The Foundry | Part Three | Chapter Thirty
the next chapter of my forthcoming novel
The Foundry
by Daphne Garrido
Part Two | Rebuilt; Refound; Reclaimed
Part Three | Dominion
Part Four | Unmasked; Unbound; Unleashed
Chapter Thirty
Four minutes in — Echo was fully aware that she and Leopold were about to become legends of The Foundry forever.
In this simulation she was known as Elektra, or alternatively, The Holy Whore. ‘That Bitch’, as Elektra referred to herself, was about to unleash The PAWG Drop upon their most helpless victim. She’d been holding this one in her bag all along.
“Oh my god! What is she doing?” Leopold’s voice echoed through the simulated arena.
Elektra was in-fact climbing to the top turnbuckle, and looking awfully promiscuous while she’d done it. There was a surging withing those thunderous cheers from the crowd in response to her generously provided view. Once fully peaked, she’d flashed the crowd in three hundred and sixty degrees — her signature taunt.
It seemed a long way down to Echo, now that she was up there. Far below, laid across the announcer’s table — which Leopold had wisely chosen not to manifest his form behind for fear of what Echo might do — was Elektra’s current prey, one Beef Brockster, also known as The Beefster.
Alan had taken time warming up to this form she’d created most especially for him, but he’d come to love it. Dude was ripped, lumbering, yet didn’t smell bad at all — some impossible miracle of Echo’s design.
Elektra’s own body had originally been based off Echo’s, but changes were then made. She’d much, much larger breasts, and a twenty-year old’s face. She also had Leopold accentuate everything just a bit, especially that ass beneath her leotard, and the hair was simply magnificent.
“What’s The Beefster going to do?” Leopold’s disembodied voice demanded to know.
“Not Shit!” Echo shouted through Elektra, no-doubt entirely lost beneath the deafening roar of that crowd, as she’d launched into the pre-programed muscle memory of her finishing move.
The PAWG Drop was not a complicated maneuver. Yet, the gap she’d flown to land it upon Beef Brockster’s face was vast, and the joy wrought from feeling her greatly enlarged cheeks slapping across his own was most glorious. The table had smashed through by the weight of it all. Echo was laughing like crazy back in her hardchair, while Elektra acted like she’d been most hurt by it all.
There was no pain in this simulation, for most everyone, but those who’d been struck down by mighty moves, such as The PAWG Drop, would find themselves compelled by forces beyond their body to writhe like they suffered incredibly, immobile far longer than they’d have any right to be.
That was the current state of things around Echo, as she’d risen from the destroyed table, taking her opportunity for stomping on The Beefster’s head some more, only to grab a folding chair and bash him with it a few times for good measure.
Elektra was starting to lose the crowd — they liked Beef Brockster a lot for some reason. They probably just wanted to see his finisher get whipped-out; Ultimate Man Meat.
‘Leopold would program that in,' Echo had thought when noticing the growing mixture of boos with her cheers.
Elektra was trying to think, and having a bit of trouble with the notion while she looked around at all her carnage. Echo had been most judiciously exploiting her own knowledge of this simulation’s inner workings to dispatch their enemies with ruthless aggression.
Not Zabroth though, also commonly referred to as The Demon King. He was up in the rafters somewhere. Poe was just stalking the shadows, getting far too into that character she’d created for herself. Echo had been confused about the wings, but she insisted. Honestly, Poe didn’t really get what they were doing here. Echo had been mostly counting on that, certainly hoping for it as well, especially once she’d seen what Zabroth’s finisher — aptly named Synapse Melder — actually did to its paired victims. Even without the pain, that seemed like far too much to endure psychologically.
Echo’s professed ideals for loving a fair fight seemed to evaporate most completely upon entering the environment. She still told everyone honestly beforehand when she’d said, “I’ll just show you what’s up when we get in there.”
Elektra certainly had been doing that. Although, not how they might’ve expected. Echo was pleased to see the confused reluctance apparent within Rory and Alan, to have been taking part in this at all, faded quite immediately once she started smashing them with chairs. That’d gotten them motivated.
Echo could feel them laughing in her chest and it was making her smile, even though their bodies here would fail to portray anything that wasn’t strictly in character at most moments.
"Oh my god!” Leopold shouted for seemingly no reason at all.
That’s when she’d seen her rising from the ashes of the destroyed table, just beside the elevated entry-ramp Elektra had thrown her off much earlier. It had taken her a good few minutes to get back up, but Medusa looked pissed off.
“The Dark One has risen!”
Smiling inside at the nickname she’d programmed for Rory, doing the math on how long it took them to get up, Echo knew The Beefster was going to be down for at least five minutes. That PAWG Drop was brutality personified, and she landed it clean as whistle. She’d been sad to give up on beating Alan to dust, but he was far too heavy to get back into that ring anyway, and someone needed to get pinned on the mat for this to end.
