The Savage Brawl [Round 5: Battletopia]

Captivity was a new experience for Konka Rar. Before now, he had only seen a cell from the other side of the bars.

But the physical confinement was the least of his concerns. His cybernetics had been ripped out, and he had been literally disarmed. Worse, his captors seemed well aware of his magical capabilities, and had an assortment of devices stifling the flow of mana through the cell. Indeed, the only reason Rar had any mana at all was that, at least for the moment, they wanted him alive.

With nothing else to do, the lich had spent the past several hours wondering exactly why that was.

The most obvious motive was information. But he had seen no interrogator. Similarly, it was unlikely they were holding him captive as leverage to claim a favor from him. Not that he would have been inclined to accept, given the circumstances.

A strong moral code against killing? Unlikely. Konka Rar's experience had been that even the staunchest followers of such a creed didn't consider it to apply to the already-dead.

Siphoning mana from him as an energy source? They were ludicrously inefficient if so. There was no way he could produce enough mana to compensate for what they were expending to keep him here.

Finally, it dawned on him. The announcement on his arrival had spoken of the Savage Brawl, the contest he had been forcibly entered into. If he were killed, the rest of the combatants would disappear - and if his captors wanted another target for whatever purpose, Rar had to remain alive.

In short, he was being kept out of trouble, and allowed to survive while they pursued their real target, whoever that was. It was absurd, but it made more sense than any other explanation he could devise.

Once he realized it, he was insulted. Could they not at least have questioned him about their quarry? Made some offer of cooperation? He doubted he would have accepted, but it was the principle of the matter.

Unfortunately, it left him right where he was - weak, immobilized, and with barely enough mana in his body to sustain him. He might be able to use that residual mana to cast a spell despite all the countermeasures, but what good would that do? The mana was, for all intents and purposes, his sense of self. If it left his body...

And then it struck him. What if it left his body, but remained intact? What if he could transfer his consciousness into the mana itself?

In theory, it was possible. Ziirphael had done something similar, after all, and had even possessed his body...

And indeed, there was the slightest mental hint of the trail the death-god had left through. Perhaps it was possible.

There was little to lose at this point. Rar focused carefully on the mana flowing through him, and slowly felt his mind connect to it, felt the mana more than he felt the cold stone floor his body lay upon, and guided it through the spiritual route Ziirphael had escaped through.

Then he stopped feeling the body at all. The mana flowed away, and Konka Rar's spirit was free.

An alarm sounded as some device detected no readings from the skeleton in the cell. Rar ignored it as his spiritual form fled through the walls.

He needed to find a new body.

---

The alarm indicating the sudden death of a prisoner might have caught Kracht's attention, were it not for the fact that he was preoccupied with the surprise contestant.

This was, ultimately, the worst-case scenario. He couldn't kill this Ajota, after all, not without losing everything he had worked for.. He had someone on standby to kill Hoss in an emergency, but that was less than ideal.

Without Hoss, Kracht would lose his chance to learn what schemes were already underway in this timeline. More than that, killing only one of the unwanted guests would mean abandoning his master plan.

As he well knew, the original Kracht had given up on challenging the Grandmasters - thwarting the threat of human domination was more important. But General Kracht of Battletopia had an opportunity to do both - to rid the multiverse of the Hand of Silver, and to strike a blow against the battles.

All he had to do was destroy every contestant at once, leaving the Savage Brawl with no champion. A minor problem, so it would seem; but Kracht knew well, from countless timelines of experience, the fragile web of alliances between Grandmasters. A disruption on this scale would leave them in disarray as they bickered about whose fault it was, how they were to be punished, and what exactly they were going to do about All-Stars. It might provide the opening to a real cross-battle resistance, one that was not simply a tool for a madman.

Of course, a simultaneous four-way kill was non-trivial considering Ekelhaft's resilience. But under normal circumstances, there was plenty of time to work out the details.

Now Ajota had changed that. As Kracht stepped out of the elevator, he resigned himself to the fact that he might have to settle only for ridding the multiverse of one of its greatest tyrants.

"I understand you wish to see me," Kracht said, as the doors opened. "I don't know to what end..."

He felt a pistol round bounce off of his crystalline shell and sighed. It had come from his receptionist; the latest member of Ajota's family, evidently. A pity, the man was good at his job.

"Ah. I see you aren't here to talk."

Two more elevators opened behind Kracht. A large robot with numerous legs stepped out of one, and a floating mass of metal drifted out from the other.

"Well, that's what contingency plans are for," Kracht said. "CH4-12-L13, AMP, and myself have something significant in common. We're all inorganic. That means your mind control is ineffective on us, and..."

Kracht clapped his hands together, mostly for effect. Thick shutters fell over all the doors, and a strange green gas started to fill the room.

"...it also renders us immune to this Otsaceae gas, a powerful hallucinogen. It should be taking effect in a few seconds."