Chapter 7: Family Conflict

Rick carefully pushed his chair out of his way, trying to maintain his focus. That was difficult when his uncle was blasting aura in all directions and snarling at him. Uncle Alan grabbed his own chair and hurled it single-handed, effortlessly sending it against the opposite wall. It bounced off the paneling without leaving a dent and tumbled to the ground.

Despite how nice it was, this room was clearly built to accommodate fights like this. But they hadn't been given any specific rules to this challenge... would the lawyer step in before anyone was seriously injured? The man was sitting back and watching them with a flat gaze as if he just wanted it to be over.

At that moment, Rick had his attention pulled back to the fight. His uncle began moving forward, striking one fist into his palm. "You're going to regret this, Dick."

"That's Richard to you, Uncle."

"It doesn't matter. I'm going to beat you so badly you won't even remember your own name!"

With that, his uncle lunged at him, crossing the room far faster than someone of his bulk should have been able to move. It was an impressive attack, fueled by lucrim with little wasted movement. His uncle wanted to take him off guard with a deciding blow right at the beginning, and it might have worked.

Except his uncle looked slow.

Rick ducked away, easily evading his wild swipes. He remembered that his uncle had always seemed like a monster, unstoppable in the cage fights where he made his money. Yet now he could see that though his uncle was strong, he wasn't the fighter Rick had believed as a child.

Every day at work, Rick had been training against people who outclassed him. Mike and the other Birthrighters had struck much heavier blows. Darin had attacked more aggressively. Lisa was far faster and more dangerous.

Though part of him began to believe that this might be easy, he didn't let himself get overconfident. Instead of trying to throw his uncle to the ground, he instead dodged to the side and then delivered several quick jabs to his uncle's stomach.

All he got was a grunt of pain, then his uncle let out a roar and charged at him. The blow looked clumsy and Rick started to automatically switch to a soft style and use his opponent's force against him.

Yet when he reached to grab his uncle's wrist, his instincts screamed that he was in danger. Rick leapt straight back, narrowly avoiding the sweeping claw that tried to grab him. He ended up skidding back across the carpet all the way until his shoes hit the other wall. His jump had taken him further than he expected - he wasn't entirely used to having this much strength.

Instead of trying to take him out, Uncle Alan stalked sideways, glowering. Rick moved to the side as well, keeping distance between them and considering his options.

He had been right not to try to throw his uncle. Most people viewed western-style pit fighters as brutes who could only punch, but he'd grown up seeing the matches, so he knew the truth: they were very good at grappling. Such a contest would pit his strength directly against his uncle's, which would be the one way he would certainly lose the match. Better to keep him at a distance, where his footwork and skill could bridge the gap.

That gap wasn't as large as he'd expected, though. He estimated that his uncle only had a generation rate of about 31,000 lucrim. Most of it seemed to be invested in an offensive core, so he was definitely dangerous, but he had plenty of openings.

To his surprise, his uncle raised a hand and his aura focused into a ball. It gathered slowly enough that Rick was able to leap aside, and a moment later the sphere of aura flashed out, exploding against the opposite wall. His uncle had been hiding something like that?

Rick was too poor to afford any special techniques or trump cards. But that didn't mean he had no advantages. Now that he had a feel for his uncle's strength, he began advancing more aggressively.

Ducking underneath another aura sphere, he moved in and struck several times at his uncle's face. Light blows, just testing him, and they all bounced harmlessly off his defensive block. That was just bait, since his opponent soon saw his chance and punched at his side.

Uncle Alan's fist connected and Rick winced at the pain... but he only winced. It didn't hurt as badly as the blow from the Birthrighter, and his defenses had grown stronger since then. For just a moment, his uncle looked astonished, never having expected that someone much weaker than him could have such a strong defensive core.

Then Rick's elbow collided with his nose. This time, he didn't hold anything back.

The blow broke his uncle's nose and snapped his neck back, knocking him off his feet. As his uncle hit the ground, Rick didn't let up, kicking at his side again. This blow dealt more damage than his light jabs as he felt his uncle's defensive aura give way. That one would hurt the next morning.

His uncle writhed and clutched his side... but he was faking it. Rick backed off and kept his guard up, preparing for the next round.

"You little shit..." Uncle Alan crawled to his feet, roughly swiping at the blood pouring from his nose. It ran into his teeth, making them a gruesome sight as he clenched his jaw. "You're gonna regret this. I'll beat the shit out of you until you're begging me not to do anything worse than breaking your nose."

"You talk a good talk, Uncle." Rick faked a smile at him and saw the other man's rage.

It wasn't enough to prompt him into another wild charge, though. Instead his uncle raised a hand and gathered another sphere of his aura, except this one didn't fire at him, just spun in place above his hand. A moment later it burst into flames, the power within it increasing substantially.

"It's too late to surrender, boy. You're going to burn."

But as dangerous as the attack was, Rick just kept smiling. When the sphere flew out at him, he leapt away from it, easily avoiding the attack as well as the small explosion that followed.

Of course, that had always been a feint. As soon as he landed near the wall, he saw that his uncle had already released another flaming sphere. There was no way he could dodge this one, but that had never been the plan.

Instead Rick grabbed his chair off the floor and swung it directly at the approaching sphere.

A few flames licked his hands as the two collided, but the chair deflected the explosion away from him. Good, that part had been a risk. But he'd noticed that the room had taken absolutely no damage from their fight, so he'd been willing to bet that the firm reinforced the furniture as well. He risked a glance at the lawyer and saw that the man was perusing papers, apparently entirely ignoring their battle.

"That's a cheap trick." Uncle Alan created a sphere on either side of him, the flames growing more intense. "But it's not going to work again. You can't dodge forever, and then I'm going to burn all that attitude out of you."

