Magic in a Bottle: Angelina Tarrant vs Shimmerlace Snuggleblossom II (Apex Match)

[Malkavia]

For an instant, the two of them were standing, eye to eye. The Terror's face was clear, sharp and pale with the deep purple irises, before Shimmer's vision swirled one last time and her last eye swelled shut. She dropped Nutcracka. It clattered off the mat an instant before she and Angelina collapsed beside it. Shimmerlace's breathing was a rattle. The inflammation that had disfigured her face almost beyond recognition pressed on her windpipe.

Her fist clenched when she heard the name Yuki. Not a thought or mention, ey? She'd have liked to say the same back to Angelina. Shimmerlace's breath gurgled through the spittle and coagulating blood around her cracked and cut lips. Her skin felt paper thin. If Angelina somehow carved a Yooki Looki shape out of Shimmer's gurgling, then she'd feel the cut before she saw it.

She lifted her hands, and even though she couldn't see them, she knew they weren't hanging steady. She must have been grasping the air like a blind woman before she found Angelina's face and held it, cupping a cheek in each palm. There you are. Her thumbs stroked the Marauder, and she could tell from the angle that she was looking at Shimmerlace. Her heart quickened its pace.

She felt a need, then, one that ached against her chest like a hot brand. One shaking hand came off Angelina's cheek. It pointed at the Feychild's eye, then Angelina's chest. She pressed her palm, flush against her skin. Then she pointed, again at Angelina, and then the hand fell on Shimmerlace's chest, slapping the taught skin over her sternum. She hit herself, then hit herself again, harder. The hand still holding Angelina's face clenched and squeezed her ear, and Shimmerlace felt a flash of something fluttery and scared in her gut when she remembered the glass, but she swallowed that feeling like pink puke. She made the gesture again, deliberate, fast, close to violent.

She pointed her finger at her eye.
Then at Angelina's chest.
Then at Angelina's eye.
Then at her chest.

She felt half-asleep, buried in exhaustion so acute it was like anaesthesia. Curling her toes was mental effort. She would have lost consciousness then and there, if it hadn't been for Angelina sitting on her gut, ready to judge her with glass and razor wire.

[Monsy]

Angelina found a pink sparkle in Shimmer’s remaining eye. It had somethin’ to offah' unlike the pirates. A sense of earnest and silent praise that Angelina could pluck to put on her shelf, stuff into a doll or place inside her mouth. Shimmer was different because she chose this. Angelina, over the psychopath beside them.

Who talked… Making Angelina turn her head sharply. She glowered. “Roll ovah and bleed out before I slice that throat again twice as deep.” Her voice snapped, short of breath, re-directed by Shimmer’s touch. A smile formed, gentle, warm, but tired with a touch of vulnerability as Angelina’s upper-body swayed idly back and forth. She was tipping, then consciously pulling herself back each time. And as Shimmer drew and gurgled, Angelina made dimples, cheeks pink, heart slowed. The ear-squeeze made her feeling foot kick and wriggle. She was as calm as she had ever been.

And content as she had been in LAW also.

Listening and deciphering her witness, Angelina paid deep attention while drawing around Shimmer’s other eye with an index, enthused and attracted. Even with inflammation all over, Angelina pictured Shimmer, fully healed, smiling and doing this exact same message. Then again, at any point of the day or night. She expected this much.

And she chose to believe that Shimmer would, so she leaned over, curled her back and grabbed Shimmer’s shoulders with both hands, whispering… "Help me sit ya up. My back is fucked.”

If Shimmer lent her remaining strength then they’d be sitting up together. Angelina slipped into Shimmer’s lap, then stood on her knees to be taller. Both arms slowly embraced Shimmer. Her hands clawed into Shimmer's back. Then Angelina laid her head down on Shimmer’s shoulder, ear-to-collar, facing out to look at Yuki with total blankness.

“It’s about that time you end this for us. Do ya best. Then…” Angelina scratched behind the ear. A hand reached up and stroked the top of the scion’s pink head with sweat and blood. Nothing but the most delicate touches.

