Courtesy the Victorian Store

For the Terribleminds Flash Fiction Challenge, “A Game of Aspects.”

His were fitter’s hands. They were meant for securing pipes, connecting cables, moving steam and electricity from one place to another. Hands meant for the labor the upper classes wanted nothing to do with. They relied on hands like his, his strength and his ability to endure punishment, but he never got invited to any of their fancy to-dos. He flexed his hands, bare and marked with scars and the evidence of calluses, the massive mitts rattling his chains.

He could hear the crowd already. Chanting for blood, anticipating the confrontation, ready to see justice done. This was how it worked. Break the law badly enough, get sent to the Pits. He had a reputation, which is why he now was outside the largest of the Pits, the Grand Arena, where tickets were sold at triple digit prices per head, exclusive boxes rented out to the especially rich and powerful. And only the most unsavory or crazy of murderers and rapists fought to survive here.

He wondered, as he stood and his guards removed his chains, if she was in the crowd now. Her cries for help sounded so sincere, as he rushed in to pull the man away from her. Before either of them knew what was happening, he had broken the man’s arm and shattered his hipbone. Moments away from breaking the man’s neck, she screamed again – “He’s my husband!” The police weren’t about to believe one of his kind would come to the defense of the landed gentry, and rather than listen to the truth, that her husband had meant her harm, they didn’t hesitate to throw the well-meaning, refugee fitter into the Pits without a trial.

Freed, for now, he walked to the entrance to the arena floor. He saw his opponent across the expanse of open ground, under the undulating tapestry of the crowd, waving their scarves, calling for blood. The other man was a serial rapist. For some sick reason, the Pit Masters had dressed him as befit his noble birth, with a filigree waistcoat embroidered with a gear motif, clean white spats, even a top hat with goggles on it, as if he was an aeronaut or something. Not that goggles on a top hat would help him in a flying machine. In fact, they were about as useless as they could be there.

The Fitter, on the other hand, was dressed as per usual: leather trousers, heavy boots, a chain vest over his undershirt and suspenders, and hard metal bracers and greaves. The crowd liked seeing the dark tattoos under the skin of his arms that wound around his shoulders and up his neck, under the close-shorn dark hair. He waved away the helmet. The overdressed idiot across the floor didn’t concern him.

He stepped out into the Arena, where they cheered for him. He gave them a wave. When the other walked in, he spread his arms and turned, grinning like a fool, bowing to the nobles in their box. The fitter could see he carried something at his hip. Some kind of weapon. He frowned; he preferred sending these scumbags to their makers with his bare hands, but even the most callous of them didn’t bring ranged weapons to a fight like this.

The announcer called his name – “The Fitter” – whereas the newcomer was dubbed “Top Hat.” It was, as always, a fight to the death. The crowd liked a good show, and a long one, for everything they paid. The Fitter knew how to amuse the mob, how to draw out the killing blow, how he would seem to revel in the bloodshed. But all he wanted was his freedom. All he wanted was to see his kin again.

The fight began with a tone from the large brass bell at the edge of the Pit’s upper reach. Top Hat drew his weapon, and the Fitter hesitated. Those capacitors… it can’t be. That moment of recognition nearly cost him his life. Lightning snapped across the Pit floor, singeing the hair on the Fitter’s right arm as he ducked to his left. The bolt left a black, angry mark on the wall leading up to the expensive, front-row seats. Top Hat frowned, took aim, and tried to fire again.

Nothing happened.

“Type 3 capacitors need 3 seconds to recharge,” the Fitter said.

Top Hat stared at the Fitter in shock. Grinning, the Fitter crossed the distance between them as quickly as he could move. His large right hand pushed the arm holding the gun away as his left came up hard, breaking Top Hat’s jaw, sending his hat to the dirt-covered floor. He wrapped his thick, fitter’s hand around Top Hat’s wrist and twisted, bone snapping, the lightning pistol dropping from numb fingers.

As Top Hat screamed, the Fitter reached down and pulled the goggles from the hat. He slid them down over the Fitter’s face and broken jaw, twisting them in such a way that they tightened around the man’s throat. The rapists’s eyes bulged. The Fitter’s teeth ground as he forced his opponent to his knees. He could feel his skin burning, knew without looking that the Atlantean ink under his skin was glowing the deep sea-foam green betraying the refined orichalcum trapped there. He didn’t care. He grabbed the man’s neck, crushing the goggles under his grip, and lifted Top Hat into the air with one hand. He slammed the body into the ground once, twice, and a third time, and then threw it into the nearest wall.

He looked down at the lightning pistol as the crowd screamed, some running in panic from the stands. It was a weapon of his home, his kin, and it had wound up in this land-dweller’s hands. Someone knew the truth. Someone knew of their power. He had to find them. Once he got out of the Pits.

The guards approached. The Fitter flexed his hands, cracked his neck, and smiled at them.

