How Far I've Come (Keith x Reader)

⁜ Almost There; Chapter Nine ⁜

~[Four Months Later]~

You grunted as you hit your opponent's neck with the blunt of your sword's handle, causing the alien to fall to the floor unconscious. A whole four months had gone by since you had been forced to stop piloting and start fighting, featuring your experience of absolutely nothing in the world of combat. You hated every second of your new purpose, it had changed you.

You weren't deathly afraid of the guards or bots anymore; you had gained a respectable increase in confidence, but you still remained fragile like an old window pane. One little rock could cause a crack large enough to bring down the whole thing. Killing anyone at the end of a fight would be your rock.

Then something weird happened. Something that would inflict bad luck on you more than you would have ever guess. About a week ago, you had been slammed into the arena's surrounding wall just to your left, leaving a dent the size of your head (from your head) and a minor blood stain there from impact. The sight sent chills down your spine, but you couldn't be distracted when strangers were being forced to kill you.

The blow had given you a dangerously serious concussion, erasing a few months worth of memories for your lifetime. They were all recent times, to both your luck and misfortune, so you didn't care much. You were happy to forget some of what happened during the worst times of your life. It would leave more sanity in it's wake, maybe enough to endure this place until you die.

However, Prince Lotor, a man you never recalled meeting, did seem to have a problem with it. He approached you after you woke up, anger written all over him like he had lost a serious bet. According to what you could piece together, he had heard that you lost your memory and didn't believe it.

Lotor stopped you in the corridors after your match, kind and quiet when he asked about some sort of event that had happened in the past week. You obviously had no memory of this and you told him so. That's when the kindness began to run low.

He began threatening you to stop lying or else, but he was dragged out quickly afterward when he nearly became violent. Although he was a Galra of royal stature, Haggar and her druids seem to dislike him more than one would think and did not hesitate to send him away.

There was no getting those memories back unless you had access to the proper technology, and the Galrans definitely didn't have that because it simply wasn't necessary. So now, you're living with a small memory loss and fighting in a gladiator's arena a week later. Exactly the life I planned for myself, you think sarcastically.

Although the arena was your mean purpose onboard, you didn't fight very often. Despite being undefeated, you weren't very popular amping the Galra who regularly watched fights. No matter how hard you tried, you couldn't land any 'entertaining hits' on your opponents, (wording [and threats] provided by Sendak). So, in the end, you decided to try knocking them out instead. It was a win-win; You literally won, and your opponent would live to see another day.

Shiro had thankfully, erm, 'removed' most of the blood-thirsty fighters before he was sent away, so you had untrained newbies to spare. Literally to spare; there was never a time you wouldn't spare them.

After a grueling battle with a very driven creature, you began to walk back to your side of the arena. Galran medics slung the blacked-out creature you had just fought onto a broken stretcher and carried it off, no care for the well-being of their fighters. One of them even went as far to drop their lift, causing the patient to roll off and roll their head a bit on the dirt. The craps they gave were in the negative range, somehow...