LJIdol 9.29 - Gauntlet
The wet smack of fist against flesh and bone.
That's all it'd ever been for the Brute.
She had a name. Nobody used it because the moment her third grade teacher called her a brute, it stuck and she lived up to it.
She wasn't exactly an A student and honestly didn't do more than she had to do to get by because she had one thing up on the rest of the class: she could fight. She could fight well. Very well, in fact.
So well that, honestly, it was only ever the new kids who ever started anything with her. They weren't the only kids she fought but those were the only ones who ever tried to start anything with her.
Her parents were proud beyond words. Lacking the funds to pay for college for their little brute, they were ecstatic to find that she had a chance in the Spencer Exams. Oh, certainly, they did their best to encourage the Brute's other, non-fighting-based interests (she enjoyed the feeling of breaking through math problems, found the step-by-step of it all remarkably soothing) but by and large, they just encouraged her to find the hardest fighters, men and women thrice her size. She didn't always win. But she won often enough. There was a waiting list of would-be badasses eager to prove themselves against her before she was sixteen.
She had a thought that she'd like to be a mathematician. Maybe someone working in the statistics bureau or doing big important research. At any rate, she'd go to a big school and she'd bloody well find a thing to do and a way to get the degree. It would be a lot of work but it was getting old, all the fighting, and it wasn't as if it wasn't a lot of work hurting people, too.
But she was good at it and being one of the ones to pass the Spencer Exams meant a lot of things changed for you. It was the king of all scholarships, a pile of opportunity, a chance to hobnob with the best and brightest and make connections no merit scholarship could muster: 1600 SAT scores and a 4.5GPA filled with advanced classes and a pile of worthy extracurricular activities didn't have anything on being the person who made it through the Spencers.
At least that was what she'd always heard. That was what they promised her.
The man on the TV in the locker room was excited for the Exams and waxed lyrical about them, about the human drama, about creating real merit, about the ratings and profits this year's event was sure to generate and how very, very assured and comfortable the life of the winner would be.
She'd heard other kids talking about it. About how fucked up it all was. About how it was dog-eat-dog and a good way to escape the open secret that the only way the leaders would let any of their ilk in was as freaks, as oddities, as monsters. It was a mishmash of ugly, degrading metaphors. Bread and circuses and cats and dog-eating-dogs and lions and Christians and worse. The Brute didn't feel like any of those things. She was just the Brute and if she wanted to win because nobody could imagine anything better.
The man on the TV in the locker room didn't rate her chances. Her town wasn't much for fighters and her parents had relied on her natural skill at violence to push her forward, nurtured it like a flower where other parents, parents with more money or connections, hired professional fighters, people who could teach the necessary finesse. On the other hand, if her parents were betting on her like they said they were and she won, well, at least they could get a little something back besides one fewer mouth to feed.
The bell rang and the locker room, silent but for the TV, emptied. Row after row of her schoolmates and contemporaries who had also traveled from all over the region for a chance. Some of them walked tall, with confidence. They'd probably been trained or were too stupid to know that if you stuck out, you got hammered down. Most approached the gate with a solemnity befitting the occasion: they weren't playing a game, they were taking exams which would decide her future.
The lot of them were herded into the center of the arena, crowd roaring, lights flashing as all sorts of cameras recorded the spectacle. Some of the favourites went up on the big screens around the arena. The Brute was not one of them.
She was sorry she recognized as many people in the mass of faces as she did. One way or another she wouldn't be seeing them again.
"Five."
That hurt her.
"Four."
But in three seconds, the Exams would begin and she would be tasked with
"Three."
taking down as many of them as she could before she tired and one of the others
"Two."
brought her down or worse. She didn't relish the fact that the only way to win was for them to lose (and lose so much)
"One."
but she needed a future beyond her tiny hometown fame as a good fighter, as a coulda-been.
"Begin!"
