ArchivedLogs:Bark and Bone
| Bark and Bone | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia
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2013-05-22 (Part of Thunderdome.) |
| Location | |
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.
Hobbling into the ring, requiring considerably more goading than usually is stumpy. Aka Marrow. Sporting a half regrown leg / bone pegleg combination and enough bone plates to attend a ren fair (as an especially gruesome gothic knight) she shambles along as best she can, hand reaching for the bars to keep herself upright, and charmingly flips the bird to the crowd. A pair of bone spikes begins sprouting from her back if far slower than in her previous matches. Jim isn't the spry /sapling/ he'd been at the start of this freak show either, his hair gone solid gray beneath the mossy green sploching over him at random; what semblance of human flesh he'd ever worn is replaced with rough treebark that may well be more than just /skin/ deep, considering his foot steps are /heavy/, his feet gnarled wide with knuckly roots that twist and warp with his locomotion. But hey. At least he's /got/ both feet. The same can't be said for hands; his left has only a palm remaining, nubs of /sharp/ branches poking out of it in place of fingers, and his right hand is supported to his wrist with a series of homegrown branches to fortify the deep FINGER-shaped indentations that had left it initially dangling off by a thread. More a nightmare tree than a man, only washed-out blue eyes set in the middle of it all resemble anything much human. Excuse him for not coming up with a pithy comment for Marrow or the crowd - he has an indentation sunk into the center of his chest, shaped to mold of a bony-old-man shoulder. He hikes up his brows at his fellow combatant like WELP. And, arms falling open at his sides, he falls into circling like a wrestler. Hi, Marrow. Want to knock on wood? "Oh for FUCKS SAKE," Marrow snarls from between gritted teeth as she reaches back and tears free the bone spikes. Each of which has a steel hard bone axe head. Glaring at the crowd she adds "What do I look like to you morons? A fuckin' lumberjack?" Before turning her attention to the task at hand. "They got you call cracked up too Mr Shrubbery?" Something solidifies harder in Jim's face, a slow grimace sinking in amongst the rough green-brown crenellations. A grimace that might honestly just be an unhappy /smile/, glancing between those twin axe heads. Right about now, sister, maybe he kinda /wishes/. The overhead booming and screaming of the crowd, the hysterical pitch of the announcer's voice booming off the ceiling with such surreal goofiness ("-going to get /boned/!" and "-he's got some wood for her!"), throwing up groans and laughter -- fuck this shit. With no lungs, there's no air to sigh with, or steady a breath, or communicate a coming action. He just lunges forward shoulder-first, head ducked down behind it. Marrow barely has time to ready the axes before Jim begins his charge, her peg leg is set back against the arena wall to brace against the oncoming charge. "/TIMBER/!" she howls, because honestly what other battlecry do you use against a charging tree? Both axes are brought straight down with brutal overhead strikes aimed at Jims rapidly approaching shoulder. Chnk-chunk! Both axeheads sink in solid with a sound of... well. Yeah, Dropping an axe head into a tree trunk, Jim's teeth clenched TIGHT in silent snarl. The real party is down south, where the forward momentum just keeps coming in the shape of one foot, which he's raised to /stomp/ into Marrow's abdomen like a battering ram. /Scramble/! He grabs for her arms or the axe or something to try and keep her all nice and close. Tall, covered in bone plates and missing maybe a third of her leg. It probably comes as a shock when Marrow grips the axe handles tightly, kicks off the side of the arena, then vaults clear over Jim tearing one of the axes free in the process. The other doesn't quite come loose before Jims grabby hands can reach it. She lands with a thwump, already twirling back round ready so quickly the peg leg scrapes across concrete like nails on a chalkboard. /Thoom/, Jim's foot hits the bars instead, just missing Marrow's daring vault and sending the whole structure trembling. He's already yanking loose the second axe remaining stuck in the god damn greenwood of HIS SHOULDER with a rapid shrug -- the instant they bone blades are yanked loose, he's /pouring/ energy into them, and the plantfibers in him erupt to life, swelling together in the ugly, puffy-hard puckering a tree in nature would only manage with a few /years/ of speedmotion growth. Instant scar. This is only a peripheral thing, he's too focused on survival to be putting a lot of attention into it. Marrow might have the armor /and/ the speed. But Jim, not so much - what he does have is an /axe/, now, though, which he's swings, closing in once more. "Awh cuntbadgers," Marrow hisses as the tree begins regrowing. She scythes her own axe through the air in a complex figure eight pattern, warding Jim off while she adds a few more bone growths to her peg leg. "What next? You shoot killer seeds out your cock? Because honestly my day couldn't get any fuckin' worse." Her other hand suddenly flicks forward and a hurls a sphere of bone at Jim's head. Jim is making this exquisite face of teeth. Showing. Eyes squinted. Because Marrow... keeps... /talking/. He has to fall back to avoid the swing axe, considering his own weapon relies entirely on a one-handed grip -- OH GOD. He throws up his other arm to deflect the sphere flying at his head, ducking back further. With his eyes tracking Marrow's axe, his neck is getting noticeably /thicker/, twisting and sprouting new grown and absurdly cheerful little spring green shoots off his head. As he backs off, he stoops rapidly to /scoop up/ the sphere Marrow had thrown at him, awkwardly, with the fingerless hand. And, instantly - he's shoving outward a thick layer of bark to /seal/ it partially into his palm. He just made a hammer. Marrow darts forward, swinging the axe in low for a strike at Jim's knee. Following