AV 20 Death Bunny vs. Margaux Lefeuvre

Match Type: Hell in a Cell
Special Stipulation: Ring and outside area surrounded by a cage, top covered by the cage.
Win Conditions: Pinfall, Submission or Knockout

Insects scurrying in their hardhats went to work in the center of the ring, constructing the final preparations for tonight’s feast. From the side several crewmen watched as the roof of steel bars descended onto the towering frame cornering each side of the beating heart of the arena, sealing it away with a final clasp of stainless steel. Their nail guns went to work thereafter. They sealed the roof tight, locked the cage at its corners, and fastened the creation to the floor. They looked to one another and nodded their arrogant approval. Whatever entered, surely they thought said with self-assured grins and smiles, could never possibly get out.

A certain pinkette in the green room was interested in exploring those possibilities. She kept to herself by the mirror, saying a curiously little amount to the other man in his tuxedo sharing her space only a couple steps behind her, hands crossed behind his back and upright as he addressed her. Not a hair out of place.

“Far be it from me, Madame, to suggest your way of life to be particularly...distasteful. But I cannot hold my tongue. I am afraid when I say that tonight’s event may be beyond your current penchant for the extreme.” He received no response from the woman in the mirror. She fawned over her hair, brushing the brown locks over one shoulder as she looked at herself from another angle.

“The organization latched beneath you would be eager to follow suit in the unlikely event of your demise. I, of course, find dwelling on these unsavory prospects fundamentally counterproductive. I simply worry for the state of affairs and that you may not be considering every point of view for tonight.” Quite to the contrary. Margaux had just given herself another twirl and admired her backside for the second time in these lovely designer shorts. The point of view just didn’t seem to matter with Andre’s handiwork. She gave herself one more look over. Every piece was in place, perfectly measured. Except one.

“Will she like these boots?”

Olivier adjusted his monocle. “Adore, Madame.”

Margaux smiled. Content finally with her appearance, she turned to take a few steps closer towards her trusted aide. She looked into his eyes for a moment and he stared back into hers, those mismatched twins he still failed to fully comprehend after all this time within her service. He was so taken he just nearly failed to notice the gloved hand gracing his cheek.

[“My dearest Olivier. I will always have you by my side, will I not? How can we count the ways? When we dissolved the Arno family? When we broke the national police at Nice? Starved the last of our competitors in the Siege of November? You were there then. You are here now.”] Her hand came lower, falling to brush against his chest. His face remained still as he looked at her serene face. [“Do you still think that I can be killed?”]

Olivier chuckled. That made her stop for an instant, her smile sinking behind a fleeting curiosity. He never did that. She felt touched by a fleeting sense of whimsy. ["Such boundless ambition, I sometimes forget you are still a child. All men must break, Madame. I have come to understand it as the ultimate truth of this world.”]

Margaux was silent for a moment. A faint smile stretched overtook her lips as her fingers entwined with the gloved hand of her aide. She looked to him with eyes filled with hope.

[“Then tomorrow, let us fall to pieces.”] She tucked the elder’s hand close to her chest, joining both of her hands before leaning close with a comforting whisper. [“Tonight. Let’s cook poultry together.”]

Simply Refined:

A genteel piano filled the air of Tokyo's fading night. It was with a certain character, refined and elegant, rising to a certain tempo that nobody present could recall being familiar with. It danced on thin waves to a fitting crescendo that faded into nothing. Then, all at once, it came crashing down in a flurry of lights. Everyone understood who Death Bunny was. The reputation of Friction’s resident revenant extended beyond the barracks and beds of AFW’s dormitories, beyond the audience with eyes stuck to the rays of their television sets. She was in every shadow and lived in each corner painted dark and shrouded. The fear that only Margaux had missed her chance to dethrone the Queen of the Night. She would not make that same mistake again.

The woman from France stepped out with her butler at her side into the magenta stage lights overlapping with smaller, thin rays of white dancing to and fro. Her form was temporarily obscured by her umbrella, carried out in front of her for those first few, crucial steps to the edge of the walkway where she promptly stopped. It was impossible to see anything from her boots to the slightest peek at her netted thighs. All at once, the moment passed and the elegant mobster threw her umbrella over one shoulder with a regal flourish.

