Angelina Tarrant vs Shimmerlace Snuggleblossom - Gibbet Match

[Monsy]

Girl got grit. Poser pixie knew a finger-lock, even with only nine left. Yet all of them can bleed, take one to the face, send them stumbling and keeling to their mumsy -- whoever that may be in her pulp of another fairytale. She’s left hanging with one arm looped on the barricade, sagging and hunching over as her spine came unwound. MOVE. Shit--

“GUUhhaaaa--” Her voice belted, ran its course, turned into a squeal then phased out into an open-mouthed, spittle throwing groan. Elbow impaled her on her small ribs, smashed between the chest and bending her back over the barricade in awkward fashion. She buckled on her knees so her shoulder blades became the fulcrum for the top bar, slowly inching over as that bone spear bruised her withered frame. Blood splatter turns her cold, flinching into the barricade. Her face looked like it broke into hives and a rash. Micro-droplets in their dozens form blotches, join the colour of her own head-wound that went down her forehead, over the eye, down her mouth’s corner and off the jaw. Something to cover the pale. “Fuckin' gross…” And without a pint of breath to spare in those dry-grape lungs, Shimmer’s hands clasped. Her bloodshot eyes grew wide, tears to the corners. Her teeth bit themselves as spittle came between them, like some congested pipe spewing a leak. She sunk, so low that her nape was over the top bar, squatting almost, more kept up by Shimmer’s choke than her own power. A dark red face trickles into blue. You can feel your heart hammer, just as your own fingers unravel and feel tingly. Your head wants to pop. Not like it didn’t already. Ugh…

Staple your fuckin’ bones together and beat this bitch. We are NOT losing!
Aye-fuckin’-aye.

She locked up her fists and arms, used them as a wedge to rise, even if it meant curling over the barricade. It got her legs straight -- which she cleaved up one between Shimmer’s legs to toe-bash the cunt’s cunt. Her arms wedged between Shimmer’s, grabbed her hair, lifted the elbows to pry Shimmer’s throat grip if it hadn’t broken already as to thrust her head straight for them, forehead to their mangled nose bridge -- and put a boot to their waist and thrust if that didn’t create distance. For she had one more thing left…

Something that had her vaulting the barricade and kicking the timekeeper out of their foldable black steel chair with a roundhouse. Something that used it as a platform to spring off, land with the balls of her feet on the top bar and take like a bird under the summer sun. Her fist drew back, elbow cocked, shoulder wound-up. It’s a shotgun slug, pulled and fired into five-knuckles of payload, aimed to destroy the jaw of dear Shimmerlace Snuggleblossom.

[Malkavia]

Input and output—slug to the sternum, spittle on the face, writhe and squeal. It’s enough to crook a smile on the Scion’s face. A collar squeezed round the throat was no moonkick, but maybe for a moment it could at least lasso the moon.

But then Angelina found her center. Arms levered, the girl pushed, the Pixie’s arms shook. More coal on the fuckin’ boiler—and yeah, Shimmerlace crunched deltoid, lateral, and abdominal to push the cunt down, but the drake's face pistoned up at her all the same, lips clenched in a thin swollen line.

Then—the pop in Shimmer's cunt. At first, it’s just a bounce, a ripple through her hips, up her spine, through the electrified invisible hairs on her forehead. Fuck. Her stomach knots. Anticipation makes her groan, then the wave hits—a hot ache. It grows like a siren, whining, bellowing, screaming, forces her gut to bend in, her knees to crook, hunched all gargoyle-like with a scowl to match. She shudders, tight, then loose, like a balloon over-inflated popping a leak. Her mouth hangs open dry and needy.

It’s that loose punch-me clown Angelina grabs and pulls in for a smash, skull to pulp. The tunnel becomes a cave-in, shattered black and spotted static in her eyes, roar in the ears. Arms go limp and she feels herself shoved.

“Nyugh…” She keeps standing, even clenches in her good fist, which she brandishes like a drunkard warding off Dracula with a broken beer bottle of a torch. Angelina is a blur when she comes, until she’s close in—until it’s a fist inches from her face and the sun sparkling far behind and Angelina the shining jewel between. CRACK.

