"How could they cut me off?" Max Thought in frustration as he stood in the entrance line to Club Myst.

He had gotten the call yesterday. His parents, usually so supportive and loving, we're apparently displeased with that fact that Max had been in NYC for a little over a month now and had not secured a real job in that time. He had tried to explain his gig at the theater and his nights spent dancing for clubs but it just didn't appease them. They had given him the ultimatum...come home or pay your own rent.

So with a net income of 250 dollars for the month and rent due next week Max was looking to make some cash. That was why he was here tonight. He had heard that this club hosted dance battles for some serious cash to anyone who could throw down.

He had come ready, wearing his flashy neon green kicks, his jeans and fanny pack, a sleeveless form fitting shirt, and a flat billed neon hat to match his shoes. He finally entered the club and saw the line led to a guy standing behind the counter in the reception area. On Either side of him were two doors that led into the club proper. Max approached him.

"Participating or spectating?" The man asked, his voice a growl.

"Participating." Max grinned.

"200 dollar buy in." The man replied.

Good Lord! He had heard of having registration fees but this was ridiculous. He would just have to do his best tonight and be sure to take home the winnings. He handed the man the last of his cash. The man took his name and gave him a number "12"

"Take the door to my left, stay on the first floor, and good luck kid." The guy grumbled.

Max followed the man's directions and entered the club proper. Myst was pretty tame for most clubs Max had been to. The second floor consisted of a wrap around balcony that overlooked the first floor. There was a stage with a small booth for a DJ and a giant screen. It currently had a ever growing roster of names on it. Max stood on the first floor,which was a completely empty dance floor, and waited.

"Participants clear the floor." He heard announced.

Max skirted to the edge of the room and stood. The DJ, for some reason wearing a suit, walked out and began to announce.

"Welcome all. Tonight we have a full house of contenders ready to go so let's remind everyone of the rules. The buy in tonight was $200 so for each round you make it through you double your money up to five rounds and a total of $6400." The announcer explained.

Max almost fell over. That was some serious cash.

"After the five rounds you are considered a night Champion and may go upstairs and enjoy the fun with all the other guests. Rounds are either to submission, or incapacitating your opponent. Let's begin."

Incapacitating? The screen began to change as a name randomizer chose two people. Max looked around for the first time at his fellow competitiors. Some were openly mutants, others were dressed in various martial arts garb. Some had popped in mouth guards.

Max swore. He had been such an idiot. This wasn't a dance battle contest, this was a battle battle contest. He had to get out of there.

"Versus combatant number 12 "Max"." The announcer said.

Max felt eyes around him lock onto him. He felt a push and was knocked forward into the makeshift ring.

"Hey guys, I think there was some kind of a misunderstanding here. I thought this was a da." He tried to explain.

A bell rang somewhere and Max heard the crowd yelling and cheering. He looked up to see his opponent.

"What's have I gotten myself into?" He cried out.

He was an obvious mutant, but he would be the absolute last person to tell you that. He was 6'2", with lime green skin and a definite 'alien' vibe. Not Ridley Scott's "Alien", though that would have been cool. More like the tall green or gray man from Mars alien. He had two fingers and a thumb on each hand, and if you'd check under his shoes, you'd see that he had one big toe and one little one on his feet. They were like the turtles' feet in the live-action teenage mutant ninja turtles movie from the 90s. He had red eyes with no visible dot in the center, and no visible nose, just two vertically-slitted nostrils. No ears. No hair. He did have antennae, though. Two nice long black springy ones jutting backwards out of the top of his head. He was smiling as he stepped into the ring. You could tell because his teeth looks jagged like a zipper, and were very charming and white. If you really really focused hard on the palms of his hands, you might see a line like a scar across each one, but you'd need to be close. And what good would this information do you, anyways? And since you're dying to know, how was he dressed?

He was dressed like a pimp, in a jet black suit and slacks with a yellow dress shirt beneath that, and golden buttons across the breast and cuffs, with a honey brown tie on top. Black belt. Black shoes. It did not fit in with what the rest of the folks were wearing. But then, he hardly fit in with the rest of the folks, seeing as he was an alien (from outer space), and many of them were just humans and mutants. So there.

