Chain Gang All Stars

This was sacred.

The low roar of thousands waiting for her. An ocean of voices above, all around. She held her scythe in her hands. She told the guards to give her space and swayed left, then right. Warmed her spine. Energy flowed through her. She closed her eyes and entered her body. Her body didn’t always make her feel safe, but there, underneath the ocean of voices, it felt immaculate.

The gate in front of her pulled open. There at the end of a tunnel that opened to light, Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker was still a silhouette.

A floating ball of glowing metal appeared before her. She spoke into it: “Who makes the knife feel good?”

An electrosynth jumped on top of a swinging melody and a pitch-shifted vocal loop. The people’s hearts beat harder.

STAXXX, they said together, definitively.

She sprinted onto the field. Show lights flashed down and golded her sandy-brown skin. Her locs fell free in thick ropes down her neck, past her shoulders, even past her lightweight reinforced carbon-fiber-polymer chest guard, branded with the WholeMarket™ insignia, a bountiful fruit basket. Her shins and left arm were mummied in white bolt leather, the style Thurwar had made popular. There was a sleeve of hard armor above the wrapped battle cloth on her left arm too. Her formerly white combat boots were splotched with browns and reds, a pale, grainy earth tone. Her thighs were compressed in elastic that stretched against her muscles, the tights also marked with the WholeMarket™ fruit basket, emblazoned near her hip, conspicuously not centered on her genitalia, as many other major brands might have opted for. WholeMarket™ was a family brand.

Her wrists glowed, perpetual proof of the forever hold of the magcuffs beneath her skin.

An additional floating camera moved around her, taking in the Xs inked all over her body. There was one on her tight abdomen, a few at her neck, several on her arms, and one on each eyelid. Every X was a story of her life’s triumph over another’s. She was a collection of death and vitality.

“That’s the best you can do?” she called out to the stadium.

Her face collapsed into a frown that was magnified a hundred times on the Jumbotron above. Seeing their failure, the crowd screamed harder. Staxxx’s mouth snapped to a wicked grin.

“Who’s that beautiful bitch you bastards beat off to?” Staxxx sang into the HoloMicCam floating in front of her. She was propellering her scythe, LoveGuile, around her hands and forearms. The momentum accrued, the bladed head leading, speeding, and eating through the air as Staxxx charmed it around her body. This staff and blade, the world knew, were an extension of her person. They screamed her name.

STAXXX!

“Who’s that heartbreaker you need to break you down?”

STAXXX!

“Who do you motherfuckers love so bad it hurts?”

STAXXX!

Hurricane Staxxx. They were her wind and thunder.

“Love is dead here. I’m trying to change that. Come on, call me to life!” Staxxx slammed LoveGuile’s head into the ground so the blade’s point was buried in the dirt and the rod, wrapped in black and gold bolt leather, sprouted at an angle from the arena’s packed dirt, empty and flat but for a few mounds near the center and five cars positioned around them to give viewers optimal exposure to the models on display. The outer rim of the grounds was made to look like a looping highway, though the “asphalt” was just treated plastic. The white sedan opposite Staxxx had a cracked windshield from the previous fight. The passenger-side door of a blue Power truck not far from the center of the grounds was hanging from its frame like a loose tooth in bloody gums.

“Do you like the Hurricane, or do you love her so bad it hurts?”

Love. Love. LOVE. LOVE!

“Y’all don’t even know what it means. How could you? You’ve never seen it. But we’re gonna change that. I came to hand out some electric love tonight! Would y’all like that?”

The flood of sound created a kinship throughout the audience, from the people high in the nosebleeds to the ones sitting up front in the BloodBoxes, right behind the Links who had paid Blood Points to be there, like Thurwar.

Thurwar’s bald head itched as she watched in reverent silence. To her right and left were two soldier-police; they’d locked her into the seat with her palms pointing up to the sky as if she were asking for grace from above. The three red glowing vertical lines on each of her wrists meant she couldn’t move even if she wanted to. She looked down at her right arm, its middle line broken, a defect of a cosmetic nature only. She forced herself to forget the itch, focused instead on her awe for the performer out there captivating the crowd.