Paris Royal:

Margaux began down the steps after the ecstasy passed. Her steps were methodical and deliberate the whole way. She seemed to be treating this as a walk down the runway with a hand at her hip rather than the march towards her inevitable death. No doubt that was what many of the awestruck faces surrounding her were beginning to surmise and picture her sacrifice to the Lethal Lepus no doubt watching from afar. Somewhere. Somehow. Maybe that was the reason for that perfect and rosy smile across her face as she finally reached the ring floor and found herself faced with the cage door. Her fingers were shaking until they touched the steel frame.

She pushed open the steel door and closed her umbrella before holding it out to one side. Olivier grasped the handle and took it from her without a second thought, turning on the spot to disappear back up the ramp and into the back halls with little more than a bow. No parting words, no tearful affections. The man departing radiated with unseen confidence in the woman at his back. He could no longer count on twice as many fingers how often he’d accompanied her into these wretched circumstances. Ten thousand tongues thirsted for blood with the coming tide. If there was one thing the butler could assure those bearing witness to her magnificence, it would see their wishes fulfilled beyond what they could suffice.

The official shut the door behind Margaux as she entered. She took a moment to eye the steel lattice from top to bottom, admiring the finish and taking a moment to remember this feeling of standing at the center of it all, trapped. A look of inspiration burdened her countenance. Sinister ideas began to flood her mind. She pushed them aside for the time being and continued her walk towards the ringside. She climbed the steel steps, throwing one leg over the middle rope, followed by the other as the Frenchwoman pulled herself inside. She held her hands out to either side as she made long strides across the ring floor, presenting herself to this new world that would soon know her name. Her hair danced on the wind, the light fabric of her outfit shined with a genteel halo about her lithe frame. At her corner, she posed with a hand at her hip and another behind her head as she peered over her shoulder to the baying crowd at her back, whistling their worthless approval and howling their meaningless cheers. It was all expected. Would any less be an appropriate reaction to her beauty? Her grace? Her mere presence?

Sheep.

Tonight, there was only one person that mattered.

Time itself...although proven in perpetuity to be an infallible equalizer for those attached to this mortal coil, indeed appeared to hesitate in its eternal march forward once the pomp and circumstance of the challenger's theatrical entrance appeared to peter down. Those left amongst the teeming masses who had not yet taken their seat now rushed to do so with muttered whispers towards their compatriots inquiring as to what they had missed. From atop the elongated ramp there was only a stillness of motion, indicating zero activity being perpetrated around the entrance's grandiose presentation as LED lights continued in their typical flashing rotation. The chaotic coalescence of thousands upon thousands of apprehensive fans' rambling voices merging together into an oceanic white noise with only an occasional high-pitched whistle overcoming the indecipherable sputtering. The Satanic Structure having lost since been erected by dutiful employees, and now stood as a chain-linked harbinger of the gratuitous barbarity due to unfold within once the stage had properly been set and all of its players were in attendance. Eventually the prolonged passage of time began being noticed by one and all as tangible anticipation became the overriding sentiment that usurped all other thought processes. Fleeting though it was, fears of her possibly not making her awe-inspiring entrance began being thought upon. Until eventually a rhythmic chant and accompanied clap began to rouse up...



A singular chime signaled the complete and absolute eclipsing of the stadium into abject darkness, not one fleeting glint of luminescence could be seen as an ebon shadow muted out all sense of hope and faith-driven optimism. And yet, in a maddened fervor that shook the stadium to its very core, a raucous clamor of vociferous pandemonium burst forth from the cheering masses as all of that pent-up anticipation was finally given its opportunity to vent. A midnight tint of shaded blue was reflected all along the entrance-way and was therefore the only visible structure being lit before several plumes of hellfire started shooting upward at the top of the ramp from beneath the suddenly fogged over flooring. Neither the floor nor the reasoning behind where the flames were coming could be ascertained from beneath the nebulous mist. Visions of lightning alongside a full moon were being broadcast from the monolithic screen...until...

