Chrono Crush Volume 6 -Sneak Peak- T LOC VS. Gigolo Jaguar

Round 2

VS. Gigolo Jaguar

 

The intense bouncer at the door barely gave Axel or Billy a second glance. All Axel had to do was mumble the phrase, “Don't be swayed by the songs of the siren,” and he and Billy were permitted to pass.

Five minutes later, in a badly lit back room, reeking of stale tequila, Axel and Billy slammed down four cases of water bottles onto the counter.

It’s like I’m in a drug deal—so exciting! Billy thought to himself, once again failing to comprehend the gravity of the situation. Outside the room, he felt bass throbbing like a heartbeat through the building. Which was odd, as Billy couldn’t hear any actual music.

“Construction work?” Billy asked his biker babe, who ignored him in favor of the eccentric individual counting up the illicit cases of water.

The ‘buyer’ was a skinny man dressed and made-up in the image of a 17^th century, Rococo fop—right down to the garish, caked up makeup and smeary rouge. He took a drag from a cigar and puffed out golden smoke.

“This it?” He grunted, the voice not at all matching his appearance.

Axel shrugged. “That’s it.” He flashed his eyes towards Billy, who had sworn not to utter a peep during the ‘transaction.’

The proprietor in green silks eyed the contents, and grinned—mouth full of gold teeth. “Someone’s mom is gonna love you,” he said. He seemed pleased.

“Everyone’s mom loves me,” Axel said, winking. “Especially yours.”

“Fuck you,” the man laughed. He nodded politely, to Billy. “Who’s the gringo?”

“That’s my gringo,” Axel said, suddenly yanking Billy into a tight—and not at all unwelcomed—headlock. “He’s with me, King Luis, don’t worry.”

The King held up his hands, defensively. “Hey, hey, I don’t ask questions!” He jerked his thumb towards the door, plastered with a gratuitous pin-up girl calendar. “You want a drink, or what?”

“I gotta’ deliver a case to Sancho’s boys,” Axel said. He patted Billy firmly on the shoulder (perhaps a little too hard). “Billy, go play. Enjoy the night life. I think your 2020’s brain could benefit from a little future shock. And King Luis?”

“Yeah, boss?”

“Make sure to keep an eye on him.”

The scraggly fop tut-tutted, shaking his powdered wig as he opened the door, letting in a Pandora’s box of sound. “I’m a bartender, not a babysitter,” he bemoaned. He relented, however, when Axel threw him a dagger with his dark eyes. “Fine, my good prince, as you wish! If he gets into trouble though—it’s on him.”

Billy was all nerves and separation anxiety, feeling much like it was the first day of school and he was about to say ‘goodbye’ to dad. “I dunno about this, Axel. I don’t have reception in this decade, so I can’t look at my phone and ignore people at the club like I usually do.”

“You’ll be fine,” Axel said. “If somebody offers you something, be it in liquid, capsule, or candy form, you do not take it, got it? If you want a drink, make sure it’s only King L who pours it. Lastly, do not leave this place without me, okay? I’ll be back in about an hour and a half, give or take. Meet me by the bar, aye?”

Billy saluted the lather-jacketed stud. “Yes, sir.” He looked behind him, at the strange, scrawny man and the abyssal corridor of even stranger music. “Do…I really have to go?”

 

If Billy had to describe the loud, alien melody pumping through Sirena 6’s light-stripped innards, it would be something like ‘dark synth Mozart’. Harpsichords and organs accompanied cold, New Wave melodies. The DJ—a gas-mask wearing ghoul on a ceremonial altar swinging from the ceiling by chains—alternated between this bespoke genre, a fusion of techno-metal, and more ‘recognizable’ Mexican dance beats, from bachata to reggaeton.

Billy stared blankly at the DJ’s floating booth, which looked like a ‘biological’, boney pipe organ from out of an H.R. Geiger at piece. The ‘organic machinery’ aesthetic carried across the rest of the dark nightclub, with its vaulted ceiling in the shape of a rib cage.

In the belly of this techno leviathan drifting through darker waters, Billy felt smaller than small. History had served, and saved, Billy so far, but now he was out of his depth.

This must be karmic payback for every time I felt like I was smarter than a samurai or gladiator just because I knew what an ‘internet’ was. Now? I’m the caveman.  

A glowing school of hologram fish darted over Billy’s head, distracting him with surreal beauty and wonder. The holograms—which, upon closer inspection, seemed comprised of individual ‘cubes’ of light—broke apart and reformed into clusters of floating moon jellies. It was easily the coolest thing Billy had ever witnessed at a night club (without the use of drugs, that is) but everyone else in the room barely reacted to the alien lightshow.

Billy sized up his fellow patrons. The crowd of zooted club-goers with their jerky, spasmodic dances were dressed like cheerier versions of the demons from Hellraiser; ‘cyber goth’ by way of anime girl. Despite their cold stylings, the patrons of Sirena 6 were hardly standoffish. A girl with snake eyes, fangs, and color cycling (!) hair smiled toothily at Billy as he skirted past the dance floor.

“Love the vintage, jock look!” She said, clear as a bell, despite the music. Billy wasn’t sure what acoustic sorcery was at work here, but it wasn’t Eros’s translation spell. The club music, while ‘loud’, didn’t rattle his ear drums or threaten him with fleeting tinnitus. In fact, Billy wondered if he was actually ‘hearing’ the music at all, or if it was being projected directly into his brain. He decided he would ask Axel about this phenomenon later.

Which was all to say that the vibes were odd and alien and dark, but they were hardly menacing. For the first time since the highway chase, Billy felt his shoulders slacken. With nothing better to do, Billy lost himself in the weird groove and attempted to match the rhythm of the ‘seizure dancers’.

“You are easily the worst dancer I have ever seen,” came a sugary, excitable voice that Billy assumed could only have been directed at him. “I LOVE YOU!”

The white boy dance moves never fail. Billy turned around to find he’d been cat-called by…well…a cat robot. At first pass, anyway. They wore a half-mask that covered the entire top half of their head, stopping short at the nose. The helm was in the shape of a mechanical feline, with motorized ears and big, LED eyes that appeared to emote in real-time—transforming from ‘cat’ mode to ‘hearts’ and then back again in a flash of rainbow. Their mouth was painted with fluorescent purple lipstick, and their sharp chin and cheekbones could have doubled as deadly weapons.

“Umm…thanks,” Billy said. “I’m new here.”

The cat person’s eyes turned. ‘! __ !’. “Obviously! Hey, relax. SpecOps usually turns a blind eye to this place—provided The King has bribed them this month, anyway.”

So, it was an underground venue. That much was certain the moment Billy had walked through the door. “Is that why women are allowed to be here?”

