hips and the muscles of his legs, it pressed against the inside of his skin until every inch of his body felt like it was made of something other than flesh.

He sat up, though the way he did it was by no means graceful. His body was still locked up. His diaphragm was still seized. But he sat up, and then he stood, and the murmur of the crowd that had been settling toward the end of the bout went silent, every head in the room turning toward the man who was supposed to be dying on the floor.

Wei Lin stopped walking, as if he could sense something we wrong. When he did turn the disdain on his face was gone, replaced by confusion. 

Mark drew his right fist back to his shoulder and drove it forward into the center of his own abdomen. The impact landed with a heavy thud against his stomach. He brought the fist back and did it again. Then again. Then with his left fist. He hammered his own torso with powerful blows, alternating sides, working his way up and down the cage of his ribs and across the wall of his stomach. 

Everyone could see the bruises beginning to bloom across his own skin under the impacts, dark blotches forming in real time across his abdomen and up along his lower ribs, but he kept hitting himself, and finally on what might have been the eighteenth or twentieth strike his whole chest shuddered and he drew a massive breath. 

The Colosseum was completely silent.

Eventually the announcer found his voice. "Ladies and gentlemen. I must confess that in my time as an announcer in this house, I have never witnessed what you are watching now. Invincible appears to have undone the Locking of the Bellows by application of repeated blunt trauma to his own diaphragm and surrounding musculature. I will be quite honest with you. I did not believe such a thing was physically possible."

Wei Lin tutted and the older man started walking back across the hardwood toward Mark with an almost casual stride. Whatever he had seen in the moment Mark had stood up had passed and the disdain had returned to his face. He came forward and snapped a flat-handed strike toward the side of Mark's neck.

The strike landed.

It cracked across Mark's neck with the same precision and the same force that the previous one had carried, but Mark did not move. He did not block. He did not slip. He took the strike on the meat of his neck and he did nothing about it.

He simply grabbed his hand and in a flash sent a punch right to his stomach. Due to being held in place by Mark, Wei couldn't avoid the blow and was doubled over to the ground by the punch. 

Wei recovered quickly and kicked both legs out at Marks knees both to push himself away and make Mark stagger. 

But Mark's right hand came down and closed around Wei Lin's left ankle.

The older man's eyes widened. He tried to twist his ankle free and tried to drive a strike with his free foot into the side of Mark's leg and did so, but it was as if Mark did not register it. His hand on the ankle tightened and he turned at the hips and swung Wei Lin off the floor in a wide arc. The older man's body came up off the hardwood and traveled through the air at the end of Mark's arm, Mark continued the rotation through a full half circle and brought the body down.

Wei Lin slammed into the hardwood face down in a crack of wood. He screamed against the floor as he felt pain explode inside of him. He once again kicked at Mark to try and force him to let go, but he didn't. 

He lifted again and brought Wei Lin upward into the air a second time only this time his left fist drew back to his shoulder and when he was at the right height he punched the older man in the chest with the full rotation of his body behind the strike, and Wei Lin's body rocketed downward and struck the hardwood a second time.

Mark released the ankle.

Wei Lin tried to roll away but his left arm was not moving correctly. The shoulder had come out of its socket on one of the impacts and was hanging at the wrong angle. The older man came up onto one knee and threw a strike. It was a flat-handed thrust toward Mark's groin. 

Mark felt the strike, but like the others did not respond to it. He stepped past it and brought his right knee up into Wei Lin's face. Cartilage in the older man's nose collapsed and a sheet of blood erupted across his upper lip and chin.

Wei Lin staggered backward, somehow still on his feet. He raised his right hand and his fingers came forward in the bladed thrusting strike that had paralyzed Mark's diaphragm.

Mark caught the older man's hand and clamped his fingers tight around it. He squeezed hard and twisted in the same motion. Wei Lin's middle and ring fingers snapped backward at the knuckles with two loud popping sounds.

The old fighter let out a shriek so high it barely sounded human. Mark released the grip and let him stagger back another step, blood already pouring from his nose and soaking the front of his shirt.

Wei Lin should have been finished. His hand was ruined, one arm hung limp and useless from the shoulder, and any normal man would have been curled on the floor screaming for a doctor. But the master had spent his whole life in fights like this. He refused to drop. 

Mark could feel his own rage surging hotter with every second the old man stayed upright, feeding the fire that had already been burning inside him through the long, punishing beating he had taken tonight. 

Enough. 

He was done playing. 

He was going to end this right now.

Mark lunged forward, throwing a heavy overhand right straight at the old man's jaw, putting every ounce of his weight and fury behind it. 

But it seemed Wei had been expecting that, as the master's right leg lifted clean off the floor in a sudden flip. His body twisted mid-air, the leg whipping up and over in a wide vertical arc with almost no setup, the heel of his slipper then swung downward like a hammer through the air.

The heel crashed down onto the crown of Mark's skull with the full weight of the older man's body driving it home.

White light exploded inside Mark's skull and swallowed everything in one blinding flash. His body pitched forward and slammed face-first into the hardwood floor where he lay completely still.

The Colosseum erupted around him with men rising from their seats and clapping their hands but the sound grew distant and muffled as the darkness pulled him under. He felt nothing when the two men in white uniforms rolled him onto the stretcher and carried him out.

...

The piece of pineapple was hovering about ten inches above his face, and Mark was starting to think Dinah was holding it that high on purpose.

He was lying on his back on what he had quickly come to think of as his bed in Dinah's apartment, even though it was technically her couch pushed against the windows and made up with sheets. His torso was wrapped from his hips to just under his armpits. His left forearm had its own smaller bandage where one of Wei Lin's strikes had left a contusion that the doctor Eve had sent over insisted needed to be kept covered. 

The whole arrangement made him look, in his own opinion, like a very large mummy.

Dinah was sitting cross-legged on the edge of the bed beside him with a glass bowl of cut fruit balanced on her thigh, holding a piece of pineapple between her thumb and index finger and dangling it above his mouth at a height that he could not currently reach. He had tried twice. Both times something in his abdomen had pulled in a way that made him wince and lower his arm again, which was apparently the result she had been waiting for.

"Awww can you not reach," she said.

He sighed. "Could you maybe lower it like an inch."

"I could," she said with a smile that was too wide for her face. "But then you wouldn't be learning anything, and I am very committed to your education right now."

"Dinah..."

"So care to explain why you went in the ring fighting like a giant toddler?"

"I knew he was more skilled so I had to leverage the only advantage I did have."

Dinah just raised an eyebrow at him. "Be honest with me. What part of that plan did you spend more than ten seconds thinking about?"

Before he could come up with anything, the phone propped against the lamp on the side table crackledn 

"None of it," Eve said. "He didn't think about any of it."

"Hi, Eve," Dinah said sweetly.

"Hi, Dinah. Please get him to listen to you."

"I have been trying."

"Beat it into him if you need to."

Dinah looked down at him with the same patient expression she had been wearing for the last ten minutes. "Listen to your little friend, Mark."

Mark closed his eyes for a second and sighed. 

He had been at Dinah's apartment for a few days now. He could not remember much of the first one, most of what he could put together about it had come from things that Dinah had told him later. She had picked him up from the back exit of the Colosseum where the men in the white uniforms had handed him over still mostly unconscious. She had brought him back to her place and brought over a doctor she knew. 

Eve had done what Eve did, which was watch the camera feeds from the Colosseum on a loop and call him approximately every ten minutes to check he was okay. 

Eve had told him, on the morning after the fight, that she was one short bus ride away from leaving her apartment for the first time in four years specifically so she could come over and bash his head in for being reckless.

"I'm sorry," he said now, looking up at the pineapple and then past it at Dinah's face, and then over at the phone. "Both of you. I'm sorry I made you worry. But I'm fine.... Apart from the part where I lost, I'm fine."

Dinah's eyes narrowed slightly and without changing her expression at all, she reached down with her free hand and gave a small, light nudge to the side of his ribs through the bandage making him hiss through his teeth before he could stop himself.

"Mostly fine," he amended through the wince. "I am mostly fine."

"Mhmmm," she hummed.

He let his head sink back into the pillows and stared at the ceiling for a moment. "I let my anger get the better of me in there. The whole thing, from the moment he started insulting me, was me losing my head. He was reading me like a book the entire fight... it pissed me off, and instead of slowing down and adjusting, I doubled down. That's on me and it won't happen again."

The line was quiet for a second.

