MULTIVERSE FIGHTERS — Pilot Episode: "The Hunt Begins" (Rewrite)
The night over District Twelve looked bruised—low clouds reflecting filthy streetglow and the flicker of busted billboards. Three bottles sweated on a roof ledge. Three orphans-now-grown sat with their feet over the drop and their backs to the world.
Asia smoked, eyes like broken glass in a pretty face. "Twenty-five," she said. "Happy birthday to us."
Cody swigged and wiped his mouth with a wrist wrapped in old tape. "Yeah. The age they flip your life from 'struggle' to 'spectacle'."
X didn't answer. He watched the sky fractures that sometimes opened like hairline cracks in a mirror—other skies blinking through, other cities, other wars. He'd been watching since the accident; smoke, shattered stone, and a crater he should've died in. He hadn't. Doctors wrote miracle. X wrote nothing. Talking never helped.
The air pulsed. Their palms warmed. Ghost-thin screens grew out of skin like frost on glass, humming with a sound you felt in your teeth.
SYSTEM AWAKENED
Fighters: Asia • Cody • X
Rule: BARE HANDS PERMANENT (no weapons, ever)
Strength: LEVEL × PRESTIGE
Flight: UNLOCKS AT LEVEL 1
After-Dark engagements: EXP-ELIGIBLE
Two choices bloomed, stark and simple:
1) 50-PLAYER HUNT
2) 100-PLAYER HUNT
Cody grinned. "Go big."
Asia's smile had knives in it. "Go loud."
X's display whispered extra lines he didn't let them see. He rolled his wrist so the screen faced his chest.
X — L0 → L1 (EXP 0/1000)
EXP CAP: 1000 (ANOMALY)
TRAIT: ENERGY/STAMINA COST REDUCES EACH LEVEL
BONUS: DOUBLE EXP (PERMANENT)
He tapped 100-PLAYER HUNT. The world folded inside out.
They slammed into a tilted city. Streets ran up the sides of towers, traffic lights blinked to no one, smoke coiled out of a subway mouth like a living thing. Gravity hung sideways for a breath, then decided on down.
COUNTDOWN: 3… 2… 1… HUNT COMMENCE.
The moment the clock hit zero, X's lungs filled like he'd been drowning this whole time.
X — LEVEL UP: L1 (FLIGHT UNLOCKED)
Energy cost per action: 98% → 96%
He stepped into air and didn't fall. Asia wobbled, found her balance, swore, smirked. Cody tried to sprint off a wall and nearly ate an old billboard before he recovered, laughing like a lunatic.
A baritone voice bellowed from everywhere and nowhere: "KILL OR BE BROKEN. BARE HANDS ONLY."
They didn't need to be told twice.
The first fighter came at Asia out of a collapsed storefront, fists high, chin low. She slid past his jab and cracked her palm into his throat. He gagged, staggered, raised hands to cover, and she kneed ribs until something gave. He fell on glass, tried to crawl, didn't get far.
Cody met a cluster near a buckled crosswalk. He wasn't pretty. He was effective. Head-butt, elbow, stomp, laughter. A man tried to clinch; Cody wrenched the shoulder until it popped and shoved him into a streetlight with a bounce that rang down the block.
X moved last, because hiding looked like caution. He punched like he didn't want applause. Bone, tendon, timing. When a kick came high, he cut the angle and shoved the heel past him, then collapsed the knee with a short step-through and a shove. Clean. Clinical. No flourish.
Squad EXP Awarded.
X — L1 → L3
Energy cost: 96% → 92%
Asia — L0 → L1 (cap 3000) (flight unlocked)
Cody — L0 → L1 (cap 3000) (flight unlocked)
The air filled with bodies. Fresh twenty-fives flickered into existence and started screaming or praying or swinging. Everyone could fly now, so the fight left the ground—wild midair grapples over alleys, ankle locks performed against the side of buildings, people falling and catching themselves two floors lower to launch back up with a roar.
