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Sooo, basically it’s dogfights, but with Steves. Y’know, these illegal fighting rings, run by gangs, used for illegal transactions and betting.
This AU is set in a modern setting with cities and modern day technology. The world is inhabited by both humans and Steves, together. The city is secretly run by criminal groups such as mobs or smaller gangs of burglars and dealers. There’s a huge underground located underneath the city, consisting of the sewers and maintenance tunnels and stuff like that. There’s also an abundance of abandoned buildings in and around the city.
So, if anyone got kidnapped or went missing, the chances to find that person are incredibly slim. On top of that, the mafia’s influence is so big, they are able to effortlessly stop any investigations into their direction.
There’s two rivaling mafia groups within the city. One run by Elemental Steve and one run by Sabre. They hate each other's guts and have gotten into plenty of fights in the past. Nowadays they mostly avoid each other and no longer mess around in the other’s territory. Each of them lead their own fighting ring though, which are like two rivaling businesses at this point. Both of them try their hardest to attract as many customers as possible, through crazy events or special opportunities, where you can challenge their ‘champions’ with your own fighters. The winner of such an occasion usually gains some hefty prize money from the loser.
Needless to say, much like with horse racing, the betting business around the fighting rings is also booming.
If you think that Sabre is a good guy in this, I have to disappoint you. He is very much a bad guy. As the leader of his own mob, he is very ruthless and cruel. The only things that really matter to him are cold hard numbers (preferably in the form of cash), his younger cousin Lucas and his champion fighter (only because it’s usually the fighter in his team, who earns him the most money).
Lucas fulfills multiple roles. Not only is he Sabre’s right hand man; he is also the one responsible for kidnapping new Steves to become the next fighters. Lucas will also be the one to train these Steves. He may be younger than Sabre and still has a lot to learn and a lot of experience to gather, but that doesn’t make him any less terrifying.
Where Sabre is known for his cold and calculating nature, Lucas earns his intimidation points with his ice cold stare and unpredictability.
Who is Sabre’s strongest fighter? His champion? Welp, it’s not Rainbow. (Not yet-) Rainbow is a young adult, who just dropped out of college. He was trying to study art, which he also kept a secret from his parents. They rathered him to study engineering or sth like that, so when they found out about the actual courses Rain was visiting they stopped their financial support for him, which subsequently forced him to drop out, because he could no longer afford it. Now he’s trying to pay his bills as a delivery boy and part time Uber driver. Until Lucas gets his hands on him…
After that it’s a fight for survival for poor Rainbow Bean. It’s do or die and he has to toughen up quickly if he doesn’t want to get killed in the ring. But that sort of development could be subject for a future story. >:3
Sabre’s current champion is Faceless Steve. With his copying abilities he is capable of mimicking his opponents’ strengths and weaknesses, effectively using them against them. What Sabre doesn’t know though, is that Faceless is secretly working together with Plague Steve. What exactly this collaboration entails, I will keep a secret for now however. I’ll tell you some info about Plague and then let you guess!
Plague Steve is a doctor/surgeon in this AU. He is a semi-neutral person, who doesn’t belong to any group. He sews back together any of Elemental’s and Sabre’s fighters, if they’re valuable enough for that. Sabre and Elemental have to pay a whole fortune though for Plague’s services, which they begrudgingly do, because they have no medical alternative. Plague definitely abuses this position of power, although he does favor Elemental sometimes.
I think this has become quite the infodump by now, lol. Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed coming up with this stuff! Oh! Before I forget: My friend @Crystal_Eclipse helped me a lot with cool ideas and adding to the lore of this AU! Thanks bestie!
Now there might be a story for this AU coming in the future, but if you’re interested you can also go ahead and ask me about things you wanna know!
Other than that, have a nice day/night! :3