Match of the Millennium

Description: You guys remember Lisa Frank, right? Those cute, colorful trapper keepers with the adorable animals on them? of course you do. Lisa Frank defined a generation, with high-quality, wholesome artwork for school supplies across the country. And what could be more wholesome than a dignified, public fight right outside their headquarters in Tucson, Arizona. The two lucky fighters? Alan R.B., the mystery wrapped in an enigma who left his last perfectly legal fight as a rising cult star. Facing off against him? The winner of the last fight Alan watched over, the artistic genius Radha Mistry. And what better form of art is there than the high quality corporate productions of Lisa Frank?

[RADHA]
ARIZONA
AMERICA
EARTH
DIMENSION "EARTHREALM"

The Lisa Frank factory is a colorful and shining place even if the wind and the sand and the sun and the desert and the ambient lizardification that seems to plague many a resident of the great state of Arizona have taken its toll. The place has the sense of something abandoned but not yet rotted.

Radha Mistry likes it! In an abstract sort of way.

The usual action cameras are set out, along with some seating for onlookers, but the action is right in front of the Rainbow Dolphin Emporium. Or will be, at least. The glazed windows do not hide the large, whimsical figures sitting in the completely empty lobby. Radha herself is seated on a folding stool, with a similar tripod holding an easel in front of her. A watercolor palette sits on her knee; periodically she takes a few brush strokes.

No reason not to work while you're waiting for a man.

A kick-up of wind throws dust across her canvas. Behind her glasses, Radha narrows her eyes. "I suppose that is one way to add texture..."

The SNF crew don't laugh.

[ALAN]
Alan R.B. has never granted an official interview. Looking into his background reveals a blank spot for about ten years from the age of 20 to 30 where he didn't seem to exist. Paparazzi trying to follow him anywhere aside from the hedonistic parties he frequently attends simply lose him somewhere without a confrontation.

The best source of information on Alan R.B. is a listicle tucked away in the clickbaity website FightPulse! in the gutter of the internet. Fifteen Weird Facts You Wouldn't Believe About THIS Fighter!

#6: Alan R.B. has never been seen entering or leaving a vehicle.

The blonde looks irritated as he emerges from around the far corner of the Lisa Frank building, barely in view of the camera. He sees the SNF crew, spits to the side, and then, with a crackle of electricity, crosses the intervening space in an eyeblink, right up in a producer's face.

Alan nonchalantly takes the producer's tie in his hands, smoothing it against the man's chest. "You got any idea how far away this fuckin' place is from a leyline?" He polishes a metal pin with his thumb. "When you set up these fun little playdates, open a goddamn map and think about what you're doing..." He slowly pulls the tie just a /little/ too tight. His posture is irritated, but his face seems cool and composed. "...for more than half the time you spend jacking off in your mom's basement. Got it?" He slaps his cheeks.

Flicker.

Now he's behind Radha, snapping open his expensive cigarette case to take out a black-and-gold, lighting it against the bottom of his sharp, defined chin. "Fuck is that?" he asks. He leaves the cigarette case out and open, a silent offer.

[RADHA]
Is Alan R.B. An Alien Lizard-Person? You Won't Believe Photo #9!

Radha raises her attention when Alan arrives on the scene and begins fucking around with the producer. There is a gentle little laugh from her, very ladylike, as she makes a stroke of something that's a sort of metallic-suggesting gold - when Alan moves to look, he sees... A glob of color.

No, there's more detail there. It actually has a sort of optical-illusion quality - it's like the light and the nearby ponderosa pines and the weird hints of garish color from inside of the tinted windows of the lobby, all melted together and without any edges or lines put together. Maybe it would remind him of the view through thermal goggles, but way more pastel.

There ain't a single naked lady in it, of course.

Radha reaches over to take a cigarette when offered, though she adds as she slides it with the practiced ease of an art student into the corner of her watercolor paint tray (a /dry/ part, of course), "Afterwards, perhaps. You understand how it is." Then she rises upwards.

Radha moves with swaying dance-like ease, kicking her stool into the air, sweeping her watercolor pad shut, tossing it into the air - sweeping her easel apart, clapping it together with the stool, raising it up, hurling it like a spear towards the production crew (one of whom scrambles, too late, to grab it) and catching the pad as it descends. After a momentary glance, she looks up to Alan. "Dries it off perfectly," she explains.

"Be sure to catch this one!" she calls to the crew. And she raises a hand, clapping her fingers against her palm. A bamboo pole is lobbed to her; she catches it, and then smiles back to Alan.

"So, Mr. Salami - are you ready?"

[ALAN]
After Radha withdraws her selected Nat Sherman Black & Gold, Alan clicks the cigarette case closed. There's that symbol again - a sapphire triangle inset in the onyx, a circle in the center with lines leading to the midpoint of each side. It matches his belt buckle.

