Tiaras and Tricorns: Angelina Tarrant vs Madeleine Citronelle (Apex Qualifier)

[Malkavia]

There were distractions: the tinny ring in her ear, the hot-skillet pain hissing at the base of her skull. The solution was to accept her demons, allowing them to slide into the background. Madeleine side-stepped away from the ropes and their dangers, zeroed in on her opponent.

Who was, for her part, having a grand time. ...Never content to merely land a hit, she savors her blows–like a sommelier allowing wine to settle on the palette. The pirate had no shame about gloating, which would have cut Madeleine something jagged if the pirate’s banter hadn't been so…

Another smirk poked at Madeleine’s dimples, in spite of the pained crows-feet around her eyelids. Kung Fu Panda…? An image of Po, stuffed and on her shelf, flit across her imagination. It was hard to imagine a character less like the person in front of her. And yet...

The smile evaporated as Angelina took flight. The slimy beast churning in Madeleine’s gut, ever since hip had mounted her back, lurched to the front with hungry, bulbous eyes. Angelina’s legs pounded the mat, and her skin shone and hair glistened–and Madeleine could see the muscle in her shoulder coil. A pivot to the left would put the Countess out of harm’s way, and a clamp of her guard would aim to grab and capture that arm.

Then her hips would twist, power would gather in her leg, and she’d aim to knife her knee deep into the Marauder’s pretty gut.

[Monsy]

This pirate had a full tank of gas and was ready to comet. Bold moves seemed to work thus far. The best way to beat the game Madeleine poised was simply: not play it. Vertical. Pirate-Fuckin-Fu. Madeleine showed quite the damn jaw being ready to swing after so short of time. What was it? Three seconds in total? She didn’t want the answer -- the feat was all enough to get her buzzing to come for seconds. Maybe next time -- it’ll be just over three seconds. She could taste it, through the air, throwing that fist.

Then-- “HUGH!”
The Marauder is plucked from the air, brought down on a tether and meets a sharp club straight into her belly for a loud thunk. It buried itself half an inch, the squishy top layer trembled from navel to hip. Her legs had yet to touch the ground but she already folded over the limb, bent like a towel over the clothes line. Both eyes go bug-eyed. A tear from each corner breaks a leak, and spittle sprays off her tongue and onto the mat. She wheezes, and it descends into a soft squealing whimper. When she meets the ground, she’s knees first, down on her elbows, hips up. Her entire body catches a tremble as her one arm was still stretched up into Madeleine’s grasp. “Mm--..peh…” Her breathing turns heavy and matches with a long intake. Stalled.

[Malkavia]

Angelina emptied her lungs, shuddered, and felt heavy across Madeleine’s leg like a cat that had gone to sleep on her lap. Gone was iron edge. Leather hung loose on a girl with hurt on her face.

One remembers the flame this soldier could produce. Blink at the inopportune moment, and she will rip your insides out faster than the mind can turn. Still. Under a smile blooming like the sun at dawn, Madeleine felt a twinge, a twist in the gut that wanted more than anything to take this girl home and slip off all that grungy leather and find something silky and loose and bright and…

Madeleine bit her lip. Her grasp tightened on Angelina until the skin on her arm wrinkled. Her smile grew steely. ”Sorry for this, sweet.” As her core tightened, her hips shifted. Her toe carved an ellipse over Angelina’s head, balance held on a pinpoint in the small of her grounded foot, and she aimed to crack the golden arc down in an axe-kick at the base of a scarlet head.

[Monsy]

“Gnnhegh…” Eating your own momentum and solid concentrated Citronelle wall had turned the Marauder’s otherwise smooth-firm gut into paste. It stabbed into the solar plexus and she found herself more winded than normal. Heavy-handed malaise and churning guts like her acids got malevolent and she started feeling it in her throat. She opened her mouth, groaned, put a hand over her bruising tummy then used Madeleine’s grip to pull herself upward.

She had a small shake to her, and hair needled over her face. “Nghh…” Angelina rose like she was grabbed by the scruff, and lifted. Her arm, limp, steadily postured on the ground, palm face-up in this awkward corral of her spaghetti posture. The cat-eyed purple looked up, wide, glassy. Teeth clenched and twisted into a shivering frown, sniffling once, like a wee one who just scraped their knee.