"Okay," Eve said with a softness in her voice. "Okay, Mark. Get better. I have to get back to my searches anyway, I have something I'm running through the Colosseum's secondary network and I think it's going to spit out something that might be helpful. I'll text you when I have something. Bye."

The call ended with a small chime, and the screen on the phone went dark.

Dinah looked down at him and finally lowered the pineapple to a height that he could actually take into his mouth without screaming, he caught it between his teeth and chewed slowly. She speared another piece on the small fork at the side of the bowl and held it out to him at a more reasonable distance which he took. 

"So Eve," she said. "You two seem close."

"We are."

"Like, close-close, or close like best friends since you were kids."

He took another piece of fruit from the fork and chewed it carefully.

"It's complicated," he said.

"I bet."

"We're not together."

"Could you be?"

"No," he said finally. "We couldn't."

She set the fork down in the bowl and rested the bowl on her thigh and looked at him properly. "Why not. She clearly cares about you a lot. I've seen a couple of those calls now and the way she watches you is not exactly subtle."

"I know she does."

"So why."

He took a slow breath through his nose. "She's not in a place where she can make a decision like that. She lost her mom in a way that I'm not going to get into, at the moment I'm probably the only person she sees in person on a regular basis, she can't possibly know how she feels about me the way she is. She deserves to figure out who she is before someone like me ends up being who she ends up with by default."

Dinah was quiet for a moment. "That's actually pretty thoughtful," she said. "I was prepared to be annoyed with you, just so you know."

"You're always prepared to be annoyed with me."

"Yeah, well, you give me a lot of material." She picked the fork back up and speared a piece of mango and held it out to him. "Okay. I'm not going to push on that one. It's not really my business and you've clearly thought about it more than I expected. I will go on the record as saying that I think she's in love with you, and you should probably be aware of that, and you should probably also be aware that whatever you're doing right now to handle it is not going to keep working forever."

He took the mango from the fork and chewed it. "Yeah yeah you can tell me I told you so another time."

She giggled before feeding him the rest of the fruit in the bowl, once the bowl was empty she set it down on the floor beside the bed and rested her elbow on her knee and looked at him with a different kind of expression.  "I want you to actually rest these next few days," she said. "Because for the next eighty-six days, starting the second the doctor clears you, I am going to train you to the bone, Mark. I am going to take you apart and put you back together as a fighter."

He grinned at her. "I'm looking forward to it."

She leaned in just slightly toward him, close enough that he could see the small flecks of darker blue near the centers of her eyes, and the corner of her mouth tilted upward in a way that was not quite a smile. "I wouldn't count on that," she said quietly.

She stayed there for a half second longer than she needed to, and then she straightened up and stood from the bed and picked up the empty bowl and walked across the studio toward the kitchen counter. 

...

A week slid past where the doctor came back twice, looked at his ribs, made unhappy noises about the bruising on his abdomen, and eventually said that the cracked rib had set well enough and that he could begin light work as long as he stopped immediately if anything hurt bad enough.

He spent another few days working through the smaller motions of recovery. He moved around the apartment slowly. He ate what Dinah cooked for him, which was a great deal of protein, a great deal of leafy green things and a great deal of water that she set in front of him. He talked to Eve every day. He read the messages she sent him about Falcone-linked warehouses and storage spaces that her digging through the Colosseum's accounting servers had turned up, and he saved every one of them to a folder on his phone that was steadily growing longer.

On the morning of the eleventh day after the fight, he stood in the matted area of Dinah's studio in shorts and a compression shirt and worked his way through a long warm-up. He moved slowly through the stretches he had learned over the years, and tested each muscle group as he went. His ribs were tight but not painful. His abdomen was sore but no longer bruised the way it had been the week before.

He was midway through a long lunge that took him through one of the deeper hip flexor stretches Dinah had been pestering him about when he heard the door of her bedroom open at the far end of the studio.

Mark glanced up and saw Dinah walking across the open space toward him. She wore a tight black sports bra and high-waisted black leggings that hugged her body perfectly. The sports bra clung to her breasts, stretched tight so he could clearly see the shape of her nipples pressing through the fabric with every step. The leggings wrapped around her hips and ass like they were painted on, showing off every curve as she moved.

He noticed every detail m, the way he always did. He was eighteen and definitely not a saint. He quickly looked back down at his lunge and tried to keep stretching like nothing happened.

Though he was pretty sure he had not been quick enough.

This was made worse by the small smirk that pulled at the corner of her mouth as she reached the edge of the mat told him everything. She did not say anything about it. She just took her time walking over and stopped a step or two closer than she needed to.

She stood close enough that he could feel the warmth coming off her skin, and smell the mix of her sweat and lotion. When she shifted her weight he could see the press of her tits against the bra and how the leggings sat high on her waist. There was a slight tension in the air that seemed to hang for a moment as they just stood there. 

Eventually she broke it. "Okay," she said, rolling her neck slowly to one side and then the other. "So here is the plan. There are two things we need to do in the next six months."

"Six months?" he said.

"Yes."

"Dinah, I have to fight again in three. The clause Corsetti laid out is at least one bout every ninety days or you're off the roster. I can't take six months off."

"I know. I'm not telling you to take six months off. I am telling you that the version of you I am trying to build is going to take six months to put together properly. So I am going to be honest with you... You are probably going to lose that one too," she said with an apologetic smile. 

He sighed and let his hands drop to his sides. "Would it kill you to have a little faith in me."

She looked up at him, gave him a wink, "Womp womp."

Mark sighed. 

"You'll get over it."

"Anyway back to the topic at hand there are two things we are going to be working on. One, you need to be a lot more flexible than you currently are. I am not talking about touching your toes flexible, I am talking about real flexibility, the kind that lets you throw kicks at the angles I throw them. Two, you need to learn how to actually use your legs. Like, properly. Not the way you lumber around like Bigfoot."

"I'm pretty flexible."

She tilted her head at him, slowly. "Honey..."

"What."

She did not answer. Instead she took a small step backward onto the mat, and she lowered herself down into the splits in a single smooth motion that put both of her legs flat against the floor in a perfect straight line. She braced her hands on the mat for a second to balance herself, and then she let her chest fold forward over her front leg until her stomach was against her thigh and her forehead was almost touching her shin. 

She held that position for a moment, and then lifted her chest again, raised her back leg straight up off the floor in a vertical line behind her, and held it there at an angle that turned her body into a perfect horizontal split with her foot pointing at the ceiling.

She held the pose and looked at him from underneath it giving him another quick wink.

He felt his ears go warm and he made himself look at the mat between them rather than at any specific part of her. "Okay," he said. "I get the point."

"Good."

She came out of the pose the same way she had gone into it and rolled to her feet. "Now," she said. "Let's get started."

The first thing she did was tie his hands behind his back. She did it with a leather strap she pulled from a drawer near the kitchen, she crossed his wrists at the small of his back and looped the strap through and tied a knot. She walked around to the front of him and looked him over and adjusted one of the loops slightly and stepped back.

"You're going to be like this most of the time for a while," she said. "Not all of it, obviously. We'll untie you for the bag work and the weights. But for everything else, footwork, stances, kick drills, sparring. Your hands have been carrying you for years and your feet have been along for the ride. I want that to switch."

He looked down at his own torso, which now had two arms folded behind it. "How am I going to eat."

She smiled slowly. "You are going to learn to use a fork with your toes."

"Dinah."

"Or," she said, lifting one shoulder in a small shrug, "I could just feed you."

He looked at her.

She looked back, and the corner of her mouth was tilted up again.

"Let's table that one," he said.

"Sure."

She turned away from him and walked over to a closet at the back of the studio and opened it and started pulling out a piece of equipment that he had never seen before, which looked like a padded frame with handles and straps and a hinged section. She set it in the middle of the mat and gestured for him to come over, and when he stepped onto the mat she kicked his ankles a little wider apart with the side of her bare foot and started showing him what the thing did.

Which was forcibly stretch his body in every conceivable way basically forcing him to become flexible. 

"Oh boy..."

...

And then the training started for real. Every day for the first three months they worked. Some days Mark's legs burned so bad he thought he couldn't stand up anymore but Dinah kept pushing. She made him do kicks over and over until the motion felt natural. At first he kept losing his balance because he was used to using his arms for everything. But she would catch him or help him back up and tell him to try again. 

One time he fell flat on his ass during a spinning kick and she laughed so hard she had to sit down on the mat. He laughed too even though it hurt his ribs a little still. She helped him up and her hand stayed on his arm longer than it needed to. 

