Ben 10 : Unlimited

37

Grudge Match

Unknown Location

When people thought of battles between metahumans, or even just fights between two people in costumes, they imagined blasts of energy, explosions, and incredible martial arts. At the moment, however, the handful of people inside the underground fight club considered going back to Pay-Per-View wrestling. And when the audience wasn't happy, they also weren't betting.

And when there weren't betters, Roulette wasn't a happy woman. Out of everyone in the run-down building, she was dressed the best, with a long red dress that was slit up to her hip, long red gloves, a dragon tattoo that went up her leg and across the rest of her body and dark sunglasses; she had her hair done up in a tight bun, held together by a pair of knives.

She stared down at the pair of would-be villains trying to get the other to make the first move, thinking back on how her moneymaking scheme had gone down the toilet.

At first, it had been easy; she had enticed the rich and stupid to come to illegal metahuman fights, called Metabrawl, and had them bet on the fighters. Her greatest fighter had been Wildcat, a member of the Justice League; he had no powers, save for being a world-champion boxer in his day, yet the middle-aged man had been undefeated in his time working for her.

That is, until Black Canary and Green Arrow had snuck in and ruined everything; Green Arrow had faked his death at the hands of Wildcat, snapping him out of his love for mindless violence, and then Canary had used her Canary Cry to bring down the entire arena. It had nearly bankrupted Roulette, and that brought her to her current situation.

One of her few employees approached her with a box; he opened it to reveal a handful of bills and coins.

"That's it?" she demanded, dumping the cash on the ground.

"No one's betting," the employee said, equally frustrated, "At this rate, we won't even be able to pay rent!"

Roulette looked back down at the pathetic excuse for fighters. "Who can blame them for not betting?"

I need some A-List fighters, she thought, and there's only one person I can go to…

…

Secret Society HQ

Lex Luthor scowled at the piece of Brainiac in increasing irritation; so far, everything he'd tried to resurrect Brainiac had failed. This next test, however, was to see if there was anything he could do with the fragment at all.

A scanner waved over the piece for a few seconds; when it finished, the word "insufficient" scrolled over a computer screen. Luthor sagged in despair.

"It's not enough," he said to himself, "Theoretically, I can bring Brainiac back to life, but there isn't enough of him left to work with!"

"Perhaps if you constructed a Positronic Event Chamber," Brainiac said, as he approached Luthor.

"Yes," Luthor said to the being that only he could see, "Yes, that could work… but where would I get the money? Between the government freezing my assets and the cost of running this Secret Society…"

"You are a resourceful human, Luthor," Brainiac said, "I am sure that you will find a way."

Behind him, Tala scowled; Luthor had been acting more and more unstable lately, always talking to someone that wasn't there, or just staring at the piece of Brainiac. The rest of the Society was becoming more and more wary of Luthor, and she couldn't blame them.