Then came a flash of white. You can see her head be caught by the crown, crack and rebound off her skull like two slap-shotting hockey pucks. She peeped out a loud whimper. Her skull snapped into the ground, and she became jell-o. A half-pipe curve went into her spine, and the lithe frame all bundled up to stick her rear into the air. Her arm had gone trapped underneath her chest. And she laid, cheek-down between Madeleine’s feet, leaking drool as she looked vacantly -- twitching at her ankle and sometimes her back. The breeze hurt too.

[Malkavia]

It took Madeleine a second to realize what hurt. Her tongue was the culprit. Her teeth had sunk deep into the flesh, making lasting dents that stuck to the enamel when she loosened her jaw. She almost dropped Angelina’s hand, almost let her arm flop like a dead fish on the mat, but—her composure intervened. She tucked down in a squat and gently set Angelina’s hand beside her sweet, vacant face. An urge took Madeleine, violent, soaring…brush, and, peck. She pushed Angelina's hair aside and planted a kiss on the redhead’s pale forehead.

When Madeleine stood, her arms went first, up in a huge Y as wide as her smile. Did the ring shake from the reply from the stands? Alas, probably not, but she liked to imagine. She spied the young Miss with the Mademoiselle mink. If she could only have captured the little-girl grin on that grown woman’s face, wide-eyed, teeth gleaming. And Codswaddle watched, too.

The Countess briefly considered taking the pin then and there, but…One must take and savor one’s opportunities, and this audience was primed. She nodded and let her smile droop an inch or two more serious. Then she clapped her hands together. One. Two. She struck a beat. Andante. Her eyes meeting the fans communicated all that needed communicating, and soon they were clapping too.

She charged at the ropes. One, two, three! The pace accelerated, from trot to run–allegro, as she slammed back first into the ropes and felt her hair whip scarlet bows and all over the ring edge. Her feet pumped. The breath filled her boot to chest, glittering in the veins coarses oxygen from fingertip to eyelid, pump pump pump, and she passes Angelina and launches top speed into the other ropes. The crowd keeps the beat exquisitely, One!–Two!–Three!–Four! Presto! And at the top of her climb to full speed, Madeleine locks her eyes on Angelina. She leaps, and tucks in her knees, and aims at the only soft landing pad around in a baseball slide, as the world goes quiet and the spray of sweat from her hair glitters in the spotlight.

[Monsy]

The Slaphappy Pirate melted against the whites. She mumbled something incoherently, and was losing her sense of feeling after her brain took a crack. Like a light-switch. Her body obeyed whatever pull Madeleine sought. Her shoulder pinched when brought up. An awkward angle for sure. Then she was half-way off the canvas, peering up, eyes nowhere to be found but the sweat-wiped lids closed when taking a kiss on the forehead. Expecting a punch, she shrivelled up, but then sagged again, in crumples and folds rather than flat. Her elbow was down, the arm tilted up, leaning over her head and touching the sturdy black horn. Both legs piled on each other, bent on the knee, then the boots rested ankle to toes.

“Mmlegh…” voiced Angelina, still coming around to catching the crowd in one reality as she was rolling through realities three, six and twelve. Converging timelines all at once. Forever confused and laying still like twitching would get some sort of extreme motion sickness.

She heard the claps. The stomps. Someone was running. Like an elephant that stormed, beautiful, ruby, blonde and petite, coming from behind and wedging two head-on collisions that could pop the spine. It thunked. Her body didn’t roll. It took all of it, bent, with her innards feeling like it slammed her stomach, chest. She can feel her heart in her throat, and she’s all frozen, choking on a scream until she laid on her back -- felt the hot coals press into her back, and she arched, heels down and rolling her neck. Finally, it came out. “N-NEGHH!” And her face twisted up, biting teeth and her cheeks inflated to puff out spit. She was awake. Then turned on her side and started panting, groaning all the exhale.

[Malkavia]

The impact rattled one’s skeleton, and the Countess had to put her hands on the mat to keep from toppling on her side. The cork popped, and champagne gushed. She ran a hand through her hair to get her face clear, turned an eye on Angelina.

”And where’s that tongue of yours?” Her voice was a low hum, a sigh. Not words for the audience. It was a a challenge to hold eye contact, the way Angelina heaved and groaned, but for the brief seconds she was speaking, Madeleine kept their gazes locked. ”You know?” The very tip of Madeleine’s tongue slipped between her lips. Cat-like in the middle of her smile.

Then she grabbed Angelina’s ankle, locked her fingers around the knee, and pulled until both their backs were tight against the mat. Her head rested beside Angelina's. She looked to the sky, and the blinding star-like blaze of the spotlight only stretched her smile wider, before she turned to watch her sweet pirate's face.

