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Where was she, again?
It took her a moment to figure it out - the stimulant rushing through her veins waking her gray matter up inch by inch - but the picture before her became clear before long; wrapped fists, cutoff fatigues, a leaking gash above her eyebrow. Melinoe Vera blinked to try and clear the cobwebs, but they weren’t dissipating with enough quickness, so she sunk into them instead. She cut out the external stimuli, and wove an image of the world before her.
To her right; a ring-doc, a staple gun in one hand and an empty stimtube in the other, yellow fumes still seeping from the quick-cracked top.
To her left; Sir cursing at the referee, trying to argue for a stoppage on account of Melinoe’s bell being so thoroughly rung - like they gave a shit about that at all - while casting wary glances at her Hound the whole way through, jaw firm, eyes wary.
Ahead, one of the largest women she’d ever recalled seeing; rippling augment scars ran up and down its arms and shoulders, a length of hair obscuring half its face, leaving the wire-box of the muzzle covering its lips as her primary defining feature. Melinoe absently felt at her own lips, curious if she’d been relieved of hers, but there it was; enclosed, covering her face from the nose-down, almost a second skin.
She blinked, and recalibrated. The ring-doc yelled to ask if she could still fight, and she grasped his shoulder, pulling herself back to her feet. As far as she could tell, her hands could still form fists, and her heart was still beating, and the flickering flame of a long-dead rebellion still burnt away in her chest - and thus, she could still fight.
Melinoe pushed off the cage-wall behind her with reckless abandon, dodging a haymaker from the titan of a pilot before her, time itself seeming to dilate as it drew closer. It was a familiar sensation, likely some consequence of nerve-rot from the various uplinks that had adorned her spinal column during her deployment, but one that served her well in a flesh-driven melee like this. She caught every detail down the other hound’s arm; kill-counts scarified on its upper-shoulder, laser-blasted rebel ink on its forearm, ever-bruised knuckles from Imperial punishments of old. Her opponent was a well-worn Hound, someone who’d likely burnt-in and burnt-out long before Melinoe had ever seen the inside of the Kennels, but that didn’t mean a damn thing here.
They were all meat for fighting, dogs to bet on; they’d all die the same.
Melinoe’s left arm came up in a high cross, knuckles slamming into the woman’s temple, a kinetic shock ripping through the whole of her arm as she met something a bit harder than she’d anticipated. A curse died on her lips as the woman’s other arm came up, catching Melinoe on her shoulder and slamming her back down to the pavement, narrowly avoiding smacking her skull on the ground below and flatlining her again. She brought an elbow up, and down toward Melinoe’s skull, but Melinoe scrambled; she drove her boot into the back of the woman’s knee, dropping her to a kneeling posture and allowing her to get some leverage, leaping and driving her fist into her temple once again.
Again, a shock to the system; again, the titan stumbled. It was starting to slow and stagger; for all she knew, maybe there was a limit to the damage the oldgens could take. Still, she doubted she’d be able to wear the hound down with her hands alone; for all she knew, the bitch was geared to the gills and then some, stuffed full of stimulants to give it some appearance of livelihood to make up for the fact that it was likely half-cognizant of the fight before it at best. A closer look at its dead-eyes gave up the ghost; it was a flesh-sack stuffed full of steelplate, likely bed-bound when it wasn’t in the cage. It wasn’t pretending to be a person in the way Melinoe was, in the way they all were anymore; it was a billy-club, a hand-grenade, a bullet yet to be spent.
It was ordinance, and death would be a welcome end to the life it had lived before.
Melinoe forced forward, the thick of her shin colliding with the Hound’s head, sending it stumbling toward the cage wall. She grabbed hold of the cage, planting the flat of her boot against the beast’s temple, stomping hard and driving its skull into the cage - again, and again, and again. Each concussive blow rang out through the hound’s emptied head, and it slumped to the ground; kneeling, forehead meeting pavement, the referee stepping in and dragging Melinoe off. She held an arm aloft to the cheering of the crowd, and her eyes searched, finding Sir where She stood; arms crossed, a wry smile on Her face -
-in a way it was just like the old days, when she’d returned from a sortie, blood and lubricant coating the exterior of her pilebunker. She’d emerge from Asterius, ignorant of the guns trained on her, stripping free of her jumpsuit despite the hungry ghouls that stood by, spectating. She’d fall before Her black leather glory, the artificial sunlight in her veins boiling up and threatening to burn her out entirely as She delayed her gift, teasing Melinoe with the tip of a boot pressed against her lips.