He noticed stuff like that more and more as the days went on.

They ate together after training most nights. Dinah would make pasta or burgers and they would sit at the table by the windows. Sometimes her leg would bump his under the table and neither of them moved it away right away. They talked about old fights she had when she was starting out and he told her more about why he was doing all this. She listened and didn't judge him for it. She told him about her own early days when she lost a lot and how she learned to control her anger instead of letting it control her. Those talks made the loft feel cozier and warmer than it really was.

Eve kept texting during those weeks. She found more stuff on the Colosseum network. Addresses of places the Falcones used for stuff. Delivery times. Mark read them at night when Dinah was asleep on the couch. He saved every single one. He was going to use them when he was ready. But for now the training came first. He had to get better so he could actually do something when the time came instead of just running in and almost getting killed.

The tension between him and Dinah grew slowly. It wasn't anything big or dramatic. Just little things that added up. The way she looked at him. The way she stood close when she fixed his stance and her hand stayed on his hip for a second longer than it had to. The way she smelled after training and how it made him think things he probably shouldn't be thinking. One night after a long session she was helping him stretch his hamstrings. She had her hands on the back of his leg and she pushed it higher. Their faces were close and for a second he thought about what it would be like to kiss her. 

But she just smiled and said "You're getting there" and the moment passed. He lay awake that night thinking about it and wondering if she had felt it too.

Eventually he cast the thoughts away. It was probably just the fact they had been in close quarters for such a long time. 

By the end of the first three months Mark could do the splits almost as good as Dinah. His kicks were faster and stronger and he didn't need his arms as much as he used to.

When he went back to the Colosseum, he fought another guy that was fast and used his legs a lot. Mark used what Dinah taught him. He lasted almost eight minutes. He landed some good kicks and even took the guy down once with a sweep. But in the end the guy caught him with a spinning heel kick and the ref stopped it. Mark was bruised and sore but nothing was broken. He felt okay about it. 

Better than the first loss anyway.

When both of them got back to the loft Dinah rubbed his back. She looked him over and patched up a cut on his cheek with some ointment. "You did good," she said. "You lasted longer. You used your legs like I showed you. I'm proud of you." She hugged him, it lasted a lot longer than a normal hug. He could feel her against him and smell her hair. He didn't want to let go but he did after a minute. She looked at him for a second like she wanted to say something else but she just smiled and told him to rest up.

That night Mark lay in bed thinking about how much had changed in three months, about his body... about the stuff with Dinah... 

He knew he wasn't crazy, it was definitely hanging in the air between them every day. He didn't know what to do about it. He had too much going on with Luca and the Falcones to start something like that. But he couldn't stop thinking about her either.

...

The next three months were different. Mark was getting better faster now. His legs moved like they were part of the fight instead of something he had to think about. Dinah pushed him harder every day. She made him do drills where he had to kick from weird angles and keep his balance even when she tried to knock him over. At first he still fell a lot but he got up faster each time. 

She would say "Good. Again." and he would do it again until it felt right.

They sparred more now too. Dinah didn't hold back as much as she used to. He had to use everything she taught him to stay on his feet. One afternoon he actually won a round. He swept her leg and she went down on the mat. She looked up at him surprised and then she laughed. "Not bad for a big oaf like you," she said and then got up and they went again. This time she won.

The closeness between them kept growing. During one sparring session they ended up in a clinch. Their bodies were pressed together and they were both breathing hard. Mark could feel her heart beating fast against his chest. They stayed like that for a second too long. Their eyes met and neither of them looked away right away. Then Dinah stepped back and laughed a little but her voice sounded shaky. "Okay that's enough for today," she said. 

Mark nodded but he kept thinking about that moment for the rest of the night.

By the end of the six months Mark felt like a different person.

He could drop into the splits cold. He could hold a horizontal split almost as long as Dinah could. He could throw kicks from angles he had not known existed, including one particular spinning hook kick that Dinah had spent two solid weeks swearing at him for not getting right.

There were a lot more tense moments between him and Dinah, but he learned to not let them distract him. 

On the last night of the six months, the night before his second fight, she sat down on the mat across from him after the final session and pressed the soles of her feet against the soles of his feet in a stretch they had been ending the day with for weeks. She pulled his hands forward gently to draw him into it, and he held the position with their feet locked and their fingers laced and his forehead almost touching hers across the gap between them.

"Tomorrow," she said.

"Tomorrow."

"You're ready."

"I know."

"Don't get cocky."

"I won't."

"You're going to win this one, Mark."

"When you do... I expect to be treated with the prize money." She said with a wink. 

Mark smiled back.

_____________________________________

The drive to the Colosseum took about twenty minutes in the rain, and Dinah spent most of it talking. Mark didn't mind much, he mostly just sat in the passenger seat with his bag between his feet and his forehead against the glass of the window ehile he let her talk. 

"The biggest thing tonight is your head," she said, one hand on the wheel and the other tapping the gear stick. "That's it. That's the whole game. You have the tools now, Mark. You have all of them. Your kicks are better, your footwork is the best it's ever been, your flexibility is genuinely impressive for your size, and if you fight the way I've been training you to fight for the last six months, you can beat anyone in that building. But none of that matters if you lose your temper in the first two minutes and start swinging like you're back in the Narrows fighting meth dealers."

"I know."

"I'm not done."

"Shocking."

"You have incredible potential. I've been training and fighting for a long time and I don't say things like that lightly. You could be one of the best fighters I've ever seen. You could be better than me, eventually. You could be better than Ted. But only if you stop and actually use your head once in a while, because every single time you've lost. It's been because you got angry and you stopped thinking and you let somebody drag you into a fight on their terms instead of yours. Don't do that tonight."

"I won't."

"If he insults you, let it go."

"I will."

"If he hits you with something you're not expecting, breathe, reset. Don't chase the counter. Don't go hunting for the big shot. Be patient. Fight smart."

"Dinah."

"What."

"I've got it."

She looked at him with a complicated expression on her face, she looked like she wanted to say more but in the end. She put the car in park and turned in her seat to face him. "Good luck," she said.  Then she leaned across the console and kissed him on the cheek.

She pulled back and looked at him. "Go win," she said.

He grabbed his bag off the floor and got out of the car.

_____________________________________

The main private box on the upper tier of the Colosseum was the size of a generous apartment. It had its own bar along the back wall, its own waiter in black tie, its own leather seating arranged in a semicircle facing the enormous window that looked down over the ring. 

Enzo Ferrante was in his element. 

Which meant he had his nose halfway up someone's ass.

He moved through the box and greeted each arrival like a dog wagging its tail and begging for approval. Most of the guests tolerated it the way you tolerate a waiter. They nodded. They moved past him. They found their seats and their drinks and they forgot about him immediately.

One of the men who came through the door about halfway through the arrivals did not shake Enzo's hand at all.

Luca Falcone. 

In his late forties he was tall and broad through the shoulders in a way that had probably been impressive twenty years ago but was now just a little extra weight. His suit was dark blue and cut well and his hair was combed straight back. He walked into the box with a slightly bored expression as though his presence there was forced. 

Enzo started toward him with both hands out. "Mr. Falcone, what an absolute pleasure, we are so honored to have you with us this evening, I've prepared a—"

Luca waved him off without looking at him and walked past and took his seat at the center of the front row.

Behind him, two people followed.

The first was a young woman with white hair and an eyepatch over her left eye. She took the seat to Luca's right without saying anything to anyone. People knew her as Ravager one of the most dangerous mercenaries in the world. 

The second was person was her father, or better known as Deathstroke. He took the seat to Luca's left and crossed one leg over the other and folded his hands in his lap and did not make eye contact with anyone in the room. None in the group seemed to want to actually be here which wasn't surprising when considering that two were trained killers. 

The last guest to arrive was a woman. She came through the door alone and walked to the far end of the front row and sat down in the chair that had been reserved for her with a small card on the armrest. She was perhaps twenty, perhaps thirty, it was impossible to tell. She was of East Asian descent and was quite beautiful by any man's standards. She wore a simple dark dress and no jewelry and her hair was pulled back from her face. 

Enzo practically ran across the room to greet her.

"Miss Wu-San," he said. "It is such an honor to have you here tonight. Truly. We have gone to great lengths to ensure that the evening's program meets your standards, and I am confident that you will find—"

She picked up the glass of wine that the waiter had already placed on the armrest beside her and took a sip. "This wine is quite tasteless," she said flatly. "I hope you are not wasting my time, Enzo."

