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

[Malkavia]

A rectangle of light pierced the black canvas of Shimmerlace’s surroundings—so bright that when it hit her face, she felt her skin turn crisp, burning as it might under direct sunlight. The Feychild recognized the source of light instantly. She tried to scramble away, but her wrists and ankles were bound in thick leather straps.

”Tsk tsk. Bad news, Charlotte. It looks like you have cavities.”

Her dentist’s voice filled the black expanse.

Sweat beaded on Shimmerlace’s brow. She ripped at her bonds, flailing in an effort to break free. Although she could feel her body contorting, could sense the pain in her shoulder as she ripped away from the wrist-cuffs, her body didn’t appear to be moving.

​​“B-but I trained!” Her whine was small in the vast, bottomless space. ​​“Twelve strokes up and down back, front, top, bottom. Everything—and, and I got one of those electric brushes!”

"It looks to me like you’ve been drinking a lot of soda. Acid and sugar…Not a good combination for your pearly whites. You only get one set of adult teeth, you know!” A high-pitched, mechanical whir rose from the direction of the light, growing until it was an ear-piercing shriek. Only one set. Shimmerlace’s face turned cold. Her jaw trembled, and she went still and small in the dentist’s chair as the drill descended on her.

​​“I stopped the soda. And candy. I even got a-a-a water pick. I was good. I was a good girl doctor. Please.”

The drill head emerged into the light, a silhouette. It was a long handle connected to a bulbous head, from which protruded a single, spinning fang. She closed her eyes but the imprint of the overhead lamp burned the outline of the drill into her retinas.

When the drill head touched her tooth, her mouth lit up in agony. The drill became a screech—a jet engine coming online with sand in the turbine. The smell of burnt enamel rose, like melted plastic, to her nostrils. She could feel a tunnel bored into her tooth as chunks of hard enamel, softer dentin, and finally the gooey gore of the tooth’s root sprayed out of her mouth. She screamed and writhed, and when she opened her eyes, she saw the LAW-Apex arena and Angelina Tarrant. Tears rolled down both cheeks. Her legs kicked. Her arms grasped at Angelina’s hips. And she bit, hard, mindless of the glass in her mouth.

The belt stopped her jaw. As she bit down, blood welled in her mouth. It pooled at the back of her throat, and when she gasped, some went into her lung. Her eyes widened as she choked. Her chest heaved as she shook and gagged and coughed.

[Monsy]

The screams swelled her eardrums. Angelina winced, but tightened her lip and sharpened her cat iris. It was so fuckin’ annoying though. This — dealing with dying animals as they thrash and get in those last scrapes. A grab on her hips as Angelina snuck her glass shard in so deep, she swore she hit a tonsil. Shimmer just had to bite the glass. Angelina calmly complained, “I can’t see, fuckin’ selfish asshole.”

“Keep it up and you’ll swallow a piece.” Then, with her non-glass hand, she grabbed the jaw and tried to press on the targeted tooth. “Makin’ this so hard for me… We coulda’ been done by now.” She looked into Shimmer’s pink eyes, meanwhile. Studied all the facial cuts with a clear head, like preliminary guts.

Envisioning the soft skin scarring over.
Her mouth salivated and tongue wagged in her own mouth.
She got curious. Leaned down. Choices materialized: Bite off a chunk of cheek, or the nose, an eye or the lip. Then the texture predictions: chewy, gamey, or just metallic.

But instead, she dug her shoulder in, stabbed the glass in deeper, moved the handle towards the side so while she stabbed one set of molars, the shard’s body went over Shimmer’s tongue and out the opposite bottom-jaw molars. Then, after a push, she had the entire shard wedged inside Shimmer’s bottom jaw.

“Hold steady…” Angelina used her Shimmer’s face as a pushing pad to stand on her one remaining leg. The fucked one was dragged across Shimmer’s throat; windpipe stepped on, but more of a sandbag. Then she reached, far, bending over and groaning, wiggling her tiny mangled fingers to grab Nutcracka. She stood upright, released a heavy breath, shivering as she felt cold and sticky.

