Chapter 90

I woke up when I felt the Omnitrix getting pulled at. My head was hurting again. Everything was, to be honest. I was swaying for some reason, and lying on my back. Something was still pulling at my Omnitrix. I leaned my head up, blearily, only to curse when the sun smashed into eyes like a sledgehammer. Combined with the swaying around me and the massive headache that was just now fading, I did not feel good.

A scaled hand pressed against my head with near-crushing force. A voice like snarling granite filled the air along with the sound of wood creaking and the wilderness around us. My head felt like it was splitting open as the hand pressed me down against wooden planks.

“Fuck!” I shouted in pain. I tried to raise my left hand to fight back, but something was wrapped around my wrist. With my other arm broken, I was forced to twist my legs up to my chest, pressing my bare feet to a scaled chest, and kicking outward, trying to put my feet through the son of a bitch.

“Geeeee!” Something shouted as it was lifted off of me and thrown back. I sat up and got my feet under me, looking around.

I was in a cage. A big cage made entirely of bamboo, right down to the planks my feet were balanced on. The cage was placed on wheels, rattling around as we moved, explaining the swaying sensation I had been feeling.

A feeling like blades had replaced my blood filled me, taking away any energy I might have had. I gasped at the pain, nearly falling to my knees, then grit my teeth and forced myself to stay standing, looking around frantically.

There were people with me in the cage. Four of them. And only one was human. The others were a big green lizard man that reminded me of Komodo, a woman with dark blue skin that turned pale near her chest who also had a single wing on her back, and a bipedal being made of black stone. I did a threat assessment as I stared at them, trying to figure out who I might be fighting. The lizard man, or reptile man I supposed, was lying on the ground, glaring at me. He hissed something, scrambling to his feet. To my surprise, the woman with a single wing hissed back at him. While the reptile guy sounded pissed, winged woman sounded sad. More than sad. She sounded like she was only speaking out of necessity.

Reptile man spun towards her, hissing. She winced back from where she was sitting against the floor. Then she curled into herself. Reptile man snarled, looking at the others. Rock man didn’t say anything. The one human looked down at the ground.

I used that brief moment of quiet to look beyond the cage. We were in one of three cages currently rattling along through a field of green grass that was about knee height. People were walking alongside the cages or riding on top of animals. I noticed the animals first. Hard not to, considering they were really damn big. Our cart was rather big as well, standing far higher off the ground than I thought was normal. But these things were huge.

They were ankylosauruses, the giant tanks of the dinosaur world. Covered in layers of armor, the sides of which were spiked. They were faster than I imagined them, but still ponderous in gait. Three were pulling the carts along while four more roamed around us, two to each side, their long clubbed tails waving along. One gave me a droopy-eyed look before smiling the way a dog would. I couldn’t figure out if that was cute or creepy.

The guy riding on top of it wasn’t paying any attention to me. I took that as a good thing. He was sitting on a chair tied down with ropes attached by the spikes on the ankylosaur. He was scaled, just like the reptile guy, but his overall body shape was different. If the Reptile Guy was similar to a gecko in overall design, this guy was more like T-Rex shrunk down and shaped like a human. My life had become pretty interesting if him turning to give me a snarl made me only slightly cautious rather than scared as hell. I mean, dude was big, covered in red scales with orange stripes wrapped around a massive amount of muscle and more teeth than the Osmond family that gleamed in the light. But I’d fought alongside the Hulk, turned into giant monsters all the time, and wrestled things that could turn aircraft carriers into mulch. I turned away to look at the other people surrounding the cages. More dinosaur-humans, a good mix of them. A woman that was mixed with a pterosaur with a downy soft covering of blue feathers, a man shaped like an ankylosaurus and one massive being that was about 8 feet tall that looked like a brontosaurus standing on its hind legs.

My captors. Well, there’s one threat confirmed.

I looked back at the reptile guy. I’d only looked away for a moment, but he was snarling at me. The noises coming from him were rising and fading in tone, with a slight click at different points. He was speaking a language. I stared at him while-

The Omnitrix, which had been glowing white this whole time, flickered for a moment.

