Let me pick your Brain! - Part 5

Today, I got something quick and dirty.

The re-write for the last half of Chapter 17 - Catharsis, going up on RR later today.

Before it goes live to the thousands of readers over on RR, I wanted to get a quick test drive on reactions and thoughts for the revised passages.

Without further ado:

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[The fight is finished, Alex is laying on the floor, two knives inside his armpits, two other knives, entirely separate knives, different from the first two knives mentioned in this passage, scraping his kidney and liver.]

[Start of passage]

As she continued, her voice became more and more frantic, her anger overtaking her initial intentions of simple mockery.

“You’re utterly pathetic, Alex. Lan even warned you. I heard all of it. He even told you straight up. You're not even close to his level, yet you thought you could beat me? Why? Just because you’re an inner-worlder, who has never had to fight a real life-or-death battle?

“You don’t even know what it means to truly fight for your life. You never had to run for your life until your lungs were burning, your legs gave out, and you were puking your guts out from exhaustion, simply to survive another day in a shithole undercity. You never had to scrounge up dregs of food from trash cans or the streets, just to have something to subsist on for the next couple of hours until you found more.

“You’ve never had to hide underneath the dead bodies of your peers from roaming gangs that were out to rape and kill you, just for fun! You. Are. Nothing. Alex.

“Your inner-world pride will amount to nothing, because you simply are nothing. You have no future here, no chances to climb the Corps, no potential. You are the worst of all the Marines in our drive, for you don’t even understand where you’re going wrong, when your friend forcefully rubs your stupid fucking face into it.”

Unable, or maybe unwilling, to hold back her overflowing rage, Thea pulled out the knife that had been lodged in Alex's right armpit, eliciting a renewed grunt of pain from the writhing Marine below her. With a fever in her eyes, Thea stood up and walked over to Alex' legs, before she expertly cut the tendons on his heels, making sure to keep eye-contact with the screaming Marine in front of her.

Leisurely, while observing the blood dripping from her knife, Thea started to speak, "You see... When I was seven, I killed my first man. Two, actually. They were hooked up on some kind of drug, likely flake, but I never really cared enough to check. It was mid-day, I was walking out of the rudimentary school with a classmate of mine. A young girl, similar in age to mine, if I remember correctly... Regardless, these two men suddenly showed up, hallucinating void knows what, and out of nowhere, started brutally beating my classmate."

Thea stabbed the knife deep into Alex's groin before twisting, watching and listening to his pained reactions with an impassive glare, before continuing.

"Have you ever watched two grown men beat a seven year old girl, with the intent to kill? It's not a nice sight, let me tell you. Her screams and the sounds of their fists hitting flesh, breaking bone and tearing hair will never leave me, Alex. I was seven.

"A year prior, my Old Man had given me a knife, for self-defence purposes, and taught me how to use it. Can you imagine, Alex? It wasn't just a gift for notorieties' sake, or a ceremonial thing. This was a very real thing that my Old Man considered to be an essential part of life in the undercity. Luckily, too, as just barely over a year later, with those two men, I needed it to survive."

Thea pulled out the knife from Alex's mangled groin slowly, before gently using it's blade to carress Alex's cramped-up hands.

"I stabbed them both. First the lanky guy, then the small one. Right in the back, where my Old Man showed me their kidney would be. They fell over, barely even screamed and died seconds later. I doubt they even knew what was happening, considering the ludicrous amount of flake they had probably consumed... Whatever. It doesn't matter. After all, things like that happened every single day, all across the midworld. The undercity might've seen the worst of it, but this wasn't a local issue. It's a planetary one."

Thea moved her face closer to Alex's, making sure that his eyes were able to focus on her and see her, before she continued.

"I wonder what you did when you were seven? What grand adventures you, the allmighty inner-worlder, have been up to? Maybe you can share them with me, someday, Alex? Tell me of your grand achievements. Your heroic battles. Your life-or-death, fight-or-flight moments? I'd love to hear them, for you truly do like to paint a vivid picture, of how superior you inners are, at everything under the suns. What were you up to that makes you so superior, while I watched another girl, the same age as me, get beaten to death by a pair of addicts, before murdering them myself?"

She finally kneeled down next to Alex’s face, who was glaring at her with utter contempt in his eyes, a quiver of rage and pain escaping his mouth.

“So... I ask you, Alex. One last time: How dare you? How dare you question my sacrifices in getting here?”

Thea forcefully slapped him across the face with her gauntleted hand, eliciting a renewed scream of pain and a spray of blood from his mouth.

“How dare you question the sacrifices all of us mid-worlders have made to get here? The sacrifices our planets have made over centuries, to finally be recognized by the UHF?”

Once again, she slapped him across the face.

“And lastly, how fucking dare you question the UHF leadership? Major Quinn? The initial assessment as a whole? 2 years of Basic, including the entirety of the Allbright System? Just who exactly do you think you are, to judge all of this with your narrow mindset of being a stuck-up, stupid cunt, to claim they’re all conspiring to get mid-worlders into the Corps, simply to spite you?”

