"Ah, jest shaddup up, already," muttered Lilly Lop as she ran the polishing cloth back and forth over one of her thigh-mounted jet implants. It was bad enough to have butterflies in the stomach about what was going to happen next, but the announcer's obnoxiously cheerful and clearly-scripted banter was not helping in the slightest. There were days when she wanted to leap up to the booth, punch through the glass and slap the man so hard his eyes swapped places in their sockets, just to shut him up for five seconds. It would certainly give the crowd something to cheer about that wasn't this complete Mad Max shit-show, at least.
Lifting off the cloth, she bent down a little to check her handiwork. Much to her relief, the shell of the implant was now sparkling. Carbon-fibre, titanium and kevlar alloys had a way of doing that if you kept it up for long enough, and what's more, it had to if their owner was going to stay in the spotlight this year. The competition was getting as fierce as it was outlandish - India's Agent Peacock was currently wowing the crowds with his gaudy outfits and current winning streak, and there was pressure from Lilly's sponsors to try and be as flashy in order to compete with him. She had socked the spokesperson for daring to suggest that, but she knew that he had a point and that she seriously needed to step up her game.
Even as she contemplated this, a green light came on in the wall by her head, startling her for a moment.
"Lilly Lop, it's your cure," droned the bored voice from the speaker, before clicking off. Ah, Norman. At least there was somebody here who resented this complete idiocy as much as she did. Not really her type, though - she'd seen the scrawny, pimple-faced temp at his desk punching holes in timesheets and had immediately shut down. Even the sight of him induced a kind of dull, listless apathy, to the degree where it was almost like an infection and you had to wear a tissue over your mouth to avoid catching it.
Straightening up, Lilly permitted herself one last glance in the mirror. She still wasn't sure how to take it in - on the one hand, she was five-foot-four and proportioned like an athlete should be, with powerful legs and prominent abs being her talking points. On the other, the brown fur, paws, long ears and cotton tail above her rump brought back latent memories of hopping across grassy banks, nibbling flowers and perking the ears up for danger. And on the other hand belonging to this freakish mutant metaphor, the logo of the Masters Corporation gleamed gold against the scarlet metal of her arm, thigh and chest implants, the latter of which hummed contently as the plasma generator did it's work.
It was... a picture, to say the least.
And that was all the thought Lilly Lop gave to it, before turning and heading for the doors that lead to the arena.
-------
"In the Blue Corner, from New Orleans in Alabama! Measuring five-foot-four and weighting in at one hundred and ninety-two pounds... The rowdy rabbit with a jet-propelled punch... The Rising Star of America...
LILLYYYYYYYY LOP!"
And the crowd went wild as, in a blaze of pyrotechnics and gaudy lights, Lilly Lop strode onto the stage. The ecstatic cheering combined with the cheesy pop theme nearly deafened the rabbit, but she kept up her peppy grin and spring-like walk, waving to the crowd with both paws and even hopping up and down at points. Completely asinine stuff, but it was part of the character she was forcing herself to play - the stereotypical ditzy, Dixieland girl with a penchant for apple pie and saluting the flag. The crowds loved it, of course, so she basically had to swallow her pride and put up with it.
What didn't help her mood was the sight of the arena. It was a Demolition match, which was basically MFF code for "we're going to dump half the contents of a scrapyard onto this massive sand-pit, good luck." There were the obligatory piles of metal lying about, of course, and then there was the occasional half a car or piece of jet fighter to worry about. Lilly hated Demolition matches with the same sort of unbridled passion one usually reserves for politics - slipping on loose junk and getting beaned with the barrel of a tank's cannon was not her idea of entertainment.
Thankfully, she managed to keep her annoyance bottled as she reached the red circle in the middle of the arena - the designated starting point for all the battles. As her theme music died down, she finished off by blowing a few kisses to the assembled masses, although the action made her shudder imperceptibly. If they weren't fat-necked, beer-swilling husbands, they were acne-riddled basement-dwellers who plied their mothers for tickets, and she knew exactly why most of them were attending. The one consolation was not being able to recognize half of them when the time came to sign t-shirts and autographs.