“Give-hragggh! Give the (bauble/jewel/shiny)!” Reptile Guy said. He licked his lips.

“Why?” I asked, trying to hold in my excitement. If this was the Omnitrix’s doing, then maybe it was on it’s way back to working!

The reptile guy snarled wordlessly, then spoke again. “Give-sheeeee-die!”

Ah. Well, that’s the drawback of knowing every other word. At a guess, he wanted the Omnitrix simply because he wanted to bully me into submission. He was trying to be the strongest guy in the room.

Even as he snarled at me, his eyes were panning around. He flared teeth, but his chest was rising and falling very quickly.

This was a guy trying to not be the weakest guy in the prison. I couldn’t blame him for it. But it didn’t take a genius to guess the thing he wanted from me was the Omnitrix. Not happening for a dozen reasons.

I lowered myself into a crouch, trying to breathe through the pain. As I did, I felt something in my stomach. I looked down.

In my stomach, in the cuts I’d gotten from the velociraptor, wiggling around as they ate, were dozens of… oh, fuck me!

I held in a gag, trying to pull at my arm, only to find it was chained to the cage. “Gross, gross, gross!”

The human, looking at me with some disgust, spoke in German, which surprised the hell out of me. I didn’t speak the language, but I’d heard it a few times. “Überlassen Sie es einem Engländer, einen schwachen Magen zu haben.”

Engländer? Whatever man.

I looked up at the cage roof, breathing heavily. Okay, okay. Oh, gross, I could feel- Nope, not thinking about that! This was normal. They were using them to clean out my wounds of infection. I could feel more in my hip. I kept the image out of my mind to look back at the reptile man. He was hissing rhythmically, almost as though he was laughing. Nope. He was laughing. Still chuckling, he moved to sit against the wall, giving me a mocking grin.

Apparently, freaking out at the maggots had been enough to make him satisfied he was the big man on campus. You’d think my broken arm would have helped.

I laid back against the cage. “Yeah, good for you, being stronger than the one-armed guy. The second the Omnitrix is working, I’m turning into something big and punching you in the face.”

The German-speaking human grumbled something, while Rock Guy just looked between all of us silently. The winged girl continued to mope.

I looked at the other cages. There were more prisoners in them. Various races, some of them dinosaur-humans as well, sat in the cages. Some were just as beat up as I was, or worse. I noticed someone else had wings. Two wings.

Once I noticed them, I looked back at the woman in my cage. She had a bandage wrapped around her chest, going around to wear her other wing would have been.

“...Damn,” I mumbled quietly.

“Well, it looks like you’re up!” a British accented voice said loudly.

I looked out of the cage to the speaker. He was a dinosaur-person as well. He looked a lot like a stegosaurus actually, with the same spikes going down to a long spiked tail, his scales a soft silvery color. He was grinning at me, which is weird to see when someone has a beak. He was riding an ankylosaur as well, though his mount looked more… ornate, for some reason. Maybe it was the skulls resting along the edge of his armor. “There he is,” he said in the tone of a man being condescending to a child. “How are you feeling?”

“Like velociraptors tried to eat me,” I replied, glaring at the guy. “Who are you? What is all this?”

“Me?” The British stegosaur chuckled, patting his chest. “I am Stend! Humble slaver and merchant.”

“Well, if you’re enslaving people, at least you’re humble about it,” I said grumbled. Slaver. I’d been enslaved. Well, now I had context at least.

“Yes, truly I am a great master, full of kindness towards those under my care,” he said with a grin. Sounded like he believed it too. “I even took you under my wing after all! You may die in the pits, but at least you will die with a full stomach.”

“Yipee Kiyay to that,” I tried to channel as much Tony as I could now. “So how do you speak English?”

“I learned it from the New Britannians that I’ve had in my care from time to time!” he said proudly.

“New Britannia?” I asked.

