Rook vs. Felix

Arena:

show spoilerhide spoilerMISSILE SILO

An abandoned military installation in the northern wilderness of Gaia, the missile silo and its adjoining facilities have recently been purchased and renovated by the GCL as a secondary headquarters. The inside of the missile silo has been converted into a fighting arena, but it is atop the silo that Season Two participants will be fighting.

Terrain

General: The top of the missile silo is a 100' diameter disc of metal. The ground is rough and uneven around the silo, but stepping off of the silo's bay doors is considered grounds for a ring-out count to start.

Weapons: Snow and ice cover the top of the silo in piecemeal patches.

Bonus Features: Some clumsy engineer set off an automated test of the silo doors! The top if the silo turns as it opens, creating a hole in the center as the bay doors retreat into the ground. This circular hole is approximately 5' in diameter when it opens, and will open a further 5' every two posts until the end of the match. The silo only begins to open after the entrance posts, and falling into the hole constitutes a ring out! A safety net has been put in place to catch any wayward fighters.

(Open to spectators.)

A cold wind swept across the bleak wastes of the high North, quietly howling its dreary song for an unseen audience, a backing choir for the battle about to take place. For the most part, the lands here were deserted, home only to tough grasses and a few roaming herds of grazing animals, none of which could be seen at this particular moment. A desolate, natural setting, but for a few important elements.

The first was the great metal disc set in the ground, like a coin flipped by the gods. A weapons emplacement, long since disused, that would now serve as a meeting ground, a field of battle. It lay still, coated in snow and ice, waiting for the first footsteps to sound upon it and the first drops of hot blood to spill.

The second were the cameras. Innocuously popping out of the landscape around the old silo on flexible black stalks, they were trained on the disk, constantly broadcasting it from every angle. On screens all over the world, these images would be mixed with brightly colored lines of scrolling text and fancy digital effects, the voices of excited commentators screaming over it all. GAIAN COMBAT LEAGUE SEASON TWO BEGINS! AND WOULD YOU CHECK OUT OUR FIRST FIGHT... ROOK, THE HUMAN TANK, VERSUS FELIX THE TINY WARRIOR!

On the disk itself, all that could heard was the mournful singing of the wind.

The third oddity, or oddities rather, were the two figures standing on the disk. Rook and Felix, the two fighters so loudly proclaimed, facing off and stoically awaiting the time to begin their duel. They were to fight until ring out or incapacitation, prove their worth before the audiences of Gaia and beyond. The former might have looked intimidating to some, the kind of warrior they imagined, a guy who could maul anyone in single combat with ease. The other... looked somewhat less than fearsome.

Felix was a cat.

Not a furred human, or even a human-sized feline creature, but a literal cat. He would have stood around two feet tall on his hind legs, and right now he was on all fours, making him look even smaller in comparison to his opponent. Black all over but for his bright green eyes and the tiny pink pads on his front paws, he looked rather pathetic standing there in the cold, out in the open. The only thing that gave any indication that he was anything other than a normal cat (short of his presence here) was what he carried on his back, a loose red cloak tied around his neck hanging over a sword (more of a dagger, really), scabbard and buckler all strapped to him.

He meowed once. "Mrow."

A moment later the disk suddenly began to rumble, and then slowly shift, a deep hole appearing at its epicenter and gradually expanding. The doors to the silo were opening, forming a constantly-shrinking ring of an arena for the two warriors to beat each other up on. The game was afoot!

Felix had begun about seven feet away from the center, and as the arena started to change, he burst into motion. Zipping forth on all fours with a speed and agility exceptional for even his species, seemingly unhindered by the equipment on his back, he took a clockwise path around the gap and the center of the arena, moving outwards and away from it while also moving towards Rook's side of the disk. Tiny fragments of ice and snow sprayed out behind him as he ran, graceful as a snow leopard on the hunt- but this creature's prey was a beast far larger than himself, and the Rook would surely not go down without a fight!

To Rook, and audiences at home, Felix's meowing would sound like nothing more than the usual intonations of his kind. Whether he was asking for food or complaining about the cold was entirely impossible to tell. Only the select few who were sentient cats or could understand sentient cat language would be able to tell what the warrior had said, and they'd be reeling back in shock or covering their children's ears.

Felix had just called Rook's mother a whore!

The cold had pissed him off enough already, and now he was facing down a giant fucking primate. They'd warned him about this when they sent him to compete, but he hadn't listened, and now look: here he was shivering his ass off on an arena that didn't even have the decency to stay still trying to fight some fucker whose damn clothing probably weighed more than Felix did! So fuck him, fuck Felix for not thinking this through, and fuck his superiors for entering him in a goddamned primate-run tournament!

Was he going to give up? Well of course he fucking wasn't. Felix was trained in gorilla warfare: he'd literally fought gorillas before, killed one with a sword and another with his teeth. The human probably wouldn't feel so big if he knew that! Rook's confidence and mockery only reaffirmed Felix's goal: he was going to tear this fucker a new asshole, show him and all the other damn monkeys that he could take on their best.

He'd started moving as soon as he could, keeping away from the expanding hole at the center of the arena while trying to close in on Rook so he could start beating the snot out of the guy. Unfortunately, the primate was reaching for a gun, opting to fight at range like the coward he was. As Rook reached for his weapon Felix slowed, claws skidding against the ice, bringing his right front paw up of the ground and reaching up towards his back, foreleg moving in a way that made it seem rather like- well, an arm.