“How much?” Staxxx said, wrenching LoveGuile from the ground and stepping forward. As a signature of sorts, Staxxx would sometimes start her match with her weapon dropped somewhere far away from her person. She’d put herself at a disadvantage for the amusement of the crowd.

“Do you love me this much?” Staxxx spit into the HMC in front of her. It tracked her, just a split second behind each of her movements, as she used the staff end of the scythe to draw a line in the dirt. The crowd booed, wanting more.

“You greedy bastards,” Staxxx laughed, jogging forward a few steps, dust clouds rising and falling beneath her boots.

“How ’bout this much?” She drew another line. Again, the crowd screamed hard in discontent. “All right, all right, you think I can handle him?” Staxxx said, pointing to the gate in front of her. She stepped out into the very middle of the arena, onto a mound of tightly packed dirt. The people erupted once more. LoveGuile rested on her shoulder for a moment, then she swung it off her body and bit the sharp blade into the ground. She let go, let her scythe stand like a planted flag. They’d never seen her leave it this far. They screamed, delighted.

She pulled a thick hair band from her wrist, gathered the cords of her hair together, and tied them so they went from loose whips to a single branch flowing from her head. Then she turned away from her weapon. She walked back as the people screamed. The spirit was something felt, not tamed. It flowed through her, made her buoyant, bright, alive, almost free. She went over to the black tile that was installed in front of the gate through which she’d entered the arena. The MagnoKeep platform glowed red at its rim as she got close.

Staxxx stood with her arms above her head. She let the sound of adoration wash over her, then pointed to a plain black X on the left side of her neck.

“Hit right here and you can be the one who stilled Hurricane Staxxx!”

The pulse came: the sound of the magnetic shackles initiating. For a moment that was a performance in itself as Staxxx stood against the incredible pressure pulling her down. Her wrists shot from orange to triple red as the cuffs beneath her skin, grafted to her bones, demanded she fall to the platform at her feet. She made a kissing face as the half second slipped away and the magcuffs in her wrists slammed into the black platform, her body forced into an irreverent kneel. Staxxx waited, knees to the platform, her wrists magnetically locked down. Her fingers spread open, ready to push off when the time came.

Micky Wright watched as he climbed on top of his BattleBox, which served as stage and announcer’s booth. He was just a few feet from the gate Staxxx had emerged from. He checked his smile on the Jumbotron before taking a deep breath and yelling into an HMC, “One of our competitors is ready to savage. But who will survive? The grizzly or the storm?” Grizzly in the Storm was the tagline for the fight, and the stands were full of T-shirts depicting a great grizzly bear clawing at a cloud exploding with jagged lightning. “Seems like the Hurricane is at full gale,” Micky said as he paced atop the BattleBox. “Let’s see how the Bear is doing.”

At the opposite end of the arena a metal gate churned open. A hulking mound of human emerged: Barry “Rave Bear” Harris.

Death metal blared from the speakers. Rave Bear was booed mercilessly. He trudged forward slowly under his armor, a slab of thick tin across his chest and back that looked like it had been salvaged from the hull of an old submarine. He had a similar slap of metal on one of his thighs. His exposed hands, arms, elbows, and knees were dirty and pink. He wore no shirt beneath his combination chest/back plate. Two metal bats hung off his back and hip, clanked off the plates, both marked with Horizon Wireless’s famous winged H. He had an iron helmet over his face like a welder’s mask, the open mouth of a salivating silvertip grizzly spray-painted on the front.

An HMC floated in front of Bear and he growled into it. His signature “Grizzly Growl” sounded like the collapse of a mountainside and garnered a few cheers from his most faithful fans. He’d crushed a few pretty good Links after all. Made Powell Angler’s spear look like a bee’s stinger. And Powell Angler hadn’t been a slouch.

Bear took his bats off and set them on the ground beside his platform. He kneeled into his Keep, which pulsed and locked him in.

“All right, we have the Hurricane and one very hungry Bear locked in and ready,” Micky Wright said happily. “Time for final words.” He climbed down from his BattleBox and onto an electric scooter. He rode around the perimeter of the arena, smiling and waving. He drew out the moment, the wait for what people really wanted.