“Lol you’re so gender! Everyone is allowed here, my guy. So, don’t you worry your pretty, pasty head. You can lay down your hair and be your gay-ass self.” The cyber raver lifted their hands up, curling their fingers in mimicry of paws. “I’m Remediox!”

Finally, the first normal person I’ve met today. “Billy!” He mirrored Remediox’s cat stance, which was well received judging from their electronic eyes shifting back into pink hearts. “And…how…am I hearing you, exactly?” He pointed to his ear.

‘? __ ?’ . “Uh…because I am talking to you?”

“Yeah, but the music? I can hear the music just fine but it’s like we’re speaking at normal decibels.”

Remediox scratched the side of their helmet. “What? Do they not have psionics where you’re from? Anyways, I saw you were with Axel. You must be his squeeze of the month, and I hope he’ll be pissed when he finds out I told you that. So, that would make you a tourist, a water runner, or some kind of black market techy. Maybe all of the above?”

“Tourist, Billy said, scanning the crowd for signs of Axel by trying to zero in on a man who was slightly short and very wide. Billy nodded for Remediox to follow him to the bar.

“Why the fuck did you come to Technotitlan?” Remediox asked. “By the way, do you want a drink?”

Billy fully trusted Remediox, but he also remembered Axel’s words of caution. “Just water, if you don’t mind.”

The diminutive cat person scrunched up their face. “I’m generous, but not that generous. How about a margarita?”

Billy’s eyes darted to the electronic, drink pricing display over the bar. He didn’t know the value of a ‘neo peso’, but if their value matched the Mexican currency he remembered, then that meant—

“Twenty dollars for a glass of water!” Billy blurted out. “And I thought drink prices were highway robbery where I came from.” Resigned to the ways of the future, he shrugged. “Oh well. At least liquor is cheaper.”

Remediox turned to the bartending King Luis and ordered two drinks, which they indicated in numerical form with their ever-changing LED eyes. They paid for them with their ID band.

Remediox handed Billy an inverted lightbulb full of glowing, pink fluid that he supposed was meant to be a ‘margarita’. “Isn’t the US supposed to be in some kind of golden age?” They clinked glasses with Billy, their eyes reading out the words ‘SALUD’. “That’s what they say anyway. Not like we get news from outside the cybernetic iron curtain, other than the shit we hear through Xibalba. By the way, what’s your avi? I’ll add you.”

They were speaking too quickly for Billy’s troubled head to catch up. He eyed the pink fluid and wondered what it might do to his stomach if he imbibed. “I’m sorry, I’m still trying to make sense of…a lot right now. What’s in this drink again?”

“Tequila soda. You seem stressed. You want a hit of lacryma to calm you down?” Before Billy could hope to answer or ask how tequila could ‘glow’, Remediox was struck with an exclamatory thought.

‘!__!’ “Oh, zonks, the fight is starting soon! Come on, you want to see something really visc?”

Billy didn’t have a chance to refuse. He’d already been taken by the hand (or paw), dragged deeper into the digital inferno that was Sirena 6. “Visc?”

Remediox’s eyes transformed into ‘eyeroll’ emojis (at least some things about the near-future were consistent). “Visceral. Come with me, my little white rabbit.”

 

It was a smaller room than the dance hall, and the overhead lighting was so jarringly bright in comparison that it took Billy a moment or two to adjust to his surroundings. The downward sloping tiers of benches reminded Billy of the gladiator amphitheater in Serge’s time, but the focal point of the arena was the roofless, caged dome over a pro wrestling ring.

Billy’s stomach flipped. Or maybe that was the tequila working. “What’s this?” Billy asked. I feel like Tina Turner is gonna come out and start singing any second now.

The seats were already half-full, with more attendees filing in from the wings to join the impending spectacle. Remediox led Billy to an open seat in the front row, which was probably the last place Billy would have chosen.

“Don’t tell me they banned blood lucha in the States?” Remediox said. “Oh, I know they’re seats, but we usually just stand.”

Billy flinched. “Blood what?” He peered into the fighting cage, finding that the chain link mesh was somehow translucent up-close.

“It’s a blood lucha pit, obviously.”

Billy’s shoulders slackened. “Oh, I love lucha libre! By which I mean, I love luchadors.” Billy failed to notice he was starting to drool. “Their trunks are always so much tighter and skimpier than the American wrestlers. Plus, I just assume they’re all hot since you can’t see their faces. I just wanna’…I just wanna’ squeeze their butts.”

“Ha! What? Hasn’t been any of that corny, fake circus stuff in a long while.” Remediox shrugged. “Maybe they still do it in the States though. My new friend, this is the real shit.” Naturally, Remediox’s eyes turned into smiling poop emojis (which the author has chosen not to detail here).

“Oh…” Billy bit his lip, realizing he was probably about to watch some graphic violence. “So…sort of like MMA, I take it?” The tell-tale panels embedded in the ring floor, as well as the machines latched at each corner of the cage, told Billy he was woefully optimistic about that assessment--

--which was solidified by Remediox giggling mischievously. “Watch and wait, my friend.”

Billy waited, and watched, and when the techno-metal music blasted over the psionic waves, the audience matched it with an eruption of rowdy excitement. A concealed trapdoor in the center of the ring erupted with smoke, heralding the arrival of a muscular figure caped out in gold, white, and green feathers, half-drag queen, half-shaman, but decidedly veering towards the ‘peacock’ masculinity of an old WWE hype manager. His shining body was covered from head-to-toe in gold body paint.

The feather boa around the buff man’s neck came to life, turning into a serpentine dragon that took to the air and circled the arena, while the crowd absolutely lost their shit. There was something of the ‘Aztec high priest’ about the flamboyant host, though devoid of any true, ceremonial meaning. Billy guessed he was not a contender, but either an emcee, the ref, a promoter, or some combination of all three.

Remediox confirmed as much. “That’s Elio El Dorado. He used to be a fighter, but he’s retired. They say most of him is actually made out of solid gold prosthetics at this point, but I think it’s just a rumor. It’s thanks to him that Felix Roko turns a blind eye to ‘degenerate hives’ like Sirena 6.”

“So, it’s only a conditional fascist dystopia?” Billy asked, out of the side of his mouth.

“Heh. The only thing that trumps hate is money, my friend.”

The gilded master produced a traditional microphone from the folds of their regal robe. “All you freaks better make some noise!” he growled, to which the crow obeyed. “There’s ten—TEN—alpha points on the line tonight! Tonight’s match is scheduled for three falls—decided by knock-out, submission, emission, death, or dismemberment.”  

Billy blinked. Emission?

The lights in the arena shifted hues, a spectacular sunset of orange and red. El Dorado took to the mic. “Now, introducing our first opponent!”

