You're back in Hell, boy.
She dances circles around you, far faster than Scourge - faster than any fucking Mortal you've faced, and you have to wonder if she's really this nimble or if something else is at work. You throw your body into overdrive to keep up but you're constantly on the defensive as she seems to command a complete three-sixty circle around you.
The iron cage is replaced with bars of literal hellfire, your foe is your own lack of speed.
The right hook you throw, cutting the air, should have knocked the tan girl's head from her shoulders but she...moves in these ways you don't understand, sliding under your arm like smoke and swinging around to drive a roundhouse kick into the side of your head that sends you staggering; you're not facing her, bad BAD -
The sidekick catches you in the ribs and throws you right up against the cage wall, shaking the whole structure and bringing you down to your knees. Somehow she's faster and hits as hard as a professional boxer.
"HOW STRONG DAVID STANDS AGAINST GOLIATH, BUT SEE HIS NASCENT GRANDEUR BROUGHT LOW BY DANIKA?! AS I SAID YUSUF, A DAY IN THE BOXING GYM, DOES NOT A WARRIOR OF THE PIT - "
You interrupt him with a furious sound that is eerily louder than the microphone the announcer shouts into. There's only one thing you do can, and that is to throw yourself forward to avoid getting your skull impacted by her fist - it smashes against the chainlink wall and she jumps back, shaking it and smarting.
"Tall, dark and clumsy," you wheeze to yourself, struggling to your feet and assessing your foe.
She is smoke shaped like a woman, her limbs tipped with spearheads that have kissed your bones and left them aching. Her eyes burn fiery orange.
Danika. You don't know her, although you feel even if you did she'd still be making a show out of you - facing the Humans wasn't as easy as you thought it was. She's only shorter than you by a couple inches, black hair worn in a braid underneath a white baseball cap. A sleek black t-shirt clings to her body, which seems to writhe with tigrish muscles; her movements remind you of a dancer's or a gymnasts, showmanship you envy in her every strike. Blood is streaming down your face from a cut in your forehead.
Shit...you can't see anything -
- but you hear her movements, smell her sweat and jink with feral speed to the right.
A flying knee strike that would have dented your forehead goes sailing by, and you understand what she's been doing...your eyes tell you she'll be in one place, but her snap-reflexes take her another. You wipe the blood from your eyes, turning to her just in time - she's up in your face with a left-cross right-jab combo you barely avoid but there's her knee, up in your groin. You barely shift your hips to the side and she instead impacts your pelvis painfully.
"
Hijo de puta de cráneo grueso, solo cae,
" she hisses as you gasp in pain, contusions and bruises, sprains and nearly-broken bones repairing themselves beyond her sight. You do the only thing you can at this angle and slam your shoulder into her, bone-jarring force sending her skittering back before she rights herself.
You're wary of her...every time you've charged she's punished you with some movement you don't predict and an elbow, knee, or fist in some soft place; every time you've let her make a move you suffer a similar fate. She's never where your eyes think she'll be, and it occurs to you that this woman is a truly brilliant martial artist. What the hell is she doing down here in a place like this? It isn't like fighting Scourge, or another Firstblood.
That's not what you've descended down to hell for, though. That's not why a chorus of demons screams for your blood.
You snag this opportunity to take the offensive, faking her out with a leading hook and throwing combos for her ribs; one gets through, but she's canny to the rest; this close up, you lock your fingers around her wrists to grapple her but she's wearing some shiny oil on her skin that makes it impossible to keep a grip if you don't dig your talons in. She slips away, seems to...roll around you and takes your shoulders, pulling back -
You SLAM into the ground, your teeth shaking in your skull. This is infuriating. You cross your arms over your face to protect it from the inevitable stomp, rolling back to your feet. "That is the last fucking time you pull that shit," you gutter as anger gets the best of you.
"Quit fuckin' up," she taunts you, already on you again with precision and speed; you take it, covering your head as blood seeps back into your vision. She pummels your midsection, rabbit punches slipping in past your elbows and bruising your organs but she underestimates your resilience. The back of your fist impacts her temple, and you use the stunning effect to throw a rib-cracking pair of blows that almost send her from her feet.