He found his way to the hulking Barry Harris. When he was close, he kicked off the scooter and sat cross-legged beside Rave Bear on the MagnoKeep platform, the two men so close to each other, it was an image Wright knew people would remember. The man-bear in rusted metal and him in a gray, tailored suit. Of course, Wright still kept far enough away that if Rave Bear’s magcuffs were somehow to disengage he’d still be just out of reach.

“So, anything from you, Bear? Any last words before taking on thee Hurricane?”

Bowed, his cuffs glowing red, Bear looked up across the undulating field of dirt to Staxxx and the scythe she’d placed so far from herself, as close to him as it was to her.

“None for that bitch,” Bear said. His heavy voice was muffled by his mask. Kill this bitch, kill this bitch, the Bear said to Barry. The Bear had kept him alive this long. Kill this bitch. He’d made it this far. He couldn’t think anything else. He was ready. He roared. He was ready. The crowd screamed. They hated him. But if the match went his way he’d be an all-around favorite.

“Ohh, feisty!” said Wright as he popped up, got back on his power scooter, and headed toward Staxxx to repeat the same routine, but faster; the people were warmed up enough. They’d waited and soon they’d be given their treat. This time he stayed on his scooter, as if he were already late for some appointment. His voice boomed through the arena: “What about you, Ms. Staxxx, any last words?”

Staxxx looked up. Her head had been bowed for several minutes, as if she’d been deep in meditation or prayer. She smiled sincerely.

Thurwar could almost make out her chipped bottom front tooth. She didn’t need to look up at the massive screen to see that Staxxx’s eyes glowed with a kindness that made Thurwar feel something like fear.

“I love you,” Staxxx whispered, looking over at Barry Harris. Her last words were the same last words she’d had for each and every one of her last ten BattleGround appearances, and so, as she said them, they were multiplied by the thousands in the stands, who repeated the mantra along with her.

I LOVE YOU, the whole world screamed. Staxxx heard the proclamation echo through the stadium and retreated into her body to feel the truth of her power. She was a vessel for it, love, and every deathmatch she preached it explicitly. Love, love, love. She forced love into this loveless space, made it the subject of her life. She showed them that she, the Hurricane, was capable of great love, and that if they’d look they’d see they were too. And maybe someday they would understand what they’d enabled, what they’d created.

“Well, all right,” said Wright. “I can’t wait any longer!” He drove himself to the announcer’s room and secured himself and the scooter inside. He peered out through the floor-to-ceiling Plexiglas, leaned into a wired mic near his face. “Unlock!” he screamed. The sound of high-powered magnetic fields disengaging, as if the air itself let out a hard cough, shot through the stadium. And then it began.

Bear roared, offering his rage to the sky, as was his custom. Across the field Staxxx had pressed her palms off the platform and was up and walking. Her first few steps were precise and deliberate. Like she was stretching out.

Bear gathered his bats in his hands and began to run. His movement was lumbering, hungry, and obvious. He clanked his bats above his head as he went. The HMCs, which trailed a good distance away, picked up the sound of his iron plates, held together by leather straps on his shoulders, slapping and clapping against his moist skin and back.

Staxxx also began to run. Thurwar watched her dart forward, easily and unencumbered. Her hands unclenched and soft as her arms pumped faster and faster, her strides making a snack of the distance before her.

She was just grabbing LoveGuile’s shaft when the two met.

Bear swung to crush.

With LoveGuile in hand, Staxxx twisted her body back as easily as if she were performing choreography. The two bats seared through the air inches from her left flank with the cold, vicious momentum of a slugger missing a breaking ball. Staxxx kept spinning, angling her blade down so that it reaped the world behind her in a flash so harsh it wasn’t until Bear’s heavy body bounced off the ground that he understood he’d been separated from his right leg.

The crowd was unified: stunned inhalation.

Then elation, honest, raw joy, swallowed the whole. They stood up from their seats. Thurwar, if she could, would have stood with them. A masterful work of violence. A legendary strike. And then Thurwar was standing, as the guards had shifted her cuffs to orange and asked her to follow them to prep. She watched Staxxx until her neck no longer allowed the twist. Then Thurwar disappeared into the stadium with the guards.

Bear’s face was in the dirt, but his arms were still swinging, still holding his bats, up, down, up, down, as though he were trying to swim on solid earth. The nearest HMC floated down and picked up his yells, which turned into groans, into mumbles and whimpers. The years of life gathered in him flowed out in a volcanic rush from his thigh. The crowd was frenzied.