Golden snow, or dust, drifted from the arena ceiling. A curious blend of heavy metal synth and ‘sexy’ saxophones heralded the entrance of the hulking beast who rose, in the same fashion as El Dorado, from the depths of the ring. Half of the cage glowed red to signify the brute’s ‘corner’.

Billy’s jaw dropped. “Oh…HIM BIG.”

Big indeed was the golden-caped monstrosity clawing his way from the gilded abyss. With a mask like a jaguar’s head, the bulky beast tore away his cape, unveiling a body that would have made Zack Wyder’s body-builder bullies quake in their posers. Shocking—and most titillating—of all, was the fighter’s gear, which did little to cover their intimidating, delicious physique. While the luchador wore the traditional kneepads and boots, their ‘trunks’ were nothing more than a jaguar-printed ‘cock sock’ that only half covered the glaringly erect whopper of an appendage, girthy dick-root highlighted by a spiked, golden cock ring.

The juiced-up stud knew what he was packing. He roared and flexed his biceps and pumped his pecs for the audience, gyrating his hips to swing and bounce his barely concealed ‘weapon’, jiggling like erotic gelatine and in danger of poking the emcee’s eyes out!

Even Billy was scandalized. “That’s quite possibly the sluttiest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said, clutching his chain lock. He grinned devilishly. “I want to be him.”

Billy’s reaction did not escape his Remediox’s notice. “Hehe. Yeah, Jag has that effect on those with guy-junk. Thankfully, I have an allergy to meat-headed jerks.”

Billy, however, did not.

While the roid beast clawed up the side of the cage to hype the audience (his bulge entirely too big and thick to fit through the gaps of the chain links, thank goodness) El Dorado announced the showboating challenger.

“From Veracruz, with seventy-eight Alpha points—all of which he’s stuffed inside his thong, it seems—he’s the callous jungle cat with an endless appetite for sex and violence. GigoloOOOOO  JagUAAAAAR!!”

In reply to the sound of his own illustrious name, the Jaguar back flipped off the cage with grace unexpected of such a massive build. He landed with cat-like precision, oil exploding off his bulging pecs, and continued his march around the cage, beating his chest, flexing his biceps, and—of course—flinging his meat sword side-to-side to rile up the crowd. When he was sufficiently gassed up, the monstrous fighter snatched the mic rudely from El Dorado and pointed his finger menacingly at the audience.

“And I don’t appreciate that snide remark about stuffing!” snarled. His voice was deep and resonate, no doubt amplified by the psionic sound waves and the sheer amount of DNA-twisting. muscle enhancers coursing through his throbbing veins.

Gigolo Jaguar snarled with passion, pointing to the audience, and hungrily licking his lips. “I’M A BAAAD KITTY—COME AND PET MEEEE!”

His half-concealed cock throbbed of its own accord, swinging like a metronome. “This body ain’t natural, but it’s alllll real, my pretty, little kitties!

“That’s right, you ROAR for your big beast! And once I’ve smeared this ring from corner to corner with the pussy-bitch who thinks he can out muscle this jungle god, I’ll let some you lucky kittens stroke, worship, and SUCK my great, golden swooooorrd of conquest! And don’t forget about all this tasty TAIL either!”

Gigolo Jaguar pivoted on his boots to flex his rippling back, but more importantly, jiggle and contract his giant, muscle-ass. A tapered, tail g-string, swallowed in the crevasse of his glutes, swung proudly from beneath Jaguar’s spherical, statuesque butt. 

“Hmmm,” Billy thought ponderously, stroking his chin—even as his own erection threated to poke a hole through his briefs, “the man makes a convincing argument.”

Either from roid rage—or just because he was an asshole—Jaguar shoved the mic back into El Dorado’s chest, nearly toppling the emcee over and sending him back into the cage. “Uh, thanks, Jag. And now for his opponent, allllll the way from Monterey…”

The arena hue shifted from glorious gold to a cool, blue-green, which washed over the crowd like water. Billy felt something against his skin and looked up to see that it was now raining indoors. “Is this another hologram thing?”

Playfully, Remediox nudged Billy, as if to say, ‘now you’re catching on’. “With cerebral haptic stimuli,” they added, but Billy could only guess what that meant.

Instead of rising dramatically from the ring, the new contender appeared, more traditionally, from an entrance arch opposite ‘his’ side of the cage. Needing no cape, the fighter’s body—though nowhere near Jaguar’s enormity—was just as formidable.

The luchador’s energy was also completely different. He burst forth with a literal splash, backflipping into an illusory puddle, and raising his hands to the heavens in smiling triumph. The wet, neon rain god summoned a flash of lighting and a peel of thunder, which raised the electricity in the room tenfold.

El Dorado tested the limits of his vocal chords, and the microphone’s integrity. “T LOC!”

T LOC responded kindly by putting his hands together and bowing deeply for the arena. And, in typical, tecnico fashion, he struck his own heroic pose, putting one arm over the other across his chess in an ‘x’ shape—which also activated all the intricate lightwork on his gear.

“That’s a big pop!” Billy said, over all the excitement. Gigolo Jaguar was ‘drool-worthy’, but his opponent brought a certain, ineffable ‘something’ that made Billy wish his eyes could do what Remediox’s LED ends could do and transform into heart shapes.

Even among the adrenaline-soaked atmosphere, Billy noted the distinction between the heel, stalking his corner of the ring and glaring at his oncoming rival, and the ‘good boy’ shaking hands and high-fiving all his fans on the sidelines. One was happy to be admired from afar, refusing to engage with the filthy commoners, while T LOC out here was most definitely a god of the people. The fighter walked confidently and deliberately down the aisle.

Billy swallowed, trying to imagine the touch of his own tongue as he licked T LOC’s boulder shoulder, or worshipping his banded bicep. The fighter’s long, wet hair hung over and around his pectorals, like a curtain framing a masterpiece. His gear was a neon explosion of electric purple, cool blue, and deep gold accents. The luchador’s trunks and boots, connected by straps, bound across his meaty thighs, were a fusion of futuristic militarism and Aztec motifs. Even his mask recalled the nature of the old gods, with fang-like adornments framing the opening around his mouth, and radiant, glowing eye-shields.

Billy figured he was right on the money about the inspiration, especially as soon as T LOC stopped short of the ring and locked eyes with his opponent for the first time. T LOC’s illuminated eye shields, flashed from gentle violet to intense blue. He struck a most-muscular pose, roaring and sticking out his longue tongue to intimidate his nemesis, like a warrior of eld.

Giant, jaguar cock be damned, Billy decided right then and there who he was throwing his energy behind. 

