The last person I expected to see probably wasn’t the Ylef with the glass hammers who’d won the Wilderness Territorial, but he was pretty far down the list. He was covered in bog mud like we’d been when we arrived.
My dirty jeans had fallen on the floor by his feet, one of which was wearing a new combat boot. He had my other new boot in his hand, loosening the laces and pulling out the tongue.
The thinnest trail of Miasma was creeping under the bathroom door and toward my jeans. My shoulders relaxed a little. Hungry Ghost was still there.
“Hey,” I snapped at the Ylef. “Those are mine.”
His gray eyes blinked, startled.
“These boots?” He pulled the other one on and started tying it. “These are my boots, meat roach.”
“Bullcrap they are,” I said, crossing the tile floor. “I just bought them. Take them off.”
“Gonna make me?” Glass Spirit trickled down his right arm, forming a glinting hammer in his fist.
I stopped in my tracks and sent Death Metal to cover one arm, shoving the shield out in front of me. The first thing that popped into my head was that he wouldn’t be so smug when Dead Man’s Hand got ahold of him. But that hadn’t worked in the tournament. The Ylef moved too fast for me to get him to submit, and my only other option once I’d escalated to that point was killing him and taking my stuff back.
That was pretty extreme for a pair of boots, even if they had cost my last forty-nine credits.
“Fine, keep them,” I said, shrugging like I didn’t care. “Let me know if they’re too big. I can see if they sell women’s downstairs.”
The Ylef’s face twisted into an icy rage. He took a step toward me, raising the hammer. I braced my legs and triggered my Ki speed and strength, ready to bash him when he got within range.
Weirdly, my other hand clamped down tighter on the towel, because I guess part of me was more worried about fighting this douche naked than one-handed.
Just then the bathroom door swung open, and a shark lady came in. She saw us standing there with Spirit attacks ready to go and whistled.
“Boy-fight in the showers? It’s not even my hatch day!” She chuckled and started toward the toilet stalls at the far end. “Don’t you two finish this before I get out.”
The Ylef’s eyes narrowed. The glass hammer in his fist drained away, and he smiled a tight-lipped smile.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “I challenge you, formally. You’ll be my first win for the Dragons.”
I let the Death Metal shield dissipate. “Don’t count on it.”
He headed for the exit. “Seems like a safe bet. It only took a second during the tournament to put you down.”
The bathroom door slammed behind him.
“Jerkwad,” I growled, picking through my bagful of clothes to make sure I still had everything else. Down on the floor, the air next to my muddy jeans shimmered with purple scales, and Sushi swam out of a fold, eyes darting around, searching for danger.
“Jerkwad!” the fish huffed at the door.
I jammed the clean clothes back down into my bag. Guess if I wanted to make enough money to buy a new pair of boots, I’d just have to beat him tomorrow.
The Catch
“YOU JUST LEFT YOUR stuff sitting out where anybody could see it?” Kest asked, looking up from the pieces of Warcry’s detached prosthetic she had spread across the table.
From the opposite side, Warcry stared at me like I was out of my mind. “What’d’ya think this place is, grav, a monastery?”
“Yeah, I know, I’m an idiot.” I shoved the vegetables and meat around on my plate with a pair of disposable chopsticks. “Where I’m from...”
“People never steal things?” Rali asked. But instead of sounding like he was making fun of me, he actually sounded hopeful.
“No. I mean, they do,” I said, watching his face fall a little. “It just wasn’t very common. I think it happened like once the whole time I was in school, and the kid gave the hoodie back and said she was sorry.”
I’d found the three of them down in the market court after changing into my new clothes and shoving everything else into my room. Everything except Hungry Ghost. That was in my pocket. I wasn’t letting it out of my possession again.
“Ought to cut the bleeder’s hand off,” Warcry said, wadding up his last piece of flatbread and shoving it into his mouth. “One theft, one hand. That’s how me ma runs her factory towns. Stops thieves quick-like.”
“I’ll see about that tomorrow.” I took a long drink from my water bottle. “He’s my first fight.”
“First loss, ya mean,” Warcry said.
“Hey, I didn’t see you beating him at the tournament,” I said.
“With a better prosthetic, it wouldn’t have been outside the realm of possibility,” Kest said, screwing a couple pieces together.
“Why’s that Ylef trash even here?” Warcry asked like he hadn’t heard her. He kicked back in his chair and leaned it up on the back feet, his knee against the table and his stump crossed over his knee. “I thought the catfish said the Dragons didn’t recruit more than one draft pick and one wild card per tournament.”
“Since the Technols wouldn’t take him, he approached Biggerstaff, and Biggerstaff offered him a shot at one of your affiliations if he can get to twenty wins first.” Kest’s hands burned dark red-orange as she heat-treated a piece of metal. It popped and ticked as it heated up. “That’s what Sedryk said happened, anyway.”
“What?” I choked on my food at the same time as Warcry fell forward, the feet of his chair slamming back down on the tile.
“You wot, netskin?” he snapped.
Rali raised his eyebrows at his sister. “Care to explain yourself, Kest?”
She blinked up from her work, realizing we were all looking at her.
“Sedryk Nameless,
