R I B B O N (daughter_shade) wrote in athinblackline, @ 2009-04-04 14:23:00 |
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Entry tags: | !tournament, ribbon |
Believe what you want
Who: Ribbon versus various opponents
When: April 4 Tournament Rounds 1-5
Where: Various Arenas
What: Ribbon takes on her opponents.
Ribbon was bored, a sentiment that hardly surprised anyone. Tournament day and everyone was supposed to walk away alive. BORING. Some would see her preoccupation with death as something juvenile, a fixation that a bit of therapy stood some chance of fixing, how wrong were they? Ribbon considered, like some, death to be her art. It was the gift she bestowed not only upon her victim, but also upon the world. Let them gaze in wonder at the spectacle of depravity.
There were serial killers who had very much the same idea of death. Only in the end, they were usually caught and tried for murder. Here, she was essentially allowed free reign. Except for the moment when she was held up from her cosmic duty by a rather paltry agreement she made with perhaps the only person who could hope to hold her to any agreement at all and only that because she respected him, cared for him, felt she needed him strongly enough that she would mold her behavior to fulfill his wishes.
That did not make it any less frustrating to withhold the hand of death from those who so richly deserved it. Once again, this was her own opinion.
Another opinion was that lotteries for opponents were bad ideas. They did not start out fighting according to ability, but rather according to accident. Her first opponent came out of Green block, so they weren't entirely fresh out of the gate, but they were not prepared for the absolute avalanche of dealing with someone who saw it necessary to not only win, but to utterly dominate opponents. Terrain meant nothing to her, she could move just as quickly over sand as she could over asphalt. Obstacles only provided her with places to hide, things she could use to drop on an opponent.
He wanted to try and take over her mind telepathically. But his mental grip only slipped off her mind as glass through soapy hands. The walls of her brain were impregnable without her opening the way for a person. He was going to have to try something else. Low level telekinesis was his secondary ability, not his best, but something. He started throwing dirt at her. Needless to say, Ribbon was not impressed. She was even less impressed when he made the mistake of trying to use his telekinesis to get a grip on her body. She was so completely unimpressed that while he was busy paying attention to the largest part of her, she was digging a pit behind him. Once it was deep enough, she lunged forward frightening him into stepping backward rapidly. Then those same ribbons she wormed through the soil to dig the hole grabbed him and dragged him down. In the same movement, the sides started to collapse. His telekinesis wasn't strong enough to stand against the weight of earth being piled on top of him.
Desperate and terrified, he sought to lift the earth or himself or something...anything to keep from going to his grave so young. Air was becoming a dear commodity. With no opponent for her to fight any longer, they called the match in her favor. Only then did she pull him back out of the hole, a gasping dirty mess, and toss him in the general direction of his exit door. She was bored. He did not help her boredom, but he did try her patience. She disliked telekinetics, not because they ever really did what was necessary but because they could. If one of them would actually grow a real brain and a significant backbone, they might have been able to stop her. So far, none had ever truly bothered. It allowed her to climb far too high.
The obstacle pit in Round Two only brought to mind her most recent feral opponent. This one was not a feral. This one was a strong man. A giant of a creature, he dwarfed her in size. Ribbon stood 6' 5" when she decided to stand. He stood 10 feet easily, ducking to clear the edge of the arena door. Ribbon listened to the sound of him moving across the arena floor as minor earthquakes and pulled her lips back from her teeth in something best classified as a maniac grin. This was usually fun. Strong men invariably made the same mistake she had learned over her years at Revolve, they always thought they could grab her ribbons without injury. She understood the idea. Really, who wouldn't give it a try if they could? If they could grab her and fling her, rather like she did others, then they had a very good chance of actually doing her some harm. Unfortunately, as all of them learned the hard way, grabbing her was a distinctly bad idea.
As she had done against Wild Child, she hopped to the top of what looked like a lamp post and she sat there, her ribbons moving around her like a cape or wings. From there, she simply looked down on her opponent and waited for him to do something interesting.
