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Though not made out of solid metal the way that his namesake, Sledgehammer's face was as hard set. Right now the kid might be able to tower over him, but that didn't mean that Chase had any better perspective of the situation. Sledge had experience with this kind of life, more than just the three years since the disaster struck. Hunger wasn't new to him and he could handle it. The days of needing extra nutrition for growing bones was done. From this point on Sledge's body was just going to be slowing down or declining. Never having much food when he was young meant that he didn't need much now. Chase was still growing, and worse still, was getting into puberty. Under normal conditions this would mean frequent raids of the refrigerator. Out on the streets it meant that normal starvation was indistinguishable from what his body would have been asking for with a proper home. It was because in his teen years that Sledge began to pinch whatever he could, including often times food, that he did not look significantly malnourished. All things considered, including the severe food allergies, illegal residence, and the language gap that existed (how could two countries that speak the same language be so far apart in a conversation?), Sledge was better equipped to handle this life that they had found themselves in. Nothing had been done to impress that fact onto the teen.

“You really shount be calling me old iffin you want to help,” he said, staring right back at the yellow eyes. This wasn't just Sledge being an adult, this was him being a leader and not allowing there to be any room for debate. What he said was law, and if you had a problem with it, then you could just go off on your own and Heaven have mercy upon you. “You might 'ave gotten into a few scraps with the rest of the pack, but this is an entirely different kettle of fish. In there it's going to be crowded, and there will[/i] be a riot in there. Do you know what a riot is like?” Chase/Aurion's face registered something akin to confusion. “A riot is a living thing. It's not the people that you knew anymore, it's not even human. It's a monster that will not stop until there has been enough blood spilled. That tail you have is going to slow you down just enough that you’ll end up being trampled. Don't expect that I can keep you safe in their either.”

Time to pull out the ace up his sleeve. “Wouldn't your parents want you to keep out of danger?” he asked, his voice almost accusing. Sledge had not softened up his tone at all while arguing with Chase. Doing so would mean that he was weakening, or at least that's how Sledge perceived it. As a child he thought that if he could get an adult to show a little concern or empathy for him, he could get what he wanted. That was why he didn't hesitate to use the waterworks as a kid when he was in trouble, and why he wasn't too worried that his youthful face would make people take him less seriously. “I'll level with you, this is the way I've always lived. On the streets, fighting whoever for whatever I want. You are in over your head 'ere. Now, you will stay outside here, keep from getting killed, and don't move unless someone is daft enough to attack you. Or if you hear me call out for help.”

Not that Sledge was going to do that. He was going to raise a little hell inside that shelter and use the confusion to take everything. Food and blankets was an obvious one. Hunger was worsened by the cold, and vice versa. The colder you are, the more important food becomes, and the less food energy that you have, the more you notice the ill weather. Maybe there was some clothes that he could swipe there. Even if something didn't fit any of the pack members, it was still useable in one way or another. If shoes wore out, then extra cloth could be used to wrap feet. Clean fabric could be used as bandages. With a little bit of fuel spare clothes could be used for torches or to keep a fire going when no wood is around. Cots were tempting. Sleeping on the ground was far from comfortable, but to have to cart the about was impractical.

It wasn't often that Sledge was challenged in the pit, at least not the times where weapons were removed. Unlike his opponent, Sledge had no formal fighting experience, simply what he had picked up on the streets, punching, kicking, clawing his way into the leadership of his gangs. Sledge fought dirty and did not cave to others easily. Perhaps as important was his mutation was his inability to accept failure. The “Man of Steel” sparked excitement in the con man. Here was a challenge, a puzzle for him to solve on the fly. Whenever his schemes went pear shaped he never felt as alive. On a regular basis he literally broke through walls. Entry into buildings was hardly a concern when you can create your own “door”. Walls weren't typically made of metal (unless you counted trailers, but why the bloody hell would you want to break into one of those?), let alone a metal with such structural integrity as steel. The beams might be there, but there were other things that gave way beneath Sledge's fists. He had never had, or at least taken, the chance to see how his mutation stood against metal. Gears in his head began to creak and turn, a little rusty from disuse. So often he just went through the motions in the fight, never thinking of what he was doing. It was just easier for him to handle what he was doing that way.

It wasn't the champion that threw the first punch. He often kept back to get that extra bit of momentum going. Even if he just barely grazed his target, Sledgehammer's punches were dangerous. When the opponent was close they got a chance at life, but if they gave Sledge the space he needed, they weren't likely to make a repeat appearance in the pit. Having his arms up in his best approximation of a boxer's ready stance served as a dual purpose. The crowd expected to see two grown men fight each other, pummeling the other into a fleshy pulp. Such a stance was practically a requirement. Secondly by just clenching his fists, Sledge's arms became a suitable defense. Bones would not shatter, and he could use Superman's momentum against him.

