The Fault in Steel
BlackSand Warrior Gauntlet
He entered with no fanfare. The others had songs. Gestures. Salutes. Justice Hacker of the Dawn just walked.
Steel boots over black sand. The arena crowd thundered above him, a wall of cheers rising like surf. To him, it was the sound of meat grinding through an old machine. Distant, meaningless.
The blue chainsaw dangled at his side, motor off. For now.
His armor gleamed. Skylord plate, polished clean. Forged in cloudsteel, reinforced along the ribs where the stab wounds had come closest in the last fight. You could still see the notch where someone’s spear had slipped under the left breastplate. The repair wasn’t perfect.
He didn’t care.
A dark scar carved down the side of his face, from temple to jaw, trailing into the space where an ear used to be. The medics had offered a rune-healing. He’d declined. Some things needed to stay raw.
He crossed the center of the pit and stopped. Didn’t look up at the crowd. Didn’t glance at Jabir’s suite above. Just stared across the battlefield.
Edge Eradicator of Muscle Mountain was already standing there. Massive. Motionless. A two-handed sword slung across his back like a railway beam.
The man, if you could call him that, looked like someone had built him in a forge made of lightning and arrogance. Chrome skin under black leathers. No smile. No signal of thought behind the eyes. Just glowing red focus.
A machine.
Justice tilted his head. He’d seen war-machines before. But this one had a face sculpted from ambition, not utility. A pretty lie. That made it worse.
He clenched the handle of his chainsaw. Still no engine rumble. Still no threat. Just the buzz.
Not of the blade. Of memory.
A child, crouched under a table, watching his mother scream. A dagger. Not even clean. The kind of blade you only use on the defenseless. A voice laughing. A man’s voice. A splash. Red. Then quiet.
The scar on his face began to itch. It always did before blood.
He brought the chainsaw up, resting it on his shoulder. Still silent.
Across the pit, Edge took a step forward.
"Combatants, ready yourselves!" Verus’s voice, like a whip crack in the sky. The crowd howled.
Justice didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. But slowly, one knuckle at a time, his fingers began to curl.
Click. Click. The motor primed.
The chainsaw shuddered to life with a low, hellish purr.
No flash. No roar. Just a whisper of a storm waiting to land.
Then, Justice did something strange. He closed his eyes.
For one breath. Not to pray. To remember what he was fighting to avoid becoming.
The chainsaw grumbled against his shoulder like a waiting dog.
Across from him, the terminator stepped forward. Edge Eradicator of Muscle Mountain, arms wide, sword drawn in a perfectly vertical line, like he was measuring the arena for destruction.
Justice didn’t move.
He let the hum of the crowd fade. Listened for the deeper rhythm: footwork, distance, wind.
The chainsaw purred in his grip, teeth spinning slower than normal. He liked it that way. Quiet. Not a scream, but a whisper. A warning.
The sword came down in a diagonal cut, too early, too slow.
Justice leaned back just enough for it to pass inches from his chest, then twisted to the side. Edge’s follow-through carved into the black sand, scattering dust like a kicked tomb.
There was no breath. No grunting. No warning. Just machine.
Edge’s eyes flickered, scanning for recalibration. His posture was too perfect. Engineered, not trained. Each step made with intention, but none with instinct.
Justice moved in low.
He didn’t swing the chainsaw. He pressed it forward like a punch, catching Edge in the thigh. Sparks. Flesh met blade with a bite.
But no blood.
Beneath the synthetic skin, something denser flexed. Not bone. Metal, or something worse.
Justice pivoted again, stepping behind him, dragging the chain backward as he moved, carving a groove down the back of Edge’s hamstring.
No stumble. Only reprogramming.
Edge turned with full mechanical efficiency, elbow-first. A piston-powered blow.
Justice ducked, slid under it, and clipped the outer ribs with a rising chainsaw arc. More sparks. Still no scream.
This wasn’t a man. It was prophecy in steel.
Verus’s voice rang from the coliseum lip: "A test of endurance, ladies and leeches! Who breaks first... the man or the machine?"
The crowd roared. Justice didn’t hear them.
His heart had already slowed. It always did, once the first strikes landed.
Edge tried to flank, coming in at a mirrored angle. Too clean. Justice stepped through it. Chest to chest. Absorbing the hit with the curve of his shoulder plate.
The chainsaw flashed once, scraping under Edge’s right arm.
This time, the machine stepped back.
The tiniest twitch in the eyes. Not pain. Recalibration.
"Critical input," it said, voice like cracked granite. "Adjusting pattern."
Justice said nothing. He lunged forward again.
