‘Speaker. I need a scan of her. Right. Now.’

“We… we need a second to recalibrate the receivers and-”

‘RIGHT!! FUCKING!! NOW!!’

Seth couldn’t move. Every fiber of his being was screaming at him to run, just run as fast as it could. But nothing he did worked. His muscles trembled in place, his legs refused to shift, he couldn’t form a full breath even if he tried. All he could do was stifle himself, stop his armor from rattling, breath even shallower just to keep quiet. And not set off the bomb that was just dropped onto the arena floor.

Like the air had suddenly turned to stone, no one else dared to even try and breath. The curt suspense had fallen in on itself and a near total fear now ruled the stands. The recruits on the protected bench tried to brace but even they were powerless against the aura that this thing gave off. Only magging a desperately slow convergence around David as he quietly broke down at the sight of her.

Heroes not in the know shot up to ready themselves, reflexes burned into their psyches, ever ready flares of demanded speed and learned fear driving them back into hell. But they were just as quickly stood down by those who understood. Because in the end no one wanted to make a sound, to set off the living bomb of claws and teeth that stood sobbing in the center of the arena. But of course Para was not beholden to this fear.

“Fear not ladies and gentlemen-”

“RRRRRAAAAAGGGHHHHHH!!!!”

The sobbing evaporated like the façade it was and that bomb exploded, half a ton of meat and muscle reflexively lunging at the sound of his voice. The audience recoiled and devolved into wanton screaming, that suffocating air ripped in twain. A stampede trying to make a break for the nearest bit of out of the way. But this cascade of callus display stopped dead,just as the chain around her neck snapped to taut. The monster was caught short, clotheslined and not allowed to leave the prison that was now the center. Over buffed bulk falling back as the weight tethered to her rumbled the arena. Claws scrambling over the sand and struggled against her collar.

“Like I said! Fear not! For today’s first challenge is not a public execution, nor some cruel blood sport!"

"RRAAGHHH!!!"

"But, you now understand. This is the truest test we can administer!”

The laceroid lunged again toward Para, yanking at the chain that recessed into the floor, heavy weights shifting and gonging against the floor keeping it down.

“Tinman’s challenge today is a simple one!”

Seth wanted nothing more than to tear Para’s tongue out and end this god damn blind obliteration of everything he’d tried to maintain till now. The metal over his hands begging for mercy as he fought just to keep quiet. But he couldn’t look away, he couldn’t turn away, he could stop shaking. Couldn’t stop seeing those eyes.

“He must stay within the central fighting circle for 5 minutes! Must withstand and avoid the onslaught of Sorrow as best he… and his powersuit can! Only then can he truly be called a hero worthy to stand among us!”

‘You fucking son of a BITCH!!’

“But he can’t be expected to be perfect! No one is! But mistakes still have a cost! Every time he leaves the circle, 2 minutes will be deducted from his total, forcing him to stay in longer! If he is knocked out too much, the match is forfeit! If he is knocked unconscious the match is forfeit! If Sorrow proves to be too much and is close to killing him, the match is forfeit! And to be sure that no one is hurt should the worst arise… we have the Elite’s own Aegis providing shielding for today’s fights!”

The air finally snapped free of that suffocating aura, let Seth out of his compounding fear, afforded him a glance over to the podium. Because there she was, finally. He’d been right, the rest of the Elite were here, sitting front row ready to observe the fights, but only she was off her feet. A dour look, a knowing and guilty doldrum that signaled she was resigned to watch helplessly. The others all sat in forced silence and stoicism, but Seth could see their anxiety and hatred clear as day. Not even they were immune to this fear.

Aegis bent down at the knee high lip of the arena, hands spread over the side. A ceiling of translucent orange energy spread out from her hands to cap it off from those not fighting below. A small wall falling around the protected bench housing the defensively frozen trainees. Looks of shared terror at their proximity to such a monster finally eased under the invulnerable glow. But they did not relinquish their brace over David.