T LOC’s side of the cage flared bright blue, and dematerialized—not unlike Officer David’s helmet—allowing the masked warrior safe passage. Gigolo Jaguar made to lunge at him, but T LOC didn’t so much as flinch at the attempt at intimidation. Instead, he nobly extended his hand. Jaguar swiped it away in disgust.

“I don’t think he likes me,” T LOC sneered. He ran to his side of the cage, scurrying all the way to the top (giving Billy vertigo in the process) where he extended his hands towards the crowd. “BUT YOU GUYS LIKE ME, RIGHT!?”

The noise, bright-eyed faces, and ululations that followed suggested yes, they did.

Billy’s heart skipped a beat as T LOC threw himself back and upwards into a literally death-defying, spiraling somersault though the air, where he landed on his feet—superhero pose and all—with a thundering crash. The stunt put Jaguar’s earlier dive off the cage to shame.

Billy couldn’t take his eyes off T LOC, or the action. “I forgot how much I loved wrestling! But how does he not break all of his bones doing that?” he asked Remediox.

“Splice,” Remediox answered.

Billy lifted up his cap and scratched his head. “Is that like steroids?”

“Steroids plus. Gen-modding is a whole art and science, dude. All customized. In blood lucha, every fighter is allowed a certain formula enhancement of their choosing. It’s supposedly regulated, but everybody knows about the dirty deals behind the scenes.”

Who’s everybody? Still, Billy understood the concept. “Superhero juice, basically.”

Remediox laughed. “Well, to a point. I don’t think there’s a formula that allows you to throw, like, fireballs.” They paused. “At least, I don’t think there is…”

Billy tapped his fingers against his chin. “Hmm. If I could get my hands on it, could it give me a big cock like Jaguar’s? I mean, not that I have any problems with my cock as it is.”

“Yeah, definitely.”

“Noting that for later…”

Back in the ring, T LOC and Jaguar faced off. “Let’s skip the shit-talking,” T LOC said, foregoing the mic. “You already know what I want.”

Jaguar growled. “To be the champion, little boy?”

“Heh.” T LOC grinned. “No, I want the champion. I want to face a real god.” He pushed his chest against Jaguar’s, causing both of their muscles to ripple. The height distinction between the two men was obvious, with Jaguar dwarfing ‘LOC by at least a foot, yet T LOC’s charisma made him more the giant. “Not some oversized, oversexed kitty cat.”

“I am a god,” Jaguar huffed back. “No bigger cat in the jungle than THE jaguar!”

Which was, zoologically speaking, patently untrue. Nevertheless, Gigolo Jaguar pushed the point by pushing something else against T LOC. He swung his spotted, cock sleeve against T LOC’s bulge. T LOC’s bulge, generous in its own way, responded in kind.

T LOC gritted his teeth. “You mean, no bigger PUSSY!”

The audience gasped. Billy bit down on his fingertips. A sick burn, to be sure.

The incensed, muscle freak with the even freakier appendage beat his chest in raw, jungle fury. “GRRRR!” He roared. “I’LL CRUSH YOU, PRETTY BOY!”

DING!

And then, they were off! Jaguar grabbed onto T LOC in an attempted arm drag, but the smaller fighter was speedier, riding along with the momentum and using the dumb wall of muscle as a springboard to flip over Jag’s head and catch him by the back. The audience gasped and hollered at this gymnastic feat. Overhead, the holo-cubes materialized out of the aether, forming the opponent’s names and current ‘Alpha points’ (whatever those were) mid-air, in addition to a two-minute countdown. It reminded Billy of the arcade fighting games he played back home.

While T LOC had the gymnastic advantage, he immediately ran into the weight discrepancy. T LOC wrapped his hands around Jaguar’s thick waist (putting him in an interesting crotch-to-ass predicament) but couldn’t lift his opponent. The big, brute was far too beefy to manage.

“What’s wrong, wet boy,” Jaguar laughed. He turned around and WHALLOPED T LOC with his fist, a sick and twisted haymaker that sent the lighter opponent soaring straight into the cage. Billy winced. The audience groaned.

Remediox squealed with excitement. “I just LOVE violence! Big, meaty men, slapping meat!”

And with the Jaguar, there was plenty of meat to slap. Jag arrogantly pumped his round pecs, sublimating oil. “Hahaha, hungry for what real power tastes like?”

The obnoxious bully grabbed and brandished his boner like a club, slapping the dazed T- LOC’s abs with his bethonged tool.

“I’m gonna make you worship it.” Jaguar sneered. “I’m gonna scramble your brains so hard you’re not gonna know anything else but to serve my cock as your new god! You like the sound of that?”

T LOC had him exactly where he wanted him. “You like the sound of this?” he said, dropping to the knee and shooting forward into a brilliantly executed double-leg take down. The colossus with the colossal cock tipped over sideways, and gravity did the rest.

T LOC scrambled to wrap his own intimidating quads and legs around Jaguar’s arm, hoping to put him into arm bar. El Dorado (who did, in fact, double as referee) dropped to his knees in anticipation of a possible submission!

“Can’t stroke your cock without an arm,” T LOC hissed. “You give up, you big bitch?”

Jaguar snarled in reply. “It’ll take a lot more than that to break ME!” All of his veins throbbing in full activation of his muscles, Jaguar flexed so hard that he broke T LOC’s grip, throwing him off his body. Jaguar righted himself onto his feet and reached down to scoop T LOC clean off the canvas.

“Before I introduce you to the ‘Golden Sword’,” he shouted, “how about I introduce you to the mat!” One grunt later, and the ‘roided cat body slammed T LOC with forceful impact. Even Billy, watching from a safe distance, felt the blow.

T LOC gasped. “Ugh!”

“Now, you’re mine.” Jaguar turned on his bootheels and ran to the cage, springing off of it to muster the momentum to deliver a deadly elbow drop—or cock-drop, as it were.

BAM!

The monster collided with the mat.

At the last second, T LOC rolled out, earning more hype and esteem from the excited crowd. He struck his signature, heroic, cross-armed pose for his fans.

Of which Billy now counted himself among their number.

Billy had been so glued to the action that he barely noticed the holographic countdown was nine seconds away from reaching its terminus.

He poked Remediox in the shoulder. “What happens now? The match can’t be over, right?”

Remediox turned their head slowly to Billy. Their LED eyes displayed two, black skulls against bloody red. “Now’s when the REAL fun begins!”

Billy didn’t like the sound of that. And, speaking of sounds…

DING!

The fighters ignored the chime, instead colliding into an intense grapple. Jaguar had more muscle, but T LOC’s strength was just as potent. The grapplers grappled, and the cage around them sparked to life, with tendrils of visible electricity shooting off the circumference of the ring.