Even as Rook's finger twitched on the trigger, Felix made a short leap to one side, easily avoiding the first shot. As he came down, he reached the rest of the way up and pulled the buckler off his back, seemingly holding it by a small handle with his front paw, and slammed it down in front of him.

The cat's sword was adjusted in scale to fit him, barely a dagger by human standards. His steel buckler, however, was closer to primate-size, excepting the handle and straps. Around a foot in diameter, it could easily cover most of him, and Felix quickly crouched down behind it, flattening his ears and curling his tail against his body so that not a whisker protruded from the edge of his shield. Whether Rook went ahead and fired the full eight shots or stopped after the first few, the buckler would weather them all with ease. The impacts might have been enough to push Felix back if he'd been the one holding it, but he'd jammed the lower edge into a patch of ice hard enough to get it stuck, making it easier to withstand the force delivered by the paintballs.

As soon as the volley was over, Felix poked his head just slightly out past the edge of his buckler- taking care not to peek from the same side he'd withdrawn into, in case Rook was aiming at it and waiting -and yanked his shield out of the ice, still holding it in front of him. A bit more cautiously but still pretty damn quick, he continued his advance, moving on three legs now while sliding the edge of his shield over the arena's surface. Rook could try to shoot his protruding head or legs, but his reflexes were as catlike as they could get, and any rounds possibly held in reserve stood little chance of hitting these parts before they could withdraw.

The cat wasn't retaliating, not yet, but it had covered a good deal of ground even with the delay- Felix and Rook were on the same side of the arena, now, barring sudden and rapid movement by the latter. The cat was growling like a motorcycle now, louder and louder, and while Rook still likely wouldn't be able to make out anything strange about the noise, the GCL had caught on and were censoring the hell out of it.

MelonusHead Wrote:

Rook had some pretty nasty equipment on him, about as good as he could get without bringing lethal ammunition- but he'd overestimated its effectiveness. The cat had blocked the pepperballs, and any blinding fragments or fluids contained within wouldn't make it past the shield. All that could possibly reach Felix were the dispersed remnants of the powders or vapors contained within, which weren't nearly as debilitating as a direct strike might have been.

All sentience aside, Felix was still a predator, and his sharp nose caught wind of the stinging dust even as it began to prick at his eyes. A chemical weapon? Fucking hell, they let people carry this kind of shit into the arena? He hissed loudly, and stopped to lift one paw off the ground and pull part of his red cloak up over his face- and then kept advancing. The fabric hindered his vision almost as much as the cloud might, but it shielded him from most of the dust's effects. Against an obstacle like this, his only other option would be to try and quickly move out of the clouds as soon as they appeared, and if he was wildly jumping around he wouldn't be able to cover himself so well.

He counted eight shots, and then the gunfire briefly stopped. Advancing a little, Felix pulled the cloak down from his eyes and peeked out just slightly past the edge of the shield- only to dart back behind it as Rook fired again. The cat was already adapting, however, keeping the cloak over his head and darting forwards through the cloud before pulling it down and peeking out once again from a slightly different angle. That shot hadn't been immediately followed up like the last ones, and that change of pattern had to mean something.

His eyes were still stinging, and though the cloak and shield had cut down the pepperballs' effects to more of a nuisance than a crippling disability, he couldn't see as well as he normally would have. By the time he'd moved past that last shot and peeked out, Rook had already holstered his pistol and primed his grenade. Through teary eyes, Felix caught only a blur of movement from the man- and a dark shape, flying through the air.

Grenade!

Incendiary, gas, stun, didn't matter: there was no cover to run to and no way to protect himself from two sides at once. But then Felix had never been one for running away, and he'd come here to fight. His teeth clenched, and he let hunting instincts take over. This was just like catching a bird, in a way, only with higher stakes.

The moment the grenade flew close to him Felix suddenly uncurled, reaching into the air and slamming his shield into the projectile to knock it back towards Rook. It'd likely detonate before it flew over the human's head, but now it was on the same side of the shield as the threat of the guns, just another storm to be weathered.

Felix couldn't see what emerged from the grenade, since he immediately brought his shield down and hunkered against the detonation, but it crashed into the buckler like a hailstorm. The steel shook, even denting in places- but it held firm.

MelonusHead Wrote:

MelonusHead Wrote:

> You didn't specify the height, and I thought it'd pass lower and closer than it did... but whatever, we'll go with the version where Felix jumps because that sounds cooler anyways.

Rubber balls everywhere. What kind of shitty grenade was this? After some kind of initial flash that didn't do much, the tiny annoying spheres went flying in every direction at crazy velocities, momentarily swallowing up the world with their bouncing madness. A large portion of them ricocheted off Felix's shield, but others would bounce off the snow and metal of the silo and fly back upwards, a few crashing into the cat himself. His buckler and small side had saved him from taking as many as a human would, but on the other hand he was basically fucking naked for some reason and had nothing to protect him from those few stingballs that did hit. They bit into his side like tiny snakes, and he cursed, a sound that came out as a screeching yowl probably loud enough to hurt Rook's ears a little (wouldn't actually do any damage, but it might be irritating because cats could be nasty little devils when they wanted to).

Rook, meanwhile, was... literally trying to hit a flying cat with a shotgun. Dude had some confidence in his aim. Cats didn't exactly fly, however, and this hadn't been a particularly high jump, especially by Felix's standards. The window of opportunity was a tiny one, and would already be mostly over by the time the grenade detonated. On top of all that, the man had only just drawn the shotgun, giving him little time to steady the weapon or actually take aim.