And just as that thought crossed her mind...
"And in the Red Corner, from parts unknown! At seven feet tall and weighting three hundred pounds... somehow... A seeker of vengeance, brought to life by a demonic spirit... The Bloody Shadow...
"REEEEEEEED SPECTEEEEER!"
He emerged, amidst the smoke and pyrotechnics that surged forth, and Lilly swallowed the bile that rose in her throat. At least seven feet tall, most of him was oil-black, except for where patches of red ran across his body like rivulets of blood, and the intense green glow of his pupil-less eyes.By his side were chains, glinting in the floodlights as he strode down the ramp - except the chains were alive, coiling and swaying to and fro like agitated snakes searching for prey. And each one was tipped with... well, the best way to describe it was if a spike grew more spikes, and that was what you had.
In short, not very pleasant.
The Red Specter stomped his way across the sand and into the red circle, towering over Lilly as he glared down at her. In that moment, she needed no further proof that this man had a demon infesting him, she could smell it on him like a thick cloud of bad cigar smoke and car fumes. The rabbit part of her cringed in terror, muscles reflexively tensing in the species instinct to flee from the approaching fox or weasel coming over the downs. Only a stern mental reprimand from her other half, the half that could think and reason and fight back, kept that whining inner voice in check, allowing her to stare back up at her opponent in defiance.
"Are you reeeeaaaady?!" howled Flashfire's voice, and the crowd went ballistic on cue. Such was the force of it that Lilly barely heard what her foe said next.
"I live to kill you," he growled, his voice like ice down the back of the neck.
"Not much of a life," she retorted, as bravely as she could.
"FIGHT!"
On the signal, both fighters leaped backwards, out of the ring and a considerable distance away from each other. But at the same time, the Red Specter was already on the attack, lashing out with his chains - or were the chains attacking by themselves? Lilly didn't really have the time to consider this quandary, however, and her instincts kicked in as she began hopping away from the deadly lashes, each one whistling far too close to her face for comfort. When one made an especial effort to pierce her skull, the rate which it came after her forced her to lean back to avoid it, nautrally transitioning into a series of backflips that carried her onto the top of a burnt-out shell of an old Ford.
"That the best ya got?" she taunted from atop the car. Always got a reaction, that one.
"No," growled the shadowy figure. "Try this." A clawed hand lifted into the air, a blaze of green fire forming within the center, before the Red Specter flung the projectile towards his fur-covered foe. With a yell of surprise, Lilly quickly bounded off the car and into the air, leg-mounted jets propelling her up and away as the fireball struck the vehicle. Oil ignited as the spectral flame ripped the engine apart, and the entire car detonated in a spectacular plume of smoke and fire that illuminated the sand.
But Lilly's reflexes had saved her, and it was the rabbit's turn to be on the attack. Now her back-mounted jets came into play, firing hard enough to change her trajectory from an upwards leap into a diagonal downward spike at blinding speeds. Before the hellspawn could move a limb or chain, a metal-plated foot had planted itself right in his face with a thud, which was followed up with another solid boot to the chest as Lilly kicked off, sending the Red Specter sprawling to the sand. The air filled with cheers and whoops from the watching crowd at this display of acrobatics and jet-powered beatdowns.
"And an amazing Rocket Takedown from Lilly! Looks like Red Specter's gonna have his work cut out for him - so far the two have been on equal standings!"
Lilly would have liked to wring Flashfire's neck right about now, but there were bigger things to worry about. Landing deftly on both feet, Lilly immediately charged for her prone opponent, covering at least five foot with every bound in her mad dash to pummel the enemy. But a sudden blaze of green light blinded her for a moment, halting her advance, and she had to shield her eyes and back away to stop herself being burned, barely keeping down the rabbit instincts screaming at her to run. When the fire actually dissipated and the glow was no longer filling her vision, she opened her eyes...
