[Round 4 - C] Skeletor & Kuzuru vs Pennywise & Shantotto

[Karl Jak]

Skeletor scowled. The ambiance was lovely, but the fact that he had just been bludgeoned and defeated by that damn Kerrigan woman had left him in a foul mood. Next to him was his partner. Whether that was Kuzuru or Renji or someone else, he didn't know.

Across the platform, their new foes were a fresh set of freaks. A sneering clown and a female of very small stature.

"Don't get your ass kicked this time," Skeletor's partner said with a smirk before he rushed across the platform.

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Time limit starts at 12 pm CDT on August 7th, 2018

“The Pit” – The sky is dark overhead. This Fight Area is a 25-foot-long platform, roughly 3 feet wide. In the distance, you can spot similar platforms, but you are constrained to just the one. Below this platform is a literal pit filled with massive spikes. Gore-stained remains of failed warriors decorate the bottom of the Pit and the spiked columns that support the platform.

Defeat your opponent. Be careful not to fall off. You will not get back up, regardless of your skillset.

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Stipulations: Flight and Super Jumping are disabled. Don’t fall to the bottom, you will insta-die, Mega Man-style.

[Skeletor]

Skeletor felt sluggish, drained, and stupid. Kuzuru seemed back to his old self, charging in to fight the strange harlequin with a gleeful abandon that Skeletor found himself lacking. The suit was gone, the Malefactor too, yet again his power had been stripped away like a petulant child teasing their pet with a dangling string. This infernal Omniverse was an endless series of frustrations!

At least his magic seemed to be working normally again, though the fact barely mollified the warlock as he shot a blast of eldritch energy at the little smidgeon across the bridge. His diminutive foe raised her own staff and a shimmering field refracted his attack away harmlessly. She responded with a torrent of water, spitting from her staff like a fireman’s hose. Skeletor extended his hand, his own magic dividing the water into weakened streams that were no threat.

“Thanks for the shower, you diminutive dolt!” Skeletor cackled, arms crossed and laughing with an angry confidence. The Tarutaru planted her own staff on the ground, with an unimpressed glance.

“Your posturing is futile, enemy prime. Your magic will lose to mine every time.” She spoke. Skeletor stared at her, momentarily speechless, then he burst out cackling.

“Oh, are we rhyming? I think not, you impudent, insect-sized idjit! I won’t be losing to a clown and a midg-ickkk!” Skeletor’s teeth locked over the insult as lighting coursed through his body, locking muscles and turning his skeleton momentarily visible. He sagged to his knees, charred marks smoking where the bolts had scorched his flesh.

His senses had barely recovered before a strong gale swept him off his feet and into the air. Skeletor cried in alarm as his unwanted flight sent him over the heads of Kuzuru and Pennywise, tumbling towards the abyss. One flailing arm managed to snag hold of an errant bridge spike, saving him from his untimely fall. Skeletor heaved himself onto the bridge, brimming with outrage. He scrambled to his feet, but Shantotto had already scurried farther back, another spell already prepared. A dark swirling orb spun towards Skeletor, he growled in annoyance and reached a hand to intercept the missile. It splattered across him, stinging with an acrid touch.

Skeletor reeled backwards screaming, trembling hands clasped in front of his skull, as the sound of shattering glass and the agony of his disintegrating face leapt to the forefront of his memory. He was gone from the battle, cast back to the hall of Elders. A moment that should have been his rise to power, when Keldor and his followers took hold of destiny, and claimed their own future. Instead it was a moment that would brand him forever as a maddened lunatic, consigned to the darkest corner of the realm.

The anguish and spite welled up in Skeletor like a caustic tide, building into a shout of defiance and rage. He charged, two more acidic orbs failing to stop his forward momentum. His eyes were nearly blind with fury as he caught up to the backpedaling Shantotto. Before the mage could finish her channeling, Skeletor launched a foot directly into her chest. The small tarutaru was flung backwards, colliding with the rocky wall at the back of the platform.

“YOU CANNOT BE RID OF ME!” Skeletor screamed, rushing forward.  He slammed the recovering mage against the stone again, heedless to the sounds of snapping ribs.

“I WILL NOT CEASE MY CONQUEST!” he yelled. Shantotto grunted and a shimmering dark field forced Skeletor back.

“Leave me be, foul undead! Your ire is obviously misled!” She muttered, planting her feet as she readied her defenses, “You are my opponent in this duel, but your rambling marks you for a fool!”

Skeletor’s havoc staff reappeared in his hands and the warlock screamed again, smashing his weapon against Shantotto’s barrier with reckless brutality.

“I SHALL CONQUER GRAYSKULL! I SHALL RULE ETERNIA!” he railed, though when it became clear that his staff blows were not disrupting her shield he switched to a torrent of magic.

“I WILL NOT PERISH! I WILL NOT BE FORGOTTEN! AND I WILL NOT BE DENIED!” Skeletor’s furious assault finally overwhelmed the barrier, and Shantotto was knocked from her feet by his attack. The Warlock seethed, chest heaving as he lowered his Havoc staff. He started to laugh, a slow chuckle, that bubbled up into full blown maniacal hysteria, his head thrown back as he cackled uncontrollably. Only slowly did he realize that another voice was laughing with him.