“We can go to our special place. Say, a week’s time.” Angelina blushed, grinning.

“And I’ll remove your eyes. As painlessly as I can. Ok?”

[Malkavia]

The Feychild went stiff as she was held, and a feeling glittered in her chest like a flurry of peony petals, and then Charlotte melted into Angelina, where she started to shake. She was held. Caught yet again. Whatever else Angelina did, she never really let Charlotte hit pavement. Not when Charlotte really tried. She grabbed a handful of Angelina's hair and buried her swollen face in her neck.

As she squeezed, the words Angelina said rolled over and over in her head. Especially one particularly sweet phrase. Roll over and bleed out. That one made her grin a grin she felt down to her toes.

...She didn't want Yuki to bleed out, of course. Not...really. Kazikura was a friend. Her owl friend. If a friend that had fucked up. Majorly.

But...yeah. If she was honest, that match with the prodigy had left Charlotte pretty pissed off. Not just the losing, but. That scratching Yuki was what it took to catch Angelina's eyes. Like Shimmerlace was just a bother on the Scarlet Terror's way to the real prize.

Yeah, actually. the more she thought about it, as her ragged thumb caressed Angelina's back. Maybe. She did really feel that a bit.

Bleed.

The fuck

Out.

Cunt.

The thought felt good. Really good. Charlotte would never look back.

...But, anywho, she wasn't about to let some interloper with no-respect ruin this moment. Angelina was talking about their special place. The word tickled in her ear, and she played it again.

Their special place.

Their special place.

They had one of those now, it seemed. Charlotte's throat tightened as tears welled in the cracks of her swollen eyes. Without lifting her face from Angelina's shoulder, she reached out and gestured for the mic.

...Saying the words hurt. Not in any deep, emotional sense, though she did feel surreal and light. But like. Getting her mouth open was a bitch. "Ah...Kwt...".

A pause dragged on. Apparently, ahkwt didn't count. Charlotte trembled with frustration, fists clenching. She tightened her resolve and squeezed open her one still half-functional eye to look out at the crowd.

The world shimmered like a mirage, but she could make out some of the faces. A cluster of candy-pink fairy fans huddled in this buoquet and that. Pirates hanging over the barricades. The endless sea of neutral fans in the middle.

Except they were anything but neutral.

In Shimmer's time, she'd experienced contempt. Disappointment. Her own fans had tipped her gibbet in a fit of pique over her incompetence.

But this crowd was furious. Rumbling. Screaming. It was hard to make out through the haze, but Charlotte could have sworn that one blurred patch of dark color in swift motion was some absolute child tossing a chair over the barricades. The sound of metal clanging on concrete confirmed it. Fuckin' toddler-ass cunts Charlotte wanted to think, but the force of it all took her breath away. Her eye squeezed shut, and her breathing quickened. She shuddered and squeezed Angelina tighter. Then. Carefully. Pushed everything but the legend in her arms aside and sounded out the vowels.

"Oooooooiiiiiii...Quuuuuwiiiiiiiiii...T."

Ding ding!

Charlotte gave a ragged sigh. She dropped the mic, which bumped the mat and shrieked. Feebdack—the eternal bane of AV crews. Alas. She felt like a bit of stellar flotsam, swooping and diving between the nebulae, and she was so tired. As Charlotte drifted towards unconsciousness, she leaned forward, locking her arms around Angelina, and in her dreams, she'd finally be allowed to join the pirate's tea party with Thistlebro.

[Monsy]

Since Angelina started cutting Shimmer’s face, she hadn’t left that headspace. In her world, she was still in those dark woods, on a highway, truck full of weapons, headlights, illuminating a corpse at her feet. She was angry, for a time. A spell, morelike. She savaged, took, harmed. And the more she did, the more dissatisfied she got, with flickers of inner spark that pushed her deeper into thumbing Shimmer’s eye sockets.

