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

[Malkavia]

The recoil was gunpowder, and Charlotte had to take a step backwards when Nutcracka bounced off the mat. The crowd's cheering sank into a groan, deep as an earthquake, huge enough to fill the stadium to its roof.

"FUCK!"

Charlotte was shaking. She raised Nutcracka in front of her chest like she expected Angelina to tear off the mat and fly for her heart. Charlotte's eyes darted over her opponent's body, from the ankle to the eye. Her mouth gaped.

"You were supposed to fuckin' roll !"

Dumb shit.
Dumb shit.
Dumb shit.

Angelina had not rolled, and Charlotte had smashed her leg with everything. All the adrenaline, all the anger—an over-the-head club with nothing held back. You could've fucking killed her if that was her head.

Angelina was crawling away. Her face was...not right. The sweat, the deep lines in her face, the way her eyes popped from her skull. It was different. Different in a way that put ice in Charlotte's blood.

Charlotte stepped forward, her two-handed grip tight enough it felt like springs might pop out of her knuckles. What's the plan here, Shim? You actually gonna bash her brains next?

She was hesitating and didn’t know it. She had the bat out in front of her face. She was stepping towards Angelina, who had hung herself by her arms on the ropes. The bat curled over her shoulder, like she was winding up for the home run, but she cringed instead of swinging.

Then Charlotte saw Angelina grinning. She heard Angelina call her name—Shimmah. Her forehead creased. She readjusted her grip on the bat and checked her footing, as if worried the ground might tilt under her.

”Yeah?” Her voice was a hoarse whisper. ”Y’alright?”

Dumbass question. That would always forever be a dumbass question for Angelina Tarrant, Scarlet Terror and Marauder of LAW, but was particularly asinine given the expression on her face. There was pain there alright—jagged, etched, animal pain that made the sweat on Shimmer’s cheeks burn cold.

And Angelina let her know just how stupid that question was. The days of clinging to Shimmer's ankle had given way to a teeth-clenched look. The whites of her eyes flashed, murderous, in a face turning scarlet. Shimmer watched Angelina build like a fire catching brush. Her own face turned pale, and she took a hesitating step backwards. Her arm clenched like she was still thinking about swinging, though it never came. But even while her claws extended to their longest, the Feychild's dimples quirked the barest hint of a grin

[Monsy]

Her leg broke. She knew it—wanted them to know it. The throbbing was being drowned and smothered by expanding tissue and surging blood racing into her leg. A reddish trunk. Her pain threshold was nuked. And the thing she was most concerned about wasn’t really being wingless now. It wasn’t winning either.

But how badly she wanted to hear their head crinkle like a bag of poatato chips.

Shimmerlace became a mangy baby deer on the highway. And she was in a spare red pick-up truck. A beater. It’s 3am on the highway with no one around. Trees, tall evergreens. Tall black shadows that shrouded the world beyond her two headlights cast on this game. She felt an itch, with a rifle on the rack behind the seats, a bow and arrow on the back-bench, a bowie knife on the passenger seat and a pistol in the dash. She chose to floor the accelerator.

Angelina on the surface had sunken, tired, but narrowed eyes. Adrenaline-powered, lips tight and feeling her brain bleed intelligence the more backtracking she smelled. Blood. She didn’t utter a word back, instead, clutched the iron bell she held behind her back just a little tighter. She had risen with it before standing. And now, facing this wee baby deer, Angelina leaned on her still-functional leg and swung the iron bell in an upwards diagonal arc, hoping to bludgeon Shimmer's against cheek.

[Malkavia]

Of course.

Of course it was the bell.

She deserved that. She saw the bell coming a frame before it slammed her jaw, and she realized—shit. She'd promised that fucker a name. Then she got fixated on her Marauder and forgot.

The unchristened bell slammed her cheekbone. For a flash, Shimmerlace saw the length of Angelina's arm and the expressionless face at the other end, silhouetted in shade, less furious and more intent, a craftsman in the flow of her work. Shimmerlace's view swung upwards. She saw the stagelights, heard nothing but Hummmmmm. Vibration. Tin, a bellstrike. Her hands swung up into her vision, and although she couldn't feel her fingers, she knew she'd dropped Nutcracka because her fists were empty.

