You Must Be This Tall To Fight

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

Closed to HikariAngel

Am I really cut out for this? I couldn't even defeat Joshua Cronen... The thought of not being strong enough to be an assassin--the only way of life Madison has ever known--was plaguing her ever since she returned from Scara Brae. She considered many things; training harder, learning another craft, and so on. Surprisingly enough, the thin woman hadn't killed herself like she considered before entering the Dajas Pagoda, despite her loss therein.

"You're an exceptional fighter, despite your... extreme tactics. My congratulations."

Madison recalled Joshua's parting compliment. As she walked the crowded streets of Radasanth, she wondered if she was really all that great. The fight made her realize that she was vastly underskilled; that only knowing how to use her fists wasn't going to get her very far. To compensate for that, she had started to learn the basics of telekinesis. Her short range allowed her to control her beloved choke wire that she kept hidden underneath one of her purple sleeves. She also accidentally discovered one day that she could use telepathy to disrupt the brain patterns of anyone weak enough to stand still and take the blast.

The assassin's feet carried her to the stone steps of the Citadel, one of the most famous establishments in all of Althanas. Madison's deep blue eyes gazed upwards, taking in the magnificent sight of the hallowed building. The steeples seemed to pierce the sky again, as she recalled her last visit here. A small shiver passed down her spine. The image of the slippery, floating platform that she last battled on flashed in her mind, as did her little two mile fall that was the outcome.

Madison walked up the stone steps, her heels clicking with each step. Her bony fingers tightly gripped the heavy iron door handle, and with some effort she opened the giant oak door. The vast marble halls and multitude of doors looked unchanged as well. It still had that majestic feel to it, one that the raven-haired woman couldn't help but to stand there and take in for a brief moment.

This is it, Madison thought with her eyes closed as she stood in the doorway. She took a few steps, heading towards a random door when a monk stopped her. She waved her hand dismissively. "I know the drill." She grabbed the handle on one of the doors, and pulled. Nothing. She pulled again. Still nothing. The assassin squinted in frustration, snarling at the thing as she tugged with both hands. The monk chuckled as he watched the scarecrowish woman tug to her heart's content. Deciding that she had enough, he slowly reached out, grabbed the handle, and pulled. This time, the door opened, revealing the familiar black beyond. Madison stepped back and glared at the monk before entering the darkness, feeling a little humiliated at her futile efforts to open the door.

After a few seconds, Madison could begin to make out shapes and sounds. The world around her materialized before her eyes. The first thing that stuck out to her was that there was no color; everything was in shades of gray, including her own skin and clothing. Her eyes widened as she whipped her head around. To her surprise, she was standing in the midway of a carnival. A thousand people surrounded her, suffocating her (Madison has a small fear of crowds). Feeling a panic attack coming on, she turned forward in time to see a man wearing a monochrome leather tunic mere inches from her face.

"Hey! Watch where you're going!" The woman threw her hands forward to stop the man from colliding with her, but he continued walking on and passed right through her. Madison stood there dumbfounded for a moment, wondering how someone just walked right through her. After collecting her thoughts, she slowly looked around, and noticed that the carnival's patrons were all translucent. She raised an eyebrow in surprise. What the fuck is this place?

The carnival itself was bordered by a rickety wooden roller coaster--no entry gates in sight. On either side of the assassin were game stalls. Circling the midway were various rides and attractions; a carousel, a house of mirrors, a ferris wheel that was slightly taller than the highest peak of the roller coaster, a freak show, and so on. The park reminded Madison of the one her father took her to as a small child, in the days before he corrupted her with her assassin training. The spirits continued their wandering around the carnival, carrying on as if Madison didn't exist at all.

Madison thought to herself out loud. "Well, it shouldn't be too hard to find my opponent in this bizarre place. I'll just keep swinging at everything until something finally bleeds." A small length of wire snaked out beneath her left sleeve, the steel shining in the white sunlight. The assassin began to play with the wire as she wandered around the carnival, searching for the one person she wouldn't be able to see through.

[HikariAngel]

Perched precariously atop the railing of the ferry that traveled between the island nations of Corone and Scara Brae, the wide-eyed catgirl gazed toward the approaching shoreline. Chin-length silver-grey hair blew wildly in the sea breeze, sending salty sea spray up the side of the boat and into her delicate face. A grey tail swished back and forth to assist with her balance as she sat with her hands between her feet and all four limbs attached firmly to the steel railing that bordered the ferry’s upper deck. A great number of fish scattered as the keel sliced through the waves just outside the breaker bars, and Monica had half a mind to jump in and catch one.

Then she remembered that she was wearing white.

A pristine white dress with a low-cut neckline and long slashes up the sides exposed a great deal of her feminine physique, inevitably drawing the lustful eyes of many men and the hateful, even disdainful, glares of women. Rose-colored irises flickered back and forth from one dark shadow to the next even as a burred tongue licked her unadorned lips, revealing teeth that definitely belonged on a cat. Large ears set atop her head swiveled back and forth to catch the captain’s voice as he called all passengers to gather away from the railing; they were about to pass the breaker bars and he expected a bit of turbulence.