She puts distance between you, keeping your back against the cage as she circles you, regarding you with just a hint more respect as you clear the red from your vision and see her bending forward where you struck her.
"You're really good," you concede. You've never fought someone like this, who strikes from many angles, who's too slippery to pin down. If she were Turned, she'd be a truly formidable Huntress, but you chose Isabel for her resilience, her brilliance, and the way she moved your heart.
Your foe doesn't respond, simply staring you down over her fingertips. The crowd roars incoherently, the announcer's grinding voice barely coming through the whining, shrieking sound of tearing metal and the crackle of fire in your head.
A punishing series of movements is your penance as she throws her all into a set of blows that leave you staggering, slipping in and past your defenses effortlessly. The crowd goes wild as she stabs your throat, cracks your ribs...your scream in an ugly voice that arouses the crowd as she twists your arm around, snapping your wrist with a pop and grind you feel through your whole body.
Of course you're howling in agony. How could you not? That doesn't mean it isn't embarrassing. Blood is flowing over your eyes again, rendering everything dark and crimson as she yanks you down to your knees.
You can't see...you can only hear, smell; but that should be all you need. You're the apex predator of this city, and no Mortal is going to lay you low. She's stepping back for the finishing blow, you can hear her every breath and movement and in this way it's easier to just set thought aside, let instinct take over.
Her knee comes up under your jaw to smash your teeth together and create a bloody mess of your face, but your body reacts before your mind when denied sight of the Prey. You roll back, crouched like a feral beast, dashing up at her with your knuckles brushing the ground. You snarl and snap, bringing your hand across her face from an unexpected angle that sends her reeling off balance.
She moves again, this time you can't see the distraction and simply follow her scent and heartbeat to your right. Something trails her, telltale -whoosh- of a kick following her movements to knock your head in. You rise and take the blow against your chest, ribs cracking and healing immediately. There, you have her, gripping her leg - you still can't see but you don't need to. You swing her around and slam her against the cage wall, and drive your fist into the sound of her heart.
Savage exultations from the announcer and the crowd are crimson noise as your knuckles impact soft flesh over and over, and you wipe the gore from your eyes as she falters down to her knees before you. Here, now, the Kill...but...there's no glory or honor in tangling with Mortals like this, and you aren't enough of a Monster to cripple or kill a talented martial artist like this one.
She isn't Scourge. She isn't Lena or Prey either, so in the second you have, you lock your arms firmly around her neck, even with the oil she wears, and wrestle her back against you. She claws at you, jabbing her elbow against whatever sensitive place she can find and it hurts but her strikes grow weaker until her arms fall to her side and she goes limp.
You release her still breathing form to the ground to...mixed reactions from a crowd who came here expecting blood and suffering, broken bones and ruptured organs.
"MERCY?! MERCY MAY BURNISH YOUR HONOR YUSUF, BUT THESE HUNGRY HEATHENS DIDN'T COME HERE FOR YOUR VIRTUE!" but you spit a mouthful of blood dismissively down the middle of the ring, giving him and the whole crowd the finger as they express their displeasure - you silence them with one more challenge, slamming your hands against the cage hard enough to bend it outward.
You didn't spiral down into this Pit to honor yourself, but neither did you descend to pull down worthy warriors with you.
---
You can't bring yourself to go back down there, so instead you stand outside, rolling an unlit cigarette between your clenched teeth. Any damage that Danika had done to you is long since healed, so you move without difficulty through the alleyway, following the other wolf's scent trail. You told yourself after the fight you'd just leave her be, but like a small flying thing you are inexorably drawn to the firelight of your kind; it was the natural state of the Werewolf, an Accursed state by your own reckoning - drawn to the very thing you most feared.
'Kin-killer. Wolfslayer.' You can't deny that the slurs were painful, a reminder of the black oil-stain on your reputation - sins that were ultimately pointless because nobody's lives had become any better. If anything, life simply spiraled downward after the brief interlude of happiness you'd enjoyed with Isabel, ever more perilous in the shadows of your shattered sensibilities and war-bent instincts. You can't help but fret over the prospect of Isabel finding out who and what you were before you'd convinced (or perhaps deceived?) her of your worth.
