Most were one trick ponies like the gorgon girl. Once someone knew the trick it wasn’t likely to work again.

I met the girl again when I was 18. I saw her get carried out of the ring after her first real fight. It was an unarmed fight, but still one of the more brutal ones I’d seen. The only advantage she’d had in the first blood fights was that they ended quick after blood was drawn. Even in those, once word got around, people started sending fighters in with a leather arm wrap to catch her first swing. She was two years younger than me, just 16. Apperently she’d been on a loosing streak and Small-Hat-Fat-Man bet heavily on her dying in that fight. She was disposable. Certainly not gonna get the treatment she needed to survive her injuries from anyone in the underworld. Useless people aren’t tolerated down here. They can’t be afforded. Several of her snake’s heads had been ripped off in the fight, thrown to the crowd to get the bloodlust boiling. At the very least I could see a broken arm, broken nose, possibly a fractured eye socket, and probably several other significant injuries from the beating she took.

“She probably doesn’t even wanna live anymore.” I’d thought to myself as she was drug out back.

“That soft sides gonna get you killed one day”, was the only thing Jinsie said to me when I showed up on the doorstep, out of breath from hauling her the mile and a half home. The same thing she’d said when I walked in with a half drowned kitten years ago. Now when she heard I’d given up half the winnings from that night in exchange, she had a lot more to say and some pointed jabs to my wounded shoulder. Needless to say my rations got halved and it wasn’t just Nuclear Warhead (the now grown kittens name, aka Nuke) who was giving me the cold shoulder. Despite Jinsie’s complaining, just like Nuke and our rodent problem, the girl grew to be useful. She didn’t have a name, so she named herself Medda. And just like Nuke, Medda also showed an affinity for Jinsie, completely ignoring the fact that I’d been the one to save them, not that I’m bitter or anything…

She needed time. I was a fighter, one of the people who had made her life a living hell. She didn’t get a soft start like me. Born to a gorgon mother she’d been sold as a pureblood gorgon. Her buyer threw her away after it came to light she was only half gorgon and the other half was human when her snakes started dying at the age of 4. She was on the street for years. Time can be tricky to count down here. The 9th baron had picked her up in a ditch one day. She thought she’d found someone to save her. Fed and sleeping on a blanket, more kindness than she’d ever know. After she was healthy enough to stand he started training her, harsh, brutal, mutating her snakes to give her a natural weapon. She’d started in the Arena at the age of 8. When she hit 16 she qualified for the real fights. She was pitted against a gargoyle. Some 20 year old looking to get his kicks out before going back to the surface where stuff like this is illegal. He’d been cruel. She used the only trick she knew. The fangs of her snakes got stuck, wrapped around his arm. Turning his knuckles into stone gave him the equivalent of brass knuckles. With no way to run or get away he’d beat her until he was tired. There’s very few rules around Arena fights, especially in the Eldridge Arena. The bloodiest fights happened there, and the most cash got thrown around too.

Medda should have turned cruel, should have broke, but she was stronger than that. She stayed kind, she hurt when she lost a fight but hurt twice as bad when she won. A soft person in a cruel place, the only result was a broken heart. Slowly she got to a better. Her injuries healed, at least the physical ones. She started trying to earn her keep. Jinsie was getting older, the fact that a former fighter was still alive at the age of 56 was astounding. Most fighters don’t make it to retirement, and those that do, usually died shortly after. Either sore losers from their past or betters who’d lost money on them. Medda took over most of the house work and caring for us. She was still wary of me but didn’t run and hide when I’d get home bloodied and battered.

Two years later I came home to a broken down door. Jumping down most of the stairs and half falling half running down the last of them, my heart dropped at the scene before me. Jinsie was lying, a gash running from her left ear down to the corner of her right jaw, unconscious. Medda, as small as she was, lay over Jinsie, trying to shield her, knife held in her trembling hands. The two rats that had come in, knowing it was just the two of them, hadn’t counted on the half gorgon girl putting up a fight. They’d got the drop on Jinsie, but Medda had left a few marks of her own on them. One was trying to stop the bleeding from his wrist and the other was ignoring the gnash on his leg while brandishing a scythe.

Pulling my dirk from its sheath on my lower back, I end the life of the rat who was closest. The blade met the bone of his spine before I ripped it out of the front of his neck. He was no longer concerned about the bleeding from his wrist. The second swung around, bringing the scythe down in a shining ark with both hands, knocking the dirk from my hand and driving the scythe into my shoulder. I fell back, blade ripping out of me. He locked eyes with me and I realized with horror, he was half basilisk. The slitted eyes, sharp fangs, scales and the fact that I couldn’t move with our eyes locked gave him away He prepared for another swing, blade coming straight down from above. I was dead, I had no way to block it.