“Oh?” Stend quirked an eyebrow. “So you speak the language, but don’t recognize them? Are you an outlander perhaps?” I stared at him silently. He chuckled. “Yes, our shores do seem to draw in wanderers. It has been a few decades since we have seen such,” his eyes, a green color like old copper, narrowed. “I wonder… Where are you from? Your armor was melted, possibly by the unmetal, but I could tell it was of an interesting make,” he had an odd glint in his eyes. “Same with this,” he reached for his side and took out my sword. The poor thing was still tipped with a big glob of metal, still much shorter than before, but it gleamed in the light nonetheless. “Sharp. Sharper than most blades I’ve seen and far stronger,” he chuckled, swinging my sword. “I rather like my new weapon. I’ll have to have it modified of course, but I thank you for it. Tell me, are there others who I can get blades such as this from?”

“...Yeah,” I said with a grin. “And I can lead you to them. Let you get your ass-kicked by my friends.”

His smug smile faltered. Then he smirked. “Imputent. I wonder how long that will last.”

“Till the day I die.”

“That will be sooner than you think.”

“Maybe,” I was still channeling Tony. So when I mimicked Tony’s best ‘I know more than you’ smile, Stend didn’t seem to like it much. “But I tell you what. It’ll be after you, and I’ll have that sword back when I do.”

Stend chuckled. “Amusing. I was going to let you heal before I put you to fight in the arena. Seeing you at your full strength would have been quite something. But since you seem so willing to fight, I think I’ll put you in for tomorrow.”

“Sounds great man,” I laid back against the cage so that I was no longer facing him. “Tell you what, you want to go in with me? We can enjoy the arena together! You and me against the world, Stend, what do you think?”

A clawed hand entered to the left of my face through the cage bars. Before I could move, it’s clawed hand wrapped around my face with almost crushing force, turning my low headache to an echoing bellow of pain. Stend hissed from behind me through the bamboo cage.

“Slave… I will tolerate many things. But there is a limit,” he squeezed just a bit. I scrambled to my feet, pulling at the chain on my left hand. “Tomorrow, you enter the arena, you and these others slaves. You will die for the glory of the Saur-Lords. Save your idiocy till then. Or I will kill you here.”

He squeezed again, enough that I felt like my skull wanted to crack in half, then let go. I gasped in pain as he leaned away from the cage to step away.

I stared after him, at his spiky back. I hadn’t ever personally hated someone that often. I like to think that I’m a pretty nice guy.

I was going to rip his spikes off and impale him on them.

I looked at my fellow prisoners (I refused to think of us as slaves). They all were staring at me. I grinned. “Some guys can’t take a joke, right?”

They stared at me, not understanding. I chuckled, shaking my head as though I wasn’t still hurting. “You had to be there I guess.”

------

We went through the jungle for a while. As we did, I took in everything I could. I counted the number of captors and prisoners, the ones who had weapons and what they were, and every weakness in the cage I could find. I figured that the metal chain wrapped around my left arm, coincidentally my Omnitrix arm, was strong, the part wrapped around my wrist the same. But Stend had revealed a couple of things he may not have realized were important. He wanted me in an arena, one I would fight in. Presumably, that meant I’d be released into it. If so, then I’d have opportunities.

The cart jumped, and I held in a groan at the pain that followed my body bouncing with the movement.

Problem was, beyond the sick feeling of fear and anger in my stomach at being captured, I wasn’t able to do much. My fellow prisoners weren’t feeling talkative/didn’t speak the same language as me, so I just had to sit and deal with it. That was the worst part. The waiting.

The jungle had been better. I could be proactive, could fight back in some way, could move. Sitting in the cage as it swayed, smelling my own sweat along with dozens of other gross scents, the hot sun beating down through the bamboo bars, hearing constant snarls and barked orders, my body in constant pain, trying to note everything I could about my surroundings. It was the worst combination of tense and boring, knowing that I’d soon end up in a fight for life, but not knowing when.

I didn’t know what to do. We were a long way from the river I’d ended up at, and I didn’t know the way back, so I was starting from scratch for finding my way back. The others were still looking for me though, they had to be. If I could get a signal out to them…

There was nothing I could do but wait and watch.