???:

...a lone silhouette would shamble forth from seemingly out of nowhere. The ominous figure becoming the centered point of breath-taken fixation for every living soul in the stadium simultaneously captivated yet instilled with a bone-chilling dread from The Phenom's ethereal aura. A baleful pillar of imperceptible maliciousness that stood amongst what appeared to be a sea of lost souls reaching out for the one could bring their agonizing and damned existence to a blissful conclusion. Yearning though they were from within this River Styx, not one dared to actually lay a finger upon the Reaper who oversaw the passing of all such restless souls into the afterlife. And who began making concerted strides through this abominable and murky ocean and straight towards the twenty-foot-high steel entrapment as her somber music echoed throughout. Motioning closer towards the ring and making her figure more visible in the moonlight.

???:

Her grim pacing evoking the inevitably of what she represented as balls of blazing fire continued once again to be discharged from within the fogged over flooring behind her. The scorching fireballs adding an orange hue for the fleeting seconds they were emblazoned into the night sky with Death's march continuing onward. The gobsmacked ringside attendant scarcely managing to slap herself out of her stupor to timidly begin opening the cage door just in time for her arrival. Death taking her grim time in observing and somewhat reveling in the steel structure before her, then zeroing in her dead-eyed attention on the participant within as she took her time entering within. The attendant nervously closing and locking the door behind Death before scurrying off and tripping over her feet in the process. The woman of mythic proportions maneuvering up the steel steps until she stood at their top...a sedated raising upward of her arms bringing the hellfire previously located at the top of the ramp, to now be fired all along the lining of the open air arena to the startled amazement of those in attendance having up till now reacted to all of this wth either maddened cheers, or silenced reverence. Death solemnly entering the ring between the middle and top rope and stepping towards her corner, where the removal of her hat unveiled the white of her eyes and brought forth the illumination of the stadium. All signs of ghouls and knee-high fog disappearing nigh-instantly, her hat and tattered trenchcoat being handed to the referee who intricately handled them and placed them to the side.

"...you know, one of these days you have to explain to me how you guys keep pulling off all these elaborate entrances" said one flabberghasted Head Of Production with a headset on to a tech-guy standing nearby, scratching the side of his head in abject confusion.

"A-Actually...we uh, don't do anything. None of this was from my crew or any other crew working here, sir. We...d-don't have any clue how she pulls this off either" replied the dumbstruck stagehand, both of them staring at each-other before turning their attention back to the monitor and gulping in unison.

The encroaching darkness that engulfed the arena stained the air with a harrowing, lingering dread. If the Madame's appearance were characterized by candid noise and outright brutality, then the Phantom's was a silent killer, unseen yet fated within the minds of the countless present. Towers of firing inferno brought them across the veil to the lone silhouette that stood at the apex of all things. As the nightmare descended her throne, every tongue held still. The more faithful among them held their crosses close, clutched their beads tightly, and murmured an unheard prayer in the encroaching darkness. It wouldn’t help them. The semblance of comfort was fleeting and faded the closer the Dreaded One approached the ring.

The sudden shift in the arena’s atmosphere gripped the Madame’s spine with a curiously familiar chill along its length. It took her to a time when she was still afraid of things in the dark, horrors from the other world, and judgment from the divine. It filled her with a whimsical nostalgia as much as it did foreboding dread. Together, the sentiments sprouted a wicked grin across the Frenchwoman’s face.

Everything fit the intelligence she’d consumed over several years of comfortable study. Every rumor, every passing thought, every curious little notion passed between mouths that either knew nothing at all or knew too much for their own good. Margaux had constructed the most accurate image she could of what it would be like to stand face to face with the Grim Reaper over hundreds of hours of accounts and doctrines. And it was everything she believed it would be.

But as she watched the dead woman enter the cage and step through the ropes, the hint of fear at her back quickly faded into the ether. It was there, but distant and dissipated. She may have been a monster, but a monster in a circus sullied with fancies of wealth and valor. Wasn’t it all such a shame? When the shroud disappears and all that is left is...wanting?

Margaux waited for the official to call them both forward to the center. She waltzed forward with slow steps and hands at her hips as their feet graced the surface of the Friction logo. Her head canted to one side, her mix of pink and brown locks gently flowing to one side as she revered the full stature of her adversary without that encumbering trench coat. Exuding raw power with every breath. Her mismatched eyes reflected an untarnished astonishment at the sight. She needed everything this one had to offer.