Seth reflexively relaxed under the light of that orange ceiling, a feeling of safety even he couldn't deny. But immediately regretted its abrupt half life. As he felt a glare on him beyond any he’d ever known, and as Sorrow lunged like predator to prey. The weight around her neck smashing against its container, sand getting shot up from the impact. Without even a thought he'd thrown himself back, stopped just short of the line, heel hung over it like an unconscious sign of weakness. He couldn't lose sight again.

“Seth… Seth we have confirmed it!”

Speaker chose now of all fucking times!

“What data we could pull from our scanners, it… it is her… It’s your mother!”

A scant modicum of the fear smothering over him faded, memories flying fast and hollow at him dropping it more to kindred sorrow at seeing the truth of what had happened to her. But he couldn’t show this shift, couldn’t react at all. All he could do was stare down the thing his mother had become. He could see all the things he saw before in her eyes. All the vain sorrow she had been locked into by her transformation, all the pain she was feeling on constant blast. He could also see the threading that held her together, the density almost too much to take in. His powered senses strained looking at her, trying to make sense of it all.

“There’s something else…”

Seth was feeling Speaker’s apprehension, feeling what he had found for himself.

‘She’s… still in there!’

“As far as we can tell… yes.”

His mind raced at the hell she had suffered all this time, was still suffering. But then it turned back toward Speaker, the Garkah, the Ark!

‘Get Concoctor! Ready a conscious crossover! We need to get her out of there!’

“W-wait we do not have that kind of tech prepared… we-”

‘JUST FUCKING DO SOMETHING!!!’

Seth couldn’t stand it. The thought of his mother suffering one more minute locked in that body. Being locked away like a rabid animal eaten out of its own skin. But… he was out of time.

“The fighters are ready!!”

Para reasserted himself over everyone’s emotions and massed consternations.

“The field is set!!!”

Seth snapped back at him, flashing a glare that could burn steel as his suits eyes lit up, an afforded condemnation before returning to the monster his mother had become. A screen flipped open over the stands and counted up five minutes. Para raised his arm to the sound of chains rattling out of their coil below the arena floor, to the sound and anticipation of a weight loosed to drop to its lowest depths. The tension in the air skyrocketed despite the precautions, an almighty bomb truly set alight. And all eyes unable to watch as that arm came down, and shook the foundations of this arena for the most terrible starting bell ever wrung. As that bomb exploded for all it held back.

“FIGHT!!!”

That crushing aura shattered as Sorrow shot away, unhindered and uninhibited. She careened like a missile made of claws and teeth, maw wide and claws splayed. A finally resolving perception catching up with the seriously needed speed, but Seth couldn’t bring himself to add to his mother's pain. And all that fear had to build up somewhere. So his only choice left, dodge!! A sidestepped to the right, stayed but locked toward her as she reached the end of her chain with a violent taut crash. She was torn off her feet by her own momentum and flung backward to the snap of one too many vertebrae to not feel it by proxy. The weight tied around her neck sprang up and beat the foundation again as she scrambled back upright. Bones reforming before the reverb could dissipate.

She kept charging from the ground, claws tearing through the sand with total abandon. Seth backpedaled around the edge of the arena, the weight on the chain could slow Sorrow’s movements, but only just. And he couldn’t fight her, not like this. And especially not without a plan. He pulled up his guard and hardened, focused everything into his arms and keeping distance. All just to buy time for something. Anything!

She found purchase and finally pulled away from the ground, a claw swiping across his guard and screaming sparks to life. Her strength was on with the simulations, but Seth was stronger now. And this metal refused to give. She swiped again, and again. Outer aluminum layers spalling their faintest loss and screeching for all to hear. But still metal did not yield, and still he kept moving back. Plate metal feet danced along the circle's edge, hardened guard reduced to reactionary single arm blocks to find an opening. But the rabid animal before him was having none of it.