Smoke curls from the corners of his mouth as he looks at the picture, going so far as to tilt his sunglasses up to see it clearly. He is tensed - electricity crackles less vigorously on his skin than it normally does. His gaze sweeps across the area.

Then he relaxes. Whatever he was looking for, he didn't find. As Radha stunts around, either warming up or trying to show off, Alan turns away, shoving his hands in his vest pockets. When he pulls them free, those iron rings are twinkling on his fingers, spots of honest brightness in the desolate, fading surroundings. Maybe the only thing honest about the man.

He turns, rising up on the balls of his feet, relaxing until the lightning constantly crackling around him begins to dance over his clothes as well. "My soppressata's always ready for the marinade. Try checking yourself, first. Last time, I was just trying to make a teachable moment."

COMBATSYS: Alan has started a fight here.

[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  <
Alan             0/-------/-------|

COMBATSYS: Radha has joined the fight here.

[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  //////////////////////////////]
Alan             0/-------/-------|======-\-------\0            Radha

[RADHA]
Radha's eyes turn to that cigarette case. Hm. She files this away for later. (The motif may slip into a piece she does in a couple of weeks. Good job, Alan.)

"Is that so? I thought you were being a bit ripe at the time," Radha says as she spins that big bamboo around languidly, stepping back a pace as if to yield Alan the authority of his fat, girthy rings. They're sparking, aren't they? She thinks so. The butt of the stave raises up to push her glasses to a firmer seat on her nose.

"But I understand that tension can make any sausage start to sour. Does that sound right to you?" This is already going to be overdubbed with color commentary in order to retain this endeavor at presenting a family-friendly, wholesome, boner-free image to the viewing public.

Radha's legs shift as she lowers herself fractionally. Inwardly, she muses: Electricity... it's a challenge, isn't it. And it may not perfectly follow the rules of normal shock - which would mean she would have relatively little to fear, given that a big old stick is usually not that conductive.

Only one way to find out, she decides. Stepping forward, she flicks the tip of the staff lightly in a half-feinted lead inwards, before throwing herself behind a strike aimed dead at Alan's center of gravity - at his /very kishkes/ - and accompanied by a wordless shout. This strike - this DEEP strike - concludes with a sweep upwards at the last moment, up and to the right.

After all, Radha reasons, he's probably right handed.

COMBATSYS: Alan dodges Radha's Deep Strike.

[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  //////////////////////////////]
Alan             0/-------/-------|=======\-------\1            Radha

[ALAN]
Hey, like, Alan's not a ninja, right? He's constantly talking shit, has taken a outboxer's stance, glows in the dark, and wears the rough equivalent of a very small country's GNP to a street fight. He's... he's /not/ a ninja.

"Who's tense?"

But standing on weapons is normally a ninja thing. What must have seemed like a well-executed strike apparently looked like a luxurious stretch to Alan R.B., who kind of casually shifts his weight and brings one boot onto the staff, pushing off with his other foot, rising right up with the strike as though he were weightless. He sneers down at Radha. "Ain't no bugs on me."

He continues moving after the swing is done, flipping around and past Radha, landing in a low crouch. He doesn't seem particularly elementally bothered by the attempt for his nuts, because he's not a hypocrite and odds are v. v. high he's going to go for a grope at some point in this fight. Despite the distance between them, Alan throws a jabbing punch toward Radha.

Electricity erupts around his left arm and both legs partway through the punch. He moves forward at a blistering speed, intersecting with Radha's face before continuing right on past her, twisting, pulling back up into his stance. Most outboxers don't have that particular kind of jab range. "Oh, here we go, here we go! Feels like it's been a fucking minute since this shit popped off, huh?"

COMBATSYS: Alan successfully hits Radha with Storm Front.

[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  ////////////////////////      ]
Alan             0/-------/-----==|=======\-------\1            Radha

[RADHA]
The weapon raises upwards, lifting Alan in the process. Radha raises her head to look at him, apparently surprised, and you know, she really does not seem to have anything much to do here. She obviously focuses heavily on the use of that stick, so that's both her hands and arms occupied. Her legs are kind of low and she does not seem to be able to just... throw legs everywhere like some kind of Chinese super-cop.

AND SO Alan R.B., agent of the Killuminati, punches Radha right in her glasses. She is at least turning away from him in anticipation of this kind of thing, so her glasses go flying, but not her eyeball or her teeth. She raises up her stick as she spins for a moment, letting out a noise like "guh!" as the glasses fly off and land into the coffee of someone on the production team.

"Mr. Salami!" Radha says with a new sort of vigor, pushing out through her diffidence, "I'm not sure I follow you, but you're a much more STIMULATING figure than you were in that last encounter. Were you holding back all this time, merely playing the weakling and the spoiler?"

She raises her head. Were her eyes blue before?