with jab from her free fist, complete with spikey bone knuckles. Just like brass knuckles only harder to take off and alas no-where near as shiny. Again she aims for his knee, because man does she just hate other peoples kneecaps. Do trees even have knees? Who knows! Again, the visceral 'chunk' sound of bone axe sinking into living greenwood, sinking damn near halfway through and Jim's face contort in silent scream. He stoop (.../drops/) forward, axe clattering from his hand and - bingo. Snarl-faced, he makes no attempt to avoid the connecting knuckles with his other leg because the proximity means he can throw his arms around her torso. Instantly, his human shape /dissolves/, twist-writhes with a strain of plant-fiber muscles, arms becoming entwining gnarly vines snarling around Marrow, seeking to drag her inward into the dent Masque had started in the center of his chest like a hardwood venus flytrap. "Get /OFF/!" Marrow yells, sprouting dozens of short razor like ridges all over her armour. "Where's a goddamned weed whacker when you need it." With remarkable strength she heaves away from Jim, trying to raise her leg and jam the pegleg into what used to be Jim-groin. Her free arm, hacks frantically at the vines as a trio of foot long bone spikes begin sprouting from her chest. If she's going to get dragged into anythings maw she's gonna make sure as hell she is unpleasant to chew. "FUCKFUCKFUCK. " The sheer power of Marrow's heave for freedom hauls Jim along /with/ her, whether he wants the free ride or not. If he had the wind to curse he would be providing the vitriol to strip Marrow's god damn ENAMEL off. Instead, there is only the sinister silence of a thing unbreathing, underscored by a crackle and pop if straining wood. He's pouring everything into this invasive growth; for a plant, growth /is/ also healing, thick puckering snarls pouring into the axe wounds. Just... At a slower rate now. And slower. And slower. The blow to his groin finds, well. Wood! Just of a considerably less tender variety. As do her foot long spines. The spines, however... They sink in. And then in further. Then further. Partly, he'd growing /around/ them. Partly it's just plain old fashioned inpalement. And still, relentlessly, his face a gnarled mask of pain, he keeps right. On. Trying. To envelop her. Or more specifically... He wants her HEAD. Where all the breathing goes on. Bucking like a mule sized porcupine Marrows struggling shifts from angry, into panic and then into the frenzied activity of terror when it hits that Jim is trying to swallow her head. The sharp ridges extend, forming crude saw blades all over her body. The axe is slammed into woodflesh and discarded in favor of shorter slashing knife-like talons. Bone spine after bone spine spouts from her chest, these ones a full three foot long and ending with wide flat ends. Intended to push her loose rather than cause any damage. "Not gonna let you fuckin' kill me you oversized weed!" Eaten alive by a tree and still she does /not stop talking/. Locked and twisted, wood /creaks/ at the force of bones pressing Jim away. Except. Wood is not elastic, and the shape of his locked arms is solid and tough yearling trees. Meaning either something's going to tear loose, or something else is going to /break/ trying. Those slashing talons are /gouging/ out chunks of him, so he start's /trashing/, legs thickening, then thickening /more/. There's no dirt to sink roots into, but their expansion makes for a wide load-bearing base from which he is straining all down trembling legs and abdomen to try and slam her against the ground. Or the bars of the cage. Or... mostly just those two things, yeah, there's nothing else really around to get creative with. The fiber of his arms is... struggling to keep up its growth. THRASH. The crowd, by this time, has gone silent with horrified staring. All the frantic slashing gets directed to the single weakest looking limb as Marrow desperately tries to get herself free before *SLAM*. The force of the impact cracks some of the weaker bone spikes, leaving them buried in Jims chest (or should that be trunk?). "Sewerknightsneversurrender," she grates as what looks suspiciously like an axe blade grows from her forehead. "SO FUCK /YOU/." And suddenly the shoving away stops, bone spikes snap and she hurls herself forward in the mother of all headbutts using Jims own pulling force for extra momentum. Victory or defeat, gambled on a single titanic blow. Jim sees it coming - how can you /not/. But impaled on Marrow's spikes, some possibly driven /through/ and out his back, with his arms only growing thicker, there's neither maneuverability nor the time to /make/ room. He yanks his head to the side, far as it will go. CHNK. The axehead sinks into the side of his face. Wood SPLITS open, the audience gasps, and an ear, a side of jaw, a side of cheek, all SHARD away from their attachment to Jim's head, Marrow's... stuck. Right into it. So close, their bodies press. That she'll feel him twitching; so close to muscle-texture, the sturdy fibers, but harder. Nerveless. And without any semblance of body heat. Twitch. Spasm. The sense of /straining/, the plants around her swell, tremble-- NOTHING. Still impossibly tangled, he begins to collapse. Victory... Ish. As the tree collapses Marrow realises a slight hitch with her plan. She has grown so many bones in such a short space of time that she's all outta juice. "Uhm..." she mumbles, spitting a couple of her own teeth out. "A little help here?" Her sole free arm, the other tangled up in the mass of Jimvines, waves around a bit to show she's still conscious. "Kinda stuck...." She lets out a long sigh now the immediate threat has passed. "What a fucking glorious victory." Sadly, collapsing... does not, as in some mutants, return Jim to his humanesque form. With eyes flutter-twitching - /these/ are human, blue and dilated unevenly - his natural form is actually vegetable to greater or less degree. So in going slack his body weight probably just - hangs off Marrow's spikes, his thick vine arms still wrapped /tightly/ around her encalcified body. This never happened in Fern Gully. DEAD WEIGHT. | |
