My Femboy System
Chapter 33: The Ringleader’s Final Act

Chapter 33: The Ringleader’s Final Act

The interior of the tent smelled like damp velvet and forgotten dreams. You know the scent—old liquor, older regrets, and something floral trying very hard to convince you it was once perfume. The kind of place where ghosts smoked cigars and shame played piano in a corner.

It was quieter than expected.

Quieter than it should have been, considering I’d just finished pirouetting my way through an apocalyptic brawl with twin clowns built like rejected opera houses. But inside this sagging carnival tent, the chaos stopped at the flap. No screaming. No snapping bones. Just the low sound of a man drinking alone.

Mavus Grey.

Slouched in a once-lavish armchair that had clearly seen more sin than a confessional booth in a pirate port. His legs were crossed, one boot tapping absently to a rhythm I couldn’t hear. His face was painted like a sad clown—white base, smeared red mouth, and black diamonds under each eye—but time had turned the colors into something more...elegiac. Less circus, more funeral.

In one hand he held a glass of something dark and viscous. The other lay limp over the armrest, his fingers twitching slightly—like a puppet waiting for its strings to be pulled again.

"Cecil Valen," he said, and the way he said it felt like a toast and a eulogy at once. "You made quite the entrance."

I dusted ash off my shoulders and stepped inside fully, letting the flap fall shut behind me. "You know my name. Either I’m very famous or you’re very bored."

"A bit of both," he murmured, swirling his drink. "I keep my eyes on the decadent. The divine. The damned. You check all three boxes and underline them with lipstick."

"I do aim to be thorough."

He chuckled, low and dry. "You’re different in person."

"I get that a lot. Usually from men whose egos are still bleeding."

"Mm. And yet you’ve made it this far without bleeding yourself. Impressive."

"Well," I said, tossing a glance around the tent, "I’m still alive. Which, in Ventri, is less of a blessing and more of a cosmic dare."

Mavus raised his glass. "To the survivors, then."

I didn’t descend into the pit immediately.

Instead, I wandered over to the warped bleachers lining the tent’s perimeter—half-collapsed, wood splintered from years of weather and weight—and claimed a seat near the top, high enough to keep the illusion of distance, low enough to hear every breath.

It creaked beneath me, protesting like an old friend with a bad back. Fitting, really. My body wasn’t much happier—bruised, stiff, and quietly muttering obscenities with every shift in posture.

Below, Mavus remained seated at the center of the ring, a lone figure in the middle of a faded stage. The spotlight above him swayed gently on its fraying wire, casting his shadow in long, broken strokes across the canvas. He didn’t look up.

And for a moment, neither of us spoke.

Two men. Two monsters. Two halves of a shattered mirror, each reflecting a different flavor of ruin—mine dressed in lace and mockery, his steeped in old wine and slow rot.

Finally, he spoke again.

"You wonder why I let you win. Why the clowns didn’t gut your little beast boy and string him up like a piñata."

I tilted my head. "I was wondering, yes. Seemed a touch...generous. Unlike most monsters I’ve met, those two stopped just short of artistically disemboweling us. Unusual restraint for creatures that look like they crawled out of a haunted puppet show."

His fingers drummed absently against his glass. "It was calibrated," he said, tapping his temple. "Their strength. Their instincts. I gave them just enough to make him fight. To keep him alive. But not enough to kill him."

I narrowed my eyes, voice dropping a shade cooler. "Shadow magic?"

He looked up, and for the first time, he seemed...hesitant.

"I don’t know what they are," he admitted. "They were a gift. From an old friend. One I haven’t seen in a very long time. All I know is they listen when I speak. Usually."

"Charming," I murmured. "You keep mysterious, invulnerable clowns as pets and don’t even know what they’re made of. What’s next? A dragon with commitment issues?"

His lips quirked faintly. "Don’t tempt me."

I exhaled through my nose, letting the silence settle once again. "So. A test, then?"

"A mercy," he replied, voice softening. "If I hadn’t restrained them, they would’ve turned that boy into mulch in under a minute. I wanted to see what he’d do with a real fight. How far he’d go."

"How fatherly of you."