She spins. Blood splatters the deck. She stumbles towards the pool, towards the bleachers, like a loose coat caught on the wind. Then her knees buckle and she tumbles on her face. The world is a blear from there. Hands press to the deck, pain erupts from the twisted knuckle pressed against wood, head spins. But when her vision arrives at something approaching steady, she’s staring down at a white speckle in a red soup.

“F-fuck…”

It hits her gut before her brain: A molar.

[Monsy]

She landed on her lead leg with momentum carrying onto her tippy toes, forward and forward, chasing her upper-half, tucking and rolling, once over to sit upright, then sprawl onto her back. Shit spins around like the start of a high. You can pick out shapes in clouds more vivid than before. Pirate ships and cannonades -- rabbits and fairies, travelling through pipes that dip and crash into normie waters on their level. “Nyoooooo--pshh…” She peeps with one eye, breathing like a machine gun, tipping her horns against the deck until her neck creaks and her head is wedged off to stare over at Shimmer where the infinite details are clear as white sails. “Owww..” Her voice is low and slurred as she turns onto her tummy, flopping more like an octopus. “Fudge.”

The discarded staff from earlier comes into her grip, used as the stanchion of her balance. She took her oatmeal knees and gave it some brown sugar to stand, staples for her shoulders, stitches for her back and two kisses for her mangled knuckles that held the staff. She was up. She arched back, looking high. The wind courses her black and red belly. She inhales with a wheeze, pinching her nose. She looked and felt like a war-torn troll, even in that pink bra. It’s so profoundly numbing. Something where your limbs hardly feel like their own. Weigh less than air, move without mind. Not even your head, which is still felt vividly, was feeling attached.

She sniffled and coughed, then wiped her milky eyes, smeared that blood and sweat, then chuckled underneath her breath between tight-lip pauses. She leaned forward, shoulders slumped and knees closer together. She tapped obsessively on the staff she used as a cane. Her smile is faint and lopsided as she hummed. She was wide-eyed and blinked slowly. Her head dipped to one shoulder, then the other when she leaned that direction every few zombie steps. She whistled a melody as the cane spun around with wrist twists. “Placebo-ing on Friday night… even though it’s Wednesday. AHEM…” She coughed.

“Oooh Shimland!” Her voice is sing-song. She inhales deeply, and speaks again, “Ya got more gold for me??” It’s much louder and higher-pitched. Angelina, put the staff on Shimmer’s spine and flattened her down as Angelina kneeled, grabbed the molar from the colour and examined. “Holy fuck, ya crazy dork. All that B.S and ya teeth sill white as FUCK.” She knocked her jaw like you would a door. “Any more in there for me? Helloooo??” She laughed, briefly, then moved to seat their lower back and plucked the headpiece from her hair to toss it aside.

[Malkavia]

Trot trot trot. You could hear her coming and the tail wagging along behind her.

The eyelids sagged, but not together. The left one—it wanted to rush ahead of the other, and it made the whole world tilt with its carelessness. How the fuck could Angelina manage her eyelids and still trot like that?

Big sigh, except it’s more of a wheeze. It’s a tough fight, but she gets it in without collapsing. Then your girl turns her head into the shadow that fell over her all cloud-like and sees what she expects.

Flick. There goes the tooth. Wait.

Fuckin’ SHUT UP ALREADY. Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP. Doctor and Angelina both have pain all wrong. It’s not just panic, no, and it’s not a 10 that sends you firing off doing fuckin’ ANYTHING to make it stop. It’s more like a big throbbing dam that closes you in. You have to get over it to think, let alone move.

Staff in the spine presses Shimmerlace to the deck. Call and… There’s supposed to be a response, but only thing to slick over the dam is a groan. Come on. Moment’s slipping. But laceration's stacked on jaw’s stacked on sideways finger’s stacked on…fuck. What was she counting? Her tongue rolls over the gap in her gum again. Lower Mandibular 18, Second ex-molar. It sent another shudder.