Well, perhaps the mercenary was one of those expert snipers who could spin three hundred and sixty degrees in midair while shooting a man through the head from a kilometer away without a scope! However, what was he aiming at? The moment he'd chosen to shoot was a moment when the air would still be filled with stingballs roughly the same color as his target, and although his riot shield would protect him entirely from any impacts, they still be bouncing off it and/or his helmet, obscuring his aim even further. Add to this the fact that the shot could easily come into contact with a flying stingball at the wrong moment and be deflected,, the fact that his target was alive and moving, the fact that a fair portion of his target's surface area was covered by a shield, and the way the impact of the stingballs on the shield would rapidly knock his target down and back into the ground... his chances were about as good as if he'd tried to hit a single specific raindrop in the midst of a thunderstorm.

In the chaos, the shot missed, and Felix hit the ground- not as elegantly as he'd planned, but that wouldn't stop him from getting up and sprinting a moment later, on two legs this time with his shield raised in front of him to deflect any remaining stingballs. The ape had just fired, and that meant he had to reload- and opportunity Felix wasn't about to fucking miss. The maneuver with the grenade had been risky, and his ribs were very loudly reminding him of that, but it hadn't set him back much in terms of distance. He was fast enough to cross the entire arena in under two seconds and a full sprint, and that was exactly the speed with which he now bore down on Rook, screaming all the way.

The charge wasn't entirely a straight one, however. Rather than crashing into the man or his shield, Felix would shoot past a little to Rook's right, before slamming the edge of his buckler down and unsheathing his free claws, letting them all scrape against the silo doors beneath and rapidly slow him down as he turned, circling around behind the human, seeking to close in on the towering ape's legs before he could turn and get his shield between them.

With things happening so fast it was hard to maintain precision, but a shot at point-blank was hard to miss. Felix couldn't make out the exact shape of Rook's shotgun clearly, especially with his eyes still stinging, but he'd noticed that only a single shot had been fired rather than a barrage like the last time, and had charged forwards in the hopes of closing distance before the human could reload. Unfortunately for him, it turned out Rook didn't need to.

The cat's reflexes were on a hair-trigger even now, and he flinched as he caught Rook shifting the gun in his peripheral vision, instinctively ducking away as he tried to bring his shield into position. Not fast enough. He might have recognized the movement a moment sooner, but there were still some minor remnants of the pepperballs in his eyes, and at this range the beginning of a defense wasn't enough.

His yowl rose to a frenzied pitch as a beanbag slammed into him, then cut off entirely as he tumbled, skidding across metal and ice. The ground bounced and knocked at him, but that was nothing compared to the pulses of agony now streaming from where the projectile had hit.

All the same, it could have been worse. Felix's reaction had moved him away in the split second that Rook had pulled the trigger, and instead of taking the beanbag to the center mass, it had glanced off around his right thigh. Still enough to hurt, and still enough to knock him into a tumble, but neither the force nor the damage were quite as bad as they could have been.

He found his feet mid-tumble, using the leverage of the buckler and the grip of his claws to slow and level himself, coming to a swift halt and then darting forwards a couple paces with his shield once again raised in front of him. His re-positioning had been somewhat successful: the beanbag hadn't stolen all his forward momentum, and he was now slightly further than Rook from the opening at the center of the arena. He wasn't where he wanted to be, however. His recovery had been quick, extraordinarily so, but he'd still been knocked off course. Not only would the human have been able to turn to face him, there were now several feet between them again. Less than there had been before, few enough that Rook would barely have time to react if Felix bolted forwards again- but still not close enough for the cat to attack directly. Damn it!

Some distance had been closed, but at a cost- the cat had recovered quickly, but as he caught he caught himself and moved back into position the change to his movements had been clear. Felix was limping.

His eyes were peeking out from just past the edge of the shield, narrow and bloodshot, locking on to any sign of movement from Rook. If the human was reloading or otherwise moving, Felix would need to move fast, to take advantage or defend. Fast as he could right now, anyways. Even the most vicious of beasts would have fled at this point to lick its wounds, but Felix was something far worse: a soldier. His orders were to fight, and that meant no retreating.

MelonusHead Wrote:

Getting this far had taken a lot out of Felix. Unimpeded, he'd have reached the human within a second or so of the match starting, but the constant barrage of non-lethal projectiles had not only delayed him but battered him badly as he made his approach. Rook's arsenal hadn't managed to take him out completely, but in his current state there was no way he'd be able to take the man in a straight-up physical face-off.

Still, the rules had changed now. In this range, Felix presented an actual thread to his opponent, and the human seemed to realize that, casting away his ranged weapon without bothering to try and reload. By the time Felix had found his feet, Rook was already reaching for something long and blunt, a simple tool to finish the job. Seemed they'd end this with a proper duel, then. The cat spat out a wad of phelgm, clearing his burning throat, and charged once more.

"Myow!" If you fucking insist!

His injuries were clear even as he burst forwards: the cat was favoring his left side. He still hadn't drawn his sword, and ran on three legs, still bearing his shield with his right front paw. This had made him a little lopsided before, but the change was even clearer now, as he practically swung from side to side as he advanced, unbalanced. Didn't mean he wasn't damn quick, though- at this range, he had less time to accelerate regardless, and not having to hide behind his shield made things somewhat easier.