Leaping backward off the sturdy bar with feline grace, the sudden lurching of the boat moments later threw off her landing position and forced the catgirl to think faster than she wanted to. A strong arm caught her leg before she had time to finish her plan, an arm belonging to one of the many sailors that might as well have lived on the ship. Twisting her neck and spine around to see behind her, a bout of embarrassment raced across her face as soon as she realized that her dress had left her undergarments exposed for the man as he held her.

“Please, sir, would you mind putting me down?”

A brief smile flashed across the sailor’s countenance as he righted her and placed her gently on the deck. She felt like slapping him; he could have just set her down before getting his eyeful. Yes, she was wearing all white.

As soon as the ferry landed, the catgirl didn’t wait for the unloading plank to lower before springing off the port railing and making her way to the nearest crowded street. After her first experience in the Dajas Pagoda, she realized just how fun (and dangerous) fighting could be. Asuka Murakama had taught her that much, even if the fiery redhead was one of the biggest meanies she had ever met. After being told that she couldn’t challenge one of the Masters or take a seat as a warrior herself “for technical reasons” she decided to head to the next best place: the Citadel in Corone.

Walking up to the grand structure forced the catgirl to realize just how small and insignificant she was. Well, she was short, but nobody was going to say she was insignificant! Looking up to the pair of brown-clad monks that flanked the monstrous doors to the famed fighting arena, she took one artificially-confident step after another. It was a lot more intimidating up close than it was at a distance. Almost as though it sensed her apprehension, the double doors swung open of their own accord to admit the overly-awed woman. It was almost an afterthought that brought her eyes down to another monk standing behind the doors, not even an inch taller than her. So the monks had a sense of humor.

“I-” she started, but before she could even finish forming the thoughts in her head, the brown-clad woman held up her hand and smiled.

“Follow me, please.”

So she did.

Hundreds, maybe thousands of doors littered the myriad of corridors, each one looking exactly the same to the Monica’s eyes. The monk knew where she was headed, however, and eventually she stopped and pulled open a door. Seeing nothing but a black void behind the door, the neko tipped her head curiously and crept up on the dark sheet. Reaching a slender, gloved finger to the inky darkness, she testingly touched it. That was when she realized that her finger wasn’t pulling out. Without thinking, she put her right hand up against the blackness, forgetting that it wasn’t actually solid. Sure enough, her hand passed right through and refused to pull out. Seeing the catgirl’s state of panic, the monk graciously placed a strong hand against her back and pushed her in just as she closed the door.

A surprised squeal left the short woman’s mouth, sounding a mix between a real scream and the surprised meow of a cat.

Note to self… walk through the strange blac- Wow. This is so cool.

Before her stood every little girl’s dream, or at least it had been her dream when she was a little girl. Only… weren’t amusement parks normally more colorful than this? She could see the variations in the grey shades that should have been vibrant greens and reds and yellows, but everything was just so… distant. She came to this realization just as a family of four walked right through her and she didn’t even feel them. Sure everything looked real enough, but it seemed that only the vending stalls and other buildings were solid. This was easily enough proven when she tried walking through a rather solid-looking wall. It didn’t work.

Finally her thoughts caught up to her. This was an arena for battle. If she was supposed to fight, there had to be someone else already here that wasn’t a ghost. Since the Ferris wheel was closest, she skipped past the queue of people standing waiting their turn and scampered atop one of the many umbrella-covered carriages. Going so high up would obviously give her a clear view of both the arena and, hopefully, her opponent. The fact that her opponent would probably see her before the catgirl spotted them didn’t even register, and that was her thinking before the wheel started turning and lifting her up toward the sky.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

Madison had spent the better part of fifteen minutes searching the monochrome carnival for her opponent. She passed the tilt-o-whirl, peeked into the house of mirrors, and tore through the line for the roller coaster. She was beginning to get a bit frustrated as she walked the hard packed dirt paths, eating a small bag of popcorn she stole from one of the vendors. The assassin passed through the ghostly families as she went about her way, tearing through every nook and cranny for her latest opponent.

The raven-haired woman propped herself against the walls of a game stall, giving up her search. If they want to fight me so bad, then they'll come looking. Madison resigned herself to crowd watching as she finished off her buttery snack. Wiping the greasy residue off on the backside of her dark velvet dress, she resumed her search, opting to try looking at the rides one more time. It had been half an hour since she first materialized in this place; how hard could it be to find one person, especially one who would be real rather than ghostly in appearance?

The carousel produced nothing, except for the screams of one spirit baby who wasn't terribly impressed with the pale wooden horse his mom held him on. The giant slide was the same way, as was the tilt-o-whirl. Her next stop was the ferris wheel. She approached the giant, rickety wooden wheel--it looked exactly as she remembered it from her youth. The color scheme alternated bright blue, green, red, and yellow; or it least it should have, but this time everything was in different shades of gray. A group of roller coaster cars passed overhead, the passengers laughing and screaming at the same time as the wheels clanked and clunked on the wooden and steel platform.

Madison began scanning the queue when something caught her eye. It was solid and moving, it didn't take the assassin a second to realize that it was her opponent. She slowly approached the ferris wheel, but the person scurried into one of the covered carriages. Madison stopped as the ferris wheel slowly carried her target higher and higher into the sky. Her eyes followed the wooden carriage, her thoughts drifting away from the impending battle.