One last time she forcefully slapped him across the face, fully putting her all into the hit, breaking parts of his teeth and cheek bones in the strike.

Upon slowly recentering his vision on her, his eyes filled to the brim with contempt and hatred, Alex gritted his, partially broken, teeth and muttered, “Fuc—”

Before he could finish however, Thea rammed her gauntleted fist deep into his mouth, shattering nearly every tooth in his mouth and cracking parts of his jaw, as she continued to bore her fist deeper and deeper.

“No. Fuck you.”

With a last, violent push, accompanied by a sickening crunch, Thea put all of her weight behind her fist, shattering the back of Alex’s neck.

A few moments later, as Alex’s hate-filled eyes finally glazed over, the buzzer sounded, ending the first round of the fight. Slowly, Thea regained her senses, as the unbridled rage inside her body subsided.

It was instead replaced by a feeling of utter regret, ‘I definitely went way too far on this one…’

Where before, she had somewhat hoped that the blue barrier was translucent from the inside, so she could see the reactions of the spectators, she now wished the opposite. She wanted the barrier to be fully opaque and not let anyone from the outside see her behaviour, one entirely unfit for the Marine Corps.

Stunned by her own actions, Thea thought to herself, ‘I should have stopped when I was ahead. That was incredibly stupid of me…’

Suddenly, the entire arena turned crimson, as the lighting abruptly changed. Simultaneously, Thea heard the revving of chainswords mere metres behind her, before an ear-splitting screech robbed her of her senses entirely.

The next moment, when she managed to spin around and open her eyes again after the intense bout of pain brought on by the sudden noise, she saw a recently respawned Alex, suspended in a cone of light, mere metres away from her, brandishing his dual chainswords in a clear attempt on her life.

Eyes wide, Thea rapidly backed away from the cone of light. Sure, Alex was a bigot and a piece of trash, but she never expected him to go this far. To actively try and kill her, outside of the official arena fights, was utterly insane. It had been a completely impossible scenario in her mind, to the point she hadn’t even considered it.

Just as abruptly, a deep, threatening voice echoed through the arena from Thea’s left, “Just what in the Emperor’s name do you think you are doing here?”

Startled by the voice, Thea quickly spun around, while backing off from the origin with a jump.

Seeing Lt. Eifang lumber menacingly around ten metres away from her put Thea’s mind into a state of panic. His face and general body language spoke of a severely upset demeanour, no matter how one tried to look at it.

“Recruit Alex Cladion, due to the attempted assault on the life of one of your fellow Marines, you are hereby immediately stripped of your rank and will be transported to the brig for further processing.

“I truly wish I had the authority to take care of you myself, but rest assured that Major Quinn will receive a full report on the incident, with very precise recommendations on what to do with you. Consider yourself lucky that you’re getting off that easy…

“Sovereign, take him to the isolation brig. Inform Major Quinn of what occurred and include a full recording of the entire Practical class. His prior comments before the class started will likely play a big part in her decision-making. Consider his advanced psych-evaluation as failed.”

Upon the Lieutenant’s words, Alex suddenly disappeared from the arena, alongside the cone of light and all of his equipment. Before Thea could process what even happened, Lt. Eifang turned towards her, his gaze freezing the blood in her veins to the core.

“And you, Recruit Thea McKay… Consider yourself equally lucky that his bad behaviour outshines yours several fold. While you did not, technically, break any rules or regulations, as everything that occurred was part of a fight-to-the-death, I trust that you understand your actions were way out of line with what the UHF Marine Corps stands for?

“Trying to prove that mid-worlders aren’t savages by displaying the most savage, torturous treatment of a fellow Marine is not exactly what I’d call fruitful. Make no mistake, the beginning of the fight was beautifully executed, but you should have ended it there. Especially as a member of Alpha Squad, you are supposed to be an example of how to behave, not an example of how to get kicked out of the Corps in record time.

“If I ever see you needlessly prolong the suffering or outright torture of a fellow Marine like that again, I promise you here and now that I will be sure to return it in kind, before throwing you into the brig and handing you over to Major Quinn. This is your first, last, and only warning you will ever receive about this matter. Are we clear, Recruit?”

Utterly terrified at the thought of being on the receiving end of Lt. Eifang’s fury, Thea quickly saluted before him and pressed out a “Yes, Sir! Crystal clear, Sir!” between laboured breaths.

“Good. Now, get your shit together and prepare for the next opponent. The class has not been dismissed yet, so you’ll continue to fight until you drop. Don’t ever do stupid shit like this again. You’re in the Marine Corps now, not whatever backwater undercity you hail from. You might be fighting to the death, but only a simulation and exclusively for training. Keep your disciplinary actions to a limit going forward, Recruit. Your advanced psych-eval has taken a severe hit with whatever the fuck you thought you were doing back there. Don't let it happen again.”

With those words, Lt. Eifang briskly walked towards the exit of the arena, which opened before him. As the barrier opened, Thea heard a flurry of discussion waft in. After listening to it for a few seconds, her mind was slightly put at ease.

[End of passage]