“Shimmah.” Angelina called rather seriously. The bat was wound up and ready to swing. She just wanted to savour a quick moment of eye contact. And once she got it, Angelina used the dopamine hit to throw a full-force golf swing at Shimmer’s lower jaw, aiming to crack razor-wire wooden goodness against whatever beauty Shimmer’s face had left.

[Malkavia]

Pain flowered in Shimmerlace’s jaw, its petals scarlet and yellow and electric-iridescent. The glass penetrated Shimmerlace’s gums, burrowing deep into the soft tissue of her mouth. Further inside. Her throat throbbed, aching from her now-dry screams.

She felt dizzy. The world sagged like melting jello, but throughout, Angelina watched her calmly. Shimmerlace’s hands clutched at the mat. Her hips thrust. You have to stop screaming.

Further and further inside. Each moment was a new crest of pain—a new height in her experience. Her screams became moans, muffled by the belt, cut by wet hacking sobs. She bit harder, even though Angelina had told her not to, but she had to. To quit. Crying. Finally, she choked down a sob and forced her screaming inside.

Be a good girl, Shimmerlace. Be a good girl and let the dentist do his work.

Further inside, and deeper in. Angelina was giving Shimmerlace her full attention. Her eyes locked on hers, as she pressed all of her weight into the shard of glass, wedging the Feychild’s mouth open. Shimmerlace was vibrating. Huge globs of fluid poured out of her eyes, and blood made her teeth almost black, but her dimples twitched towards a smile. As her body convulsed, and her breath came in asthmatic gasps, she didn’t scream. She was a good girl.

Later. Shimmerlace didn’t know how much later, but later. Angelina was standing over her. The pain emanated from the glass wedge holding her jaw open, but it floated everywhere, an almost physical presence, buoying her up. Making her skin glow, tight with anticipation. Her eyes rocked in their sockets but came back and back to Angelina. Angelina was beautiful. She was the Scarlet Terror, gleaming like the sun’s aurora, with eyes whose violet flashed just for her. Powerful and certain of purpose, Angelina lifted Nutcracka, and Shimmerlace’s knees clenched together.

The wire on the bat sliced her cheek. The momentum of the swing broke her jaw. She felt the glass inside her cheek, lodged against her teeth, crunch. The force rolled Shimmerlace onto her chest, as the climax finally pushed her over the edge. She was too weak to get off the mat, but her mouth shivered as she spat out the hard lumps cutting into her tongue. Glass. And something golden that dribbled out of her lips and rolled onto the mat. Her pupils contracted. Panic like cold iron formed in her chest.

She tried to say something, but her jaw wasn’t fitted correctly to her skull. Her eyes flew, wild. They found the referee. She raised a trembling hand to him.

Gimme the mic.

[Monsy]

Bone cracked against her wooden bat and the motion carried through. Happy birthday, Angelina. To herself and from herself, a comet delivery.

She looked down, leaning on her remaining leg with tippy-toes on the broken one. Her eyes—she felt them sink into her head. Deeper, again. She was numb. Her back, with dangling pieces of black cotton, glass slivers, flesh slits as half-inch shards were pushed out, burned. Breathing was like ripping her slowly scabbing wounds. Sticky, and inflamed.

But she can only think...

Her early years, Angelina can recall her imagination; macabre and adventurous. It thought of dumb things like running away, or throwing baseballs at people’s heads to inflict personality change. These things were like a sport, and that consequences, losing, were washed away with smiles. But it was consequences that kept her at bay, then. That, and desire. She didn’t care enough, they were just thoughts. And there was physical limitation. Biology and all that..

“Comets.” Angelina talked in a quieter register.

She reached and finger-locked with Shimmer’s outstretching hand. The referee, halfway there, stopped in her tracks. Angelina collapsed onto her good knee, if you can call it that, and kneeled in front of Shimmer’s asymmetrical face. Her smile twitched after sighting broken bone, and she moaned underbreath.

