Theodore's impassive mask softened imperceptibly.

'What a fight... You floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee... but against genetic perfection it's—not enough.'

Atkarsh advanced—sadistic triumph returning to his compound eyes.

Joe's lined face sank with fleeting concern before he explained, "Harland tried to capitalize on leg kicks, but Atkarsh absorbed the strike and timed a punishing counter. With his four legs he can cover so much ground. Harland couldn't use his fluid movement to escape. And he can't dodge with minimal adjustments—ducking under one fist still leaves him vulnerable to the other. So he was forced to block but his arm could only provide limited protection. A vertex's punch, especially Atkarsh's, can generate insane force. Despite protecting his head, he looks like he got rocked through his guard."

Samir's face split into a predatory grin.

"This is the inevitable fate of humans who forget their place," he announced pridefully.

A rebellious impulse flickered across Joe's face. He leaned forward, his voice sounding unbothered yet obviously strained, "Will Atkarsh press his advantage?"

The unstoppable annihilator hurled himself forward, simultaneously launching two left uppercuts. Each aiming at a different side of Harland's body—leaving him trapped, Newfound fear flashed across Harland's face—the recognition that defeat loomed. In a last-ditch attempt, he fell to one knee then thrust himself at Atkarsh with every ounce of strength his aching frame could muster.

*Voom*

Atkarsh's fists cleaved empty air.

*Thump*

Harland's lead shoulder collided with Atkarsh's abdomen, his arms shooting out to grip the vertex's front legs with grim determination.

"What a beautifully timed takedown! He actually ducked under those uppercuts for a perfect double-leg… Atkarsh clearly wasn't expecting it—but Harland may have placed himself in grave danger."

"Ha! Now you will understand why Atkarsh never needed to be concerned," Samir crowed.

Joe remained pointedly silent.

Harland's muscles strained explosively as he attempted to lift the boulder-like midnight scarab. He managed to raise the front jointed legs a foot off the ground, but it proved futile—Atkarsh's back legs remained firmly planted, keeping him upright.

*Bang*

Harland drove Atkarsh into an octagon pillar. Atkarsh's bottom arms braced against Harland's shoulder while his upper arms seized Harland's waist in a crushing grip.

"Ugh," Harland's face contorted with surprised pain at once.

Atkarsh hoisted Harland up by his waist—the heavy weight champion's legs dangling powerlessly.

"He's going to slam him..." Theodore muttered with cold certainty.

Atkarsh crouched suddenly, using all four arms to drive Harland into the canvas with devastating force.

*Bang!*

Harland's head crashed against the unforgiving surface.

*Bang!*

The impact scrambled his neurons. He attempted to brace his hands against the canvas—but the brutal force overwhelmed his defense.

Theodore visibly flinched, his emotional mask slipping.

*Bang!*

'Dammit'

A vermilion rose bloomed on the canvas, voraciously consuming the splattered blood from Harland's fractured skull.

The human spectators fell eerily silent, their collective breath caught in their throats, but the vertex in the stands howled with a frenzy of bloodthirsty delight that celebrated the sniper phantom's suffering like connoisseurs savoring a rare vintage of pain.

"Kill!!! him!!! Kill!!! him!!! Kill!!! him!!!"

***********************************************************************************

A few seemingly endless moments later

*Bang!*

As Harland's head recoiled from another impact, his arms finally went limp. The pool of blood had expanded into a grotesque lake.

'Why isn't the referee stopping this?! Is he waiting until Harland actually dies?!' Theodore raged internally, his face a stark contradiction to his emotional turmoil.

Joe, unable to stomach the brutality any longer, sprang up in protest.

"What is the referee doing?! He clearly cannot continue fighting!!" he shouted, righteous anger breaking through his professional veneer.

*Bang!*

Harland's blood arced through the air like crimson parabolas. A dark puddle swirled in the cavity created by the merciless slams, his arms flailing lifelessly from the sheer force.

The referee finally rushed in, diving between Harland and Atkarsh.

Joe slumped into his chair, drained.

"I think he might be..." he whispered hoarsely.

'He's dead,' Theodore concluded somberly.

"This is why a vertex champion cannot fight a human. They're simply too... fragile." Samir declared with undisguised contempt.

Silent fury blazed in Joe's eyes.

"You..." his voice strained, audibly cracking.

Samir grinned with malicious satisfaction.

"Hahaha, you can't blame Atkarsh. It was Harland's choice. Let this be a lesson to you all."

Medical personnel swarmed the Octagon, rushing Harland out on a stretcher.