Her palm came to meet her chin, her fingertips gracing the bottom of her lip as she looked upon Death Bunny with a palpable curiosity. Her tongue shifted to its native tones.

[“My subordinates never returned after our prior engagement.”] The Frenchwoman’s leer grew to one side in a vicious smirk. [“Would you happen to know what became of them?”]

Whatever mystified smoke that lingered had arisen upward into the atmosphere as dispersed vapor once all semblance of darkness had been erased by the arena's brightened illumination. Light and life returning to the jam-packed stadium all at once as the throngs of bystanders brought the decibel level to new heights for the evening. As if they had been spellbound in quiet reverie for the entirety of her other-worldly materialization, but were then released from their transfixed enthrallment to remember where they were and what they were about to witness. Uproarious bellows and feral adulation reigned over all within the stadium now filled to the brim with die-hard fanatics eager to witness exactly what this match-type promised, and what The Dead Woman always delivered on whenever another entered into her domain.

So far not a word was spoken from the stoic reaper currently staring straight ahead towards the dual hair colored madame directly across from her, a hollow lifelessness to her iris' that still had a honed concentration to them. Mystery still abounded as to how seamlessly this posh and poised mob boss can become what she needed to become in order to survive all of this. The odd dichotomy of a bloodthirsty crime boss veiled behind a demure socialite was still quite the elaborate ruse...but by now she'd seen hints of it firsthand. In subtle glimpses into those twin colored eyes, in faint upticks to the corners of her mouth. They were akin to poker tells, in that only other people of the same ilk can notice them. And if DB's own information network was to be believed, Margaux has yet to truly show Death her full hand.

Tugging down on her black gloves while outstretching her fingers, Death approached the middle of the ring at the referee's signaling as well. A resolute stride with commanding purpose that nevertheless showcased the bunny girl's ample assets stretched against her booty shorts until she'd come center-stage with her dance partner for the evening. Sublime skin, graceful posture and an elegant French accent still did not a savage sociopath make. But to Margaux's question spoken with her silken voice and native tongue in regards to her two henchman whom she'd sicced on D.B. but were never seen of since...Death could do naught but smile. Burgeoning upon her face slowly and somehow turning an expression of cheerfulness now illicit outright dread as she looked up to the roof while taking her right arm and started digging through her pocket. She'd find what she wanted and balled that hand into a fist, dropping these items into Margaux's hand.

...a chained pendant holding a picture of a loved one inside, a gold ring, and a tooth with gold fillings. All splattered with dried blood. "They won't be needing these where they're going. You can't take it with you, ya know? [None of us can..."]Death's smile becoming the solemn grimace she's known for as she grimly uttered her final words en français, now beginning to backpedal as the referee opted not to even ask what was going on anymore and instead signaled for the ringing of the bell with a flapping wave of their arm.

It was midnight at the Louvre around that time. Snow was falling like cold petals dancing over the bounds of sleek Earth all around them. The street lights seemed to make the night glisten with a heavenly hue. Across the way Margaux stood watching the young couple from under the comforting umbrella of her aide. Against the backdrop of that spectacular pyramid of glass and steel, they embraced in its warming halo. She remembers smiling for quite some time then, to the point that her cheeks started to ache.

Margaux gasped. Her vision had suddenly become blurred and foggy. The moisture welling between her eyelids fell in a single drop and splashed against the clear surface of the portrait. Her free hand slowly wiped it all away with one flourish. The vow sworn at midnight. Those halcyon days...how far away were they now?

She twirled the locket round, wrapping the thin golden chain around the width of her fingers before it landed squarely in the palm of her hand. Margaux flicked the amulet open to see the framed picture of a lovely woman with eyes of a shimmering cerulean, and the happy man she once knew at her side. A cruel, unfair smile sorrowfully started to appear on the Frenchwoman's lips.

["Yes...I suppose they cannot…"] Margaux ran the ridge of her thumb along the locket's fragile chain.

The referee could only look between them, oddly transfixed at the scene. He looked to the Reaper and followed her stoic gaze down at Margaux, who almost appeared lost, far far away as she disappeared into the portrait cradled in the center of her palm.