Felix seemed to be charging at Rook head-on, a desperate last attack. He hadn't ignored the sparking shield, however. Just before he came within striking range, he leaped.

Light weight and enhanced strength made a pretty devastating combination. Felix's bounds could easily take him over twelve feet, and uninjured he might have flown over Rook entirely, too high for even the baton to reach. The beanbag had fucked up his rear right leg pretty good, however, and he couldn't put that much strain on it now. Instead, he'd pushed off entirely with his left legs, flinging himself to the right.

He wasn't going for height, but for lateral movement. Felix shoved himself towards the space past Rook's left side, not really flying so much as skidding across the ground, veering away hard and fast with a single, powerful push. Cats weren't meant to move that way, and the movement would have sent him painfully sliding on his right side- but that was where his shield was. The steel buckler shrieked against the steel door, bearing the punishment of friction as Felix rode it like an improvised sled, right side lying on the shield with his left exposed.

A flanking maneuver, similar to his first but more sudden and reckless. His course would take him diagonally past Rook's left, about two and a half feet from his side, before friction and extended claws brought him to a quick halt and he bolted around to the man's rear. Unlikely that he'd get that far, but the move would force a response, and the audience would have their violence.

MelonusHead Wrote:

The giant armored ape was dead-set on playing it safe, no longer so confident now that the two fighters were close enough for a brawl. Felix might have shot off a few quick meows about the inverse relationship between size and courage, but he was running short on time and breath, and actual maiming took priority over the verbal kind. Time to pay back all that long-range fuckery!

He was fast enough to keep to Rook's left side, but without the latter actually committing to anything it would be impossible to get entirely behind the human before he turned around. His little steps had brought his right side away from the arena boundaries, but Felix figured turning around and going that way would only mean running into the shield and the baton. The electrical effect was part of the problem: Felix couldn't just charge in and grab the barrier's edge without likely getting burned.

In short: no safe way around nor through. That left two options.

Felix had gone dashing off after his initial leap to the side, but mid-way through that the roundabout movement became something far more aggressive. His dashing around had probed the human's defenses, but this would be their first true test! Rather than complete a full semi-circle, he suddenly sprang forwards, covering roughly half the distance between him and the human with a quick hop on three paws. The motion was akin to a pounce, keeping his body low and on three paws, but rather than stop on nonexistent prey he'd quickly transition into a full sprint. The short hop, as before, served as a way to quickly change direction, leaving the human with little time to move before the cat went howling beneath his shield in a streak of black fur and gleaming steel.

MelonusHead Wrote:

> Forward movements also take Felix diagonally to his right, keeping him towards Rook's left side.

The human dropped his shield, trying to crush Felix beneath it before the cat could make any attempt at actually attacking. Not that he would have been able to do shit to the massive ape's boots, especially without his sword drawn. Even with his increased strength, Felix didn't have the leverage to topple the towering Rook off his feet, and his own weight was so puny that tackling the titan's leg probably wouldn't even budge the heavy bastard.

Still, the cat was a predator, designed for speed and accuracy in sudden forward bursts. He was right on target.

Felix's buckler would be the first thing to meet Rook's leg, edge-on. Though it certainly wouldn't topple the man, he'd have a nice bruise to show for it later- what the blow lacked in momentum it made up for in strength. The main purpose of the strike, however, wasn't to hurt. That same incredible proportional strength was also working to adjust the tiny warrior's relatively small momentum. Hitting the leg head-first would have caused Felix to stop entirely, but with the shield striking it was his right forelimb that slowed, allowing him to immediately swing the rest of his body around to one side of the human's massive limb.

To Rook, the move had likely appeared as suicidal as charging straight at a tree trunk. Cats, however, charged at tree trunks all the time, usually when fleeing a perceived threat. They dashed straight towards the great columns, and climbed.

Felix's razor-sharp claws dug into boot and trousers alive, clinging on with ease as he hauled himself up and around the leg, dropping his buckler and swinging his tail in behind him just as the electrified riot shield slammed down where he had been a fraction of a second before. An agile cat could climb almost as fast as he could run, and Felix was a trained warrior, equipped with strength most of his kind didn't possess, his uninjured back limb easily compensating for the hurt one in his rapid ascent. In an eyeblink, he'd be scampering up the back of Rook's leg, latching onto the human's ample buttocks with one set of front claws while he drew his blade with the other and rammed it into the man's rear with all his might.

MelonusHead Wrote:

It was a tricky gap to slip through. Rook didn't seem to lower his shield as Felix charged in, but that was simply due to the cat's own speed- with only a couple feet between them, he'd get most of the way to Rook before the human even had a chance to react. Once the human did react, however, the shield came down damn quickly. It was a close thing: Felix would be able to strike Rook's leg with his buckler and redirect his own momentum as intended- but he wouldn't be able to get all the way between the man's legs before the edge of the electrified shield slammed down on his hindquarters.

"Hurt like a bitch" wouldn't begin to describe it.

Felix did have a sheathed blade still strapped to his back, and the hard blade and dry leather offered some resistance to the impact and electricity respectively. The actual force of the hit wasn't so bad, with mostly only the weight of the shield behind it, serving more to slam him downwards than to actually hurt him. The electrical current, on the other hand, shoved its way through the scabbard and tore into Felix's nervous system. His back legs lit up, pain tearing through them like a ravaging flame, and collapsed, muscles momentarily paralyzed by the shock.