“Shit,” Barry said.

“I love you, okay?” Staxxx said, then she pulled her secondary, a hunting knife called Kill, and cut the straps from Bear’s helmet and body armor. His back showed a single blue letter M tattooed into his skin. She turned him over so he could see something besides the ground. When she pulled the iron helmet from his head, the crowd could see how the Bear looked in death. His brown eyes seemed incapable of focusing, as if he were trying to keep track of something floating this way and that. His hair was matted and greasy. His chubby cheeks were colorless. “Don’t worry about them, baby,” Staxxx said. “Don’t worry about them. This is yours. Don’t miss it.” She kissed his face several times, then slit his throat.[*1] Her theme music erupted from the speakers and the audience roared. She carved his body with Xs. Blood sprouted forth, and with each X, she kissed the weeping skin. She was grateful for how far she could be removed from herself. She knew what she had to do and why she was doing it, was watching herself just as if she were part of the screaming audience.

When she was done, Bear looked like he’d been pulled from a woodchipper. Staxxx looked like she’d showered in blood. “I love you!” she screamed as guards jerked and pulled her from the body, force-locked her back into the Keep.

“That’s a closed-casket finish if I’ve ever seen one,” Micky Wright said from his room as two guardsmen rolled the dead man up in plastic and dragged him back through the tunnel he’d come from, a third man trailing behind them with Barry’s leg. “Which means some additional Blood Points added to Miss Stacker’s already hefty stash.” Wright poked his head out and skipped across the battle-worn earth toward Staxxx.

Staxxx raised her head and spat at the ground as he approached. Wright slowed but didn’t stop. “What a show, what a show,” he said, holding a smile in his voice. “How does it feel to be the Hurricane right now?”

“It feels like crushing a child in your hands. It feels like watching your own skin open up as you carve a message to the future in your arms,” Staxxx said, her breath steadying. She was a spectator too. She was watching this. “Call me Colossal, ’cause I can see the future. You’re welcome.” One day they would understand.

The crowd clapped appreciatively. They were cultured, they liked it, Staxxx and her words. They wanted her to live and they loved that she continued to do so. The BattleGround was a shrine to harsh violence and Staxxx was as violent as any, but unlike the others, she offered something more after almost every match. A poem, a story, and of course more love. She insisted on it. Her violence, her warmth, the messages cryptic or clear: They accumulated to the character they called the Hurricane. And as they considered themselves good, learned people, they had long before decided they could appreciate the way she entertained them, even as it made their chests heavy, even as they wondered if— Well, no need to dwell on that. Mostly they were excited that she was that much closer to the rank Colossal, a plateau only the very greatest Links ever reached.

In the halls of the stadium, Thurwar smiled at the pang of uneasiness she felt as the newly minted Grand Colossal.[*2] A kind of ownership. She was now almost three full years in, and she felt a proprietary hold over her new title. A title she’d earned after the recent death of one of the best friends she’d had in this part of her life. It was hers now, Grand Colossal. And while Staxxx may have just told the crowds to call her Colossal, the fact was, for now at least, Staxxx was still a Harsh Reaper.

“The bard has spoken,” Wright said, motioning for the guardsmen to retrieve Staxxx.

“Any words of encouragement for lovey-dovey?” Wright grabbed a handful of Staxxx’s blood-drenched hair before letting go and making a sour face as he flicked red from his hand. “This is a big night for her, you know. If she wins, she’ll have reached a new plateau. Almost thirty-five months. What do you think about that?”

“I think we’ll be celebrating out on the Circuit,” Staxxx said. “And maybe guys like you will get something to hand grease to.” The crowd laughed together. Wright put a hand over his mouth, feigning embarrassment.

“We can only hope,” Wright said as one of the guardsmen standing behind Staxxx pressed a black Magrod™[*3] to her wrists. The three red status lines merged into one as Staxxx’s wrists adhered to the rod and she stood up. She looked like a shark on a fishing line as she rose.