I've got a few minutes... Madison turned around, looking for a way to kill some time, and settled on playing one of the many midway games. This particular one, from the looks of it, required you to throw a ball at a pyramid of six milk bottles. She walked over, and waited until the man in the booth turned away before she reached behind the counter and grabbed a bowl that had three balls in it. She wrapped her bony fingers around one of the orbs, noting that it felt a bit soft. Madison wound up and pitched the ball at the bottles, hitting the middle one on the bottom row. The pyramid swayed a little bit, but stood strong. She glared as she pitched another ball. The same thing happened; the stack of glass bottles taunting her with their resilience.

Oh, that's right, I forgot these things were rigged. The scarecrowish woman looked on the ground for something heavier than the baseballs, finding a nice round rock about half the size of her fist. She picked it up, tossed it in the air a few times, then sent the missile straight for the bottles. Her black lips curled in grim satisfaction as the rock shattered the bottom glass bottle, causing the rest of them to fall to the counter. The booth tender looked up at all the clinking and clanging, letting out a small gasp as he discovered that someone actually won at his game. The chubby man reflexively reached for one of the stuffed cats lining the wall, one that was about as big as his chest.

"We have a winner," he called out with forced enthusiasm. Moving towards the counter with the fuzzy prize, he noticed that nobody was standing there--Oh yeah, I forgot, they can't see me. As the puzzled man drew closer, Madison leaned over the counter and tugged the stuff cat out of the spirit's arms. As the animal slipped from his sweaty arms, the booth tender cried out at the top of his lungs. "Aaaahh! Ghosts!" He then ran screaming from his booth, the other carnival goers wondering what the hell was going on.

"Look who's talking," Madison mumbled to herself as she left the booth, cradling the stuffed animal in one of her arms. She turned around and looked at the ferris wheel. Her target was nearing the bottom. The assassin smiled ever-so-slightly, preparing for her second win in one day.

[HikariAngel]

The wheel took off and started rotating slowly, allowing the catgirl to perfect her balance atop the umbrella-covered carriage. In only a few seconds, Monica was seeing a sight she had never seen before. The ghost-like people began vanishing into the grey earth, insubstantial forms losing all substance from so far away. It was amazing to say the least. Halfway to the top the silver-haired girl spun around slowly to take in the entire amusement park.

The house of mirrors, her arch-nemesis, was on the other side of the park. The last time she had entered one of those cursed buildings, it took a half-dozen workers to find her, then another four to convince her that the mirrors weren’t going to eat her. After five of them wound up with scratches and bite marks, she relented that they weren’t out to get her. There was no way she would go into that place again.

Three-quarters of the way to the apex, the ride slowed to allow a family to get out. The wind was a lot stronger than she thought it would be, so she laid down prone on top of the carriage as a long train from the roller coaster roared by. The ghosts screamed in delight and fear as the rickety wooden track plummeted down the second fall, curving down and eventually leveling out into an upward helix. She had never been on a roller coaster before; the last time her parents took her to the park she had been too short to ride the best rides. Well, she was certainly tall enough this time around, even if nobody would stop her because they were ghosts and she wasn’t.

The wheel continued down its course, and Monica finally remembered why she had climbed up the attraction in the first place. The revelation of why she had come here in the first place stood out against the fog of her head as clearly as the dark-clad woman staring straight at her. The catgirl’s eyes locked onto her opponent. There was still a quarter turn left before she reached the ground level, so she decided to speed up her descent. It was almost too easy to jump from one carousel to the next in line down; the scared screams of ghosts screaming “ghost!” were almost ironic.

A soft four-point landing from twelve feet up finished her ride with flair, considering the back-flip she pulled in mid-air. Delicate shoeless feet padded quietly against the ground when she stood, white dress flowing in the breeze. White gloves reaching past her elbows gave her form a refined look, even as her silver-grey tail swished excitedly behind while she walked closer. Rose-colored eyes examined the woman before her, comparing figures almost unconsciously out of habit. Her ears twitched playfully atop her head; she was still the cuter of the two. A genuine smile sprang onto Monica’s face as she offered her hand to her opponent.

“I’m Monica. What’s your name?”

No tricks. No deceit. Just an honest girl introducing herself to a potential new friend, even if she was going to have to beat her up soon.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

The assassin calmly watched as her opponent effortlessly leaped from carriage to carriage on the ferris wheel, already making mental notes about her movements and how she would counter them. As she landed on the ground and walked towards Madison, she could make out who her opponent was. Glancing down, she turned the face of her carnival prize up: There was a remarkable resemblance between the two. The oversized cat ears, the bright, cartoony eyes, the childish smile... "Those bastard monks... They had to go and pick something cute for me to kill," she muttered to herself as she returned the stuffed toy to its nest underneath her armpit.

The short catgirl offered her hand in introduction. Madison hesitated, suspecting a dirty trick, but relented as the girl's bright smile revealed otherwise. She slowly extended her own black lace-gloved hand, glancing for a split second at the suspicious gloves that the feline wore. She noted to be wary of those at well; there was no telling what they would do in the heat of combat.

"Madison," she said, her raspy voice almost devoid of emotion. As she firmly shook her hand, she concentrated on snaking her choke wire from the device she wore on her left wrist up her arm. The thin strand of steel tickled as it traveled across her shoulders and down her right arm. The wire came out of her sleeve and began looping itself around the catgirl's wrist; Madison silently hoped that she wouldn't notice it and pull out before she could start the fight.