God, she loved Her. She loved all of Her-
-before it all faded, replaced with a look of shock, as Melinoe was hurled full force into the cage wall. She somehow managed to keep herself barely afloat, the titanic frame of her opponent looming dumbly above her, waiting for an order. Were it more cognizant, it’d have already gone for the kill; were it more cognizant, it’d have broken Melinoe’s skull open and spilled whatever little sense of self remained therein across the pavement.
It was a tough cunt, that was for sure, but Melinoe doubted it’d be able to piece together the best way to kill its prey before she could recover enough for a fatal blow of her own. Her swimming vision locked in on a sharp chunk of interlocked cage bracket; a triangular bit of scrap that would almost assuredly punch straight through the hound’s thick skull with enough force provided to the back of it. Melinoe was certain she could boot the poor bitch into a well-earned euthanasia if she were able to get it close enough. She placed the flat of her palm against the ground, ignoring the growing pool of blood spilling from the gash at the crown of her skull, ignoring the way she could feel her last few bits of cognizance slipping from her mind like water through a child’s fingers.
She glared over her shoulder at the titan, pooling spit in her mouth, pursing her lips and hocking a ball directly into the feral beast’s eyes - and it took the bait, sweeping down toward her, trying for another last-ditch haymaker.
Jackpot.
Melinoe pushed back to her feet with all of the effort she could muster, causing the poor thing to ram its fist full-force into the concrete below, howling with compelled agony as each and every bone in its hand likely shattered on impact. A gasp from the crowd rang out across the space, and Melinoe wasted no time rushing forward, pulling her leg back for a soccer kick.
In the brief moment before her boot connected with the other hound’s skull, she felt something like guilt.
Then, she remembered that such an action was a mercy.
She drove her boot into the hound’s skull, kicking it straight into the dislodged chunk of caging; as predicted, it punched straight through the woman’s temple, straight into her brain, obliterating whatever existed therein. A spray of liquified gray-and-crimson splashed upon the few spectators on the other side of the cage wall, but she didn’t take half measures; on the off chance it survived the first blow, she kicked it once more, forcing the fence-spike fully into its skull.
Then, she stumbled back, settling on her knees, a compulsory ‘sorry’ dying on her lips as the crowd rose up into a fever-pitch cheer, as Sir stared down at her from on high. With the exhaustion that ran roughshod over her body, She almost looked like the sun.
Almost.
Melinoe let herself slump to the ground, and faded into the sucking darkness once again.
-
By the time she regained consciousness, they were almost home.
She’d been laid out on a bench of the maglev, her jacket bunched behind her soaking in whatever blood ran free from the loose bandages around her temple, her hand clasped in Sir’s. She didn’t bother to look up at the other woman, her vision swimming enough as-is without trying to focus on anything in particular in a moving vehicle.
Instead, she turned her glance toward the vague outside; the closest thing they got to seeing the city proper on a regular basis coming in these transitory periods. Former Imperial superstructures danced amidst new high-rise towers, all adorned with various markers from the different corporations that had carved the Cape in order to best fit their needs and interests. She couldn’t fathom how much it cost to live in one of those buildings, or even in their shadows; Sir had once told her that she’d need to up the frequency of her fights to even scrape together a month’s rent.
Such a thing was a bad joke; she could barely manage the biweekly trips to the pit she found herself engaged with now, let alone anything further than that. Were she to try, she’d end up like her opponent before long - and Sir still had some vested interest in keeping her around for conversation, at least for the moment.
That could change, of course; even in the shadow of the Imperium’s reformation and the collapse of the Project, she was still property. The few maintenance vets that had come around in the early days had long since retired, or moved into more lucrative fields, meaning that they had to scrape and scratch and claw to find any semblance of care for the variety of ailments that ripped through her on a regular basis - Starlight Withdrawal and NerveRot chief among them.
It was hard to find a Hound that wasn’t defective, nowadays; they’d burnt those candles as brightly as they possibly could’ve, and spent their wicks well ahead of schedule. Most would’ve preferred to die young, rather than be reduced to some senile bed-bound wreck, only propped up on occasion to remind the new generation of what they’d managed to move beyond. Melinoe had been lucky enough to join the Corps in the last few years of the war, so she’d avoided most of the profound psychological alterations and damaging neuroablation, but she’d still suffered for it all.
