Gaining Momentum - Round 2 - 'Bouncing' Betty Buchanan vs. Margaux Lefeuvre

”I don’t like this.”

Betty sighed for what had to be twelth time today, as she heard those words from her Lara, her second.  She’d been hearing them all day, and no, they weren’t getting any less tiring now, right now, as they were getting ready for the second most important match of Betty’s career. After squeaking by against Simone Skyles, Betty was in the second round of the tourney, one step to her goal of making Momentum her own personal kingdom. There was only one thing standing in her way of taking Cicilia in the finals - a Frenchie by the name of Margaux Lefeuvre.

Nothing to worry about - at least, as far as she was concerned. Lara was doing plenty of worrying for her, though, as she watched Margaux’s previous match on her iPhone, checking it as the two of them were getting ready in the back. Every once and while she’d wince and draw back, like she wasn’t really believing what she was seeing, but that wasn’t the sort of thing that Betty was going to let worry her too much - whatever this woman was bringing her way, she had an answer for it.

”Oy, will you relax?” Betty threw out a few practice punches from underneath her dark violet robe, staying nice and warm. ”You’re making me nervous, over here.”

Lara, leaning back against a wall nearby, waved the phone nearby, giving Betty a quick glance of the woman Margaux had knocked out in her round one fight, laid out on the canvas. ”Maybe you should be a little nervous. You seen this chick in action? She’s kind of serious stuff.”

”I’m ‘kind of serious stuff’.” Betty threw out a double-jab with a straight, slicing the air before she whipped around to face Lara, hands on hips. ”Hook or crook, right? We got a good strategy going on, here, no reason to change things up.” She shrugged. ”Have a little faith, be confident. I got us through the first round easy enough, I can do the same with some frog-eating bitch. So. Chill.”

Lara still looked skeptical, but didn’t voice her opinion beyond that, and that was the way it stayed, even as Betty was called out and the two of them made their way into the ring. Still riding high on her first win, she came down with a lot of bounce in her step and a smile on her face, ignoring the crowd’s low opinion of her first bout. No, she hadn't pretty, but so what? She was here, and Skyles was sitting at home. That was what playing nice got you.

She wasn’t here to make friends, she wasn’t here to get pats on the back. Betty Buchanan was in the business of winning matches.

Making her way into the ring, she promptly slide over to her corner and shedded the robes, revealing her purple top and bottoms with the black trim, topped off with matching gloves. Eager to get this going, she cracked her neck from side to side as she waited for her foe to come on out.

Theme:

Only a moment after Betty’s theme had faded into the background did a series of violent and foreboding wails quickly follow in its shadow. The fear it elicited was palpable as the excitement from the Bouncing Betty’s entrance gave way to restrained applause and scattered jeers. Two figures emerged from behind the fluorescent pink and scarlet red from the top of the ramp. Beneath her hooded robe, Margaux’s shaded expression was complemented by the dignified black and white of the steward by her side. Their descent was slow and orderly, stepping with the weight and force uttered in every demonic chance that echoed throughout the arena.

As the pair made their last steps down the walkway, however, it became easier to make out the dejected expressions upon their faces. Well, upon the butler’s face, at least. Margaux wore a mask that expressed an outright annoyance more than anything. Her brows furrowed and her arms crossed, she seemed a far cry from the gleeful and eager pugilist that had savored every strike and blow from her exchange with Madison Kelly. If anything, she appeared as a woman inconvenienced. Perturbed. When the pair reached the ring floor, they opted to round Betty’s corner of the ring rather than cut the opposite, shorter path to Margaux’s corner. As they passed by the purple-clad pugilist and her number two, their conversation became audible over the theme music. They spoke loudly and clearly, not caring for who may have been listening in as they passed.

“Well, I for one distinctly recall insisting for the umpteenth time, Olivier, that you were to have ze music for my grand arrival changed!”

