The Outer Sphere

“And that is why, ladies, if you value your life, sanity and the ability to tighten your kegel muscles ever again, you should never be in the same room as Bigdick Tad.”

Garth spoke intimately into the microphone, spinning to take in the entire screaming crowd.

“What the hell are you doing?” Tad demanded a few steps away.

“I’m having fun. Incidentally, you’re probably gonna get laid.”

“You just told them not to have sex with me!”

“I warned them against doing it. To a teen, that’s practically an imperative.”

Garth winked.

Garth heard clanging off to the side and saw security trying to get through the gate. Unfortunately something was keeping it closed. Weird.

Garth spotted The Savage tromping toward them with murder written all over his face. God, this is an excellent vacation. Almost as fun as an orgy…almost.

Garth turned to Tad and spoke, “Tad, I need you to take a deep breath, contemplate how fucking low the stakes are here, and let loose.”

Tad closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, then nodded, exhaling.

“Excellent.” Garth tossed him the microphone, then turned toward The Savage and met him halfway.

“The Ancient Criminal is pure malicious intent, a fucking hodgepodge of every evil man has ever conceived!” Tad began to shout into the microphone, gesticulating wildly.

Garth stepped forward until he was face-to-face with The Savage. Or as close as he could be with the man looming over a foot taller than him.

“Pretty stupid idea, kid,” The Savage rumbled, staring down at him.

“Nah, I got the situation under control.” Garth said. “I was thinking we put up a little fight, you sell us a little before beating us, then you get back to your match.” Garth revealed a lump of gold from his sleeve, out of sight of the rest of the crowd. “How much do you want to make that happen?”

The Savage shrugged and glanced up into the audience. Garth followed his gaze to a richly dressed older woman. The wrestler gave her an odd hand signal, and his patron frowned and shook her head.

“Looks like the powers that be want me to put you out of your misery quick and get to the real fight.”

“Improv, man! Did no one ever teach you-“ A huge fist interrupted Garth’s question.

Garth flew backwards, tumbling twenty feet through the sand as the blow sent him flying, all the way back to Tad. Careful use of Fly turned his wild tumble into a backflip and Garth set himself down right beside Tad.

“Tad, he didn’t take a bribe, and side note: I think these men use heartstones,” Garth said as the enormous muscle-man’s jaw dropped at Garth’s recovery.

“No shit. Their sponsors want them to win.”

Garth glanced at Tad. “So these guys are stronger than you?”

“Us, they’re stronger than us.” Tad corrected him.

“eeehhh,” Garth waggled his fingers. “Duck.”

Tad’s eyes widened and he dropped out of the way of a feral punch by BloodStorm before rolling to the side and springing up.

“How about you take that one. Mic.” Tad tossed Garth the microphone, and Garth began commenting on the fight.

“Bigdick Tad is getting pushed around the arena, just barely staying clear of Bloodstorm’s experienced, precise punches and kicks. His legendary third leg technique is of no help while his pants are still on. God help Bloodstorm if he decided to take them off.”

Garth covered the microphone and chuckled to himself a moment before the hulking brute arrived again, lunging forward in the sand, aiming for a tackle.

“The Savage catches The Ancient Criminal in a vicious tackle, leveraging his tremendous size to overwhelm the smaller competitor. Now it…it looks like he’s going for a suplex!” Garth shouted into the microphone as he rose up into the air, the bigger man throwing him backwards and slamming him into the ground.

“Shut up!”

The wrestler flipped over and jumped on top of Garth, raising one ham-sized fist up and bringing it down on Garth’s face. Garth just barely managed to keep the microphone out of range of the man’s repeated punches that drove his skull into the sand until it met something hard.

“Looks like The Savage is trying his best to put his opponent in the ground, literally, but he’s just too weak to overcome pure evil. How’s your hand there, hoss?”

Once Garth’s skull hit the concrete beneath the stadium, the superhuman man was punching something with a little less give than he was used to. It didn’t seem like he broke anything, but he was wincing as he flexed his knuckles.