He couldn't stop himself from screaming. Couldn't stop his back end from crumpling behind him, suddenly useless. He wasn't done yet, though, and there was no way in hell he'd give up while he still had fight in him.

The blow might have cost him some movement, but he still had a bit of momentum on his side, and he'd gotten most of the way to his goal before the riot shield had struck. His own buckler discarded, he latched his claws onto the inside of Rook's left leg and hauled himself forwards, dragging his back end out from under the riot shield before it could drop the rest of the way and pin him down. It crashed down on his tail, still buzzing with electricity, and Felix reached higher, dragging himself up as well as around the leg, straining against the pain and the pressure until his tail came free- part of it, at least.

Beneath the riot shield, a small lump of fur and gristle was crushed into the icy metal, still sizzling as electricity coursed through it. Felix's tail flopped down behind him, two inches of exposed bone now jutting out at its tip.

He'd dragged himself about halfway up the human's left leg and most of the way around to the back of it, still moving with speed and focus, training and experience combining with strength and adrenaline to somehow keep him moving, keep him fierce. With only two limbs to hold on with, he wouldn't be able to reach Rook's rear and stab it, but he could still do some damage where he was.

In spite of his small frame, Felix could lift weights many humans would struggle with. His muscles were enhanced to a point that almost defied belief, and that included more than just his limbs. An ordinary cat's bite could hurt a human, but Felix could savage them.

Without wasting any time to try and climb after his close call with the riot shield, he'd sink his fangs into Rook's upper left thigh, turning his head sideways and biting just above the back of the knee. The human was likely wearing some fairly tough clothing, but the strength of Felix's jaws would drive his teeth in with a force comparable to what he might have managed with his blade.

MelonusHead Wrote:

> Played things out more or less as we discussed.

A few shakes wouldn't be enough to dislodge Felix. His claws dug into Rook's clothing, holding his upper body in place even as his lower side swung about, tossed to and fro by the human's struggles. The cat's jaws only secured his hold, clamping down hard enough to resist any further thrashing, drawing warm blood that trickled down Felix's throat- but by the time he'd made his bite, Rook had already switched to a different tactic.

In a way, it was fortunate that Felix was too crippled to reach the man's rear: the force with which Rook's torso crashed into the silo door would easily have been enough to finish off the wounded feline, had he been directly under it. As it was, however, Felix had no time to get that high, and chose a different course of action as soon as he felt the oncoming vertigo. He let go with his right paw, swinging his body to the left, trying to move his hindquarters towards the outside of Rook's leg.

With most of his body hanging from two points of contact around Rook's knee, it wouldn't be a long drop, and the weight coming down on him was relatively manageable- the leg was heavy, but it hadn't fallen as far or as suddenly as the human's upper body had. Rook would be able to lay most of his body down flat as planned, but his left knee would remain a few inches off the ground, the upper half of a cat still between it and the ground. Felix's lower body would be sticking out, lying limp just to the left of Rook's lower left leg.

At that moment, the human would notice two things. One, a release of pressure around his knee, powerful jaws releasing his flesh from their grip. The other, a flash of movement from under that same knee, accompanied by the sound of a blade being drawn from its sheath.

Letting go with his right paw had helped Felix swing his lower body out of the way, but it had also freed up one front paw to finally take hold of his sole weapon. It wasn't anything special, more of a knife than a sword by Rook's standards, but any sharp weapon with a strong arm behind it could do a lot of damage, and this one was practically surrounded by targets.

The man could try and strike out, but it'd be hard to land a solid hit with his own leg in the way- hard, at least, to do so before a six-inch blade speared through his upper leg from below, its tip scraping past his femur to rear its bloody head on the other side. Felix was squirming, using his blade and his claws to lever himself around the huge limb and restrict it's movements, using Rook's own thigh as a shield against him. The cat was hurt and worn out, and wouldn't be able to keep fighting for long in his current state, but pain and desperation were only making him all the more vicious.

MelonusHead Wrote:

Though Felix's positioning made him hard to get at, it also left him stuck in a damn tight space. He could both feel and hear the human shifting, and reacted as fast as he could, digging his blade in and curling up, using the muscles in his core to shift his limp lower body closer to his front. This wouldn't stop him from being pinned, but would put more of him beneath the leg and less of him near the shield. Once stung, twice shy, as the saying went.

Even if this did help him a little, though, he was still trapped, partially paralyzed, and dangerously close to weapons that could fuck him up worse than that one time he'd visited a primate pub and almost drowned in his drink. This was it. He'd had a good run of it, but he couldn't hang on any longer.

Felix exploded.

Not literally, because there wouldn't be bloody chunks of him flying everywhere and the cat would still be very much alive. On the other hand, in that instant it might seem to Rook that he'd set a furry bomb off right beneath him. Felix had entered a trance, most of his consciousness swallowed by a single, overriding force. A signal went out through his whole body, activating every muscle in it simultaneously and causing them to push outwards. In a sense, it was similar to the shocks delivered by Rook's own weapons, except rather than interfering with and confusing the nervous system and muscles, it galvanized them.

Unlike the shocks, however, this message defied all common sense. In less than a second, Felix had tossed aside the laws of physics and doubled in mass, going from the size of a domestic cat to something more like a lynx. This alone would've been shocking enough, but it looked even scarier: his hairs were stood on end, puffing straight out like tiny spikes and making him seem even bigger than he was.

