Dust Knight-1 test - Who Steals A Teddy Bear?

The grimy streets were lit by obnoxious flickering neon signs that barely cut through the all-consuming smog of the undercity. Zane passed through another throng of cutthroats and street hawkers who took one look at him and stepped the hell out of his way. Zane was used to not being exactly subtle. He was clad head to toe in an ancient and battered but functional suit of United Shock Trooper armor, all black synthetic Kevlar and angled armor plates that looked vaguely like an ancient knight's armor.

It didn’t help that his armor was covered in graffiti from the orphans back home, crude scrawlings painted with cheap red and white spray paint. The crown jewel of his armor's decorations was the jagged shark's maw painted straight across the front of his visor. It fucked with his vision something fierce if he had to look down too far, but it would break little Conrad's heart if he got rid of it, and honestly, it was a pretty badass touch.

He was far from the only armed and armored figure stalking around in the ass end of the under-city, but around here at least he had a bit of a reputation. Zane was about to go and absolutely, spectacularly enforce that reputation on some assholes that had pushed in on his home turf. They robbed one of the kids of a stuffed animal of all things. Did it really matter when they could barely afford food some weeks? Absofuckinglutely it did. They stole a goddamn teddy bear. Who does that? It was just a bonus that after he stole all their shit, he could probably afford some nice stuff for the kids and Dad.

Would Pappy complain about the how of his credit acquisition? Of course he would. The old bastard constantly bitched that Zane was going to die by the sword, blah blah blah. In the end he always took the money and used it to keep everyone from croaking, though, so he could bitch all he wanted if he kept being the crotchety grocery getter. Zane really hated the supermarket.

Zane walked past another alley, this one even narrower and covered in glowing paint that showed pictures of alien slugs with crowns on their eyestalks. He slowly walked backwards until he was even with the alley again and made eye contact with the street slug gangster half-assedly standing guard ten feet down the alley, vape in hand. “Gotcha, motherfuckers!” Zane said with a bit too much zeal.

The very high street slug squinted hard at him for a moment, like he wasn’t sure if what he was seeing was real or not. “Oh FUCK! Boss! Boss!” The man slipped in some filth, bouncing off the narrow wall before scrambling farther down the alleyway and taking a sharp left-hand turn.

Zane chuckled darkly before looking around for a fire escape. There sure enough was one halfway down the alley; he got a good sprinting head start and launched up the alley wall, running upward till his momentum ran out, and then kicked off, catching the edge of the railing and vaulting over smoothly. “Thank you, parkour tutorials!” He made a chef's kiss gesture down towards the alley below and kicked in the nearby window.

He clambered into the room above the alley; it looked like some poor fucker’s apartment. “Ah shit, sorry about the window; it’s for a good cause, I swear...well, good-ish,” he muttered as he wandered through the dingy room, letting himself out into an equally sad hallway. Zane looked around for a bit; he probably needed to go down this hall about fifty feet and then hang a left. He was going to come from above; people literally never expected it. It was bizarre how no one ever fucking looked up.

He rounded the left-hand corner into an even shabbier hallway; all the lights were broken out, and it was lit by a sole advertising banner for “Super Thirst Dew.” Holographically projected across the middle of the damn hall, and a few more Street Slug gang tags dully glowing.

Zane made it to the staircase leading downward into even more gang tags and a concerningly large pile of trash bags. Weapon check time! Zane quickly pulled his pistol from his hip, checking that it was ready to go. It wasn’t anything special, a decade-old, high-ish-caliber semi-auto with a holographic sight he had spot-welded on top. On his other hip he had three grenades: two stun and one fragmentation. He wouldn't use those unless everything went utterly tits up; they cost more apiece than the pistol had. But in a sheath running behind one shoulder and across his back was his crowning jewel, the only really nice thing he owned.

A mark-3 centurion thermal blade, it looked like a beat-to-shit-and-back longsword with an overtly long handle and a few buttons along the leather-wrapped grip. The blade was a dull bronzy metal with a thin edge of transparent material running along the cutting edges on both sides. Zane knew that was where the magic science shit happened. How? Hell if he knew, but it didn’t matter much if you knew why your sword edge could melt through titanium, since it could, you know, melt through fucking titanium.

Zane gripped his pistol loosely on his finger, giving it a good spin while he listened to panicked shouting down the staircase. Zane began his pre-fight ritual of a personal pep talk and reminder, “Alright buddy! You got this, bunch of fucked-up teddy bear thieves. The selection committee for the game is always watching! Always! So fight mean, kill gratuitously! And most of all, throw in some fucking flair and be entertaining!” He finished his personal pep rally a bit too loudly and heard a voice below respond.

“Wait..like man..…did you hear that?” A very inebriated voice spoke to someone unseen.

Zane was already moving; he leapt from the top of the stairs to the opposing wall feet first, sliding down the wall for a few feet before dropping down onto the mountain of garbage at the bottom of the stairs. He exploded out of the debris pile with a clatter of cans, pistol upraised. “Housekeeping!” He shouted before shooting the nearest man straight in the junk.

The room ahead was a smoke-filled cesspit of discarded takeout boxes and half-working displays set around a collection of grimy sofas and recliners arranged in a rough circle around a central table. It wasn’t much of a gang; three woozy-looking men in greenish leathers stood around the table with ancient-looking pistols, and one junkless guy was on his knees a couple feet from Zane, trying to stay conscious.

“So teddy bear, please?” Zane said, rushing behind the nearest recliner as bullets began flying haphazardly around the room, filling the air with chunks of couch and chair floof. Zane put his shoulder against his cover and heaved it at the nearest gangster; the second it hit him, he put four shots through it and was rewarded by a scream and splash of blood.