The assassin grinned slightly as she let go of the girl's hand, commanding her wire to constrict around her wrist. Immediately, Madison raised her arm straight up in the air, pulling the ensnared limb with it to create an opening--and sent a knee to her opponent's stomach as a proper greeting.

[HikariAngel]

Her tail twitched. Sure she was being a little brash just offering her hand like she was making a new friend, but she wanted to see how her opponent would react. There were no tricks involved, and she wasn’t planning on doing anything sly… as long as her opponent didn’t do something stupid. The spindly woman in dark grey was suspicious of Monica’s intentions, and rightly so, but she was a bit too hesitant for the catgirl’s generous spirit.

Something tickled the silver-haired girl’s arm, but she didn’t have the time to look down and see the offending party. It almost felt like a spider, but not quite. And she would have felt a bug crawling up her leg first… if the monks even put bugs here. She was, however, priming her body for the unexpected, which was incredibly hard to say the least. It made guessing what Asuka Murakama from the Dajas Pagoda was going to do next back then seem like a cakewalk now.

Focus… that was what she had to do. Cool down… take things slow. Her normally red eyes lightened slightly, and if there had been any color, flecks of blue would have shown up in them. A sudden pressure all around the catgirl’s right wrist as all she had, and in a moment, she had to make a gut call. When in doubt, jump. It had been her personal motto once, and now it served as her decision.

Powerful toned legs launched the catgirl up much farther than she looked capable of jumping. Like watching a film that had been recorded a little too fast, Monica watched the events unfold before her. Her light grey eyes were locked with “Madison’s”, and as such she didn’t see the knee coming to strike where she had just been. It didn’t matter, because her own knee was already on a collision course with the raven-haired woman’s face. Just a gut instinct. But that didn’t explain why she was still smiling.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

Her knee moved quick, but to the assassin's dismay, the cat girl was quicker. Nearly the instant she fired off her attack, her opponent sprung high into the air, higher than any normal person could have within the confines of gravity. Madison could feel the cat girl tug on her arm a bit as she rose into the sky.

Within a split second, she noticed that her opponent was also quick with a counter. A knee was flying fast towards her face--the woman's sapphire eyes widened in surprise as dozens of ideas flashed into her head. Yet, before she could enact any of them, she could feel a sharp pain in her jaw as Monica's knee drove straight into it. A white-hot fire traveled through her head as the raven-haired woman cried out in pain.

That was a fluke. You should've seen something like that coming, Madison thought to herself as she clenched her eyes shut and tried to block out the pain. She reeled back, her dark bangs flying in her face. A warm liquid began to fill her mouth and creep through the cracks between her teeth, staining them a bright crimson--or, due to the nature of this strange arena, a deep gray.

Madison realized she had to shut out the pain and act fast--Monica was bound to her at the wrist, and she had to regain the upper hand. Hundreds more ideas flashed through her head as she regained her focus on the cat girl. As the cat girl's feet touched ground once more, Madison found her opening. Quickly, she twisted and yanked the girl's right arm to her stomach, positioning her left forearm just under her opponent's shoulder. She then fell on her side, yanking the girl down to the gray dirt ground. Madison grinned inwardly, hoping that the force of the primitive armbar coupled with the momentum of Monica's landing would do some serious damage.

Let's see her writhe out of this.

[HikariAngel]

Jumping was always fun. The elation of flying through the air, if only for a moment, was impossible to compare to anything else the silver-haired catgirl had ever experienced. It was a good thing she wasn’t afraid of heights; there had been more than one occasion where escape meant running atop metal girders no less than two-hundred feet off the ground. But then there was the inevitable fall back to terra firma. It was the fall that Monica hated the most, simply because she was helpless on her way down. Jumping was controlled – she knew how hard to push off to travel how far – but falling was random. The wind shifted her course at times. Then there was the awkward second of vulnerability after landing.

Something solid hit her knee as she leapt higher than she looked capable of and it didn’t take a glance down to know that it was Madison’s face that interrupted her jump. Well, it was intentional with how she brought her knee up, but that was beside the point. Or maybe it was another point just beyond her first, but still as important. Either way, the feeling of solid contact where she had the advantage was still nice. She didn’t necessarily like having to fight, but sometimes conflict was unavoidable. This was not one of those times. It had been a conscious decision that sent her to the Citadel.

The wire clinched around her right wrist was all but forgotten in the catgirl’s blissful elation, so when she landed she was caught completely off-guard. Yes, that awkward vulnerability came into play in the worst possible way. Landing with her right foot first, she did not have the luxury of taking a large step sideways to stabilize herself. Her left arm flew to the side as fast as it could to stabilize her body, and her tail twitched and spun large circles to add its slight bit of counterbalancing to the equation. Unfortunately, she was fighting against more than just gravity this time. Splayed out as she was, she was easy prey for her black-clad opponent’s arm bar.

