ArchivedLogs:Tree vs Spider

Tree vs Spider
Dramatis Personae Peter, Jim
In Absentia	2013-05-11 (Part of Thunderdome.)
Location Thunderdome
It's a warehouse, or something like it; at least it's spacious, and was probably once industrial; at the moment it's largely just empty. There are tracks in the floor from long-since disused equipment and the construction of walls and high exposed-beam ceilings is sturdy. The center of the room has been excavated, since this place was in actual daily use. In the middle a pit has been gashed out of the concrete; it's not /deep/ and it serves more as a foundation than anything else; around its wide circular perimeter a cage has been erected. Nearly reaching up to ceiling-height, it is constructed of thick sturdy metal bars wrapped in a thinner wire mesh. Surrounding the cage there is a lot of empty space. Some nights, though, when fights are in session, the room is filled; with people, with cameras (though no outsiders' cameras are allowed in), with paper betting slips and folding chairs. The spotlights in the ceiling are bright-bright-bright, the better to illuminate the fighters within the centerpiece cage. The Spider ain't gettin' a lot of love. His only match so far was one against Anole; it ended with Peter getting /trounced/ by lizard-boy. Which means he might not be as tough as he acts! So they've decided to give him one more chance to clean up his act: Shove him in the ring with a man who kinda looks like a tree. Peter is not happy to be here. The pulsing roar of the crowd is not something he's pleased with; the boy looks more like a deer in the headlights than anything else as he emerges from the other side of the cage for a /second/ time. Bare-chested, his black carapace now /gleams/ underneath the hot lights; the result is - an almost prismatic light-show, flashing vivid swirls of metallic blue against his coal-colored chitin. Otherwise, he's clad in dress-slacks - with a greasy mop of hair he keeps having to pull back behind his eyes. "Ohcrap," Peter mutters as they shove him into the ring - along with a quick ZZZAP and a light THWACK with the baton to keep him in line. He doesn't need much prodding, though. He isn't really the /disobedient/ sort. You'd almost think Jim wanted to be here. For all his bored-meandering and sullen beach-bum slouching given to frequently around the kennels, when he's brought out into the hot bright lights and the sudden breathless EXPANSE of crowd noises and jeers and talking and EYES, his faded-blue flat gaze fasten onto the ring in the center of the room, his fists LOCK tight, spine hardens and he utilizes /long/ strides to arrow for these bastard's destined arrival point. And then he's there, /here/, in all his planty glory. Though - it's not terribly glorious. There are very few pale leaves complicating his graying salt-and-peppered hair, but he's gone onto /autumn/ colors mostly, yellowing and cracked, blistered, rough. He is /presumably/ zapped as well, to maybe get his blood up or just for good-fucking-luck, because the collar makes that familiar 'bzzrt' sound and that thin stream of smoke tendrils up form it, but he doesn't seem to feel it. His full attention is locked HARD on Peter, head dropped low like a bull. He isn't immune to the crowd, the pure savage ENERGY and the smells of blood; his eyes are shrunk down to pindots, his breathing controlled, "Kid," he murmurs through teeth that do not unclench for him to speak. It makes his words a low, hissing /seethe/. "Get your fucking game face on, let's go." His fists uncurl at his sides. And he begins to STRIDE forward, arms raising out as though there was something, some thin membrane he were moving through that was /glorifying/. And his skin... begins to constrict. Twist. SPEAR outwards in little spines of branches. And thorns. "Ohholy/crap/." This is all Peter manages to get out when Jim proceeds to go all... tree-y. Then, he's /hopping/ back, trying to get himself a bit of distance between Jim and those suddenly long strides - hop, hop, until - HOP - he's /on/ the cage, his feet pressed against a metal bar, hands gripping besides his ankles - dangling like a furnishing, /staring/ at him. About... six feet up. And then... ZZZAP. Peter yelps; tumbles to the ground with a thud. And blinks, owlishly, up at the approaching Jim... beginning to slowly, /reluctantly/ get up to his feet. And assume - something that looks like a battle stance. Feet apart; one fist near his jaw, the other a bit lower. Eyebrows /clenched/ together into a painful knot. With a very worried expression on his face. "...I... I, okay - I can do this," Jim might hear him muttering as he approaches. "/We/ can do this. Okay. /Okay/." Jim's lips pull back a little from his teeth; it's oddly less of a 'bared snarl' look than it is something... furious and /resigned/ to an ugly world, heading down an ugly road to an ugly destination. With his shirt tossed to the ground to avoid the spikes spearing out of him, there's little human to him now, save his shape. And his blue eyes staring out hard, sedate, /sharp/. There are a few excited-startled 'Oohs!' from the crowd when Peter launches up the wall, though the faces themselves are difficult to make out beyond this self-contained realm of mesh metal, bright lights, blood strains /stark/ on the ground and the two bodies breathing this same stifling air. "-god fucking dammit," is what Peter will hear /Jim/ saying to himself in response. Jim is no stranger to violence. But mutational combat? Overt attack on a kid(creature?) that can bound six feet straight up... His arm is longer, hard-rough and FORKED, and he swings it like a club with an expression flat-out aware his speed isn't likely to match the Parker kids. "Little