And the moment he turned his back, the Madame's open hand clenched tight around the locket and swung up with a backfist to the underside of Death Bunny's jaw. By the time the official turned back around, the gong had already sounded and mayhem would break loose. Margaux aimed to catch the Revenant on the backpedal. Regardless of whether her knuckles found purchase in her swift strike, Margaux gave chase, reeling her tightly clenched fist back and swinging with reckless abandon with one flourishing straight after another upside-down Death Bunny's head in a desperate, violent struggle towards the ropes.

So familiar. So very familiar...

Messages written in blood were often not needed to be repeated...a phrase Death had once uttered in passing to her second-in-command in what seemed like a lifetime ago. Perched atop her throne like a mad queen in shadowed solitude as she contemplated strategies, seeing the chessboard play out three moves ahead at times. Scholars and philosophers romanticized the concept of leadership with flowery syntax and hopeful ideology...but to know you've just sent a man to their ultimate demise...someone who you may have considered a friend, even. Epic poetry and sonnets could never find the words to encompass that particular feeling. Death had done it herself. Unknowingly, and sometimes knowingly. Pawns sacrificed on a board and gambits taken towards what was intended to be achieving a victory with as little bloodshed taken as possible. Eventually though, all of those smaller sacrifices begin to pile up, until that's exactly what your throne becomes perched upon.

Margaux should have known that this was always a possible consequence of her actions. Another small personal rule of D.B.'s that she figured only seemed natural...was that if you tried to kill her than she'd fucking kill you right back. It's why hitmen eventually stopped taking on bounties for her bunny-eared head no matter how much money was offered from mob bosses. People learned that her name was one bestowed through actions and...*sigh*...this was all from a world and life she thought left in her rear-view mirror long ago. And certainly not something she wanted Blossom to learn of or become involved in one iota. What mattered now was the present and probable future. And in this case just how Margaux would react to being informed of the fate of her lost henchmen. A question answered via her lunging backfist whiffing past D.B.'s jawline only by the grace of a nimble backstep on her part.

"Hup!!!" Already having been backpedaling enabled Death to evade the first salvo with a darkened sneer from having finally seen just what Marg brought to the table once she'd abandoned that posh and upscale mask of hers. One back-step turned into several as the evasive rabbit seemed just out of reach throughout her retreating footwork, the whiffing wind from each of Margaux's strikes felt against the side of her face only scarcely avoiding the Frenchwoman's fury. If it seemed uncharacteristic for Death to be so deftly put on the defensive was because she'd suddenly lunge forward and clamp on to her adversaries’ neck with both hands. Tightening that restriction with dead-eyed glare before pivoting around and downright chucking Margaux off of her feet back first into the turnbuckle, where Death would grip on to the top rope and proceed to stomp, stomp, and stomp the treads of her boot into the Frenchwoman's midsection.

One good shot. All Margaux needed was one good shot on Death Bunny’s face and she could have been happy with whatever came next.

The opening salvo wouldn’t change much. The refined mobster had been in too many battles and close brushes with the other side to tell the difference between a formidable foe and ones that simply overestimated their station in life. Margaux wouldn’t be able to knock her down with a single punch, but if she could land one, she could gauge what exactly she was up against.

But of course, Death wouldn’t grant her that so easily. She moved like a phantom, shifting and warping around every strike the Frenchwoman attempted to drill through her with killer precision. She was a shadow dancing around the pinkette’s blows but Margaux filled to renege. She almost had the bunny at the ropes. In a moment, she would have nowhere to go and then-

“Grgk!” Margaux’s hands immediately went for her throat feeling clamped by an inexorable pressure. It took her half a second to realize she’d been grabbed. Her mismatched eyes caught the malicious gaze reflected in the single iris of her ferocious adversary. The pugilist’s blood froze. Her back slammed against into the adjacent corner with such speed that her footing faltered beneath her, leaving Margaux to fall to the floor breathless in an instant.