A hard left raked Seth’s left away, refuted its reaction. Another swipe already coming wide. Sorrow’s claw eclipsed his flashed up opposing guard, grabbing hold. She kept twisting, wrestling him off his feet and slamming him onto the ground. Back to sand and front to death. She reared back her left claw pointed straight at his head, bringing it down under another wailing roar. But it crashed hard into his intercepting left, armored fingers interlocked with claws, tension nearly snapping his elbow clean out but stopping her skewers repeating history. Seth clamped down on her claw, keeping it in place. A swift twist off her rebuke, and his grappled right reversed and grappling her right as well. A forceful kick out of a shin and an all or nothing twist, and Sorrow was pulled over off her feet and flung toward the center.

She rolled uncontrollably over her chain, claws bashing it about but only collecting more rolls as she franticly clawed for purchase. Seth righted himself and pressed the advantage, scooping up slack chain as he rushed after her. Her tumble stopped neck deep heavy links, wrapped two layers deep and on her back. She pulled and clawed to be free of it like a feral beast, but it held as Seth piled the slack atop her. A desperate scramble carried him over, trying to keep the chain tight and contain her. He pressed down on a bend, staking it into the ground with his gauntlet. Sorrow struggled in vain, her flailing only adding to her containment. Seth slammed onto her chest and pressed all the weight at his disposal, pressing an elbow down as she kicked up from the ground and tried to claw at him with her talon clad feet.

Slowly her predicament seemed to dawn on her as she ceased flailing, an odd calm for a living bomb. Seth looked up from his huddled press, meeting her in those horridly nostalgic eyes, desperate to reach his mom behind them. But he only saw the same look that he’d gotten every time before. The tears were hers, but the rage was truly something else’s.

Suddenly she shifted, pushing the chain binding her taut over her chest, denying Seth's weighted press. She reared back her neck and opened her maw wide, teeth stained by dust and grime long over past due. They chomped down on the chain two widths deep, links nearly shorn off from just the impact. Seth could only watch as she crunched those surviving metal links, welds cracking under the assault. With a final press the chain shattered between her teeth, shards scattering over his helmet and telling him to fucking run! He immediately pushed off to regain position as she tore off the last of the bindings keeping her at bay. The fact that Para didn’t call the match as she rose up unhindered by her weight only added to Seth’s dismay.

‘Damnit Speaker, do we have anything?!’

“We… we have something, we cannot be sure! We would need time and proximity… physical contact!”

‘Good enough!!’

“WAIT!! She will tear you apart if you try to get that close!!”

‘Only if I fail!’

Seth stood his ground, back to the circle’s edge, front to true manifested death. Ruts and banks of sand piled up around his feet. Sorrow stared at him with all of the wild overriding hate, sorrowful glare left piecemeal but ever continuous. She stamped a taloned foot down, sand pressed aside in more banks as she menacingly advanced on him.

‘This is the only way.’

Seth redirected his focus, the suit’s stores shifting lower, energizing and adding to his legs. He had to be fast, and he had to focus lower. As Sorrow drew close and loaded up for a truly unhindered lunge, Seth dropped low, scooping a hand into the loosened sand of the arena floor. All those displays and movements had left him plenty to work with. But a simple motion was all it took to set off this monster, no force keeping her locked within the fighting circle’s circumference. Sorrow burst forward, sand trailing talon loosed and maw hungering wide, but at that same moment Seth made her regret her hunger.

Metal feet dug deep into the sand, push to the side, and scraped against the solid metal floor below. And in the same motion, he catapulted that hand full of sand straight into the over exposed maw seeking to take a chunk out of him. He spun away and skidded across the hidden floor, leaving a sand clogged and blasted Sorrow to tumble away in his wake. He didn’t look back, there was no time for second guesses as he dropped both hands down and continued moving. More sand aerosolized by the handful, kicked up from the floor with every scrapping step and thrown over head at every chance. He could feel the floor below him, heavy steel plating so cracks wouldn’t form from impacts. He could feel the sand, heavy and filled with iron particles to work with the hardlight system. A medium he could use and abuse and risk exposure in desperation. He dragged his metal feet across the surface like a hellish ice rink, but also like his finger across a broken servo. Power flowed from metal foot to metal floor, magnetizing it to his will, but instead of sealing itself together. It would repel outward.