Her head hit the mat.

The world lurched. The ground fell away and swallowed her. Everything was up there—the ceiling, the ropes. Angelina loomed in the edges of her bleary vision.

Not in blackness.

The world might have gone sloshy as the sea, but it had color—bright in the sky, red where her opponent looked down at what must have been her prone body, darkness in the seats on all sides. Focus drifted, a ringpost looming huge then blurring insigificant, the lights burning into crystalline detail, then melting into fuzz.

That was her inside. From the outside, she choked, hands grasping at nothing. Spittle flew from her lips in flecks along her body, and her boot heels scratched at the mat without pushing her even an inch in the direction she was making to go—away from the Scarlet Terror.

[Monsy]

Angelina slammed into the baby deer with her truck.

Instead of flying several feet, they just tipped over and thunked. The tires screeched: crowd jeers from an ugly shot they knew was coming. But now with Shimmer on the ground, Angelina could now exit the truck and approach, bowie knife in tow. Then after limping over the baby deer’s kicks, Angelina collapsed onto it, hissing and seated on their sternum.

Her head dipped and she slumped. An arm folded back and gripped the bowie knife in its sheath. The biggest glass shard in her back, sitting between her shoulder blades. She yanked on it. And after three seconds, it stayed stuck. So she roared, veins bulging on her forehead and neck, continuing to torque. The skin suckled to it and tented. Slowly, by attrition, it came free and Angelina was heaving out her mouth.

Then she tightened her lips again.
Grabbed the fawn by her throat with her shredded hand, and squeezed.
Looked her in the eye. Focused, intent, and frankly: apathetic.
And stabbed at the baby deer’s temple in a long arc.
Once it lodged against the bone, she carved it diagonally across their face, towards her opposite jaw.
Arm folded across, she slashed again, horizontally in the opposite direction.
And again, then again.. And again. Cheek, nose, lower-lip, forehead, below the eye.

Swing, swing, swing, swing, swing.

To see, hear and feel it bleed.

[Malkavia]

The stagelights formed a halo around Angelina, who appeared in Shimmerlace's vision with sudden, cold detail. She reached with eerie calm to a shard of glass jutting from her back.

"Wwwwait." The word was slurred, stretched in Charlotte's mouth like old, tough chewing gum.

As Angelina wrenched on the glass, Charlotte heard her shout as if from far away. The whites of her eyes bulged. Gradually Charlotte's hearing returned, and as Angelina's shout got louder and louder, Charlotte shivered and pressed herself against the mat, as if she could escape through the floor if she could just phase through.

Then the glass came free, and the silence was worse than the scream.

Charlott'es hands found Angelina's hips. She tried to push away, but the sweat and blood made her slip. When Angelina's hand pressed against her throat, the texture was rough, like carpet. Charlotte's eyes drifted to the glass. It was ruby red. She couldn't even tell it was blood. It looked like stained glass.

It happened slowly. Deliberately. Angelina looked down into Charlotte's eyes, and Charlotte shook her head, and she mouthed the words, No no no, and the glass touched her forehead and she squeezed her eyes shut. "A-A-A-Ange—A-Angelina please, pleeeease—" The way her jaw trembled over the A made her teeth clack, the way it had when she was a tiny girl sobbing over a spanking.

Her forehead split open. Blood poured out of the cut, and Charlotte felt a sudden, almost irresistible urge to vomit.

Unwanted thoughts flooded Charlotte's mind.

The body was full of essential, delicate, irreplaceable parts. Slice too deeply or in the wrong place, and you might sever a nerve and never feel sensation in your hand again. Slice the wrong tendon, and that same hand might never be able to clench its fingers quite right. And if you hit the wrong vein? Or artery?

Pain?

What pain?

All Charlotte felt was one overriding electric need to be anywhere but there. Half her face melted into the mat. Her hands shoved into whatever they could grab a handle on. Angelina's face, her tit, her throat, her hands. Charlotte clawed at her, and if her hands got lacerated in the process, she didn't even feel it. She wanted to scream, but her jaw had clamped shut. Her insides were boiling, and a shrill shriek issued from her throat, and none of it stopped Angelina from cutting her. Again, and again, and again.