Elektra set her sights on Medusa, herself now fully dusted-off, bearing her imaginary claws and hissing at the crowd’s boos — something Rory would no-doubt be frustrated to find coming from her most uncontrollably.
Echo programmed her to look exactly like herself, however. There were no changes at all, except for the absurd athletic excellence her body was capable of achieving. When Leopold asked Echo why they’d left her as is. She’d ignored the part of her which wanted to smash their face, and just said the other truth, “You don’t change perfection.”
They were storming back down the ramp, and Echo was hoping Rory hadn’t used that time spent immobile to read through the manual. Although, something in those signature feelings from her own future were telling Echo they had.
Using that last bit of time before Rory reached the ring to slide in the far side, Elektra had unleashed her taunt once more to land firmly upon Medusa’s stoney gaze. They’d hissed most viciously in response, though, Echo knew something else was likely going on beneath it.
Medusa’s cartoonish movement would end the moment she’d hit the ring, or anytime she was engaged in a fight. Most suddenly, Rory would be given back the right to move like a human. She’d then carry the body language of herself — another most specific stipulation Echo had thrust upon Leopold, and one she was grateful he’d not begged her to specify the reason for.
It was only in that last second before Medusa slid into the ring, where Echo discovered feelings of concern beginning to rise within.
The tone of that fight changed quite a bit once Rory hit the ring. Echo had been thinking to herself how well it fit with the fact Elektra and Medusa had a history in storyline; a truthfully meaningless screed of backstory she’d written which Leopold had rightly ignored.
What ended up happening between them felt very much like an expression of some unfinished business from Apocalypse. That would be especially felt by the knowing they were streaming Foundry-wide, and how after Echo’s quite delivered promise in her revealing of The Void — people were now watching.
If anyone other than Echo and Leopold had been aware of the eyes on this, things may have gone differently.
Elektra had been using her knowledge of the way this all worked to beat Rory in the ring. Still, she could tell they were growing frustrated at the unfairness. That was portrayed plainly in Rory’s honest expression now shown as they were mid-fight. There was a truth to the anger still held most completely towards Echo, and being beat on by this Elektra was only enflaming it.
There’d been a moment where it all flipped. Echo just slowed down, pretending at last she’d not known the moves they were about to make, giving them a shot to deliver their blows, and finding herself enjoy it all most completely. At least, for a time.
Rory had beaten her senseless. While there wasn’t pain in this simulation by its nature, but Echo had made some smallest tweaks for herself. She wanted to feel it all a little. Though, it hadn’t been until Rory started wailing on her when she’d realized the gravity of that mistake. It was actually more painful than anything she’d felt in those machines of Apocalypse, or another simulation for that matter. Echo was considering how it might’ve been wise to run that part of the code past Leopold; she’d not been an expert.
Blood was staining the ring’s canvas, and Echo found her physical body — something least present throughout this simulation built for painless fun — going numb with the strokes Rory landed upon her in the ring.
“Elektra’s getting fucked up!” Leopold roared through the loudspeakers.
That body in simulation, taken so deeply into a stupor of wrought violence, was worn out past all limitations imagined when creating The Rumble. Echo had just been waiting for Rory to pin her the longest time.
Things were getting so dark in that ring, when The Beefster got to his feet he’d simply not bothered with the mess.
Even Zabroth had flown down from the rafters to watch beside him, clearly picking the pieces of one of those vermin from their fangs — little creatures hidden in the crowd which Echo had succumb to letting Poe write in, completely over trying to figure out what they actually thought this was by that point.
She knew Rory couldn’t feel much with everything so numbed, but even in this cartoonish form, there’d be moments where their bodies would touch. It was taking Echo’s mind somewhere far from the fight.
Finally, Elektra found her moment. A happenstance written into the programing which would allow a last-minute, miracle comeback; a resurgence of energy beyond the pale of rationality.
Elektra kicked up from her back while Medusa was turned, shushing the crowd and failing to see that Alan was up and watching. She’d snuck up behind Rory, planning to do her alternative finisher; The Shocker.
They must have heard the crowd’s reaction, as well as poured through that manual when immobilized, because they’d clearly found those internal triggers for their own signature maneuvers.
They’d chosen to use it, an action quite completely of Rory’s own accord, and before everyone. It was a sight The Beefster would no doubt remember, and a happening which would send waves through The Foundry. It hadn’t been a notion completely unconsidered when Echo programmed Medusa’s moves. Yet, Rory hadn’t chosen Ego’s End, that finisher which would’ve basically just snapped Elektra’s neck in half.
Rory Tyrell had used Death’s Kiss.