Enzo's hands came together in front of his chest. "No ma'am. No. Not at all. I know you have been looking for an apprentice, and I believe I have exactly the right candidate for you to evaluate this evening. His name is Jae-Sun Park, he fights under the name Tempest. Twenty-three years old, South Korean, has been training since he was six. He's already mastered taekwondo, Muay Thai, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu at a master level. His striking speed is the fastest I've seen in this house since I opened the doors, he has the kind of instinct for distance and timing that cannot be taught, and his conditioning is extraordinary. He has never been knocked down in this ring. He adapts mid-fight faster than any fighter I've ever had on my roster, and he has a killer instinct that I think you will find—"

"Thirty wins," Deathstroke said, without looking at Enzo. "No losses. Three martial arts, heh those talents are a dime a dozen."

Enzo kept his composure, though barely. "With all due respect, sir, the young man's record speaks for itself. Thirty-one wins. Zero losses. He has not simply beaten his opponents, he has dominated them. Several of the fighters he's faced were former champions in their own right, and he finished each of them inside three rounds."

"Why has he not challenged the champion?" Luca asked, though did not turn around to look at Enzo.

"Out of respect," Enzo said, and he bowed his head slightly as his eyes moved to Miss Wu-San.

Miss Wu-San did not react to that. She took another sip of the wine she found tasteless and said nothing.

From the other side of the box, a heavyset man in a pinstriped suit who ran most of the gambling operations on the south side leaned forward in his chair and slapped his palm on the armrest. "We're not going to learn a damn thing sitting up here talking about him. Start the fight already."

Enzo straightened up and adjusted his cuffs and gave a small nod to the waiter near the door, who spoke something into a radio.

...

The announcer's voice rolled out across the Colosseum.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this evening's main event. Our first fighter, making his third appearance in this house, standing six feet and seven inches tall, please welcome back to the ring, Invincible."

Mark came through the curtain and walked down the runway toward the ring. The applause was warmer than it had been the first time. It was warmer than the second time, too. Somewhere in the front rows a man actually stood up and clapped with his hands above his head. He climbed the steps and ducked between the cables and walked to the center of the ring and stood there punching the air a few times as he loosened up. 

"And his opponent, fighting with a record of thirty-one victories and zero defeats, a master of three disciplines and the most dominant force this house has seen in years, please welcome to the ring, Tempest."

The man who came through the opposite curtain was younger than Mark had been expecting considering his record. He was about six feet tall and lean in a way that suggested speed rather than power, with black hair that fell across his forehead and a face that would have been handsome if it hadn't been wearing an expression of absolute certainty that bordered on boredom. 

He was shirtless under a light robe that he shrugged off as he climbed the steps. His body was covered in the kind of lean, defined muscle that came from a lifetime of training. He bounced on his toes as he crossed the ring and did a couple kicks for the crowd and gave them a wide smile. 

Tempest stopped about eight feet from Mark and looked up at him. He studied him for a few seconds then snorted. "Let me save us both some time," Tempest said with a grin. "You should give up now. I've watched the tape of your first two fights. You lost both of them. I don't know what you think has changed since then, but I promise you, whatever it is, it's not going to be enough. I've beaten thirty-one men in this ring and most of them were better than you on your best day. So do yourself a favor and walk out of here before I have to embarrass you."

Mark looked at him and rolled his shoulders, first one and then the other, and cracked his neck to each side, and then he looked past Tempest and out into the crowd where his eyes immediately found Dinah's and he smiled at her. 

He turned back to Tempest.

"Fighters, take your positions," the announcer said. "The bout begins on my mark."

Mark stepped back and raised his guard.

"Begin."

The announcer's voice faded away into the background noise of the crowd as the signal to begin the fight rang out across the entire Colosseum. 

Mark stepped forward from his corner, keeping his hands up in guard position while his feet moved in the small circles. Across the ring Tempest came out light on his toes, bouncing with energy like he had all the time in the world to play with his food. That cocky grin never left his face for even a second as he started circling to his left and looking Mark up and down like he was a succulent... piece of meat.

Tempest threw the first real punch of the fight a few seconds later and it came in fast with a lot of snap behind it. Mark slipped his head to the side and let the fist whistle past his ear without making contact. 

Tempest laughed out loud as he reset his stance and kept moving around the ring with that same arrogant bounce in his step. "You should have stayed home tonight big guy," he said loud enough for half the front row to hear him. "Tonight I'm going to make you look like the amateur you really are before I put you on your back for good."

Mark stayed quiet and kept his eyes locked on Tempest's shoulders and hips. He refused to chase after the fighter or let the insults pull him into swinging wildly. Tempest threw another punch right after he finished talking and this one was a flashy spinning back fist that came around with a lot of show but not much power behind it. 

Mark raised his forearm to block it and the impact landed solid enough to jar his arm a little but it didn't do any real damage. He stepped back to reset his position and kept circling while he waited for the right moment to come to him.

Tempest kept up the showy stuff as the seconds ticked by and the crowd started to get into it with a few scattered claps and whistles. He threw a high roundhouse kick that was more about looking good than actually hurting anyone, the shin connected with Mark's shoulder with a meaty thud that left a red welt on the skin. 

Mark absorbed the hit without flinching and stayed patient. Tempest smirked and threw another kick right after that one landed and this time it was a spinning heel that caught Mark on the side of the head with a glancing blow. The contact split a small cut open above Mark's left eyebrow and a thin line of blood started to trickle down into his eye but he blinked it away and kept his guard up without chasing. 

"You really are as slow as you look," Tempest said as he bounced back out of range and wiped a little sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. "I thought the big guys were supposed to hit hard but so far all I'm seeing is a guy who can't even keep up with me. Come on at least try to throw something before I get bored and end this thing early."

Mark continued to bide his time and let Tempest burn through his energy with all the flashy moves and the nonstop talking. He absorbed a couple more light hits during the next minute of circling and feeling each other out. One was a quick body shot and the other was a jab to the head that he rolled with so it only grazed his temple and didn't do anything serious. The blood from the cut above his eyebrow was starting to run a little faster now and it mixed with the sweat on his face but he ignored it and stayed focused on watching for the opening that he knew would come if he just waited long enough. 

Tempest threw one more big spinning kick that was all show and no substance and this time Mark slipped inside the arc instead of blocking it and that was when he saw his chance.

Tempest had overcommitted on the kick and his guard dropped for just a split second as he tried to recover his balance. Mark exploded forward from his back foot without any warning and started with a quick jab that snapped Tempest's head back hard enough to make his eyes water. The younger fighter's nose started to bleed right away from the impact and a spray of red misted the air between them as Mark followed up immediately with a straight cross that landed square on the same spot and sent more blood flying from the already damaged nose. Tempest tried to bring his hands up to cover but he was too slow and Mark finished the three punch combination with a hook to the jaw that split the skin on Tempest's cheek wide open. Blood poured down the side of the younger man's face in a stream and his head snapped sideways from the force of the blow.

Before Tempest could even think about recovering Mark planted his back foot solid against the hardwood and drove everything he had into one final punch. He activated every muscle group from his legs up through his hips and core and into his back and shoulder and arm all at the same time. 

The fist shot out at a speed that no one in the crowd or up in the private box had expected from a man Mark's size and it connected with the center of Tempest's face with a sound like a baseball bat hitting wet meat. 

Tempest's head snapped back violently from the impact and blood erupted from his nose and mouth in a thick spray that painted the hardwood floor in front of him. His body flew backward off his feet like he had been hit by a car and he crashed down hard on his back with his arms and legs splayed out wide. His head bounced once off the floor and then went still as blood pooled under him from the split lip and the broken nose and the deep cut on his cheek. His eyes rolled back for a second before they fluttered open again and he lay there gasping and blinking up at the lights while the entire Colosseum went quiet for the first time since the fight had started.

Up in the private box the reaction was even more substantial. Luca Falcone turned his head all the way around for the first time since he had taken his seat at the front and his bored expression cracked into something that looked a lot closer to genuine interest as he leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. 

Miss Wu-San set her wine glass down on the armrest without ever taking her eyes off the ring and her posture straightened as she leaned forward to get a clearer view of what had just happened down below. 

Deathstroke uncrossed his legs and planted both feet on the floor while his hands tightened their grip on the arms of his chair and he watched the young fighter who had just dropped Tempest. 

