Memories lost

The searing heat of the sun beat down relentlessly on the dry gravel of the arena floor as Wade was ushered out of the holding cell and into the blindingly bright light, raising an arm to ward it off. He'd been here before, sometimes under the cover of clouds, sometimes at night, and sometimes during the day as it was now, and he knew they would have re-arranged the obstacles covering the dry ground since his last fight. His eyes swept the terrain as they adjusted, and he noted the new locations of the rocks that could be used for cover and weapons. Everything from boulders right down to stones the size of his own fist could be seen, and they could hide almost anything behind them. He'd learned that the hard way. In a fight not one week past, his opponent had presented himself without hassle, but when Wade began to close he had been swarmed by small rodent-like creatures that had been hiding behind the boulders.

Stepping around one of the larger stones, he shifted his gaze to the man stepping out of the opposite gate, large and muscular with unnaturally pale skin and tinted goggles over his eyes. Wade felt a word begin to rise out of the murky depths of his memories but before it could coalesce into something tangible, like a name to go with that pale skin and aversion to light, it evaporated into the ether of his mind and fled from his tongue. So much for identifying his opponent. There were other things to look for though.

The obvious observation was the weapon he clutched in his right hand, a long spear just a hair taller than the man that held it, who was head and shoulders taller than Wade himself. To Wade, though, the weapon barely registered as he studied the other man, focusing his observations on the way he moved and the marks covering his body. He was confident and self-assured, and his shirtless chest revealed an abundance of scars that surpassed even Wade's. The pale skin hid them well, but they could be spotted by a keen eye, running the length and breadth of his torso and down his arms to his hands and fingers. Not the brutal and random scars of battle, but the faint and precise scars of surgery that hadn't been healed in a bacta tank. There was only one reason a man would possess scars like that, and it didn't bode well for Wade. A smile began to creep across his lips at that thought. Perhaps this time he'd see something new. The pale man wasn't the only combatant who had been augmented though, and Wade's body had been pushed beyond its limits a thousand times before, only to come back stronger and more resilient than before.

There was a flash of something, some half-remembered feeling of muscles and skin being torn apart as bones were crushed and snapped like twigs, and Wade grit his teeth and growled through his teeth. Even the foggy memory of whatever that had been seemed to manifest physical pain, and his muscles tensed and coiled against the imagined feeling. His grip tightened on the spear in his hand until his knuckles were white and his teeth ground together as the rage began to boil within him. He didn't know who it was that had done this to him, or how they'd done it, but those brief flashes were enough to tell him he hated the man. Despised him with every fiber of his being. One day, he would find and kill that man, but for now the Umbaran in front of him would have to suffi... Umbaran. That was the word.

His smile gone, replaced by a snarl, Wade advanced on the other man, his pace growing faster with each step. There was something predatory and dangerous in his eyes as he closed the distance, but the Umbaran gave no ground to hesitation and began moving as well. Circling like predatory cats, the two fighters studied the other, one with raw, barely controlled anger behind his eyes, waiting for any opportunity to be released, and the other with the calm, collected confidence of a seasoned warrior.

Every muscles in Wade's body wanted nothing more than to launch him at his opponent and tear him limb from limb, leave him writhing in agony on the blood-stained ground, but he forced himself to hold back. Forced himself to wait for his opportunity.

It came only moments later when the pale man grew tired of waiting. He stopped in his tracks and halted the predatory circling, setting his stance at the same instant he drove his spear toward Wade's chest with inhuman speed. Wrong move. Wade reacted on instinct, action preceding thought as muscles fueled by rage unleashed their fury on the initial strike of the fight and its instigator. The spear was swept aside by Wade's own as he launched himself forward, driving a fist down into the extended arm that held it just before his leg pistoned straight into the Umbaran's sternum, the inhuman strength of the blow driving him off the ground and throwing him several meters before he touched gravel again.

When he did though, the results of Wade's attack almost brought the smile back. The pale man landed upright and slid several meters in the loose dirt before coming to a stop and rising to his full height once more, showing no evidence of the broken arm and caved in chest he should have possessed. This one wasn't going to be as easy as the rest.