Garth had a nosebleed.

“Let’s take this opportunity to check the situation with Bigdick Tad and Bloodstorm.” Garth said, using legwork and a bit of Fly to slide out from under The Savage, trying not to headbutt the man’s crotch as he went.

Garth spun and leaped on top of his opponent, tracking Tad’s fight as he did. Garth hooked his mic arm around The Savage’s neck and put the microphone beside the man’s ear, continuing his narration.

“The Ancient criminal puts The savage in a chokehold!” he leaned over and whispered in The big man’s other ear.

“Can you breath okay?”

The savage nodded.

“Cool, shake me off in about five seconds.”

The Savage nodded and began to faux struggle while Garth commented on Tad.

“Bigdick Tad is pushed all the way to the edge of the arena, for some reason acting like his dick isn’t as big as – “

Tad jumped as Bloodstorm lunged toward him, braced his shoulders against the concrete wall of the arena, and caught Bloodstorm in the face with both feet.

The arena wall suffered some minor cosmetic damage as the paint cracked in the wall, and Bloodstorm shot back like he’d been hit by a car, flinging up sand as he slid to a halt, shaking his head and wobbling on his feet.

“Damn, Bigdick Tad lured Bloodstorm into a trap! I take it back, he truly lives up to his name! And now Bigdick Tad is pressing his advantage, mercilessly aiming blow after blow at Bloodstorm’s head, trying to keep his opponent from regaining his senses!”

Kid’s got good fighting instincts, Garth thought before he felt mounting pressure on his arm.

“What’s this, the Savage is mustering his herculean strength to tear The Ancient Criminal’s hold wide open! Does anyone have a better name? five syllables is too MUUUCH!”

Garth’s commenting turned to a shout as his opponent flung him over his shoulder and slammed him into the arena floor.

“How about the sandbag!” Garth heard a shout from the stands.

“Ref, the Ancient Criminal needs both hands. Hold this.” Garth said, tossing the mic to the referee, who almost fumbled it.

Garth snaked his hand around the big man’s wrist, almost unable to hold it on account of his size. He used both hands to drag the man forward, placing both legs on the man’s chest and pushing with everything he had.

The Savage went flying into the air, sailing up some twenty feet in the sky, eye level with the spectators, his limbs flailing as he tried to find purchase in midair. He looked like he was trying to swim in his onesie.

Garth put his feet under him and jumped up, grabbing the man’s uniform and turning him to face away, prison rape style. Garth put his right knee in the small of the man’s back and turned him to face downward.

“I’ll take most of the impact with my left leg.” Garth whispered to him as they started falling. “You do the same with your arms and legs.”

His opponent nodded, and the two of them screamed downward. Garth arrested his fall with his opposite leg, sending a massive amount of torque through his left leg while The Savage slammed his arms and legs downward to mitigate the fall.

Garth’s knee lightly made contact with the huge man’s spine, and his opponent sold it, writhing in pain and holding his back while Garth stretched out and healed the damage to his opposite leg.

“The Ancient criminal has performed some kind of aerial spine-breaking maneuver on The Savage!” The announcer shouted, getting into it now. “I don’t know if he can recover!”

Garth glanced over and spotted Tad with Bloodstorm’s Blood covering his fists, redfaced and panting. Tad was covered in scrapes and bruises, and he was developing a hell of a black eye, but he was the one standing in the end. The bigger, more experienced, and lauded man was moaning weakly in the sand of the arena.

Huh. Guess I should have told him wrestling is fake. Poor Bloodstorm. Well, the guy didn’t look like he was taking it easy on Tad either.

Garth tore off his shirt and raised his hands, circling around his opponent while pantomiming a few vindictive stomps to the man’s face to keep the crowd interested.

On the last stomp, Garth’s opponent grabbed his leg and slammed him into the dirt.

“how’s your back?” Garth whispered.

“Fine, thanks. Spine breaker?”

“Sure.”

“I’m going to snap you like firewood, you little punk!” the big man shouted for the crowd’s benefit.