Enzo was the only one who was seething. 

Tempest lay on the hardwood for a moment just breathing and looking up at the ceiling. Then something changed behind his eyes. The dazed blinking stopped and what replaced it was a kind of fury that twisted his whole face into something ugly.

He rolled onto his side and pushed himself up off the floor with one hand while the other wiped the blood from his mouth. He stood there swaying for a moment, looked down at the red smear on his palm, and then he looked at Mark.

"You got lucky," Tempest said, though his voice was different now. The cocky showman was gone and what was left underneath was pure rage. "You got one lucky shot because I was playing with you and you caught me slipping. That's all that was. That was nothing. You hear me? That was fucking nothing."

Mark stood where he was with his guard up and said nothing.

"I have thirty-one wins in this ring," Tempest continued. Blood was still running freely from his nose and down across his lips and off his chin in a drip that spattered the hardwood between his feet. "Thirty-one men have stood where you're standing and every single one of them is gone and I'm still here. You think one punch changes that? You think one lucky shot makes you something? I'm going to break you. I'm going to take you apart piece by piece and when I'm done they're going to carry you out of here in a body bag."

Mark looked at him for a moment then he winked.

Tempest's face went dark red under the blood. He let out a sound that was more animal than human and he launched himself forward off both feet in a flying kick that came straight at Mark's chest with everything the younger man had behind it.

Mark stepped to the side and the kick went past him, Tempest landed hard on the other side of the ring and had to catch himself with both hands on the floor before he slid into the cables.

He was up again immediately and this time he didn't waste any breath on talking.

Tempest closed the distance in two quick steps and threw a kick at Mark's lead leg that came in fast and connected just above the knee with a crack that sent a bolt of pain shooting up through Mark's thigh and into his hip. Before Mark could adjust his weight to compensate the fighter had already switched levels and driven a straight punch into the center of Mark's chest that landed with enough force to push him back a full step.

Mark brought his guard up higher and tried to check the next kick but Tempest had already changed the angle. The shin came around from the other side this time and it caught Mark across the ribs on his left side. The impact was deep and he felt something shift under the skin in a way he didn't like. He tried to counter with a hook but Tempest was already gone, bouncing back out of range and resetting his stance before 

Mark's fist had even reached the space where he'd been standing.

This was different from the first few minutes. The showboating was gone. The flashy spins and the crowd-pleasing kicks had been replaced by pure skill and dedication. It was clear everything Tempest said about himself was true, he was a certainly a master fighter. 

He came in again and opened with a jab that snapped against Mark's guard and pushed his hands back toward his face, which created just enough room for the real attack. An elbow came around the outside of Mark's raised forearms and caught him across the cheekbone with the point of the bone. 

Mark's head rocked sideways and he felt the skin split open in a line that ran from his cheekbone almost to his ear. He threw a cross at Tempest's body while the younger fighter was still close. The punch landed on Tempest's ribs but the impact was absorbed by a sharp twist of the torso that bled off most of the force, before Mark could follow up with a second punch Tempest had grabbed his extended arm at the wrist and yanked it forward and down while driving a knee straight up into Mark's midsection. The knee hit him just below the sternum and the air left his lungs in a rush that folded him forward at the waist.

Tempest let go of the wrist and threw a high roundhouse that caught Mark on the side of the head while he was still bent forward. The kick connected behind his ear and the world tilted sideways for a second before he caught himself and stumbled back to create distance.

Mark tried to reset and managed to get his guard back up and starting moving right, but Tempest cut off the angle immediately and closed the gap before Mark had taken more than two steps. The younger fighter threw a front kick that caught Mark in the stomach and pushed him backward, and then Tempest was inside his reach and working the body with short hooks that dug into his ribs and his liver with a precision that made each one hurt more than it should have for the amount of power behind it.

Mark tried to reached for Tempest's neck with both hands to pull him in close where the size advantage would help. His right hand got there and closed around the back of Tempest's head but the younger fighter immediately posted both hands against Mark's chest and drove him backward while twisting his neck free of the grip. As Mark's hand came loose Tempest pivoted on his front foot and threw a spinning back kick that landed on Mark's stomach with a thud that echoed across the ring.

The kick drove Mark backward into the cables. The steel dug into his back and he bounced off them and stumbled forward two steps and Tempest was already there waiting for him. A left hook caught him on the jaw. A right cross followed it immediately and landed on the bridge of his nose. Blood burst from both nostrils and ran down over his lips and into his mouth and the copper taste of it flooded the back of his throat.

Mark swung back and threw a hook at Tempest's body and a straight right at his head, both of them missed as Tempest had already moved, sliding backward on the balls of his feet. Mark tried a front kick of his own,  but Tempest read it early and sidestepped and the kick hit nothing but air.

Tempest countered with a combination that started with a jab and turned into a three-kick sequence. The first kick was a low calf kick that dead-legged Mark's lead leg. The second was a body kick that landed on his already bruised ribs and made something inside him light up. The third was a high kick aimed at his temple and Mark managed to get his forearm up in time to block it but the force of the shin against his arm drove his own fist back into the side of his head and he saw stars for half a second.

The problem was becoming clear to Mark and it was not a problem he had an easy answer for. His boxing, which had been his foundation for years, was being neutralized by Tempest's taekwondo and Muay Thai. Every time Mark tried to get inside and use his hands at the range where they were most dangerous Tempest used his kicks to keep him at the end of a longer range where Mark's fists couldn't reach him. And when Mark tried to use his own kicks to match the distance Tempest's technique was simply better.

Even if he had full range of motion for his body and a high amount of flexibility he hadn't learned any kind of martial art that could take advantage of that, just what he'd picked up off Dinah. 

He needed an opening, but was not going to find one. Tempest was too disciplined now, too locked in. The first opening Mark had found had come from the younger fighter's arrogance and that arrogance was gone, replaced by something professional and much harder to exploit.

Which meant he had to make one.

He dropped his left hand, though not it all the way. He dropped it about four inches from where it was supposed to be, just enough that his left side was exposed, just enough that a fighter as sharp as Tempest would see the gap and read it as a mistake. He kept his right hand high and his chin tucked but the left side of his face and body were there, open, inviting.

Tempest saw it. 

Mark watched the younger fighter's eyes flick down to the dropped guard and back up to his face and then down again as he calculated. The opening was m clean and Tempest was too good a fighter to let an opening go to waste.

"You think you can trick me with a fake opening? HA! You must be running out of options, but I'll play along let me show you how pointless your counter will be!" Tempest drove off his back foot and threw a straight right hand aimed at the exposed left side of Mark's jaw.

Mark moved.

He threw his weight backward and dropped his body low while his hands went to the floor behind him, and in the same motion his legs came up off the hardwood and his body rotated backward through the air in a tight backflip. As his legs swung up through the highest point of the flip his right foot caught Tempest directly under the chin with the ball of the foot driving upward into the underside of the jaw. The impact snapped Tempest's head back and sent a fine mist of blood and spit flying from his mouth as his teeth clacked together.

Mark's hands hit the floor behind him and he pushed off immediately into a second backflip that carried him farther across the ring and created distance. He went straight into a third, building momentum, and then on the fourth rotation he changed the axis entirely. Instead of flipping backward he tucked his knees and spun sideways through the air in a full aerial rotation, his body horizontal to the floor for a frozen moment at the peak of the flip before he landed on both feet facing Tempest from fifteen feet away.

The Colosseum went quiet.

What could they say when they just witness a 6ft7 man do four backflips and then a flip as smoothly as a gymnast might do them. 

Up in the private box Miss Wu-San had set her wine glass down, both of her hands were now on the armrests of her chair.

Deathstroke's one visible eye had narrowed.

Luca Falcone was leaning so far forward in his seat that his elbows were on his knees.

Down in the ring Tempest was still on his feet. He had braced himself at the last second before the backflip kick had connected and the bracing had kept him upright, but the cost of staying vertical was written all over his face. His jaw was already swelling on the left side where the kick had landed and his mouth was hanging open in a way that suggested closing it hurt. 

He worked his jaw slowly from side to side, testing, and then he spat onto the hardwood.

Two teeth bounced across the polished floor and came to rest in the thin smear of blood that was already drying between them.

Tempest looked at the teeth, then looked at Mark. His eyes were different now. The fury from before was still there but it had been joined by something else, something that Mark recognized because he had seen it on Wei Lin's face six months ago.

It was the first flicker of doubt.