Kineta had told him about this club. That sort of broke the first rule, but that was okay. She had told him he had been practicing long enough, and needed to get his toes dirty. Or hands. Whatever. For being Cybele's sister, she certainly didn't seem anything like her. While Cybele was calm, cool, and collected, Kineta was brash and impulsive. She came off cocky, but she overcompensated for her muscle by acting girly whenever she could. It was a distinctly different feel than her third sister, Megara, had given off. That woman was cold, smug, and somehow kind. She hadn't wanted him to do this. She had wanted him to wait. He had wanted to impress the Cerberus sisters, though. So here he was.

His opponent looked like he had stepped out of a boy band support group meeting. Curly brown hair. Those clothes. That hat. Looks could be deceiving. That was part of the reason he had dressed the way he'd dressed. It wasn't like he was going to dirty anything other than his shoes.

The bell rang. He ran. Sweep the leg, young padawan. He rushed in to try and take the boy's feet out from under him, shouting "Let's end this, fast!"

The man was green? Max had only a moment to take in his opponent as the man rushed at him with speed that didn't seem quite right. He looked like some kids twisted nightmare version of the Martian from Looney Toons. It would have been a frightening visual if not for the suit the guy was wearing.

Max almost shouting a submission then and there. He hadn't signed up to fight anyone, least of all a fellow mutant who had come here ready for combat. The only thing that stopped him, petty as it was, was that quitting meant he'd be broke. If he won he'd make a little money and with the bull his parents were pulling he needed it.

The green man yelled at him as he swept a leg at Max's feet. Max's surprise at the situation had prevented him from putting up any defense and he felt the man's leg swipe across his ankles and took him off his feet.

Anyone else would have fallen and been at the man's mercy. Luckily Max had quick reflexes and a helpful little mutation. He leaned into the fall, nullifying the gravity around him as he did. Instead of falling Max went horizontal, floating in the air perpendicular to his opponents midriff.

The man had been right he needed to finish this fast. He was floating for only a fraction of a second before he once again shifted gravity around him, this time augmenting it's pull to the side. He flipped backward (swinging his body back in a horizontal flip to anyone watching) and swung a leg at the man's left side, the strength of the blow boosted by the additional pull of the now helpful gravity.

As his leg approached his foe he prepared a nasty trick. When his kick collided, in the moment of contact, he would throw a bubble of double Earth's gravity around the man. That slow him down and fighting under increased gravity would wear down a person faster than usual.

All he had to do was land this kick.

The kick hit with a satisfying sound, and he fully expected to be able to follow it up with another when the guy hit the ground. Such things were but dreams, it seemed. Instead of falling, he levitated, and put that idea in the ground. The guy moved around the area, levitating like a paper clip in a magnetic field. Elliott didn't drop his guard, just because something ridiculous had happened. Who would?

The kick came towards his left. It came fast enough that he probably couldn't have easily dodged it with a backwards leap or a side step. So he did neither. As the kick came in on the horizontal, he moved vertically up into the air in a standing jump to let the kick fly past. As he did, a pair of hand tongues shot out upwards to catch on some metal fixtures on the ceiling. Then, he swung a power kick at the guy's center of mass.

The guy could fly or something. Maybe gravity? Maybe magnetism? He wasn't sure yet. There were a lot of possibilities. All of them could be dangerous. But then, so could he. 

Max saw the man jump, and geez could this dude jump. Max's kick flew under the man and the augmented pull of gravity kept his momentum going. He spun just in time to see pink ropes shoot out of the man's hands and wrap around something high above them.

"What the fu-" Max began

Crack. The kick hit him in the stomach and he soared sideways from the man a solid six feet. He dropped his control on the gravity around him and fell to the cool floor, sliding a few inches before coming to a stop.

He scrambled to his hands and knees and looked at his attacker. What he had at first thought were ropes were in fact some kind of tongues, wet with saliva. What the hell was this guy. Max rose and took a defensive stance.

This didn't look good. This guy was fast and insanely agile. Max's stomach hurt and he figured he would have a nice bruise the next morning. If his gravitational pull hadn't been pulling him with the force of the kick he knew he'd have suffered a serious blow. He couldn't go toe to toe with this guy. He had to fight smarter not harder.

"If I can't catch him I'll have to let him come to me." Max thought bitterly.

He sprang forward, rushing the man and leapt at him, throwing a punch with all the force he could muster.