“That’s…dangerous as hell,” Billy stammered. He knew about ‘ring outs’, electrocuting your opponent was something new!

“Just you wait,” Remediox laughed, sadistically.

The trapdoors around the fighters, struggling for dominance, flipped open to reveal their deadly contents. Each cardinal direction called home to a different danger. A tongue of flame jetted upwards from the south-most section, insinuating a fiery end for whomever fell into its hellish depths.

The western floor panel pulled back to reveal a bed of electrified nails. A rack of assorted dangerous weapons (as well as what Billy swore was an actual dildo, or vibrator) rose up closest to the fighters in the eastern portion of the ring, while a metal box demarcated with the word ‘SPLICE’ occupied the remaining spot.

A knot formed in Billy’s stomach, just as he turned green. Talk about a boner killer. “I came to see hot, sweaty mean grinding on each other, not a death match with actual death!”

“I’m going to tear up that back!” Jaguar said, pushing T LOC dangerously closer towards the bed of sparking daggers. “Right before I tear up that ass! That’s right, we’re gonna give these folks a real show. I’m gonna rip you APART FROM THE INSIDE!”

T LOC responded to this by simply taking his hands back, breaking Jaguar’s balance. ‘LOC kneed him in the gut once, and then followed it up with a two-piece combo, transforming seamlessly from luchador to Muy-Thai fighter. Jaguar doubled back from the killer blows, giving T LOC space, and sparing him from teetering over into the deadly nail bed.

The heroic luchador dove forward into a handspring leap. More unnecessary gymnastics, Billy thought—at first. T LOC shot his legs up like a spring-loaded trap, wrapping his meaty quads arounds Jaguar’s neck. The momentum lifted Gigolo Jaguar up from off his neck and flipped him head-over-tail, planting his head into the canvas.

The crowd buzzed and Billy’s mouth dropped wide open. “Holy shit, an actual hurricanrana!”

With Jag busy counting lights and stars, T LOC dashed to the weapon rack and pulled off an object Billy had only seen previously in museums—a macuahuitl. This version of the Aztec war club was electrified, sparking just as much as the sides of the fight cage. Billy always thought of wrestlers utilizing foreign objects was more heel/rudo thing, but the noble weapon looked heroic in T LOC’s hands.

“This ends now,” T LOC shouted, lifting the electric club high over his head. He brought it down—

But Jaguar had been playing possum—or puma, rather! He rolled out of the way and swept his legs as he did, knocking T LOC onto the ground and thereby knocking the macuahuitl out of his hands.

“You big, blue BITCH!” Jaguar roared, super kicking T LOC right in the side of the head.

CRACK!

Struck silly, the long-haired hero fell backwards onto the mat.

“Couldn’t handle all this sexy beast!” Jaguar exclaimed, while the audience booed him. Just to be a dick (with a giant dick) Jaguar kicked T LOC in the ribs. Only El Dorado’s intervention prevented him from any further assault.

T LOC’s face was turned to the side, with his hair hung over his mask and shoulders, preventing the nervous crowd a closer examination of their hero’s status. El Dorado knelt at the fallen wrestler’s side to check his level of consciousness.

The emcee/ref held his hand high, initiating the count out to K.O.

“That’s one!”

“Hahaha!” Jaguar celebrated his premature victory by ‘helicoptering’ his bulge for the audience, which had somehow grown harder the longer the match went on. “You want me to make him suck it on the wake-up!?”

“That’s two!”

Billy ground his teeth together and cupped his hands to his mouth. “Come on, Loc!” He shouted. “Get up! GET UP!”

“Three! Four!”

With a sadistic gleam in his feline eyes, Jaguar stomped over to the splice locker. He threw opened the door and examined the rack of strange, fluorescent potencies. “I need me some more of that good JUICE,” he glowered. “If I’m gonna really grind this wuss into DUST!” His selection decided, Jaguar pulled a fuchsia-colored syringe off the rack and slammed the needled into his giant shoulder, pressing the plunger down.

Meanwhile, T LOC showed no signs of stirring. Only the slight rise and fall of his chiseled back muscles indicated proof of life.

“Five! Six!”

Billy shook his head in confusion. “But steroids don’t work that fast,” he said to Remediox.

“Yeah, but splice does!” The mecha-kitty pointed to the far-less-lovable cat preening himself in the cage. “Watch.”

The chemical transformation was subtle, but instant. Jaguar roared back, his vocal chords growing deeper, while all of his vascularity turned a fleeting shade of pink. His chest, biceps, quads, back muscles all contracted, and then expanded by an inch. The thong holding back all that meat finally gave way, ripping right off Gigolo Jaguar’s body and releasing his meat monster in full. The engorged, girthy member was now almost Priapic in its length and size, constricted only the by the dog-collar of a cock ring keeping its master stiff. Pearls of white precum by way of bloodlust, spilled onto the canvas.

Billy’s jaw threatened to fall off its hinges. “How is this even allowed?” he asked nobody in particular.

Remediox, hardly bothered, was happy to respond. “Geez, what are you, Amish? It’s 2046. Get with the times.”

The splice pumped Jaguar full of strength and adrenaline, but its effects were transparently detrimental. Either from the pain of rapid muscle and tendon expansion, or by way of roid induced psychosis, Jaguar clutched the side of his head in agony. “GAAAAAHHHH!” He roared monstrously. “MUST…DESTROY!”

The decorative eyes on Jaguar’s mask now glowed with hot-pink hatred. Muscles throbbing, and tan skin tinted with a ruddy pink hue, the sexy sadist devolved a bestial posture, clawing ferally on his hands and knees towards his prey (and giving the audience a full view of his rock-hard glutes).

Just as Emilio El Dorado formed ‘nine’ with his lips, T LOC finally stirred, his groan drowned out by the tidal wave of cheers spilling out from the audience. The fighter’s beautiful, wet hair, dangled over his mask while he tried desperately to get back onto his feet. While he wasn’t out for the count just yet, but he was far from safe, especially with a 300+ muscle monster hungrily stalking towards him, destined to land the killing blow.

T LOC tossed his head back, flicking his hair out of his face and meeting death eye-to-eye. “Bastard,” he spat, with spittle mixed with blood dripping onto the stained canvas.

The transformed Gigolo Jaguar clawed down and grabbed a handful of T LOC’s stringy hair, yanking him onto his feet. “GET UP, MEAT.” The booing from the audience only fueled Jaguar’s appetite to destroy, and soon the juggernaut had wrapped both of his titanic arms around the handsome fighter’s midsection, constricting him in a tight, back-shattering bear hug!

Billy could almost hear the strain of muscle and bone from T LOC’s compressed body. Jaguar’s explosive chest threatened to suffocate the fighter, moaning, and gnashing his teeth. If Jaguar’s tank arms didn’t crack ‘LOC like an egg first, the hero hunk was bound for a smothering.