Which was half of what Sledgehammer did. His fists clenched tighter, making his arms unbreakable. That's not to say that he did not feel the sting of the punch. Steel's mass was so much more than a brief encounter with a brick wall. Even the texture of the brick didn't bother him, for by the time that he would really notice it, he had already gone through the wall. A wicked smile was given to let Superman know that he had not done anything more than a slap on the wrists. A head shot could be possible for Sledge to deliver, but it was such an incredibly delicate part of the human body. With a steel body there had to be some sort of protection, but rather than risk it, Sledge aimed a blow for the gut, the intention to be knocking the wind out of his opponent. A close proximity punch, so there wouldn't be as much speed to it, but if it hit, it would be a hell of a lot faster than anyone else could do, and would feel more like someone had taken a swing at you with an actual sledgehammer.

The was a point in Chase being able to do something to help. Sledge wasn't going to send the boy in though the shelter's doors. It was probably filled to capacity, and in the madness he didn't want to risk Chase being trampled. For now he was a giant lizard man thing, but for all his attempts at maturity, and the trials that came with the end of the world, Chase was still a kid. A kid that Sledge did not trust to stay focused. Should Chase revert back to his normal, more compact self, he'd be crushed.

When the combination of repeating orders and stern glares failed to work, probably due to having to look upwards instead of down, Sledge realized that some sort of compromise was going to have to be reached. Chase was not going to go back to the camp, and Sledge was loosing time trying to get him to go there. Surely there had to be some way in which Chase could help. "Alrigh', you want to help, then you'll do exactly as I say," the Brit decreed. When he had it, Sledge wore his fedora the way a king might his crown. Slipping into a position of authority was hardly a struggle for him. It wasn't just a mind for tactics that made one a leader, though it was a quality that Sledge possessed. For fun he had read historic battles, comparing the descriptions of the troops movements with the maps in his head. "Stay out here, do as I say, and get killed on your own time."

Sledge’s Da had been the one who enforced things in the shabby house in Bradford. The man had been almost militant. Leaving his boots laying about got him a shift in Charlie’s shop, a torture worse than being grounded to the man. The mixture of rubber tires, petrol, and brake fluid always gave him a headache, and it only rubbed Sledge’s nose in the extreme poverty that he lived in. His brother could repair the autos that the rest of England drove about, yet nobody in his family ever owned one. What purpose did it serve him to learn how to repair something he had no hopes of obtaining. Little things, such as clothes and records, his parents never noticed, but Sledge didn’t think they would turn a blind eye to a posh car sitting outside the house, no matter how good he was. He also didn’t think that he’d turn into his father other than a shared addiction to work. All in all, he wasn’t enjoying this. Was it karma for him disobeying his Da all those years?

“Doesn’t matter what I’m suppose to be doing now does it?” Sledge asked, staring down the kid. He was the adult in this situation, and Chase was going to have to obey him. “You would ‘ave been fine back at camp. There’s enough of us that someone can play babysitter to yeh.” Why couldn’t Chase just have stayed still with the others? Chase was going to have to grow up, life was hard, and things were only getting tougher everyday. When Sledge was unable to sleep at night he simply stayed still and acted as though he was still unconscious. This constant needing to be around someone only made the kid look weaker.

Chase tried to stand up for himself, as though his following Sledge was perfectly acceptable. Sledge pinched the bridge of his nose. Taking the kid back to the others was going to occupy a large portion of his night, and his plan was to get this over with before the pack moved on the next day. Sledge made a disgruntled noise. “You should have stayed with them. I’ve got plans for the night and I don’t need to spend all me time making sure that your head stays where it is.”

Late nights did not bother the Yorkshire man. He had a tendency to get caught up in whatever work he was doing, not realizing that he had spent an entire night hunched over a map. Sledge didn’t mind missing a night or two of sleep, he could always catch up at a later point. Yes, Sledge was most definitely a night owl. Back when he had his flat, it lacked alarm clocks. For one, there was no need for him to have them. It wasn’t as though he had to wake up by a certain hour to go to work. Secondly he didn’t usually pick up on the sounds that most alarm clocks made. If, by some miracle, the sound did register in his mind, there was the small mater of his sledgehammer. Money hadn’t been a concern, and even if it was, nobody expects you to lift an alarm clock, but having to replace a bit of machinery every day was bound to be tedious. Not only would the alarm clock have ended up being a sacrifice to the gods of sleeping in, but the nightstand upon which it rested would need more than some wood glue to bring it back.