Oliver coughed and rubbed his hands together meekly as he stood upright. “I-I sincerely apologize, Madame. But ze...'heavy metal’, as the outsiders refer to it, carries within its abrasive tones a certain energy that most certainly suits tonight’s-”

“Non, non!” She dismissed with a wave of her glove, closing her eyes as they rounded the next corner. “Debauchery, my dear Olivier! Simply uncouth! Anything beyond that...drivel! Stravinsky, Boch, Debussy. Talent that exudes a touch of flair with a classical approach to the grandiose. The overture must speak for itself, a trademark that any such cultured individual may identify with relative ease and yet is nevertheless is inspired with awe upon receiving its tones.”

The pair ascended the steps as they continued their public debacle. Margaux stepped between the ropes and entered the ring before standing with arms spread wide. Olivier reached over the top rope and began to remove the robe from her figure, untying the sash around her waist and pulling her two-tone hood low to reveal the matching mane underneath. Margaux pointed her gaze to the opposite corner, nodding Betty’s way.

“Take that slovenly woman over there. Would that deplorable appearance and punitive posture be restored, if even a little, by a heavenly crescendo and iconic overture? Would even an inkling of class and culture be spared for that lowly appearance of hers?” Margaux turned her attention back to Olivier, placing one hand to her chest and disrupting his attempts to disrobe her. “I, Margaux Lefeuvre, am a spectacular person. I make a spectacular entrance. I thus require spectacular music.”

Olivier adopted a shameful frown, seemingly losing his composure slightly as he bowed deeply with one hand crossed over his chest. The embarrassment from insulting his dear Madame was almost visible as it weighed on his shoulders.

“It was my gravest error to insult you so, Madame. Please forgive my ignorance and I promise I shall devote myself to fulfilling your most honorable and dignified request to the utmost of my ability. If you would but allow me to present you for the evening’s festivities as the first act on a long road towards redemption in your eyes...” Margaux peered at him with a sidelong glance before facing forward again.

“Hmph. Do as you will.” Olivier nodded once and grasped the fabric at her shoulders, peeling the robe away to reveal her trained and envious frame to the world once more. Her gray top stretched and sagged as she rolled her head back and sighed to the stage lights, opening her eyes fully before lowering them again.

Margaux Lefeuvre :

Her disgusted face flipped on a lid in an instant to an infinitely more pleasant aspect the instant she made eye contact with Betty. She raised her glove into the air and gave a friendly wave and warm smile from across the ring. “Bonne soirée, mon ami! Your hair looks lovely from a distance!”

Betty liked to do her sizing up in the moment and get a good read on her opponent, figure out the best way to work her ‘ring hustle’. In her experience? People were easy to take out once you figured what made them tick, and that didn’t change when they put on boxing gloves. It was enough to get her through any situation, she was sure.

This was going to be a little different, though. She could tell that right away.

Her hackles began to raise the moment that her opponent’s music - if you could call it that - started up, and the two figures appeared in the gloom. It was a show, just trying to get in her head, and it wasn’t going to mess her up when the bell rang, but all the same, there was something wrong about it. Something off. And that something was only going to get more off as her opponent and her - butler? Manservant? Slave? - made their way around the ring, chatting with each other. It was a long, strange conversation, one that Betty could hear quite clearly, probably because she was supposed to. From it, she was able to gleam certain facts.

Margaux wasn’t just French, but an annoying flavor of French.

She thought highly of herself. Very fucking highly.

She didn’t think much of Betty, or at least the way she looked.

The first and two facts would just make knocking her out all the sweeter, and she wouldn’t have cared so much about the final one if not for the snooty way she got her opinion out there. The bitch was trying to rile her up, she could see it, and Betty had every intention of making her wish she hadn’t done such a good job at it. ”And your face is about to look like shit up close, bitch!” She pumped a fist Margaux’s way as the referee moved between them, only acknowledging the exchange with a roll of her eyes. She held out her hands and ushered both of the fighters towards the center of the ring, ready to get the pleasantries out of the way and get the match going.

Betty slapped her gloves towards and strode forward, muttering under her breath as she approached and never letting her gaze linger from Margaux’s face, not even for a second. It was rare that Betty let herself get so invested in a match that she was actually looking forward to just pounding someone’s face in, but she had to admit, this woman was getting her there in record time.