“I love you,” Staxxx said once more in parting. The crowd roared. She turned her head as they pulled her away to see if she could catch a glimpse of Thurwar. She found an empty seat, as expected. One of the guardsmen picked up Staxxx’s scythe and her knife, and they all disappeared into the guts of the stadium as the crowd watched a commercial for the new FX-709 Electriko Power™ pickup truck.

The soldier-police’s boots clapped against the gray floors and echoed off the walls, which were plastered with portraits of the Vroom Vroom City Rollers, a minor league baseball team. “So, nobody thought I might need a towel?” Staxxx said. The guard pulling her along stumbled back a little. She could tell he was embarrassed despite his eye shield. Like all soldier-police, his helmet had a black visor that hid his eyes completely.

“Shut up, convict,” said the lead guard, a distinction marked by a gray band on his biceps. He nudged her in the back with his black rod.

“You don’t mean to say that,” Staxxx said, staring into the visor.

“Your trap needs to be shut, convict,” the guard repeated. He motioned for the unit to proceed.

Staxxx closed her eyes and kept walking. “I want a towel.”

“You’ll have one in your dressing room, and a shower. You know that, Stacker.”

“Staxxx.”

“Convict,” the lead said.

“Colossal.”

“Not quite.”

Staxxx dropped to the floor. She fell on her back, her arms raised above her, still connected to the guard’s Magrod™. She felt the blood on her skin, which was drying and flaking. She tried to absorb these moments, these few moments in her life when she was not being observed by hundreds of thousands, but instead was just under the watch of a few weak men. When there were no cameras floating up her ass, asking her to be the Hurricane. Here she could regret freely, she could hope openly, she could be herself. She tried to think of herself specifically. Not the Circuit, not Thurwar or Sunset or the poor man she’d just slaughtered.

One of the guards hit her in the ribs with his baton. Hard enough that she coughed, but gently enough that she knew he feared what would happen to him if he damaged her. “Come on, convict.”

She wanted to enjoy this time with the self she hardly ever got to see. She could feel a deep dread, the adrenaline comedown, a headache, and a hard fear of the retribution that could come for her in one of so many ways. She told herself that she was Hamara Stacker. She told herself that she was Hurricane Staxxx. Then she told herself that she was also neither of those people. Her anxiety pressed her down and she tried to remember to breathe, tried to remember that this was her happy time. She was kicked again in the ribs and a rod came down hard on her hip. She took a breath and thought of what was there in front of her: Weak men who feared her. Fresh-spilled blood. The cool of concrete. The sound of more boots clapping closer.

Staxxx opened her eyes again and looked at the lead. His head swiveled around. The unit was focused on him.

“Mighty Miss Staxxx,” the lead said, “please get your Colossal ass up.” He pulled her up by the underarm. She allowed it and stood.

“That’s all I’m asking for,” she said sweetly.

She rolled her shoulders and stretched her neck to show that she wasn’t hurt, couldn’t be hurt by the soldier-police. A door opened a few yards ahead of them. Staxxx smiled and wiggled her fingers in a wave.

.    .    .

“Let me see her,” Thurwar said quietly.

“Real quick,” one of the soldier-police said back. She was Thurwar after all.

Thurwar could see that Staxxx had orchestrated whatever pause had allowed them to meet in the hall. Seeing her alive and smiling, even dressed in blood—especially dressed in blood—Thurwar felt she was seeing straight through to the real Staxxx. This person who had just killed and was fresh with all the feelings that came with bringing death. She tightened her grip around the war hammer in her hand and walked forward. The men around Staxxx knew to stand aside as Thurwar approached. The officer holding Staxxx on his rod looked at his superior, who nodded, then he released his prisoner. Her wrists displayed two red lines as they snapped together. The two warriors, one clean, one soaked in spent life, locked eyes.

“You did well,” Thurwar said, her wrists kissed together just as Staxxx’s were.

“Romantic,” Staxxx said, twisting her face and projecting a disappointment too big to be real. Thurwar smiled. Then she turned and offered her shoulder, bound in a carbon-fiber guard branded with a hammer crushing a nail, the LifeDepot™ insignia. Staxxx turned in kind and offered her own shoulder. They rubbed together, blood smudging the home improvement company’s logo as Thurwar closed her eyes. Staxxx kept hers open and watched Thurwar enjoy the moment. It was a battle hug between two true warriors, the kind the world hadn’t seen for centuries.