"You're faster than I expected. Maybe even faster than me, and that's an accomplishment. There aren't many that can make that claim." As the Umbaran spoke, Wade felt a prickle of something against his mind, gently testing and probing his defenses for any exploitable weakness. The sensation brought another flash of memory, this one of psychic pain so intense it felt as if his skin had been ripped off and every raw nerve exposed to the world. Rage that had moments ago only been fueling a generic fight in an arena was suddenly honed to the focus of a laser that was planted firmly on the Umbaran warrior. Before, it had just been a fight. No longer. Now the pale man had tried to do the same thing he had done, and that made it personal.

"Stay the hell out of my head." He punctuated the phrase by launching his spear at the Umbaran's chest at the same time he launched himself forward, reaching his opponent in the split second before he recovered from deflecting the projectile. His fists hammered home as he drove blow after blow into the man with such force that even those that were blocked caused pain to the Umbaran's cybernetically enhanced physique, and with such speed that the blows he blocked were in the minority.

At this point, the Umbaran's spear was made entirely useless and quickly became a liability in such close quarters, so he quickly arrived at the conclusion that he needed a change of tactics. Dropping the spear, he began to focus entirely on overcoming the compact mass of inhuman speed and strength that was pummeling the life out of him, going on the offensive with his own boulder-breaking strength and eye-blurring speed.

In the flurry of blows that followed, neither combatant heard the screams of the raging fans or the booming voice of the announcer as they fought back and forth across the arena, one standing solid and firm like the boulders that surrounded them while the other moved fluid and fast, never keeping a foot in the same place for more than a single step as he flowed like water around the larger man. It was truly a spectacle to behold as blows were thrown and countered and thrown again, those that missed and struck stone shattering it into a hundred tiny chunks where they impacted.

It wasn't until a break in the fighting, when the smaller of the two men broke out of a hold and launched himself away from his opponent to land several meters apart, where they both waited and watched as they caught their breath. While there was blood on both combatants, it was clear that the greater majority of it belonged to the Umbaran, lacerations on his fists and broken skin on his face and chest leaking the life-giving fluid onto the ground below. Wade's blood stained the ground as well, though even as they studied each other his wounds began to close. It was the Umbaran who grit his teeth this time, both his experience and his instinct telling him the fight was already lost. His breath came hard and fast, and his wounds wouldn't heal for days, yet this small human seemed nearly as fresh as when the fight had started and was already healing from the marginal damage he'd caused. He was not the type to give up, however, and when the human closed in again he met him with equal ferocity, trading blow after blow in an uphill battle to overcome his seemingly insurmountable capabilities.

In spite of the pale man's great efforts, it was only a matter of time before Wade stood victorious over his bleeding, exhausted body, then leaned down over him to speak a few small parting words. Gripping the larger man by the throat, he pulled him closer and glared into his eyes as he spoke. "I'm not going to kill you, but if I ever feel you in my head again I'll finish the job." Then he dropped him back to the ground and left the arena behind. Until the next fight, at least.

"So you're the unfortunate kriffer they want dead, huh?" Wade, though none here knew him by that name, stood with arms crossed just inside the antechamber that led to the arena proper, leaning on the smooth stone wall as he waited for his partner to show up. When he finally did, he inhaled deeply through his nose and pushed off the wall with his shoulders. "Well at least you're not all human. Those don't usually last very long." He didn't bother explaining how he knew Sol was more than just human, instead walking over to the rack of weapons and selecting a particularly vicious looking vibro-spear. "I hear they've got a real challenge in store this time. The kind of thing you'd expect for one of those jedi. Personally, I never saw why they're the standard everyone gets judged by. Killed three of them before I came here." A complete fabrication, if we're being honest. Then again, Wade wouldn't know it even if he HAD killed three jedi in his past life. But where's the fun in being amnesiac if you can't make poodoo up from time to time?