“It looks like The Savage can keep fighting, and he’s lifting the Ancient Criminal above his head…is he..He is! He’s going to break his spine over his knee in a stunning turnaround!”

Garth was lifted over his opponent’s head, thrashing wildly for the crowd, before he was drain downward, landing with the small of his back against the man’s knee.

That’s a tricky one. Garth tried to absorb all the damage he could with his hands and feet, but still, an incredible amount of force slammed into his spine.

Garth sold it, rolling off the man’s knee and screaming, clutching his own spine. A few seconds later, the savage pulled him up into a headlock.

“That felt like you were being just a little vindictive there,” Garth muttered.

“Thought you could take it.”

“How’s my friend doing?”

The Savage jerked Garth’s head to face Tad, who was now shirtless, showing off his spectacular array of scars. The teen currently had Bloodstorm in an arm-bar that was threatening to end the man’s career.

“You should tell your friend to take it easy, or I won’t have anyone to fight next year.” The Savage said.

“Toss me over there.”

“Happily.” The huge man shook Garth like a ragdoll before throwing him straight at Tad, where Garth slammed into him and knocked him off his opponent.

“Hey Tad,” Garth said to Tad, who was buried in the sand beneath him.

“Ed, what the hell are we doing here?”

“Getting you a girlfriend, obviously. The Savage is gonna fake choke us out, then throw us back into the stands, right, Savage?”

“Sounds good to me,” the seven-foot tall man said, rolling his shoulders. “It’s been fun kids.”

The huge wrestler grabbed the two of them while Bloodstorm recovered from Tad’s thrashing.

His hands were big enough to wrap around their throats, and he growled ferociously as he held them up by their necks, holding them delicately to avoid cutting off their air for real.

Tad followed Garth’s example and struggled for a while before going limp.

“The savage has seized Bigdick Tad and his teammate while the two of them were disoriented, and he’s now strangling them, holding them at arm’s length in an incredible feat of strength!”

“The savage is just too big to return fire, and the two competitors can’t do anything about it!”

“I could break his elbow,” Tad muttered with his eyes closed.

“Shut up, you’re supposed to be passing out,” Garth said with his jaw clenched.

“Bite me.”

“Raaah!” The Savage roared and swung one arm, then the other, sending the two of them sailing over the bannister and into the crowd.

Garth and Tad impacted against the hard concrete of the floor and rolled to a halt as the teeming throng melted out of the way. Garth surreptitiously reached out and cast Heal on Tad as he lay there less than a foot away, groaning. The Savage has pretty good aim.

A hand entered Garth’s peripheral vision, and he took his, hauling himself to his feet.

“Thanks, Linda.”

“You’ve always been bad at keeping a low profile.” The white haired leader of the Prima Regula said with a wry smile.

“Just getting my friend here a date,” Garth said, pointing a thumb at Tad, who was being surrounded by excited spectators, more than half of them young women.

Where’s my crowd of people? Garth thought as he glanced over. He and Linda had an odd radius of free space around them, as if people were actively avoiding them.

“Spell?”

“convenient for crowds.”

“Huh,” Garth grunted. “It’s handy meeting you here, because I wanted to ask you about something.”

“I wanted to ask you something too,” she said.

“Shoot.”

“How would you like to desecrate a church dedicated to worshipping your brother?”

Garth narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “You gotta tell me who you are.”

“I thought it would be more fun if you found out on your own.”

Garth considered for a moment. “Alright, I would love to shit all over a Jim-church, but only if you answer my other question, and buy me a pitcher of cider. With honey.”

“Let’s talk.” Linda said, motioning for him to follow her.

“Ed! Where are you going!?” Tad shouted after him, multiple delicate hands exploring the scars covering his body.

“I gotta go take care of some business!” Garth shouted over the throng of people. He gave Tad a thumb’s up. “I’m sure you can handle yourself while I’m gone. Have fun, use protection, and pace yourself! Remember, exercise and physical contact!”

Garth turned away and followed the rebel leader into the dark corridor.

Macronomicon