The beefy cat mocked his prey. “Gonna’ wet your pretty panties?” He growled and tightened his grip, squeezing the oxygen right out of T LOC’s lungs, and tightening the metaphorical noose. He drove the point further by grinding his engorged, tumescent cock side to side over T LOC’s bulge, leaving it wet, as if to remind him who was the more dominant, virile man.

The fiend pressed his sweaty mask and mouth, almost intimately, to the side of weakening T LOC’s face. “FIRST, I WILL CRUSH YOUR SPINE,” he roared. “THEN…I WILL RE-ARRANGE YOUR INSIDES WITH MY MASSIVE SWORD! THEN, I WILL THROW YOU INTO THE FIRE PIT AND SEND YOU TO HELL FULL OF MY SEED.”

El Dorado approached the woozy, long-haired hero. “What do you say, ‘LOC? You give?”

T LOC threw his head back again. “Never. I will NEVER GIVE!” A shimmery sheen coated his bronze body, matching the metallic luster of the flamboyant referee. “You…want to splice it up, big guy? I don’t need more muscle to skin a cat.”

Somehow, T LOC managed to free his left arm from Jaguar’s pulverizing grip. Jaguar responded to this insolence with another tight squeeze.

T LOC’s mask obscured his eyes, beginning to roll into the back of his head. Still, he pushed through. “I’m one slippery customer,” he gasped, reaching for—

“Is he crazy!?” Billy shouted from his seat. He watched T LOC’s fingertips spread outwards towards the live-wired cage. “It’s suicidal.”

“No,” Remediox replied, with shooting-star eyes. “It’s science!”

Though Billy deemed the ‘science’ at work here questionable at best, there were likely other, futuristic factors in the mix that escaped his understanding. Nevertheless, T LOC’s gambit went into effect as the wrestler wrapped his wet fingers around the electrified fence. The touch-sensitive cage emitted an audible ‘ZAP!’, the current passing through the fighter and into his opponent.

Jaguar began convulsing. “Wh-wha-GRZRZRZRZZRZRZRZRZRZ!”

The electricity paralyzed Jaguar’s hands, forcing them to contract, thereby loosening his grip on T LOC’s sweat-soaked body. Liberated, the masked warrior let go of the electrified fence and backflipped dramatically out of Jaguar’s reaching zone. In the midst of this dramatic reversal, a sexy, female, electronic voice rang out with a cold: electrified field disengaged. The chain-fencing lost its cool, blue glow.

T LOC landed on his feet and struck his signature, cross-chest pose again. The hero of the hour smiled for his fans, but for his nemesis, he channeled only fury.

T LOC pointed dramatically at the beast, who’d collapsed onto his knees in (literal) shock. “I command the water and the lightning!” T LOC said. He dashed to the cage fence opposite Jaguar and began claiming it as if his life depended on it—and, in many ways, it did. Higher and higher T LOC, all the way to the top.

Billy arched his head back, mouth agape. “Is…is he gonna jump from there?”

And he did. He did jump from there. Not only did T LOC jump from there, but he also spiraled into the air over the cage, nearly colliding with the lights, doing somersault after somersault. The luchador transformed his body into a living missile of electricity (figuratively speaking).

The meteor that was T LOC collided with Gigolo Jaguar with the blast of a thousand bolts of lightning. If the big, bad jungle cat had come into the ring with nine lives, then T LOC’s Stormsault had just wasted at least six of them.

But the beast wasn’t down yet. Jaguar, now positioned on all fours, groaned, while T LOC recovered from his deadly leap. The audience, already foaming at the mouth from the drama, could not believe their eyes!

“The splice giveth,” T LOC gasped. Dripping sweat, and just about to pass out himself, the fighter wobbled over to the weapon rack. “And the splice taketh away. Let’s see how tough you are when I drain your muscle juice from your system.”

Violence was no longer on T LOC’s mind. As the fighter picked up and examined the long, gun-shaped implement with the tapered, spherical ridges, he decided that he’d finish off Gigolo Jaguar in a more ‘’inventive’ fashion.  

T LOC read the lettering on the side of the device. “The ‘Prostate Punisher 3000’? And it’s pre lubed!? Hehe. Sounds like you’re in for a good time, Jag.”

 Billy’s mind registered the proverbial record scratch (or maybe that was another ‘psionic’ auditory flair). “Uh…what? Is he really gonna’ stick that inside his—?”

“OH YEAHHHHH!” Emilio El Dorado shouted over the mic; arms stretched outward to the crowd (who seemed not only unbothered, but eager to watch the unfolding, erotic humiliation). “The god of the ring is about to make it rain, baby!”

“N-no,” Jaguar moaned weakly, tumbling forward, and arching up his bare, naked butt to be received. “But…yes.”

T LOC appraised his prize, gliding his palm down the oiled, sweaty cheek of his defeated opponent. “Awww, I think he wants it. Don’t you, bad little kitty?”

Either the rain god had seriously rattled his opponent’s skull to the point of complacent delirium, or the side effects of Jag’s splice formula had driven him to a submissive need for sex. The muscle cat literally purred, nuzzling T LOC’s pec, and presenting his winking, expanding tight hole for his master. 

T LOC responded by petting his submissive, muscle slut on the back. “Good kitty. You hold that position for me now.”

‘LOC slowly plunged the ribbed tip of the wicked device into Jaguar’s pretty, hungry hole. The machine slipped in with ease, trembling and buzzing upon insertion.

The effect took hold, taming the jungle cat and making him drool with dizzy arousal. “Fuuuucccck. Meeeeeoooowww.”

The vibrator violating his opponent’s innards, T LOC put the finishing touches on Gigolo Jaguar. The fighter knelt down, with his knee pressed firmly into Jaguar's shoulder blade. ‘LOC planted his other boot in front of Jag’s shoulder--flat against the mat--to keep him positioned upside down, with his head to the mat and his ass towards the sky. The jungle cat was going nowhere fast.

“Some apex predator you turned out to be,” T LOC sneered. “The difference between us, is that I don’t bring my opponents pain alone. I bring them pleasure. So, just relax and let all of those spliced up muscles—and your cum—drain completely for me.”

Jag’s body wrenched up against T LOC’s, the victor scooped his arm under Jaguar giant, trembling thigh and took hold of his balls, not to squeeze down painfully but to apply just the slightest bit of draining pressure. With his other hand, ‘LOC began rhythmically milking his prey to perfection. Meanwhile, the vibrator plugged into Jaguar's hole did its work, lighting up the beefcake’s inner nerves, opening wide his anal cavity, and injecting pure stimulation into his pulsing prostate.