The chainsaw’s tip buzzed like a wasp, hungry for nerve.
Edge raised the sword too high. A mistake.
Justice dropped to a knee and sliced low. Ankle to knee, sparks dancing like fireflies.
"Glory or grave?" Verus bellowed. The crowd shouted back: "Blood or oblivion!"
Still, Justice said nothing.
But deep inside the machine, something was beginning to tick.
Edge didn’t bleed, but he bent. The cut to his leg didn’t disable, it disrupted. The machine adjusted again, faster this time, angling his sword in tighter arcs, compensating for delay.
But Justice was no faster. He didn’t need to be. He wasn’t trying to win.
He was trying to survive.
The chainsaw roared as he whipped it overhead in a broad feint.
Edge read it, stepped back. Just in time to miss the rising knee that slammed into his metal-plated chest.
The collision sent a clang through the arena like a dropped bell.
Justice stumbled, winded by the impact himself, but didn’t let it show. The crowd saw violence. They never saw fatigue. That was part of the art.
He flicked a glance up at the stands.
No one important. Just Jabir. Watching. Always watching.
He looked back to Edge.
"Your oxygen levels are unstable," the machine intoned. "Heart rate: rising. Analyzing blood loss..."
Justice threw the chainsaw. Not as a weapon, but a deception.
Edge’s head snapped toward the blur of steel and whirring teeth. That half-second of attention was all Justice needed.
He was on the machine again, fists wrapped around the hilt of Edge’s own sword. He drove his shoulder under the android’s arm and heaved.
The blade clattered into the sand.
Edge didn’t hesitate. He retracted a concealed spike from his wrist.
Too late.
Justice already had the chainsaw again.
With a sudden vertical arc, he cleaved the spike off, and for the first time, the machine twitched like it had felt something real.
"The man fights like a ghost!" Verus barked from above. "Speak, warrior! Claim your name!"
Justice didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
Instead, he dropped the chainsaw low and revved it once, slowly. It gurgled and spat red smoke. Oil, heat, memory.
The blade hovered an inch from Edge’s synthetic throat.
"Victory," the machine said, "is not based on style."
Justice leaned in.
No words. Only his breath.
Steady. Controlled. The kind of breath that doesn’t make it past a sob.
Behind the plate armor and chainsaw, he was still that child. Watching a mother bleed out while cowards watched.
No one had helped her.
But now? The world would watch him.
Edge raised a hand as if to calculate, but the chainsaw’s scream cut the motion short.
No speech. No cry. Just the silence of a final movement.
Edge’s head didn’t fall clean. There was too much resistance in the frame. Too many locks, redundant alloys. The chainsaw bit through the first three inches like butter, then caught.
A lesser fighter might have panicked. Hesitated. Looked to the crowd.
Justice didn’t. He stepped in. Planted a foot against the automaton’s thigh. Pressed.
The teeth of the saw found torque.
The machine spasmed. Electricity danced in short, pale arcs across its plating. One eye went dark.
"Excessive force!" someone from the stands yelled. Another voice countered: "Let him finish!"
He didn’t hear them.
He heard the scream his mother never got to finish. He heard the silence of the guards who watched her die.
The saw broke through the final vertebrae. Sparks flew.
Edge’s body dropped to its knees, then folded sideways like a machine being shut down in reverse.
Justice stood over the wreckage, chainsaw grumbling low in his hands like a caged beast.
And still, no victory cry.
He didn’t look up. Not yet.
He turned, slowly, and made his way to the fallen sword. He picked it up. Not to keep it, but to return it.
He laid the blade gently across Edge’s body, positioning it with both hands. A quiet offering.
It wasn’t mercy. It was recognition.
Edge had been a weapon, nothing more. And weapons, Justice understood, didn’t choose what they killed.
The crowd surged in its seats, screams flooding the BlackSand Arena.
"The winner... Justice Hacker of the Dawn!" Verus’s voice cracked like thunder.
Justice didn’t bow. Didn’t wave. He simply walked toward the tunnel, his chainsaw humming behind him like a loyal animal, dragging a thin red mist behind him.
The guards stepped back to let him pass.
One reached for a coin pouch. Justice slapped it away with the flat of the chainsaw and kept walking.
Bribes were for before the match.
Now? Now, he’d been seen.
Behind him, the medics approached Edge’s body. A few engineers, too. Some tech in the crowd whispered about reactivation. Others bet on salvage.
Justice didn’t care.
Dead was dead.
Unless it wasn’t.
But even if Edge did come back, he would remember one thing: Not the chainsaw. Not the pain. But the silence.
Entered by: 0xB9D1…4eA5