[Monsy]

Carving someone’s flesh intentionally was a new experience. It’s a rush of something exciting and new. A discovery. Like squishing juice from a fruit where begging and screaming was just the product of peeling the orange. She found it both annoying and messy. How it gets under her fingernails. The soap required to get it out. And how wrong this theoretically was criminally…

Though, she found that last part funny.

The most gratifying part of this was the name basis. A-Angelina.

How it took this fucking long to scrape the proper word out of her mouth. And it was right before she wanted to go digging inside it. Being pawed and clawed had its merits, though. Not even deliberately guided and controlled incandescence and ill-will bile can correct her injuries and size. So she ended up being pushed around a bit. And it hurts.

Then, she grabbed onto the fawn’s wrist and stabbed its forearm with the glass shard. She let go.
She leaned against their clawing, challenging it, then took hold of their face with two hands, stroking the baby deer’s cheeks with her thumbs like a mother soothes its own.

“Open your mouth, Shimmer.”

She spoke calmly; a whisper to cover her accent. Then waited. And after a few seconds, she faked a loving smile.

“Open your mouth.”

[Malkavia]

Charlotte did not cry out as Angelina cut deep ravines into her face. Her cries caught in her chest and made it heave. The noises she did make were strangled, close to a sob. Still, the pain was better than the anticipation. It centered her, gave her focus: she had to get out. Her boot caught on the ground, and she bridged her back. Angelina toppled left—but just when she thought she might get free, Angelina resettled on top of her.

Imagine if that glass hit your eye.

As soon as she had the idea, she wished she hadn't. She couldn't turn it back—couldn't help but imagine the feeling of intraocular pressure squeezing her eyeball's fluids down her cheek. What would the inside of her eyeball taste like?

Her gut heaved, frantic, the way a prey animal breathes when cornered. She kept her hands in front of her face, and was surprised when she noticed blood was running down to her elbow from a laceration along her arm. She hadn't even felt it.

“Open your mouth Shimmer.”

“No!” she said through her fingers. She was still trying to bridge, but she couldn't get her hips off the ground. Her knees were knocking.

“Open your mouth.”

Why?

She knew why. Her gums itched.

“Come on. Let's—let's, let's talk.”

That's opening your mouth. She'll stick your tongue.

She was squirming, her hands shaking over her face and especially her mouth. She peered up at Angelina through her fingers. The blood was black near the cuts but turned red as it ran towards her eyes and covered her face. Her voice was haggard, and she barely processed the words that flew from her mind's core to her lips.

“Comets, yeah? You and me. You said that.” As she struggled, they slid and rolled over the mat. Shimmerlace was always retreating, while Angelina stayed just on top of her. “L-let's light up the sky Ange. Something—something—something, eh...BIG. BRIGHT. Yeah? Some top rope shit or—or anything else. Fuck." That last bit was exactly the wrong thing. It showed her hand. She cringed, and her boot slipped on the mat. Angelina's weight fell solidly over her shoulders. If this were a pinfall contest, Shim would be dead to rights. A sob wrenched through her throat and her chin trembled. Her next words came out in a wail. “Oh God put it away Angie, please!"

[Monsy]

Skin didn’t make noise when being slashed. Which was disappointing.

She drank up their curdling noises in their fucked-up face, feeling a rush. It powered her hand to strike at the softest and most open runways on flesh. A hair from the eye, an inch from that stubby bumpy delicate trunk called a throat.

Then she eased off.
Thumbs to cheeks.

Drawing circles, her face unchanged and waiting for the fawn's obedience.

Did she really expect it? Did it fuckin’ matter? Bahahahaha. Nope!

Her smile flattened further from adoring to more polite. Her shoulders relaxed, brows lowered.

“Come on. Let's—let's, let's talk.”

She played along, “Talk, then.” Her hands remained where they were.

It gave her time to look over her Shimmer’s state. The face, the hands, the peeking. Protective posturing, sure. The fawn knew what Angelina wanted. So she went after other curiosities. The wounds, she wanted to touch them. She wanted to push them together, then split into a pouch with a finger-spread, or curl in both hands and rip them open to see the other side. She wanted to squeeze it like a pimple, grab a nerve and yank it out like a tapeworm, or pick at bits with her nails.