That overwhelming glare, and Seth ducked low and dragged his left, coming about and narrowly avoiding a claw across his back. Sorrow was close behind, retaliation without hesitation, but her eyes were strained and her snout caked. Eternal tears create eternally wet sand. He dropped both hands down again and shot them up, shooting a cloud of sand into Sorrow’s face. She recoiled, a little eye and nose irritation was an acceptable attack to his conscience, but it could only do so much. She flailed about, half blind and screeching. Seth took every opportunity and continued circling, but knew she was far from inhibited, her sight and smell plenty affected but her hearing was still in play. And the screeching metal on metal wasn’t helping.

Sand was building up in the air around the circle, thick enough to block sight in and out, but it wouldn’t stay forever, but Seth needed that time and that cover. Despite her frustration, Sorrow stopped short, wiping her eyes clear and blowing hard to clear her snout. Seth, meanwhile, finished his circuit, coming to an even stop at his starting point and eyeing a large pile that was left in Sorrow's wake. With a resounding and challenging stomp, he stepped forward. Charge building up and focus rounding the whole of his creation. Sorrow stepped out opposite from the obscuring cloud, eyes burning with hate and streaming dusty tears. Tension didn’t have time to manifest as both rushed forward in unison, both racing toward each other with every intention to finally finish this. But Seth stopped short, slid low and reeled back high an almighty right.

As Sorrow lunged one final time, he slammed that fist down on the piled sand, smashing through to the steel plate below and ringing it loud and clear. His hit imparted the last of the power needed to turn this circle into a massive repulsive magnet, enough to keep the sand clouds up for the short minute he needed. The slam aerosolized the pile, as well as other loose piles across the ring. An ambiguous crescendo of expressed force. A final blast of sand smacking Sorrow off her pounce and caused her to roll to the side. She was up and clearing her eyes again, roaring in anger at the constant irritation and constant refuting. The sand cloud too thick to see through, suspended just barely by the magnetic floor, but Seth didn’t need to hide from her.

Stepping into sight, he squared back up, staring back at eyes that seemed to know only pain and hate and nothing of what it took away to get here. With a flick he extended the claws on his gauntlets, hardened them with everything he had. Sorrow splayed her own claws out, intent on tearing into him with everything she had. Frustration too much to keep tension, she immediately careened forward, talons slashing the ground under her, adding more sand to the cloud. But before she could wrap her claws around him, Seth shot his own claws up to meet hers. Claws locked together, force met force as sand was cleared from the air, a shock wave of colliding titans. His bones threatened to snap in half as her full force pressed down, sliding Seth back a step, but he could hold it. Sorrow became torrential, hate, pain, anger, and sadness all bearing down without thought or care. Metal holding just barely against the onslaught, but Seth wasn’t going to rely on it. He had to rely on there being something, anything, left of his mother in there. And the only way to get to it was to meet it face to face.

His forehead smacked the emergency release on the inside of the helmet, panels folding back as the heated air inside released. His shock white hair flowed away as he shot his head up, met Sorrow’s hateful gaze with his, met eyes shared across paternity and clung to with everything left of their beings. A vain hope that his gambit was worth it withering under that baleful stare caked in sand. But slowly, inch by inch, it shifted Something deep in breaking that all-consuming torrential hate. Seth felt the claws lighten, internal strife weakening her. Then that expression contorted, maw finally closing shut, eyes locking straight at his. Something more, recollection, memory breaking through. But it needed more, something drastic, something-

“Mom!”

Like a dam had suddenly shot into place, the torrent slammed to nothing, Sorrow's claws failing to keep their press any longer. The fight sapped out at a single word. Internal strife still keeping her locked away, but that dam would not hold for long. It needed one final push. And Seth took that chance. He pulled his hands free of Sorrow’s, ducked low, and pressed himself into her scaled chest, head held tight against her with everything he had left to muster. And threw everything he had at breaking through to her.

‘MOM!!!’