“Comets, yeah?” Angelina repeated, head dipped. “I’d like to be one. Just not to them.”

She thought for a second, “But… To be somethin’, someone has to call ya it… Witness it, right?”

Her hands hugged Shimmerlace’s face, cupping cheekbone, the pocket of index and thumb underneath Shimmerlace’s eye, and the thumb was against her inner eye-corner. Her stomach rumbled, and she clenched her beaten abs. She drooled out her mouth.

“You’re my witness Shimma." Her thumbs pressed in, gently. "My witness."

Then jabbed her thumbs, nails slanted, full-force to try and make the pink pair pop from their sockets.

[CaptainL]

Yuki Kazikura knew Shimmerlace Snuggleblossom. She especially knew Angelina Tarrant. Put the two of them together in a match, and she was sure there was bound to be chaos. When she booked her tickets to this match, she was already sure she would witness things she wasn't entirely sure if she wanted to see.

But even then, this match had been one to defy all reasonable expectations.

Yuki knew how merciless Angelina could be. It was Angelina, after all, who had tracked her down at her home just to make sure she knew she wasn't safe. It was Angelina who had destroyed her high school yearbook just to taunt her. She, of course, knew how Angelina had made a surprise appearance during Yuki's qualifier match with Shimmerlace that let the Feychild be here in the first place, and how brutally she had slashed open her brow. But even then, this was something beyond.

When she saw Angelina slash at Shimmer with the barbed wire of her bat, using it to flay open her back, Yuki gasped. When the two of them took to the ladder, and their brawl spilled out into the bowl above, she could only look on with eyes wide and mouth agape, her hands clasped to her mouth as though to stifle a scream. When Angelina began hacking away at Shimmer's face with a shard of glass, she could feel the sickly tug in her stomach, her body urging itself to vomit, though nothing made it that far. This couldn't be happening, she thought. Not even Angelina would go that far. It had become apparent by a few minutes in that, even if this was an I Quit match, Angelina wasn't really looking to make Shimmer give up. Yuki was all but convinced she was watching an attempted murder.

She had been through plenty of horrors in the ring. She'd had her leg broken, her scalp split, and been hanged from the top rope. She'd gotten tangled in barbed wire, slicing her arm open just to pull herself free. But somehow, this seemed to top it all. Maybe it was because it was Angelina, the woman she had come to fear, or perhaps it was because she and Shimmerlace had come to know each other on a more personal level - but this stung her deep into her soul. She wanted to look away. She wanted to faint, really. And yet, she couldn't. Like a trainwreck, her eyes were glued to the scene, no matter how horrible it grew.

A few times, Yuki thought about getting involved. She was a wrestler herself; she would've been able to take Angelina down. She was agile enough to catch up to the ring if she pushed her luck. Anything to make it all stop. But something stopped her, every time. This was Shimmerlace's fight to win, she told herself. If she stepped forward, she would only be putting a target on her back, a target that Angelina would be happy to take aim at. A few times she tried to get up, only for her joints to lock up with a cold, clammy sensation and force her back down, a prisoner of her own nerves.

But this time? Seeing Angelina looming before a broken, helpless, bleeding Shimmerlace - seeming as imposing as ever even with her leg shattered and her body limp - with her thumbs extended to ram straight into her eyes? Yuki knew she couldn't hide any more. Something needed to be done. This match could've already been over. She could've stopped this all plenty of times before and she hadn't been brave enough. She'd let things get out of hand - it was her fault this was happening. But this time, she couldn't let it escalate any further.

Spoiler

"WAIT!! WAIT, WAIT, WAIT!!" she screamed, jumping up from her seat. A few faces in the crowd turned toward her, and the cameras caught her as she went sprinting down the steps. With her unassuming appearance, Yuki had blended in with the crowd enough to escape notice up to this point. But now, everyone watching the event knew she was here in the arena.