Yet even caught off guard she fell as gracefully as a cat. Like a wave, she hit first with her knees bent only slightly and continued her flowing motion to the best of her ability. It worked for the most part, up to the point where her chest was smashed into the ground. That would be the time where, for once in her life, Monica was thankful for the diminutive breasts she had been mocked for over the years. Her left hand instinctively tried to stop her chest from striking the ground, but all the unconscious effort resulted in was increased pressure on her right breast. Also having someone lying on her arm didn’t help her situation at all either.

When she hit, a sound that was somewhere between all the air in her lungs coming out at the same time and a squeal of pain echoed off the sturdy wooden frame of the roller coaster. The front of her right shoulder hurt, and she couldn’t move that arm either no matter how hard she tried. After a couple gasping breaths, however, her head was back in the fight. She grimaced and bared her sharp teeth at the air for a lack of Madison to bite into as her arm was wrenched farther back. Something told Monica that she would get her arm back soon, though. Something that involved her rose-colored eyes swirling with more and more sapphire. Or, in this strange world, her light-grey eyes swirling with more and more dark grey.

Deathly chill of winter… I am your vessel.

The change was not a gradual one, but it wasn’t quite instant either. The ghosts even gave the invisible fighters a wider birth as they sensed the change of atmosphere. Pale flesh that had been pleasantly warm rapidly lost all warmth to the point where the catgirl was cold as a winter storm to the touch. With her still-free left hand, she rotated her arm backwards a little ways then shot a four-finger thrust across the middle of her back. If her aim was right and Madison was where she thought the other woman was, four singularly unpleasant sensations would enter her consciousness. Each one was six-inches long, sprouting from the tip of the catgirl’s gloves where her claws would have been, and left a trail of frost even in the warm carnival air.

In short, Madison was about to receive four blades, each colder than ice, into whatever part of her body was closest to Monica’s right arm. It wasn’t something that she liked doing, especially so soon, but arm bars hurt!

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

Dust kicked up as the laws of gravity carried Madison and Monica to the ground. A high-pitched squeak emitted from the cat girl's lips, providing the raven-haired woman a small note of satisfaction. Confident that the submission hold was all it was going to take to end this battle, she allowed the wire to slack and retract into the device on her left arm. The assassin twisted and pulled on the girl's arm, trying to apply enough pressure to break it. Quit your crying, kid. The monks will fix you up in no time, she grimly thought to herself.

The armbar itself was a technique that Madison never thought she would use. Back when she was eleven, her father taught her some rudimentary self-defense. Madison preferred brawling over technical moves such as submission holds. This was evident the day she was thrown out of her parents' estate, when she single-handedly kicked the living daylights out of her two brothers after they accused her of her third brother's murder. She may have been outcasted, but not before her brothers suffered from broken noses and arms.

Reminiscing about that dark day sent a ripple of anger through her, and she twisted tighter. Imagining that it was Justin or Michael that she was fighting--and not Monica--made everything so much easier. But, there was something amiss about the situation. This girl... Is it just me, or is her skin getting colder and colder? Madison raised an eyebrow at this notion, until the touch Monica's skin became so cold that it started to burn slightly as it sucked away her own body heat.

Madison gritted her teeth and tried to shut out the numbing pain, as the cold wasn't enough to make her break the hold. What was, however, were the four very sharp, very cold blades that were inserted into her right shoulder. She could feel the slick steel immerse itself in her flesh and muscle, right down to the bone. Madison let out an unholy scream as she released her iron grip on the cat girl's arm. Blood gushed out of the open wounds, staining her already dark dress to the point of near-black in the monochrome environment. The assassin rolled away as she squeezed out a few tears in her pain.

Suck it up, you idiot! You've been hurt more than this! Get up! Fight! Kill her!

She quietly conceded that her recent inactivity had softened her up a bit. It hurt to move her right arm--Monica's blades caused quite a bit of damage, wherever they came from. Blood continued to pour as she slowly rose to one knee, her tattered velvet dress completely covered in light gray dirt. Doing her best to ignore the burning pain in her shoulder, she unsheathed her steel daggers. With a silent rage, she snarled as she set Monica in her sights, and charged at her with murderous intent. Dust kicked up as her heeled boots lightly dashed against the dirt ground. Neither the assassin or the ghosts of the carnival attendees seemed to notice as they passed through one another. Once she was within a few feet, she slashed her arms across like a pair of scissors, hoping to leave the cat girl with a few new holes to breath out of.

[HikariAngel]

The relief was immediate. When Monica felt the resistance of skin being pierced and the grating of metal on bone, she knew that she had seriously injured Madison. While she didn’t quite know where her artificial claws had struck, knowing they had saved her right arm from being wrenched in all the wrong ways was as much of a comfort as the soothing endorphins that numbed the pain. The only pain that didn’t immediately go away was the banshee shriek that tore through her sensitive ears. Even pressing them flat against her head, the grappling woman’s voice was still incredibly painful.

As quickly as the other woman got up and moved away, Monica was back on her feet. So what if she had just been winded, had her arm wrenched, and her breasts hurt? She had to win this fight; losing meant that she would come to the surface again, and for the sake of more than Madison, Moni could never be allowed to take over her body. Things had gone terribly wrong in her first organized fight, but that was different. Rin had only been playing with her; teasing her. It was no wonder the Akashiman native had won the bout.

