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

[Malkavia]

Eleven months, almost a whole year Shimmer had been crawling towards that face—and fuck if very second didn’t cough up interest. The more the Scarlet Terror mewled her name, the brighter Shimmer’s half-lidded pink eyes sparkled, her pumpkin grin inching wider and wider as she nodded, slow, acknowledging every whimper and spit. When the pirate finally reached full steam and screeched her death oath, Shimmerlace cackled.

"Ayyyye, that’s the stuff. That’ll do…That’ll FUCKIN’ do, Angie!" Then she tightened her grip and flexed her thighs and stretched her back hard as she might, and it made her back sizzle in a way that pulled at her grin, made it twitch into a grimace because in spite of all the glitter arcing through her, it fucking hurt. But she didn't let go, even though her fingers were numb, because her ring post was not ten feet from the announcer’s table, and she could see — upside down — a pair of long white ears. The grin was fully gone now, and her eyes had gone stony.

"When we finish here, Ange, first thing I’m doin..." Rivulets of sweat ran down our Feychild’s back, tickling, itching, burning where the salt found open cut. Sometimes it made her spasm, like a hot brand had been pressed to her back. "...Is buying a big ol’ glossy new deck of cards. And we’re traipsing to the park with a picnic blanket and wee basket with orange marmalade sammiches and tea and top grade celery and all the works, right? Aaaaall fancy and got up like. And I’m gonna lose a game of Black Jack to Thistledown."

Her eyes traced back to Angelina. "If you’re fit to get outta bed at that point..." Breathe—Grin over the pain—And heave! "...You can come watch."

[Monsy]

Hugging the corner didn’t help much. It just makes the rest of her body comfortable. Its spine feels like a feather. She can rub the sweat off on the leather. Her breath drips, drips, drips. Heavy and fast. It becomes this slow, mirage of max level pain. But she begins to feel drunk. Her stomach had twisted that she was one wrench away from vomit. Sobs became quiet, but every millimetre moved was a shock on her waist, forcing a twitch, a high-pitched squeal, girlish and short, then back to biting her lip.

And as she came off the turnbuckle, she appeared vacant. A slack jaw, shattered glass with dirt spots in her purple cat eyes. Snot down a nostril. Blood dried smeared hand-print. She grabbed the air, seeking the rope. She missed. And gradually she slipped back. Her legs didn't struggle. The bone looked to be bending more. The elastic in her knee went twice-fold. She laid down, gasping for air like a choke, quietly. As she sunk into her own sweat, she suddenly sat back up -- but no more awake than before. Her shoulder against the rope.

“Stay….” She heaved, “The fuck…” Again. “Off…” and again. “MY Rabbit!”

She twisted her body between the bottom and middle rope, curled over to reach her boot, cross-beamed over knee. An index and middle found the ankle slot, pulled, torqued and retched once from vertigo. Her face went sicker, but it glowered. “Not in ya.. limp-dick, fairy-bitchstick, back-fucked, rabbit-cucked, soggy-cunt-suckin LIFE! OFF!”

The boot was undone on the laces, down to the last that gave a few feet of slack. She twirled it, and it picked up, faster and faster until she swung it as twelve o’clock chimed six, back up to twelve -- then down onto Shimmer’s chin. Steel toe.

[Malkavia]

That oozing, runny, twitching rash up the back gets worse the longer and harder Shimmerlace yanks at the figure four, but there's a keen distraction to keep her wrenching—the wee pirate face. She's seen it every day for almost a year now, urban explorer, rabbit keeper, all grins and violet flash. Now a sheen of sweat lacquers her cheeks, and that violet is going hypnotic dull while her jaw goes loose, and Shimmerlace leans into her lock like she's a pup and the knives in her back are a scratch behind the ears.

…Angelina’s up to something. The look behind Shimmer’s half-lidded eyes sharpens–her arms and legs and everything is committed to the figure four, and all she can do is grit her teeth and stare when the Scarlet Terror…unlaces her boot.

She snorted, shuddered, heaved in a breath, but kept on smirking. "Ach, Angie! Gettin’ desperate are we?"

CRACK!

Steel fuckin’ toe. Hadn't accounted for that. It's like going for a sip of cool coke, except it's milk and also roundabouts a thousand degrees. The boot smashed the Feychild’s chin and left he speechless, jaw twitching. There's a numb beat before the spider work needles and pins from the impact rush across her face.

CRACK!!

