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

[Malkavia]

The Nutcracka ripped through a lot of nothing, Shimmer snarling as she swung herself to her feet. She twisted her hands around the already-hot strip of black leather grip at the bat’s base, then shifted it to a two-hand grip. And here was Angelina—the firework. Thin-lipped, silent, bored enough to beckon. Shimmerlace felt her gut curdle, and it showed in a snarl and a headlong charge.

When you’ve got a pistol, shoot. Shimmerlace wound for a home run swing—the kind of strike that would crush her opponent's cheekbone. She wanted to crumple her face like tin foil, to make her leak a lovely gush of claret-red. The audience saw her flow, hair unfurled behind, lacy costume fluttering, body unfurling. Angelina would see her grin and stare eye-to-eye, as hungry to see the pirate fold around the razor-wire teeth as to feel the crunch under her fingers. The swing drew power from her full body, head to toe: It started as a twist in the torso, a spring-tight shift in the hips, then it projected through a step, thud, step to close the distance, and then unwound in a blink-and-you-miss it whistle.

[Monsy]

Meeting your own weapon had its fuckin’ flavour alright. You can pretend it to be your old pal, where you know each of every one of its flaws, its moves and where to strike. In the hands of someone like Shimma? Fuckin’ motivating in all the right ways to win it back. Confronting her seemed to be what she wanted, so here was her next time. Shimma came full steam ahead, and Angelina saddled into a focus, breathing once, twice, thrice -- and on the fourth, shot up from her knee, leaned left into the swing, then back so its violet blurred across her eyes and she saw the tape. One hand went for it, even if it landed on Shimmer’s own hands. Her foot swung in concert, close to a punt kick to sweep Shimmer’s legs from the front, and take this shit to the ground.

Angelina scrambled to get on top, using her knees on Shimma’s stomach and leverage on the bat to flatten this girl the best she possibly could. Even a second hand came into play, gripping the razor, tangling her fingers underneath and over just to feel the wood instead of a bite. She pressed down with both shoulders at once, to put the bat’s neck over the Seelie Scion’s windpipe, and squash it.

This could’ve been the point where she popped the first laugh. Instead, all she got was the same look before this whole swing began.

[Malkavia]

Her feet flew heel-to-head and the mat slammed her back hard enough to make Shimmerlace shout. The impact on her back knocked her breath out with a burst of spittle, and the Marauder’s knee in her gut kept re-intake of breath painful and shallow. All the while, Angelina stared flat and cold from on top. Then she drove the bat into Shimmer's throat, hunched over, heaving. Every ounce of the pillaging pirate tried to squeeze Shimmer’s light until it burst, popped, fizzled, and leaked out of her ears.

Instinct had Shimmerlace kick, heels dragging on the mat. She yelped like an animal. Pain flared and Shimmer felt pressure behind her eyeballs as she went bug-eyed and choked. Her face shaded purple, and she writhed, grabbed the bat, and her right-hand fingers caught razor, which sliced her, and she felt the laceration as an itch and an ooze that pulsed with her heartbeat. Metal nicked her right jaw-line and opened a red line that leaked a warm drizzle below her ear. All the while, horns loomed overhead. The Marauder's body heaved with the struggle, but her face...Her face made Shimmerlace shrink, chilled. Angelina's expression was as unconcerned as a captain managing as a matter of routine the wiles of a stormy sea.

Crunch. A capsule shattered between the fairy’s teeth. A heartbeat echo pulsed in Shimmer’s ears, while her tongue burned like it tasted five-alarm pepper. A pink chemical soup in Shimmerlace's mouth aggravated salivary glands into overdrive and—

Pink gunk belched from Shimmer’s mouth. Her spray was a capsaicinoid blend, eye-meltingly hot when it came into contact with sensitive tissue or mucuous membrane. While tears rolled down the fairy's cheeks, her face flushed scarlet, eyes blazing from the taste, she heaved from her core, and shoved. Fuckin’ roll her. As part of the same motion, she gripped Nutcracka’s base. One of Angelina's hands had wrapped around the bat's sharp teeth, which gave the fairy an opportunity to make ribbons of her palm. She just had to twist her shoulders. Pull. Swing the fuckin' bat.

[Monsy]

Who can say I Quit from a choke like this? Maybe the paramedics would come in to save this girl’s shit. Can you imagine her face if she got pulled out before the words? She can, and pressing down -- more by the second, with red trickles coming from the neck, onto the collar and to the shirt. It nearly brought another smile. Winning felt close already, even if in the back of her consciousness, she was waiting for something to happen.

“Nothing else?” She asked, raising her brows expectantly, huffing out as Angelina practically leaned off any base to ground herself, fully applying onto the choke at hand. It’s just a moment later -- a crack, tilt of the head, a growl -- then a blindfold. Pink dots over her face, in blotches and holes like a moth-eaten cloth that sinks into her eyes, turns the purple and white into pink -- then a swelling red. She can feel them expand into her sockets, like a thousand bed bugs just started feasting on the naked iris, crawled into the back of the socket, chewed on the cord and gave her head a brain freeze.

