06-08-2018, 06:57 PM
Bubblegum hair bobbed and swished around the bandit’s shoulder armor, the light of the blue touch screen reflecting the eldar and nameless woman’s faces as they stared intently into the Dataverse stream. Caret’s hand grabbed the bandit and tugged, “Let me see!” She dashed to Balanlara’s side and peeked around her cloak, then ran back to the other side of the impenetrable wall of bodies that blocked the Dataverse stream. She whined frantically and then muscled her way under the bandit’s arm, her head poking out from beneath the woman’s armpit. Her face lit up into a grin when she saw Karl Jak in a dapper suit, smiling with a showman’s smirk.
“Oh my goodness, this is so exciting!” she squealed with glee.
The woman pushed her gloved hand down into Caret’s hair and tousled it aggressively, “Shut up, I can’t hear!”
Karl pointed to the camera and winked dramatically, “Hello and welcome to the Dante’s Abyss 8 Draft Live Stream!” Caret squeaked in a soft, continuous tone before the bandit bonked the top of her head. “Our organizers are particularly cheap this year,” he quipped, holding up a cheap glass bowl with a number of slips taped up inside of it.
“The way this will work is that I’ll draw a name from the ‘hat’, and the next name I draw will be their partner. The next name I’ll draw will be the first person of the team they’ll be against in the first round, and the one after that will be their teammate. Got it?” Caret nodded exuberantly, her mussed hair bouncing along. The nameless woman sighed and clicked her tongue at her companion, but left her be for the moment.
Jak stuffed his hand into the bowl and fished it around for a moment, the retrieved a thin, blue strip. “Alright, it looks our first contestant is…” He carefully pried it open and read it. “I am gonna get so many names wrong,” he chuckled, then composed himself. “Taloc! Taylock? Tlalock? Taloc!” he announced, then turned the strip towards the camera.
The woman let out an anxious breath, not sure if she wanted to see her name drawn next or not. “And his partner will be…” the announcer’s hand thrust back in and snatched another strip. He aggressively snapped it open, partially tearing the strip, but it was legible nonetheless. “Makoto!” he called out with flourish. “Looks like our first team will be Taloc and Makoto, folks! And they’ll be up against…” Another slip torn open, read, and turned around. “Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades!”
The combatant’s fists clenched and unclenched. She hadn’t expected the team-making draw to be so engaging, but she was latched on, hook line and sinker. She could only imagine how the folks back home would be reacting.
“And her partner will be…” Another slip, another tear. “The one that was a fake secondary and is now a fake prime,” the bandit’s chest stopped its rise and fall as she held in her breath, every muscle in her body tense, “the bandit with no name!”
The thin mechanic shrieked loudly and began jumping up and down, slapping the nameless woman’s steel-plated back with a twang. “You’re in it!”
Balanlara offered a faint smile and tilted her chin up, violet eyes cast down at the phone with an intrigued stare. “And I am simply enraptured by who your teammate might be.”
“Damnit!” she yelled into her device, grabbing either side of it firmly, “I put down Ass Kicker! You can’t have my name be the same as it was in the last one!” The veins in her head bulged as she shook her phone back and forth impotently. For a moment it seemed as though she would throw the tiny machine but she caught herself, frozen with her hand over her head. She exhaled slowly and gathered herself, her body relaxing back down. “It’s fine, I’ll have them fix it in the announcements,” she reassured herself, “No biggy.”
Balanlara nudged the armored woman and placed her elegant hand upon the rugged surface of her armor. “But who is this Kerrigan that you’ve been paired with?” she said, her psychic echo almost like the purr of a curious cat.
The woman’s shoulder bopped upwards with a clank. “I dunno, let’s look her up!” She began to clumsily thumb type “kerrygan queeen if blades” into the search bar. It helpfully corrected the search and brought up a few, scant results. She tapped the “Images” tab and sudden;y recoiled. “Ah damn,” she spat with a laugh, “well that’s something.”
Caret peeked over the woman’s forearm, and her face immediately went almost as pink as her hair. “Yeah, that’s something alright,” she said softly.
The bandit’s arm dropped and she planted her hand on a planted hip, staring down the young mechanic with a judgmental expression. “Why you always into the ones that look like they wanna tear out your heart and eat it on the end of they claw, Caret? Why you so into monster chicks?”