Wei was dazed now so Mark took advantage and pushed off his back foot and crossed the space between them, his right leg came up from the floor in a sweeping arc that targeted the outside of Tempest's lead thigh. The shin connected with a crack that buckled the younger fighter's knee inward for a split second before he recovered. Mark followed the kick with a straight left hand that snapped forward and caught Tempest on the mouth and he felt the younger man's lip split under his knuckles.

Tempest fired back immediately with a quick punch to Mark's chin and a hook to his ribs that landed with a wet thud, but Mark ate both of them and kept coming forward. He threw a front kick that caught Tempest in the stomach and drove him backward two steps, and before the fighter could reset Mark was already there with his hands. A right hook to the body, a left cross to the face, and then he grabbed the back of Tempest's neck with his right hand and drove his knee up into his midsection.

Tempest's body folded over the knee and a gust of air exploded from his mouth along with a string of bloody spit. He tried to clinch and tie Mark up but Mark yanked his head down by the neck and threw a short uppercut that caught him under the chin and snapped his head back up. Blood flew from the cut on his cheek in a spray that dotted the hardwood beside them.

"RAAHHHHH GET OFF ME YOU APE!!!" Tempest screamed a raw, furious sound that came from somewhere deep in his chest, and he answered with a three-kick combination. The first kick caught him across the stomach and made his abdominal muscles seize. The second caught him on the thigh of his lead leg and dead-legged the muscle underneath. The third was a high roundhouse aimed at his temple and Mark got his forearm up just in time to block it. 

Mark grabbed the kicking leg before Tempest could pull it back. He caught it at the ankle with one hand and at the knee with the other and he wrenched it sideways while driving his shoulder into Tempest's chest. The fighter hit the floor on his back and Mark came down on top of him with his full weight. He threw two punches at Tempest's face while they were on the ground and the first one connected with his cheekbone and opened the existing cut wider until the white edge of bone was visible underneath the torn skin. The second one caught him on the forehead and split Mark's own knuckle open against the ridge of skull.

Tempest bucked his hips and got his legs between their bodies and kicked Mark off him with both feet. Mark staggered backward and Tempest flipped to his feet with blood running freely down the entire right side of his face. He came forward again and threw an elbow that caught Mark across the brow and opened a cut above his left eye all over again. Blood poured into Mark's eye and turned half his vision red.

They traded blows in the center of the ring for what felt like hours. Tempest would land a kick and Mark would eat it and come forward with a powerful straight. Mark would land a punch and Tempest would slip it and answer with an elbow or a knee. The hardwood around them was becoming slick with blood from both of their bodies. 

Mark threw a rear leg body kick that Dinah had spent three weeks drilling into him and it landed clean on Tempest's floating ribs with enough force to lift the fighter's feet off the ground for a fraction of a second. Tempest's face went grey and he folded sideways and Mark followed with a hook that caught him on the ear and made him stagger. He grabbed Tempest by the waist and lifted him off the ground entirely and drove him backward into the cables. The steel dug into Tempest's back and he screamed again and Mark threw three short punches into his body while he was pinned against the cables, each one landing on the same bruised spot on his ribs until the skin there turned a deep purple that was almost black.

Tempest fought his way off the cables with a jumping knee to the side of Mark's head that made his ear ring and another three knees to his stomach that doubled him over. He threw a spinning back kick that caught Mark square in the chest and sent him sliding backward three feet across he floor.

They stood apart from each other. Both of them were breathing hard. Both of them were bleeding from multiple places. The front of Mark's body was streaked with blood that was not all his and the same was true of Tempest.

Tempest spat another mouthful of blood onto the floor and wiped his face with the back of his forearm. "I underestimated you," Tempest said. His voice was quieter than it had been all night. "I am ashamed of that. It will not happen again."

He planted his feet and his stance changed. It was subtle but Mark saw it happen. The bouncing stopped. The flashy movement stopped. Tempest's center of gravity dropped about two inches and his hands came up into a guard position that was tighter and more compact than anything he had used so far. 

Tempest came in low to the ground and incredibly fast and his opening strike was a knee that he threw from a side handstand. The knee drove into Mark's solar plexus and compressed everything in his chest cavity upward. Before Mark could react to the knee Tempest's elbow was already coming around in a horizontal arc that caught him across the jaw and snapped his head sideways. The elbow transitioned into a grab and Tempest seized the back of Mark's skull with both hands and pulled his head down while driving another knee up into his face. Mark's nose erupted and he felt cartilage shift under his skin as the knee drove the bridge sideways.

Mark threw a hook at Tempest's body while he was being held but the punch was wild and Tempest released his head and slipped outside the hook and answered with a kick that Mark had never seen before. Tempest's foot left the ground and his body rotated through a full three-hundred-and-sixty degrees in a jumping spin and his heel came down from above like an axe on the top of Mark's shoulder. The impact drove Mark downward and he felt something in his shoulder joint grind in a way that sent a white flash of pain across his vision.

Tempest didn't stop. He chained the spinning kick into a second technique that involved dropping his body weight onto his lead leg and throwing his rear leg out in a sweeping arc that took Mark's feet out from under him entirely. Mark hit the hardwood on his side and Tempest was already above him. The fighter dropped his knee onto Mark's chest and threw a downward elbow that connected with Mark's temple.

Everything went dark.

It was not long, it lasted perhaps three or four seconds, and when the light came back he was on his back on the hardwood. 

He could hear the crowd murmuring. He could hear the announcer saying something but the words were coming through a wall of static inside his ears.

'Shit... I'm gonna lose again aren't I...'

Use your head

You have the most potential I've ever seen

'Not yet...'

'I'm not done yet.'

Mark opened his eyes and rolled onto his side. He got his hands underneath him and he pushed himself up off the floor until he was on one knee, and then he stood up.

Tempest was standing in the center of the ring about ten feet away with his hands up looking at the crowd already celebrating. Though the gasp of the crowd seemed to draw him out of that and he turned and looked at Mark with shock on his face. 

Mark stood there for a long moment, breathing through the pain, this whole time he had been at a disadvantage because he had only one style. 

 So he did something completely stupid. He let go of the stance. He dropped his hands out of the boxing guard he had been using since he was thirteen years old and he let his arms hang at his sides. He shifted his weight until it sat differently on his feet, not in any way he had been taught, not in any configuration that belonged to any discipline. 

He just stood there, and he let his body find a position that felt comfortable. He just let himself be loose, he spent six months working every aspect of his flexibility, time to stop being so rigid. 

It did not look like a fighting stance. 

It did not look like anything.

A murmur ran through the crowd. Up in the private box several of the guests leaned forward in their seats.

"What fighting style is that?" Luca Falcone asked.

The heavyset underboss beside him shook his head. "Never seen it before. Looks like some eastern thing."

Deathstroke laughed. "That's not a style, it's not anything. The kid is bluffing."

Miss Wu-San said nothing and simply watched.

Down in the ring Tempest was studying Mark a lot more cautiously now, he knew how much power Mark packed and if he got a good hit on him then he'd be in trouble, whatever this new stance was he had to be careful. He settled back into his compact stance and started building toward another one of the devastating techniques he had just used, his weight loading onto his rear leg and his guard tightening.

Mark walked toward him casually with his arms loose at his sides.

Tempest threw a jab. 

Mark moved his head to the left and the jab went past his ear and did not even counter.

Tempest threw a harder punch and Mark shifted his weight backward and the cross fell short by an inch.

Tempest threw a body kick and Mark turned his torso so the kick glanced off his hip instead of connecting clean.

The murmur in the crowd was getting louder. People were sitting up in their seats.

Tempest backed up a step and threw a combination. A jab, a cross, a hook. Mark slipped the jab by tilting his head. He caught the cross on his forearm with a lazy motion that looked like he was swatting a fly. He stepped inside the hook and the punch went past his head and then he was inside Tempest's reach "Boo!" Making the fighter had to scramble backward.

Mark pursued him but he didn't chase And every time Tempest threw something at him he moved just enough to avoid it or absorb it and nothing more. No wasted motion. No telegraphed counters. No anger.

Tempest threw a spinning back kick that would have ended the fight if it had landed. Mark dropped his level by about six inches and let the heel pass over his head, and as Tempest completed the rotation Mark was already standing back up and moving forward into the space the kick had vacated.

The younger fighter threw an elbow and Mark turned his shoulder into it so the point caught muscle instead of bone and then his own arm came up in a slap and it caught Tempest across the side of the neck in a loose, whipping strike that made the younger fighter's head snap sideways.