...to find that he had vanished.
"Whut now?" she groaned, snapping her head this way and that. No trace of her opponent was in the arena that she could see, and it was no good listening for him, for the roaring crowd practically deafened her ears and blotted out any other sound that would give her any clues. Great, a teleporting superhuman - just the exact kind of bullshit that would make any day worse. Raising her fists and gritting her teeth, Lilly realized that her only hope now was to either catch him before he caught her, or that the demon had learned sense from that beating and had run off.
"Right here."
No such luck.
Lilly didn't even see it coming. The fist whistled through the air and planted itself heavily into her stomach, driving the breath from her lungs in an explosion of exhaled air and folding her in half around the offending limb. A sympathetic groan rolled across the stands as the rabbit dropped to her knees, wide-eyed and coughing, paws clutching at her bruised midsection as she struggled to get her breath back. By her immediate right, the emerald fire flashed again as Red Specter rematerialized, filling the air with his awful smoke stench and looming over her impassively.
"Ooh, that's a low-down dirty trick, Specter! Shame on you!" Flashfire wasn't exactly being supportive.
"You're in the wrong place at the wrong time, Benjamin Bunny," growled Specter, his voice booming above the arena loud enough for all the crowd. Then a foot came lashing out, catching the stunned Lilly right in the chest with a metallic clang that echoed around the arena like a gong. Lilly's world span crazily for a moment as she bounce-rolled across the floor for a good six metres, then went dark as she sprawled face-first in the sand, her nose and mouth filling with the cloying, gritty particles. Her ears picked up another gasp of horror from the audience, and she privately cursed whatever deity saw fit to put her in this situation to begin with.
"I'm here on a mission," continued the Red Specter as he advanced. "And when I'm on a job, I see it through to the end." As if on cue, the metallic chains unwound from his body once more and surged forth, their spiked ends hungrily seeking their prey. The hissing noise as they lanced through the air reached Lilly's ears, and her entire body tensed in preparation.
Three metres...
The crowd shrieked, as one.
Two metres...
Flashfire, up in his booth, covered his eyes.
One...
...Clang.
The chains went taught.
But not because they'd hit. The demon's eyes widened, and the crowd fell ominously silent, as Lilly Lop rose to her feet, holding a spike in each paw. The iron serpents writhed and wiggled in her grasp, but she refused to let go, merely spitting sand onto the floor before directing a wry grin at her bewildered opponent. Her armor was dented by the earlier kick, and grit was laced all throughout her fur, but she didn't let that bother her for a moment.
"Well, gee," she deadpanned. "Maybe y'all oughtta find a new line o' work."
And she yanked. The Red Specter gave a yell as, attached symbiotically to his own chains, he was pulled harshly across the arena floor, dragged against his will across the few metres that separated him from his opponent. Lilly waited, tense like a coiled spring, until he'd staggered close enough and was completely off-balance, then reared back and lashed her body forward like a cobra striking for prey, delivering a sickening thud of a headbutt to his face. It was a good thud, with the satisfying crunch of disintegrating cartilage that told of a broken nose.
With a howl, the specter staggered backwards, clutching his ruined face, but Lilly was far from done. Shutting out the sudden roar as the crowd found it's voice again, the lapine lady dashed forward to close the distance, arm rockets firing as she swung again and again with every technique she could think of. A right hook to daze him, a slug to the gut as payback for earlier, a hammer fist to the back of the head just to rattle him some more. He staggered backwards with every blow, and she pressed on after him, not willing to let up for a moment in case he recovered and pulled some other fancy trick.
The fight was taking them towards a wrecked-out tank, casually splayed against another pile of garbage, and seeing it from the corner of her eye gave Lilly an idea of what to do next. As the Red Specter staggered back from another punch, she bounded upwards, twisted around in midair and thrust her hips backwards whilst firing her thigh jets in reverse, ramming her rear end hard into his torso. The net result was spectacular to behold - the wraith flew backwards as if fired from a cannon, colliding heavily with the side of the tank hard enough to crumple the metal and rock the vehicle on it's treads.