Margaux was rather excited about all of this. No, nothing about her opponent particularly garnered her interest from a strictly aesthetically-pleasing point of view. Her style, garb, attitude. All things that could be set aside mentally when it came down to the key aspects of tonight. Above all, the Frenchwoman was simply happy to have another opportunity to re-decorate this intimate little space she’d grown surprisingly fond of. She was happy to be a part of such endearing progress with her betters.

Ms. Buchanan didn’t seem to quite share her happiness. As planned. The fist pointed her way was everything she could have hoped for. The corner of Margaux’s mouth wagged, threatening another inch of growth from her cheshire-cat grin into something far more genuine. She held it back. In good time. She instead turned for the moment to look to her aide, scrunching her eyebrows with imaginary feelings that had been deeply offended.

“Aww, Olivier. She does not wish to play.~”

He made a slight, quick bow forward. “A terrible tragedy, Madame. Perhaps you could convince her otherwise?”

The pinkette allowed the eerie stretch of perfect pink along her lips to say all she needed on his suggestion. She brought her gaze back around and marched dutifully to the center, meeting Betty on the opposite end of the Momentum logo, her gloves pliant at her sides and arms relaxed without a care. Her head was crooked slightly as she took in her foe through low-lidded eyes. Unlike the rest of her, nothing stood out too badly. Leaner than the last one, but only sufficiently so. It was a nice body, not to undersell the foul-mouthed vagrant, but she was missing a certain something. Hm. What ever could it be?

Ah, of course. Scars.

Margaux didn’t offer her gloves. There was no point. The official looked between them as she ran down the rules before letting them return to their corners. Intensity was shifting the atmosphere between the three. Margaux, for her part, couldn’t have looked more composed. She liked the intensity in the eyes staring straight back at her. What she didn’t quite like she made obvious with a frilly wave of her glove close to her nose.

“Ugh. Sight is not ze only sense bettered by distance in this slovenly arrangement. Must you smell of degeneracy as well?”

Lara did not like this. Not one little bit.

As Margaux and her - butler? Manservant? Alfred? - talked, something about them made her red flags raise, even more so than the already high level they were at when this whole thing started. She’d met boxers who were calm before a fight, a sign of good mental control, but this one was just way too lax about the whole thing. Something about the way she looked over Betty, a slight hint of something more feral going on under the surface. It was enough to make her hairs raise, even more so with how apparent Betty was making it that she didn’t see any of it.

The referee started to lay out the rules, but it didn’t seem like either fighter were [color:93cc=cc33ff]”Don’t like the way I smell, huh? Won’t smell shit with a broken nose!” She spat - literal, actual spit - at Margaux’s feet, aiming at her shoes, before the referee ushered her back, doing her best to speak up over the fans’ booing.

”Enough! Enough! Keep that up and I’ll disqualify, I swear!”

Betty just waved off the warning as she came back to her corner, waiting for the bell to ring. Lara groaned, wishing she had more time to talk with her friend about the best way to approach this, but her time was short. Had to keep it simple. ”Look, I know you’re hot, but take it slow at the start, okay? Feel this one out, and we’ll work from there. No big risks!”

Be careful. Make the first round more of a feeling out process. Don’t take unneeded risks. It was good, sound advice.

And Betty ignored it the moment the match started.

The bell’s ring might as well have been a starter pistol. Betty came dashing out from her corner, practically sprinting towards Margaux with reckless abandon. The instant she was in range, she reeled back and put her all into a massive right cross, looking to floor her opponent with all the force she could muster, putting her all into the haymaker.

Margaux’s aide saw this coming. From the way Margaux had little more than flinched at the spittle splattered on the pristine gloss of her pink boots. From the beastial tinge in her eyes once the referee shooed her away to her corner. Even in the taste of the smoldering atmosphere between the two. Oh yes. This cold rage would have its reckoning.