“...Engländer, hör auf mich (glaring), bevor ich dir die Augen ausreiße,” the German man said, the Omnitrix randomly translating the word in the middle. I’d been eyeing him for a moment. Apparently, he didn’t like that.

“You keep calling me that,” I noted. “I’m not an ‘Engländer’. I’m an American, dude. Red, white, and blue, baby,” I ended with a wide grin.

“Dummer Idiot. Ich spreche kein englisch… (Butt violin),” he said at the end, as though adding a garnish.

“Butt violin?” I asked, confused as hell and wondering if the Omnitrix was somehow regressing in progress because there was no way the German language had a word that meant ‘butt violin’.

He scoffed instead of answering.

Okay then.

We traveled on and on. The guys transporting us got water, took shifts, rested in the shade. We sat in the sun and waited. I meditated, trying to rest that way, to keep my mind together.

I looked over at the rock guy. Or girl. The rock person looked at me. It opened its mouth and spoke for the first time, in a language that sounded like stones shattering rhythmically, hitting each other in a kind of beautiful cadence.

“Nice to meet ya,” I said as casually as I could.

Then I looked past him/her and stilled. A frown grew on my face as I struggled to my feet, staring out at the place in front of us. The other prisoners had similar reactions.

In the distance, a city rose out of the jungle. Made of gray stone, it seemed almost like a mirage the way the fog of the jungle parted to reveal it. First, there were some small buildings, inns, and homes maybe. Saur-Lords, which I figured was the name of the dinosaur people, stepped out from the homes to watch us as we rattled past. I was surprised to see a few humans, reptile people, even a stone person like the one next to me, coming out. But the main population seemed to be the Saur-Lords. They were mixtures of various dinosaurs, but it was relatively easy to tell they were in charge. I tried to remember if any species like this had appeared in the comics. If they had, it wasn’t often. The only dino-hybrid I remembered from the comics with any certainty was Sauron and Stegron. And as big as Stend was, he was no Stegron.

As we rattled along, the smells of the jungle faded and new scents hit my nose. The smell of fresh bread baking, meat cooking, along with more gross scents like the kinds that came from a sewer, or from when fruits and vegetables had rotted to near nothing.

Stend rode up alongside our cart, chuckling. “Ah, look at this! Home! Isn’t it beautiful!”

I kept my opinion on that to myself. It was okay. All the buildings were made of granite, giving the place the feel of a medieval city mixed with Aztec culture. The buildings came closer and closer together the further we went, the dirt under the cart gave way to cobblestone, and the smells got stronger.

“So, Outsider!” Stend said to me proudly. “What do you think of our home? Humble, but strong, no?”

I thought about being pithy again. But not yet. Not until I was ready. “It’s nice.”

“Indeed,” he chuckled. “A good place to die.”

In the distance, I could see it. An arena, large as any basketball stadium I’d ever seen, built of the same rough grey stone as everything else around us. We moved towards it as Stend beamed proudly up at the thing. He mumbled something to himself before waving up at the arena. Far above, at the very top where windows looked out to the city, two figures could be seen. I watched them carefully. Watched everything. Tracked routes. Imbedded the path we’d taken into my mind, watched the guards roaming around, from eight-foot Brontosaur-lords to squat and strong Anklyosaur-lords. We entered the arena from one of the lower floors, moving from sunlight to shadow. The door closed as we finally entered.

------

When they stopped the carts, it was in front of more cages. The guards didn’t waste time. They seemed pretty practiced at the whole ‘enslavement of people’ thing. They did each cart one by one, forcing the groups in with their spears poking, barking orders in that growling language that seemed common here. Only when every prisoner was secured in one of the metal cages did they move to the next.

We were last. Since I was in the back of the cart, I was ready when it opened. I thought, for just a moment, about attacking. But there were multiple guards, all armed, all presumably superhuman. I had to choose a better moment.

