“Hey, bitch.” Jayson’s face twisted into a smug smile as he wrapped an arm around Madeline’s hips.

Seth kept his chin up, but words failed to come to him. He settled with a two-word, “Fuck you,” and turned around to walk towards David, who now had his hand intertwined with the kid in the tank-top.

“What?” Shouted Jayson. “Vale tudo rules too much for you?”

Seth stopped and twisted half-back. “I think they’d be too much for you, Jayson,” he snapped. “How’s the arm?”

“Healed,” he said. “But tell me, Seth, if it’s too much for me, why am I the one not looking like he’s about to try and back off the main card?”

Seth blinked. “Excuse me.”

“Oh, yeah, they didn’t tell you? We’re fighting, Seth. No ring judges on your side this time, so go run back to that whore you call a girlfriend.”

“That wasn’t-” Seth rooted into the ground, trying to find a center-point, a balance, as his world flipped this way and that. The void within promised it could be that for him, the hunger of it rapidly growing and threatening to overtake his determination to uphold the reputation of CFA. No, it didn’t threaten. It had. It screamed in his ears for blood, promising release of the overwhelming stress in his skull and his back. He finished turning around to face the two of them, and then walked up until he was chest-to-chest with Jayson. “You’re the one who should be worried.”

And then Seth headbutted him. Hard.

Jayson fell back through the entryway, Madeline falling aside from him.

“WHOA! WHOA! HEY!” Shouted David as he sprung up from the couch, grabbing Seth’s around the waist and jamming his head into Seth’s upper back. The guy had no chance of moving him, but Seth glanced back. “Save it…” grunted David. “For the cage!”

Seth looked back at Jayson, who had begun to stand up from the surprise blow. He jammed a finger forward and pointed at Jayson. “You’ll stay the fuck down if you know what’s good for you,” he growled. Seth shrugged easily out of David’s bear-hug and blew past everyone, through the kitchen, to the dance floor to hide and maybe find Andrew and Jessica.

The partiers danced, unaware of the violent confrontation that had just happened seconds ago and only a couple dozen feet away from them. Seth wove into the crowd, searching for his friends, the demon inside him raging more and more by the second, its appetite only whetted by his attack on Jayson. He found them, dancing face-to-face, Jessica’s arms looped around Andrew’s neck. He wasn’t particularly happy with his two friends, but the sight of them did bring some level of calm within him.

Andrew noticed him. “Seth? You alright? You’ve got your look in your eye.”

“Jayson,” Seth managed.

Andrew’s eyes widened. “He’s here?”

“He’s here. He’s Madeline’s boyfriend. And he’s my opponent.”

“Fuck…” Andrew grabbed Jessica’s hand, then motioned for Seth to follow him. “Come on, we’re all going upstairs.” Andrew dragged them off the dance floor, and made a quick cut through the crowd outside to the staircase, guiding them all to an empty guest bedroom. He locked the door behind them, then leaned against it as he faced Seth. “We need to get you out of here?”

“No,” Seth said, sitting down on the cleanly-made bed. Jessica sat beside him, criss-crossing her legs. “Now I really can’t back down.” He laughed. “I was about to, too. I realized on the dock I should be focusing on my black tab and not doing shit like this. But I can’t now. I couldn’t live down backing away from Jayson… I just shouldn’t have been here in the first place. I fucked up.”

“No,” said Andrew. He shook his head. “You’re gonna fuck him up. Again. Just like the tournament. You’re in it now, like you said, you can’t back down. So don’t stay backed into the corner. Go after him like you-” He stopped. “Yeah, like I’ve seen you do.”

Seth needed to hear words that would calm the unreasonable void within him down, but Andrew’s heart was in the right place. And he was right. If Seth clung to this indecision, there was a very real possibility of getting thrashed in the ring. Jayson was a more than competent fighter, one of the best that Seth had ever faced down. Seth couldn’t straddle the line on this one, and he’d already closed the door on himself once he found out Jayson was his opponent. Backing away from Jayson would mess him up even more than anything that happened at CFA as a result of this. He put his head in his hands. He’d thought the tournament had finally put this bullshit to rest.

“Bro.” Andrew knelt down in front of him and put his hands on Seth’s shoulders. “Everything aside from kicking Jayson’s ass, out of your head right now.”

No, he needed to silence the void. He’d been so close.

“He doesn’t get a win from you. He gets the hardest loss he’s ever going to get. There are hundreds more here than at Grand Island and you are going to wreck him.”

Seth looked into his best friend’s eyes. There wasn’t a point; the void would get its way tonight. Seth nodded and steeled himself, allowing the void to run through his limbs and fill his skull with one thought—one thought he had assumed he’d never have to deal with again. Destroying Jayson.