Now, even if she wanted to go corporate and find her way back into a rig, she doubted she’d even pass the physical.
So, her eyes drifted toward the skyline once again, and she allowed herself a bit of a dream; she dreamed of a view from the top of one of those towers, of a place that she could’ve called home had it not gotten all fucked up, of a shared space with someone else - she was well aware that her care for Sir was something cooked in, something conditioned, something inauthentic. She dreamed of a world where she could’ve patrolled empty borderlands, collecting a paycheck without ever having to see action.
She dreamed of a world where she didn’t long for the certainty of warm leather and a given reward and the words of another woman to bring her the meaning she could no longer manufacture herself.
She dreamed, and she dreamed, and she dreamed until the skyline vanished from view; until the maglev dipped below the Earth and they made their way to the slums once again. She dreamed, and she dreamed, and she dreamed, still, even though it was harder to do without the visuals themselves - until Sir’s hand clasped her shoulder, and said,
“We’re home. C’mon.”
And, ever-dutiful, she followed.
-
Foot-over-foot, they made their way home; a cramped studio with a simple kitchenette and a slender bathtub, a pile of blankets on the floor for her and a stained mattress for Sir. She barely made it through the door on her own two feet before she crumpled, and she let herself lay prone as Sir worked Her way through the varying locks, ensuring that the door would remain sealed from any would-be intruders.
Then, She stepped over Melinoe, dumping their winnings onto their bedside table, counting out the various denominations and currencies that’d made their way to the betting table earlier in the night. A few curses told Melinoe all she needed to know; Sir would need to wash the cash, and it’d be some time before they actually had anything useful in hand. Long gone were the days where corporate interests would throw legitimate coin to the table; gambling crackdowns kept them far from the underbellies where dogfighting still occurred, and no executive worth their salt was willing to spend their reputation on a bit of bloodsport.
They’d all suffered for it, even if the sport itself had, arguably, contributed more to the prolonging of their suffering than anything else.
Sir’s shifting ceased for a brief moment, and She clicked Her tongue; Melinoe’s body moved under involuntary compulsion before her brain could catch up, dragging itself toward the pile of blankets. She forced herself to her knees, and Sir’s fingers danced behind her head wordlessly, undoing her muzzle and letting it fall to the ground. Melinoe tried to bury how naked she felt without it, and looked up to the other woman’s eyes; she tried to see the stars she’d seen in the past, but received nothing in return.
“There you are.” Sir called, hollow and empty. “You did well, tonight.”
That was a lie. Melinoe had almost died, and the fight had almost been called off at least once before then. It was a middling performance, and in and of itself a far cry from any of her earlier glories - but this treatment, this moment, wasn’t for her.
It was for Sir; an attempt to recreate the prestige of the Imperial hangars after a sortie, an effort to find the glory of old once again. For as far as Melinoe had fallen - from the rebellion, to the Kennels, to the fighting pits - she knew that Sir had fallen further, and some misplaced loyalty told her that she needed to entertain it, that she needed to let her Master have this.
Another, much quieter part of her told her that the bitch should choke on her Hound and drown in her sins. For now, the former won out.
”I did, Sir?” Melinoe asked.
”You did, hound. You did well.” Sir’s hand danced within the pocket of Her coat, retrieving a syringe from within; the coloration of the substance inside of it was dull and the suspended starlight was far less prominent, but it was what it was. Delirium brewed in the bathtubs of street-chemists would always be less potent, but in these days, you took what you could find. “Would you like your reward?”
Melinoe blinked. Were she to take it, she’d fade back into dumb, docile, doglike oblivion. She’d rut herself raw on Sir’s boot until her body could rut no longer, and then she’d crumple to sleep. She’d wake the next day feeling the worst hangover she could fathom, and she’d vomit every few hours until it left her system, and they’d do it all over again.
Somehow, that still remained preferable to going through the world sober and sane.
The hound didn’t bother to answer with her words; instead, she opened her mouth and stuck her tongue out, allowing Sir to depress a bit of the dull substance onto it. Immediately, it hit her; immediately, she felt her higher cognizance fade into the void, leaving her hollow and dull and complacent.
She watched as Sir’s form started to radiate and glow; the old jacket and weary eyes giving way to wondrous starlight. Even if it wasn’t as bright as it had been in the past - in the days of hangars and prestige - it still warmed her soul all the same.
Melinoe stuffed that little voice into the shallows once again, and leaned into it, letting the heat swallow her entirely.