The force of his expansion alone would have been enough to fuck up Rook's balance, as if he'd been sat on a balloon that had suddenly gone from flat to fully inflated- but that was only the beginning. The sword that had gotten two inches into Rook's leg was suddenly buried to the hilt, extended reach and massively increased strength shattering the cat's old limitations. The initial push of the Felix's sudden growth against Rook's weight wouldn't stop either, as the enraged warrior shoved against the man's left thigh with a strength more than double what the human could muster. He came bursting up like a coiled spring from where he'd been pinned, pulling himself upwards with his abdominal muscles to shove Rook's left leg- along with the man himself -up and back, toppling him over to roughly where he had been a moment before. This time, however, the fall would be neither expected nor controlled, and as Rook was knocked onto his back again his head would likely be swinging back faster still, the back of his skull colliding hard with the metal beneath him as he came crashing down.

Felix was yowling once more, but it wasn't a scream this time, not the high-pitched wailing one might hear in any ordinary neighborhood. This was low and guttural, a roar that reverberated out through the air and set bones trembling. A sound that humans had feared for millions of years, and would now learn to fear again.

Growltiger Rage: post 1/3.

MelonusHead Wrote:

> Hope I didn't contradict any of Rook's positioning here? Anyway, gist of it is Felix curls himself up while Rook's shifting, then goes Hulk-mode and tries to lift himself up against Rook's left leg to tip him over backwards.

Even if Felix wasn't able to tip his opponent over easily, lifting the leg on him would still give him some room to move. He glimpsed movement in his peripheral vision, and let go of his sword, lashing out with one paw at the incoming baton. The weapon was simply swatted to Rook's right, slammed off course hard enough to quite possibly knock it into Rook's own right leg, or even send it flying out of his grip entirely.

The cat's leg went limp only a moment after striking the stun baton, but he didn't seem to care. Pain was nothing, now, only a niggling doubt at the back of his mind. His body twisted, movement now returning to his lower half, and he threw himself against Rook's left leg. Even if he couldn't flip the man himself, a wounded limb was easily shifted, especially now that his back legs were pushing too. He practically threw it to one side, slamming it into the shield to get that out of the way too as he righted himself.

Even with his mass increased, he was strong enough to move himself around with terrifying ease, and within a second, he was standing on two legs in between both of Rook's, his previous injury seemingly forgotten- his back leg was still screaming in agony where he'd been hit earlier, but Felix no longer gave a flying fuck.

One of his front legs was paralyzed, but the other quickly found the handle of his sword and yanked it out with brutal force, the edge slicing the wound wider even as it emerged, now dripping red.

Growltiger Rage: post 2/3.

MelonusHead Wrote:

The baton had been kept from landing a finishing blow, but it hadn't been knocked away enough to delay it much, and it came down again just as Felix was trying to pull his sword out. The cat was strong enough right now that a little twisting of Rook's leg wouldn't stop him from yanking his blade out, but it would keep him from getting it out quickly enough to block another baton swing.

In his rage, however, Felix wouldn't back down, wouldn't duck away from the challenge. A berserker didn't have to worry about little things like pain or fear, and sometimes this drove them to attempt what most would view as insane. Felix glimpsed movement, a threat coming towards him, and lunged at it, head twisting sharply to the right as his mouth yawned wide.

In one instant, the baton was descending on the enraged cat's skull. In the next, the beast's head was turned sideways, his jaws clamped down on the weapon like a bloody vice.

Then his sword came out, fast and vicious, and his head was twisting to the left, turning the baton around fast and hard enough that Rook would need to let go or risk breaking his wrist. Felix wasn't about to hold on to something so dangerous, though, and spat it out hard to his left before bursting into motion.

The jump up to Rook's right shoulder was easy, even with one front leg still numb and dead. It was steep, but his kind made such leaps all the time, and the height was almost trivial. He'd land hard next to the human's head and stab downwards into his back, aiming for the gap between the spine and the scapula, where his blade could punch through between two ribs and puncture Rook's right lung, from an angle where his arms would never reach on time.

Growltiger Rage: post 3/3.

MelonusHead Wrote:

A hard blow straight to the front of the mouth could indeed knock teeth clean out from their roots- when it hit them head-on. In this case, though, Felix had bitten his target, and his jaws were closing around the baton rather than in front of it. His incisors and canines would never make contact with its leading edge, and while it would slam hard into his molars, the angle at which it did so would be pushing them into the gums rather than against them. The flat, hard teeth were far tougher to break than the sharper ones up front, and though they might well be chipped or cracked, it was unlikely that any of them would shatter entirely.

As for the jaw, evolution had shaped cats to take massive bites out of prey rather than slowly chew as plant-eaters and omnivores often did. Felix's jaw was designed to open wide, and this combined with his increased size could handle the baton, thick as it was. It was painful, to be sure, but in his current state pain was only a dull, throbbing annoyance at the back of his mind, hardly a hindrance to what came next.

Even without teeth, the vice-like force of Felix's twice-enhanced bite would have been enough to keep the baton tightly held as he jerked to one side, his head twisting almost a full hundred and eighty degrees to the left. Obviously Rook wasn't just going to let that happen easily, but if he thought he could wrestle against the full body strength of a creature currently more than twice as powerful as him using only one arm, he was in for a nasty surprise.

Not only did Rook have little change of stopping that cat's movements, however- even if he did, it still wouldn't be enough. Felix's strength was unusual in some ways in that it was applied to every muscle in his body, including his rough, pink little tongue. So if the man somehow managed to hold on to his weapon and push back, it mattered little: a sudden push from within the mouth combined with a quick twisting away of the head would free Felix to bolt over the man's forearm and to his right shoulder, a leap followed swiftly by a blade in the human's back.