Even in the midst of his convulsing, Jaguar managed to drool out a few words of pleading. “M-m-y splice formula...it all goes away if I cum. Ah—ah fuck, it feels too good!”

“Oh man, this isn’t even gonna take long!” T LOC nodded to El Dorado, who was happy to kneel down and do his duty. “Ask him, ref!”

El Dorado was all smiles, completely comfortable with the kink exhibition on display. “What do you say, Jag?” he said, putting the microphone down to Gigolo Jaguar’s trembling lips.

“N-no,” Jaguar mewed weakly. “I-I’m the big jungle cat.”

T LOC stroked slower, harder, with a twist at the top of Jaguar’s swollen, leaking, purple-turning glans. “Ask him again!” the fighter demanded. “They won’t be calling you ‘Gigolo’ anymore.”

“What do you say!?” Elo Dorado said, nearly shoving the microphone into the opening of Jaguar’s mask.

The defeated villain couldn’t take it any longer. With a low growl turning into a desperate squeal, the monster became a tamed kitten. “I-I-I giiiiiiive!” Jaguar screamed, letting loose the contents of his balls. His ejaculate exploded out of him in a staggered fire hose of thick, liquid, white ropes. “I GIVE! I GIVE!”

For every blast of spunk, every milky puddle forming on the canvas, Jaguar screeched out another ‘I GIVE!’. Each time, his body mass—and cock—shrunk in size. Billy, close to creaming his jocks himself watching this all play out in front of his eyes, watched Gigolo Jaguar literally deflate like a balloon.

By the tenth, half-hearted, weak ‘I give!’, the Jaguar had been reduced to a scrawny, skinny state, with T LOC now reigning more muscular in comparison. Jag, his mind broken from pleasure, mewled, and drooled like a kitten.

The vibrator fell from Jaguar’s gaping hole, trailing a strand of lube. The device landed with a wet ‘plop’ into one of the deflated stud’s spent cum-puddles. The little man’s cock, once his proudest weapon, flopped to the side like a limp noodle.

El Dorado twirled his index finger in the air. “K.O. by emission!” he shouted. “Ring that bell!”

T LOC’s anthem blared over the speakers while the crowd cheered. He gently lowered his opponent to the mat, doing his best to pull the unconscious, naked, bean-pole out of his own secretions. T LOC stepped over his body and let El Dorado raise his arm to the air as the victorious one. The comparison between the two men couldn’t be starker. T LOC stood, a bronze muscle god with luscious hair (and a proud, bulging victory boner to boot) over the shriveled up, color-and-cum-drained loser twitching beneath him.

Back in the audience, Billy—who likewise cheered on his new favorite luchador—wasn’t sure if he was turned on, or just confused. “It…shrunk!?” He had to confirm with Remediox. “All of him shrunk!? Also, I’m pretty sure that’s now how conducting electricity even works!”

To this, Billy’s cyber cat only shrugged. “That’s splice for you. Don’t worry. It eventually equalizes in the body. Metabolism takes out most of the harmful effects if the formula is right. Once the fighters get backstage, the med teams usually patch them up with a special concoction. Jag will be fine, in time. Isn’t medical tech awesome, Billy?”

It was, but Billy suspected that said tech was probably hard to come by for most of these normal folk spectating. He glanced around the crowd. Beneath the excitement, the people looked tired, dehydrated. While some of them had come into the arena carrying drinks from the bar, Billy wondered how much of it was water.    

The blood sports. The splice. The capitalist police state. It was like someone had taken the tropes of every dystopian science fiction movie and brought them to life in nightmarish neon lighting.

Lucky for Billy, he didn’t have to wait too long to find out the identity of that nebulous ‘someone’. While the med team carried out poor Jaguar from the cage on a stretcher, the holo-cubes above the ring re-pixilated into the semblance of a television screen.

The bald, thirty-something on the floating screen wore expensive sunglasses (that still somehow looked cheap) and smoked a cigar. Billy couldn’t tell if he was naturally tanned, or wore too much bronzer, but he decided the guy’s physical features gave him the unsettling appearance of a cross between a Pitbull and a human penis.

Billy expected the man to greet the audience. Instead, he began…woofing.

“RAH! RAH! OOH! OOH!”

Billy titled his head to the side. “Why is he bark--?”

A good portion of the men in the crowd started enthusiastically barking back. Billy noticed the other people around them shift their eyes, and raise their shoulders uncomfortably, but otherwise they kept their silence.

Billy frowned. “Remediox, I swear to God, if you say, ‘What? You don’t know who angry, sunglasses man is—”

“That’s Felix Roko,” Remediox said, like they’d just been sucking on a lemon.

Those words meant nothing to Billy, so he watched and listened as the pre-recording (at least, he thought it was a pre-recording) spoke to the blood thirsty crowd.

And to T LOC specifically.

“Congratulations from the Top Dog, my good Alpha. You’ve clinched enough points to face the champion this Saturday night. The question is…do you have what it takes to take down the baddest of them all?”

The crowed encouraged the sweaty, bleeding, indefatigable T LOC with thunderous praise, and the hero responded by flashing his pearly whites and doing his signature pose. The man on TV dissolved into a heavy metal montage of fire and violence; a glory reel of ‘the baddest of them all’ viciously bodying his opponents.

 Decked out in black, red, and gold, the vicious fighter tossed opponent after broken opponent into the ring’s flaming trap door pit. The fighter’s besequinned mask burned like the sun, and his red-eyes gave him a more bestial, blood-thirsty energy that contrasted T LOC’s cool blue resolve.

“Who’s the scary dom daddy in the red mask?” Billy asked his new friend.

In a hushed, fearfully reverent tone, Remediox said, “That’s Dark Solar. His catchphrase is ‘Break ‘em and burn em. They say he cut his teeth throwing himself onto flaming tables…for fun.”

Billy glanced over at the still flaming char-pit trap in the arena. He swallowed.

The clip reel concluded. Dark Solar, a beautiful fiend, now stared down the barrel of the camera. His deep voice made all the hairs on Billy’s neck stand on end…and his cock twitch.

“Bring me a warrior on my level,” he said, as if he himself was on the verge of combustion, nostrils flaring. In addition to sweat, blood dripped from his chest—Billy was unclear if it was his own. “If you got the balls to step into my ring, then I welcome you…as my next sacrifice.”

It was hard for Billy to tell, but he thought he saw T LOC grinning, narrowing his eyes with determination at his future opponent on screen. Billy knew that expression well. It was the look of a man who wanted very badly to fuck a monster.

