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

[Malkavia]

The world throbbed, red-tinted and off its axis. That clunk on the head rang out and still came echoing, and the heartbeat thu-thunk rush in her ears made the light from the spotlight ache like a pin going in and out of the eye. Thoughts clung to graymatter only with difficulty, like a limpet clinging to the understand of a boat scraping aground. But one idea throbbed red-hot: Hold your fuckin’ bat.

CRACK!

Shimmerlace had rolled out of the corner, been tugged and shoved by this pirate tide jerking at Nutcracka. When the fist-to-face collision dragged her to half-wakefulness, she was on her side. Two images swam together: Glow and dark. The spotlight shining with headache-wrenching arcs of rainbow and white. Horns sliding between.

A second blow forced a sound out of Shimmerlace, not quite a scream, not quite belch. Gloopy, wet, sharp in the throat. But you could read its meaning: No. Her hands held tight enough to the bat to ache at the joints. It would have been white-knuckle if flecks of blood (Angie’s? Shimmer’s?) hadn’t flecked over them.

And it kept coming like a hailstorm until you couldn’t count how many you’d taken. Shimmerlace’s breath became a snort. Blow after blow had all the fluids running—tears, snot, blood, and the snort sent them all down her throat in an iron-flecked gulp. Her vision was clearing, focusing. She could see the violet slits—and she knew.

CRACK—!

They Feychild would have to give it up. Other path was just getting pulped. One last suck in of breath, another red-flecked bellow at Angelina, and she let it go—and flit her arms at the ropes and dug in her heels, and pulled for all her might to get out from under and away from the sky full of bright-raining stones.

[Monsy]

Who’s counting these punches? The referee? The crowd? Why would they, watchers of the comet, fellow Marauders and fairies, patrons of the Tea Time Court, be interested in the number -- but to cheer, jeer and hold their breath before the violence, melting together. Angelina did. Every single one. It’s the number that put fuel into this fuckin’ fire, driving the feat higher, setting a new bar for one more, then crushing it. Each and every time. She came to one last draw of her bloody, swelling, purpled-reddish fist. And Shimmer moved.

Angelina panted, then peered down, watching her Nutcracka’ -- the sword at the pirate’s hip, her Marauding cutlass, was finally free from thieving hands. She earned it. And by fuckin’ Pirate Jesus, o’ Long John Silver, Kevin Mitnick and Patchy himself, she was ready to swing.

If she took one second more, Shimmer would’ve gotten free. Instead, Angelina grabbed the ankle, stood, then took her boot to soccer kick Shimmer in the jaw. “Don’t chickenshit me now.” Only if she can knock her loopy, to mitigate the weight between them to pull like she did on that fuckin’ boat. Take her lifeline, then turn her over. Belly face-down, and with Angelina mounting a boot on their nape, bending over and picking up her beloved barbed-wire cutlass.

“Watch me, ya fuckin’ pinks and pirates!” Angelina shouted, drawing the bat like a sword and thrusting it high, pointing to the ceiling and hailing it with her bloody hand. The crowd made an awe and buzzed, wincing as Angelina arched it back, then cleaved it down, razor and blunt force crushing into those Seelie clothes. Even better, her spine. And all the squishy bitties holding it there.

[Malkavia]

The rope’s a ledge. Shimmerlace pulled, and the rubber squeaked, and the steel cable banged against the turnbuckle hooks. She pulled hard enough to put an ache in her elbow and to remind her shoulder what an escape artist’s autodislocation felt like.

Then the ground got her, and the ground was a black boot and a crack along her jaw that set the hinges loose, and she lay splaid and spread-eagle with the rain coming down, fey skin a loose and dead molting split by the fall. Then the boot pressed her cheek into the dirt. Breath bubbled with spit in the wet space between tongue and soil, while he boots and knees with minds of their own slipped and slid in the mud.

Angelina looked down from the rooftop and drove the Nutcracka into her back like an axe. Shimmerlace’s eyes bulged. She was on the mat again. The metal on her back was like a shotgun blast full of salt. Each thorn that pierced the attire was a hook that slipped into her skin—red-hot pain-point star, then a burst as the first droplets of red leaked onto the surface. Then. The itch from unzipped skin.

If you roll or slide, it peels your back like a tuna can.
If you stay put, you look like a cunt—and she cuts you anyway.
So, off the ledge we jump.

In spite of the mist in Shimmer’s vision, she could still make out two thick gray lines ahead of her like power lines obscured by storm clouds. The ropes.

The Nutcracka kept Angelina’s hands full. This time she wouldn't be able to grab an ankle or fistful of hair. If Shimmerlace could just buck and reach the rope and pull and roll, she could get out of the ring. The only thing holding her back was razor wire like fishhooks in her skin.

So she dug in her palms, pushed on her knees, heaved with her core, and screamed.

[Monsy]

One-handed execution. It snapped across the back. You can feel the weapon shake like you just hit a tree log. It hurts. But the satisfaction weighs ten times more. Whether it’s from a new spark of sadism or just the thrill of winning in real time, she couldn’t quite say. She just loved it, and beamed to the audience who watched with mixed horror and abstract fascination. Clothes into ribbons and skin into steak. She watched Shimmer’s escape. Crude and before the submission can truly lock in. At least not yet.