Tempest tried a front kick and Mark caught the foot and instead of holding it he pushed it sideways in a direction that turned Tempest's hips and left his back exposed for half a second. Mark's knee came up and connected with Tempest's kidney from behind. The fighter made a sound like a dog being stepped on and stumbled forward.

He spun around with another back fist and Mark leaned away from it, and then he stepped forward clapped his hands loudly in front of his face and jumped into him making them tumble together. Tempest growled and pushed him away before trying to throw a hook kick that Mark ducked under before rolling on his back and kicking with both feet out slamming them into Tempests stomach. 

Mark could see the young man's anger  building. The younger fighter threw a rapid combination of punches and kicks that came from three different disciplines and none of them landed clean because Mark kept moving in ways that did not correspond to any pattern Tempest could read or predict. 

"YOU'RE MAKING A MOCKERY OF MARTIAL ARTS," Tempest screamed.

Mark looked at Tempest from about four feet away. Blood was running down both of their faces and the hardwood between them was painted red. "The ultimate martial art," Mark said quietly, "is winning."

Something broke behind Tempest's eyes.

"I'M GOING TO KILL YOU," he screamed. He planted his feet and his arms drew back and his chest expanded and Mark could see something building in the younger fighter's core, a tension that ran through his whole body like a current of electricity. Tempest thrust both palms forward and a wave of force erupted from his hands.

Mark felt it hit him.

It did not feel like a punch. It did not feel like a kick. It felt like something had reached inside his body and squeezed. His internal organs compressed against each other and a shockwave of pain radiated outward from his center through his ribs and his stomach and his back. His vision went white at the edges and his knees buckled and he doubled over and vomited a thick rope of blood onto the floor between his boots.

Up in the private box Deathstroke whistled softly through his teeth.

The heavyset underboss turned to him with wide eyes. "What the hell was that."

Miss Wu-San answered before Deathstroke could. "He channeled his chi," she said. Her voice was calm and precise. "It's an internal technique. Extremely rare. What he just did was project concentrated chi, it bypasses the external body and damages the internal organs directly. Invincible is likely bleeding internally right now. His liver and kidneys have likely suffered contusion damage and his diaphragm may have partially seized. It is a shame." She paused. "He was showing real potential before this. But this fight is over."

Down in the ring Mark was on his hands and knees in a pool of his own blood. His stomach was cramping so hard that every breath felt like a knife being twisted between his ribs.

He could barely stand, but he still stumbled up to his feet. His legs shook underneath him and his vision was swimming but he locked his knees and forced himself upright. 

He needed to think.

He could not take another hit like that. His body would not survive it. He wasn't even sure he'd survive this. He also needed to get close enough to end the fight, if it went on much longer his body was going to make the decision for him.

Mark looked at Tempest.

Use your head!

He looked at Tempest and visualised every section of the fighters body trying to find a weakness. He looked at the young fighter's shoulders and saw the tension in the left trapezius. He looked at the deltoids and saw the way the right shoulder sat slightly lower than the left, which meant the right arm had been doing more work and was further into its fatigue cycle. He looked at the quadriceps and he could see the slight tremor in the left thigh where the muscle fibers were starting to lose their coordination from the accumulated kicking.

He looked at the intercostal muscles along Tempest's ribs and he could see which ones were bruised from the body shots he had landed earlier. He looked at the neck and he could see which side was tighter and which direction the head would move if struck.

A plan formed in his head. It was not a good plan. It was a desperate plan. But it was the only one he had.

He needed speed. Speed meant sacrificing power which meant he would not be throwing knockout punches, but he would be throwing fast ones. Very fast ones. If they managed to be faster than Tempests then there was a chance this plan was going to work. 

But first he needed to get close.

Mark raised his head and looked at Tempest through the blood running into his eyes and smiled.  "You know what's funny," Mark said in a rasp. "You could win this fight right now. You probably will. But it won't matter. Because tomorrow morning every fighter in this building is going to be talking about how the thirty-one-and-oh guy needed to use his ultimate move to put down a kid with zero wins and two losses. They're going to laugh at you behind your back."

Tempest's face darkened.

"They'll smile to your face," Mark continued. "And they'll laugh when you're not in the room. That's the legacy of tonight, your pathetic win today has stained you for the rest of your life."

Tempest roared and launched himself forward.

He came in with a flying kick that had his full body weight and all of his fury behind it, his rear leg firing out in a straight line aimed at Mark's chest.

Mark turned his body sideways and the kick went past him, but it was strong enough he felt the displaced air brush across his stomach. Tempest landed and immediately spun into a back fist that came around.

Mark dropped his head below the arc of the fist and the knuckles went over him.

Tempest was close.

Close enough.

Mark's left hand shot out and traveled in a short, snapping motion that covered about eight inches and it hit Tempest in the center of the chest with the bottom two knuckles.

His right hand followed immediately and hit Tempest on the left side of the ribcage where the bruising from the earlier body shots had weakened the intercostal muscles.

Left hand again. Right pectoral. The fatigued muscle on that side failed to absorb the impact and the strike reached through to the nerve cluster underneath.

Right hand. Left shoulder, where the trapezius was already tight. The punch hit the exact spot where the muscle was most exhausted and the arm dropped by about an inch.

Left hand. Right floating rib. Right hand. Left side of the neck. Left hand. Solar plexus. Right hand. Liver.

The punches were not powerful. None of them would have knocked a man down on their own. But they were coming so fast and hitting so precisely that Tempest could not counter them. His nervous system was receiving damage from a new location before it had finished registering the previous one. 

His guard tried to come up but the punches were targeting places his guard could not protect because each one hit a different spot on a different part of his body.

Right hand. Left oblique. The muscle there was already guarding from the earlier rib damage and the punch drove through the guard and compressed the tissue underneath.

Left hand. Right side of the jaw, just below the ear where the mandibular nerve ran close to the surface. Tempest's jaw went slack on that side and his mouth fell open.

Right hand. Left deltoid. Left hand. Center of the sternum. Right hand. Right quadricep, targeting the tremor he had identified earlier. The leg buckled for a tenth of a second.

In the private box Miss Wu-San stood up from her chair.

Deathstroke stood up beside her and let out a loud laugh. "Well," he said. "Would you look at that."

Enzo was standing behind them with his mouth slightly open. "What is he doing. What is that?!"

Miss Wu-San did not take her eyes off the ring. "He's mapped the other fighter's body," she said. "He is striking in a pattern designed to overload the nervous system by hitting too many targets too quickly. A fighter will automatically go to use their other hand or foot if one of them is disabled, what Invincible is doing is disabling each part of his body in sequence and doing it fast enough that Tempest simply cannot do anything but stand there!"

She turned to Enzo. "He is very impressive," she said.

Down in the ring Mark was still going. His hands were moving in a blur that had long since stopped looking like punching and had started looking like something else entirely.

Left hand. Right hand. Left hand. Right hand. Left hand. Right hand.

The tempo increased.

Tempest was no longer fighting, all he was doing was standing there as he was being hit with a barrage of punches in a cycle that he couldn't break out from. 

Mark's hands did not stop. He hit the same spots again. And again. The first pass had mapped the targets. The second pass had overwhelmed the defenses. The third pass was destroying what was left.

Left hand. Right hand. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left right left right leftrightleftrightleftright!!!!

LThe crowd was on its feet and people were uncharacteristically screaming. The polite audience of the Colosseum had abandoned every pretense of composure and they were shouting and stamping their feet. 

Tempest's head was lolling on his neck. His eyes were open but they were not seeing anything. Blood was running from his nose and his mouth and from cuts on both cheeks and from a split in his eyebrow and from his ear on the left side where one of the strikes had burst a small vessel.

Mark drew his right hand back.

This one was different from the others. This one had power behind it. He loaded it from his hips and his legs and his core and his back and his shoulder and he drove it forward in a straight line aimed at the center of Tempest's face.

The fist connected with an impact that was like a door being slammed shut.

Tempest's head snapped back and his feet left the floor, Marks fist travelled with him along his face as he then slammed him towards the ground.  His arms fell to his sides and his legs went straight, his eyes rolled back and his body did not move.

Mark stood over him, his face was a mask of red, his chest was heaving and his hands were shakin. He could feel his vision darkening at the edges and he knew he had about thirty seconds before his body decided it was done whether he was ready or not.

He raised his right fist into the air.