Black battled against white… her dress was a dirty grey now. The wire-wielding woman somehow produced a duet of daggers from deep inside her clothing. In response, Monica flicked her right hand to the side; she flexed her natural claws and a quartet of blades slid from the finger tips of the strange gloves she wore. Trails of frost followed behind each of the metallic instruments of death, a testament to their cold and just how serious she was about winning this battle.

When Madison started running toward the white-haired catgirl, a thin smile revealed sharp teeth and a genuine will to do battle. Even if it wasn’t her first choice, it had been her decision to go from the pagoda to the Citadel. It was her choice and she was going to deal with it. That meant there was no holding back. Padded feet pounded against the dirt paving the park grounds; the only sounds were the slight slapping of skin against rock and the restless tumble of stones falling back to earth as the catgirl sprinted toward her assailant.

The assassin's arms crossed; the catgirl's left foot planted into the hard-packed dirt. Their bodies were close to colliding. Madison unleashed a double-slash at her opponent's ribs; Monica threw her weight backward as fast as she could and pushed off lightly from the ground. The cross-slice bit into her right leg, but it was a small price to pay to deliver a two-footed jump kick to Madison’s gut and ribs.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

The assassin's black lips parted in a small smile as her blades passed through the pale skin of Monica's legs. Time seemed to slow down as she watched the black blood pour from the wound. A small urge began to form in the pit of Madison's stomach, a sort of blood lust that wouldn't rest until she tasted her opponent's blood. Since she was fixated on the damage she had dealt, it was quite unfortunate that she didn't notice the kick that was coming straight for her.

Monica's powerful legs rammed themselves into her exposed chest, seemingly hitting with the force of a cannonball. Madison's normally deep blue eyes widened in surprise as an unbearable wave of pain shook her body. The force of the impact sent her flying backwards and tore a few seams of her beautiful velvet dress as she hit the ground. As the world was spinning around her, the raven-haired assassin curled up into a ball. She clutched her scrawny frame, trying to will away all the pain.

Her teeth were clenched. She could taste blood in the back of her mouth. Tears of pain caused her black eyeliner run down her cheek. All she could think about was how much she hurt, between the four stabs into her shoulder blade and Monica's drop kick.

I have to do something, and I have to do it fast, otherwise I'm as good as dead. She winced as she tenderly touched her left side, which only served to verify that her opponent had broken a couple ribs. It was then that she noticed one of her daggers, which she had let go of when she hit the hard, gray dirt, lying within reach. Madison's back was to the cat girl, who for all she knew was coming in for the kill already. However, she could hear nothing but the atmosphere of this strange spirit carnival.

The assassin slowly reached out with her right hand. Her shoulder twinged in pain as her arm moved, but Madison had no choice but to bite her pitch-black lip and suck it up. Her thin fingers wrapped around the spidersilk hilt of her weapon, and she pulled it in close to her body. A look of hate-fueled determination crossed Madison's face. Come on, Monica. Come and attack me. I dare you. As she lay there, her dress and hair covered with dirt and debris, Madison began storing her energy for one final, desperate attack.

[HikariAngel]

The dropkick that landed Madison a serious injury saw Monica fall squarely on her behind. Her right arm still ached like no else, her breasts hurt from the prequel to the arm bar, and now her bottom had its share of pain. Yet she knew that the injuries she had sustained were far less damaging than what she had dealt to the black-dressed woman she was fighting now. Pain was the nature of war, and it didn’t matter if there were two warriors or two million. Everyone got hurt.

I don’t want to hurt people, but I have to hurt them to survive.

Soft padded feet made whispers on the dusty grey ground as the white catgirl jogged toward her fallen target, though her jog was about as fast as an athlete’s sprint. Frosty blades slid in and out of her gloves to clean the dirty residue from the ground off them; the residents of the ghost carnival had learned to avoid the cold, associating it with tales of ghost stories and the paranormal. Scared screams were the only warning sounds that could be heard above the ambient noise of the park, but they would only give Madison an idea of how much longer she had before Monica was upon her.

A good ten feet away, the white-haired contestant leapt high into the air, breaching the six-foot mark with feline grace. Her left hand was drawn back; fingers locked straight preparing for a four-bladed thrust into Madison’s exposed body. Her landing zone was almost exactly where she had wanted it to be: right on her opponent’s lower back. Her right hand’s blades were retracted for the moment and her hand was held out defensively just in case this was just a case of possum. She had used the tactic before to great effect, but then again, she had taken quite a beating and it wasn’t very hard to lay still and whimper in pain. The descent was amazing; her mind had a thought to stop the madness, but it was overturned by the need for strength and the knowledge of what it would take to get there.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

Madison clearly heard the sounds of her opponent's feet crashing against the dirt as she ran towards the prone assassin, coupled with the gasps of more than a few of the spectral carnival-goers.

That's right. Come on in. I'm lying here, ready for you to stab me. Madison allowed a grim smile to cross her lips as she tightened her grip around the spidersilk hilt of her dagger.

The footsteps stopped, which could mean only one thing. Monica had taken herself to the skies, perhaps to give herself a makeshift advantage over the scarecrowish woman. Madison ran a couple calculations through her head. If I were to pounce like some barbaric animal, where would I try and land? What would I aim for?

She had an idea, The pale assassin clenched her fists and quickly rolled over. A sharp bolt of pain ran down her right arm as she thrust her dagger skywards at a high angle. She could see Monica coming down upon her, exactly where she figured she would be.

