Free Star Force: Perquisition by Aer-ki Jyr

Makron said,
heading for the ring. “We are so going to get our asses kicked.”
    “Probably,” Laantrel agreed,
“but there’s only one of him. Try and grab an arm or leg when he hits you and
we might get lucky.”
    “Worth a try,” Makron said
as he ran into the ring along with the other 17 veterans, making it a 68 v 1
with Brad continuing to laugh and taunt even though there was virtually no room
left in the ring for him to hide in, yet he still found a calm moment here and
there to gesture in mocking fashion.
    “Come on, you fight like Gnar ,”
he said between ducking and dodging several attacks without hitting back. “Are
you guys fast or what?”
    Two of the veterans ran towards him with their arms
interlocked into a clothesline…the best attempt yet, but he ducked underneath
it by dropping down to his knees in a short slide, then kicking back at one of
them to launch himself into a handstand that he immediately flipped out of.
Acrobatics aside, the longer one spent inverted the more vulnerable they were,
especially when he wasn’t using Pefbar to augment his situation awareness.
    Brad dropped back to the mat with his butt kissing his
heels as three arms swung above him, missing his head and giving him a good
counterpunch opportunity, but he passed on it. He didn’t need these guys
disoriented from body blows, he wanted them thinking and hearing his insults
clearly, so he rolled out between two of them and ran a couple steps, avoiding
their tackle so quick and smooth he barely brushed against their bodies on the
way out.
    “You…guys…are so…damn…slow,” he said, weaving in and
out of them despite there being no visible room to maneuver, then he got to the
side of the ring and almost comically knocked two out of bounds. “Oops…sorry,”
he said, ducking back in and maneuvering for moments to utter a word or two
between whiffs, “did you…want…to stay in?”
    The two Protovic that got knocked, one a Red and the
other an Orange, glanced at each other as they sat on the floor, both perturbed
by the mocking, and got back up and moving into the ring again this time
focused on getting the Human. Their rivalry temporarily forgotten, they worked
together with hand signals they all had learned in their identical training and
began to organize what had quickly become a rabble.
    The coordination and sentiments spread quickly, with
the veterans implementing some strategies the Oranges hadn’t thought
of…including sending several bodies down to the floor before the Archon knocked
them down to act like land mines, trying to trip him up with kicks or grabs as
he hopped over and through them. One got hold of his left leg for a split
second, turning Brad around but he just spun out of it and danced over the
roadblocks.
    “Whoa…that one was…close. I’m…getting…worried now,” he
mocked, and continued to do so for more than 20 minutes. Over and over he
evaded them, never once using his psionics and relying only on his speed,
agility, endurance, and strength, showing up all the Protovic no matter how
hard they tried. During the sparring match he kept getting glimpses of their
thoughts and emotions, letting him judge when and where to push his taunts.
When he felt them finally coming around to the mindset of a proper beatdown he
gave it another minute or two then switched tactics…going from evasion to
offense and knocking them down with blows so strong that they literally took
the wind out of the Protovic.
    And he was hitting them on their exoskeletal patches
every damn time, jarring them considerably without damaging them, but giving
them the knowledge and fear of what would happen to their bodies should he miss
and hit a ‘soft’ section. He never did, and before they realized what was
happening they were looking at each other on the ground as the Human was
prancing around the ring above them knocking down the last few so hard they had
to catch their wind before getting back up again.
    “I