The Prodigy

The coliseum

The huddled mass of Roman spectators filled the colosseum with raucous exhilaration as the people's champion, Marcus Aurelias, drove his gladius into the throat of his foe, a towering minotaur, having to leap several feet in the air to do so, and drove it down through its body, exiting through the pelvis. Bluish blood gushed from the subcutaneous tissues, and Marcus stepped aside with a graceful slide, letting the eruption spew past him.

The aggregate of spectators, over ten-thousand in number, doubled the might of their cheers as Marcus rose his blade and waved them on. In the sky-box, an elaborately engraved, large stone protrusion just above the main entrance to the coliseum, Marcus Aurelias turned and smiled to the congratulatory pats on his back.

"Your clones are a bit slow, Titus.", he said jokingly, to the thin blond man with thin-rimmed glasses, standing in a corner with an emotionless face. Ignoring this typical solemn demeanor, Marcus laughed along with everyone else in the box. Among them High Proctor Brutius, Lord General Petrocious, and Consulate Cato. The highest-ranking group of men anywhere on the planet.

"Perhaps it's his mutants are just too fast.", came a voice that caused everyone to halt their antics to stand and turn in respect. The current Caesar over all Rome, the prestigious Claudius Augustus Tiberius, entered the room, toga in one hand, his beautiful daughters' hand in the other.

He waved his toga hand lightly, motioning to the men in the room to ease attention and return to their seats. Marcus, instead, approached his daughter, Eoinella, and offered his own hand.

"Perhaps, the beautiful young lady would like to come sit closer to the window next to me, as to have a better view of the spectacle."

She passed a quizzical glance to her father, who only produced a slight grin and shrugged, releasing her hand and moving to his curule. Eoinella turned back to Marcus with a courteous smile.

"I'm afraid, brave Marcus, that I only attend these events out of etiquette. I have no real appetite for the violence of the games." Then to clarify her true response, she finished, as she turned to sit in her designated curule next to her father, "Nor the participants in it."

The other men in the room, other than Titus, who stood just behind Caesar now, laughed under their breath, giving a variation of 'oof' or 'ouch'. Marcus, who had made this attempt many times before, simply bowed to the lady in respect and returned to his seat.

"Perhaps,", she said, grinning at Titus, who paid her no mind, "you would offer Rome's most notorious lawyer a seat next to you."

This earned another round of quiet laughs. Eoinella persisted, always attempting to get a smile out of the man whom did put a glint in her eye.

"What do you say, Sir Maximus. Don't you wish to have a closer look at your creations in action?"

Before he could, answer, or rather, not answer, Caesar grabbed his daughters' hand once more and pulled her down to her curule.

"Come now, give the man peace. He is only here out of obligation as yourself."

Marcus, trying to distract from both his own rejection, and Eoinellas clear interest in the scrawny, joyless litigator, he said aloud to the room, "My next opponents will emerge soon. You won't believe what they've put me up against."

Everyone's attention was indeed drawn to the arena. Though, to all inhabitants of the arena's surprise, other than Caesars, who hid a sly smirk on his face, the opponent who emerged was far from a motley group of ferocious monsters. Instead, it was a small figure covered in a green cloak.

"What the hell is this?", Marcus said, rising to his feet once more. He turned to Titus. "Where are the mutants I was shown?"

Titus, far from concerned over Marcus' satisfaction, instead was looking down at Caesar, who felt the eyes burning into his skull, but did not return a glance. Titus, who recognized who was under that green cloak, could only stand in frustration.