His madame was barely two steps out of her corner when Benethany decided in her no-doubt infinite wisdom to charge her down like the boorish animal she was proving herself to be. A simple play of defiance, one Olivier had seen denied too many times before to even attempt an act of surprise at the inevitable result. He could practically count off the openings she had left for herself and that his liege must have been taking note of. Disappointing really. He’d expect the second round to pose a significantly greater chall...

Why wasn’t Margaux guarding? Betheany was only a step away now and her gloves were still flat at her sides, totally relaxed as if she couldn’t comprehend the danger coming her way. The only thing the pinkette cared to offer Betty was a serene smile, flashed with that clandestine white from ear to ear.

“Madame! Your guard!”

Margaux did not hear that. Her face kept its serene expression absent an ounce of worry as she kept her eyes on Betty, watching as those lines of irritation give her forehead the most interesting folds. She found those far more interesting than the pink pugilist’s fist that was suddenly barreling towards her, but a few inches from her face after a single flutter of the eyelash. Margaux looked past that and to her face. Through her eyes and into her being. Pretty amethyst.

With an almost pitiful amount of effort, she ducked and weaved to Betty's right side. As the haymaker swiveled through empty air and the American had scarce an opportunity to shift her gaze, death loomed upon her. Margaux’s body went taut, her quads peeking beneath her shorts bulge in sharp definition, the musculature along her arms surged and her toned abdomen flexed as she twisted her body with a barrelling right hook straight at Betty’s head.

The sheer, devastating force of her magnificent counter would be enough to folly even the strongest woman...if the madame were of a practical mind. The Frenchwoman opted not for her jaw or that vulnerable kidney, somewhere that would have ended this in rather curt fashion. Rather, her right glove would find its way to the woman’s ear, determined to let that resounding, deafening bell ring and rattle her cranium.

Betty swore, it was like time just slowed down to a crawl. Maybe it was the adrenaline, slowing everything down to bullet time, or maybe she was just so focused that everything seemed. Like some kind of weird sense that got activated in her brain when she was revved up.

Or, maybe, God was real, and he had a sick sense of humor, and he wanted to drag this moment on for as long as possible.

Whatever the reason, she was in a zen kind of mind as she threw herself in a headlong flight towards Margaux. Fist drawn back and clenched, pink hair flying about, every muscle tensed and ready to strike. She was a jungle cat pouncing on her prey, a lioness throttling the gazelle, and it didn’t matter one lick to her that her prey didn’t seem the least bit concerned about the meteor that was careering towards her face. She didn’t know why Margaux didn’t see fit to block and she could not have cared less.

Lara, however, had those concerns. For some reason, she was reminded of the time she saw a man get hit by a car when he crossed the street at the wrong time. Seeing him walk out, seeing the car heading his way too fast, knowing, in that instant, what would happen and being completely able to stop it. The only thing here, though, was that she couldn’t shake the feeling that Margaux was the car in this metaphor, but she couldn’t figure out exactly why.

And then, she could.

Betty threw her punch and missed, but barely. So barely that it was almost hard to tell that Margaux had dodge, avoiding the blow with the least amount of effort possible. Not that it mattered - Betty had put much into that blow, far too much, and now it had her off balance and open. Her opponent could’ve hit her with any number of things in that crucial moment, couldn’t laid her out with a haymaker and took an early ten count.

Instead, her punch sliced into the side of her head, right on Betty’s ear. For a split second, the pink pugilist had a tinge of relief, glad that she hadn’t taken anything too bad for her fuckup...until she tried to straighten up and found her legs had suddenly turned to jelly. Dizzy and dazed, her arms came up in a weak guard as she staggered back, her equilibrium so out of whack that she couldn’t hope for anything else.

And just like that, the bug’s life was forfeit.

Why do they insist on buzzing so close to those larger than them beyond measure? Do they not realize the aggravation their presence brings? Do they lack a mind and awareness of their own? In fact, why did she never feel so bad when she crushed them beneath her shoe, in the palm of her fist? Why was there but a twinge in her heart where sorrow should be?

The little girl with brown hair pondered the pretty wings and scattered legs in her hand once more before she heard the abbey’s bell. With a glance over her shoulder, she looked back, brushed the remains from her hand, and frolicked through the flowers back home.

