The Hydra Sin

A Fight to Remember

I walked through the crowd, trying to sign up before the contest started and got to the pipsqueak in charge moments before the sign-up ended, "Cutting it a bit close, aren't you?" He yelled and I just nodded.

"Are you sure a girl should be allowed to sign up? I mean, that seems kind of cruel to put her against a beast like me, doesn't it?" I groaned as I recognized a familiar voice, Sir Pig had come to join in on the fighting, along with another Holy Knight, I believe his name was Howser.

"Come on, if the lady wants to fight, then let her. Although, she doesn't look like she'll have an issue defending herself." Howser commented and I grinned under my mask, I knew exactly who I would be targeting in the preliminaries, Sir Pig was going down!

The contestants were called into the ring and I immediately spotted ban, Meliodas, and even King... Wait, what? King?! I laughed to myself and shook my head, knowing them, Ban probably convinced him to join to impress Diane, this should be amusing.

The bell rang and immediately I had to duck under a fist, this guy seemed decent, and if weren't me he was against, he could have won; but as it was, he was against the best and was out of the ring in a second. I continued to duck, weave, and kick my way through the arena, avoiding where Sir Pig was, I wanted to really wanted to take my time with him and dress him down so he could possibly deflate his big ego.

Barely ten minutes had passed before the bell rang, ending the preliminaries; in the ring still were Ban, Meliodas, King (surprisingly), some girl named Matrona (I suspected it was Diane somehow, because Matrona was someone from her past.), Some old guy named Cain, another named Taizoo and several of the holy knights including Howser, Sir Pig, and Griamore. Oh, I was in there too, of course.

The contestants were invited back to a small hut off the ring and the commentator told us the rules and gave us the matchups for the first round; to my complete delight, I was put with Sir Pig and we would be going right after Cain and Old Fart (King), and Meliodaz and Ba'an would be right after us (I don't need to explain who those two are, right?).

I left the hut and waited for the King and Ban to come out before I snagged their arms and dragged them through the crowd, trying to make it as inauspicious as possible. "Hey what do you think you're doing? Get your hands off us!" Ban cried out and I sighed, quickly forming a mental link with them before they could draw attention from anyone.

"Shut up you idiots, it's just me! Pipe down or we could get in trouble." When they heard my voice, both of their eyes got really big.

"Holy Crap Janis, I had wondered, but you look good in that outfit! Where'd you get it?" Ban asked, sounding a little too impressed.

"This is pre-Eight Deadly Sins days, I figured that no one would recognize me in it, and it looks pretty good, so I figured why not?"

I didn't give them another chance to talk as I pulled them to somewhere to talk, "Uh, Janis, if you don't mind me asking, why are we still talking through our mental link?" King asked that then Ban threw in another question.

"Yeah, and why are we talking in the middle of a huge crowd?"

I severed the link and turned to them, "I just wanted to shut you two up without drawing attention, so I formed the link, you are the ones who continued the conversation that way; and Ban, the first rule to having covert conversations is to appear like you aren't having a covert conversation. acting like you want secrecy is a sure-fire way to draw attention."

They both nodded and I continued, "We don't have much time, but there is something I need to tell you before today is done; ideally, I would tell the whole team, but this isn't something I want to talk about unless I have their full trust. The reason I went to the capital is that I have been sensing demonic magic coming from several of the Holy Knights; it happens randomly as well, so I know that these aren't just isolated incidents... I was investigating these and up until yesterday I had no luck, but then I not only found the demonic source of the energy, I also discovered why some of the Holy Knight's apprentices are gaining full powers overnight."

King looked at me thoughtfully, "Now that you mention it, I do remember Gilthunder mentioning something about that when I worked with the kingdom; he said that Great Holy Knight Dreyfus was worried about the number of apprentices who were starting to side with Hendrickson."

"Well, I can see why they would side with him, if you follow the traditional path, you have years of hard work ahead of you, and even then, you aren't guaranteed to be amazing. If you follow Hendrickson, you will have incredible power overnight; however, the price is steep, and for some, it costs their life."

I was about to continue when Matrona's match was announced, King waved for me to continue, but I smirked, "No King, I think you'll want to see this match; it should be interesting." He looked at me in confusion then shook his head and walked away.

"Why do you want King to see this match so badly?" Ban asked, and my smirk turned downright sadistic.

