La Belle Dame sans Merci

As Makoto made her way upwards, she tried to push through the pain induced hazed and make sense of the moment, form some coherent thoughts. It wasn't the easiest thing, not with this stabbing pain at her side, and it felt as if every breath she took exacerbated the pain. She knew Margaux was strong and fit, but that hit was something else. Aisha hadn’t hit that hard. Dixie hadn’t hit that hard. It honestly didn’t even feel like she’d taken a punch there, more like she’d been struck by a baseball bat. A metal baseball bat, even.

Breath in, breath out. Breath in, breath out. Makoto clenched her teeth hard, shook her head as Margaux came over to check her, her voice rife with concern, asking questions that she wasn’t sure about herself. She hadn’t had a match in a while, and even then, she couldn’t remember taking a serious shot there before. Maybe it was some old pain that had gone ignored, and she’d just hit in the exact wrong way?

”I don’t know. I-” She had a sharp gasp as the pain flared up, worse than before. It felt like someone had a knife pressed to her innards, and the blade kept getting twisted. ”I think something’s broke.” She tried to push herself up, stumbled, then tried again. ”I think-”

Makoto’s world went black. No pain, no sound, no anything for a solid three seconds. When she returned to reality, however, it all came flooding back to her at once. Her jaw ached with a wild, fiery agony that flowed through her entire skull. Her face was on the floor, and the taste of blood was growing in her mouth, though she couldn't tell what the source of it was for the life.

Had Margaux punched her? That was the only thing her mind could process, but why? She had to know the spar was over, why would she hit her like when she was getting up?

She blinked, rapid blinks, as she tried to push her way up again, turning her head to Margaux as she rose. ”M...Margaux, you-” She spat on the mat, joining the small pool of blood and saliva beneath her head. ”Stop...please, I need some help...I need…”

“You need-” Margaux kicked the judoka in her side, letting her roll onto her back. “-to stay silent.”

The concern had vanished. Taken to the wind along with her facade. The next time Makoto gazed upon her, she would find herself staring Margaux Lefeuvre. A wide, eerie smile on her face. Fangs glistening against the faint, dying light of the room. Her face contorting and the skin overlapping at odd angles as the wicked grin grew larger and larger. Wider and wider. A razor-sharp maw that threatened to eat the Japanese girl whole.

And poor Makoto, she hadn’t even realized it yet. She was seeing the Frenchwoman for the first time. With a lingering hunger in her eyes, she watched the fading fire in the judoka’s eyes, flickering in the agony and despair that now moved to crumble the world around her.

“You have forgotten ze concord, Makoto.” Her head tilted to the side, her heterochromatic pupils boring into the judoka’s innocent, frail eyes.

Her foot raised over the Judo Babe’s body, planting itself harshly on her chest as Margaux’s mouth slowly opened. As she let out an elated gasp, her lips moved toward the laces, gracing the bow Makoto had tied before gnashing her teeth against the thread. With a couple strong yanks, she tore the laces on her right glove free, slipping the weathered equipment off and letting it fall against Makoto’s face.

She moved to undo the other glove. As she pulled the restraints away and began to slip off the other glove, Margaux hadn’t batted a single eye towards the judo warrior. All the same, she knew she would have had a question about the brass knuckle that was affixed to her hand for some obscure reason.

She let the other glove fall beside her. Spreading her legs over Makoto, she looked down at the woman before kicking the gloves clear with each respective leg, then leaned down, straddling the Olympian’s waist. Placing one hand gently on her throat, not enough choke, but merely restrain, her brass hand tightened into a fist.

The whole time, the same smile remained on her face. Unmoving. Uncompromising as she looked Makoto in the eye. Letting the judoka realize, in this moment, that the divine, fate, herself, whatever she believed in, all at once, had turned on her.

“No rules. No mercy.”

And threw a swift jab into her sternum.

Makoto had been on her way to standing up, for what reason she couldn't fathom. It was as if her body worked on autopilot, seeking to rise on instinct, despite the futility of it all. Before she could make any real progress, Margaux kicked her hard in the side - not the same one that was suffering from the inflamed ribs, thankfully - and flopped over to her back. She started to shrivel up, making a weak attempt to sit up, before her back gave and she wound up flopping back to the mat.

She looked up to Margaux for pity and relief, and found herself staring at a completely different person. Gone was the polite, genteel ladyboxer that had massaged her aches and pains away, that had invited her into her home with open arms. A dark goddess of chaos stood in her place, looking down on her with mismatched eyes and a smile that could not have been any wider or viler, without a speck of concern or care to be seen. Her foot hammered into Makoto’s chest and pinned her to the floor, letting her do nothing but stare up, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, watching as she undid her gloves.