The crowd roared, a sound quickly drowned out by the wet smack of fist against flesh and bone.
That's all it'd ever been for the Brute.
She had a name. Nobody used it because the moment her third grade teacher called her a brute, it stuck and she lived up to it.
She wasn't exactly an A student and honestly didn't do more than she had to do to get by because she had one thing up on the rest of the class: she could fight. She could fight well. Very well, in fact.
So well that, honestly, it was only ever the new kids who ever started anything with her. They weren't the only kids she fought but those were the only ones who ever tried to start anything with her.
Her parents were proud beyond words. Lacking the funds to pay for college for their little brute, they were ecstatic to find that she had a chance in the Spencer Exams. Oh, certainly, they did their best to encourage the Brute's other, non-fighting-based interests (she enjoyed the feeling of breaking through math problems, found the step-by-step of it all remarkably soothing) but by and large, they just encouraged her to find the hardest fighters, men and women thrice her size. She didn't always win. But she won often enough. There was a waiting list of would-be badasses eager to prove themselves against her before she was sixteen.
She had a thought that she'd like to be a mathematician. Maybe someone working in the statistics bureau or doing big important research. At any rate, she'd go to a big school and she'd bloody well find a thing to do and a way to get the degree. It would be a lot of work but it was getting old, all the fighting, and it wasn't as if it wasn't a lot of work hurting people, too.
But she was good at it and being one of the ones to pass the Spencer Exams meant a lot of things changed for you. It was the king of all scholarships, a pile of opportunity, a chance to hobnob with the best and brightest and make connections no merit scholarship could muster: 1600 SAT scores and a 4.5GPA filled with advanced classes and a pile of worthy extracurricular activities didn't have anything on being the person who made it through the Spencers.
At least that was what she'd always heard. That was what they promised her.
The man on the TV in the locker room was excited for the Exams and waxed lyrical about them, about the human drama, about creating real merit, about the ratings and profits this year's event was sure to generate and how very, very assured and comfortable the life of the winner would be.
She'd heard other kids talking about it. About how fucked up it all was. About how it was dog-eat-dog and a good way to escape the open secret that the only way the leaders would let any of their ilk in was as freaks, as oddities, as monsters. It was a mishmash of ugly, degrading metaphors. Bread and circuses and cats and dog-eating-dogs and lions and Christians and worse. The Brute didn't feel like any of those things. She was just the Brute and if she wanted to win because nobody could imagine anything better.
The man on the TV in the locker room didn't rate her chances. Her town wasn't much for fighters and her parents had relied on her natural skill at violence to push her forward, nurtured it like a flower where other parents, parents with more money or connections, hired professional fighters, people who could teach the necessary finesse. On the other hand, if her parents were betting on her like they said they were and she won, well, at least they could get a little something back besides one fewer mouth to feed.
The bell rang and the locker room, silent but for the TV, emptied. Row after row of her schoolmates and contemporaries who had also traveled from all over the region for a chance. Some of them walked tall, with confidence. They'd probably been trained or were too stupid to know that if you stuck out, you got hammered down. Most approached the gate with a solemnity befitting the occasion: they weren't playing a game, they were taking exams which would decide her future.
The lot of them were herded into the center of the arena, crowd roaring, lights flashing as all sorts of cameras recorded the spectacle. Some of the favourites went up on the big screens around the arena. The Brute was not one of them.
She was sorry she recognized as many people in the mass of faces as she did. One way or another she wouldn't be seeing them again.
"Five."
That hurt her.
"Four."
But in three seconds, the Exams would begin and she would be tasked with
"Three."
taking down as many of them as she could before she tired and one of the others
"Two."
brought her down or worse. She didn't relish the fact that the only way to win was for them to lose (and lose so much)
"One."
but she needed a future beyond her tiny hometown fame as a good fighter, as a coulda-been.
"Begin!"
The crowd roared, a sound quickly drowned out by the wet smack of fist against flesh and bone.