He ducked forward back behind the recliner he had just yeeted as a bullet clipped his leg, ripping it painfully sideways. “Oww, motherfucker! Armor or not, getting shot sucks!” He peeked out and saw the two still-standing men looking panicked at their empty guns. ” Wait, seriously, you guys robbed me? Of all people, when you don’t even have backup ammo, there are way less dramatic ways to commit suicide!”

The bigger of the two gangsters threw his pistol at Zane and ripped small hatchets from homemade Velcro sheaths on his thighs. “Fight me like a man! They are always watching; they love this kind of shit!”

Zane smirked. “Ah damn right!” He rose up, holstering his pistol, and slowly drew his sword from his back, igniting the blade into a simmering red crackle that slightly illuminated the room.

The gangster with the hatchet's face paled. “Bro, what the fuck? That’s not fair.”

“Nooo, no it isn’t, but hey, you stole a teddy bear. Like, seriously, man, just consider this the universe coming back to roundhouse you with some karmic beheading.” Zane said, stepping out cautiously, sword raised high in a well-practiced stance.

The last gangster ran the hell away as they began circling each other; the discordant beat of dubstep playing through the room almost drowned out the moans of pain from Mr. Dickless in the corner. Zane went for some flair, starting the fight with a few snapping kicks that caught the gangster upside his face; he staggered through a few display screens in a shower of sparks before getting his footing again. The gangster lunged forward with wide sweeps of both axes at once. It was almost comical how Zane just waited and then backstepped slightly over and over, avoiding the blows. When he finally ran out of room to backstep, he ducked past the man and slapped the utter shit out of him on the way past.

“Dude, come on! It has to be a good fight for the selection committee to give a fuck! I want in on the damn contest, and I sure as shit don’t think I’m going to be a lucky fucker who wins the lottery.” Zane did a few unnecessary flourishes with his blade and bisected the nearby table with a sweeping blow.

“Stand still, you squirrely piece of shit!” The gangster screamed before charging wildly into another series of slashing blows that didn’t hit anything except for an innocent monitor in a shower of sparks.

“Alright, yeah, this isn’t going to cut it...” Zane said, looking around the room, he needed drama, something out of the ordinary, something that would make the people in charge of the most powerful organization in the galaxy go, “Yeah, he’s got the stuff we need for the galaxy’s most important warriors.” His eyes fell on a stack of trash bags, the only thing neatly stacked in the whole room.

He dashed over, sheathing his crackling blade and scooping up a trash bag, opening the top, and swooshing it through the air dramatically to pop it open more. “Cmere motherfucker!” He said ominously, holding the trash bag open in front of himself with both hands like a weapon.

The gangster stared at him openmouthed. “You are actually fucking insane,” he said in a tone tinged with concern and hope that he still had a chance.

Zane sputtered for a second. “I’m not insane! I'm fucking poor! Now get your plushie-stealing ass over here; I’m working with what I got!”

The gangster lunged at Zane with another pair of wild swings. Zane waited until the last second and narrowly dodged before bringing the trash bag down over the man's head and torso all the way to the waist with a swoosh. “The fuck!” Came a muffled shout from inside the bag as the gangster struggled to pull the bag up.

Zane snatched another bag off the table and used it like a shitty belt, looping it around the man at belly button level and tying it tight enough to pin his arms. Then he began searching the room for anything unique as the goon stumbled around, running into tables and screens in dramatic crashes, finally cartwheeling over the side of a recliner. “You motherfucker! “Fight me!” came muffled from inside the trash bag, sounding slightly defeated.

Zane looked over “Hold up, I’m looking for the thematically perfect weapon, but you guys literally only have trash in here; it’s actually kind of disgusting.” Zane's gaze fell on the remnants of the teddy bear; it looked like they had used it as a fucking ashtray for the last day. The many patchwork fixes had been burned away, and cigarette butts filled its belly.

“Hey, it’s getting kind of hard to breathe in here!” The gangster's voice called out again weakly.

Zane looked at the teddy bear again and back to the slowly suffocating man. He grabbed the teddy bear and shook out the cigarettes with disgust. “Fucking wasting my time. Why would the selection committee care about this tiny scuffle?” He grumbled and headed for the exit.

The groin-shot man held out his hand desperately. “Please, man, get me to a hospital!”

Zane looked at him incredulously. “Dude, we are both too broke for that shit. We wouldn’t even get in the door. Stuff some couch fluff in it and go find an alley doc.” He kept on walking while trying to figure out how the hell to clean the bear off enough to give it back to Timmy.

Combatant Selection Committee—Earth.

Rogal clicked through another thirty observation drones that had been attached to some of Earth's most violent individuals, watching silently and unseen. Most would be observed for a month or two before moving on to new targets. Your average criminal or soldier didn’t have that IT factor that made a star, and without stars there were no viewers, and with no viewers there was no money. And at this point he was pretty sure without the warriors the show rented to the galaxy, the horrors they were fighting against would overrun them all inside a century.

He was about to click to the next thirty drones when he saw something odd: an armored figure with a trash bag in his hands squared off against a dangerous-looking thug wielding melee weapons. “Oh, hello there?” He cooed out from his side gills. And rewound the footage to before the start of the conflict. He was cackling thirty seconds in after the man named Zane gave himself a pep talk and alerted his foes.

He went ahead and hit the little star button in the bottom right-hand corner of the drone. It didn’t select him as a combatant, but it designated him worthy of additional observation. Rogal's boss could watch Zane's exploits now and see if he was a good fit for the galaxy's biggest stage.

(Alright yall this is the test pilot chappie I made it still needs a few hundred more words But i Would really appreciate opinions, thought id put it on patreon as a fun little bonus and for yalls feedback.)