When she saw the metal wrapped around Margaux’s fingers, her face went through a short renaissance. First there was the surprise, her brows furrowed in confusion, as the source of her pain made itself clear. Then came the narrowed eyes, as the pieces fit into place, as she realized the situation she had willingly settled into, that the position she found herself in was no accident, that she was trapped in a room with a madwoman who delighted in her pain.

After that came the fear. The clenched teeth, the shivering, the trembling lips, the gaze that zipped about the room in search of some source of salvation. A panic was setting in, as the weight of the situation began to register in brain, along with the real possibility that, if she didn’t find some way out of this room soon, she might not be leaving it at all.

But, as Margaux took a seat on her waist and straddled her, there was something else struggling to make its way out, coming in through curling lips and snarl, leaking through her clenched teeth when the Frenchwoman grasped her throat. Rage, a seething, blinding rage beyond anything she could imagine was starting to take hold, a fire that had just now found something to burn.

She reached up and grasped at Margaux’s arm, gripped it hard and dug her fingernails deep into the skin, but this act of defiance died the moment that metal fist crashed into midsection and disrupted her innard. A choked cried came from Makoto’s lips as her back arched hard and went into wild spasms, forcing the madwoman to ride her out. Her face contorted into a mask of pain, and she began to push at Margaux arm, frantically trying to push it away in a desperate bid to get free. Through it all, through the pain and the anguish and the fear and the sorrow and the mounting hate, she was able to get out a single syllable.

”Why?”

Ivana rushed through the darkened arcades and corridors that were once so familiar to her as the back of her own hand. Now, they seemed to twist and turn unendingly in the night. Her breath quickened and grew heavier with every step, feeling her blood overflowing with burst after burst of adrenaline. It happened again. She prayed day and night for what felt like an eternity, and, evidently, it wasn’t nearly enough. She rounded the corner and saw her sisters crowding around the door, feet nailed to the floor and mouths agape, staring into the shadows of the room. A few children attempted to get by, but were pushed away and shooed back to their beds. Ivana pushed past her sisters and gazed into the doorway. Through the faint light from the hallway, she could just make out the boy’s legs. She went to call out to him. The words died in her mouth, a pool of blood surfacing beneath his cold, twitching body.

None of her sisters dared to move. They looked not at the fading adolescent, but into the darkness, seeing the shadows shift and echoes of the death rattle. Tentative steps came forth, akin to a stalking wolf backed into a corner. A bloodstained smile, obscured by loose brown and red strands. The small, ferocious thing stopped just inches from the corpse, dipping its feet in  Hazel orbs stayed still, looking forward, boring into Ivana.

The nun looked on, trembling her lips as she struggled to draw forth an answer. She took a single step forward and the girl cocked her head in a silent dissection of her elder. Ivana could only utter a single word. The one word that had haunted them all for years. That hung over their institution like a swirling, dark cloud of encroaching madness and wrathful disdain.

“Why?”

Margaux stared back at the woman asking her that question. There were so many ways to dispatch a human being. So many variables, so many constants, each jumbling together, mixing and matching that each one brought her a new experience. But of all the constants, that was one that always endured. She leaned forward, bringing her face down to the judoka’s ear, brushing her lips against the lobe before parting them slowly with a sickening hiss.

“Why not?”

She leaned back and brought her smile back to its full strength. Clutching her fingers, she went strengthen the grip around her neck.

“I saw you.” She threw another punch into her gut. “I wanted you.” Another punch. “And now I have you.”

She delivered another punch, feeling the ribs creak beneath her reinforced knuckles. She would have loved to tease out more cries of agony from her. She wanted to feel each and every one of those bones give way and splinter off into every which direction. She wanted to hear the sinew and flesh grind and tear beneath the skin. She wanted to push Makoto over the edge and see her fall, screaming and howling the whole way.

But...business before pleasure.

She grabbed one of Makoto’s arms and brought it above her head, slamming it hard against the mat. Then, with repeated strikes, she’d swing her metal fist into her wrist, working her way down to her forearm, then her elbow, lining the bone with chips and cracks.

When Makoto asked the singular question, she honestly hadn’t been expecting an answer. She didn’t know what insanity was driving Margaux to this, but she doubted it was all that rational or coherent, that someone who was capable of this much brutality could have a solid reason. It wasn’t like Makoto had done anything to her to deserve it, they’d just met.

But she did get her answer. An insane, cryptic, chilling answer, one that made her shiver more than the cold lips against her ear. Harsh truths were forced into her as Margaux drilled away at her ribs, as if she was nailing the revelations to her body. This was a ruse from the start, she’d been picked, and now she was in the den of a woman who seemed to take glee in her every scream, who wanted nothing more than to tear her apart.

