Chapter 15

Surprise Attack

Dana and Kyne were driving back to the detective’s home with the younger of the two asleep. Dana assumed that this was due to him using his powers too much and thus needing to rest for some time. As she was driving, she couldn’t help but keep replaying the scene of Kyne killing Aqua Jaws in such a brutal manner.

‘I suppose I forgot that no matter how kind he may seem, he is still a person that was practically bred for killing,’ Dana thought to herself as she spared a glance at her sleeping partner. ‘Hard to believe someone so polite could become so vicious so suddenly. Maybe he was right about how there might not be a place for him in the world…’

As soon as she had that thought, the detective wanted to slap herself for thinking that way. She owed her life to Kyne and she wasn’t going to betray him in such a manner.

Suddenly, Dana’s phone began to ring. She looked at the caller ID and saw that it came from an unknown number. Not wanting to wake up her partner, the detective pulled over to the side of the road and exited the car, hoping to speak with the caller without fear of Kyne being disturbed from his sleep.

“This is Dana Colt, private detective,” Dana answered the phone. “Who is this?”

“I have to say, Ms. Colt, that you are doing far better than I had expected,” the familiar voice of Robert Kartz said from the other end of the line. “Most of our group, myself included, didn’t think you would live this long after getting entangled in our little game. Honestly, if I could reward you for such an accomplishment, I’d do so right away.”

“Don’t feel too bad over that. Even if you were to give me a reward of any type, I’d just shove it up your ass anyways,” the detective said without even attempting to hide her anger, as her grip on the phone tightened. “Now what the hell do you want? I doubt you’re calling me just to exchange pleasantries.”

“Now, now, there is no need for such hostilities. After all, I did take time from my busy schedule to inform you of the current state of affairs,” the businessman explained. “But first, I should congratulate you on defeating Aqua Jaws. That was quite the feat that a lot of people enjoyed.”

“As if I didn’t have a bad enough taste in my mouth from that whole ordeal already…” Dana muttered unhappily. “Anything else you wanted to tell me?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. Like I said earlier, I wanted to inform you of the current state of how things are going,” Robert answered. “You see, while you and your little partner were hunting Aqua Jaws, a rather interesting development happened in the battle between the other Bio-Gladiators, as not just one, but three competitors were taken out. I’m sure if you tell Telekyne the names Gasback, Fast Gale and Blaze Master, he’ll know just what type of people are no longer a concern for you.”

Dana’s eyes went wide upon hearing this. While she knew that she should have expected that some of the remaining Bio-Gladiators would end up killing each other, the detective hadn’t thought that so many would die in such a small amount of time. She just hoped that she could find more information in regards to this.

“...Mind telling me any details as to what happened?” Dana asked.

“While I shouldn’t be telling you anymore than I already have, I’m going to make an exception. After all, everybody likes an underdog,” Robert Kartz said in a tone that was just dripping with smugness. “All three were killed by the same Bio-Gladiator.”

“All three were taken out by the same one?” the detective asked with a shocked expression. “What were they facing? Godzilla?”

“Come now, you should know better than that. Having a Bio-Gladiator like that would prove to be no fun at all,” the businessman said with a slight chuckle. “Anyways, I have now given you the information I was supposed to. Any more than this and my customers will begin to accuse me of interfering too much and that I’m playing favorites. However, before I leave, I should mention that I looked into your background a bit. Turns out that you have a bit of a connection to one of the people you’re looking for. I’ll be looking forward to your reunion.”

“Wait, what is that supposed to-?” Dana began to ask, only for the call to suddenly get cut off. “Figures…”

The detective put away her phone and thought about what she had just been told. If she truly had a connection to one of the Bio-Gladiators, what could it be? The only conclusion she could come to was that it had to be some criminal that she busted at one time, but who? There were all sorts of thieves, murderers and other scum of society that she had dealt with, so it wasn’t exactly a small pool of possible candidates.

As she was thinking about this, Dana heard the a noise from a nearby alleyway. She immediately took out her pistol and ran to where the sound had come from, expecting some type of a monster there. Instead, all she saw was a small child.

“Hey, kid, what are you doing out here all by yourself?” the detective asked as she lowered her pistol. “Shouldn’t you be at home with your parents?”

Dana was about to put away her gun completely, but then a small part inside her mind that told her there was something wrong with this. It was almost like an animal instinct that warned her of danger that she hadn’t seen yet, which had been quite useful for her in her line of work.

