The New Suchi Arena, the next epic one-on-one, the veteran Cripple versus an intern journalist who’d been playing less than a month.

Pale as a corpse, London Tremor stepped on stage with his wolf, rehearsing an opening line in his head before his doomed fight with The Tyrant man on man, amateur against duelling god...

Henry—while the British intern had been torturing himself—had just been chilling after another fun duel on top of an imitation dragon skull. Legs dangling into the map-feature's eye-sockets, he sipped from a milkshake between nibbles of a cookie and scribbles in his diary on the many therapeutic benefits of 1v1s.

"Oh?" he said at the surprise appearance of the Beast Tamer from Channel 5, who didn't seem the psychological type to issue a challenge of his own volition.

Henry, before the intern could stammer out something stupid, held up a silencing palm and scanned the audience.

Others might've missed it, but he'd spent a great many hours on the lookout for spies in crowded streets, on the search for minuscule flaws in the shifting mass of troop formations. In an instant, he found an overly wide gap between two spectators, one in front of the other. The gaze of the rear person had flicked down questioningly at a third ducking between them, at the lurker attempting to orchestrate this farce.

Most likely Spears, Henry assumed.

He paused another second, trying to decide between kicking the cocksucker out of his stadium or transforming this into another mentally-healing one-v-one.

For now, he would go with his heart...

Following his shrink's advice, Henry set a clear intention for this next therapeutic exchange. Its theme: the spiritual catharsis in vengefully snapping the head from a cunt's neck.

“Hey, if it isn’t Oliver Nipple Twist in the grimy flesh!” he gave a friendly greeting, waving at the empty spot. “Are you still bumming it in the streets, mate, or did they give your job back?”

Aside from a question at his press conference, he hadn’t followed the story of Oliver’s firing, the matter not much of a priority.

After a brief hesitation, Oliver Spears, Gaming Journalist of The Year 2049, popped up from his hiding place, his lips curled in delight at occupying enough of his enemy’s brain to be spotted so quickly. He approached the arena's guard perimeter, and the confused crowd following The Tyrant’s gaze split for his royal advance.

So, at last, after years of rivalry at distance, the two were meeting face to unmasked face.

Spears beatifically emerged. His nerve-fibres ignited with a conflict-loving fire, and his expression took on a hostile shade, as ferocious, bold, and cocky as any of the previous challengers – except, unlike them, he’d already won his tussle with this shadowy pervert. Their exchange now would just be a chance to gloat and to maybe bait The Tyrant into exposing a bit more of his depravity.

“Unfortunately,” replied the journalist, stopping when a guard gestured for him to proceed no further, “you’re not rid of me quite yet. My employers had a bit more maturity than whoever ordered my sacking. Conceding to the ultimate victor of the Truth, they rehired me. Even gave a promotion. Oliver Spears, Chief of Global Investigations - has a nice ring, don't you think?”

The tone of 'whoever' had contained a subtle accusatorial thrust.

Henry stared at the weak jab directly. “That wasn't me. If you think I’m chummy enough with Shan to call him up with requests to fire random rag-scribblers, you’ve failed to understand me. You're still mistaking me for Alex."

Shan had been Henry and Alex’s main rival throughout Saana and the figure who’d personally ordered the journalist’s dismissal.

Oliver chortled, understanding these perverts better than themselves, then his laugh came to an abrupt end, replaced by a hard, stabbing gaze. “What’s the aim behind this ‘retirement’ charade? Or should I ask, ‘who?’. While the world’s focused on this distraction here, which enemy abroad will feel your dagger in their back?”

“How impatient.” Henry, his face unmoved as always, emoted an exaggeratedly-fake cringe at the attempted blindside. “It seems you didn't read all the terms you signed before entering this venue. This is my stadium for duelling, my workshop on duelling, my week-long bonanza in celebration of duelling. Nowhere in the contract was an invitation for you media dogs to bark about unrelated group-based hobbies from the past." He flicked a fed-up wave, the journalist's sudden seriousness making him accept that this one-v-one led to nothing but further madness - instead of the self-destructive path of vengeance, he would choose forgiveness and forgetting. "Stuff this pup in the naughty pen. Six days.”

A squad of guards grabbed Oliver by the arms to escort him away. He would be taken to a distant area of the stadium for rule-breaking trainees on timeout and rude reporters who’d interrupted the workshop by shouting off-topic questions.

Henry thought that—rather than gifting this prick his desired spectacle of a pathetically-one-sided fight—he'd force him to twiddle his thumbs in a cage until the tournament finished or he suicided his character and fucked off. Thanks to The Slums having no laws, Henry could administer any punishment of this sort that he wished. What was Ollie or his stupid news channel going to do about it? Go to war with him? With Him. No, they'd just continue blathering like the cowards they were.

To the crowd’s amusement, the journalist stood rigid as a plank while being dragged through their midst, his feet scraping a trail in the dirt.

Oliver, muzzled but not silenced, continued to fix a dogged stare upon the ‘duellist’ onstage. Along with this, he gave a satisfied smirk, the smile of one who also rarely missed his target.

But Henry'd already turned to greet his forgotten challenger. “Little London, scruffy Scotia, how are you two coping these days? You look like shit.”

The Grey Wolf snarled. It'd sensed a flare of murderous intent.

London Tremor—caught off guard by being abruptly addressed by The Tyrant himself, glancing at Oliver being seized by the troops—answered honestly, too scared to lie. “I'm terrified.”

“Why?” asked Henry, before remembering the obvious. “Oh, stage fright.”

During these downtimes of his workshop, millions of viewers were still tuned in. That’d made some of his noob challengers nervous.

London Tremor blinked in confusion, wondering if The Tyrant was pulling his leg.

“No?” Henry, his garbage social IQ leading him astray once more, spared another half second to simulate a pleb’s perspective. “Terrified of me?” He laughed. “No, there’s no need for that. With your colleague, I’m just not in the mood for mannerless gotcha games; if he can’t at least pretend to adhere to the sensible flow of polite conversation, then he can go interview the bars of a holding cell. As for the previous transgressions, outing my identity or whatever, that doesn’t bother me. I was already preparing for the leak alongside my art’s debut. Suppose it is a tad annoying that the timeline ran ahead of schedule since that smoked the much sicker scam you and I had going. But why would I blame you or jolly Olly for that one? Schemes engineered with this many moving parts are prone to failure. Can’t always predict what pesky blue wrenches might jam the gears.”

Henry, really, didn't care about their minor contribution to his identity leak, viewing them as nothing but pawns. If he were to hold any personal grudge against these cunt journalists, it would be for failing to report on Ramiro earlier and allowing several more kids to get cannibalised. However, it was specifically that type of over-emotional, over-invested perspective that a retiree needed to discard. A person eating a simulation of a child, another person ignoring this heinous behaviour for a juicier news-piece, neither committed any real harm or crime - except, maybe, the crime against their own souls spiralling into an inhuman void of nihilistic degeneracy.

"Scam?" London Tremor had no idea what ‘sick scam' he was apparently in on.

Henry added a note his therapy journal, the intern nibbling the bait to transition their duel into the next healing theme: spiritual redemption. “Wait, don't tell me you missed that obvious plot, too? Hah. How embarrassing. Well, I guess I can spoil the spoiled story. Come. Let's duel; let's chat."

In a jankily-forced segue, he began fighting the intern while simultaneously delivering a villain-esque monologue summarising his ruined plans for the saga of The Cripple’s Return.