When he progressed to the armor rack, he passed right by the breastplates and heavier pieces and instead strapped on only a pair of durable looking bracers, covering his forearms from wrist to elbow. "Doesn't really matter though, since the difficulty is being set for me and you're probably not gonna make it past the two minute mark." With his armor and weapons selected, he moved to stand at the door that would soon open to reveal their challenge. "If it helps though, I hope you don't die."

Wade's face went sullen as Sol pulled the power packs from the weapons, his eyes staring into an immeasurable distance as something akin to a memory flashed through his mind. The room was small, no bigger than most 'freshers, and there were loops set into the floor around him, two of which held chains attached to the manacles at his wrists. Looking up, he found himself staring at a sleek black orb that somehow held an air of menace about it as the last wisp of his visitor's extravagant robes disappeared through the closing cell door. He let out an unsteady breath as the visions continued to flood his mind, though they didn't feel like his own memories. They felt like recordings of someone else's life being forcibly imposed over his own. With the visitor gone, the droid floated closer as a needle reached out toward him, and he moved with a fluid grace and ease that belied the speed of his motions, catching the droid with his legs and smashing it into the nearest wall. When it dropped to the floor, his hand contorted unnaturally, though he felt no pain, and the shackles slipped free of his wrist. It didn't take long to find the power cell and acid chamber, then from there...

The memory cut out as Sol approached and extended his hand, and Wade inhaled sharply and returned to a more upright posture, not realizing until then that he'd began to slump slightly against the spear he held. "Cal." He gripped the other man's hand to return his greeting. "If you're gonna blow up a rancor from the inside, you'll need a distraction to keep the others off you. We better get started."

Wade stepped up to the door as it began to open, then ducked through and into the glaring light of the arena when it was still only halfway open. When his eyes adjusted, he glanced around at the contestants assembled around him. There was a group of three Weequay's stepping out of a similar door a ways to his left, a Sakiyan, a Wookiee, and a Twi'lek a ways beyond them, a group of Barabels exiting the first door on his right, and a trio of Gand at the door beyond them. Then, on the far side of the arena, his eyes landed on the form of a monstrous bull rancor, still chained to the arena wall, and flanked by a pair of gundark's several dozen meters away. For a moment, Wade wondered how they kept the rancor from eating the gundarks, or vice versa, until he caught the glint of metal around their necks. Electroshock conditioning, no doubt. Might be fun to break those and see what happens...

"Maybe you should have brought more bombs." He said as Sol stepped up beside him.

"You too, Sol." Wade began walking as he spoke, making his way to the center of the arena before any of the others dared to claim the space. Once there, he drove the butt of his spear into the gravel so it stood on its own and took a step back, closed his eyes, and waited. The wookiee reached him first, charging in from his right with fury in his eyes and claws flashing in the blinding sun, which probably meant he was insane. Wookiees were tough, all that muscle and reach and the claws, when they went mad at least, but they had weaknesses just like everything else. Front approach, throat-punch to collapse airway, step past beneath flailing arms, low kick to collapse knee, grip the fur at chin and back of scalp, neck snap. The memory played out in an instant, over before the wookiee had even taken another step, and Wade followed it to the letter. His eyes remained closed as he moved, acting on instinct and some inexplicable sixth sense as he stepped between the oncoming ryyk blades to deliver the initial strike, moving with more speed and fluidity than any human ought to be able to. It was over before his companions could even cry out in shock and rage, and their ally crumpled to the ground in a lifeless heap. Wade inhaled sharply, then exhaled slowly before turning to face the two that remained, who had run past to flank him and now turned to charge once again.

They lasted only moments longer, one even managing to strike his bracer with a blow intended for his neck, but angry opponents were easy prey if you kept a calm head. They took bait that was an obvious trap and sacrificed far too much to gain almost nothing. Moments later and there were two more corpses to join the first, and Wade was turning to meet the stares of the barabels. His gaze flickered between the three of them, watching as their tongues tested the air, found the utter lack of fear in his scent, and shifted their focus to the trio of Gand. That suited him just fine. Pulling the spear out of the ground, he hefted it as though it weighed next to nothing and sprinted toward the right-most gundark.