Acting upon this strange feeling, the detective looked over the child a bit more carefully and realized that something was indeed wrong. The little boy in front of her was obviously not normal, as he had many strange qualities to him. For starters, his clothes were odd, as he seemed to be wearing a skin-tight suit of some kind, similar to what divers would wear. He also didn’t have anything covering his feet, not even socks. The strange attributes of his appearance didn’t stop there, as his skin seemed to be strangely pale, almost like he was sick, with bulging veins showing all around where his skin was visible. His hair was a messy mane of long black hair that was unkempt, showing that no care went into it. The last and most disturbing thing were his eyes, as his they were completely pitch black with only small white irises in the middle.

“...Kid? Would you mind answering me?” Dana asked as sweat began to drip down the side of her face. Her hand was slowly positioning itself around her gun, ready to fire at the possible threat. “Come on now. Didn’t your parents teach you any manners?”

“Bio-Gladiator… behind you…” the boy finally replied, causing the detective’s eyes to go wide. “You… out of my way…”

Dana pointed her pistol at the boy, hoping that it would be enough to scare this new enemy that had appeared before her. However, before she could tell him to stand still, the Bio-Gladiator began to suddenly change right before her eyes. The sounds of bones breaking and muscles tearing echoed through the alley, as the boy’s body began to bulge and grow in every place. The detective could only stare in wide-eyed shock, as the small child changed in a manner of seconds into a giant right before her eyes, with red skin that had bulging veins everywhere and completely white hair.

“Okay… This seems completely fair,” Dana mumbled to herself as she stared at the monstrosity before her in disbelief. She began to slowly back away from it as she also aimed her gun. “N-Now don’t you make any sudden moves! I’ve got-!”

The detective’s warning fell on deaf ears, as the giant tried to crush her with its fist. Dana barely managed to roll out of the way, as the attack left a crater on the place of the impact. The detective hardly had enough time to run away, as a second fist came at her quickly afterwards, destroying the wall behind her.

Dana had now made her way behind the Bio-Gladiator and aimed her pistol at the beast. She opened fire, but the giant didn’t even flinch. The massive muscles he had prevented the bullets from doing any real harm.

The detective cursed as she saw her attack being ineffective and prepared herself to run. However, unlike how she had expected, the Bio-Gladiator simply turned its attention away from her and began to walk away. At first, Dana was confused and didn’t understand what was happening, but soon realized what her opponent’s real goal was. Her eyes went wide upon realizing this.

‘SHIT! He’s going after Kyne!’ the detective thought to herself. ‘His real goal is to simply eliminate the other Bio-Gladiators! It doesn’t give a shit about me!’

Knowing the state her partner was in, Dana had to act fast. If this guy got to Kyne, there was no way the telekinetic boy would be able to defend himself, as he was still tired from his earlier battle. Kyne would be turned into bloody paste in a matter of seconds.

The detective tried to desperately think of a way to prevent the Bio-Gladiator from getting to Kyne, but didn’t really have anything to do so. The bullets from her gun barely annoyed him and she didn’t even need to try to know that her attacking the giant with her bare hands would only get herself killed.

In desperation, Dana pulled out Ricky’s switchblade that she had kept after her encounter with Acidspring and charged at the Bio-Gladiator. While this would have seemed completely insane to anyone who was watching, the detective actually had an idea. She wasn’t going to randomly stab at the musclebound monster, as that would only annoy him. Instead, she was going to aim for a certain spot in his body to hinder his movements.

Swinging with all her might, Dana stabbed the blade into the Bio-Gladiator’s ankle a couple of times. While the giant had incredible muscles to protect its body, there were still weaknesses in it that could be exploited. With the attack on its ankle, one of its tendons was cut, bringing the monster to its knees. This was accompanied by the Bio-Gladiator roaring in pain, before swinging his large arm at the attacker.

Dana was unable to move out of the way this time and could only bring her arms up in an attempt to defend herself. The blow sent her flying backwards a few feet, where she laid on the ground in pain.

“Freaking bastard… You sure can dish it, but you can’t take it, huh?” the detective said as she struggled to get back up with her body in pain.

Meanwhile, the Bio-Gladiator was slowly making its way towards Dana. He was having some trouble moving, due to his injured leg, which was only made worse by the weight of his insanely large muscles. Despite these issues, the giant was getting closer and closer to the detective, who was still on the ground, unable to shake off the damage from the blow she had received.

Soon, the Bio-Gladiator was right next to Dana, who had only managed to get on her knees. She looked up at the monstrosity towering over her and saw him raise both arms up, getting ready to squash her like a bug. Seeing no way out of her predicament, the detective closed her eyes and waited for her life to end.

‘Dammit… Guess I won’t be bringing down the people responsible for this after all,’ Dana thought to herself bitterly, as a couple of frustrated tears fell from her eyes.