A relentless pounding ensued. Margaux’s face met the underside of the bunny’s boot first, smacking the back of her head into the middle buckle before it moved on to her chest and stomach. Margaux held her hands out in a blind defense. It was pathetically nostalgic, in a way. It reminded her of when she was first getting started in this whole miserably rewarding business of cutthroats and monsters hiding in the dark. Before she had enough bodies to throw at whatever issue required a decisive resolution. When she had to conduct these sorts of affairs personally. Olivier tended too many of those wounds to count.

Best not to revisit old nostalgia. Margaux crossed her forearms together and quickly blocked the last stomp Death Bunny attempted to quash her with. From the ground, Margaux shot out a quick kick with her right leg to push the menace away. If she managed to make herself some temporary breathing room, she could use the ropes to scramble her way onto two feet again before the Reaper came for her life once more.

Most intriguing. On the list of possible triggering events that could bring the French mob-boss to abandon her pontificating persona and start swinging for the fences like a madwoman, hearing of the demise of an underling would have been right at the bottom of the list. Remorse for a fallen comrade was understandable, but knowing just whom Death was dealing with made her extremely skeptical towards that being the case. More likely Margaux was just that cunning a deceiver to make anyone believe a reputed ganglord could feel anything resembling remorse. But the mere fact that Death still could not discern the truth between the two possibilities meant that Margaux still felt like a puzzle box that D.B. had yet to solve.

Regardless, faint signs of surprise could be ascertained from the raised eye-brow on her face from noticing just how much brute force Mags managed to hide behind these haymakers of hers. Death not having much time to settle in between each swing whiffing past her face and beginning to come in faster and faster until her ring awareness warned of when she was becoming dangerously close to being boxed into the corner. And therefore when it was time to bestow that cornered fate upon Mags instead.

Clenching onto the top rope aided Death in maintaining her balance for the veritable mud-hole being savagely stomped down upon the dainty striker. Ring ropes wavering from the reverberations of the Reaper's boot treads becoming drilled down with increasing ferociousness, Death not aiming for any target in particular after Margaux started mustering up some shielding defense and beginning to block her downward kicks. This practically made the entire practice an exercise in futility.

The Dead Woman sucking her teeth and beginning to ease up as a result until an errant shove from Margaux's boot to D.B.'s midsection separated them by another few feet as Death backpedaled. She wafted a hand through her purple locks with a brief flop to her bunny ear before beginning to approach the pugilist once again with malicious intent and the strength to make it a reality. The side of Death's forearm being mushed against Margaux's cheek in an effort to keep the Frenchwoman pinned there for the duration while puffing her chest out as well. Death ominously lifted her other hand to signal a shushed silence before the Unholy One would attempt an equally unholy open-palmed knife-edge-chop that male wrestlers admitted they'd be reluctant to endure.

Well, well. This was turning to be about as pleasant an experience as Margaux could have aspired towards.

Granted, Death Incarnate was hardly the type of company the Frenchwoman would have expected to be particularly...hospitable. Though for her first foray into the world of “professional wrestling”, she would have perhaps appreciated a slightly more benevolent introduction into tonight’s affairs. A chance to feel out her competition, preferably by forcing the bunny on her back feet from the very start and establishing some solid footing to start testing that renowned endurance.

Either way, someone would have to explain to Margaux why precisely she was the one helpless on the floor, having beautifully refined countenance stomped beneath the uncaring boot of the former gang mediator. Such a burlesque offense from a bigger foe, one without the fear of death in them. It reminded her of that one job gone sideways in Prague.

Margaux found herself staked to the corner with a flash of thunder, slamming against the turnbuckle and denying her even a chance to gasp before her head was reared back, leaving herself fully exposed and her vision obscured. Somehow, in some cosmic distortion of reality against her, the strike that connected with her chest cracked with double force. The Frenchwoman gasped her last breath, finding her body stunned to the core as she fell to her hands and knees on the floor in a coughing fit. Her heart had skipped a beat, but the madame found it difficult to concentrate on that with what felt like a punctured lung and a searing burn in her chest.

“Y...you can’t...you can’t…” She hacked and expelled the last of her throat's refuse to the floor. Her gloved fist curled, raking her fingers over the ground. The pinkette’s face looked up at Death’s shadow looming over her. From the dark, she flashed an insincere smile at the soul stealer. “...you can’t do better than this?”