“Sh--.” Angelina yelped, made a biting action at the air, clenched teeth and sucked in, hard, tipping her head into her collar and forcing her eyes open through a means that gave her forehead a wrinkle. Her breathing kicked up about five notches, heaving in her shoulders like she was holding it in, with pink goop seeping at the corners, dripping down and onto the mat, hissing and wrinkling her nose as she tried staying firm. Yet even her eyes couldn’t stay open as it just got worse, then worse, until she was starting to see nothing but fuzz.

The weight didn’t peel off, but with one shoulder-twist and pull, it that sent her spinning the opposite direction like cogs in a clock. “HAAAAGGHH!!” Angelina grabbed her wrist and went pale. She dropped to her back, threw her head back into the canvas, beat it with her feet, one after the other, closed her eyes then belted another cry. “AAAGGHGH!! UGH!! H-HAHAGH--!” The hand was sliced, nicked and gashed in several places across the palm, fingers, fingertips, the tops, back and knuckles. Whites appeared in the cut, open to view before filling up with red and seeping out like a milky sludge. Her whole forearm shivered with her hand, locked in some half-flexed position where the digits curled at the ends, the thumb being out, and she stared at flaps of her own flesh like they were peelable scallops.

“Nggghhh!!! H-Hahhh!! Hoo--- Mm-O-ow…” Angelina ended up rolling onto her tummy, then used her elbows to rise, pushing off the mat to rise onto one knee, the wounded piece resting across her knee. Staring with bloodshot eyes and a pink-speckled face that broke its first sweat, she panted after coming down, biting down on her pain using her cheek as a pin-cushion. “I’am going to rake my fuckin’ bat down ya back, stomach and face. Hear that?! You’re fucked-fucked-fucked!”

[Malkavia]

Fuck but breathing felt nice—bit of an ache, still, on the old windpipe, but air is air, and just then the intake and expansion of lungs filled our fairy with sparkle that spread from her chest out to her shaking fingertips and up to an unsteady grin.

"Fuckin’ fuck…" Getting to her feet was a shaky business, even with Nutcracka as a crutch. Phew. She exhaled to fight the dizziness whirling out from a sudden shift in elevation combined with sharply increased oxygen and still-leaking blood. Ah, but Shimmerlace had screaming pirate music to take the edge off while she steadied the world. Cutting a girl open, figurative or literal, always makes the hair on your arms stand all electric-straight with shivery glowing delight. Eat shit, kiddo. But with Angelina, the Scarlet Terror, Violet Eyes herself in all her pillaging, flame-bedecked glory—

Shimmerlace got to her full height and spat in her palm. Her lips still burned numb from the capsaicinoid sap and the wad in her palm shone neon pink. That soon became the tint on the bat’s hilt as she squeezed her mark into the leather grip.

"Ye don’t got no bat, cunt."

Then her boots pounded the mat, her Nutcracka arced behind her, and her free elbow went high as the fairy soared a path to the pirate that aimed to slam arm to snout

[Monsy]

There’s got to be some fuckin’ way to cover this up. Her whole hand was out of commission. Nudging it felt like ripping another quarter-millimetre in her flesh, like a papercut for every brush of oxygen just flooding between the red-soaked gaps and skin flaps. It burned before there was peroxide. She stood, arm across her belly, still heaving as her hand spasmed. Ye don’t got no bat, huh --

“Fuckin’ watch me.” Angelina said, calmer with a small hint of growling like it just squeezed out her tense throat. And ahoy Shimmer came, dead ahead. Her injured hand folded behind her back, and she slouched, stopped blinking, breathing, and when Shimmer made her move -- waiting. Angelina ducked and went straight for the wrist, twisting it over and yanking to turn the palm roof-side and Shimmer whipping around.

A shoulder buried itself into her midsection, just underneath the bust. Helps being short. Putting it there, then running them back until she squished Shimmer against the ropes, then revving back and giving the Scion a hearty tug and throw towards the other set of ropes -- an irish whip! She huffed, slapped herself twice on the head, then jumped for the second rope, back-flipping off its spring to catch the returning Shimmer, centre of the ring with an added rotation to sit the girl’s shoulders, legs pinching that pink head before swinging through for the Hurricanrana, flinging the Scion into the corner.

[Malkavia]

Shimmer’s elbow not only missed but sent her back first into the ropes. Steel cables bent, hook heaved on receive, and all the momentum in her charge became stretch on a cold-iron slingshot.

Surprise compressed time. The moment Shimmer’s thinking landed back in the present was the instant she saw Angelina leap–whirligig. She cut the stratosphere with her horns and came tumbling down to force the fairy's snout in her crotch–and for a frozen instant, there the two of them were, fey head caught between pirate thighs.

Then the wound up spring sprung. *Clunk* went Shimmer's skull against the mat. The Feychild gave a croak from her back collapsing against the ring post and air forced between her teeth. Her head smacked the mat, then she to the left, half-conscious as her spine compressed, neck pressed to mat.