Pain is also a bit of an unscrew, Shimmerlace was discovering. Emotions usually held in check fly out everywhere like ghosts from a bottle once there’s enough ache in the air. Sometimes you make it productive, make it hot, make it anger. Angelina stripped the barrette. It was a hairpiece designed to stay in place through a wrestling match, so the point of connection was tight. All that meant in the end was Shimmerlace lost a clump of hair as well.

Make it real—make it anger, fury, rage—

“C…Cunt…” she wheezed while her jaw shook.

[Monsy]

“Cunt. Cunt-cunt-cunt. Guess not.” For what it’s worth. That’s a damn good captain hook to reel her in. A tooth. An actual fucking TOOTH. Colour her eyes fully glimmering. She needed extra care to keep it pinched in her grasp. Barrette just became another gold chunk, first in the pile. She gripped the staff with two hands, held it in the air like a holy sceptre.

Deep breath in -- “HMMMM…..”
Her head arched back, looking at the sky. Deep breath out -- “Aaahhh…”
“Hail Thistle, full of fluff, the loot is with thee.” One hand slides up the staff, gripping over the pommel, her fingers coiling around the sharpened point that has stabbed and cut them both. You can still see the red just dried on. Almost solid red. “Blessed art thou amongst feats… and blessed is the fruit of thy chests; gold.”

She drops the point into Shim’s nape, pulled along just enough to catch the material.

“Holy rabbit, fatha' of thieves, pray for us bandits, now and at the hour of El Dorado.” Then -- she yanked it down the spine. It’s a quick tear. One that could even cut the skin. Who cared? Everyone laps this shit up. Two comets, one crashes. And the impact of that crash leaves Angelina’s eyes sparkling in its fireworks. A bare back. Torn gold. She gets more breathy than before, almost becoming this wheeze. It takes her chest, lifts her shoulders and back down. She slams the staff and tooth down on top of the barrette, smiling more ear to ear as she grabs the flaps and says, “Amen.”

Then rips it apart. Her pupils dilated. She becomes this laboured breathing machine, shifting down Shimmer’s body to continue ripping more down her back. Once it splits, she slipped to Shimmer’s side, booting a boot to their ribs, grabbing a fistful of their collar and a shirt flap to tear the collar and gain a chunk. A sliver of the shirt flap snapped and she ended up back-rolling to her hands and knees. “WAAGH!” It did her dizzy and she started having a giggle fit. “Whoops.” She put the cloth she tore between her teeth then came crawling back, curling her finger beneath the waist fabric. Not just the shorts, but the underwear too. She made sure to feel both, stand, hook her second hand in and walk back, picking up the thigh highs, taking away all that remained to leave only skin. When it got the boots? She took those too, balled it all up, spun around and tossed it into the air like a confetti. Her arms are wide, and she’s laughing like a hyena. The shorts catch on her horn, cover half her face, and she swats at it like a feline giggly-bits. “Brooo…”

A deep puff and swat and it came free. She walked over, put a boot on their spine, bent over to unclip the bra then held one strap whilst gripping Shimmer’s remaining sleeve, hooking the gloaming soap tubs under her finger. She said, “Isn’t this just the best, Shimma??” Then, for the last time, pulled on both, tugging the sleeve and bra in hopes to take every bit of remaining clothing left to her name. All for the horde.

[Malkavia]

Shimmerlace’s costume had formed a natural if damp barrier over the laceration, and removing it tore the clot like ripping a bandage. The intuitive thing would be to scream, writhe, clutch herself. But there was no gas in the tank. Instead she shuddered and made a sick, dry-heave of a sound. Thumbs crooked inside Shimmerlace's shorts and pressed against her hips. Her breath accelerated through her mouth. Tug and slip—her thighs were damp, and the fabric wanted to cling, so it tickled coming off.

The idea crossed Shimmerlace’s mind to make a crawl for it. Heave in a breath, push forward, crack on, yank the rope in her palm. Rope break, and we all start over. If she could just figure out where the rope was. Her eyes kept sagging and made it hard to see.