The second swing is all it takes. The time to get away from that is right fuckin’ now, and Shimmer’s reflexes don't give the consequences a lot of thought. She unthreaded the hold and slid off the apron…with a thud, right on her back.

"AAAANGH..." Her teeth gleamed white in the spotlight as she beat the concrete, once, twice, until her knuckles throbbed. It's like snakes have gotten under the skin, snakes with sharp, cutting scales that tear up the skin as they slither up and down the fairy’s dorsal end.

MY rabbit. The absolute mouth on this cunt. Just picture her face again, all twisted up, then loose and drunk like you've shoved the liquor down her throat personally, with a roofie to boot. Were she only so lucky. So take that and clamp your jaw like you're set to crack a tooth and roll.

So she rolled, and then heaved, growling, to her feet. "Ya REALLY thought you'd got me..." Adrenaline buzzed, at once glittering and dumb between her ears. She twisted her shoulders, then uncoiled, heaved, and slapped the ripped backside of her shoulder. The wet slap of her palm on the shoulder made the fairy cringe. She growled, and the palm came away red. In the same motion, she palmed a golden trinket from a hidden pocket, out of sight behind her forearm. "...ya dumb cunt. If you coulda only seen your loopy-fuck face!"

Her hand drifted between her legs while her knees went all bow-legged and wobbly. Her eyes drooped and she keened a warbling whine. "Poooooor thing. Aye, but it sucks eatin’ shit, don't it Ange?" A sigh. A shake of her head. All the while Shimmerlace kept an eye on Angelina like she was a snake you might need to catch mid strike. Then she raised her arms. "Come get some more."

[Monsy]

Steel toe boots are street-level kusarigama and boomerang. That shit ties into utility poles for a game of horseshoe. It's the whack-a-mole of kneecaps. Guillotine of the shin. And here, it's Mohammad Ali, coming at you stinging like a bumblebee, hitting like a thunderclap off that bone. She drops. And that moment, her knees felt much worse. Her tendons had stretched to their limits. The elastic had white shades in the middle when they’re about to snap. They rest and recoup back to their normalcy, with tight hamstrings and now twice the slack. Her lips curled, contorted, and she put her wrists against her eyes to hold it all in. Suck. Suck-suck-suck. It throbbed, a pulsating glass-shard tumour that connects shin and calf.

She used her elbow, dragged herself, got her legs across the apron then sat up using the ropes. Easing herself down, gravity quadrupled. She’s walking on pure inflammation, then collapses. The pain got so vile that she retched once, down on all fours, then spotting the Nutcracka that stopped by the apron, its tip underneath. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” Angelina breathed in deep, then grabbed the white tape. A cane, true and fair, pink and still showing her glare; she stood. Out her nose came vapours, deep huffs as she stomached standing on twigs. “Keep talkin, Shimma. KEEP TALKIN!” She put the bat down and made a step like a crutch. An eye started twitching. Her tongue poked out and she bit it, hard.

“I still gotta cut ya gut, then ya face.” She limped, hissed, getting louder, then spat on the ground. “Bell or no fuckin’ bell, I'll turn ya into a Scarlet Terror!” The bat came back as a cane, arching clockwise in a windmill motion. But, it changed direction. Like an upper-cut, counter-clockwise, the bat swung upward and with an angle that travelled sharply to catch Shimmer in the ribs. The effort would do her balance horribly, with a shoulder invested to compensate for her diminutive size, and those sewage knees, she’d end up back down on all fours.

[Malkavia]

It should have been rocket fuel, watching Angelina shamble like a scarecrow with life barely flickering in worm-eaten joints. And it does set Shimmer’s heart pounding.

Inevitable—Up the Terror comes, over the apron our Marauder rolls, and now she has a razor wire bat and Angelina is on even ground and getting close. Closer. And there's nothing to do but meet her. Shimmer’s jaw throbbed, but the worse sensation is cold in her palms and the tension hammering in her ears.

Angelina swings, and the fairy backpedals. She can see the pink blur, a miss this time, but a miss she can feel biting ghost-needles in her gut, mirroring the itch on her back, anticipating with an electric clench how those teeth will feel when they lacerate her gut.

If. If they lacerate, ya dumb cunt.

Shimmerlace pressed her toes against the ground and squeezed, hard, around the trinket she'd slipped against her forearm. Springs fire at the same moment that she swings her arm back, then overhead, like a pitcher winding up. The Court’s staff extends up and out as it falls on a collision course with the pirate’s head.