However, when the attack never came, the detective opened her eyes and looked up to see the Bio-Gladiator still holding his arms up, but now it looked like he was struggling to move them. Like there was an invisible force holding him back.

It didn’t take long for Dana to realize what was going on and she saw Kyne standing behind the giant with his arms stretched out, a sing of him using his powers.

“KYNE!” the detective called out to her partner, happy to see him.

“WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!?” the telekinetic boy yelled back at her. “USE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO KILL HIM! HURRY! I CAN’T HOLD HIM FOR MUCH LONGER!”

Realizing that she didn’t have much time, Dana quickly looked for her gun and was able to find it nearby. She picked it up and aimed the barrel at the Bio-Gladiator’s head.

“Doubt you have muscles here, do you, big guy?” the detective asked as she pointed her gun at the giant’s left eye. “End of the line.”

Dana pulled the trigger and the bullet went through the eye, into the brain and came out from the back. With the Bio-Gladiator now dead, Kyne released his power and dropped the gigantic body to the ground.

Unfortunately, he forgot about a certain someone.

“GAAH!” Dana yelled out in shock as the mountain of muscles suddenly fell on top of her. “GODDAMMIT, KYNE! WOULD IT HAVE KILLED YOU TO GIVE ME A FREAKING WARNING!?”

“I’ve already spent too much of my strength on not just my previous fight, so holding Titan back was no easy feat,” Kyne replied while on his knees and panting heavily. “You’re lucky that I managed to this much.”

“Sure… I’m real glad,” the detective said sarcastically as she struggled to get out of her current predicament. “Mind giving me a hand or something? This thing is at least twice as heavy as he-”

Dana was cut off as what looked like steam started to suddenly rise from the massive body on top of her. As this happened, the body began to visibly shrink, until it was back to its original size, which was that of a small child.

While this allowed the detective to get out from underneath the massive weight placed upon her, she was horrified to suddenly have the body of a dead child on her. Her eyes went wide and her face turned pale upon realizing this and she quickly crawled away from the corpse. Dana then stared at the dead boy in horror, as she thought over what she had just done.

“He… He was just a kid…” the detective struggled to say. “I thought he was just pretending to be one at the beginning, like he had some weird transformation ability, but… We killed a child!”

“That is true,” Kyne said. “I once heard that Titan was an orphan that was picked up from the streets before being made into one of the Bio-Gladiators. I believe they even said that taking orphans is easy, as they aren’t wanted in the first place.”

“...Why didn’t you tell me?” Dana said as she was starting to shake from anger. “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME THAT HE WAS JUST A KID!? If I had known about it, maybe we-!”

“MAYBE WHAT!? Are you telling me that we could have somehow saved him!? Stopped him from being a killer!?” the telekinetic boy yelled, shocking the detective. “Like it or not, all the Bio-Gladiators are killers that know nothing but bloodshed! From what I saw from the files you had, he has already killed plenty of people, so this was the only option left for us!”

“But… He wasn’t originally like that, was he? He couldn’t have been,” Dana asked. “This wasn’t his fault, but the bastards who made him into… this thing! There must be others like him as well! How can we just go about killing them like it doesn’t even matter!?”

“We can, because it is the only thing we can do. In order for us to win, we need to be ruthless and we cannot hesitate,” Kyne said. “Besides, you have already taken the lives of other Bio-Gladiators without knowing their backgrounds. Why is it an issue now?”

“Well… The other ones were grown up, so they should have known better, right?” the detective asked. “But this one was still a child. I mean, it’s horrible no matter who it is that gets abducted into these experiments, but it’s worse when it’s a child. Had he been taken care of by someone, he probably wouldn’t have-”

“Become a killer? Possibly. But that doesn’t matter any longer,” the telekinetic stated coldly. “The fact is that these people are now going around, killing people and need to be stopped. No matter who or what they are. I thought you knew that.”

“...Yeah, I knew that. Or at least I thought so,” Dana said as she stood up. “But I can’t help feeling bad for someone like him, okay? Kids aren’t supposed to die like this.”

“No one is supposed to die just for the sake of someone’s entertainment, Dana.”

Kyne got up and walked back to the car, having rested enough to do so. Dana soon followed behind him, but not before giving one last look at Titan’s body. It was heartbreaking for her to see such a young child lose their life. This was made worse when she remembered that the reason for it was to simply entertain some sick bastards.

So far, the detective had been pursuing the Bio-Gladiators with certainty, but now she was having trouble. If there were others that were just innocent children that were turned into monsters, would she be able to fight them?

Dana could only hope that she wouldn’t have to find out.