The Colosseum exploded.

Every single person in the building stood up at the same time. People were screaming his name. It came from the front rows and the middle tiers and the upper boxes and it built on itself until it was a wall of sound that shook the chandeliers and rattled the glasses on the bars.

"INVINCIBLE."

"INVINCIBLE."

INVINCIBLE."

Mark held his fist in the air for as long as his arm would let him.

Then the edges of his vision closed in, his arm dropped and his knees buckled. Two men in white uniforms were there before he hit the floor. They caught him under the arms and lowered him onto a stretcher and he felt himself being carried again.

The medical staff moved quickly and got him into the prep room and onto the table, someone was already cutting away his hand wraps while someone else was pressing gauze against the cuts on his face. A third person was running an IV line. He felt the cold slide of the needle into the back of his hand and the warmth of whatever fluid they were pushing into his vein.

He stared at the ceiling he listened to the muffled chanting that was still coming through the walls.

He had won.

He closed his eyes and let the medical staff work.

...

Up in the private box the atmosphere had shifted into something that almost resembled genuine enthusiasm.

A stream of guests were making their way across the room to shake Enzo's hand and tell him what a spectacular evening it had been, and Enzo was absorbing every word of it like a sponge dropped into an ocean. 

He made sure to remind each one of them that the next event would be even more impressive, that the Colosseum was entering a new era, that he had always known Invincible was something special from the very first night he had walked through the doors.

None of it was true but that had never stopped Enzo before and it was not going to stop him now.

On the other side of the box, far from the congratulations, Luca Falcone had not moved from his seat. He was looking at the empty ring below.  "What do you think," Luca said. 

Deathstroke was leaned back in his chair with one ankle resting on the opposite knee and his arms folded across his chest. "About the kid."

"About his viability for the trials."

Deathstroke rubbed his thumb along the edge of his jaw and he considered the question.  "That chi blast would have killed a normal person," Deathstroke said. "Internal organ damage at that level... a normal man's liver ruptures and he bleeds out internally inside of twenty minutes and that's if he stays on the floor crying in pain. The kid took it and got back up and then fought for another give minutes at a level of output that should not have been physically possible given what was happening inside him. His body is abnormally durable. Whether that's genetic or something else entirely I can't tell you, he'd be a good fit."

Luca nodded. "He could make a good product. Strong body. Young. The kind of raw material that responds well to the stress protocols. If he triggers under the trials he could be worth eight figures easy, depending on what manifests."

He turned his head and looked at Deathstroke directly for the first time since they had sat down. "Go down and secure him," Luca said. "He's injured now and shouldn't put up much of a fight."

Deathstroke uncrossed his legs and put both feet on the floor and started to stand.

"No."

"I will not allow that," Miss Wu-Sande said. She turned her head and looked at Luca and there was nothing in her eyes that resembled a request. "The boy is to be my apprentice. I have been looking for the right candidate for three years and I have not found one that has interested me until tonight."

Luca's expression did not change. "With all due respect, Miss Wu-San, the boy is an unaffiliated fighter in my establishment, on my territory, and the business I conduct with the materials that come through my operations is my business."

"Your establishment would be nothing without my presence." Miss Wu-San stood up from her chair. She was not a tall woman and Luca was still seated and yet the dynamic in the room shifted the moment she rose. 

Luca stood up and faced her, he was taller than her by a head and broader through the shoulders, but none of that intimidated the woman. 

"I am not accustomed," Luca said slowly, "to being told no."

Miss Wu-San looked up at him. "Then you should become accustomed to it."

The temperature in the box dropped several degrees in the span of about two seconds. Deathstroke had gone very still beside Luca's chair and his right hand had moved to his hip. On Luca's other side Ravager had shifted her weight forward onto the balls of her feet and her hand was resting on the hilt of the sword across her back.

The other guests in the box had gone quiet. The congratulations had stopped. Enzo was standing frozen with someone's hand still in his grip and a smile dying on his face.

For a long moment nobody moved.

"A compromise," Luca said. "You will have priority purchase rights on the boy after my trials are complete. If his meta ability triggers and produces something viable you I will sell to you first, at a discount of thirty percent below my standard asking price."

"Forty percent," she said.

The silence stretched.

"Fine," Luca said. He sat back down in his chair. "Forty. Priority purchase. But if I don't hear from you within seventy-two hours of a trigger event I sell to the next buyer in the queue."

"Acceptable," Miss Wu-San sat back down in her chair and picked up her wine glass and took a sip of wine, finding it much more palatable than before..

Luca looked at Deathstroke and gave a single small nod and Deathstroke stood up and walked out of the box without a word.

...

"You're an idiot," Dinah said from the side of Marks cot in the preparation room. "You are the biggest idiot I have ever met in my entire life. You should have given up. After that weird attack you should have stayed down and let them call it and walked out of here in one piece. But no. You had to get back up. You had to keep going. You had to win because that's what you do, you impossible, stubborn, reckless, beautiful idiot."

She wiped her eyes with the back of her free hand.

"But you were incredible," she said quietly. "You were so incredible, Mark. What you did in there, at the end, I have never seen anything like that. You were..." She trailed off and shook her head and squeezed his arm. "I am so proud of you."

Mark did not hear any of it, he was deeply unconscious, his face slack and pale beneath the gauze and the tape and the dried blood that the medical staff had not yet finished cleaning.

The door to the room then opened and  Dinah turned toward it expecting another nurse or maybe Corsetti coming to check on his fighter.

Deathstroke walked through the door and the first thing he did was shoot the nearest medical worker in the chest with a suppressed pistol. The second worker turned toward the sound and Deathstroke shot him in the head before the man had finished the turn. The third worker, a woman who had been adjusting the IV drip, opened her mouth and Deathstroke shot her twice in the torso and she fell backward against the wall and slid down it.

Dinah threw herself behind the examination table. Two shots punched into the wall above her head and sent chips of stone spraying across her shoulders.

Her hand found the metal tray on the rolling stand beside the table. She grabbed the scalpel off it and threw it sidearm from behind the table without looking. The small blade spun once through the air and hit the barrel of Deathstroke's pistol.

She came up from behind the table in the same motion and she was already moving. She closed the distance between them in three steps and threw a spinning kick aimed at his head that she loaded with everything her legs had.

Deathstroke blocked it with his forearm. The impact jarred her ankle and she felt the difference immediately. This was not like hitting a normal person. His arm felt like it was made of iron wrapped in skin. He caught her leg on the second kick and twisted and she went with the twist and turned it into a flip that brought her other foot around toward his temple.

The second kick connected and it caught him on the side of the head, his neck turned and for anyone else in the world that would have been the end of the fight.

Deathstroke turned his head back toward her and he did not look hurt. He looked mildly inconvenienced.

He released her leg and threw a straight punch that she ducked under. She came up inside his guard and drove her elbow into his solar plexus. He grunted and she followed with a knee to his thigh and a palm strike to his chin that snapped his head back by about two inches.

He grabbed her wrist and pulled her forward and drove his knee into her stomach making the air leave her body in a rush that folded her in half. She grabbed the front of his tactical vest with both hands and headbutted him. Her forehead connected with the bridge of his nose and she felt cartilage shift under the impact but not break

He hit her with short hook that caught her on the jaw and sent her staggering sideways. Her vision blurred. She caught herself on the edge of the table and came back with a high kick that caught him on the shoulder.

She was good. 

She was very good. 

But he was not alone. 

Something hit her from behind.

She had not heard the second person enter the room. Ravager's boot connected with the back of her knee and her leg buckled and she went down to one knee. She tried to spin and throw an elbow but Ravager caught the elbow and twisted the arm behind her back and Deathstroke stepped forward and drove a strike into the side of her neck.

Dinah's vision went dark and she was unconscious before she hit the floor.

Deathstroke stood over her for a moment. He drew the pistol and pointed it at her head.

"Leave her."

Luca Falcone walked through the door. He stepped over the body of the first medical worker without looking down and he crossed the room to the table where Mark lay unconscious and he looked down at the young man's face for a long moment.

"Don't kill her," Luca said. He did not turn away from Mark. "It would be a waste of a body not to use her. She's got some skill. Take her too."

"Load them both up into the van I want them at the facility before dawn."

Luca then walked out barely giving Mark a second glance. 

(AN: Next Chapter is the end of the prologue and origin and the end of the Luca Falcone shit. So don't worry in case any of you are aren't fans of it. Anyway hope you enjoyed.)