Then, an animal attacked. Yuki Kazikura. Psychopathic snake. Tumour in her brain and sickness to Shimmer.
And through all her thinking in the moment, she never expected anyone to help her. Not in a time of need or without glass to their neck.

So when they collapsed together, Angelina felt something immensely new..

Gratitude.

She didn’t know it was there, just the want to hold and own Shimmer’s soul. By holding her close, head stroked and voice light. She can think of Yuki meanwhile, the snake, and muster only feelings of spark knowing that in this place, she was now just a little more alone. And that she wasn’t good enough to keep a friend. Not stolen, but chosen. Angelina was that person, and now will always be that person. Knowing that Yuki would never know why made her smile.

The whims and winds of the crowds can see it too. Beyond steel barricades, they trashed and thrashed. Cups, popcorn bits and pirate insignia, thrown, ripped and stomped on. Fairy ears and pink shirts, plastic staffs and a mock hairpiece. So much vitriol from what Angelina can see crystal clear.

But they were all trees in her dark woods. Rustling fern, more like. She can watch them, know they’re there, but feel absolutely nothing. There were times where she got annoyed by them, or let them scratch her skin when they get too involved, like what happened with Madeleine Citronelle. And there were times when she revelled in them, playing them up, inviting them to Gibbet tip, or socializing like any other person. But this was much closer to how she really felt about them.

Trees in her dark woods. For all she’d care, she’d set them ablaze just to give her something beautiful to stare at, and enjoy it with Shimmer. And with the bell ringing, and Shimmer resting, Angelina felt the night in her woods go quiet. A shiny moon, overhead, full, casting down to their space filled with blood, clipped tissue, a slayed evil. Pirate. Fairy.

And thus, Angelina was complacent to keep holding. Stare off, hum gently and close her eyes, barely awake, but enough to feel alive.

[CaptainL]

Yuki couldn't believe what she was seeing. That after all of this - all the times Angelina had antagonized her, threatened her, tormented her; all of the twists and turns that Shimmerlace had related to her back in the owl cafe about how the Marauder seemed to be out to make her life hell; after all the horrors she had put her through in this one match alone - Shimmerlace was still going to take her side? Not just to roll over and end the match on Angelina's terms...but to take up arms against Yuki in doing so? Her mind groped around for any explanation; any clues that she could cling to - but nothing. No, there was no earthly explanation for why Shimmerlace had done what she'd just done. It didn't make sense. It was wrong. To Yuki, it felt so strange, so inexplicable, and so terrifying, it should've been a scene out of a nightmare.

And yet, it was real. As Yuki's trembling fingers squeezed desperately to try and staunch the blood pouring from the cut in her throat, the world around her grew hazy and indistinct; the edges blurred, and everything seemed like it was spinning. There was a throbbing and a pounding in the back of her head; her skull felt like it could split open at any moment. She felt cold, then numb; she couldn't even feel her legs. By all accounts she was losing blood - too much blood - and with that, her head had fallen into a haze. But Yuki knew one thing all too well, one thing too great and chilling and undeniable for her to ever brush off as a fantasy borne of delerium. No, this was real - somehow, she knew it. Its magnitude had pierced right through to her soul.

Her breaths had slowed into haggard pants; her face had grown pale and hollow as the world spun out of place. Yuki wanted to speak up, to say something - even if Angelina had threatened her, she still knew it had to be done. Yet, any words she could've formed died in her throat. She couldn't begin to think of anything that would capture the weight of this moment, and her strength was rapidly failing her. All she could do was to stare blankly at Angelina and Shimmerlace, the two women who had once been pitched rivals, now arm in arm. And as the referee stepped in to call the match's finish, and the paramedics began to gather around her, Yuki didn't pay them any heed. Her gaze was fixed unmoving to one spot. And when the exhaustion and the blood loss finally claimed her, the last thing to cross Yuki's mind before everything went dark was that terrible scene; that scene that should never have existed - and yet, it did.

Winner by Submission: Angelina Tarrant