The grease monkey recoiled and hung her head bashfully, then mumbled something beneath her breath.
“What was that?” the woman scorned.
Caret shook her head and put on a transparently faux smile. “Nothing!”
Balanlara’s lips curled incredulously. “She said that’s not all she can eat,” she scoffed, her tone flat as an old tire.
Caret’s mouth hung open and she stammered, the bright pink on her cheeks deeping to an almost purple shade of dark red. “I- well- I did not!”
The eldar rolled her eyes, flourished her cape and began walking towards the main chamber. “Let us find your partner before the young romantic does?” She cast back a sly look, “We wouldn’t want anyone to be ‘consumed’ before the tournament even starts.”
The bandit creased her eyebrows. “Gross.” She began her slow trudge into the main hall, her flustered and now dead silent friend trailing after listlessly.
The main hall was packed shoulder to shoulder, a vast sea of humanity and “other” intermingling into a hot soup of sweat, awkward “excuse me”s and body odor that the AC and public affairs teams couldn’t quite conquer. Pictures were being flashed and microphones were being hustled in front of everyone that might be mistaken for a prime. While Balanlara swept through the crowd like a shadow, even with her exceptionally broad pauldrons and oversized backpack, the nameless woman was forced to push herself through like a bull through a herd of cattle.
It only took a few moments of standing on tiptoes before the bandit caught a glimpse of the practically titanic woman’s dreads standing over in the corner. It only took a few metal-spiked shoulder checks before people got the picture and started clearing the marauder’s path.
The Queen of Blades had been leaning against the wall, her ominously glowing eyes darting from person to person. The bandit knew those eyes. Intelligent, calculating eyes, every shred of information gently falling into a vast record of neatly kept mental records. She’d seen it a hundred times in the eyes of warband leaders, insane shamans, and snake oil vendors. The rest of the woman was completely alien to her.
Her entire body was sheathed in a thick, reddish-brown shell that flowed organically over her entire trim feminine figure, otherwise devoid of the trappings of humanity. Atop her head was something akin to hair, which the nameless woman had thought to be dreadlocks such as her own, but was instead twitching and writhing and chitinous, more like hundreds of smooth, hairless spider legs. Folded behind her back were two large “wings” of spines, reminding the bandit of a bat’s skeleton but with a lot more stabby bits. Her fingers terminated in long, pointed claws, the shell over them shaping them into nightmarish weapons of rending and tearing.
For a moment the nameless woman simply regarded her from the safety of the crowd but then shrugged her hammer unto her shoulder, strode forward, and held her hand out. “Oh yo, so you must be Kerrigan, right? It’d be pretty damn hard to confuse you with anyone else. MY roster says ‘Ass Kick’ but I don’t really got a name.”
The woman smiled sharply and picked herself off of the wall. The bandit wasn’t used to others looming over her, but Kerrigan was almost a half foot taller than she was. The Queen of Blades took up the wastelander’s and shook it confidently. “A pleasure,” she said with an edge of intrigue. “"If I can't call you by your name, what are you known for? I can tell from the looks of you this isn't your first fight, but I hope those are the scars of victory?"
The bandit smirked and shrugged passively. “Only lost twice, and the first time I was a secondary, so don’t hold it against me. Some people call me ‘the bandit,’ ‘cause that’s what I used to do for a living, but I’m trying real hard to keep anything from sticking.”
“A secondary,” Kerrigan purred, her burning eyes narrowing with attention. “So you’re a proper veteran then. And as the ‘bandit,’ you would be the one listed as my partner.” She released the nameless woman’s hand but didn’t take a step away. “I'm glad to see it's someone with strength. I shouldn't expect you to have any qualms with my,” she paused and allowed a poisonous smirk to soak into her cheek, “methods, then?"
“No idea!” the warrior laughed back. “As long as we’re fucking up primes on prime time, I don’t particularly give a shit. Last time I was in one of these competitions I got shivved by a dirty rotten disease boy and I don’t hold it against him, if that gives you any indication.”
The titanic woman’s smirk split into a broad grin. “"I think we'll get along just fine, then.” She looked the woman up and down, taking note of every minute detail. “And just what happens to be your preferred method of fighting?”