The truth laid before them had all the tells. Shimmer looked paralyzed with the razors eating into her back. Who wouldn’t? Well, it’s the pirate’s place to the one who could. She had to look down on them. For once. Your Posah Pixie. Why? Because it’s that perspective that let her follow, with all the lacking restraint and decisiveness, to put her boot on the lower spine, lined with the Nutcracka that dragged and slid, millimetre by millimetre, having just the smallest resistance. She took her spot, readied with her hand, applied her forearm across the upper handle, then raked the weapon down her back in one almighty torque that would see it come free, and Angelina to stumble, turn around and raise the blood-caked cutlass to the Marauders and Pinks.

[Malkavia]

PULL—!

Her arms clench, and her tug opposes the cling of her sweat-slick thighs against the mat, the Marauder’s weight on her neck, the Nutcracka’s hooks in her skin—but even so, she slides. Her back is on fire, like she'd pressed her skin to a bee hive and held it there, but she heaves until the boot slips of her back, and she crawls half an inch towards the ledge and escape.

Angelina put her boot in the small of the Feychild’s back, which makes a soft rustle of rubber on cotton, like a bird settling into a nest, a sound she can only make out because everything else is stone quiet. She's face to face with the rope, but there's no pull left. Her elbow’s already at ninety degrees. The adrenaline has her hyperventilating, breathing as fast as the heart race in her neck, which is a mistake because every breath pushes on the red latticework on her back and expands the lacerations by millimeters. All the while, her feet grip and slip against the mat.

Then, Angelina raked. Claw-marks from shoulder blade to her hips split the once-smooth curve of her back into rough, red, wet ravines.

At first, the reactions are subtle. Her body clenches from toe to scalp, jaw clicking as it worked, open and shut. A tremor ran through her thighs and up her navel. Her costume is a tangled mesh of ribbons and frayed cotton. Then the blood wells from shallow cuts until her back is slippery with scarlet, and her hands slip from the ropes and press to her back. She'd roll on her side, except the boot keeps her pinned, so instead she bends against the boot, arcing, then cringing as her body’s automatic spasms tear the cuts wider.

Then the wailing starts, only it's a wail that isn't expression so much as inhale, desperate to get breath inside her but through a throat clenched to a straw. It isn't one scream but a series of choked gasps, getting louder after every gulp, more cut, more fissured, until her breathing is bawling, and she's left shaking at the edge of the ring, cheek to mat.

[Monsy]

They were gladiators.
Blood became the sugar that gave this audience something to cringe, reel, but nevertheless invest. The pink weapon had its shade of red. The silver steel got a new coat and was soon to stain. Angelina put her back to the ropes. Her nose turned away. Curled. Words were bubbling up inside now that there was slack to play with. After all, the girl looked like a ripped up blood bag prop. She licked her lips, set the point of the bat down and leaned on it like a cane. “Question, Shimba.” Her head tilted to get parallel with Shimmer’s head on the ground. “I beat ya once, I steal ya shit. Twice. Then you, with that sharp, sharp head of yours -- come at me again with the same soap. Same repertoire. Same skill. What the fuck did ya think was gonna happen, Shimba?”

Angelina stepped between the ropes, reaching the apron. She kneeled by Shimmer’s head, picking her head up by the pink locks, and growled in her ear. “What the FUCK did ya think would happen?!” The bat dropped to ringside, and rolled towards the corner post. Using the grip on Shimmer’s hair, she slammed it back down, but not before spotting the direct alignment between her skull and that black metal pole we scrubs call a ring post.

“You’re fucked.” Angelina said, smiling ear-to-ear as she stood up, walked back, an arm over the ropes. When she reached the opposite corner, she bolted, and it only took a second to drop into a baseball slide -- and see her boot soles aim to squish Shimmer’s skull against the ring post.

[Malkavia]

The lacerations had a cold bite: a slit opens, then stings like ice slashed along skin. But the longer the wound gapes, the more blood clots and skin turns red, swells, the more heat radiates from flesh turning bumpy and angry. Five pirate fingers take our Seelie Scout by the head and wrench her neck to look up, and her back’s not so pliable and makes her cringe and gasp as the cuts twist with her back arching.

Shimmer’s eyes are lidded—is she even there? Words sink into her. Same fuckin’ soap. And you know she hears it because her breath gets heavier against her teeth, and her face flushes darker purple. Still. It’s not like she raises any claws to protest; her eyes refuse to focus. Breathing seems to be the extent of her power, huffing and puffing at the edge of the throb and fog of a sore head and fire-eaten back.

She jerks when Angelina tosses her head against the ringpost, groans, as fresh waves of nausea ripple from another clunk against steel. And then here comes the windup, Marauder lining up the shot, all grins and jut-out jaw and horns tilted to pierce, and as she got her weight rolling, flying-like, Shimmer’s half-covered eyes locked. Her hips heaved, and she rolled out the ring quick as a fish yanked from a stream.

