ArchivedLogs:Losing Footing and Mind

Losing Footing and Mind
Dramatis Personae Marrow, Masque
In Absentia	2013-05-20 Two people go into a fight, one point nine people are dragged back out. (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 crowd tonight is -- more subdued than it has been before. Maybe it's a slightly smaller group, maybe many of the spectators today were here /last/ night, too, and the mood is a holdover. But there is definitely less /charge/ in the air than on other nights. Still excitement, but it's a tense one, a tightly held expectation. People are keeping their distance, this time, from the cage. The lights are hot and bright and the floor is speckled with bloodstains. The cage /itself/ has had some modification; the bars in some places are singed black, in some places /warped/, and they've been hastily reinforced with new construction. New bars, new steel mesh. It looks like a kind of patchwork, strong but /ugly/. The announcer is not subdued, though. He still sounds pumped as ever as he announces tonight's first fight, between the FLESHMANCER and BONESAW. The contestants are prodded into the ring none-too-gently. There are, though somewhat fewer audience members, somewhat /more/ than the usual contingent of guards. Strong but ugly about sums up Marrow these days. The bone growths on her chest have fused into a thick plate studded with spikes, medieval knight meets H. R. Giger. She stalks into the ring with a sneer, sprouting two new shoulder spines as she waits for her opponent to enter the ring. When the announcer calls out the names the sneer turns into a scowl and the pair of new spikes gets is joined by a further two. Better safe than sorry! It's obvious right from the start that Masque is not quite himself, this very moment; After his last meal, he spent his time slowly sinking back into that familiar feeling that he'd experienced before his last fight. Now, any worries he may have had have ebbed away into a PCP-induced stupor that sends him toppling over onto the ground of the cage before he's even been dealt any blows. His slow rise back onto his feet shows him to be uncharacteristically uncoordinated and mentally... absent. Pupils covering nigh all of his dull, dead grey irises, while what is left his torn and punctured wifebeater hangs loosely over his relatively wiry frame. A plethora of superficial pucture wounds is littered across his arms and hands, one of them loosely bandaged up. Mind dulled, his head hangs low and his expression shows-- little, really. Confusion, perhaps, at where the hell he even is, or what the hell all of the NOISES are, as he sways absently to one side. If he's noticed Marrow, he certainly does not show it. Marrow frowns at the shambling Masque, but doesn't hesitate to reach back and grab a spine in each hand. With a grunt of effort she snaps them free, each sporting a shorter side handle much like a set of bone tonfas, and gives them an experimental twirl. "Well, guess they do listen to what we say in the cages after all," she mutters. "Or maybe I wasted a fucking wish on this shit." Masque doesn't seem terribly eager to fight, instead nearly falling over as he swaaays - what's left of his reflexes manage to keep him from falling, but only just, and instead of approaching the middle of the ring, he just inadvertently shuffles /back/. Whoop. Marrow's wish is being tragically /boring/, though perhaps that is the curse of being served things on silver platters. "This some kinda trick?" Marrow wonders, taking a few cautious steps forward. Batons twirling. She begins to close the distance on what seems to be Masques bad side. Or more likely his /worst/ side given all the recent damage. A few more bone plates sprout to cover as much exposed skin as possible, better safe than sorry. Finally, Masque's attention is brought upward. His iris-eclipsed eyes land on Marrow as if she were somehow swaying too - not far from an unfocused drunkard's gaze. His expression screws into one of vague recognition at least on the /better/ side of his face, when the bone plates sprout from her form, and he finally speaks. Or, well, attempts. What comes out is more of a slurred together hiss and the failure to say a /word/. It may have been a greeting! For reasons unclear, he then leans forwards and starts a slow, ungainly dragging walk toward Marrow, shoulders hanging low and mouth agape. With apparently no intention of stopping once he closes the distance, slow as he might be. Marrow adjusts her grip on one baton, so the long end acts as an extension to her arm, then takes a sudden springing step forward sweeping the baton at the side of one of Masque's kneecaps. No sooner has she struck, successful or not, she springs back out of arms reach twirling the other baton to hopefully fend off attack. There doesn't appear to /be/ an attack. The sweep hits without issue, and Masque is sent unceremoniously down onto his knees. The pain inflicted doesn't much seem to bother him, but the fact that he is now on the ground, somehow, does not seem to /please/ his mind much. Apparently that was all he needed to replace that listless expression with a much more alert one, as his head snaps up to look around him in a mixture of fear and fury, and he swings his weight to the side in order to haul himself back up to a stand. Once his gaze lands back on Marrow again, he once more starts to wander closer with that gawky, dragging gait. Apparently he does not learn. "Like a fucking /zombie/." is a call from an audience member nearby -- perhaps amused, perhaps kind of freaked. "Maybe that tree did for his /brains/ too." And, cheerful ENCOURAGEMENT to Marrow: "Gut him!" "The fuck.." Marrow grunts, circling around to Masques wounded leg side. Forcing him to turn on it. "You been at the crack?" Darting in again she goes for the kneecap again. Battering at it with a one-two downward strike to hopefully pop the kneecap