"SOMEONE STOP THE MATCH!!" She ran down to the barricade, where she took a leap forward, one hand planting down at the top rail and giving a push as she vaulted over it without a second thought. The moment her feet hit the floor, she went off dashing toward the ring. Her heart pounded and her chest heaved as she tried to hold in breath, but she knew she couldn't afford to let fatigue take her now. Whether or not anyone heeded her call, Yuki was going to take matters into her own hands. She sprung through the ropes, throwing herself headlong at Angelina to tackle her to the canvas!

[Monsy]

It felt like wet and slimy meatballs, fresh from the pan. You couldn’t quite squish them, but they had a rubbery, almost spongy texture on her thumb. Her digit was trying to wedge into a hole that was already full. Meaning either the orbital broke or the eyeballs warped.

Angelina still felt disappointed in herself, like she was Shimmer trying to pick a lock. I’ll get better at this for next time, she told herself, and kept going, steady, “Come to Mama…”

Six seconds in and Angelina had Shimmer’s eyes cross-eyed and bloodshot. One veered towards the ceiling with veins blemishing and fluid oozing out like squeezed goat milk. The other eye pointed to the bottom left towards the nose, more oval than sphere. The eyelids twitching, unable to close.

Just a little more…

Her shoulder rotated sharply, thumb in, and Angelina heard a slushy pop. Her fingernail was millimetres in the socket and was squeezed, but the tip was behind the eyeball itself, fingering the optical nerve. She gasped, smiling.

“GYAGH!”

Pain punched all over. Her body bunched up and smacked the ground, disorienting her and taking her breath. Laying on her hip, one arm pinned under, Angelina reached and clawed the canvas, whining and having a strained kick in an attempt to turn to her belly.

She peeped up at Yuki. Her face shriveled with abject disgust. “You f-fuckin… hughhh… PSYCHOPATH!!”

[Malkavia]

Angelina cupped Shimmerlace’s face, and Shimmerlace grabbed her wrists. The whole match—Hell. The whole year welled up to her throat, but the only sound she could make was a gurgle. She squeezed Angelina, trying to press all her feelings through her fingerprints.

Angelina’s nails slipped under Shimmer’s eyelids and slithered in the crevice between orbital bone and eyeball.

Shimmer’s vision went wild. Black spots flashing metallic colors burst into the side of her vision and danced. Visual illusions, mixed with the dream-like images that twisted through her optical nerves to the beleaguered mind beyond.

Shimmerlace arched her back and moaned, a deer in its death throes. Her legs twitched, and her jaw clicked and clacked, but the resistance was weak and rubbery.

She was going to lose her sight.

She felt light—soaring on the endorphins. She wondered if she had fallen from the roof atop that temple, if this is what it would have felt like.

There was a pop, and although skull-splitting agony rocked through Shimmerlace’s head, she went stony still. She felt naueous and sweet in her stomach all at once. For a camera-flash instant, she was aware of every inch of her body—her face that no longer felt like a face, her hair adhesed to her shoulders, her torn back, her curled toes and clenched fingers. She’d had this dream of a ten-story tumble, or knife in the gut, or gun in the face a hundred times, but this time she couldn’t pussy out and wake up. Everything clenched.

And just like that—it was over. She didn’t know how it happened. Fuck, she didn’t know what happened. But Angelina was off her, and Shimmer’s hand flew to her eye. She sucked in breath.

Her first instinct was to clap the displaced eye. It slunk back into its socket, and her vision filled with orange kaleidoscopic lightning and then glittering black—not inky black. Not darkness. Stars and shifting geometric shapes, churning in a morass. She tried to open her eye, but the surrounding tissue was so swollen she couldn’t peep a crack. She didn't know, once the tissue healed, if the eye underneath could still see, and the question made her head throb.

Yuki.

—What?

She was breathing hard, becoming aware of the world as the world again. But that name didn’t make any sense. Until it did, and then Shimmerlace, in her fetal position, clutching her eye while her broken jaw hung diagonal on her face, let out of a laugh that scraped in her throat and ended in a long whine.