"Matrona is Diane. I don't know how she managed to get human size, but she did, the body size and the fighting style of 'Matrona' matched Diane's perfectly; I have a feeling that King is really going to want to see his crush take out the competition."

"I keep learning new things about you little one, not are you extremely sarcastic, you also are a shameless matchmaker!" I giggled and nodded, getting some weird glances from the people around us; it must look weird for a hooded assassin type person to be giggling like a teenager.

"Well of course! You run out of actually productive things to do after living long enough. I want to get Captain and Elizabeth together next!"

We strolled together to the ring and Ban grimaced, "Are you crazy, Diane would kill someone if that were to happen!"

I laughed a little, "Of course, that's why I'm trying to get King and Diane together first. They've been my OTP for a REALLY long time!" He sighed and we watched as Diane took Griamore down without much trouble, shocking everyone else, but the only thing that was surprising to me was how long he lasted.

I zoned out for Howser and Taizoo's fight because it was painfully obvious who the winner was going to be. Taizoo looked impressive, but even if I didn't know that Howser was a Holy knight, it was still pretty clear that Howser had more brains and could do far more damage than Taizoo could ever dream of doing.

The match barely lasted five minutes, and finally, it was time for King to fight; excellent, I needed a laugh! Ban had wandered over to the Captain and they were all talking about King's shocking fighting skills. I stared at them wistfully, and I think Diane noticed because she was giving me a really weird look.

King ran at Cain and they had a momentary struggle that looked like to drunk cats trying to avoid each other, then King tripped over a crack in the ground and fell flat on his face. He may be powerful, but his fighting skills were crap! I nearly doubled over when King started mentioning how tough his opponent was, and I could tell that the rest of the sins wanted to do the same.

Finally, Cain delivered a surprisingly strong punch that knocked King out of the arena, and a grin crossed my face as I realized that it was my turn to destroy Sir Pig. I climbed into the ring and faced off against my opponent.

The commentator started to announce the match, "Let's hope this match has more fighting in it, it is Jackson verses... The Wanderer!" I smiled at the nickname I had come up with, "Standing at six feet two inches, and weighing 220 pounds, Jackson!" There was some scattered cheering and I could hear a couple girls fangirling over his wavy brown hair. "Standing at five feet, eight inches, and weighing an undisclosed amount, The Wanderer!" I heard Ban and King cheering for me in the background, while the others asked them who I was, which the two pointedly ignored.

"I want a good clean fight, so LET THE FIGHTING BEGIN!" I rushed at Jackson (He would always be Sir Pig to me) and feinted going in for a punch, then dropped down and swept his legs out from under him. He toppled to the ground then tried to recover, but I was on top of him, delivering a quick bout of punches that nearly pushed him off the edge.

I slowly approached him, "Next time you think of dissing a lady simply because of her s*x, remember this and how I took you down without hardly any effort. No matter how good you are, you are lacking at least a hundred years' worth of experience."

He stood up shakily and grinned at me, wiping a bit of blood from his mouth, "Well, I'll admit lady, you pack quite a punch, but nothing you say or do will convince me that you wouldn't be better placed in a kitchen, making lunch for all the men-folk." I heard Ban and King gasp in outrage at his words and I snarled beneath my mask.

"You seem to have a gift for saying things at the worst time, you really need to learn that you will never get a lady if you keep that up." I went in to punch him again, but he ducked, and we were set into an almost dancelike few moves, then he jumped back and sighed.

"I didn't want to have to sink this low, but I would much rather be done with this so we could get to know each other a bit better, over some wine perhaps?" He then started summoning his magic and I leaned forward a little, interested in seeing what magic he held.

"He thinks that's romantic, he needs help." I heard Captain snort that and I smiled, obviously, we agreed on something. He pointed at me, and I noticed water begin to swirl around me, quickly gathering at my wrists and ankles. I quirked an eyebrow and stood still for a minute, letting him think that he was in control of this moment. The water lifted me off the ground and began to carry me to the edge and I decided that enough was enough. I stopped moving and a look of surprise crossed Sir Pig's face.