The holo-set literally went up in flames (another special effect) burning back to the perpetually sour-faced businessman puffing away at his cigar. “You heard it from my best beast, folks. Should be a match for the ages. And for all you other bad dogs out there, be on the lookout for my new Neuro transmit, which I’ll be launching right after the big match.” Felix took a long drag on his cigar. “And if you miss it, it means you’re a BETA CUCK PUSSY. Roko, out!”

The screen blinked out of existence, and T LOC began his grateful, victory march out of the ring, into the crowd.

The image of Roko’s scowling mug lingered in Billy’s head like a bad smell. As soon as Billy pulled his own hand off his face in frustration and disgust, he sighed and turned to Remediox. “Don’t tell me that third-rate live streamer we just saw, with the ‘hand-over-your-drinks, ladies’ energy is the fucking president of Technotitlan?”

“No,” Remediox gagged, “but he may as well be—considering Everglade basically owns the country. Roko and the President are tight. So tight that Everglade basically makes the laws in this country.”

“My area of expertise is history,” Billy said, “not politics, but I seem to recall Mexico’s constitution being one of the strongest in the world. There were protections for like, literally every facet of society.”

Remediox’s light-up-eyes became two shattered hearts. “It was.”

Billy bit his tongue. Bemoaning the present (or future, as it were) wasn’t going to change the state of affairs. “So, all these guys are fighting in some competition?” He was grateful for Remediox’s patience.

They were happy to explain. “Not all of them. Some of them are criminals who chose the pits rather than being sentenced to virtual incarceration.” Remediox made a disgusted face, which told Billy everything he needed to know about whatever that meant. “Some of them end up being natural talents, but most of them are just meat for the grinder.”

The color left Billy’s cheeks. “Just like the gladiators in ancient Rome,” he mused. Sergius would probably have something to say about this societal regression.

 Remediox shrugged. “It was all Roko’s idea. Apparently he had a mixed martial arts background, but his career went corpse ‘til he took over Everglade. Now, every fighter is ranked. The one with the most ‘alpha points’ points moves up to the Blood Dome.”

“That’s a fucking stupid name.”

“Which one, alpha points or—”

“BOTH!”

“SHH! Not so loud, Billy. Anyways, Dark Solar’s reign is the longest in blood lucha history. But he might have a worthy challenger in the form of our sexy, long-haired hunk who is—incidentally—walking towards us right now ohmigodherecheomeshe’ssocuteohmygoddddd.”

Distracted, Billy whipped his eyes towards the (slightly limping), sweaty stud slowly high-fiving his way down Billy’s lane.

Billy shook his head and refocused himself. Hunks could wait. “So…this shit is real? Do people, you know—”

“Die!?” Remediox finished for him, cheerfully. “Yeah, all the time. It’s so exciting!”

Billy spoke before thinking. “It’s not,” he said, bluntly. “Remediox, I lived and studied in this city for a few months of my life. Granted, that’s not a wicked long time, but it was long enough to learn that the people here are warm-hearted and considerate and communal. And, above all, they wouldn’t let someone like Roko just in and take over. What the hell happened?”

It was only for a moment, but Remediox’s LED eyes dissipated, showing their ‘real’ eyes, dark, watery, and full. “You did.”

Billy felt time freeze for a second. “W-what do you mean?”

The LED illusion snapped back over Remediox’s orbitals. “Well, not you specifically, Billy. But once young Americans—those ‘digital nomads’—started making this place their playground for cheap, they opened the door for scum like Roko and Everglade. I’m sorry if that hurts your white feelings, but it’s true!”

“My white feelings remain intact,” Billy said, gently holding out his hands.

“It’s more complicated than just that,” Remediox quickly added.

A sick idea crossed Billy’s mind. If Eros was the god of love, and he was now missing, could it be that ‘love’s’ influence upon the world had waned or stagnated? Not that Billy’s magical adventures across time and space had endowed him with any particular knowledge of metaphysics, but if Eros had dropped off—chronologically speaking—during the 1990s, the following three decades Billy had lived through, and the slow crumbling of human kindness, now made a lot of sense in retrospect.

But none of that mattered any more, because all 5’8” feet of sweaty, long haired, muscle-bound luchador was but mere inches away from Billy and Remediox. Billy could practically smell him (and he smelled good). T LOC, still noticeably concealing quite a bit of injury, made small talk with a group of fans before moving onto Billy’s row. 

My goodness he’s so handsome. He could look like a nasty foot under that mask, and he would still be handsome. Billy thought he saw T LOC’s head swivel slightly towards him, then abruptly look away (though it was hard to tell because of his glowing eye-shield).

“LOCCCCC!!!!!” Remediox squealed, doing an infinitely cuter version of his cross-fist pose. Their helmet’s read-out displayed raindrops and sparkles.

T LOC reeled back out of genuine amazement. “Woah, that display is so freak! I love it. Thanks for coming out tonight, friends.”

If ‘freak’ meant ‘cool’ in this time and place, then Billy considered himself the freakiest freak of the week. Billy wanted tell T LOC how badly he enjoyed him, how hard he had been rooting for him, and that he was so happy to see him safe.

But all of that came out as, “S-s-show us your cock!”

Which, incidentally, was not the strangest thing he could have said, judging from both T LOC’s and Remediox’s nonplussed reaction.

T LOC bit his lip and nervously played with his strand of matted hair, twisting it around his fingers—which somehow made him even more endearing. “Uh…that’s only for the meet-and-greet,” he laughed. He nodded to Billy. “Have a good night, folks!”

Show us your cock? Billy now wished he really had been smeared across the Insurgentes Skyway. Billy wanted to scream, cry, and throw up at the same time. Instead, he plastered a painful grin across his face and hoped T LOC would put him out of his misery by DDT’ing him into the cement.

“Oh, ‘sup brother!” T LOC said to some fan two seats to Billy’s left. Just as he passed by Billy, he leaned in closer to him. For a second, Billy wondered if T LOC was about to head butt him into oblivion, providing him a sweet release from embarrassment. Billy smelled the intoxicating mix of perspiration, body odor, and deodorant on the winded wrestler.

It smelled like sex.

T LOC whispered. “There’s a training ring in the back of the club. Meet me there in ten and I’ll show you whatever you want, handsome.” In moving his head closer to Billy, T LOC’s strand of hair grazed the side of Billy’s neck, but it was the all-too-brief touch of the fighter’s palm against his cheek, and the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it blown kiss, that brought Billy from the depths of hell up to the highest heaven.

Billy had shoot his shot and thought it had misfired, only to see it circle across the world and hit his target true.

T LOC moved on. Billy hadn’t. J felt like he’d been super-kicked in the face. “Pinch me,” he said, trying not to drool. “I’m dreaming.”

Remediox piped up. “OK!” They did not hold back.

“OW, FUCK!”