[CaptainL]

It was all happening faster than Yuki could really keep track of. Her feet were pumping at the air as she put all her strength into her charge forward, and her heart was pumping even harder in her chest. She just knew one thing - she couldn't allow this to happen. Angelina Tarrant had shown her on plenty of occasions that there were no depths she wasn't willing to sink to, and yet, even with plenty of advice to the contrary, Yuki still held out hope that she had limits. That was why, every time Angelina surpassed her own standards, Yuki was left aghast. This match had seen that happen more than once. But this time...Yuki wasn't going to let the shock stop her. She knew something had to be done, before everything truly went to hell. If there was a time for her to make a difference, it was now.

As she came to the ring, Yuki took one step more, then shoved off the ground with the ball of her foot. She went hurtling through the air - and then, just as quickly and as suddenly as her feet left the ground, she felt her body slam right into Angelina's, upending the Marauder's position on the canvas. There was a thump and a rumble and a roll; the world was spinning around Yuki, and what was down a minute ago was now up. But when it all came to a stop, and it all settled, she looked down to see Angelina pinned beneath her weight, held to the mat. It was over. She'd done it. She'd stopped her.

Yuki was still gasping for air, but as the realization finally hit her, those frantic pants began to slow into a steady sigh of relief. Yes. She'd done it. Angelina was down - and Shimmerlace was safe. When she looked back up at the pink-haired girl, she breathed a sigh that almost made the tension flow out of her body, though she tensed back up a moment later and reminded herself things weren't over just yet - the sight of Shimmerlace's broken jaw dangling limply and the mad laughter coming up from her throat was enough to make her wince; a sinking feeling dropped in the pit of her stomach, and a shudder went through her body for just a few fleeting seconds before she pushed back down at Angelina to hold her still. Even after all she had been through in some of her most painful moments, she could have hardly imagined the agony Shimmerlace was in right now. But as much as that was enough to make her stomach churn, the alternative was so much worse.

No, Yuki couldn't let go, not now - not when doing so would let Angelina free. Even when the redhead could barely walk under her own power, right here and now, she stood for a threat so much greater; a threat that Yuki couldn't ever forgive herself for letting go free. The joshi wrestler's muscles once again went taut, her knee digging against Angelina's back to assert her presence all the more. Her teeth tightened in a grimace as she felt the rage bubble up inside of her. If Angelina's actions weren't enough already to steel Yuki's spirit, it was what she said next that truly told her she needed to act.

"Psychopath!? Me!?" The heat flared up in Yuki's body, her eyelid twitching. It wasn't the first time that Angelina had thrown that insult at her. In the past, it had left Yuki wondering if there might be some truth to it - if she really was losing control and giving into her rage. Not so here. Yuki did feel a chill on the back of her neck when she heard those words, but it wasn't because she agreed with Angelina - it was from the sheer audacity she would've had to even say that after all she'd done. That anger was driving her even more to stand up - to make sure Angelina learned her lesson!

"Look at yourself!" With one hand, Yuki grabbed for Angelina's wrist, going to twist it behind her back and hold it against her shoulder blades, while her other grabbed the back of her skull, shoving her face down against the canvas. "You were just about to pop someone's eyes like a couple of damn grapes, and you call me a psychopath!? Really!? You don't even belong in this ring!" Gritting her teeth, she looked back over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of security; surely the guards would be arriving shortly, after this disturbance. "This match should've stopped a long time ago! Someone here needs to do their job!"

[Monsy]

Angelina’s back was sliced to hell already. Now, it had a knee smack dab on some fat cut and Angelina squealed.

Her spine compressed and curled into the canvas. Angelina was flat on her purple tummy, cheek face-down and eyes squeezed tight. Her struggles became rugged. A knee slid, scraped, but had no give. Her wrist turned into her back and she whimpered. The free hand made a fist. Then she felt tingling in her broken leg. Numbing, and multipying.