My chain was loosened, and I was pushed forth. I dropped down to the ground, looking around the stone room we were in, noting the number of guards, tracing my eyes across the cage. Stend was watching in silence. I pretended not to notice. Walking forward as docile as possible, I stepped into the cage. The others followed me, the reptile guy trying to shove past me. I slid around him, avoiding his bulk, leaving him to stumble inside. Then I took a corner and sat down. The others filed in, one after the other, the German guy last. Reptile guy hissed something to Stend, who hissed back, pointing for him to sit.

Stend looked at all of us. He spoke in English, one of the guards translating. “Some of you, the ones who have lived here for some time, know what the arena is,” he panned his eyes across the room. “Others, you country-bumpkins,” he noted the stone man, the winged people, and a few of the reptiles. “And those who are newer to our proud ways,” he eyed me. “May wonder what it is. Let me be clear. The Arena is where you fight for a purpose greater than yourselves. The entertainment of our lord,” he chuckled. “It’s an honor. A privilege. I myself once fought there. Made a name for myself. Won my freedom. And if you win? You can do the same.”

Nope. That wasn’t how I wanted the story to end. I’d make my way out another way. Besides, I already had a greater purpose.

“Today, rest, eat, drink. But tomorrow, you will fight,” he chuckled. “Make it fun, will you?”

He turned and strode out, his spiked tail waving with each step, followed by a lot of the guards. Two of them were left, glaring at us. I noted them. The first guy was a T-Rex hybrid, about six-feet tall, carrying a spear. The second one was a raptor, just a bit shorter than me, with a spear as well as a sword on his hip. Two exits, one of which was locked now.

A moment of waiting later, a few humans entered the room escorted by a guard, all of them wearing chains. My heart ached at the sight of them. Children. They were children, carrying buckets of food they were struggling to carry. One of them, a little boy barely older than my nephew back home, came up to our cage and struggled to lift his bucket to pour it in. I stood up, only to blink in surprise when the T-Rex guard stepped forward and helped him. I looked at him in surprise. The guard kept his gaze on the boy, giving him a smile, which the boy returned.

The food they poured into the cages was some sort of bread. I moved forward to take one.

Reptile guy hissed, moving forward as well. He reached out to shove me. Red filled my vision.

At that point, I couldn’t take it. I was hot, in pain, tired, and hungry. I was imprisoned by guys I’d usually beat into a pulp. And now, this guy was trying to swing his centimeter ego at me. No. I’d had enough.

When his long arm reached out for my chest, I snapped my left arm out to wrap around it. He squawked in shock, trying to pull back.

“What?!” he said in clear English, followed by loud hisses when I twisted his arm around and swiped his feet out from under him in a kick. I pushed him down to the ground, keeping his arm high, and slammed him into the floor before bringing my knee down into his back, keeping him pressed there.

“Shove me again, asshole!” I shouted, pulling him up and slamming him back down to the ground, bouncing his face against the stone.

“GREEE!” he shouted, struggling against me, his green scales warm against my hand and under my knee. He struggled to stand, pushing up against me. He was stronger than me. But strength is nothing without proper leverage. I pulled his arm towards the center of his back. I looked around at everyone else. No one was moving. Even the guards were just watching. I stared down at reptile man. He snarled, struggling to rise. I shook my head.

“Dude. We’re literally enslaved and you’re still…” I shook my head again, unable to hide my disgust. Damnit. I didn’t want to break his arm. We might be fighting tomorrow. Two people with broken arms wouldn’t help things if we had to fight together, which I was guessing was going to happen.

I let him go and jumped back as fast as I could, waiting for what he would do next. He rose up in a scramble, roaring as he rushed me with his claws out for my throat. I ducked under his right slice, then punched out with my left arm, hitting him directly in the solar plexus. He gasped in pain. Then I kicked his right knee, bringing him to the ground, before kneeing him as hard as I could in the face. I couldn’t afford to hold back. He was bigger, faster, and stronger than me. All I had was surprise and training. So as he landed on his back, I leaped onto him, ignoring the burning sensation in my wounds, and punched him in the chest again. He snarled, snapping up with his teeth. I uppercut him, dazing him before wrapped a hand around his muzzle getting ready to-

Someone kicked me in the back, sending me flying forward. I hit the ground and tried to roll with the impact, only to get pulled down and held to the ground. A snarling sound filled the air, someone speaking. I was on my back, so I could see the T-Rex roaring down at me. Reptile Guy was staring at me, his eyes wide, as raptor guard held a spear to his throat. I stared back, then looked up at T-Rex. He snarled. I nodded, trying to show I wasn’t about to attack again.