“No!!” The rat paused for a critical moment, not able to swing the blade forwards with Medda holding on to it. He made the mistake of taking his eyes off mine. Medda was the variable they weren’t expecting. They’d probably been watching this place for days. They hadn’t recognized her as a gorgon since she wrapped up her snakes. The fact that she was half gorgon, a cousin of the basilisk, meant his stare didn’t work on her, not only had she held out till I got here, she saved my life by jumping in. Grabbing my dirk from the floor I drove it up through his ribs into his heart. Staring at the handle of the blade buried in his side, the basilisk rat dropped the scythe.

The fact that I’d just killed someone, along with massive blood loss and the beating I’d taken in the arena that day, hit me like a truck. I fell back, landing on my ass on the floor, back against the wall, head lolling forwards and eyes trying to look to Medda and Jinsie. I’d never taken life before. I had yet to cross that line in the arena. I had little doubt eventually it would happen but I wasn’t prepared, I had felt his pulse on the handle of the dirk, seen the glaze over take his eyes, heard the rattle of breath leave his lungs for the last time as he slumped over. He wouldn’t be getting back up, by my hand he wouldn’t be getting back up.

“Demo!”, Medda rushed forwards, pressing her hands to my shoulder, trying to stop the bleeding. I smiled, my eyes threatening to close. She wasn’t flinching away, but she was crying. Crying for me?

“Hey, it’s ok, it’ll be ok, yeah? All good…” I managed to mumble before passing out.

I woke up two days later. And that was how we found out Medda’s blood had healing properties when put into direct contact with a patients blood or ingested. Her hands had been cut on the scythe’s blade when she grabbed it and her blood had entered my bloodstream when she tried to stop my bleeding. Less than a month later, and my wound was completely healed. Unfortunately it didn’t work on herself so she spent the next month and a half with her hands bandaged up. It was a rare gorgon trait to have healing blood. So rare most people had never heard of it. Jinsie had heard rumors from where she’d come from, wherever that was. She never felt like sharing her past it seemed. If Small-Hat-Fat-Man had know about it he never would have let Medda go. It certainly wasn’t the stuff of legend, it couldn’t heal a mortal wound, couldn’t even completely heal a proper cut, but it would significantly slow bleeding and accelerate tissue regeneration which was enough to call it life saving. It also helped with pain control. Natural morphine.

As much as I protested, Medda decided this was her way to help earn. Jinsie didn’t have anything to say about it. Money is money, and how we got it didn’t make much of a difference to Jinsie. We were barely surviving off my arena fights. Medda worked on refining the ‘healing potions’ she was going to try and sell. We couldn’t let it slip that it was her blood. Everyone would come for her, the barons included.

She found that the serum of her blood was where the properties resided. Nuke kept her well supplied with mice to experiment on. She got supplies to draw her own blood, a pricy purchase but Jinsie called it an investment. All though she’d never admit, I know Jinsie was against the idea of Medda cutting herself to fill vials. I drew a firm line when I came home to Medda trying to decide which finger to take off to see if bone marrow or tissue would help increase the healing properties. I was surprised to see her pout as I yelled at her, no flinching, no cowering. She’d found her power again. But damn it, that didn’t make it ok for her to go lopping off her fingers. She sulked for three days until Jinsie came up with the bright idea of trying basilisk bone. After all, it was easily accessible, being buried under one of the overhangs just outside of the main strip.

After several months of playing around with the recipe and quickly becoming our resident mad scientist, Medda was ready to start selling. The issue arose when we realized that everyone in the underworld is naturally severally suspicious and stingy…

We needed this to work. Jinsie wasn’t able to work, I was winning more and more fights as I entered my 20s, but it wasn’t enough to support three people. I was a lanky build as a teen. I had reach but no power to throw behind it. I started putting on muscle and focusing on refining my style, playing to my strengths, actually dodging instead of running in blind and using my face as a shield. I wouldn’t call myself particularly handsome, nothing compared to the red district workers, but I started considering the fact that I had enough scars on my face just from my first fight with Medda alone, and maybe, I could try and preserve some chance of getting a girl in the future. Stupid, I know. People don’t settle down in the underground. Relationships are transactional, used to get power or pleasure, empty, meaningless.