Her smile widened as the cat girl drew closer and closer to the sharp point of her steel dagger.

[HikariAngel]

One last mental check. Was she really ready to kill someone? Again? It had taken many years to atone for the sins of her past life, but this was different. This world was created for her to fight. The sole purpose of the carnival was to be a battleground. Her reason for being there was to kill. Outside the Citadel she would remain stoic in her pledge for as long as she could, but in here… in a world of illusions…

Grey eyes darkened as the catgirl’s body remembered what it was like to kill again. Her opponent was turning over rapidly, but it didn’t matter. Five blades yearned for the blood of the black-tressed woman, and even as Monica’s right hand fought to knock the extended knife away from her body, she was simply moving too fast to deflect the thrust.

Something warm and smooth entered her body just below her left ribs, passing all the way through her large intestine, colon, and just barely missing her stomach before sprouting like a nail driven too far into a board from her back. She wanted to scream in pain, but all that came out was a clenched-teeth snarl.

Her left arm crumbled from the sudden pain, hardly breaking her opponent’s skin with the nearly sub-zero blades. Her frosty body slammed hard onto Madison’s in an impromptu landing and jammed the dagger deeper still into her torso. Fresh waves of pain rippled through her ribs as she thrust her head to her prey’s neck. Opening her jaws, menacing teeth made for tearing flesh dove for the first succulent target they could find. Her breath misted in the warm atmosphere of the fair. Neither woman was going to come out of their lethal embrace alive; she was going to take the assassin to Hell on her way down.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

Much as she predicted, Monica fell hard onto Madison's extended dagger. Her arm buckled under the cat girl's momentum, folding in on itself as she fell on top of the thin assassin. Madison could feel the steel kris embed itself further into her opponent's flesh, penetrating muscles and organs as the tip erupted out of the girl's back. She never fancied the actual fighting, but killing someone--it was almost an art form in her twisted mind. Her black lips twisted in a slight grin as she envisioned removing the dagger from the girl's corpse and drinking a bit of her blood.

I've always wondered what neko tastes like, she thought to herself as she twisted the blade a little. Veins snapped and muscles sliced as a trickle of blood began to pour out of the wound. She could hear Monica snarl as the waves of pain traveled through her body. Madison's lips parted as she stared into her opponent's dulling gray eyes. She offered a guttural cackle as she prepared to rip her blade out horizontally, effectively giving her the win.

However, such a move was not in her cards. As she began to slide the kris along its path of destruction, the cat girl bared her fangs and lunged towards her exposed flesh. The assassin's eyes widened in horror as she felt Monica's fang burrow deep into her throat. Warm blood flowed down her pale neck as the two women thrashed on the ground. Madison tried to scream, but only more blood and a weak cry came out. Out of desperation, she pulled the dagger sideways, further destroying the cat girl's insides. Monica replied by biting down further then whipping her head back with all she was worth, tearing out a nice chunk of the assassin's throat.

She immediately froze up. Pain overwhelmed her senses as she tried desperately to breathe, but to no avail. Madison laid motionless on the dull gray dirt of the ghostly carnival, her blood collecting in a thick pool around her neck, saturating her silken dress and clumping her ragged black hair.


***

After what seemed like a split second after Death drew her out of the mortal coil, Madison awoke with a surprised noise that caused a few figures around her to take a quick step away from her. She frantically looked around for a few seconds as light and color began to define her surroundings. Several monks stood by, presumably the ones that pieced her back together after the fight. They stood adamant, decked out in their plain robes and exhuming a sense of kindness that veiled their formidable power. She was seated on a cold, hard slab of stone that served as her healing platform. The setting sun lit the room with an amber wave that tinted everything. Monica was nowhere in sight; she was presumably off in another chamber, receiving the same treatment.

Bewildered, she rushed a hand to her neck. The smooth feeling of her lace gloves verified that her throat was intact; further proof that the Ai'Brone monks knew damn well what they were doing.

The initial rush of confusion after being revived slowly faded and was replaced with anger and frustration. Madison recalled her dagger doing damage to Monica's frail insides--had she survived? Who was the winner? She clenched her teeth and pounded her fists hard onto the stone.

The same thing had happened during her battle with the chef. She eyed one of the monks, her voice cracking with disuse. "So, who won?"

[HikariAngel]

Black blood flowed freely from the catgirl’s body. The dagger embedded in her left side was excruciatingly painful, but bearable. Her head was already plunging toward Madison’s neck when a fresh wave of torment rippled through her entire being. Not only had the black-clad woman stabbed her, she was twisting the kris and destroying the last vestiges of Monica’s tender insides. Her lips met the assassin’s neck with renewed fury as the dagger began moving sideways and out of her body. With her teeth sunk deep into Madison’s neck, the best relief for the renewed pain was simply to bite down harder. Her rough tongue brushed against Madison’s trachea relentlessly, skinning layer after layer of flesh from her victim’s throat instinctively.