The announcer read the scorecards, his voice hollow in the aftermath of such brutality.

"The judges score this a knockout stoppage. And NEW KFC heavyweight champion of the wooorld! ATKARSH, 'THE UNSTOPPABLE ANNIHILATOR!!'"

"Oooohhh!!!" The Vertex's celebration thundered through the arena, their carapaces vibrating with guttural, piercing sounds that echoed like ancient death whistles—a haunting symphony of alien triumph.

'You didn't lose, Harland. Only you could have gotten this far... I owe you…' Theodore acknowledged, a rare moment of earnest expression parting his emotionless void.

*****************************************************************************************************************************

Minutes later

An amalgamation of voices and noises blanketed Theodore's ears, as he stepped onto the bleak gray concrete that was outside the ball arena. An uncomfortably humid gust of air greeted his body, leaving him momentarily dazed.

'... Okay, time to get out of here.'

Theodore walked to the car park. He spotted the Dolt driver in his gray Toshota Primus. Sliding into the backseat, he felt a weight dissipate off of his shoulders as he slouched on the seat. 

'Finally~... I'm actually going to escape this hellhole—'

*Smash!*

Theodore sat up.

"What the hell?!" he hollered aloud.

In front of him, at the entrance of the car park—were hundreds of angry-looking vertex on hoverbikes. The bikes had very discernibly dark glossy panels covering their exterior. They looked like the rectangular version of a motorbike but significantly wider than normal, with four thin bladed footrests, two sets of throttle handles and instead of two wheels there was one. Even more bizarrely than that there were a set of dull-black, cone-shaped nozzles. One on either side of the central wheel. And if that wasn't enough thrusters, there was another nozzle jutting out from the back of the bike. Looking closely, it showcased an embedded thruster that was so wide, that one might consider the seat as simply clothing it. A square-like structure sat on top of it, still part of the bike's body. The culprit of the commotion was evidently a hoverbike driver, now attempting to withdraw from the three feet-long dent that they adorned the side of the car at the mouth of the car park with. The blood-stained fragmented shards of the car's window glinted with soft blue light from the hoverbike's front nozzle, which flickered with the ethereal flames made visible by the bike's stark contrast, lurching itself from wreckage. Revealing a segmented deep-blue headlight, still wet with blood. The remaining passenger in the backseat was cowering pitiably in their seat. Some of vertex got off of their bikes and approached said car.

'****!….. At least I brought protection... That sounds weir—'

*Sma-sma-sma-smash!*

Theodore was interrupted by a synchronized opera of several car windshields being smashed.

Snapping out of it, he reached for his plastic white carrier bag, the sturdy metal trash-can lid and thick metal pipe peering out of it. He secured his hands around the handle of the trash-can lid and the pipe—which felt reliable in his grip. Not wasting anymore time, Theodore placed the pipe into his left pocket. The pipe having a worry amount of movement, but defying comprehension to stay in. Using his now free hand he clicked open the car door.

*Creak*

"Hey! Where are you going?!"

Theodore unflinchingly droned out the driver's voice as he went through the open car door and shut it behind him.

*Thud*

Crouching beside the car door, he flattened his body against it. The air was suffused with chaos—pulsing in the sanity of those present, straining at the edges, ecstatic to break free. With horns blaring, people screaming, and the shrill hum of hoverbikes. The horde of Vertex had spread throughout the car park. Some still on their hover bikes, whilst others on foot. They were crashing into cars and breaking into them, wanting to pull people out of their cars and lynch them. Theodore looked to his left and saw the stained but once chalky hexagonal wall of the highway road that gradually slanted downwards the further along you went. A fence secured the whole way along the top of it for safety.

'If I can get to a short enough part of the wall, then I can scale it and then run down the road. Ugh, the Dolt driver just had to park near the tallest section of the wall,' Theodore internally groaned.

With everything planned out, Theodore started sprinting along the wall, his feet monotonously pounding against the sidewalk and his arms swinging even faster. The Wall of the highway got smaller and smaller, while the cacophony of carnage got louder by the second. A reasonable height for scaling the wall neared.

*Vroom*

A sound reminiscent of a jet engine closed in on Theodore from behind. Gauging the speed, he launched off of his legs explosively into a dive to his right, breaking his fall with a reflexive roll.

*VROOOOM!*

A hoverbike driven by a vertex narrowly missed him. Theodore felt the resulting wind brush past him. Getting to his feet, Theodore flinched anticipating a crash, but nothing happened. So, he looked behind himself, only to see the hoverbike levitating diagonally on the wall while on its way back.

