"Fishback, you're next."
Wearily, I stood up and trudged to the door of the chamber. There was no need to rush. My masters never bothered to train me for punctuality, the fans liked a good dramatic pause, and, after all, I was in no hurry to reach my destination.
As I trudged to the airtight door, I glanced ruefully up at a poster on the slick, clean white wall of the hallway.
'Simon Fishback,' proudly announced the caption on the poster. Above the ostentatious yellow text was a photograph of me, nude and oiled- as I was now- and in fighting stance. Under my short, dark brown hair, arranged into a mullet, my harsh brown eyes stared back at the camera, by brow lowered and my thin lips pursed with concentration. Of the highlights on my contoured chest, roughly half looked real, while the rest seemed to have been edited in. Beneath the subtle ripples of my abdominal muscles, my shaved manhood hung.
I scowled, remembering the day of that photo shoot. The photographer had wanted me to look sexy, which was hardly unusual, but she didn't want me to be fully erect. As such, it took at least forty-five minutes of lengthy retries to get me photographed with my masculinity at exactly the right stiffness. I had no idea how well in turned out, but the photographer certainly seemed excited. Her opinion was the one that mattered, not mine, what with me being a mere slave.
That's right. You can bet it wasn't my idea to pose nude for posters. I was part of this city's male slave fighting league- the boyfights. And now I trudged to the finals. There would be one round. It would be quick and brutal. Whoever won would dominate utterly. I intended for that to be me.
They never told me much. I had a name, but they still saw it fit to treat me like a racing team might treat its car. They would wash and train me fastidiously, and, the rest of the time, leave me locked up.
Then they had the gall to tell me I was pampered.
Indeed, they never told me much. Even so, I still knew a thing or two about how the fans reacted to me. My fighting style was not one of specialization. I was never the fastest, the nimblest, the strongest or even the cleverest. What I was instead was a balance. Any foe who tried to use his signature move, I simply weathered and outlasted. Any foe who tried to stonewall me, I slowly moved in on and wore down. I didn't win all my fights, but I was never defeated quickly. Always, I gave the audience a show to remember.
Over time, I had gathered that I had become a fan favorite. I knew this didn't mean much for me. I knew it meant that my owners were getting rich by selling posters of me and that women all over the city were probably masturbating to them. That's not very impressive when you think about it, but, when you're a slave, you take what you can get. You bet I was proud.
At the end of the hallway, I emerged into the stadium. The roof was two stories high, and from the ring, the bleachers radiated out all the way to the walls, packed tightly with what looked like three hundred people. As I strode in, the announcer bellowed my name in the most drawn-out cry imaginable, and the crowd cheered, the mostly-female voices coalescing into a wailing like a fire alarm.
Forcing a smile, I snapped them a two-fingered salute to the fans, then vaulted into the ring and pounded my fist into my palm, facing my opponent.
The boy hardly looked like a fighter. His shoulders and arms were thin- well toned, but thin. His skin looked unusually pale, though there were surprisingly few blemishes marring his surface. His lower torso, even thinner and more discordantly muscular, led smoothly down to his moderately sized manhood, accenting his thin, shaky legs.
What truly made him seem like an odd boy to enter a fight- let alone win one- were his eyes. Set close above his abbreviated nose, his adorably large eyes gleamed with the same shade of cobalt blue as his flowing, shoulder-length hair. He gritted his teeth, but he wasn't fooling anyone; he lacked the eyes of a fighter. That ready hostility that made a good fighter was completely absent from those pretty eyes.
Come to think of it, he was a pretty boy all around. I considered myself heterosexual, but I wouldn't have minded having him to myself in bed.
With the sudden, fateful ding of the starting bell, we piled into one another. I decided to take the offensive. He looked like one to fold easily under a strong opening.
A few minutes later, I collapsed, flat on my back, panting, sweating and hurting. My opponent stood beside me, still in fighting stance, light-footedly shifting his weight.
That boy's speed amazed me. Not only were his reflexes significantly better than mine, but he struck like a cobra. Not long into the fight, I had shifted onto the defensive, and, not long after that, he had laid me low. As I sucked in deep, heavy breaths, I felt the ball of his foot press onto the soft base of my upturned cock, and I flinched. Thankfully, he did not push down; he had dominated me, and all he wanted was for everyone to see that. Maybe he also wanted the sports photographers to capture him that way.
"Smart boy," I thought. "You'll go far."
After keeping my cock pinned for a few seconds, he disengaged, and I stood up. As we were led out of the ring by our respective handlers, all I could think was how relieved I was to be finally over with my first season as a fighting boy. The training would relax now, I knew, and stay lax for at least a few months. That would be reward enough. What would winning have meant, anyway? Bragging rights and a lot more photo shoots. To my chagrin, I realized that I would have been glad to make that trade-off. Unlike many slaves, I always did have quite an ego, and I was always hungry to justify it. I think that drive is part of the reason they entered me into the boyfights in the first place.
Back at my storage room, my punching bag was, tellingly, gone. I sat back and put my hands over my face, willing my sores to stop throbbing.
Eventually, the door to the featureless room opened, and in stepped my handler, who motioned me to follow her. As always, it never occurred to me to resist. I may have been a fighter but, not only was this one armed, but she was a fighter herself. There was no going against her.
As we walked through an airtight door, the hallway transitioned from a smooth, shiny, edgeless tube to a trapezoidal truss structure, its gaps filled in with several layers of glass. Looking out, I took in the sight of the rest of the city.