It would have been the easiest thing in the world to dodge that punch... if not for the simple fact that something on the ceiling had been sticky, and he'd also gotten a little tongue-tied. He tried to let go, and his eyes widened as he realized this fact. A nice quip along the lines of 'how's it hanging' would have been most opportune right at that moment, but thankfully nobody was in his head to have heard the situation and had the thought. Badly. It was hanging badly right this second. Or in other words, 'too well'. Side note: Ceiling tasted dusty, and sticky, and stinky, and old. Like ancient sprinkler system water, dust, and mold. With a coppery metal aftertaste that said "You're licking metal, dumb ass."

Wriggle, wriggle. Vague wriggling didn't work. He wasn't loosening. Since his eyes were focused upwards, he didn't notice the guy coming at him until it was almost too late. At the last moment, one hand tongue slipped free of a metal beam. It whipped through the air with a sloppy slapping sound as it retracted back towards his palm, and then-- Right before it hit, he swung a little backwards with the give from a free arm, and shot the hand tongue straight at the guy's face. It wouldn't injure him. It wasn't going to be a hard slap. Probably like your average face slap. But that sort of thing normally made people pause and stop punching through value of sheer 'what the hell', and by blocking their view. The punch still had forward momentum, however. If that didn't work, he'd get hit.

Elliott swung back and forth a little more urgently as he focused on all those things at once.

Max thought he had the guy for sure. He closed the distance easily and was almost at the guy when he saw him pull himself back. The tongue from his one hand slid down and back before redirecting itself at Max.

"No, he wouldnt" Max thought, just in time to get a face full of tongue.

Now Max had bad a few strange romantic encounters before moving to NYC, but having a green man lick him square in the face definitely took the cake. The tongue smacked against his cheeks and he had to hold back a gag.

His fist cleared the distance and he connected with the green man, though most of the power in the hit had been negated by his surprise. He felt his hand touch green, smooth skin and in that moment releases his power.

He extended a field of gravity, double that of Earth's as he tried before, and tossed the invisible field over the man. Hopefully that would slow him down a bit.

Max pulled his head away from the tongue and braced himself. He knew the counterattack was coming, but this close and with both of them in midair he wouldnt have many options other than to take it.

Pow! He hadn't dodged that one.

You cannot dodge them all.

The blow didn't hurt as much as it could have. It still HURT, though. It was a punch. The force from the punch was enough to nudge the remaining hand tongue loose from where it was gripping. That, combined with shock, combined with whatever heavy energy it was the guy sent his way, equaled a pretty painful fall. He bruised his butt with all the grace of a martial arts fighter that didn't have time to fall properly. He landed a second after the guy braced himself. The tongue that had lashed him whipped back into his arm with a sloppy 'schlup' sound. Elliott's breath escaped him in an almost slow motion 'whoof'. Maybe the counter-attack wouldn't come as soon as one might have expected.

Weight double that of the usual gravity pressed down. Elliott had not been trained by a little old man wearing weighted turtle shells. He had not trained with exercise weights on his wrists and ankles. After today, though, he'd give it some definite thought.

His whole body felt heavy. Gravity, he decided with a certainty. He pushed himself to a crouch with a single hand and an effort of will. Elliott faced the guy, still crouching. His eyes locked with his. "Name...?" He drawled. He wanted a name to go with the face of the guy who'd scuffed his suit.

The man fell, the crowd cheered and booed and called out, and Max landed before the man without getting hit again. He hadn't expected to get out of that exchange so easily and he felt a small surge of relief.

The man struggled and Max felt bad for the guy. He had placed himself under double gravity a few times to get used to the experience but it was never pleasant. Having it randomly done to you must suck.

He heard the man speak his question and Max relaxed and smiled.

"I'm Max. What's your name?" He asked with a nod, "Sorry I had to do that to you. Honestly till the fight started I thought I had entered a dance competiition."

The sooner Max could get his money and get the hell out of here the happier he would be.

"A dance competition?" A smirk tugged at one side of Elliott's face. "Figures. Name's Elliott." One word about that awful Steven Spielberg movie, and this. Guy. Was Toast. "You seriously thought this was a dance competition?" He asked him. It was a pity he didn't have hairy caterpillar eyebrows. This seemed the perfect situation for one of them to get dangerously close to metamorphosing and fluttering off his face. In layman's terms, the brow over one eye was bald and arched. "In that case, let's dance."