The sensation is like pushing off the lip of a double black diamond slope. In the next seconds and minutes, she could tumble end over end and snap her leg around a tree, or catch her skis on invisible exposed ice and crush her neck on a tumble down the mountain, but for now—for now it's free, grinning tumble with wind in her face, weaving through all the dangers as she flies from rest back to the fifty mile an hour glide in a cold instant.

"'Member this?"

[Monsy]

Both knees bugged, locked and she hit them on the ground. It didn’t hurt as much as before. It stung, but at some point, they just became numb. They stop working. For a minute that was. Shimmer’s own weapon clocked in as a shadow as Angie looked down. A long something that aligned between her horns, and Angelina raised her bat to guard, clashing perpendicular. “Of course I fuckin’ do.” Angelina said with a smile that went razor at the corners. Her side felt a tingle, and a deep breath filled her up. Gotta move. Bury the feelings in her knees.

The breath comes out smoothly. “That’s my staff.” She tilted the bat’s point down, putting a slide for the staff, then pulling the opposite shoulder back, turning and making a motion like a leg-sweep, but the striking limb was pink and full of razor wire, going straight for the kneecap’s side. “And what you’re wearin’ is also my outfit.” She got up, but her knees wobbled to power up like she did. They looked like rotten cherries.

“That pink hair is my wig.” The bat spun in her grip, and she made a quick swing from eleven-o-clock, coming down towards Shimmer’s collar. It continued, diagonally across her body until it reached the hip, and her arm crossed, wrist turned with the weapon curving back up, high towards the opposite shoulder, then slashing down at Shimmer’s other collar in a figure-eight combo.

“Those boots? Those are my boots.” Her shoulder dipped, and she went with it, twisting her footwork to turn a full rotation, letting her bloody hand aim before she thrusted the bat’s tip at Shimmer’s face. “It’s all mine.”

[Malkavia]

Nutcracka sliding down the Court’s Staff was steel teeth grinding on aluminum. The razor wire cut into the gold gilding, splitting silver lines where they bit. Even if Angelina was full of shit claiming that which she couldn’t have—her marks were already dug into one treasure. Shimmer’s footwork had her backpedaling, barely side-stepping the low hew at her knees as the two weapons detached with a metal ping she could feel vibrate up to her elbows. Her glare was poison, lips upcurled as she breathed between her teeth.

The Maître wielded her staff one hand at the pommel and the other a third of the way up the staff while she stoof feet apart in a fencer's lunging stance—and here comes the Terror's onslaught. Steel slices the air—Clang!—almost catches her shoulder, then whirls across her vision. Ping! Her downward-swung parry barely saves the fairy's hip from another laceration.

Fuck. She's stumbling heel over heel. Anyone can see she's struggling. Fuck offense or retaliation, it takes every drop of concentration, every flicker of reflex to keep the space between her and the pirate sufficiently wide. Hair hanging ragged, her face is pinched, teeth grit, and she’s forgetting to breathe as her eyes dart with the pink bat’s trajectory. When the figure-eight finish meteors down, the force of the strike shivered through the Staff and made her wrists buckle.

Then she hits the barricade. Her back bumps plastic, and here’s that sticky, blood-caked-to-costume sting again, mixed with surprise, mixed with—fuck. Out of space. Her eyes go wide—and in the split-second where her elbow’s wobbling, that’s the Nutcracka’s opening. Her guard’s too low and the bat whirls towards her cheek-bone.

Fuckin lean! Leaning means bending her spine over the barricade, means pressing her back into the plastic until the ache’s screaming again like a kettle on the fire, which becomes a hiss between her teeth, and there’s Nutcracka. A gray whir over her face, and she's flying downhill again, neck attached to your shoulders even so. But just barely, as she blinks and opens her mouth and gasps in a trembly breath.

—But there’s more on the way if she doesn't move. Our knight of the Seelie Hedge swings the staff in a golden arc, one-handed from the pommel in its widest possible path over her head. A scythe hew to cut her some space. Then it’s going to be a hop and a tumble over the barricade with her and further up onto the high ground, which better be fucking clear when she gets to it. As her staff flies, her eyes blaze at the seats and cunts sitting thereupon.

"Outta the fuckin’ way!"

[Monsy]

A dominion of Pirate-Fu was knowing how to handle your cutlass. Sometimes hands just don’t cut the job and you only get two. One. Two. One-Two, followed through, three-four, swing some more. She ate the wind each time, became Nutcracka’s extension, turning, shifting, switching her angle just the tiniest bit, keeping up the speed and doubling her power in just one hand. Then when it got to the barricade, she made her thrust. Missed.