No one knew where she was. No one knew she was here. Her only future obligation was a match next week, but that wasn’t binding. Friction wrestlers quit without notice all the time. No one was going to come looking for her.

That realization almost caused her more distress than the mounting pain in her side and Margaux’s sudden shift in focus, as the madwoman pinned her arm to the ground, and started going to work on her arm. She shrieked as the metal stabbed at her arm and started to work its way down, but her brain was sending out signal flares, demanding action. She had to get out of here. She had to. This wasn’t some secluded building in the middle of nowhere, it was an apartment complex, with other rooms and other tenants. If she could just get far enough to let one of them know…

Desperate, she jerked upwards with her free arm and reached for Margaux face, frantically trying to rake her nails across it with a vicious scratch, hoping it would be enough for even a moment’s reprieve.

Snap. Break. Crush. Crack. Splinter. Fracture. Shatter.

The shrieks that reverberated around the room were enough to rattle the building to their very foundations. Margaux’s smile only grew more elated, more sinister and malign with every second that passed. It was like a game for her. How high a pitch could Makoto’s voice reach? Which places gave the best reaction? She’d get to them all eventually.

She could feel it all within the judoka’s arm as her metal fist tore away with reckless abandon. Her hackles stood up on end as her work progressed. Part of her couldn’t help but entertain the notion of deviating elsewhere. Her perfect face, her lush lips, her bright eyes. Oh, how her mouth watered at the notion, just wanting to ravage each and every crevice of those refined features.

But she stayed her hand for now. Gut the animal, then devour it.

She gave particular attention to the wrist as she worked her way down the extremity. If their “spar” was a good enough demonstration, it was a fair assumption that a judoka wasn’t much good without her arms. With each strike, she drew closer to defanging her prey. Then she would be able to fully indulge herself. The fruits of her labor becoming realized with every strike she threw into the woman’s frail and useless body.

Or rather...not quite as frail as she believed.

A claw found itself embedded deep into Margaux’s cheek, dragging along the skin and threatening to rend the flesh clean off her face. She attempted to pull away from it, but almost immediately stopped herself, unwilling to concede her seat atop the Judo Babe’s body. However, her nails were dug deep into her, bolstered by Makoto’s demand for survival. For now, she had to relent.

The Frenchwoman sat forward and brought both her hands to the woman’s arm, attempting to pull herself free from her grasp. In her desire to keep the Olympian pinned, however, she neglected her prey’s lower body to assert greater pressure on the shoulders, granting Makoto a fleeting moment of freedom for her legs.

For whatever reason, Makoto found her mind drifting as Margaux dismantled her arm bone by bone, going back to the Rose of Roses tournament from her glory days. The second round stuck in her mind specifically, when she’d had the misfortune of going up against Anesthesia in a street fight. She’d underestimated just how vicious the woman could be, and after managing to stave her off for a good five minutes, she learned the hard way. Something in the crazed nurse snapped, and she proceeded to slam Makoto’s face against every hard surface in the area.

The referee stopped things before they got too out-of-hand, but even so, Makoto needed multiple stitches, took a trip to the hospital, and needed half a year off before she was cleared to return. She thought back then, as she’d laid on the street with an aching back and a concussed skull, that she understood what true pain was.

Only today did she learn just how wrong she was on that front. Her body was a symphony of agony, starting with the bruised and broken ribs and growing loud as Margaux demolished her arm. Even though the pain, she had the wherewithal to recognize the idea, here - she was weakening, trying to make it so she couldn’t fight back, and then...Makoto had no intention of finding out what came next.

The hand that came up to claw at Margaux’s face was powered by desperation, but with more than a little rage, too. Rage at the woman who was attacking her, but also at herself, for falling for this in the first place. For being fooled by a pair of pretty eyes and a kind smile. Was she so desperate, so stupid that she couldn’t see this coming?

She knew the answer to that question, and it just fueled the rage even more. Rage equalled strength, and she used it to plant her feet on the floor, push up with her hips, and throw all she had in a single, strong, upward thrust, attempting to hurl Margaux off her with all the might she could muster.

Past indulging in her own desires, Margaux was not a primal being at heart. She didn’t tend to lose herself in the frenzy of blood and destruction that she so readily indulged in. Beyond her salivating mouth and wild gaze, there was still very much a keen awareness of the world beyond her, for it was in these moments that she felt the most alive. She was one with her prey and them one with her, whatever their thoughts.

Thus, the slight twitches in the judoka’s face hadn’t passed her by. The gritted teeth and tension welling up in her grasp as she desperately attempted to pull the boxer’s muscled arm away. Loneliness. Agony. Fury. She saw the cycle unfold before her very eyes, even as the woman beneath her tore away at her face.