“This is funny. Yes indeed, it’s so so funny!” the strange voice spoke behind him. Skeletor’s laughter faltered as he turned to face the speaker. The eerie clown had managed to catch Kuzuru in a bad way, and the demon was on the ground, struggling to hold back Pennywise’s claws as the clown perched on his chest. Yet even as his talons scrapped for Kuzuru’s throat, Pennywise was watching Skeletor, with a tilted head and unnerving smirk.

“You’re a bad man. You act angry.” The clown’s smirk split eriely wide across his face, “But you’re also scared. Scared of SO MANY THINGS!”

848 words according to MS word

[Pennywise]

Shantotto groaned from where she'd been thrown to the ground, a throbbing headache beating against the sides of her skull-- likely brought on by the skeletal warlock's overly boisterous shouting. Yes, the boneheaded fool had knocked her for a loop with his own spell, but that was only a secondary irritant. Bodily injury was always preferable to the absolute agony Shantotto felt whenever she encountered a particularly stupid being.

"I cannot believe that I have been bested by this skinless buffoon," she muttered under her breath, struggling to sit up. "Truly, my victory over this tournament cannot arrive too soon!"

At least Pennywise appeared to be faring well. Looking past the burly numbskull dressed in blue, Shantotto could see that the cosmic devourer had that cocky devil, Kuzuru or whatever-he-was-called, trapped in a stranglehold. This was not to say that Pennywise was entirely unscathed, however. Deep gouges lined the creature's sides, a particularly nasty one slicing diagonally across Its face. While the cuts didn't appear to be bleeding, Shantotto began trying to stand once again.

All her efforts to rise were for naught, unfortunately, and she only succeeded in wriggling around like a lame duck. The rhyming sorceress rolled uncomfortably onto her side, her shoulder colliding with cold, roughhewn stone. Abandoning wallowing in her misery for a second, the mousy mage opened her eyes and immediately wished she hadn't. Her vision was fuzzy, but she was still able to take in the yawning depths that stretched below the narrow platform, the hazy air and silvery cast of the moon combining to create an almost spectral veil of swirling, distant fog. But even this could not conceal the rows upon rows of deadly spikes that lay far below, lurking like the maw of a gigantic beast beneath the stygian black. The sight made Shantotto's stomach give a queasy lurch, bile rising in her throat.

As if sensing Its partner's distress, Pennywise's lurid yellow eyes slanted to look at the tarutaru. A sly look curled Its painted lips into a perfect Cheshire grin, teeth flecked with gore and shining like the pulpy remains of crushed strawberries. It ignored the leader of the Ashen Blades trapped under It, hardly registering the blade-demon's savage struggling. In fact, the clown didn't appear to feel any pain at all.

Tearing Its gaze away from Shantotto, Pennywise's head craned once more toward Skeletor. "What's a skeleton's favorite instrument?" It asked, grinning widely.

There was a beat of silence, broken only by Skeletor's incredulous, blurted "What?"

"A skeleton's favorite instrument," Pennywise repeated, head canting to the side like a curious hound. "What is it?"

What the fuck? Kuzuru mouthed to himself, unable to speak because of the clown's big ol' clawed hand currently attempting to crush his windpipe. He could feel the beast above him practically vibrating with anticipatory excitement, Its talons tapping out a disturbing staccato over his collar bone.

No one noticed Shantotto surreptitiously grasping for her fallen staff, her other hand clutching the stone parapet for support.

The clown's red lips pouted when no reply was forthcoming. Still, Pennywise howled with laughter when It finally revealed the joke's end: "A tromBONE!"

"LIES!" Skeletor barked, shaking one angry fist at the sewer clown. "Lies and slander! It's the viola, you half-baked harlequin!"

After that, a series of incredibly violent things occurred in quick succession. Future historians would never be able to say if the would-be conqueror of Eternia might have continued to rant at the smug clown, for sadly, he was cut off by an earth-shattering explosion and a spray of liquid flame across the back of his cowl-covered head.

Saffron flames easily set the fabric alight, red and orange tongues of heat quickly consuming every scrap of fabric available to them. Skeletor screeched a long, agonizingly strident cry of pain, tearing at his burning, blackened cowl and casting it over the bridge's edge like a fiery ribbon. In that same instant, Kuzuru was able to debunk Pennywise with a well-aimed kick and a shout of "Get off, Bozo!"

"I'll make you pay for that, you lame lemming!" Skeletor cried. Bare-skulled and shaking with rage, his empty eye sockets glared hatefully at the little shrew with a fierce attitude. "Every participant in this competition will know my incredible might once I turn you to ash!"

Weaving another spell around her hands, the hero of the Crystal War narrowed her eyes, but Pennywise cut in before she could reply, "Well, you know what they say... You can't spell 'incredible' without 'edible'— hrnk!"

The creature choked on a laugh, the limbs of Its body seizing as a spike of metal punched out from Its back. A spurt of brackish ichor decorated the blade, the lifeblood peeling off like wisps of smoke and vanishing into the night air. More blades swiftly followed, shredding through soft tissues and jutting out in all directions like a porcupine's quills.

"Ugh," Kuzuru hissed, a disgusted scowl on his face as he wiped a streak of drool from his cheek. "This thing needs to learn how to shut the hell up."

850 words - Wordcounter!