"Like I said earlier, you have at least a hundred years of training to do before you're at my level." I then broke my bonds without any issues and rushed at him, stepping forward right as I reached him, delivering a sharp uppercut that knocked him out on the spot

The crowd went nuts when Sir Pig hit the ground and didn't get back up, and I could hear Ban above everyone else. I smugly walked off the ring listening to the shouting of the commentator as he did a blow by blow replay of the match.

I briefly stopped by Ban and wished him luck with his match before heading off to watch the match from the sidelines.

***

I whistled as the dust cleared and Meliodas was left standing, whispering to Elizabeth about using his fake name, then when everyone asked where Ba'an was, he pointed to a bridge that was probably a half mile away. I inconspicuously summoned Durendal and flew over to him and sat down by the crater made by his impact.

"Ban, you always did enjoy a dramatic exit, but I think this was taking it a bit too far!" I laughed as I heard a mumbled "shut up" come from the crater.

"I don't know Ban, I knew that Meliodas was going to win, but you almost had me doubting that for a minute, I was surprised at how much power you got from the Captain."

"Obviously it wasn't enough, did you see what happened when I punched him?" He pulled himself out of the crater, holes still riddling his body.

"Yeah, that was something that I hadn't seen coming, to be honest." I thought back to the mark I saw on Meliodas' face, and I frowned at the amount of demonic energy that came from him. I had investigated all the sins before I joined, and I remember finding out that Meliodas was part demon, but I hadn't thought anything about it until now.

"What do you suppose happened to make him like that?" Ban asked me and I shrugged.

"An emergency defense mechanism?" I pondered, then sighed, it was not going to be pretty when Ban found out about Meliodas. I was also concerned at how easily Meliodas turned; last time he had turned into his demon side, Danafore was wiped off the map. I could feel the energy building, and I was worried that we might have a major problem on our hands if this kept up.

I helped Ban walk back to the ring and let him go as Hawk came up to Ban to talk, I murmured to him, "I have to go see who the next rounds of fights are between, good luck with this one." I grunted and then walked away to the hut off the side of the ring again.

Meliodas, Diane, Howser, and Cain were there as well, and I frowned, wondering how this was going to work with an odd number of contestants. The commentator came in and started speaking, "Okay everyone, I hope you are ready for the next round of fighting because this is going to be a doozy! The first match will be between Cain and Meliodaz, then Howser and Matrona, and finally we have a bit of a mix up for this last match, Wanderer, we had someone come in and ask to fight you personally, and I signed off on it; it will be the Wanderer against The Day Bringer!" I blinked in shock but nodded, I guess I would have to see who it was when we fought.

I walked outside and saw King standing there with an extremely bloody nose, "Diane?" was all I said, then I laughed as his face flushed and he grunted. I grabbed his arm and led him a bit away, "I don't know where Ban is right now, but I want to talk to you before the next rounds start; Hendrickson had a corpse of a red demon stashed away and he's helping the Holy Knight's apprentices become stronger through its blood. He's experimenting with infusing the human body with the power of the demons, and he is succeeding. We need to stop him before this escalates."

King just looked at me in shock, "Are you serious?"

"Why would I joke about this? something major is going down, and I keep getting a very bad feeling about this situation; I don't like it, and I know that people are going to end up hurt."

"What? We need to talk to Captain about this, he deserves to know."

I grimaced, "I know, but it'll have to wait until after the festival because so much is happening that it would be bad to distract him right now. Plus, he just got into the ring, so it'll be away before we get the opportunity to talk to him privately. I don't really want to have this conversation in public, it's too risky."

He sighed, "I guess I agree, I'll meet up with you again once the festival is over." We parted ways, and I settled back to wait for my match. I wasn't expecting the reunion between Meliodas and an old friend from Danafore, but I smiled at the scene of them hugging, then Diane's and Howser's fight ended in her knocking him out, serves him right to think he could get rid of her that easily.

I once again climbed on stage and saw a hooded figure join me. I gasped at the energy they were giving off, I knew that I had felt this before, I just had no idea when. The commentator announced the start of our match, but neither of us moved, we were staring each other down, then my eyes widened in realization. My hand shot forward and I pushed Durendal at him, still encased in mist, pushing my opponent's hood off; at the same time, he raised his hand and I could feel our surroundings shift, the sky was now green, and we were surrounded by giant crystals instead of people. We were somehow in the Necropolis.

That wasn't what had my attention though, I was shaking as I stared at my opponent, "Jonas? How are you here, brother?"