[Monsy]

Girl’s skull was a fuckin’ field goal. She traded hand for back. Who wants to argue who’s winning? It’s none otha’. And while consciousness may be recommended to extract those two pretty little words, no one said they needed a brain to babble. So she went for it. Images like a watermelon taking the brutish full swing of a sledgehammer. Swung by a machine like herself. Then…

“KYAHH!!....”
She missed. The bar threads her legs. Stupid fuckin’ square, with its dull smooth edges. Her skirt rides up, and she’s hit in the pink. Her groin is smashed. Clit, vulva, labia in all, wrapped, twisted and burnt into a white hot knot, shooting up her pelvis, down her trembling thighs that squeeze the pole, curled at the toes. It tingles in her abdomen, into her chest, stops her heart. It rattles her fingers. It’s in her head and swims until she's drunk. A full-body exhilaration mixed with sheer agony. She’s caught between belting a sultry moan and a cry. Her mouth was open and she sat up immediately, petrified.

"A-Ahh... h..hah... a...ah...mm--" The colour had drained, except for a scarlet streak across her cheeks to her ears. Then she squealed, girly and rather short and quiet. She nibbled on her lip, sobbed in her eyes then fainted onto her slightly arched back with whimpers and small convulsions, hands between her legs, between hot pink underwear and cold metal, and the legs dangling off the side. Eyes fallen into her head. "m-legh..."

[Malkavia]

The ground surrounding the ring is concrete, and the drop is at least three feet. Her hands catch the fall, but the impact bristles her back all the same. She cringes, squeezes her eyes until they ache, breathes through pursed lips as she sits, huffing and puffing on all fours, but. But. Then she cracks a smile.

"Tsk. Fuck Angie..." Her voice is rust on a hinge, cracked like she’s got a cold, as she hops to her knees and looks at the pair of legs hanging all dangly over the ring apron. One glance at the Scarlet Terror’s face and she can’t help but snicker. "You know me better ‘n that, don’t ye?"

The ankles were right there, so Shimmerlace helped herself, taking one boot under her arm and the other in her hand. Hers were lidded, drunken eyes, but a smoldering something lit behind them as she looked her Marauder over, stern to prow. "Obviously, I was just thinking on you. And how much I missed your pretty face, and pretty voice, at memorable moments such as these. Now come along…"

One pretty knee-sock crossed the other, straight leg under a knee crossed ninety degrees, with the ringpost between, and Shimmerlace locks both hands around the captured ankle. "...And gimme a smile for the ages." With a flex of her hips, she’d aim to jump, to beat her wings, flip her legs over Angelina’s, and—presto! Like magic, she’d wish for a figure four, tight in all the joints, pulled to stretching bones in sockets around that lovely ringpost.

[Monsy]

“U-ummnah… h-hummm…nah… a-a…” Crushed is the pelvis that hate-fucks a ring post. The Pirate Soul left her about ten seconds of frozen, dead twitching. Shocks and flutters, with pain like gout and the cat claws dragging across her bones and insides. It started burning.

She groaned. “I…” Angelina stressed the sound, long as Shimmer talked, choked on spit and coughed. Then she cracked another sob. Quiet, more pitiful than belching wail from her shredded hand. And that blood now had gone to her thigh, between the squares of her fishnets where she grabbed, clutched, held her breath and let it out, easy as can be. Sooner or later, she’d need to move. “S-Shimma… S-Shimma…” The feeling in her legs was ninety percent absent. Until Shimmer pulled the figure-four. “S-Shim-- GK!”

“K-K…kh…” Her lithe legs tangled. The knees, covered in stockings and nets, crossed, bent, twisted and yanked in one submission. Angelina arched, grabbed the ring like it was her own bed sheets. She didn’t scream. But her face was frozen and contorted. Her horns caught the canvas and rolled her head to look back. Eyes were shut. She had a hand out in the air, wide, slowly clenching. The pain… It’s like someone was digging in your knee with a dull, rusty knife only recently resharpened by another rusty knife.

It goes past the skin after a few moments, finds the kneecap like a rock inside the hole. They take the kneecap by hand, twist it, clockwise then counter, then start stretching all the tendons like strips of beef. You can feel the top skin shift, stretch and wrinkle and you know it's going red. That knife is digging, finds its wedge on the post and torques until the pearl is grinding on the incline. Your shin bone feels like it's bending. A wet bark, squeezed, on each end, with a dry spot on the half-way point that can still just snap. At any moment.

She began to mewl. Hands in her hair and face, smearing it red.
“S-Shim! ImGoinTOFuckinKILLYOU! S-Shim-MAH!”

Angelina rolled shoulder to shoulder. Her voice broke into choked so s. She was beet red. Her stomach curled. She hyperventilated. The choker started eating into her throat, so she snapped it with a yank, then gagged herself, screaming into that. Then she sat up, hands out, trying to touch her thighs but she felt that was the only thing keeping it from a break. So she beat her face into the second turnbuckle pad, hollering, snarling, with drool, snot and tears in one face stew.