"And there it is, folks!" bawled the commentator over the roaring, chanting crowd. "We haven't seen Lilly pull off a Cottontail Bomb in a while - this is a real treat for the loyal fans!"
Ugh, grumbled Lilly in the back of her mind as she landed on her feet. As if. Why her manager had even approved of the decision to make her use such a demeaning eye-candy move was beyond her, and she'd protested against it from the beginning. If she wanted to go around hitting people with her butt, she'd have turned in her contract and become a 1950's housewife. But it was part of her character, and so she had to use it at least once a match just to give the teenage boys something to drool over. If only she could find the idiotic basement-dweller who wrote her part...
But her moment of self-loathing was soon cut short, as the screeching noise of tearing metal brought itself to her attention. The Red Specter was obviously made of sterner stuff than what she anticipated, having shrugged off her attack as well as the collision with the side of the tank, and was now tugging hard upon the barrel of the cannon that hung limply from the top of the vehicle. As Lilly watched, the entire thing was wrenched away, turret and all, in a shrieking of broken steel and wiring, and the demon roared as he swung his massive, makeshift club up and downwards.
Except by the time it thudded down, Lilly's jets had already kicked in and she'd leaped right above the shredded turret base. Thinking quickly, the rabbit fired those same rockets in reverse, bringing her in for a quick, if rather rough, four-point landing on hands and knees upon the top of the turret. Instantly, she began dashing on all fours down the barrel of the gun, muscles and claws straining to defy physics as she made a solid beeline for the man holding the other end of the improvised weapon. A good haymaker to the jaw ought to make him drop this thing, and then a nice kick to the-
Green fire shot through everything.
This time, the animal side finally got sick of the whole thing and snatched the driver's wheel. A scream of fear - not a human one, oh no - tore itself from Lilly's mouth as the flames engulfed her, and a single push of her powerful back legs sent her sailing off the cannon's barrel and through the air, away from the conflagration. This time, she hit the ground forepaws first, kicking up a plume of sand as she landed, and quickly began twisting and turning on the sport, trying to shake off whatever licks of fire still clung to her fur. Every synapse was on red alert, the same panicking fear that lent wings to the feet, and for a moment she completely forgot about her enemy, the crowd or her surroundings.
That's the thing about fear. Too much of it clouds the mind, and you become blind to what's important.
Like the entire tank turret being swung at you.
The THWACK echoed across the arena loud enough to make the scrap vibrate. The crowd as a whole gasped in horror as Lilly sailed through the air like a home-run baseball, then shrieked as she slammed bodily into the energy shield that fenced the viewing public off from the carnage. The thin film of solid plasma shimmered purple as the lapine lady was plastered against it, hanging in mid-air for an agonized two or three seconds, then dimmed as she fell away from it, hitting the sandy floor once more in a barely-conscious heap.
For once, Flashfire had nothing to say. Probably for the best.
Tossing the tank cannon aside, Red Specter slowly advanced across the arena, his chains writhing and clinking in anticipation. Slowly and ponderously, he closed the distance between himself and his prey, who was struggling to pull herself back to her feet despite her injuries. Lilly lifted her head, saw him approaching and felt her ears instinctively lie backwards in terror, willing herself not to run again - that was what got her into this position to begin with. Now was not the time to let the inner rabbit try to drive again, not after last time.
"Playtime's over, Flopsy," she heard him growl, despite the distance between them. Then the green fire blazed again as he vanished from sight once more, leaving nothing but smoke behind.
Not this shit again, Lilly groaned mentally as she finally staggered into an upright position. A shot of pain lanced through her, making her clutch her side and wince - fractured ribs, most likely. To compound all that, her armor was crumpled in several places, bruises were forming all over her body, her fur was scorched and she was more than certain one of her legs wasn't in good order either. She wasn't in the best of conditions to just run up and kick the fucker, as much as she wanted to, and he wasn't going to give her that opportunity right now.