Her eyes welled up into teary hate-filled goblets.

“I’ll do more than take your fuckin’ eyes if you don’t let me fuckin’ GO!! HUGHHH!!!”

Her scream scratched a chalkboard. Angelina arched her goose-bumped neck, then flattened out, huffing. “I’ll fucking eat them, Yuki!! For your parents to see!!” She belly laughed, from a high pitch to a wheeze. Then, teeth clenched, Angelina put her messed-up face into mat, forehead flat, then folded her legs in and kicked them out. One had gained thirty percent more diameter and a ten degree slant. Air burned its blemished stiff surface, like carnivorous microscopic worms were eating into her bone.

Her smile, once painfully tight, gave into a shoulder-rattling cry. Her eyes stayed at half-mast, ready to pass out. She was shivering and making gasp sounds. And her busted lips contorted trying to catch her breath. She started to audibly pant and feel so many things slipping. Her gold, both Apex and Shimmer’s eyes. The looming threat of security and what happens then… The hospital visit, and its pit of snakes and venom, touching her. Restrained.

Yuki getting one over on her.
Her witness; stolen.

Angelina wanted to do so-so-so many things, but reeked of powerlessness.

But what did the referee want?
SHE was sheltering her ear-piece, listening to the drove of talk coming in. Her pale complexion was telling, and security was eyeing each other, expecting someone to step in.

But who?

[CaptainL]

The threats Angelina was spitting out should have intimidated Yuki. Indeed, when the dark-haired girl heard the abuse being hurled in her direction, the promise of grievous bodily harm, it was enough for her to clench her teeth as another tremble ran down her spine, her body stiffening. But it wasn't out of fear that she had such a response. If anything, it was out of anger - anger that even now, when by all means she should've lost a long time ago, when her body was too limp and broken to do anything to stop Yuki pressing down on it from above, Angelina still wasn't learning her lesson. She was still going to dig herself deeper. She was too committed to her heinous acts that not even the fact she could barely move her own body would get her to step down. In any other situation, it would've been a pitiable sight - Angelina laying there helplessly, her leg broken and her face bruised, only able to throw useless threats at a rival who had overtaken her with ease. But Yuki had no such pity for Angelina - not when Angelina had done what she had, and not when she fully intended to do so much more. She didn't deserve any such pity. She didn't deserve to be in the ring at all.

"Shut...up..!" Yuki snarled through her teeth, her whole body trembling. Even as Angelina tried to struggle out from under her, she pushed her knee down harder against her back to try and pin her in place, grinding it from side to side to exert a little more force just for good measure. It was becoming apparent that not even Yuki's intervention was going to keep Angelina down for long - but then, Yuki was prepared for that. Letting go of the Marauder's arm, she instead grabbed for the belt that had been spat out of Shimmerlace's mouth. Then, she would wrap it around her wrists and buckle it into place to keep her tied up. Doing so would free up her hands. And, as Yuki looked around, she could see that she needed those hands free.

The ring was covered in blood and broken glass, and Yuki had needed to throw herself in the middle of it all just to make it stop. And yet, everyone was just...watching. Staring. There were medical staff standing by, but there were no blaring sirens, no security storming the ring as she'd envisioned. Her eyelid twitched under the pent-up tension. Couldn't they see why she was doing this? Couldn't they see that Shimmerlace's very life was in danger - that Angelina was too deranged and uncontrollable to be trusted with her opponent's safety? She growled a little under her breath, shaking her head in disgust. But if no one was going to show up, she'd just take matters into her own hands.

"Security! Someone! I said, stop the match!" She hopped up and down, waving her arms to try and signal someone; then, she threw her hands over her torso in the shape of an X, as though signaling an injury. At last, she turned back around to the referee, fixing a glare on him. Ultimately, the blame rested with him, for letting this continue.

"Why aren't you stopping the match!? She was going to get killed out there! Angelina belongs in jail! You're supposed to be here to ensure we're safe, right? So just...do your job!"