The bandit twisted the throttle on her hammer, filling the room with the brief roar of the engine perched atop it. “Either I shoot em, crush em, or get creative.” With her free hand she pat Magus’ head, which hung from her belt in a permanent scream. "I also carry a few souvenirs from previous fights. They give me a couple of extra tricks."
“Such a handsome face,” Kerrigan teased. “And what does he do for you?”
“Shit’s wild,” the woman replied enthusiastically. “He spews out this super thick cloud of black fog that drains everyone but me of a bit of strength. It’s also, like, a big black fog cloud, so it’s pretty hard for anyone but me to see in there.” She slapped her left forearm, which had been replaced with some kind of steel prosthetic. “This used to be Gildart’s, I think he’s here isn’t he? Anyways, it lets me punch shit into about a million little cubes. Like, literal cubes. It’s called Crash Magic or something.” Next she pointed to the small ribbon on her flesh and blood arm. “And this was Mami’s ribbon. It’s basically like a rope, but way cooler.” Finally, she slid her fingers over a large hole hear the sternum of her armor. “And this is from Okor, the aforementioned disease boy. I really don’t know what’s in there, but something is left of the sickness he stabbed me with. The blood that comes out of it is almost clear, and I definitely do not suggest touching it.”
The infested woman nodded with a calculating lilt. “Such a collection,” she responded coolly.
The nameless gladiator laughed, “You should start one of your own.”
“I’d love to know more about your method of combat,” Kerrigan said with a falre of psionic energy flashing from her pupils.
The woman gestured over to the dojo with the haft of her hammer. “Only one way to figure each other out.”
Kerrigan’s almost permanent smirk deepened, “Of course. I would greatly enjoy a quick spar.”
The broad-shouldered woman began making her way towards the training area, her secondary companions sticking to the edges of her attention as they watched with giddy investment. The camera crews and service staff had even less of an issue parting for the two oversized woman as they prowled through the central room, a few even taking a few candid photos as they strolled past.
“So what’s your home universe like? Any of your friends make it over here? Make any new ones?” the marauder chatted casually.
“The world I come from is very different,” she said in that distant tone that just about every prime had when they were talking about their origin. “I was human there, once. Now I am more than that.” She blinked away the memories and carried on with the questions, dodging any depth that might have been plumbed from her answer. “The only person in this place I might call a friend would be Illidan.”
The nameless woman let those details die in obscurity. “Why you doing DA?”
“I’d like to win the competition and solidify my position within this world,” she said passively.
The woman scoffed, “Alright, I’m not gonna let that one go. That’s the most generic answer that every would-be king gives. You don’t seem the type.”
Kerrigan hummed pleasantly, “At least you’re sharp.” The Queen of Blades glanced down to her clawed fingers and splayed them out idly. “I’d like to collect information on all the strongest fighters and influential players of this universe. I’d like to fight them in a controlled scenario to see what I make of them.”
“Everybody wants to rule the world,” the nameless woman laughed, shoving a particularly insistent microphone from her face. "Ya know this place has been won and lost by so many primes that saw themselves as king of the molehill, I don't even know if the history books would bother writing one more down. Even Palpatine, Aragorn, all the other dudes that have been around since the start don't seem terribly interested in leadership anymore.” She sighed, glancing up to the white tiled ceiling. “The Omniverse is just chaos. We're here to have fun in it, make a few messes, clean some up. I know I'm sure as hell gonna make a racket when I can.” She turned and looked at the imposing woman over her shoulder. “I guess I just hope you focus your attention on the primes when you're doing whatever you're gonna do. They got nothing to lose. But secondaries? They're once and done. They were created by cruel hands, most of the time. Their lives usually suck. You'd probably have a pretty easy time just letting them go on by, if not make their world a little better with your literal god powers."
"I was already in complete control once,” Kerrigan responded, almost sounding bored by the idea of it. “When I got there, ruling all the little ants didn't seem very interesting to me. Here, I simply wish to,” she paused, searching for the perfect word , “establish dominance, you could say."
"Yo, I know that feeling, the woman pleasantly affirmed. “I can honestly say it interested me more in dominance when I was a secondary; everything felt more important then. But I hear that. There's not much that feels better than looking down at some jackhole who copped off to you with a hammer in your hand.” She cast a disdainful glance at some of the other primes across the room, “Everyone in this joint needs a fucking attitude adjustment."