This was not going to be any more interesting than the last time she fought someone with super strength. He grabbed the light post, she popped him on the hands hard enough to make him look up at her. She then turned around and slapped him across the face with a ribbon the temperature of a stove burner. The smell of his flesh burning popped out in the air, a sudden smell. Her next motion was (normally) to gouge out the eyes. Her fights tended toward the bloody end of things. Simply her way of dealing with things. This time, she didn't. She waited as the crowd looked on, breathless with anticipation of what could be coming next. He recovered and did the obvious thing, the stupid obvious thing, because he couldn't do much against her without being able to bring his strength to bear.
Super heated tentacles wrapped around his hands, wrists, and forearms....sudden blistering pain and he couldn't let go. Now she lifted him, dangling his struggling form for all to see. Then she tossed him upward and brought him back down hard enough to shake some of the less stable obstacles in the arena. He moved feebly as she let him go, then simply stopped. Dead or unconscious, she didn't particularly care which.
Her handlers waited for her to come get into her little cage all by herself. They had learned it worked much better for everyone that way. She didn't find it necessary to put a ribbon through someone's shoulder joint that way. There was a short wait before she was ushered back into the dirt arena. It had been smoothed over. The evidence of her first fight was gone. Just as well. It would have only made her want to do it again. The way his heart rang in terror had been beautiful to her ears. She was still bored, not beginning to feel fatigue at all, but hunger was gnawing at her insides. It was time for her to have lunch.
Pity for her opponent. Ribbon generally preferred to play keep away. It was far easier for her to take an opponent out from a distance, almost too easy, that getting in close just a pointless waste of her time. It didn't make things any more fun. Her third round opponent didn't give her the option. Another feral, newer than either Raksha or Wild Child, came at her straight on. Obviously, he was not a student of her previous fights. Getting in her face was a very good way to get hurt. However, because she was hungry, she let him come.
Fast food was generally welcome. He moved to leap forward, attempting to cover the last few feet and found himself caught in the grips of a web she spread around her just under the surface of the dirt to keep it out of sight of the eye. Just as he moved to leap, the trap sprung not only grabbing his legs, but grabbing even his arms and wrists, pinning him like a fly to the floor of the arena. He struggled and she only wrapped him harder.
It was a unique sound him screaming over the sound of his bones snapping in various places. The fight called in her favor, the guards moved onto the field to separate the two of them. Ribbon hunkered down over the man and hissed at them. She was hungry, they weren't going to take away her food.
A dog whistle intruded on her thinking. Even as she pulled back her teeth in a grimace of displeasure, she knew where the sound was coming from. It was meant to bring her up short, done much more effectively than with a shock from a collar she could dismantle in seconds. Relunctantly, she relinquished what her mind dubbed as her kill. Done with a grumble of displeasure, she sulked back to her end of the field.
The break between fights saw her provided with meat, seared to keep it from bleeding all over everything, but only just that, some crackers, and a couple of marshmallows in recognition of the fact she had done extremely well in keeping up her part of the bargain so far. The scarecrow of a woman scarfed of the food down and then seemed to just idly await for her next fight.
Her next fight was on grass. She broke her opponent's back in the first thirty seconds because she simply was not interested in being bothered. It wasn't that she had a major problem with her opponent, but she simply didn't much like the grass arena. It made her want trees and there were no trees. Hence it frustrated her. She wanted to go sit in a tree. Her opponent was between her and being able to go do what she wanted to do. Promptly after defeating her opponent, she went and hung out in a tree, crouched there like a cat. It made her late for her round five fight. Asphalt did not make her any more interested than grass. Bored, she formed a ball around herself and proceeded to simply roll over her opponent. She did crush him to death, but it was quite close. She left him bleeding on the arena floor.
All done, she allowed herself to be carted away from the fight. There were more rounds to go, but she cared nothing for what was to come next. Again and again, the fight was really all she had. She crawled back up in a nearby tree, ribbons flattened around herself as if she wanted a blanket. It wasn't so much that she wanted a blanket as she was bored and bored usually translated into sleeping. She wanted to sleep. It wasn't as if the next fight was going to keep her attention any better.