Moot question! Radha lunges forwards and slings her stick forward, not to strike but to loop that long, stiff length of bamboo into Alan's range of operation. He may be able to box fast and hard, but the goal's to get that stick under something - like an armpit, but a neck will do too - where nothing much can happen

EXCEPT for when Radha grabs the OTHER end of the stick and pulls, hopefully hauling Alan up close and against her body at a poor angle. Well, poor for him. Or maybe not? I mean, body press, not a bad deal.

What's the next part? The grim icons of Lisa Frank do not dare to guess.

COMBATSYS: Radha successfully hits Alan with Infatuation.

[     \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  ///////////////////////       ]
Alan             0/-------/--=====|=======\==-----\1            Radha

[ALAN]
Alan R.B. starts falling back, willing to give ground. Keeping Alan zoned out is hell. "Oh, you'll know when I start playing. I don't do it in front of SNF cameras, though." He smiles, sharklike. "Their color balance is no good. Some things you want a real crisp image for."

He tries to sway away from Radha's staff, but his own desire to go for a perceived opening lets her tangle him up and haul him tight. "Yikes!" She pulls the blonde close enough to smell the tobacco from his cigarette - richer and mellower than a harsh Marlboro. Money always smells better.

By either instinct or will, Alan adjusts to the situation ably, settling his left hand on the small of Radha's back. It's not a gentle caress, but a possessive clutch. "Then again, we can't always wait for a perfect moment." He leans close. "Can we?" He leans closer.

By which I mean he bashes his forehead into Radha's before his other arm comes up, freeing itself from the press, forearm wreathed in electricity as he smashes it into Radha's neck. He still has that predatory smile on his face.

COMBATSYS: Alan successfully hits Radha with Rapid Combo.

[     \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  ///////////////////           ]
Alan             0/-------/-======|=======\====---\1            Radha

[RADHA]
Up close to a man is exactly where Radha enjoys being. She bares her teeth in a smile, as he presses closer. "The perfect can be the enemy of the ghhh," she replies tartly, interrupted at a certain point by that mixture of the good old-fashioned head butt and the slightly less old fashioned electrical smash against the side of her neck.

Her expression is less appealing now, but that is probably because of the electrostatic stimulation of her facial muscles. Boy, that does weird stuff to your face, doesn't it!

However, the shock to her neck and her head doesn't seem to have fried her brains, though her shoulder does spasm and the grasp on Alan loosens. Is it going to be enough to let him wriggle loose, like the legendary mountain trout who has also snapped loose from the grip of a bamboo pole?

Maybe.

What Radha does next is to throw herself to the side. Not back, not forward, but towards one of those great gold-tinted windows that are keeping out the harsh Arizona sunlight from the desolate tomblike environs of that barely-used lobby. Her hips and legs move to steer Alan round as she does it: That's to try and get him to smash THROUGH the window, which will no doubt go down as a true family-friendly innovation. More to the point might be the strangely narcotic sensation that aims to flow through him, over him: it's a bit strangling, but a lot more pleasant, something that makes the muscles want to relax, something that makes the subtle tissues want to slump and the energies to sag.

Which may make it easier to bear when Radha slips her grip on the stick and then proceeds to an old-fashioned set of whaling strikes downwards-- hopefully into Alan's placid, flaccid corpus.

COMBATSYS: Alan blocks Radha's Aesthetic Narcosis.

[         \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  //////////////////            ]
Alan             1/-------/=======|======-\-------\0            Radha

[ALAN]
Alan doesn't seem to be... /particularly/ interested in disconnecting from Radha just yet. Perhaps he doesn't want to struggle in an undignified fashion, perhaps he thinks he'll just wait until he can bolt away in a single impressive mood, perhaps he's just comfortable where he is.

Radha casually drives him into the window, getting the benefit of seeing his pupils dilate and his eyes unfocus as he falls back through the glass. The woman shifts her grip on her staff.

Alan lifts one hand, looking at it like a drug user on a bad trip, extends his finger and pinky like a pair of devil horns, and jabs it up against his own neck.

The Illuminati agent's body jerks with the electric charge and he's suddenly moving again, arms blurring as he takes each of Radha's staff strikes on an elbow. He swings one foot under him, pushing back to his feet, leaving some blood behind. "Hey, you got any idea how many hard drugs I've done? A little psychic euphoria's barely gonna tweak my synapses, though I /am/ upgrading you to tikka masala." After blocking one strike, he suddenly pushes forward, one palm out, electricity forming a strange pattern as it pushes the oxygen away. Briefly, the space around his hand is cold, simulating Earth's upper atmosphere.

A strange, jagged red shape of lightning thrusts out from his palm, a ring of darker red emanating out from the origin point and slowly dissolving along his arm.

"Still, that's an interesting technique. Most of you people use that power like a club. You a spy? Already spoken for?"