Six floors above us, the surface of the ocean rippled, crinkling the light that filtered down. The bottoms of mammoth skyscrapers protruded down beneath their freely floating foundations, and tunnels like the one we walked through bridged between them. The bottoms of boats scooted across the water's surface, while the slim shapes of submersibles rumbled peacefully through the water below.
This was Pacific- a self-sustaining city floating on the ocean, unknown to the rest of the world. A city where men and women like me can be kept as slaves, and no one will lift a finger to help us.
Or so I thought.
Wordlessly, my handler led me into a featureless room much like the previous one, but with the all-important difference of a cot lain out in the corner. Taking the hint, I curled up on it tried to fall asleep.
Where did they get all of these empty rooms?
The night passed in a moment. As soon as I heard the door slide open, I lumbered to my feet and faced the exit, only to find someone other than my handler. It was a man this time, with a calm, sweet face, a blonde bob haircut and pale brown eyes that stared at me with something approaching sympathy- admiration, certainly.
"Follow me," he ordered, giving no additional explanation as to who he was or what I was doing with him.
I did as he asked, heedless of what it might mean for me. If a boat gets stolen, one does not consider the boat defective, and Pacific treats slaves the same way. I don't stand to lose anything by following this man.
"If I follow him long enough, maybe he'll tell me what the devil's name he's doing with me," I thought.
The answer presented itself not long after. A few stories down from where I had slept, he took me into a suspiciously barebones maintenance hall, then to a small door.
As soon as I traveled through, the atmosphere of the room hit me like a wave. The air was hot and loud, a roiling mess of hushed voices infusing it with a unique tension. For a moment, I dreaded a rematch, only to see that I was walking onto a stage, not a ring.
The stage was at least twenty feet wide, and, unlike any other I had seen, it was permanent- made of metal and plastic and trimmed with wood, which was an extremely rare substance here in Pacific.
Facing me was a crowd roughly two-thirds the size of my previous audience, with a similar gender distribution but a vastly different mannerism. No one wore body paint and no one shouted. There were no signs and no fan brawls; everyone sat in orderly rows and watched the stage.
Elsewhere on the stage stood a row of several dozen men, ranging in age from eighteen to what looked like forty, all nude and heavily oiled. None were fat and few had long hair, but, other than that, they were as diverse a group as one could expect. All of them were erect, but their faces were mixes of despondence, dispassion and dread.
There was no doubting it; this was an auction. A vague anger flared up in me, bemoaning that I had been given no warning of this, but I pushed it back down. As a final twist of the knife, however, I doubted that I would have been sold had I won that final match.
My handler pushed me onto a spot in the stage and quietly locked my feet into two sets of straps on the ground, keeping them at just over shoulder-width. Then, grabbing my penis, he pumped with businesslike dispassion, causing me to wince and bite my lip as he stretched my skin too far. As I did, no more than four of the audience turned and looked.
"Tough crowd," I thought.
Regardless, I stood up straight, put my hands just behind my hips and pulled my lips into a shallow, confident smile.
The abolitionist in me cried out for me not to play their game, but I silenced him. The slavers could enjoy staring at me all they wanted. This show wasn't just for their benefit. The prettier I looked, the more expensive I would be. The more money was paid for me, the better I would be treated. Besides, I needed to know that I was worth more than these bitch boys.
The auctioneer plied his trade with gusto, enthusiastically shilling each male's best features, running his smooth hands along their flesh as he loudly aggrandized their attractiveness. It surprised me how little he focused on the boy's cocks; According to what little I knew about women, the cock was the only part of a male they had any interest in, but here, the auctioneer, in front of a mainly female audience, divided his attention evenly among every part of the slave. First, he would run his index finger along one slave's chin, yelling about how smooth yet well-defined it was, then he'd tell him to flex his muscles. While I could only see so much difference from my angle, the audience seemed pleased by it.
In this manner, the auctioneer worked his way down the line of slaves. By the time he got to me, I knew what to expect. I renewed my smile as he descended on me like a vulture.
"And here we have a specimen straight from the boyfights," he began. "Lost to Slim Tim just yesterday, but he put up quite a fight."
The auctioneer ran his hands down my chest, invoking more of a response in me than I would have liked.
"You'll notice he's got the tone of a fighter here, all down the body. He'll do your heavy lifting, and if you like it rough in bed, here's one boy who can deliver."
He pried open my mouth.
"And there's a nice strong tongue in here, not too long, not too short, silky smooth and ready to use."
He backed away, then looked me up and down, as though suspecting that he had missed something.
"You get a clean, healthy physique, you get the muscle to help with chores around the house and you get the resale value of a bofyight finalist. Let's open the bid..."
The rest of the auction was a blur for me. Putting up a pretty face, I made like a doll and tuned everything out, trying not to listen at the numbers that were offered for me until I was sold.
"Sold!"
That was suspiciously fast.
For an excruciatingly long pause, the crowd shuffled around and the auctioneer drew out a set of papers until, finally, my buyer stepped up onto the stage to collar me.
She was a woman, and, to my relief, an attractive one. Her unusually broad shoulders and hips attached to surprisingly thin limbs, connected to a heavy but shapely torso. On her face was a broad smile, and in her pale eyes was a look of speculation as she continued to eye me.
While she slipped the collar around my neck with her right hand, she put her left over my pectorals and ordered, "flex."
Closing my eyes and focusing, I did so, meeting a high-pitched hum of approval from her.
I felt her left hand on my abdomen.