clean off. "Stay /down/ you fuckwit." The turn is utterly graceless, and that first strike hits, no problem, with an audible CRACK. The second, however, is intercepted in the midst of him falling back down to his knees again, by Masque's arm rising to /grip/ that bone-baton, as tight as he possibly can - which is actually a little stronger than he usually could, so perhaps he's got the drugs to thank for one thing, at least. It starts to give way under his fingers, wherever his skin touches its surface. "HnnghghGH." This is growled at the baton, slightly unhelpfully, before his gaze slides upwards instead, and he PULLS the baton toward him without warning or, it seems, reason. His other, bandaged hand rises, to SWIPE upwards toward her face, equally in the mindset to try and /melt/ whatever he may reach. Marrow releases her hold on the warped baton at the unexpected pull, then grips the other with both hands and brings it down overhead at the reaching fingers. "Stay down you piece of shit," she howls, bringing her foot up and then stomping down at Masques head. Swipe unsuccessful and subsequently baton'd away, things don't look too good for Masque. But he hasn't /just/ got his hands to work with. His eyes close in reflex thanks to the part of his brain still functional, but though he means to turn his head away, he is far too slow to avoid the second CRACK his nose soon gives way to. After that an an initial incoherent bark out in pain, however, the force of the blow is drastically mitigated, softening and readily turning the tissue that comes into into contact with his skin into a rubbery clay consistency. As a bonus, both of his hands shoot up to try and GRAB, instinctively, at the thing that just nearly caved his face in. "SHITFUCKINGCUNT," Marrow howls as her foot goes /wrong/. Recoiling from the sensation she springs back with a horrific wet tearing sound as most of her calf muscle sloughs off. There is a ear splitting scream mixed rage and agony as the teenage staggers back, stumbling to walk a stumpy protrusion made from bone armour and what leg bones remain. Leaving a trial of gore and discarded toe bones she limps to the far side of the arena, gripping the cage for support while the bleeding stops. Whether or not Masque even realises what happened remains largely a mystery, as the mess of what's left of Marrow's calf muscle and foot liquefy under his touch, bits of it streaming down his face before catching on his wifebeater and solidifying, leaving little bits of person littered across his front. Drops of skin, meat and bone alike leak down his hands and arms too, and threads of the stuff get /spread/ along the ground as he spastically shakes his arms to get rid of it, like one would attempt to shake themselves free of water. He even-- spits some of it out, sluggishly and with an utterly dumbfounded look on his face. How'd /person/ get in his mouth? Plehgh. But then, he drops. The result of trying to get to his feet when one of his kneecaps is clearly not up to the task, buckling under the pressure. Marrow snarls a low animal noise, then fingers white-knuckle gripping the baton, hammers at a weak looking spot of the concrete. Just enough to loosen a lump. With a vicious grin she grabs the piece of floor and begins sprouting bone around it. Turning the concrete into the head of a bone hammer. "Someone will /pay/ for this," she promises glancing around the crowd and starting to carefully hobble forward hefting her new weapon. "Starting with you." It takes a few bumbley movements of arms swinging uselessly and weight shifting in the wrong direction, but Masque gets back on his feet just in time to forget one of his knees isn't cooperating, sending him reeling ungracefully and somewhat flaily to the side before he manages to steady himself at least /partially/, with that one uncooperative leg at an awkward angle, sloped to one side. He'll feel that in the morning-- if he's left, by then, to feel anything at all. His eyes lift to Marrow once more, but he doesn't quite seem to comprehend she's coming toward him. The anger on his face is gone now, mouth agape as he /leers/ laboriously at the fellow Morlock. What's going on, again? The leering seems to snap something within Marrow. The shambling peg-legged walk speeds up to as close of a run as she dares on the slippery floor, she brings the hammer up high and with a scream of rage brings it arcing down. Aiming to clear the flailing arms from her real target. She doesn't even wait to see if she hits or if it gets a reaction, bringing the hammer up for another blow at his arms. Then, risk of being grabbed again hopefully reduced, she rains down more blows this time aimed at his head. Going for quantity over brute force killing power. The hammer scarcely connects on the first blow to Masque's arms, sending one of his arms violently swinging back with a /pop/, out of its socket. In the midst of the confusion of /that/ happening, he brings his bandaged hand up only to have the hammer SWOOSH by and SMACK it away again - leaving his fingers not /quite/ at the same angles they were sticking out before. The next thing he knows - is darkness. The hammer smacks into the bad side of his face, and all at once his eyes roll back and he goes limp, falling to the floor in a pile of torn cloth and pale flesh. Blood trickles from his nose, mouth and from the scrapes created by the hammer. A few teeth lie decidedly /out of place/ on the floor beside him. KO. Marrow raises her hammer up one final time and then *Fzzzzzzzzzzzzap*. Either one of the guards has a soft spot for Masque or they're just not in the mood for trying to manhandle a berzerk hammer wielding Marrow back into the holding cells. Either way the combination of missing foot and night-night levels of electricity send the Morlock crashing down with a thud. Thankfully for both of them she doesn't fall onto the prone figure of Masque.