“Bravo.” Angelina smirked, then leaned back for the Scion’s swing. The stabbing point whistled by her nose. A small bob lifted her shoulders up and down, and then Shimmer left. Quick as ya like. Botched as she wills it.

Spectators moved like a school of fish. Individuals became groups and groups became a mass. They cleared away from the staff, into their neighbours who then moved. And so on. Angelina followed, throwing a leg over, then hissing when she needed to hop. It’s about the knees that bite whenever the weight lifts off and comes down again, held together by wet glue. They wobble, and she bites it back just to appear ready and invincible. “Fastah, Shim! Run fastah!” Angelina laughed -- then kicked off her remaining steel-toe, sending it swirling towards her shoulder, batted at Shimmerlace with a back-spinning swing. And as it flew, Angelina picked up a fold-up steel chair, using her bloody hand to frisbee the thing after another spin. Then she picked up another, and repeated it. And another. And another, chasing this higher into the stands, and somehow finding a way to throw them faster each time.

Maybe soon she’ll get dizzy.

[Malkavia]

Every second Shimmer spends in flight is another moment the Terror gets to dictate their terms, and that captain’s hand on the steering wheel is a hot nail in the sternum. Now that she’d got space to maneuver, Shimmerlace spun round—just in the nic of time to see a big black something careening at her face. Steel toe. A flick of her staff, a CLUNK of rubber on aluminum, and it bounces off a nearby chair.

And then the follow up chair’s foot smacked her in the eye. "FUCK! !" Her hand flies to her face. She can already feel the flesh swelling, tender and ITCH as the violence on her eye becomes a candle-wick burn just behind, along the optic nerve...

The second chair she bats down one-handed-staff, twitching on reflex when she catches the shadow in the corner of her eye, and the third clips her shoulder. It's enough to make her stagger, but the real shock is in her brain, now limping a full second behind the action. It's a growl from her, and then she slinks below the level of the chairs. Cover. Space to collect herself.

When she pulled her hand off her eye, it wouldn't open fully. She can only imagine the purple-black nub forming in her eye-socket, pressing halfway down like she belonged hunched over and heaving rope to ring the bells of Notre Dame. Her vision ran blurry as fluid streamed down the right side of her face. Another chair crashed just behind her.

Soon it would be time to hop back into the fray. And what hellfire would our fairy bring with her? There was a tall, extra large LAW soda cup left behind by the seats, nearly full and still fizzing foam that smelled—of Pepsi. Pepsi. The cunts would drink that kind of swill. Might as well be poison. Shimmerlace grabbed it, then lept and tossed it, a wave of cold and sticky to soak Angelina and distract her as Shimmerlace hopped over a row of chairs, prior cover, some fallen, some upright, and swung her staff around in a grim reaper's arc at Angelina's horned head.

[Monsy]

If this were a ship, she’d already be over starboard. Back and back. What ground did she hope to fuckin get here? Sword duels are a dance, but only one was making the moves for this splice of pirate heaven. Every grip was making it harder for her hand to clot. Stretching, squeezing, then whipping, friction to open up the dozens of small seams and the five bigger ones. She buried it all.

“Fight BACK!” Angelina barked. The inkling that this fuckin’ pink comet was going to slip, falter and wilt to the level of foldable steel. Rejected on all counts. She pointed the cutlass, blood-dipped but still with pristine left to paint; the tip, however, looked matured by use, with scratches and a bit of red on that pink. “I said--”

Sploosh!
--Motherfucker. Wet.

Angelina took that to the front. Hit her nose, made it curl and bubble, sting. Her collar became drenched and then it splashed down her shirt, making it stick with the coal black now looking like shiny ebony. Some got in her eyes, then dripped. And the girl took her shot, flew, making Angelina peer up. Her cutlass had gone to the side, low, pointed diagonally towards the ground. She side-stepped, spun once, hunched to curl up the momentum then whipped her cutlass upward at Shimmerlace’s hand, to turn her staff into a flying frisbee, spinning till it looked solid.

Then she followed through, windmilling her arm and back-spinning to swing her cutlass at three-o-clock, coming towards Shimmerlace’s ribs. This served to create a gap. She lunged once, twice, then jumped, spun on a slant of forty-five degrees, catching the staff mid-air before another rotation and coming down straight from twelve, bloody-arm extended to crack this fairy’s collar.