The task off keeping an eye on the kid that day had fallen upon Sledge. While the sun was up it wasn’t that bad really. Try to keep Chase a reasonable proximity to the group, don’t let him die, and see that he got his share of what food was found. Night was an entirely different matter. As was, Sledge found what little sleep he managed to get difficult, what with the stomach pains and tightening of his throat. Add to that keeping an eye out for everyone else while they slept. His nighttime issues were bad enough, he didn’t need to handle Chase’s on top of that. Or, more accurately, he didn’t know how to help. How do you chase away a child’s night terrors when you can’t even control your own? Tonight he hoped that for once Chase would be able to sleep without interruption.

As was always the case when Sledge was hard at work, his mind was focused entirely on the job. Go to some of those shelters that churches and other people wanting to seem charitable ran, take food, blankets, anything that Sledge thought would make his life easier. Persuasion and a sexy British accent didn’t work as well as it use to. These days brute force was the only way to get anything. Time had made Sledge’s punches more reliable, his arms did not get exhausted as easily as they had in the past. More punches, sturdier arms, his fists hard as steel as he hit his target. Sledge had confidence in his capabilities, perhaps too much. Still, as damaging as his arms could be, without feeling any harm on himself, he had a habit now established. If a fight snuck up on him, he cracked his knuckles before the first punch was tossed. The activity he was now doing, as he approached his first stop of the evening, was when he got to plan ahead. Taking a dwindling roll of medical tape, he began to wrap his knuckles and wrists. When he pulled this off, he could be like Santa to Chase, giving the kid something that a normal child should have. Santa who had blood on his hands.

At seeing Aura’s reaction to Sledge confessing time spent with human females he gave her a small and sheepish smile, as if to say that he was weak. Honestly he did not care as much about genetics as others around the Sanctuary. It was what you did that dictated who you were, not what your blood says. Some of the best stories concerned humans who simply did what they had to when the time called for it. Mutant, human, child, adult, it didn’t make a difference, the capability to change the course of history still existed. It was better, Sledge thought, for Aura to think that he wasn’t able to resist human women’s wiles than for her to know how her opinion sat poorly with him. Anytime that you discriminated you lost out on one more person to manipulate.

Instead he chose to take her up on asking when his powers emerged. Hard to believe that it was nearly ten years ago that he learned he was a mutant. Ten years and he had questions about it still, like why his arms turned to lead noodles. “I was already caged. Me mate Briggs and I were on a job and everything went pear shaped.” Which was a more polite way to say that he had gotten arrested because of something that he shouldn’t have been doing in the first place. “He woulnit shut his gob, and I missed ‘is head.” To this day he wasn’t sure if that was the best option. He knew without a doubt that taking the exit that he had made only put his future deeper into the pot than if he had just been patient and waited for Charlie. Given the chance to go back he probably still would have done it anyways. Corpses are terribly inconvenient, and waiting in a jail cell never sat well with Sledge.

“Can’t right say iffin that’s better or worse than what happened to yeh,” he concluded. On the plus for him he hadn’t knocked the head off of someone who he did consider a friend. He also got himself out of the cell, which might not have been the case for Aura, he didn’t want to pry. However he no longer could return to where he had been living, let alone his birth country.

Usually Sledge flirted with any lady that he met, or at the very least gave them special attention. Part of the trouble he had with keeping Kaitlyn from sending him everywhere was that he had no clue what to say to the kid. It was easier by far for him to chat up a bird than to try and connect to someone half his age. The flirtatious thing worked well in clubs, but it meant at times he could, and had, tossed out a line as a way to strike up a benign conversation. His favorite pub's owner loved it though, and the old lady would smack him playfully with a rag, calling him a "wicked little thing." Such behavior was dangerous around the Sanctuary he had discovered. To piss off a normal girl did not as frequently run a major health risk.

Although they had not really spoken much before, Sledge was aware that the woman was called Aura. It wasn't hard to see why, she wore her powers like it was a coat of arms, where Sledge kept his hidden. Well, as much as possible when you call yourself "Sledgehammer". David liked the element of surprise that came from a man of his physique producing so much power. The lack of referring to him by name made Sledge wonder if Aura even knew his name, or if "friend" was the way to address others around here, like some sort of cult. This was, after all, called The Sanctuary, and his first impression had been that this was some sort of church. "Sledge'ammer," he reminded her, just in case. As he continued he flexed the hand in the sling. "I've been better."

He purposefully kept his voice as dry as possible. Pity was not the aim here, but rather something between it and regret. Too much in one direction meant people coddling him, and too much in the other wouldn't keep him Sanctuary bound. "And yeh?" he asked. Flat voice or no, Sledge's accent came out strong when upset, or angry, or any strong emotion. What had sounded as the weirdest vowel in existence was just the letter "o". He had asked Aura how she had been.