Barely an instant after that deadly strike, however, the cat's wild rage guttered out like a dying candle, and a wave of pain roared in to replace it. Not only had he been battered and shocked while berserk, the strain of holding that fearsome form had strained his muscles past their limit. Felix withered, shrinking back down to his original size, and flopped forwards over Rook's shoulder, tumbling down the man's back. He held on to the blade he'd dug in, but did not immediately try to pull it out or dig it in again. Pain and exhaustion alone would have kept him from doing that, and he wasn't holding anything else- he'd end up swinging down and dangling from the handle of the sword, his other paws hanging limply as he took a ragged breath and hoped that his well-aimed strike would be enough.

MelonusHead Wrote:

> Sorry for the wait!

There was something of a disconnect between what Felix's nerves were picking up and what his brain actually registered. His jaws closed around the baton, and the initial pain of the impact simply passed on through, nothing more than a blip in the mad frenzy of signals passing through his mind. His teeth were damaged, but still roughly intact, and he bit down hard to try and twist the weapon away.

Or that was what was supposed to happen. It was only when he tried to clench his jaw that Felix noticed there was something wrong, less a sensation of damage than a realization that something was fundamentally not working. One side of his jaw still held all his strength, but the other one wasn't responding properly: the bone had been knocked out of position, and the muscles attached to it couldn't pull like they were meant to. He couldn't keep a solid hold of the weapon- not solid enough to work.

However, he certainly wasn't going to keep holding onto the thing until it electrocuted him. His jaw went slack, hanging open at an odd angle, and his head swung away from it, tongue helping to push his opponent's weapon out and break him free. His own sword was bared, still dripping red, but Rook's left arm was already in position to intercept a stab at his torso. A strangled hiss emerged from Felix's lopsided mouth, as he eyed the human, weighing his options-

-and stepped back, body deflating, puffed-out fur falling back into its usual position as the berserk rage drained out of him. Without the extra strength and with his pain now returning in full force, he couldn't manage another offensive just yet. Instead he retreated, moving out of Rook's immediate reach on unsteady back legs, sword held at the ready in case the human tried to kick out at him.

MelonusHead Wrote:

> Judge call

Until this point Felix hadn't noticed the grenade, and he flinched back sharply as Rook let it fall to the ground. Was the human trying to take them both out? Possibly not, since if the grenade was similar to the last one, it might not penetrate Rook's clothing, while Felix would be left exposed to those nasty bouncing ball-things. His shield wasn't too far, but he wasn't sure if he could get to it and pick it up in time, especially with a sword in one front paw and the other paralyzed. Which left him with no cover- except for the large form of Rook himself.

Being as strong and light as he was, Felix could exceed even the more impressive jumps of ordinary small cats, propelling himself up to twelve feet in the air. Now, however, springing off two legs with one of them injured, he only managed eight. Still high enough to take him well over Rook's left shoulder as the man drew another weapon. The cat winced as he landed a short distance behind the mercenary, his movement hardly helping with the pain in his jaw and leg. The grenade didn't seem to have gone off yet, but Felix was already ducking down and to one side, eyes flicking at Rook to try and catch the inevitable reaction. Whichever way the human tried to turn, Felix would try to move away from the arm coming closer towards him, while closing in himself to see if he couldn't get a good stab in.

MelonusHead Wrote:

A high jump wasn't so wasteful when one's opponent was built like a gorilla- had Felix jumped too low the human might have risen up to slam into him, or gotten a lucky strike with that crackling baton. As it happened, however, Rook was using some strange human contortionist aiming technique, firing under his right arm even as Felix came down behind him and to his left. Not perfectly accurate, but at this distance one didn't need to be a sniper.

The cat was moving, however, and though not quite as nimble as he had been, he wasn't going to make himself easy to hit. One shot whizzed over him as he ducked down, but two others found their mark, stinging his body and spreading more vile dust in the air to sting his eyes as well. Any hopes of moving in to stab Rook in the back were dashed: charging in to such a barrage would blind him for sure.

He wasn't about to give up on his assault, however. Surrender was for pussies- the other kind -and though Felix might have been forced to briefly retreat, he damn well wasn't going to go out like a pansy.

The human was fast enough to react to an advance at close range, as Felix had painfully learned after being struck with the shield. That baton was still a threat if he closed in, and while Rook was injured now, the cat was hurt enough that circling around him might be easier said than done.

So he darted forwards, attempting to slip around to the left (Felix's left) and behind Rook- or at least, that was what it'd look like at first. In fact, the movement was more of a feint, a mock charge. He had a rough estimate of what the human's reflexes were like, and his apparent attack would only last a couple of steps at most, just long enough to give the human time to react and hopefully bait out a response.

Ideally, Felix would have been able to see whether a response was coming, and commit to his movement if it didn't. As it was, however, there was pepper stinging his eyes, and it'd be hard to tell what was going on immediately. Thus, he'd retreat from his sudden feint whether or not Rook actually swung for him. However, he was counting on the human not knowing the charge was false in the first place, on Rook recognizing the danger of Felix getting behind him and responding with all due speed.