All at once it came bubbling up and Makoto bucked her off. She went stumbling forward a couple paces on all fours before stopping on one knee. She giggled, slowly turning around as she rose. There was more fight in this one than she was expecting. Her blood was getting warm.

“What’s wrong, Makoto? Did I go too far? Have I offended you?” She spoke with sweet words, betraying the cutting smile on her face. She clasped her hands together, swaying her hips and shoulders left and right in a posture reminiscent of her more innocent, youthful years. “Would you like to talk about it? I only care for you ever so deeply and wish to be your deepest, closest friend in the whole wide world.”

It took everything in her power to muffle her laugh into a reasonable chuckle. She lowered her arms and merely watched the Olympian with a canted head and distant stare. Her curiosity was getting the better of her. She would rather just watch the judoka, wondering how exactly she was going to approach her little dilemma. Flight or fight? What was Makoto Aihara on instinct alone?

Makoto did it, she was free.

She could almost scarcely believe it was happening when it happened, but her desperate bid for freedom actually bore some real fruit. She bucked hard and Margaux was knocked off of. It wasn’t much, sure. The Frenchwoman was still more fit to fight than she was, and there was no way she’d let her run out of her without a hassle.

But Makoto could stand. She could run. It would be a painful, sloppy affair, but she was sure she could soldier through the hellish pain and make her way to freedom. Just a moment, a chance to leave this room and scream bloody murder. She could do it. She could run.

She was about to, too. Makoto sat up, gritting her teeth all the way, and prepared her body for the push...but then Margaux spoke, and all those thoughts vanished like morning mist.

It wasn’t just the things Margaux said, but the way she said them. That tone. That same sweet, saccharine tone that suckered her in the first place. She could just turn it on and off like a switch, and it was tacit confirmation that this whole thing had been a ploy from the first second. Just one big joke.

At that moment, Makoto didn’t care that she was outmatched. She didn’t care that her bones were a mess and that she likely had internal bleeding to some extent. She didn’t care that this was probably just a ploy to make her angry enough to attack.

Only one thing mattered in this instant: wiping that stupid smile off of Margaux’s face.

”Bitch!” With a feral, fierce noise that would’ve been better suited for some beast of the forest, Makoto scrambled to her feet and charged towards Margaux with awkward, ungainly steps. She threw her entire body at the woman, attacking to tackle her to the mat and rain down punches on her face, her chest, her neck, anything she could get a solid hit on.

This was an interesting development. Very interesting.

For a moment in her mind, an image of the Olympian flashed before her eyes. A few, in fact. One from the phone that her employer had slid across the coffee shop table to her. Another from when the judo girl looked over her shoulder, a small smile upon her lips as the two laughed  and giggled for a fleeting moment. The last just moments after they parted their embrace, and the final tears parted from her dazzling countenance.

None of that brightness remained in the snarling, howling apparition standing before her. Makoto Aihara was no longer.

Bitch.

She’d heard that words so many times, from so many different mouths, in so many languages that it hardly registered beyond a pair of rolling pupils and half-lidded eyelids. It was a word of spite, something to grant reprieve from in a hopeless situation. A word used only by the truly desperate and worthless. She knew that.

But even to Margaux, that word sent a chill up her spine knowing that it was Makoto of all people that had said it. It felt so foreign, so outlandish. It was as if that mouth hadn’t been designed for such a word. As if the fabric of reality quaked at its very utterance from Makoto’s lips. It was wrong. It was so very wrong.

She wanted more.

Margaux smiled from ear to ear as the judoka charged towards her. She welcomed the embrace. Relished in its coming. Inviting the judoka to clash, arms patiently at her sides, eager to prod the woman’s rage for all that it was worth even as she was tackled to the ground and quickly mounted. She kept her grin as wide as possible, baring her fangs and stretching her pink lips as far as she was able, even as punch after punch met the side of her face. Her head knocked left and right, her collarbone rattled, and ear was nearly blown out. But she kept smiling. This too was all she wanted.

But not too fast. Oh, not too fast. Her head traced up the woman’s side in direct contrast to the unrelenting savagery the once elegant judoka was now raining down upon her. Stopping at the site of injury, Margaux’s finger danced around the entrance, feeling for a disconnection. And she found it. Her palm widened  and clasped the damage ribs through Makoto’s supple skin. With a claw-like hold, she’d scrunch the ribs together, grating the bones and digging her nails into the skin. Would it remove Makoto off her person? No. Would it compress a lung? Perhaps. Would that prevent her from running any significant distance in the event she came to her senses and charged for the door? Most definitely.