Why was she remembering that now, if she had to guess?

In the back of her mind, maybe that question would receive a bit more rumination. Margaux was too entertained in the way Betty’s head cracked like a drum to pay many other things mind. Not even the crowd’s collective roar and wince of displeasure at the ugly sight could take her eyes nor ears away from this moment.

She watched her foe scatter like a fawn, barely able to support itself on both legs. If she could still hear, then the laugh that Margaux let out a second after may as well have sounded the dinner bell for the demons lurking in her fists. Her gloves creased tight. The playful smile across her lips was taking on a devious turn at the edges, threatening to show fangs and draw on the mania in her wide gaze.

She wasn’t letting Betty go. As the pinkette staggered and put up what she assumed was an attempt at a guard, Margaux burst forth and chased like a hound after blood. She didn’t care to dance around the issue with hooks now. Stepping in so close their toe could nearly touch, Margaux let free with a one cross after another, alternating lefts and rights that drilled right into her opponent’s arms and gloves. Whether they fell away or broke through, she wanted that lovely face at the center and that spiteful tongue wherever it was hiding.

Lara had been working with Betty for a while now, a good long while, and she had a fairly concrete idea of what the woman was capable of and what she could do at her best and worst. Being honest, she wasn’t all that good of a boxer, going off skills and stats alone. Not bad, better than half, but scarcely above average. Where she tended to do well was when it came to the mental aspect of things. The woman had a good mind for working the referee and turning a match to her advantage, even against opponents who should, on paper, run circles around her.

But that mind was only any good to Betty if it was working. From the looks of it, that was temporarily not the case. ”Protect yourself! Betty!”

Those words came to Betty in a distorted, garbled fashion, scarcely registering as she saw the three Margaux’s heading her way. Her body was trying to get itself back on track, but everything was off kilter now, and while she had the sense to put her guard up, she suspected it wasn’t anywhere near solid enough to do the job.

She was right.

The first punch might as well have not even been blocked, slicing through the guard like a bullet through butter and crashing on her nose. In a way, that was a good thing - it woke Margaux up a bit, gave her enough mind to tighten up further, but even that only went so far with her opponent on the warpath. Blow after blow hammered her against the ropes, with more than a few slipping past her arms and rattling her face. A bad situation getting worse by the second.

Desperate, Betty threw her body forward and opened her arms, trying to pull Margaux in with a clench. It was only a temporary way to stop this, trying to plug up the damn with a finger, but it was better than nothing. She’d take every single second she could buy.

Beauty was what she’d call it. That nearly indescribable moment of awe and ecstasy as one appreciated the utter destruction painted across another’s face in their final hour of revelation. It wasn’t just an impact, it was a ripple of force across the American’s face. Everything she could have wanted and longed to experience over and over again before she left this night bloody and bare.

The image of a steel axe shattering a shield came to mind, reducing the wood to splinters with one mighty strike. Everything after that flowed naturally. The Frenchwoman pummeled her prey, savoring the way her nose crunched with the first strike and kept up the pressure from there on. The jeering from the audience went in time with her blows, watching the slaughter as the pinkette strung her opponent up with her back to the ropes. There was nearly nothing she could do about it.

Nearly. Betty had a sound mind behind that foul mouth and chose the best course of action for someone in her state: keep Margaux in check.

That was alright. She could make do with this. And Betty.

She fought the girl for her balance. They stumbled a few paces back towards the center before Margaux put a stop to it, bringing her substantial strength to bear before she forced the both of them to turn slightly on the spot through fumbling footwork. They wouldn’t go anywhere, but from this angle Margaux’s head would be obscured from the referee. She wouldn’t be able to see the side of her head pressed close against Betty’s. Or the grin shaping on her lips. Or her mouth moving close to her opponent’s ears.

“Hard of hearing, Bethany?” A hushed whisper and long deep breath were all the hints given when the inevitable happened: she bit the girl’s ear. Right on the cartilage. Enough to hear it snap and dig in before she let go after a couple seconds, not wanting to give the caper so quickly.