"No," he said slowly. "How desperate. I needed to believe someone still had fire in them. Someone who wouldn’t crumple under the weight of cruelty. And you..."

He raised his glass toward me slightly.

"...You danced with death like it owed you dinner."

I gave him a slow smile. "It does."

His eyes met mine—tired, sharp, and impossibly old. And in that look, I saw the truth.

He wasn’t playing games.

He was searching for a reason to still believe in anything at all.

"You want the invitation?" Mavus asked at last, his voice breaking the silence like a sigh through parchment paper.

I met his gaze. "Yes."

He nodded, almost absently. "And I could give it to you."

I said nothing. Waited. Let the silence stretch like a noose.

"But I won’t," he finished, his tone flat but not unkind. "Not without a fight."

There it was.

I didn’t bristle. I didn’t reach for threats or raise an eyebrow like a diva denied her curtain call. Instead, I leaned forward slightly on the bleachers, resting my chin in one hand, my posture lazy, indulgent.

"Let me guess," I said. "This isn’t about us being enemies now is it?"

His mouth twitched—something close to a smile. "You’re sharper than most of the scum that crawls in here."

"I exfoliate regularly."

A dry chuckle escaped him. Then, with a slow, deliberate motion, Mavus rose from his seat in the pit below. He picked up the chair—once planted in the center of the ring like a forgotten throne—and dragged it aside, setting it with care near one of the tent’s drooping posts. The gesture felt ritualistic. Final.

Then he turned back to me.

"I want to feel something," he said, beginning to undo the buttons of his coat. "One last time. Not wine. Not lust. Not dread. Just pain. Something real. Something sharp enough to prove I haven’t vanished entirely into memory."

The coat fell away, crumpling onto the dirt like a shed skin. Beneath it, his frame was lean, almost wiry—scarred in a way that made you wonder how a body could hold so many stories without bursting. The wounds weren’t just on his skin; they clung to his posture, to the way his shoulders curled in ever so slightly, as if even standing was an act of resistance.

"So," he said, stepping back into the center of the ring with bare feet and bloody history, "I propose this."

I rose from the bleachers and hopped lightly down, my boots kissing the earth with soft finality. The tent felt quieter now. Even the shadows seemed to draw closer, listening.

"A duel," I said, voice low, tasting the weight of the word.

"No weapons," Mavus replied, cracking his knuckles, not menacing but meditative. "No magic. No tricks. Just flesh. Bone. Blood. One last round of meaning."

I tilted my head, the faintest smirk ghosting across my lips. "How romantic."

"Don’t flatter me," he said. "I’m far past poetry."

"Everyone says that before they bleed."

Without ceremony, I reached up and undid the illusion around me. My Divine Femmeform shimmered away in a curtain of light, peeling back to reveal myself—my true self—beneath. The air shifted. He noticed.

"Hmm," Mavus said, eyeing me with something like curiosity. "You’re even more dangerous when you’re honest."

I rolled my shoulders, unfastening the last few pieces of costume and tossing them aside. "You’ll find I’m rarely honest, just persuasive."

We stood there for a beat. Just two men in a rotting circus tent—each shaped by hunger, haunted by what we’d done, what we still might do. The ring around us wasn’t made of ropes or sand.

It was made of memory.

And we were stepping into it together.

"Before we begin," I said, flexing my fingers, "one question."

He arched a brow.

"This invitation of your’s—who holds it?"

Mavus’s eyes glinted, even under all that exhaustion. "Someone who’d be very happy to see you again."

I raised a brow at this then laughed—quiet, sardonic. "That rarely ends well."

"For them, or for you?"

"Usually both."

He nodded slowly, then lifted his hands.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Always."

And then, without fanfare, without drums or trumpets, he struck.

The first blow was fast—faster than I expected for a man who seemed so tired. I twisted to the side, catching his wrist, but his other fist came low and buried itself in my ribs. Pain bloomed hot and immediate.

I hissed through my teeth. "All that philosophy, and you still punch like a bastard."

Mavus smiled grimly. "It’s the only thing that’s ever made sense."

Somewhere, amid the blur of movement and the ache blooming through my ribs, I realized something.

I wasn’t fighting a villain.

I was dancing with a mirror.

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