The Brothers Gruff

Remake of the Three Billy Goats Gruff for The Writer's Cramp.

Grid City, once a beacon of progress, had rotted from the bottom up. The Lower Stacks a crumbling district of rusted scaffolds and flickering neon was a pit where the poor clawed at scraps and survival.

There was only one way out: The Bridge.

Suspended high above the Lower Stacks, the Bridge wasn’t a road it was an arena. Floating with magnetized platforms and watched by millions, it connected poverty to promise. But to cross it, you had to fight. Win, and you were free. Lose, and you didn’t just stay you disappeared.

The Troll guarded the gate.

He was a machine in a man’s skin, reinforced with combat plating and synthetic muscle fiber. Rumors claimed he’d once been a champion before losing his soul to tech and greed. Now, he ran the Bridge and the Pit Cells beneath it.

In an old gym two floors above a noodle stall and one floor beneath a weapons mod shop, the Brothers Gruff sat on crates under the flicker of a hacked solar lamp.

LG, the youngest real name Gabriel Gruff bounced his leg as he tightened his wraps. Just 19, wiry and quick, LG had speed most fighters never saw coming. He was also the loudest.

“Yo, we really doing this tomorrow?” LG asked, biting a protein bar. “I mean, Troll’s a freakin’ tank. You’ve seen what he did to that guy from Iron Ring, right? Snapped his spine like cheap plastic.”

KG, the middle brother Kevin Gruff grunted, checking the actuator in his elbow brace. Calm, powerful, with short cropped hair and military posture, he had once served in the border defense corps before defecting.

“Yeah. I saw. That’s why we have to do it smart. One at a time, keep the pressure on. Get their attention. Let OG hit 'em when it counts.”

LG threw his head back and groaned. “So I’m the bait.”

“No,” said OG Oliver Gruff, the oldest. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed. His frame was massive, but it was his presence that quieted rooms. Everyone called him Big Bad Gruff, or just OG. No mods. No implants. Just fists like concrete blocks and a mind like a steel trap.

“You’re the spark,” OG said to LG. “You light the fire. Show ‘em who we are. KG keeps the flames going. I bring the burn.”

LG cracked his neck, rising to his feet. “Then let’s burn the damn bridge down.”

~ ~ ~

LG stepped onto the ring first, heart pounding. The Troll’s voice echoed through the platform processed, booming, metallic.

“Who dares cross my Bridge?”

LG smiled, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Name’s LG. Lil Gruff. You’ll remember it after I’m done dancing around your boy.”

The crowd roared. A massive brawler stepped out Troll’s enforcer, clad in shock armor.
The fight was fast. LG darted like lightning, landing quick hits and keeping the enforcer chasing shadows. But he wasn’t built to win just to survive.

When he took a knee after a hard hit, he raised a trembling fist.

“Heh...you should see my brother...”

~ ~ ~

Next came KG. He walked in silent, expression carved from steel.
Troll's voice came again. “You think you're stronger than your brother?”

“I am stronger. But I’m not the strongest.”

KG took down two enforcers before they overloaded his brace and dropped him with a pulse baton. He hit the mat hard.

~ ~ ~

OG stepped onto the Bridge as thunder cracked above. Rain began to fall not the clean rain of the upper levels.

Across from him, three enforcers advanced. Hulking, augmented men with carbon fiber limbs, reinforced jaw plates, and taser spines. Their suits buzzed with internal generators built to break any opponent before they ever touched Troll.

The crowd screamed. This was the pre-show.

OG lifted his fists. “Three at once?” he muttered. “You’re gonna need more.”

The first enforcer rushed forward a blur of metal and bone. OG stepped inside the swing and cracked an elbow into the man’s temple, short circuiting his neural link. He dropped like a marionette with cut strings.

The second came from behind. OG ducked under a charged punch and used the man’s own momentum to hip toss him into the support column. Sparks flew as the enforcer convulsed.

The third had learned. He circled, scanning for openings. OG grunted.
“Smart. Too bad you hesitated.”

OG lunged, his shoulder slamming into the enforcer’s midsection. He lifted him up and spine bombed him into the ground hard enough to fracture the magnetic ring plating.

Three down.

~ ~ ~

Troll descended from the skybox like a war machine hydraulic limbs hissing, shoulders humming with stored kinetic energy. He stepped into the ring, shaking it with each footfall.

“You should have stayed in the Stacks,” Troll said, voice metallic and slow. “This ring is mine.”

OG raised his hands, breathing steady. “Not anymore.”

They collided like titans.

The first blow from Troll was like being hit by a railcar.

OG staggered but stayed upright. Troll followed up with a plasma charged elbow, catching OG’s ribs.

“You’re strong,” Troll hissed. “But you’re just flesh.”

OG choked out a laugh. “And you forgot what that means.”

He headbutted Troll. Once. Twice.

Troll staggered. OG dropped down, pivoted, and swept the cyborg’s legs, causing him to crash.

The crowd screamed. OG mounted and pounded brutal, relentless punches, each one denting the armor, each one louder than the last. The Bridge shook with the rhythm of raw defiance.

He grabbed the metal giant by the shoulder, hauled him up, and just as Troll fired off a desperate punch, OG ducked under it, pivoted behind, and with a roar, dropkicked him across the ring.

Troll crashed into a drainage trench in the magnetized platform slick with rainwater pouring from the city’s upper layers. The moment his body hit; sparks erupted.

The trench lit up as arcs of blue danced across Troll’s cybernetic limbs. He convulsed, systems overloading. His red optics blinked once, then dimmed.

The Troll was done.

They were all free.