Well, nothing for it...
Mercifully, the crowd had remained silent since Specter's trick with the tank cannon. So this time, when Lilly perked her ears up, she could finally pinpoint all the tiny sounds that were normally muffled by the cheering, chants and occasional fistfights. There was the hum of the generators that powered the shield fencing - the same thing she'd been forcefully batted into a few moments ago. There was the faint scuff of feet on the floor, of bags rustling and souvenir key-chains clicking. There was the faint breathing of Flashfire Mays over the microphone, although that was more annoying than anything. And...
There. The faint popping noise of fire about to break out.
Behind her.
She didn't move, didn't lash out fist or foot, knowing that would be what he wanted. Instead, she waited until she heard the clinking of chains as he moved, then hit the button on her chest that fired off not the jets, but the afterburners to vent excess plasma from the engine. Sure enough, a roar of agony rent the air apart as the surge of blue flame struck something, although Lilly was too busy digging her toes into the sand to stop herself overbalancing. But this was cause for the crowd to start roaring as well, finding it's voice in support for the Rising Star of America at last.
"OH, WHAT A MOVE!" Oh, great, Flashfire was back as well. "RED SPECTER FINALLY HAD SOMEBODY GET THE DROP ON HIM! COOK 'IM GOOD, LILLY!"
"With pleasure," growled Lilly under her breath as she turned off the afterburners. Only then did she wheel around and bring a leg swinging through the air, planting her foot right into his gut and knocking the wind out of him - fitting revenge for the similar trick he pulled earlier. But not content with this, she darted around him, slipped behind and wound both arms about his waist, muscles tensing as she shifted both legs apart and crouched down in preparation for the final stage in her retaliation. She knew that she needed to put this guy down quick - prolonged conflict wasn't something she wanted to risk against him.
And she knew just how to finish this off.
She tightened her grip...
"Oh, what's going on here?"
Grit her teeth...
"Is this what I think it is...?"
And fired every single one of her jets.
The world turned into a blur. All she knew was clutching desperately onto the kicking, screaming demon, the wind whistling in her ears and the glass roof and sandy floor spinning about her like she was stuck in a washing machine on final rinse. What mental gyroscope she had finally gave up on the sixth gyration as she pirouetted through the air, letting momentum and the rockets do all the work for her. Just beyond the screaming, the hiss of engines and the howl of the wind, she thought she heard someone shout:
"MEGADRIVER! MEGADRIV-"
And then, with a metallic crunch, everything went dark.
-------
Silence reigned in the arena.
The crowd, originally roaring with delight at the favorite fighter's sudden comeback, had been silenced by the impact with the scrap pile and were now silent with anticipation. Nobody moved, or spoke, or dared to rustle any of their popcorn bags for fear of breaking the moment into tiny pieces. Even Flashfire, up in his commentary box, had gone quiet once again - a merciful relief, as far as the audience was concerned, for there was nothing that his usual stating-the-obvious jabbering could add to the scene.
Then the scrap started to shift. Everyone gasped, believing for a moment that Red Specter had survived, and the mental image of him emerging, holding the severed head of his enemy, was too strong a one not to let fly through the mind. There was the sound of scuffling as literally all the people in the stands crawled as far back as their seats would allow, not wanting to be the ones on the other end of his predictable, yet still very real wrath.
The rusty iron heaved...
...and erupted a very beat-up, woozy, but still alive Lilly Lop.
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN... YOUR WINNEEEEEER!"
This time, the crowd's roar could have been heard from the next city. Battered as she was, Lilly pulled herself from the scrap she'd smashed the Red Specter into and staggered to her feet. Through eyes blurred by her dazed condition, she saw the ecstatic faces of the crowd as it rose to it's collective feet, and through ears bruised and full of rust, she heard the applause and the chanting of her name by a thousand voices. And she smiled and waved back, biting back the twinges of pain in her arms as she soaked up the appreciation.
Sometimes, she thought, this gig is totally worth it.
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