Kerrigan ran her fingers through the thick tendrils atop her head, flipping them from side to side like a model adjusting her hair. "Heh, I love the passion in your voice. So much more honest than most of the 'noble warriors' gathered here. I think we're going to get along famously."
The bandit stepped over the threshold of the training area. Her nostril flared and a sinister snarling grin appeared on her face. “We’ll sure fuck be famous when we win it.”
“Oh my goodness, this is so exciting!” she squealed with glee.
The woman pushed her gloved hand down into Caret’s hair and tousled it aggressively, “Shut up, I can’t hear!”
Karl pointed to the camera and winked dramatically, “Hello and welcome to the Dante’s Abyss 8 Draft Live Stream!” Caret squeaked in a soft, continuous tone before the bandit bonked the top of her head. “Our organizers are particularly cheap this year,” he quipped, holding up a cheap glass bowl with a number of slips taped up inside of it.
“The way this will work is that I’ll draw a name from the ‘hat’, and the next name I draw will be their partner. The next name I’ll draw will be the first person of the team they’ll be against in the first round, and the one after that will be their teammate. Got it?” Caret nodded exuberantly, her mussed hair bouncing along. The nameless woman sighed and clicked her tongue at her companion, but left her be for the moment.
Jak stuffed his hand into the bowl and fished it around for a moment, the retrieved a thin, blue strip. “Alright, it looks our first contestant is…” He carefully pried it open and read it. “I am gonna get so many names wrong,” he chuckled, then composed himself. “Taloc! Taylock? Tlalock? Taloc!” he announced, then turned the strip towards the camera.
The woman let out an anxious breath, not sure if she wanted to see her name drawn next or not. “And his partner will be…” the announcer’s hand thrust back in and snatched another strip. He aggressively snapped it open, partially tearing the strip, but it was legible nonetheless. “Makoto!” he called out with flourish. “Looks like our first team will be Taloc and Makoto, folks! And they’ll be up against…” Another slip torn open, read, and turned around. “Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades!”
The combatant’s fists clenched and unclenched. She hadn’t expected the team-making draw to be so engaging, but she was latched on, hook line and sinker. She could only imagine how the folks back home would be reacting.
“And her partner will be…” Another slip, another tear. “The one that was a fake secondary and is now a fake prime,” the bandit’s chest stopped its rise and fall as she held in her breath, every muscle in her body tense, “the bandit with no name!”
The thin mechanic shrieked loudly and began jumping up and down, slapping the nameless woman’s steel-plated back with a twang. “You’re in it!”
Balanlara offered a faint smile and tilted her chin up, violet eyes cast down at the phone with an intrigued stare. “And I am simply enraptured by who your teammate might be.”
“Damnit!” she yelled into her device, grabbing either side of it firmly, “I put down Ass Kicker! You can’t have my name be the same as it was in the last one!” The veins in her head bulged as she shook her phone back and forth impotently. For a moment it seemed as though she would throw the tiny machine but she caught herself, frozen with her hand over her head. She exhaled slowly and gathered herself, her body relaxing back down. “It’s fine, I’ll have them fix it in the announcements,” she reassured herself, “No biggy.”
Balanlara nudged the armored woman and placed her elegant hand upon the rugged surface of her armor. “But who is this Kerrigan that you’ve been paired with?” she said, her psychic echo almost like the purr of a curious cat.
The woman’s shoulder bopped upwards with a clank. “I dunno, let’s look her up!” She began to clumsily thumb type “kerrygan queeen if blades” into the search bar. It helpfully corrected the search and brought up a few, scant results. She tapped the “Images” tab and sudden;y recoiled. “Ah damn,” she spat with a laugh, “well that’s something.”
Caret peeked over the woman’s forearm, and her face immediately went almost as pink as her hair. “Yeah, that’s something alright,” she said softly.
The bandit’s arm dropped and she planted her hand on a planted hip, staring down the young mechanic with a judgmental expression. “Why you always into the ones that look like they wanna tear out your heart and eat it on the end of they claw, Caret? Why you so into monster chicks?”
The grease monkey recoiled and hung her head bashfully, then mumbled something beneath her breath.
“What was that?” the woman scorned.
Caret shook her head and put on a transparently faux smile. “Nothing!”
Balanlara’s lips curled incredulously. “She said that’s not all she can eat,” she scoffed, her tone flat as an old tire.