The arena faded away, bodies falling in on themselves. That familiar, distant, simulated calm. But mixed and foggy. The void of translation, of minds brought too close without abiding precaution. A tether, a focus drawn out and attached. But despite the fog, despite the void, despite the chasm separating them in figurative literality. He could see her, clear as day he could see her. Points of light mimicking overgrown and messy dark brown hair, cloaking her in disheveled self pity. Her own self image translated and made real, her mind locked away and unable to care for itself. Unable to feel, to know, to do anything but cry like the day she was subsumed. But now… she was confused, looking out at where her cage used to hold her in, the same hazel eyes scanned around her freed mind. Until they met Seth’s and found their true feelings.

‘Mom!!’

“S-Seth?!”

He couldn’t help but try to run to her, to hug her, to feel like everything was just another forgotten dream needing to be woken up from. But he couldn’t move further toward her. The translation could connect them, but not free them so haphazardly. Seth felt the Garkah at his back, felt their hesitation and worry at their barely operable creation. Speaker stepped up beside him, trepidation keeping him less than poised. Threat held back, knowing full well what his part in her suffering was.

“We need to pull her out of there! Before that thing reasserts control! Tell me you have something!”

Speaker looked concerned, but nodded.

“Concoctor said it was feasible, but we need to tell her how to use her Power first, or else there won't be enough to even transfer.”

Seth’s mother worked through her shock, knowing glare pulling over the once suppressed outflow. She hesitated, but stepped up to the expanse that separated her from her son. Eyes falling on Threat with a knowing guilt, like she had seen what he had done and what had been done to him. A feeling that drove him low, in the face of another victim of his. She looked to Speaker, seeing one that seemed to help her son along through his hardship, but understanding he was guilty of much of it. Her feeling shared across that precarious tether like the collective she’d been passed over by.

Finally she looked back at her son, looked back at Seth’s longing stare, seeing him as the little boy she tried to protect from this. He held a hand out, felt the expanse widen against him, but sought to stretch out regardless through that more than demanded of tether. Memories pushed along and given with purpose. Seth felt her see what had happened since that awful day, felt her take to the power she’d been cursed with in knowing purpose.

“She has it, start the-”

But Seth was cut short by a blinding aura from his mother.

He could feel an influx, power from outside. She was using it like she knew everything it could do.

“What’s she doing?!”

Threat doubted, but knew it immediately.

“She’s… going to destroy herself.”

“WHAT!?!”

He could feel it. The hum of her newly realized threading, she was tuning her new power to it, planning to…

“MOM!?!”

She smiled, tears rolled down her face. Not the tears of eternal sorrow, but tears of happiness, she was free from the prison she had been locked in for so long. Finally able feel the world around her again, breathe for herself again, to know what warmth and cold and any other emotion other than sorrow felt like. But also… she got to see her son grow up and become something more than she ever could have imagined.

“It’s okay Seth. It’s okay.”

Her voice was almost angelic, he could barely remember it before, but hearing it now was… too much.

“You already saved me as best you could.”

“But!!”

She lowered her head, held her quickly blinding self like even this body was nothing but another cage.

“I can still feel her… the thing that locked me away. She’s a part of me, something neither I, nor anyone, could separate completely. She fed off my emotions, my memories, my pain… my sorrow. Tried to fill a gap that she wasn’t even able to know she had. That’s all they ever were… empty beings trying to fill themselves with anything they could. But now… there will be nothing left for her to take.”

Seth dropped to his knees, the weight too much to take the light burning his eyes.

”I don’t feel sadness anymore, now that I know you’re safe. That you have friends who care about you. That you are doing what you feel is right.”

The aura around her recoiled the Garkah as it intensified but Seth refused to look away, his mother becoming little more than a blinding light across the expanse. Tears welled up as he tried to find words to get her to stop.

“Don’t suffer on my account…! You saved me, gave me the only key that could truly free me! You shouldn’t have to shoulder the burden of keeping me around! I died that day with everyone else. There is no going back to what came before, only moving forward with what you have. So don’t despair! You freed a trapped soul today…! And ended her eternal sorrow all with one word.”