The actual advance, however, would be circling around Rook's other side, to Felix's right. The cat would be moving almost as soon as he'd leaped back, seeking to take advantage of any opening he might have created. If Rook did swing to ward off the false attempt, the cat would try and dart straight past him before he could bring the baton back. If the sparking weapon failed to fall where he'd lured it, however, Felix would take a longer way around, still circling quickly but a little further away to try and re-position himself, see if the human could keep up.

In spite of all his deceptive movements, he'd likely take another pepperball or two in the process, and his eyes would be tearing up, narrowing down to slits as he tried, desperately to focus. Just a little bit more. He likely wouldn't be able to accomplish much beyond these next couple moments, but rather than taking the coward's way out, he'd do his utmost to make them count.

MelonusHead Wrote:

> Judge call.

The maneuver was a success, at least partly, but Felix wasn't nearly out of the woods just yet. The gun was turned on him again, and with his eyesight already going to shit he knew he wouldn't be able to keep fighting after taking another barrage head-on. If he was lucky, he could get a stab or two in while blind, but against a foe so large it wouldn't be enough, and the shock baton would quickly finish him off.

Time for last resorts, then.

Claws cut through ice and screeched against metal as he tried to duck his head away, and as Rook had predicted, one forepaw came up in a blur- but not to block. Rather, that paw held a blade, and he brought it up and hurled.

The sword would go flying end-over-end towards Rook's gun hand, a flash of whirling steel. The blade probably wasn't going to damage either gun or hand much, at least not with its edge, but it was still a flying piece of metal thrown with a fair amount of force. Likely not enough to break Rook's grip on his weapon entirely, but Felix only needed to knock the gun to one side, throw off his opponent's aim or make him flinch away from the sudden projectile. However effective it ended up being, the cat would seize the small window he'd created with one last burst of speed, passing by Rook and pouncing on the grenade the man had dropped mere moments before.

He had no idea what that thing did, but he knew enough about explosives to operate them, and unless some deliberately obfuscating design were to foil him, his nimble toes would activate the grenade, starting up its countdown even as he tottered a couple more swift steps- to where faint boot-prints were marked in the half-melted ice, where Rook had stood before he'd fallen. Where Felix might yet fall- but he still had a weapon of sorts, and he'd be damned if he wasn't going to go out with a bang.

MelonusHead Wrote:

Maybe he'd just gotten lucky, but the sword-throw worked better than expected. The pepperballs stopped firing, and Felix was able to get his paws on the grenade without getting his eyes shot out or completely blinded. He clawed at it as he ran, managing to hook one in the pin and yank it out.

Like Rook, he started counting down as soon as the weapon was primed. Unlike the human, however, Felix could only estimate the time he had based on what he'd seen of the stingball grenade from earlier. He'd play it safe, throw it maybe a second before his guess at the time of detonation, and hope for the best.

A quick glance back at Rook, however, showed that he wasn't idle. His arm was being pulled back, but not for a swing. Shit, he wasn't going to-

Too late. The human's arm blurred into motion, and even through pepper-stung eyes Felix could tell what he was doing, though not well enough to easily sidestep a projectile that was little more than a grey smear flashing across his vision. Almost without thinking, he hurled the grenade, tossing it high in the air. Up and up it arced, as the cat dove to the ground, flattening himself against the cold ice and steel beneath.

The baton clipped him as he went down, but that was just the edge, a glancing blow from one end of the weapon as most of its length careened through the space where Felix's center of mass had been just an instant before. The evasion, however, hurt almost as much as the strike would have, his loose jaw wrenched suddenly and painfully by the movement.

He'd gotten where he needed to be, however. Where boot-prints still marked the ice, where Rook had fallen- and where Felix's own shield still lay, abandoned as he'd attempted to climb up the human's leg. One last, desperate lunge and he had it in his claws, pulling it over his body just as the grenade, now falling down towards him and Rook, went off.

What came next was a sound like the end of the world.

The shield spared Felix from the worst of the flash, and perhaps mitigated the sound a little as well. Not that he'd be able to tell. No buckler would be able to stop the noise entirely, and Felix's sensitive ears were suddenly torn open from the inside out, overwhelmed in an instant. Even as most of him screamed, a small part of Felix cursed his luck. A flashbang. The human would have known what it was, would have covered his eyes before it went off. Perhaps stunned, for a moment, but not debilitated enough for Felix to finish off in his current state.

Even so, the cat hauled himself up on his back feet. Damaged muscle ground against bone in his legs, and still he charged forwards, a head-on assault. A dozen small aches and pains racked his body, even as he leveled his shield, aiming to slam its edge into the first vulnerable spot his eyes could make out. His jaw felt like it was tearing off his face as he made one final attempt at a battle cry, a barely audible rasp crawling out of his throat. He struck, heedless of any incoming counterattack, the last few steps taken on teetering legs, his balance disrupted by the ear-splitting noise of the flashbang.

The edge of his buckler hit Rook's leg with a quiet thunk, barely hard enough to feel.

If the human had managed to withstand the grenade's effects well enough to attempt a counterattack as Felix moved in, he'd find he wouldn't need to. The black cat slumped to the ground with all the unceremonious disarray of a rag-doll tossed aside, completely still other than the gentle rise and fall of his sides. He could only stay ahead of the pain for so long, and his last-minute antics combined with the shock of the grenade's blast had pushed him past his limits.

A quiet hiss slipped through twisted jaws, slowly fading away into the cold air, as an announcer's voice blared out over the thin ring that remained of the arena, proclaiming an end to the duel.

MelonusHead Wrote:

> Well fought