Caret’s mouth hung open and she stammered, the bright pink on her cheeks deeping to an almost purple shade of dark red. “I- well- I did not!”
The eldar rolled her eyes, flourished her cape and began walking towards the main chamber. “Let us find your partner before the young romantic does?” She cast back a sly look, “We wouldn’t want anyone to be ‘consumed’ before the tournament even starts.”
The bandit creased her eyebrows. “Gross.” She began her slow trudge into the main hall, her flustered and now dead silent friend trailing after listlessly.
The main hall was packed shoulder to shoulder, a vast sea of humanity and “other” intermingling into a hot soup of sweat, awkward “excuse me”s and body odor that the AC and public affairs teams couldn’t quite conquer. Pictures were being flashed and microphones were being hustled in front of everyone that might be mistaken for a prime. While Balanlara swept through the crowd like a shadow, even with her exceptionally broad pauldrons and oversized backpack, the nameless woman was forced to push herself through like a bull through a herd of cattle.
It only took a few moments of standing on tiptoes before the bandit caught a glimpse of the practically titanic woman’s dreads standing over in the corner. It only took a few metal-spiked shoulder checks before people got the picture and started clearing the marauder’s path.
The Queen of Blades had been leaning against the wall, her ominously glowing eyes darting from person to person. The bandit knew those eyes. Intelligent, calculating eyes, every shred of information gently falling into a vast record of neatly kept mental records. She’d seen it a hundred times in the eyes of warband leaders, insane shamans, and snake oil vendors. The rest of the woman was completely alien to her.
Her entire body was sheathed in a thick, reddish-brown shell that flowed organically over her entire trim feminine figure, otherwise devoid of the trappings of humanity. Atop her head was something akin to hair, which the nameless woman had thought to be dreadlocks such as her own, but was instead twitching and writhing and chitinous, more like hundreds of smooth, hairless spider legs. Folded behind her back were two large “wings” of spines, reminding the bandit of a bat’s skeleton but with a lot more stabby bits. Her fingers terminated in long, pointed claws, the shell over them shaping them into nightmarish weapons of rending and tearing.
For a moment the nameless woman simply regarded her from the safety of the crowd but then shrugged her hammer unto her shoulder, strode forward, and held her hand out. “Oh yo, so you must be Kerrigan, right? It’d be pretty damn hard to confuse you with anyone else. MY roster says ‘Ass Kick’ but I don’t really got a name.”
The woman smiled sharply and picked herself off of the wall. The bandit wasn’t used to others looming over her, but Kerrigan was almost a half foot taller than she was. The Queen of Blades took up the wastelander’s and shook it confidently. “A pleasure,” she said with an edge of intrigue. “"If I can't call you by your name, what are you known for? I can tell from the looks of you this isn't your first fight, but I hope those are the scars of victory?"
The bandit smirked and shrugged passively. “Only lost twice, and the first time I was a secondary, so don’t hold it against me. Some people call me ‘the bandit,’ ‘cause that’s what I used to do for a living, but I’m trying real hard to keep anything from sticking.”
“A secondary,” Kerrigan purred, her burning eyes narrowing with attention. “So you’re a proper veteran then. And as the ‘bandit,’ you would be the one listed as my partner.” She released the nameless woman’s hand but didn’t take a step away. “I'm glad to see it's someone with strength. I shouldn't expect you to have any qualms with my,” she paused and allowed a poisonous smirk to soak into her cheek, “methods, then?"
“No idea!” the warrior laughed back. “As long as we’re fucking up primes on prime time, I don’t particularly give a shit. Last time I was in one of these competitions I got shivved by a dirty rotten disease boy and I don’t hold it against him, if that gives you any indication.”
The titanic woman’s smirk split into a broad grin. “"I think we'll get along just fine, then.” She looked the woman up and down, taking note of every minute detail. “And just what happens to be your preferred method of fighting?”
The bandit twisted the throttle on her hammer, filling the room with the brief roar of the engine perched atop it. “Either I shoot em, crush em, or get creative.” With her free hand she pat Magus’ head, which hung from her belt in a permanent scream. "I also carry a few souvenirs from previous fights. They give me a couple of extra tricks."
“Such a handsome face,” Kerrigan teased. “And what does he do for you?”