Her head tilted. The positioning kept her well-balanced from the baby deer's scooting.

As it went on, Angelina’s face dulled out into observing the babbling.
Top-rope shit. Comets. Right, coming from Leg-breaker.

It wasn’t the greatest offence, or one at all. She was just tired of hearing that fucking name, and scowled.

“I fuckin’ hate what you call me. Do I look seven to you?”

Annoyed, Angelina tensed an eye to their sobbing, “Everythin’ is so hunky-dory when ya got the reins, huh, Shimmer? You get to dictate the stage, and what I gotta be. When one doesn’t fit the image, ya set fire to everythin and hiss.” Angelina put a finger on the fawn's forehead, leaned over and grinned wide. “No one's gonna pop for that psycho shit! Fuckin’ unlovable piece of pink puke! I bet that’s why ya do all this fairy shit! Poooor Shimmer! Cry fuckin’ loudah! Ahahahahaha!”

Angelina tossed the glass shard. Then, she reached for the cast iron bell, raised it overhead, two hands, on her knees, then brought it down onto the fawn's covered face. She grunted, then whipped it again from an angle towards the temple.

[Malkavia]

Angelina talked, and Shimmerlace shrank.

Pink puke.

She wanted to take it back—the whole, spewing, cowardly puddle of pink puke. If she could have just...screamed. Taken it without all the hypocritical begging. Her jaw worked, and her head twisted around looking for the words to rewind. Angelina cut her off with a verbal knee to her gut. She shuddered. Charlotte's eyes shifted from the glass poised over her face to Angelina's eyes. “...Fairy shit?" Her mouth hung open by a quarter of an inch. She forgot about her hands.

The bell clapped her snout. Charlotte reeled away. She kicked, more out of instinct than a plan. “Fuck—"

Then the light flipped like a tripped circuit breaker. She spun through the air, spiraling like a torpedo. The ring behind her was empty, the bowl was empty, the speakers breathed static. She felt herself flying, but there was no wind in her face—just the concrete wall blazing towards her at a speed that promised to crush her head inside her ribs.

Into the Gray

“...Ey, puke-head! Enjoying the mid-match nap are we?"

Shimmerlace jerked out of her seat—hard. So hard that if hadn't been strapped into her seatbelt, her head would have slammed the roof of the minivan. “...What?” That smell—sandalwood. She knew that smell. Her eyes adjusted. And yeah. It was her van, with the prayerbeads hung with the fey charm from the rearview mirror, complete with the piles of boxes of old doodads and gadgets in the backseat. Her eyes welled with tears. Outside,the ocean extended, gray, in every direction as the van sped along its briny surface. “What?”

“Well sorry, ye bilgerat, but there will be no rest for a crew mate as disloyal as ye. We've bones to pick and ribs to snap, you and I!"

The voice came from the driver's seat—or the thing seated in it anyway. Which was a rabbit. Or. Something related to a rabbit. It wore an eyepatch, and a black, jagged scar ran from the corner of its mouth up to one ragged, torn ear. He wore a black leather jacket with silver skulls for the buttons and a golden sword pinned to the lapel, plus a helmet that...She thought might be the green steel drum the Allied boys used to wear in one of the world wars? A chinstrap held it to his chin, with both his ears folded down inside it His eyes flashed violet, and his tongue was the deepest red Shimmerlace had ever seen.

“Thistle?”

“Ah, ye can still speak my name true, at least."

“...I'm out. Aren't I?” Out cold.

"Much pain as it does cause me. Aye. I am afraid ye mind be colder than a watery grave in the thick of winter."

Shimmerlace sighed. In through the nose, out through her mouth as that bit of news slunk through her veins like salted ice. She didn't want to think about what she'd be facing when she woke. Instead, she slumped against the window, cheek to the glass.

"Time be short, Shimbo! To the marrow of it: YE, filthy rat mine, had the shore in sight. Sails full of wind! And then ye took me and tossed me under the ship. So I ask...The fuck?”

In. Out. Shimmerlace wrapped her arms around her waist and curled her legs to her stomach. “You were gonna leave anyway. Or at least, you’d want to. I’m not one to tie rabbits up.”

“Ah, ye augured this prophecy through stars and leaves did ye? As I don’t recall tossing my view into this stew.”