A shaved-head brawler tore straight at Asia, grabbed a handful of hair. Asia grabbed the wrist, planted her boot on the elbow, fell backward, and snapped it like a bad twig. A second rushed in; she faked a kiss, laughed in his face when he flinched, and smashed an elbow across his cheek so hard he spun.
"Cody!" she shouted.
"On it!" He crashed through two at a chain-link fence, wrapped the fence around one like a cheap gift, and beat the other until the world forgot his name.
X ghosted behind a pair trying to corner them, put one to sleep with a forearm choke in four seconds flat, then heel-palmed the other at the base of the skull. Lights out.
X — L3 → L7 → L12
Energy cost: 92% → 84% → 74%
Asia — L1 → L2
Cody — L1 → L2
A giant hauled himself out of a wrecked elevator car and rolled his neck like he wanted the world to hear it. A faint badge flickered on his chest: PRESTIGE 3. He'd hit the ladder and reset three times already. He looked at Asia, then past her, like he could smell the strongest person in the room.
"You fresh," he rumbled.
Asia spat blood onto the concrete and smiled. "Starving."
He threw a hook big enough to darken the street. X stepped between them before the fist landed. He didn't look fast. He looked inevitable. He caught the forearm on his bicep and hip, turned, and dropped the giant to his knees. The sound of kneecaps on stone traveled.
The giant looked up and laughed once, short. "Hiding."
"Always," X said.
They traded. Bare hands made it honest. The bigger man's punches were bricks. X's were scalpels. Bricks make messes. Scalpels end problems. X took body shots that rattled his teeth, learned the rhythm, then cut away the man's base—heel to ankle bone, calf chop, head snap, short cross to the jaw. The big body folded.
X — L12 → L19
Energy cost: 74% → 60%
Asia — L2 → L3
Cody — L2 → L3
Asia's eyes cut to him. Cody wiped his split lip and stared. "Since when do you—"
"Since I was tired of losing," X said, too calm, and turned before either of them could pin him to the truth.
The Hunt ate the city.
A pack of five tried to run a choke point at a stairwell; Asia took the first, Cody the second, and the third tripped over X's foot right as the fourth tackled him from behind. X rolled, trapped the fourth's arm with his legs, and cranked until the shoulder left the socket. The fifth tried to fly away; X caught his ankle mid-air and whipped him through a broken office window. The glass went everywhere. The screaming stopped fast.
REMAINING: 43.
Down in a service tunnel, three fighters waited in the damp. Asia went first—palm heel, head slam; Cody went second—rear choke, hold until the twitching stopped; X went last—two knuckles to the carotid and a gentle lay-down like tucking someone into bed they wouldn't wake from.
X — L19 → L31
Energy cost: 60% → 42%
Asia — L3 → L4
Cody — L3 → L4
By the time the center square filled with the last survivors, everyone looked like they'd been fed to a grinder and climbed back out smiling. Ten left. Eight. Six. Four. Bare hands, flight, blood everywhere, curses bouncing off brick. Asia kneed a face until it caved. Cody took a hook, saw stars, came back with an uppercut that scraped sky. X moved like a rumor, put people down and kept moving.
REMAINING: 1.
Silence hit harder than any punch.
HUNT COMPLETE. SQUAD CLEARED.
After-Dark engagements unlocked and EXP-eligible.
The world flicked again, and they fell into the Underworld—rooms without doors, stairwells without railings, music thudding like a second pulse. People drank, fought, and pulled each other behind curtains. Dealers poured pills like candy into open palms. A brawl erupted and spread along a bar top like fire on dry grass. The system chimed in heads everywhere: EXP + for indulgence, EXP + for impact, EXP + for forgetting.
Cody grabbed a bottle. "To not dying," he said, breathless, bright with blood and victory. He clinked Asia's glass, then X's. X touched, didn't drink.
Asia leaned into X, studying him. She'd been reading his face since they were kids stealing bread in the orphanage, scabbing over the same wounds. "You okay?"
"Fine."