"Nyeeegh..."

Her vision was bleary like rain on a windshield–but like always she could make out the horns, and the Nutcracka rolling towards centre-mat, which set Shimmer's shoulder to scrambling. She grabbed her thorny prize, still hanging upwards-down like a downed vampire bat, groaning rage as her vision cleared and eyes locked on violet jewels.

[Monsy]

Practice makes the magic beat and hum before the eyes who see it first. Even when you’ve already done it plenty. Her frame could twist, bend and snap like an elastic, come onto her opponents in one swift, fluid motion then make it sting like hell. This time, however, the end-game wasn’t so pretty. Angelina smacked the canvas on her belly. It wasn’t pretty. She had one arm to stuff it, but ended up smacking the opposite shoulder then collapsing as a whole, having a small bounce. It winded her. For a second, at least.

Then she was up again, skipping the kip-up to spare her messed up hand, still tied on her back, she glowered at Shimmer while biting her cheek, still hissing and going bug-eyed. If she were bigger, stronger, then punching this girl silly like a Huan would’ve been so appetising. Her knuckles were finite, wood compared to steel -- primed to splinter if she did that too long. Instead, like always, she peered to the skies, then raced for it.

She jumped to the top corner, landing crouched, then popping off her feet to turn towards Shimmer in the adjacent corner. The crowd livened up as Angelina dragged her thumb across her throat. The sound is like a beehive getting kicked. She bent her knees and hopped for the top-rope, stepping over once, then springing true, flying from one corner to the next, casting a shadow onto the Seelie Scion as she pulled up her knees and shot her feet for Shimmer’s defenceless belly. Coast-to-Coast

[Malkavia]

And here came the comet itself, burning red in the atmosphere on its descent not towards just a crash but nuclear fuckin’ winter. The audience buzz was the thunderous crackle of its coronal fire, and Shimmerlace felt her skin crawl as her eyes went wide.

Her gut tightened. Two boots landed on a wall of abs shoved up to the deflect the pirate, but Shimmer’s her back bent between turnbuckles. This is five feet of air that's come crashing down, and it slams against the muscle, which buckles, then collapses, goes soft like pudding.

The feeling is instant nausea, and the blast is still sinking in deeper by the quarter-second. Blood pressed from her core tingles in her fingers. Her head goes light at the same time the sound of a dry-heave wrenches up her gullet.

And finally, finally, after it's pushed past what seems possible and her tum feels flat and stretched out as a zoo’s collectible penny souvenir, it's over. Herr body reniflates, and it's shake-city from there. Trembling fingers, quivering jaw. Her hips roll out of the ring corner, and she collapses, face down, hacking and whimpering on the mat.

And for all that, she still hasn't forgot the bat. Teeth ground against roiling nausea, she draws in old Nutcracka, shaking from elbow to wrist, until it's cradled against her gut like a doll. Then Shimmerlace rolls on top of her thorny bat while hot, furious tears roll down her cheeks.

[Monsy]

If she can ever imagine hitting something with hate, this was it. Full stop, diving for extra air, knowing your back is going to take a hit too. Then thrusting boots like you wanted to snap your knees, ankles and femur just by hitting the damn girl. It would be worth it. And Angelina indeed crashed too, with a hiccup to grip her fall, a breath’s hitch, then stomping on the canvas to back-roll. She checked her hand again. Like a toddler given a knife, who slapped away at a cut of meat. A finger pressed her palm. Four different minor cuts oozed. The whole thing burned like a maddening LSD, and she didn’t even get the peroxide yet.

“H-Hooh…” Breathed Angelina, out through an O-shaped mouth, half-hunched, then looking over to Shimmer. She inhaled. It came out her nose and she stood, putting her boot to their side and turning them over. “That’s fuckin’ mine.” And Angelina tried grabbing it, pulling on the middle where the razor couldn’t bite. But she only had one hand. One fuckin’ hand. Even adding a boot to Shimmer’s stomach didn’t change that. Really, it’s like pulling a huge fucking rock from the seabed. No matter how deep you dig your toes, lean into the water and the angle. It’s still heavier than you. Well, fuck it.

She dropped her knee sharply onto Shimmer’s navel, then put her bloody fist down, propped on the knuckles so she could lean. Then, with her good fist, she pulled it up til the shoulder-blades touched, then swung like the pickaxe, mining for Shimmer’s skull.

“Give it. Give it. GIVE IT!” Snarled Angelina, with red-tinted bloodshot eyes, leaking soap, and the bared teeth of an animal, contorted into a frown and rattling upper-lip. One, two, three, into four -- five, six. “GIVE. GIVE IT. GIVE ME IT!” And the pirate’s rage started to bleed away when she raised her red right hand, and started whipping it down too. She laughed. It hurt. It hurt so much. But no pirate was fully dressed without her smile, poking ear-to-ear, panting, not from exhaustion, but the joy of taking, and all its struggles, steps and glory just over the horizon. Her north star.