But then—a shimmer of white on the deck. It took her a moment, forehead creased, to recognize, but then he started scratching away with his hindleg behind his long ear and her bottom dropped out. It’s all elbows and knees and darting across the deck, then, except she can’t seem to nudge herself forward.

“Thistle! Oi—cunt!” She whistled at him, arms outstretched.

The rabbit looked back at her. Then above her. Then back to her. Then he smiled and flipped three feet in the air. Binky. Moonkick.

“Get the fuck over here!”

“Mmm.” He slumped against the deck and started chewing his celery as he pretended to think. "So. I love ya. Soooo much! I love you and your voice for me, and the darkish room where we live, and the dragons and stuff. But uh. You know, it’s a big world out there, lots of people to meet, and…”

Pop goes one boot, clunk against the deck, then the other. World is cold and slick and spinning and sharp. Shimmerlace's body stretched, she moaned, she scraped her bare feet against the deck trying to reach. The rabbit yawned.

“Awh. Goldangit ma. Don’t make me say it.”

Somewhere in the fog someone's whistling. Train-whistle cat-call wakes in the middle of hitching and sniffling. Boot in her back, last bit of fairy yanked off her breast, she buries her face between her arms.

[Monsy]

What an image.
You're a bruised, cut, and stabbed-up shell, down some knuckles, blood, and some clothes. Stepping and standing over another bruised, cut and stabbed-up shell, down a tooth, blood, and some clothes. She gave this last piece of gold a look, held, its skeleton tubes dangling so pathetically that Angelina almost dropped it outright. Gloaming soap. What a fucking idea. Did her eyes a number. She can't stop passively crying from each. Though she's no longer sniffling. Her breath still has that rattle, though, quick-fired rattly breaths. It gets longer the more she stares at her gold, then tosses it to the pile. She looks at her side and taps the black and red. It went goopy, no longer burning as much, but sore like wounds of tomorrow. It has a light stickiness her fingertip taps on, squelching like squishing a sponge, and she cringes, taking another deep breath in, combing back her hair between her horns, then stepping so one foot was at either side of Shimmer's ribs, leaning down so she can put her mouth to her ear.

"He belongs to Angelina Tarrant now."

You wouldn't believe how good that felt to say. With gusto. A full breath in her chest, whispering. She spends the rest blowing on Shimmer's pink hair through an O. Didn't have a shaver. Shame. She straightens up and stretches out her arms, full wingspan. One arm goes over her head, and she makes fists, groaning as she leans back. It's a good day in the Thistle era.

"But dontcha' worry about a fuckin' thing, yo!" Angelina walks away from Shimmer towards the Gibbet's gate, where she holds it open, knocking on the metal bar. Her back to Shimmer. "I know how to protect and care for my shit. I give all my gold a good bath, the polish and attention it deserves and I keep it locked up, nice and safe, which is mo' than ya can do. I think if my Thistlebro was watchin' -- He'd part with something like…"

"--Sorry Ma."

[Malkavia]

The girl knew she was naked before she knew she’d been stripped. The cold, the wet, the sun, the constant air stream of a ship in motion—these all hit ye olde cerebral cortex before catcalls or the ball of cotton rags and gray pixie dust. Connecting the dots toppled a domino line of emotions. Her body jolted. Pick it up. But she can’t. It’s torn. Ripped. Ruined. Fuckin’ gone. Her fist pressed white against the deck. Belongs to Angelina Tarrant now. The Marauder’s breath brushed the girl’s ear, and every hair stood on end. Worse than gone.

Once the participant in a magic trick knows where the magnets are, magnets are all they see. And once someone like Angelina Tarrant, the Marauder, the Legend Toppler sees you naked, with your ankles too small for your feet and the way fat turned lumpy about the hips, and how one breast hangs slightly lower than the other…After that, the costume really is just a costume. A fresh wave of prickling heat made the girl wilt like crumpled paper.