[Monsy]

It’s not a match until the Marauder is fuckin’ screaming in some fashion. The girl had a voice and a sharp tongue, in more ways than witt. Your Countess had found that number and played it well, leaving the Pirate without a spine. She twitched, not from resisting the pin, but just by her back, having a short squeal inside her mouth as she was laid flat. Her boot pointed to the sky, knee just under her bust. Flexible as always, a trademark for acrobatics. But also adding ease for her opponent to pull and stretch the limb from the boot straps to the stockings, belts, harness and shorts. There’s a million places to grab. Each one is soft.

The pirate’s face was half smothered by her own shoulder, pushing on her small cheek to the cheekbone and raising a corner of her mouth. She had a hand up in her own spilling red hair, with the forearm under a horn. The purple slits were closing, but having a small stare at Madeleine. She had a closed maw, with the smallest gap at the wet lips. A heave was striking her chest. In and out, steady. By looking at her forehead, there were clear signs of sweat.

“ONE!”
“TWO!”

In one stroke, Angelina threw her arm up, but then over. Her body rolled with it, and she tried to lay across Madeleine. Chest to chest, and a knee on either side of Madeleine’s waist, giving all her weight. She grabbed onto Madeleine’s arms, in the pocket of her elbow, then tried pinning them down overhead, shoulders stuck as a result. There, with a punch-drunk look, she peeked a little more so you could see the cat-like iris stare down. And still groggy, her head still tilted into her shoulder, she made a faint lopsided smile and said, “Whyyyy don’t ya come find it, Countess?” And marked the challenge with her tongue wiping across her upper lip.

[Malkavia]

Each count was another lightbulb pulse in the gut, a glow so hot as to almost be unbearable, until, all of a sudden, she was on the bottom. Her instinct was to tug, but Angelina held her arms firm against the mat.

It’s not the jump that rests in the mind’s eyes, nor even the heel over head cartwheel through the air…

An inferior position, supine and under a full mount, was undesirable in grappling but not insurmountable. Madeleine’s eyes narrowed. Yes, the disappointment was bitter. Yes, it was a firebrand against the chest, squeeze your fists until the palms bleed, scowl up at your red-headed captor kind of frustrating. But not for one instant did she let her mind stray from her plans.

Then, the tongue brushed across her lips.

...It’s the way she looks at you after she lands.

The Countess squeaked, then bit her lip as if she could catch the noise and drag it back past her teeth, down her throat, and into her now-heaving lungs. One breach of control toppled into another as her face went scarlet and eyes went wide.

It was just a kiss. It wasn’t even a kiss. Just a brush of tongue…soft, and warm, and dripping with that pirate’s fucking swagger after all that—

”TWO…!”

Madeleine realized in a thundercrack that her shoulders were against the mat, had been against the mat. Her face was a window blown through by a baseball, stretched with something between panic and rage. She pushed her shoulder, wrenched head and hair off the mat, laid her feet flat on the mat, and heaved with her gut in a firecrack attempt at flipping Angelina where she could be treated properly. Beneath.

[Monsy]

Eyes half above water, sinking into another girl’s covered skin. She felt warm, and her belly was steaming. From the knee that made it sensitive. Then the opposite midriff, to lay on and rest, feel the inhale and find a scent to latch onto. Her knees squeezed onto Madeleine’s waist, searching for that sweet spot between firm, painful but comfortable. Heels went back and tried to hook the knees, going from the outside, then in around so the grip caught the inner thigh. Then spread. But Madeleine had an answer. Clever one with a scarlet face. How did she manage that? One moment, the fall is right there. The next, her horns were poking into the canvas, heels taken to the air. Her neck folded and they practically whipped. Madeleine’s weight now came onto her. But.

Angelina used that momentum to keep a small roll. Just enough to crunch her small abs and curl up the shoulders to have them sit up. Now when the referee came to check the pin. They stopped. Because Madeleine got her wish, but instead, came right into the pirate’s lap. Her legs were straight, idle. Angelina’s head was rolled back, looking up, smiling even more. An arm wrapped around and spread her palm between Madeleine’s shoulder-blades, pulling her close so Angelina can slouch and lean awkwardly. The other grip went towards her chin, cupped it, with a thumb pressing just under the bottom lip.

She snickered, glancing at them from the bottom of her eyes. “Oh for two, puppy.”

Then Angelina snapped her head forward. A headbutt now whipped to catch Madeleine right in the nose.