The aura finally blinded Seth completely, forcing him to shut his mind’s eyes and bear what was to come.

“Don’t despair! I will always be with you! Not as a monster that needs locking away, but as a mother, who will always love you.”

Seth fell back out of his head, the tether snapping as the light tore it apart. Back to the arena, the sand falling over his head, the crushing weight of what he couldn’t prevent no matter how hard wanted to. And… to his mother… hugging him one last time.

Bulky scaled arms that once threatened to tear him to ribbons now wrapped around his metal carapace, mirrored his hug and pressed him tightly. The warmth was almost unbearable, cascading through the suit like it wasn't there in the first place. Something he couldn’t help but fight as tears overflowed his eyes... and the pressure lightened. Scales softened, bulk fading, turning to dust under his embrace. She was disintegrating. Not like the laceroids before, not bursting at the seams as their beings failed to hold, but flaking away. A permanent smile on her softened maw. Seth recoiled as she finally fell apart, black flakes and dust heaping away to ground between his hands. Staining them... again. The magnetic field churned the heap, spreading it finer and finer, staining the sand for all to know. All that was left was a black smudge surrounding a heavy chain collar. Seth left with nothing but his tears streaming down his dusted face. The sand losing its hold, but giving him this one last moment.

“Goodbye mom…”

He snapped the helmet closed, hiding away emotions he still had to conceal, and let the sand fall away to reveal what had transpired, even if it was only half the truth.

Seth turned and looked up as his cover fell away, stared dead at Para with a managed disdain radiating from the suit’s blank gaze. He, the audience, everyone watching was speechless. But Para looked like he was expecting something far more violent to occur, something more like the Berta scenario. Instead all he got was a quiet ending to the last holdout of the Laceroid Crisis. And it was driving him livid.

The Elite sitting to his left seemed to have more mixed opinions though, but equal surprise. Aegis looked relieved that Seth had made it through, though this fell into concern as the gravity of his actions came back to her. Samurai seemed happy, though he always seemed happy. Technomancer looked dejected, the pad in his hand displaying readings he was getting from the fight, and it seemed to have been blocked out by the sand. Maglev looked annoyed, but dismissive of whatever had transpired. Hothead was pissed, almost jealous even. Guess he wanted to kill Sorrow himself. Ziyou looked impressed at least, though she seemed more into the prospects than the outcome. She really liked to fight. Erdwut though seemed… well he doesn’t show emotion much, but something more laid below. His intense hatred of the laceroids was very much known, so maybe he didn’t like the implication that the last one had been killed by a trainee with a powersuit. The whispers from the crowd began to draw Seth back wide, growing in volume as people started to question what even happened. Did he win, did he cheat, wasn’t Sorrow important? All the while Para was growing too perturbed to keep quiet.

“Ladies and Gentlemen!! Quiet please! …As I said before… This was not meant to be a public execution!!”

Para locked eyes with Seth, unmoved by the assertions, but still couldn’t help feel the dust staining his hands.

“That Sorrow would be killed today was something we had not planned for! Though some of you would see this as a good thing, the ending of an era of pain, her continued existence allowed us to study what had occurred those many years ago! It gave us insight into how those creatures even existed in the first place! Her death ends those pursuits!"

A twisting glare finally cleared his livid tone.

"And her death seemed to come too easy at that. This… is a troubling turn of events.”

Para had calmed his dismay, a contemplative disquiet looking to turn this result around.

“Due to the nature of this… win, I will leave the decision up to the judges on whether this was enough to secure ‘Tinman’s’ graduation!”

Para swept a hand to the left, toward the Elite sitting next to his podium. Aegis looked up at him in surprise, looking back at the rest of her team. Seth couldn’t hear, but assumed the Elite’s judge status was not preplanned. They all seemed to shift their demeanors at this announcement though, probably happy at the implication they get to curate the rest of the graduates. Para reasserted attention before any verdict could be ascertained.

“But that will have to come later, we have 12 more graduates to challenge! Rest assured we will have a ruling in time! But until then, let the fights continue!!”