“...Reh,” he pushed me down, then rose to his full height. Raptor slowly stepped back while the other guards kept watching. I stayed on my back, waiting. The T-Rex finally exited the cage, then Raptor, before they shut it closed. T-Rex growled, low and deep in his throat. I shared a look with reptile guy.

The green-scaled man looked like he was about to snarl. I shook my head, then got up, ignoring him. Whatever noise he was going to cut off. I walked up to the bread, most of which had been stomped on by the little brawl. Big chunks of stale, moldy, dirty brown… huh. Not bread. Some kind of dry baked thing filled with meat. Well, I suppose a lot of us were carnivores. I hadn’t expected them to waste meat on prisoners. Still, they were big. I picked up a piece, trying to keep my panting to myself.

God. That had been stupid. One moment, one mistake, and I’d be dead. I’d lost my temper. Nat would have killed me if she knew.

I pushed that thought down in favor of walking up to reptile guy. He flinched back. Winged girl, German guy, and stone person watched. T-Rex snarled.

So when I kneeled to hold out the breadmeatthing to the reptile guy, he seemed shocked. I sighed, holding it out. “Stop being a dick. Just eat.”

He stared at me for a moment longer. I dropped the food in his lap and went to the beat-up bread. One by one, still clutching my broken arm to my chest, I grabbed two other pieces, then tossed them to Winged girl and German guy. I picked up another piece and looked over at Stone person.

“You want a piece?” I asked, holding it out.

Stone person shook their head. Instead, they reached for a piece of random rubble and began to chew on it. I sat down in front of Reptile Guy and began to eat, ignoring him. After a moment, he started to eat as well.

“...Dial,” Reptile Guy looked up at me. I patted my chest. “Dial. Diiiiaaaal,” I patted my chest again.

“...Gresh,” he said hesitantly. He sort of growled it.

“Gresh. Nice,” I grinned. “Look at that. I’m a master of communication.”

He snarled. I chewed my food, trying not to look like his teeth were scary as shit sharp, and grinned.

------

Gresh was the Reptile Guy. Stone person’s name was some combination of a boulder shattering and gravel bouncing. When I tried to say it, I felt like my lungs were about to pop out of my throat. So I called them Demi since Deadpool’s voice was always described as Demi Moore’s if she was gargling gravel. I am great at names.

German guy didn’t want to tell me his name. He kept calling me Englander. German guy was a jerk, so he did not get a fun nickname.

The winged girl didn’t want anything to do with us. I think she didn’t want anything to do with the world at large. She had her one wing wrapped around her as she sat with her knees to her chest, her eyes low. I got a good look at her back. Her left wing was torn off, leaving a stump of bone. The winged people in the other cages kept singing to her in a flowing language, sympathy on their faces. She ignored them.

It was while we were all hanging out and making friends in the worst group setting I’d ever been to, I kept watching the guards. I noticed a couple of things as the day came to a close. They never seemed to have any less than two people around us. But they also kept sending people in groups of six to one of the exits. More than a few returned looking positively exhausted. Like they’d been fighting for hours. I also kept hearing something. A muffled sound, through the ground. Like something under us was moving over and over. At one point, a loud roar came from the distance.

“...” I looked at the T-Rex guard. He didn’t show any surprise. “What the hell is causing that?”

He stared at me with those reptilian eyes of his. The raptor guard looked between us. Finally, the T-Rex spoke. His snarling voice rose and fell in a brief sentence, the Omnitrix finally translating something.

“Red Devil…”

Oh. Oh damn.

I had an escape plan.