Any moment, the girl expected the end. Two devil’s arms under her shoulders, a long drag across the deck, a last jeer from the audience. Clang. But it never came. Instead, what came were words to make the girl flinch, then, slowly, painfully slowly, stand.

Her arms hung limp like scarecrow sleeves. Red dripped from her snout and speckled her toes. As she swayed, she muttered under her breath, “Should've pushed harder.” Her head swam, body creaked—but the dam was fuckin' boiling. Sorry ma. “Aye. Should've made your peepers into jelly."

The girl shifted one leg behind, straight, one knee slightly crooked in front. Posed to launch. Her eyes set on the small of Angelina's back while her jaw hung slack and stupid. Her legs didn't want to move, so she lifted her bad hand and slammed it into her thigh. Muscle and cartilage in the girl’s throat bulged, her face turned purple. Sooooorry Ma. Huff, count to three, clench the core, and—presto. Off she charged towards Violet and Scarlet, Moonkick and Flying Leap from the Gibbet, Thistlebro and magic ears big enough to cover a scrawny, naked girl pink at the tips and blonde at the roots.

[Monsy]

Picture perfect. Look at that.
This deck is now sprinkling with gold, and what was left to catch her eye twinkle? She glanced over-shoulder once. Just a skeleton. Still got that pink hair but nothing that made it Shimmer anymore. One glance. She found herself staring off at the hardcore teatime patrons. Ridiculous bunch. Your pink face paint, wigs, bunny ears and shirts. You think they’d pay more respect as she wore her own pink. The colour of the teatime nation. Well, what they did lack in respect for their urbancore bandit was honesty -- seeing the unease in their eyes, the flicker and worry. Got your hardest mark, there, the fat one to mouth, ‘GO’. Though she heard those steps coming, Angelina lapped that cue up, winked, turned around and came face-to-face with our naked Seelie Scion.

She sprang, high as she could to get her legs up where they needed to be -- to catch Shimmer’s head, lean back and out past her hip. The hurricanrana. One grand ol’ spin that sought to flip Shimmer right into the cage. See her crash like petty fireworks as Angelina landed on her fucked up gut, rose to her knees, grabbed the bar and whip the cage door shut.

[Malkavia]

The girl rolled head over heels into the gibbet, and when she landed, her head protruded over the lip of the base of the cage. It was only millimeters of scalp, but it was enough that when the gibbet door slammed shut, it created a red welt of pain and put stars in her eyes. Rather than bounce off the skull and swing back open, however, the gate remained tight against the girl’s head, forcing her to crook her neck.

Gong. The girl felt her body as a medium of the cold iron’s vibration, her bones buzzing, her skin shivering. Big breath in. Her eyes squeezed shut. Her hands rose over her shoulders, finding the bars. Push...no give. Her feet pressed against the bars at the opposite end of the gibbet. Push—from the core, heave until the thighs shake and the abs crunch and the arms flex, until the side splits and oozes, teeth clenched hard enough to ache and make her face scowl…and the lock held. The girl collapsed.

DING DING DING

One feeling melted into another, a dozen tangents competing for mental bandwidth. She’d be put on display, she realized, assuming she didn’t wake up in her bed in relief—put on display without her ears, costume, rabbit, or fairy—lopsided tits to the wind. And what would she eat? How would she sleep? Would she be able to sleep? How would she…How would she…On and on, questions without answers, all terminating like so many inward curling threads of a spiderweb towards the one concrete, impassable reality at the center, the black, gibbet-shaped hub.

The girl’s tongue clung to the roof of her mouth, and a headache sent a fissure between her left and right lobes. Rabbit, comet—fuck. What the girl’s animal hindbrain begged for just then was a glass of water and a soft bed, which were equally of reach.

It took a long few breaths for the girl to become aware of the twin streams running down her temples, for her to press her hands to her face to cover her eyes, for her breathing to become deep and stretched and deliberate. The end-of-match sniffle was a cliché the Pixie up to this point had avoided in her loss-bedecked career. But alas. No streak lasts forever.