The thing about capoeira is that it's a fighting style. It's a martial art. It's also a dance. And capoeirists often practice the dance against another person with the moves slowed down, so that it's just them balancing on arms and sweeping their legs through the air slowly, and the other person dodging and doing the same. Capoeierists... sorry, capoeiristas... fight gravity all the time. So Elliott moved out of the crouch by placing his palms on the floor, and rising to his feet. A shuffle left. A shuffle right. His body moved to get used to the weight. And then, he was ready to fight. It looked like he was dancing. To be more specific, it almost looked like he was about to start doing the Carlton dance from the show The Fresh Prince of Bel Air... this was a mistaken thought, obviously. What he was about to do was so much worse. And all he was waiting for was for Max to make his move.

"Nice to meet you Elliot." Max said.

He shrugged when questioned about his mistaken belief in the context of the competition. He knew it was a dumb mistake but he didn't feel embarrassed by it, those kind of things just happen.

Elliot stood, and Max's smile faded into a frown. Normally when he tagged someone with some extra gs they acted freaked out, or struggled to adapt. This guy didn't seem nervous, he didn't seem thrown off. He seemed calm. He was cracking jokes like he knew something Max didn't. That more than anything sent a cold shiver down the young dancer's spine.

Elliot was bobbing back and forth, moving with grace he shouldn't have been capable of weighed down. Max knew he only had a limited time before his gravity trap would wear off and Elliot would be back to kicking him around. He had to end it before that happend.

Max took a step back, planting his back foot. With a burst of effort he threw the strongest kick he could from his hip, propelling himself with a burst of sideways gravity. His leg flew out towards Elliot's stomach in a flash.

Circular movements, people. Always circles. Use a circle right, and you can turn offense into defense and defense into offense. Aikido practitioners use cyclical movements to turn attacks aside, and turn an opponent's strength against them. And Elliott turned his body and did a side flip out of the way of the kick. It wasn't as fast as it could have been. Normally, he was faster. But his legs were strong enough that it was fast enough. As he flipped, one leg came up and around for balance.

The second the leg went past him, Elliott lashed the leg back in and around in an ax-heel kick aimed down and towards what he hoped was a dropped guard and a face. If he missed, he'd just continue and shuffle off onto the other foot to turn himself around and bring his guard back up. Both arms were ready as he moved. Ready to turn aside blows, or to catch himself if he had to go to the ground. Gravity was still affecting him more. If he started doing flips and stuff fast, he was sure to reach his limits. That was why he wanted to end this decisively, and fast.

"I have no witty comment to say here," he said, as his leg came down. He'd somehow found oxygen for the running commentary whilst doing something incredibly physical that would have used said oxygen, and it showed. The comment came out thready, on the exhale.

The moment he saw Elliot flip Max knew he had made a fatal miscalculation. His leg flew past its target, and for a moment everything slowed down. He saw Elliot's leg coming at him, he anticipated the kick, but was helpless to do anything but cringe as the strange, green man's leg cracked him across the face.

The world went fuzzy as Max flew away from Elliot. This time he didn't will himself to stop he just slammed into the floor and rolled. His vision swam as he came to a stop. He wanted to just lay there. He could taste blood in his mouth and he felt sore all over. Maybe just staying down wouldn't be too bad.

"Let's dance."

Elliot's words from before popped into Max's mind. He had come here for a dance battle, and without realizing it he had gotten one. Since the bell first rang Max had let himself be thrown off guard. Elliot had controlled the song, the tempo, the beat. No wonder Max was getting his butt kicked. No more.

He rose up slowly and stood, fumbling slightly from side to side. He reached into his fanny pack and pulled out the headphones he always kept in there. He put them on. They were already connected to his iPod and with a quick button press the bassy, upbeat hip hop music flooded his ears.

He let himself go to the beat, his aches and pains fading into the vibrations of the treble. He raised his guard and called upon his power. He cut the gravity surrounding him by a third, enough to keep him from floating but plenty to give him a speed and jumping boost.

"That's my jam." Max said with a grin.

He flew at Elliot, rushing him with his augmented speed. He lept into the air, soaring above the green man and spun, his hands once again reaching into his fanny pack.