“Angelina keeps you happy. Well-fed, well-groomed, and brought out to adventure on the regular.” Outside, the world began to tilt. Shimmerlace glanced through the windshield, but instead of the horizon, she saw the huge, roiling gray wall of a wave. “Truth is, even if I did get you back, and you wanted the getting, I don’t know anymore if my house is the better place for you.”

Thistledown didn't respond. His eyes were fixed on the world ahead, as the minivan climbed the wave. Shimmerlace grabbed the armrests by her seat, eyes going wide, a lump in her throat, as the car went up and up until it was straight vertical. The backseat broke open and all her boxes and doodads spilled into the ocean. Then the minivan tipped and crashed into the cold water.

“Mmm. Poor sweet. Listen. Maybe you should fixate a little less on our red-headed friend, hm?” Shimmerlace was shivering. She was soaked from head to foot, but the water felt thick and sticky, and the scarlet sun overhead scalded her back and made it peel. She blinked and knew where she was: In a gibbet, hanging off the edge of Jindaiji Temple, with a vast black nothing below her. Madeleine sat on the edge of the roof, heels kicking out and then against the stone wall. “Maybe what you need is to give yourself, and your many talents and virtues, some credit.”

Shimmerlace's fists clenched. The rocking motion of the gibbet made her feel sick. “Credit, ey? Like what you gave?”

“Poor kitty. Poooor kitty. So full of self-pity. Everyone quits eventually, if you quit on yourself.” Madeleine reached out, lazily, and gave the gibbet a one-handed push away from the temple.

“I’m not quitting.” She pressed her back to the bars of the gibbet and grabbed one of the bars. She couldn't look at the Countess, her eyes fixed instead on the yawning nothing underneath the cage. The cage swung, up and down, like a pendulum. “P-p-please stop that.”

“Don’t lie to me, sweet. Mama knows. There’s no taking back what you said about Thistle.”

“I’m not here for Thistle.”

“I don’t know if there’s anything that shows less self-respect than abandoning a friend.” As the gibbet swung back towards Madeleine, it creaked, like the sound of a bird screaming. Madeleine caught the cage in both hands, dragged it back until Shimmerlace was almost horizontal with the roof. Then she let go.

Shimmerlace's thumb throbbed as she clung to the cage. She had forgotten about her thumb in all the adrenaline, but it came back now, and when she looked at her hand, she saw it was black. Brown, dark fluid flowed from a shattered nail, which clung to a thumb that looked like it was full of mud. The Feychild squeezed her eyes shut. “Yeah. I’m not...here for me. Either.”

Even through the darkness of her eyelids, Shimmerlace could see Madeleine sneer and catch the gibbet on her boot. Then she kicked, and the gibbet snapped from the chain connecting it to the scaffold on the roof, and the cage and fairy and all went careening into the Black.

[Monsy]

Angelina wanted the baby deer concussed. For that brain to be scrambled, bruised and pickling in whatever pink shit bled up in there. Then for it to come out her ears.

She wanted to keep smashing, smashing and smashing, with thumbtacks and gasoline to make it happen, until she wasn’t looking at a face anymore. The way they seemed serene while asleep bothered her greatly. It was a monotone lusting now that her rage died.

Experimental curiosity, even. Because now: they were a corpse. A carcass she named Shimmer.

Angelina ditched the bell and gulped air, adjusted her nose for a click then sagged slightly. She undid her waist belt, black and studded, hastily, as the longer she let time slip, the more her broken fuckin’ leg burned into a sensation crisp. She folded up her belt once, grabbed Shimmer’s chin and inserted it between Shimmer’s teeth, then folded out of Shimmer’s mouth and straight down to the canvas. Angelina shuffled her knees onto the ends, cringing, then huffing — now seated high on Shimmer’s chest.

After collecting the bloody shark-tooth-shaped glass shard, Angelina examined it before her own eyes, its edges, smiled and looked down again. She opened the corpse’s mouth, lined up the angle, then stabbed the bottom gum, inner-side, beside the tongue, calmly and with an earnest thrust.

If she can puncture the naked jaw, she thought, then she can slice inward towards the golden molar. And back. Over it. Then in. Out. Short elbow motions; quick, focused and steady.