“Shit’s wild,” the woman replied enthusiastically. “He spews out this super thick cloud of black fog that drains everyone but me of a bit of strength. It’s also, like, a big black fog cloud, so it’s pretty hard for anyone but me to see in there.” She slapped her left forearm, which had been replaced with some kind of steel prosthetic. “This used to be Gildart’s, I think he’s here isn’t he? Anyways, it lets me punch shit into about a million little cubes. Like, literal cubes. It’s called Crash Magic or something.” Next she pointed to the small ribbon on her flesh and blood arm. “And this was Mami’s ribbon. It’s basically like a rope, but way cooler.” Finally, she slid her fingers over a large hole hear the sternum of her armor. “And this is from Okor, the aforementioned disease boy. I really don’t know what’s in there, but something is left of the sickness he stabbed me with. The blood that comes out of it is almost clear, and I definitely do not suggest touching it.”
The infested woman nodded with a calculating lilt. “Such a collection,” she responded coolly.
The nameless gladiator laughed, “You should start one of your own.”
“I’d love to know more about your method of combat,” Kerrigan said with a falre of psionic energy flashing from her pupils.
The woman gestured over to the dojo with the haft of her hammer. “Only one way to figure each other out.”
Kerrigan’s almost permanent smirk deepened, “Of course. I would greatly enjoy a quick spar.”
The broad-shouldered woman began making her way towards the training area, her secondary companions sticking to the edges of her attention as they watched with giddy investment. The camera crews and service staff had even less of an issue parting for the two oversized woman as they prowled through the central room, a few even taking a few candid photos as they strolled past.
“So what’s your home universe like? Any of your friends make it over here? Make any new ones?” the marauder chatted casually.
“The world I come from is very different,” she said in that distant tone that just about every prime had when they were talking about their origin. “I was human there, once. Now I am more than that.” She blinked away the memories and carried on with the questions, dodging any depth that might have been plumbed from her answer. “The only person in this place I might call a friend would be Illidan.”
The nameless woman let those details die in obscurity. “Why you doing DA?”
“I’d like to win the competition and solidify my position within this world,” she said passively.
The woman scoffed, “Alright, I’m not gonna let that one go. That’s the most generic answer that every would-be king gives. You don’t seem the type.”
Kerrigan hummed pleasantly, “At least you’re sharp.” The Queen of Blades glanced down to her clawed fingers and splayed them out idly. “I’d like to collect information on all the strongest fighters and influential players of this universe. I’d like to fight them in a controlled scenario to see what I make of them.”
“Everybody wants to rule the world,” the nameless woman laughed, shoving a particularly insistent microphone from her face. "Ya know this place has been won and lost by so many primes that saw themselves as king of the molehill, I don't even know if the history books would bother writing one more down. Even Palpatine, Aragorn, all the other dudes that have been around since the start don't seem terribly interested in leadership anymore.” She sighed, glancing up to the white tiled ceiling. “The Omniverse is just chaos. We're here to have fun in it, make a few messes, clean some up. I know I'm sure as hell gonna make a racket when I can.” She turned and looked at the imposing woman over her shoulder. “I guess I just hope you focus your attention on the primes when you're doing whatever you're gonna do. They got nothing to lose. But secondaries? They're once and done. They were created by cruel hands, most of the time. Their lives usually suck. You'd probably have a pretty easy time just letting them go on by, if not make their world a little better with your literal god powers."
"I was already in complete control once,” Kerrigan responded, almost sounding bored by the idea of it. “When I got there, ruling all the little ants didn't seem very interesting to me. Here, I simply wish to,” she paused, searching for the perfect word , “establish dominance, you could say."
"Yo, I know that feeling, the woman pleasantly affirmed. “I can honestly say it interested me more in dominance when I was a secondary; everything felt more important then. But I hear that. There's not much that feels better than looking down at some jackhole who copped off to you with a hammer in your hand.” She cast a disdainful glance at some of the other primes across the room, “Everyone in this joint needs a fucking attitude adjustment."
Kerrigan ran her fingers through the thick tendrils atop her head, flipping them from side to side like a model adjusting her hair. "Heh, I love the passion in your voice. So much more honest than most of the 'noble warriors' gathered here. I think we're going to get along famously."
The bandit stepped over the threshold of the training area. Her nostril flared and a sinister snarling grin appeared on her face. “We’ll sure fuck be famous when we win it.”