“One at a time, gentlemen? Or all at once?”

Prompted by Terribleminds’ “Another Random Word Challenge”.

His opportunity came when the office door opened. She was in a hurry, so he quickly matched her stride. Fortunately, he was twenty years her junior.

“Senator, one minute please.”

“I’m on my way to the floor, Pete, you better make it quick.”

“Lockheed has been on the phone trying to get to you. I’ve fed them every excuse I can think of. Their lobbyists are pissed.”

“They can take a number. I’m not changing my mind.”

“I didn’t think you would, Senator, I just wanted to let you know.”

“Is that all?”

“No. A lot of Blackwater employees have been emailing in. And more NRA members. They’re… getting nasty.”

“Send the usual response. Remind these gun-crazy wanna-be ‘Rambo’ junkies I didn’t just put on a cape one day and jump in to save the hippies from their guns.”

“Already done, but I wanted to recommend an increase in your security detail, at least until the vote for the resolution is completed.”

She turned to look at him as they walked. She was a head shorter than him, her hair a tight cluster of silver and golden curls, keeping a brisk pace as they headed towards the floor. “Peter, how long have you been my aide?”

“Two years, Senator.”

“And in those two years, how many threatening emails, phone calls, and bricks through my home window have I gotten?”

“One thousand one hundred and fifty-two emails, two hundred and seven phone calls, and three bricks.”

“When was the last brick?”

“It was seven months after I started, but I still-”

“Pete, these people are all bark and no bite. I can’t let them intimidate me out of fighting for more sane laws governing our country’s use of domestic firepower. You told me when you started you believed in that. Your sister lost her eye in Aurora, didn’t she?”

Pete blinked. “Yes.”

“How is she doing?”

“She’s fine. We finally saw The Dark Knight Rises together a couple of months ago.”

“It sounds like she’s recovering well. But she’d have both eyes if our country had better gun control.”

“You know I don’t disagree.”

“Which is why you increased my security the first time. And since then I’ve been more safe. Right?”

Pete knew he wasn’t going to win, but rather than concede, he nodded. He actually wanted the Senator to build up a good head of steam before she hit the floor. She was at her best when she spoke from the heart, regardless of how much the others in the room wanted to hear what she had to say. She saved her profanity for outside of the room, of course, but Pete always heard it raw and uncensored. Although he would have paid cash money to hear her call the one Senator from Massachusetts a “raging idiotic cock-piston” to his face.

“Right,” was what he said out loud.

“So don’t get more security people. Make sure my cases are air-tight. Get the words for my speeches exact. You know how I think and how I talk. That’s what you should be focused on. I’m safe. Count on that.”

Pete nodded, stepping in front of the Senator to open the door for her. The session was about to begin and they could hear other Senators milling about by and in their seats. She gave him a smile and patted his arm.

“Thanks, Pete. Time to take the kid gloves off, eh?”

He nodded. “Knock ’em dead, ma’am.”

A twinkle in her eye, she headed into the chamber. Pete closed the door behind her and walked back to his office. He checked her schedule: after her appearance in the Senate, she had dinner scheduled with an anti-gun lobbyist and two other Senators. The actual vote wasn’t for a few more days, but there was no need to slow down once the session ended. He called one of the security detail and arranged for them to get the Senator’s car from the nearby garage. He then went through the Senator’s official email again.

They wanted to shoot her dead, they wanted to grind her into hamburger like the fat cow she was, they wanted to see her burn in Hell for being so anti-American, they called her a socialist and a lesbian, so on and so forth. It was starting to get boring, truth be told. They never did anything original.

A couple hours later, he was walking to meet her after the session when he saw two uniformed policemen and a detective standing in the hallway waiting for her.

They said nothing to him, waiting for the Senator to emerge. That’s when she found out her car had been rigged to explode and the security officer Pete had sent was dead.

“Apparently,” the detective said, “it was on a timer meant to go off when you were on your way to dinner. But they fucked it up and it only killed that one poor guy who went to get it.”

Pete said nothing. His stomach was a knot of nausea. The Senator, her eyes slightly wet but neither wide nor quivering, looked to him. “Did he have any family?”

“A brother at Walter Reed. Both of them are… were… Afghanistan veterans.”

“See to it that he gets full military honors at his funeral. He deserves that much.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

“And Pete?” She touched his arm. “Let’s go ahead and up my security detail. Make sure my husband and kids are safe, would you?”

“Right away, ma’am.”

Pete did his duty. The Senator’s family was all present and accounted for. After he was done making the arrangements, he looked in on the Senator in her office.

She sat behind her desk, quietly weeping, rapidly running out of tissues. Pete got her a fresh box.

“Thanks.” She blew her nose. “I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t know.”

She shook her head. Pete changed the subject.

“How’s the vote look?”

She looked up, her eyes red.

“Oh, you bet your ass we’re getting this bill passed.”