Eyes blazing with grey fury narrowed to animalistic slits. Madison wrenched her dagger sideways, practically cutting the catgirl in half. Her palms found the ground and straightened while her neck whipped back and her mouth clamped down tighter. There was a great weight, then nothing. Spitting the tender meat onto the ground, primal urges took control of Monica’s body and she dove once more into the gurgling pool of blood. This time the flesh fell down her throat. Her third lunge was slower than the rest; her teeth hardly broke the black-drenched skin. Her vision blurred as the adrenaline sustaining her vital functions ran dry and all strength left her body.

Even trying to move her fingers was too much to ask. Slowly the black and white carnival faded to naught but darkness. A single point of light in the darkness called her, warm and inviting, but even that bit of hope was washed away from her subconscious mind. The growing pool of blood reached its limit when both bodies ran dry, but still the fair went on. They had never been there in the first place… why should ghosts care for the happenings of other ghosts?

~*~

A dull ringing was the first sign of life that Monica was able to notice. A ringing that slowly developed into the whispers and prayers of the monks working their impossible magic. Warmth. The second sensation she was aware of. She was restrained by a few too many layers of blankets, most likely because her innate magic had awoken before she could control it. Her hands brushed the pristine white sheets of the infirmary gingerly, noting that she was no longer wearing her gloves. Shifting in the fluffy cot revealed that the rest of her clothes were missing as well. A slight tingling in her left side was the only reminder she had of her previous experience with death, a slight tingling and sluggish movements of her left leg. Opening her eyes, the gentle faces of the Ai’Bron maidens greeted her red orbs.

Holding the blankets to her chest with her right arm, she sat up a bit too fast and immediately the world became a swirling mass of black, blue, and red. Breathing deep, her head eventually cleared and she looked around again. Madison wasn’t in the room with her and her dress was hanging on a peg on the wall, sliced neatly with a razor all the way down the center. The medical center was very warm even sitting upright. The catgirl let the blankets fall, exposing her small chest as she pushed the blankets aside. As soon as she put weight on her left leg, a pair of maidens caught her arms to stop her from falling over.

“I guess just walking out the front door today is out of the question…”

“You have been unconscious for a full day,” the woman on her right said. “It will take a little time for your strength to fully return, but just be patient and it will.”

Monica’s ears drooped and her tail brushed lazily against the floor at the news. Rehab was not something she was expecting after fighting in the Citadel.

[Call me J]

BlackandBluEyes Total Score- 69

• STORY ~ 16/30

Continuity (6) ~ Though you mentioned Slow Ride on the Easy Train, it really wasn’t apparent why. Continuity matters beyond just the introduction and conclusion.

Setting (5) ~ Settings in battles should not be things that you describe to begin with and then ignore.

Pacing (5) ~ I really don’t know what the point of dealing with all the fair stuff was when it was practically ignored once the battle got started.

• CHARACTER ~ 21/30

Dialogue (7) ~ I really liked your use of internal monologue, though using more sentence fragments instead of full sentences would have conveyed more urgency.

Action (7) ~ You did a really good job making Madison’s actions stand out as that she was quite mean, which is impressive, given that the basic premise of the thread was a fight.

Persona (7) ~ At times she can be a little flat, but I feel that is more of an artifact of this story than the true nature of the character.

• WRITING STYLE ~ 26/30

Mechanics (9) ~ A couple awkward phrases hurt your score here.

Technique (8) ~ There was a good use of literary devices in this thread, but I’m not convinced they always had as much of an effect as they should have had.

Clarity (9) ~ Good job here, the simplicity that you go for helps you a lot in this category.

• Wild Card (6) ~ Interesting battle.

HikariAngel Total Score- 65

• STORY ~ 16/30

Continuity (5) ~ There was a sense here of what happened before and what would happen after this battle, but I really didn’t the sense that it connected to a bigger tale for Monica.

Setting (7) ~ I really liked how you didn’t neglect the setting once the battle started. The conclusion was really strong.

Pacing (4) ~ This is really your worst area of the thread. I feel that you need to develop a better sense for the appropriateness of information and do a better job of making sure that your introductions provide readers with any information that will be key to later in the thread. The goal of a story is not to see how much information about your character you can cram into a thread, it is to convey information in an entertaining way.

• CHARACTER ~ 19/30

Dialogue (6) ~ This thread really wasn’t conducive to much in terms of spoken dialogue, but I feel as though just a bit more of internal monologue could have helped your continuity score.

Action (6) ~ I would have loved to give you a really high score here, but it seemed like through the course of this fight, Monica’s motivations changed without there really being a good reason for them to change.

Persona (7) ~ I really like Monica, and your writing style is really conducive to a graceful character like her. However, the comments I made in action apply here as well.

• WRITING STYLE ~ 24/30

Mechanics (9) ~ I noticed the odd grammatical issue here, which causes you to lose a point.

Technique (10) ~ This thread was literally a clinic in how to write flowery prose.

Clarity (5) ~ This score is somewhat lower because of your big brevity problem. It made it harder for me to remember the important information. Far too many times I had to go back in the thread just to get a sense of what you were trying to do, because it had been such a long time since you talked about it.

• Wild Card (6) ~ I feel that you are a very good writer, but at the same time, you’re not a great storyteller yet. You can become the latter with some practice, and your writing skills suggest that one day, you can become among the all time greats.

Spoils
BlackandBlueEyes receives 852 EXP and 150 GP
HikariAngel receives 225 EXP and 100 GP

[Karuka]

EXP/GP added!