'Da—'

*Vrooom*

The frenzied roar of an engine cut him off. He looked right to see a consecutive vertex driven bike glide toward him at fatal speeds. Feeling the shadow of death—he pushed his legs powerfully off of the ground, launching himself backwards.

*WOOSH!*

The air parted by the bike licked his face, causing him to blink for an instant.

*Thud*

He unceremoniously fell to the ground.

Getting up quickly, he found that the vertex had surrounded him on their bikes. Closing off all routes of escape. They had already begun dismounting from their bikes. Some were openly carrying knives and others brandishing metal rods. Theodore felt something for the first time in his known life—a dense sensation diffuse outward from the pit of his stomach, twisting his insides into a bottomless whirlpool.

His eyes widened.

'What is this… feeling?'

Understanding the gravity of the situation, he addressed the vertex mob, whose heights averaged around 5ft 6, making Azario tower over them.

"Hey guys, you almost killed me there. What were you thinking?" He said with artificial calm.

"Sorry, this time we won't fail." one of them said.

The rest laughed sadistically.

"Come on guys, are you trying to kill me for over a match? The vertex guy won anyway. It doesn't make sense to do all of this over that. And even if he didn't win—that doesn't reflect badly on you guys. He doesn't represent you. He's just another vertex and how do you know I didn't want him to win?" Theodore stated convincingly.

The laughter ceased and they became reassuringly silent. Seeing their reaction, he continued his dubious spiel.

"Yeah, don't devolve into tribalism you guys. You are better than this. It's not me versus you, it's the fighters versus each other. They don't represent us and we should separate ourselves from whether they win or lose, love or hate each other. One race winning over the other doesn't mean it's inherently better. So let's stop this nonsense and be friends. Right?..... Guys?"

A vertex spoke up.

"We could never be friends with waste like you. Die, so we can reclaim what's ours," he affirmed spitefully.

They cheered, waving various weapons.

'Dammit.'

The sinking feeling suddenly became suffocatingly intense but oddly enough a smile began to tug on his lips. Unable to hold it in any longer—he erupted into maniacal laughter.

"HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAH!"

The faces of the vertex became ugly.

"What the hell is wrong with you? Did you go crazy out of the despair?" one of them questioned mockingly.

Theodore's unsettling Cheshire cat smile froze. 

"Sorry about that. I haven't felt so alive before… or at least that I remember." Theodore deliberated, mirth still present in his voice.

Theodore pulled out the metal pipe from his pocket, still holding the metal trashcan lid in his left hand and pipe in his right hand.

"What is that for? Are you trying to look like a knight? Too bad you look like a jester instead!"

Howling laughter filled the car park.

Theodore's smirk deepened, his eyes crescents and his heart beating desperately into a crescendo.

"No," he breathed.

The emotion on his face ceasing abruptly—a serious expression projecting from his eyes.

"I'm trying to look like your executioner," he stated evenly.

"Haha—"

Decisively, Theodore dashed forward, rushing at a small group of vertexes. Instinctively, his right foot kicked off of the ground, sending him hurtling at the nearest vertex. His right arm, as if possessed—extended forward and his right shoulder responded by swinging powerfully in unison, producing a reaching thrust.

*Thunk!*

The metal pipe struck squarely on the vertex's clothing covered abdomen. A crunching sensation transmitted through the pipe into Theodore's palm.

"Arrgh" the vertex man wailed painfully.

Like a marionette on strings, Theodore retracted his arm in an elliptical arc. It flowed into a slightly horizontal overhead strike driven through by fluid step towards the vertex on the right.

*Crunch!*

Crimson blood streamed from the crack ridden dent of the vertex's neck.

"Argh," a muted scream left the vertex's mouth as his hands cradled the wound.

"Wow! What the hell was that?" Theodore blurted, stupefied.

"Hey!" a vertex man without a helmet screamed, approaching the now startled Theodore, who responded by swinging the trash-can lid in his direction.

*Thunk*

The impact of the trash-can lid caused cracks to expand part-way across his face, oozing blood from the fissures, dripping down his chin.

"Holy ****. I need to go."

 Utilizing the moment of chaos, He ran past the three wounded vertex and their dismounted hoverbikes. He came across a duo of helmetless vertex.

"HAA!" the duo suddenly emitted a dissonant and harsh battle cry.

Rooting Theodore in a wave of fear. The two vertex lunged at him from both sides. Both wielding two metal knives, each in their top two outstretched hands. Theodore's body reacted—reflexively stepping back and raising the metal trash-can lid in front of him.