Spare change is such a pain right? Max's hand gripped the coins he had stuffed in one of the fanny pouches over countless putchases. He pulled the handful of tiny metal disks out and threw them, coating them in 2Gs worth of force. They flew down at Elliot like a Shotgun blast of hail.

If it hit him it hurt like hell, but Max had his eyes locked on Elliot, looking for any indication on how and where he would move.

He was prepared for a lot of things. A running punch. A standing punch. More gravity junk. Even more gravity junk. Even more even more gravity junk. But there was one thing he hadn't been prepared for. Headphones and an iPod. Well, okay then. Kid was obviously in the moment. This had become a dance war.

The crowd was cheering now. The fight had started a bit goofy and slow, but it had heated up. One person in the distance had their arms crossed over their black silk shirt. They were watching the show smugly. Her circle-lens glasses catch the light as she watched.

The blow had been brutal. Certainly, he would get the kid while he was on the ground. No? Well, okay then. The man would obviously have to come to him. Something metallic and shaped like a spider crawled up her leg, and into her pocket. Her phone made a sudden sound. She pulled it out and read the screen, turning away from the fight.

"That's my jam," Max had grinned.

"You have a fanny pack," Elliott had shot back, under his breath. And then, the kid was running at him, light on his feet. Up and up he went, over his head. Elliott's head snapped up on a swivel to keep his eyes on the guy's progress and plot a counter for it. As he watched the move happen in its split second, a thought struck him. That's actually not a bad move... Maybe he would steal that at some point, replacing the sudden rain of change with something else... fighting dirty. Lot of options. Maybe a pocketful of sand.

With this gravity, what he wanted to do would likely be hard to pull off. Jumping upwards while Max was airborne, to drive a painful knee kick into the kids gut or groin. Gravity would weigh him down, and could put the whole plan in peril. And then there was the fact that he'd be leaping up into the path of coin shrapnel, but... pain would be fleeting. It wasn't an actual shotgun's blast. He had dealt with pain before. Putting himself in pain's path to hit with a strike would be par for the course from some of his battles. It'd put his clothes in the forefront of the battle, too. And that just wasn't fair. There was no way around it. He would just have to deal with replacing the suit when he was done claiming all the money he was going to win tonight. Elliott's feet left the ground after a split-second of crouching and gathering a jump, and he did just that, springing at Max and aiming for either one of those targets. His arms were crossed in front of his body, to block the majority of the damage to his upper body. The coins hurt like a dirty whore, but hell. A fierce grin hit him as the pain from the coins set his nerve endings on fire. "Make. It. Rain." He drove his knee into an attack.

"Yo Skrill drop it hard!"

Max bobbed his head as the beat dropped. The quick, rapid melody pounded in his ears. He could feel his body, even locked in combat, shifting to the beat as it accelerated. Back down on Earth Elliot squated and launched himself upward.

"This guy is a special kind of monster." Max thought.

Fighting under double gravity should have worn this guy down to exhaustion by now, but he just kept coming. To be able to leap up with basically double his normal weight on him wasn't easy. Max could feel the gravity trap he had on Elliot pushing down on him, but it wasn't going to last much longer.

Elliot flew upward, his arms taking the brunt of Max's attack. For a second Max almost felt bad, the change barrage had been a cheap trick, but he had needed an opening. He hadn't expected Elliot to actually take the hit. He had expected the green man to try to dodge, not power through.

The knee came up and slammed into Max's stomach. The fact that Max was so much lighter, coupled with the fact that Elliot's kick was being pulled down blunted the hit somewhat, but it still hurt like a bitch.

Max used the moment of impact as a chance to grab Elliot. His knee had flown in between Max's outstretched hands. Max twisted his arm and locked it around Elliot's leg at the knee. His free hand reached up and he grabbed his hat, he was gonna need to hold on.

He started spinning in midair as fast as he could, throwing his power around himself in an attempt to keep Elliot from getting any balance. 2Gs to the left, half gravity to the right, he changed it up as quickly as he could, building momentum as he spun. His body was used to the gravity, but the sudden change was putting a strain on him. He couldn't keep this up for long. He just needed to hold on long enough to build up enough power to toss the Martian back down to Earth and finish this.