"You're wrong." As dangerous as the spheres looked, Rick saw them for what they really were: desperation. His uncle might be strong, but he was usually desperate for money and running low on lucrim. Normally Rick was in equally dire straits, but at the moment he actually had more stamina than his uncle. Everything so far had been an effort to beat him quickly or intimidate him into surrendering.

"Wrong? You think I'm going to take that from a little shit who can't even make it in real fights?"

His uncle hurled both spheres in quick succession and Rick avoided them as best he could. Though he felt a bit scorched, he was still uninjured. More importantly, when his uncle created two more spheres, his control faltered a bit. He was sweating and gasping for breath now, but his eyes still raged.

"You won't win, Uncle." Rick tried not to look smug, since he was sincere: better to end this without injuring anyone and leaving vendettas behind. "You think you can wear me out first, but that isn't going to happen. You should admit you've lost."

"Never!" His uncle hurled the spheres, but his movements had slowed down even more.

Instead of dodging to the side, Rick leapt toward the spheres, passing between them before they could explode.

Suddenly he was within his opponent's guard and his uncle was too tired to counter-attack. Rick staggered him with a punch to the injured spot on his side. Dodged to the side of the predictable haymaker. Dealt a kick to the back of his uncle's leg, making him drop, then lunged straight in with an elbow to the side of his head.

Rick jumped back as his uncle fell, expecting the large man to explode with force and burst from the floor. Yet to his surprise, Uncle Alan lay where he fell. His face was bloody and his eyes were unfocused. Beyond the damage he had suffered, it looked as though he couldn't believe that he had been defeated.

For a while, Rick couldn't believe it either. The adults in his life who were fighters had always seemed unstoppable to him when he was young. And though his uncle had been stronger than him... a generation rate of just 31,000 lucrim was nothing special. For the first time, when Rick looked at his uncle he felt only disgust and a bit of pity.

"If you're all quite done, may we continue?" The lawyer looked up from his papers as if the fight had been nothing more than a bathroom break. "Bring a chair over here and do try not to break it when you do."

The chair didn't seem to have taken any damage from its use in the fight, but Rick still seethed at the insult as he set it up in front of the desk. To the lawyer, both of them probably looked like impoverished brutes squabbling over loose change. Refusing to care about the other man's judgment, Rick just sat down and waited to receive what he was owed.

"This concludes the ritual challenge, and clearly you are the victor. Therefore you will take possession of both Birthright Cores. We would recommend you absorb them immediately and we can help facilitate that process if you like."

Rick stared at the two cores, but they had never been for him. The offer was tempting for Melissa, however, because he wasn't sure if she had the strength to absorb them unaided. "How much would that cost?"

"Oh, it's part of the overall fee. Which your relative will be paying, by the way. When the one who issues the challenge is also the loser, they're required to pay all legal costs for both parties. Provides a disincentive for spurious challenges, you see."

"Right, I understand. But what I'm wondering is if you could implant the cores in someone else?"

"Our gratis service only covers services for you today, but the cores are yours to do with as you wish. You can give them to anyone you want, or use them as paperweights for all I care."

"The person I have in mind is also a-"

Sighing, the lawyer waved his words aside. "We can figure out the details later. First we need to finish bestowing your parents' assets."

Rick stared at the lawyer. "They have more? But you said their property was taken... and surely they didn't have more cores."

"No, they did not. Before they died, your parents took on a number of significant debts, primarily in lucrim." Still with the same flat smile on his face, the lawyer reached down into his briefcase. "Those debts are not discharged by their deaths. As the inheritor of their estate, their debts are yours as well."

"But... you said their belongings were sold to cover them..."

"Some of them."

His hands rose and Rick was already jumping to his feet even before he saw it. The lawyer held a ghostly blue lump in his hands that began to writhe from his fingers. An aura leech. Though Rick had never seen one in person, he'd seen enough of them in cheap crime dramas to know what it could do, and that he needed to get away as soon as possible.

Yet he barely made it two steps to the door before he suddenly found himself slammed back against the wall. The lawyer calmly held him there with one hand, not displaying any visible aura, but radiating overwhelming strength.

If Rick had been fully charged and fresh, he might have been able to strike back or struggle away. But having exhausted so much of his strength against his uncle, and still feeling his burns, it was simply impossible. This opponent was stronger than anyone he'd ever faced, without any obvious weaknesses. To make matters worse, he had the law on his side.

"This isn't fair," Rick said, glaring at the lawyer. "If you had told me their assets included lucrim debts..."

"Yes, we've had difficulty getting anyone to accept estates under such conditions, and one of our core duties is to ensure the repayment of such debts." The lawyer shrugged and raised the leech. "This will only hurt at first."

With that, the lawyer set the leech on his chest over his heart.

It bit down and cold pain lanced through Rick's chest. He managed to choke back his scream, his body thrashing uselessly against the wall. Worse than the pain was that he could immediately feel the leech draining his strength.

Even as he watched in horror, it sank down into his chest, merging with his lucrima. He knew that it would stay there, draining his power until the debt was repaid, but at that moment all he could feel was terror. Not just that an alien being was burrowing into his soul, but that it would stay there, robbing him of the strength he desperately needed to survive and help provide for his sister.

Yet just when he started to think that he had come to grips with his new reality, he saw that the briefcase was floating into the air. The lawyer gave him a false apologetic smile and reached into it again, pulling out another ghostly leech.

"Apologies for the discomfort, but your parents acquired several different debts before they passed..."

Rick struggled with all the strength he had left, but it was too late. When the creature latched onto him, the world slipped away and he fell into the darkness. With his last thoughts he cursed his parents, then there was nothing left.