"Liar," she said, affectionate and tired. She lit another smoke. A stranger kissed her just to see if she'd bite; she let it happen, then pushed them away with a laugh and a bruise blooming on her knuckles. Non-graphic. Fast. Human. The HUD hummed. EXP trickled.
X eased back into an alley that felt like the world's exit wound and pulled up his hidden screen.
X — L31 → L54 (After-Dark share + double EXP)
Energy cost: 42% → 34%
Footsteps scuffed. Not Asia. Not Cody. A man walked into the alley like it belonged to him: shabby coat, tired eyes, mouth set in an amused line. Under his lapel, a faint badge flickered a number that shouldn't exist outside rumor.
PRESTIGE 100,000.
Only forty-nine were said to hold it. Legends. Boogeymen. Judges without courts.
"Don't startle," the man said. "It makes folks swing wide."
"I don't startle."
"I noticed." He tilted his head like he was listening to a radio only he could hear. "Your numbers hum weird. Everyone else drags chains. You walk like you filed yours off."
X didn't blink. "You want a fight?"
"Want?" The man chuckled. "I want to see if the story you're writing is worth reading."
He took a stance that looked like nothing until it looked like everything—hands half-open, elbows loose, weight nowhere. Bare hands, permanent. The only game.
They met in the middle and traded quiet. No showy blasts. Just decisions made at speed. The man touched X's liver with a knuckle that felt like a lesson. X answered with a cross he shortened to hide the strength in the last centimeter. The man's head snapped a notch. He smiled. "There you are."
X — L54 → L73 → L89
Energy cost: 34% → 26% → 22%
"You can't hide this forever," the man said, tapping X's cheekbone with two fingers like a metronome.
"From them, I can," X said, meaning Asia and Cody, meaning the only two he couldn't lose.
"For a while," the man agreed. And then he hit X with a body shot that wasn't cruel so much as clarifying. X's back found brick. He grinned despite the ache.
"Again," he said.
They went until sweat had a taste and the brick wore both their blood. When the man stepped back, he looked almost pleased. "You'll climb," he said. "Or fall loud. Either way, I'll hear it."
"Why show up?"
"Maybe I'm bored." He shrugged. "Maybe I want to see a secret keep itself." He nodded toward the doorway glow. "They're waiting. Don't bleed on them. It makes people honest."
He left like a rumor leaving a mouth.
X — L89 → L102
Energy cost: 22% → 20%
Projection: Super Form at L500 in a handful of major Hunts at current pace.
Warning: Concealment becoming difficult if spikes continue.
X rinsed his hands in a sink that had seen things it would never confess. He returned to a table stacked with empties and strangers trying to forget. Cody was shadowboxing the air and telling a story louder than necessary. Asia had her head tipped back, laughing like she wasn't holding the world in her teeth.
"Where'd you go?" Cody asked.
"Bathroom."
Asia slid a drink toward him. He let it sit.
She bumped his shoulder. "We don't get out of this alive by being saints. Or liars."
"I know," he said. He didn't look at his screen. He didn't have to. The numbers glowed under his ribs like a secret furnace.
Up above them, a strip of sky showed fractures widening—other places peering in like curious eyes. Somewhere, someone screamed. Somewhere, someone celebrated. In the middle, they sat and breathed and tried not to think about how many bodies it would take to feel safe.
X raised his palm; the ghost screen flickered once more.
X — CURRENT LEVEL: L102
EXP toward L103: 420/1000
Energy/Stamina cost per action: 20% and falling
Prestige: 0 (first reset at L1000)
Next transformation threshold: L500
Status: Concealed
A message arrived without sender:
UNKNOWN: Keep your hands honest. Everything else is a lie.
X deleted it. He curled his fingers against the wood until he felt the bones hum. He watched Asia curse out a dealer and win a game that didn't exist. He watched Cody kiss someone he'd forget. He watched the sky cracks grow and told himself he didn't want the future like a drug.
He failed. Quietly. Privately.
He kept it to himself.