Thurwar continued to rub until Staxxx pulled back, stood erect, and waited for Thurwar to open her eyes. “Focus now,” Staxxx said. “I need you back to me so we can change things. Make it like Sun wanted.” She stopped short of saying more; to suggest too much of a future outside the fight was dangerous. You had to be present in the now to kill. “It’s me and you,” she finished.

“You and me,” Thurwar mouthed back.

And then Thurwar was thinking of Sunset, the former Grand Colossal. Like her, he’d understood what it was to choose this life and thrive in that decision. But earlier that same week, they’d woken up to find him dead. He was dead and no one had claimed it. He’d died during a BlackOut Night, when all the cameras were off. No one in the world had seen how he was killed but for the person who’d done it. They’d found he’d been sliced across the neck, as if someone had snuck behind him. Whoever had done it had used Sunset’s own sword and been precise. Sunset had been so close to seeing the world. She’d let him slip through her hands. One of her own, one of the other members of the Angola-Hammond Chain-Gang, had killed Sunset Harkless, and she, Loretta Thurwar, who knew everything about A-Hamm, who was A-Hamm, had almost no idea who it was. And the small inklings that she did have she couldn’t bring herself to think about.

A feeling rose within her and she pressed it down, as she so often had to. She breathed through her nose, held it, then released everything that wasn’t her and her hammer. Until the fight was done nothing could exist beyond that. Finally Thurwar opened her eyes, looked at Staxxx. Thurwar had drawn a Question Match face-off; there was no telling who she was about to face or what they could do. But even that, Thurwar could not think of.

“There’s nobody out there you should worry about,” Staxxx said. “You’re just lucky you’re on my Chain,” she added, smiling. It was a joke, but it was also true. Links on the same Chain never fought one another on the BattleGround. A Chain was not designed to be a team, but because of that rule, it could be one. They could share battle strats or help one another earn weapons, as Thurwar had for so many. Chain solidarity, that’s what Sunset had preached. The Links on your Chain were some of the only people whom you could trust. Still, they destroyed one another so often. But Sunset was different, and he pushed others to be too. He’d been among them, a champion, not stressing his strength or how many he’d killed, but preaching the idea that every one of them was better than what the world thought, and they could use one another to show that.

“You’re on my Chain,” Thurwar said, implicitly emphasizing which one of them was a Colossal.

Staxxx tried to squeeze one more grin out of Thurwar, but Thurwar’s face had eased back to flatness. She knew that Thurwar had already transformed into the warrior the world feared. She wished for a few more minutes, a few more warm seconds, with her one person. But it was done.

“All right, all right,” the lead officer of Staxxx’s party said. And for a moment everyone in the hall was grateful for him. Staxxx continued toward processing and a shower and a new X to ink on her skin.

Thurwar walked forward. She could hear Micky Wright preparing the people for her.

*1 Barry Harris had been drunk. Again. Officers found him passed out over the body of Harold Marcer, a man Barry claimed was his best friend. “Well, you sure have an interesting way of showing you like a guy,” an officer joked, then punched him in the mouth and shoved a handcuffed Barry into the car. Barry and Harold had wrestled together in high school. They still wrestled sometimes. And Harold wasn’t the type to back down, even though Barry had wrestled at 220 and Harold at 160. “Do you remember being upset about something?” Barry did remember being upset about something, but he couldn’t imagine ever getting that angry. Harold was usually the one who kept him company when Tiff acted up, dumped him, or took him back just to dump him again. But they’d been drunk, and he’d woken up with Harold cold and asleep, his head resting on Barry’s chest and Barry’s arm tied around his friend’s neck. Barrington Eli Harris.

*2 The title awarded to the Link closest, at any given time, to freedom. All Links exist as one of the following rankings: Rookie, Survivor, Cusp, Reaper, Harsh Reaper, Colossal, Grand Colossal, Freed.

*3 ArcTech™ Magnetic Handle Baton Te-SIP 2.2 Magrod™ model 7 can engage with all series 7 products of the Magnetic security family as a control device, a carrying aid for transport, and a sturdy instrument of blunt defense and discipline. ArcTech™, the Coldest in Tactical Security.