more /dynamic/, kiddo," he /snaps/, "give 'em a /show/." There are a lot of ways to avoid getting hit by a tree trunk. You could duck! You could block! You could hop back - way back - and get out of the way! But this Peter kid? He opts for the /weirdest/. He tries to jump right on /top/ of it. It's not /quite/ a jump. More of a grab - Peter's hands snatching out to seize hold of that barkish skin as he /hups/, attempting to propel himself up, back - his feet aiming to land with a /thwunk/ on top of Jim's shoulder and bicep. If successful - suddenly Peter's /clinging/ to him, scrambling over him, /behind/ him, on his back, scuttling like some mad beetle who has just found its prey - except Peter seems more /terrified/ than genuinely predatorial. If he succeeds on getting on Jim's back, he immediately goes about the business of wrapping his arms around that trunk-like neck - and his legs around his waist - just /squeezing/, while yelling: "YAUUUGH-YAAAUGH!" PULL. SQUEEZE. Dynamic enough for yah?! At'll do, pig. "Hrgh-." Jim hoarse-snarls, /re-absorbing/ his extended branchy arm while he begins the expected backwards /march/ to slam Peter's back against the wall. This isn't the dangerous part, though. The surface Peter clings to - /very very strange feeling/, being clung to by a HUMAN SPIDER, a hysterically /reasonable/ part of Jim's mind is remarking - is alive, it twists and reforms, pulling in the last of Jim's extended arm to wrap his hands HARD around Peter's arms. That twisting of back skin(bark?) suddenly seizes, the strange mix of human-muscle anatomy and plant cells mesh into a single tangible strain. And then a set of SHARP spearing branches are jabbing out of his back like a tree growth set to wildly fast-motion, spearing for Peter's abdomen. The crowd has no idea what to think; it's early in the fight, and spry hopping and twisting man-tree leaves everyone squirming at the edge of their seats, craning their next to see what new freakish phenomenon might occure. "HNK--" Peter's /DANGER SENSE/ proceeds to fire off the mental equivalent of a heap of pots and pans dropped down the stairs; there's a chitter right in Jim's ears as his hands seize hold of Peter's arms -- followed by a very /un/ boyish hiss. And then he is kicking, /scrambling/ to try and push up Jim's back - just as those branches project outwards, biting and slicing into meat. Branches manage to dig through chitin and tear a jagged line through his stomach and hips; his feet shove up against Jim's writhing, twisting back as cellular material fluctuates under Peter's bare soles - and then, scrambling as high as he can manage while still having his arms in Jim's grip, Peter starts to /headbutt/ - rolling his torso up, then /down/, trying to jar the tree hard enough to get his arms free and /jump/ the hell /away/. Peter is not a /weak/ young man, and Jim head bounces downward under the first headbutt. He staggers, even if his hardwood reinforcement makes the impact feel for Peter probably somewhat akin to trying to headbutt a coconut. It doesn't help that after the /first/ impact, Jim slams his head back to /meet/ Peters chitinous forehead. Between wooden spikes poking out like an evil woodspirit hedgehog and that hard hollow-wooden /thunk/ of heads clacking together, a shiny beetle-dark body HEADBUTTING against a severely pissed off tree, it's like WHEN MOTHER NATURE GOES MAD in here. The crowd loves it, cheering louder now, picking favorites. Discovery Channel has nothing on this shit. Jim's grip on Peter's arms loosen, and when Peter jumps free, Jim staggers back to lean against the wall. Already, he's pulling his spikes inward. And... panting. /Hard/. His hair is turning grayer visible and the reabsorption of treelike extensions is slower than it had been with his arm. Thwumpwhumpwhumpwhump. That's the sound of Peter rolling; uncontrolled, graceless and painfully, across the floor. He finally comes to a stop somewhere on the other side of the room - and then, slowly, he begins to pick himself up. His head is ringing; his temples are bruised - and he's got several /nasty/ looking gashes in his belly and hips. Blood gleams against his chitinous exterior like a bicycle's reflector panel; when he finally gets up to his knees - it's with a bit of a wobble, one hand against his stomach, the other held up at Jim, clenched into a fist. "Nng..." Peter blinks at Jim, and then at the cheering, hooting crowd... and then back to Jim. And then... /eyeroll/, followed by a *WHUMP*. Looks like Peter's out. Actually, he's probably faking, but considering he just battered his head several times against Jim's /skull/ - and has a gut full of /splinters/ - it's unlikely anyone will be able to tell the difference. The crowd effectively goes wild. It thuds in a loud composite noise of many voices yelling until it becomes instead a strange /throb/ that pulses in the ceiling above. Jim looks down at the bloody bug boy on the ground, his arms just... dropped limp at his sides. Face blank and hard. He'd been looking at those gashed injuries until they went /splut/ against the ground, and the blood of Peter Parker joins the blood of so many others that have shed it here. He's pulled himself back into a full manshape, the strange jutting branches internalized, the strain of it causing a slight swoon of his head on his shoulders. Once shouted at to vacate the ring for the next fight, he only needs one wake-up call shock (singe?) to get him to lean away from the wall and, compressing a hand against the back of his head, he turns to leave the ring. Swiping his shirt off the ground as he goes. The sound of the crowd is fierce and pleased. Jim - just looks like he would rather like to go back to headbutting something.