COMBATSYS: Radha dodges Alan's Sprite and Elf.

[          \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  //////////////////            ]
Alan             1/------=/=======|======-\-------\0            Radha

[RADHA]
Radha twirls her stave as she puts her free hand on her hip, looking down to see Alan's defeated body. Before she can raise one of her feet, no doubt wearing some sassy little slipper that she has an endorsement deal for, to put on the Illuminated man's head and/or chest region - he gives himself the most metal of boosts.

Radha reaches up to push her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Of course, they aren't there, but the gesture seems ingrained. "I haven't the slightest idea," Radha answers about the drugs. And then as her strikes are blocked, she can see the man raise his hand and -

Oh -

That looks bad. Extremely bad. Radha's response is to pull away from that cold, swerving herself to the side - practically lunging into what is in the final analysis a dive and a roll that should, by all rights, give Alan the strategic advantage of breathing room. As she recovers herself, his burst of lightning smashing gold-tinted glass and melting it into stinking slag, Radha looks over her shoulder.

"A spy... already spoken for?" she asks, even as she approaches a flight of stairs leading up to a set of dark offices. Her hand rests on the bannister as she steps upwards, giving Alan yet more space in which to breathe, recover, or hurl some kind of horrible illuminatiray towards her. She takes the time to flutter her eyelashes as she takes several steps further up, bamboo pole landing on her shoulder with a solid passing 'thunk'.

"My dear fellow... I'm certainly not sure what would make you think that I was a spy." Her head tilts back. "Who would you think that I would be spying 'for'? Or would you think I was something romantic, like in a novel... a renegade agent, an 'information broker' perhaps?" Why is she going up those stairs. "I'm just what I appear to be. An artist! That's all."

Wait a minute: As she climbs up to balance on the curved bannister, the truth becomes clear. For standing next to that stairwell is a jolly panda bear holding the famous bucket of striped paint that many a young recruit or freshman has been sent to find. https://cookiesandsangria.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/lf-hq.jpg

"Unless you're asking me two questions at once, and want to know if you can take me out, for tikka masala later?" Radha concludes, and then she jumps up onto the head of Mr. Panda Bear. She balances--!

And slams her pole down, shoving the bear forwards with the vigor and enthusiasm of a Venetian gondola man! (A Viennese one, in some translations.) As the colorful statue with its aesthetic promise of a bygone era of innocence and purity topples forwards, Radha steps backwards, spreading her arms like a mime of Christ.

"I cannot bear to split my focus right now, Mr. Salami!" Radha shouts as the statue falls, and maybe that's the worst part of all.

COMBATSYS: Radha issues a challenge!!

[          \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  //////////////////            ]
Alan             1/------=/=======|======-\-------\0            Radha

COMBATSYS: Radha successfully hits Alan with Large Random Weapon.

[               \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  ///////////////////           ]
Alan             1/---====/=======|=======\-------\1            Radha

[ALAN]
The sprite's red electricity lingers in the air for an unreasonable time, crackling and sizzling into nothingness in the air for the entire time it takes Alan to push himself back up, grab the collar of his vest, and adjust the fit.

"Don't lie to me," he says, grinning. "Power like that fucks you up. I never met a Psycho Powered person living humbly. You're all a mess, somewhere. Something like what you just tried to whammy me with would ge shit hot for espionage. I guess you could be a serial killer, like half of you types end up. Cult leader. Crime boss." He smokes the last of his cigarette down and drops it from his mouth, hand casually slapping it aside as he looks up toward her. "Don't give me that artist shi-"

Alan was reaching up to pluck his next cigarette from behind his ear - he's a two-smoke-a-fight kind of guy - and the panda looms large in his vision, fat, endangered, and happy. The boxer puts a hand out, fingertips touching the rainbow heart, but doesn't get the chi into his hand fast enough. The panda blows the fuck apart against him in a cloud of plaster and whimsy.

The cloud blows away in a rush, leaving the blonde man hunched over, covered in multicolored plaster, his sunglasses cracked on the beleaguered pavement a few feet away, his cigarette crumpled in his hand. He coughs, powder in his lungs, though he's had worse in there. "Ahh, fuck that," he complains hoarsely, brushing at his pants. He still doesn't look, like, /mad/, so the traditional triggers for guys like this just keep on not firing. Damaging his clothes, his cigarettes, his sunglasses, and laughing at his peepee just haven't done it. "Now you're just getting cocky." He takes a few steps back and tilts his head back, drawing a deep breath and relaxing. Relaxing /hard/. All of his muscles loosen at once, and the chi that has always been flowing through him is suddenly raging around him like a storm.

Alan takes one step forward and flips forward, power spiralling down into his hands. He clenches his fists together, body tensing from his legs up, funnelling more power up his body, compressing it into one spot. Before he actually reaches Radha he swings down an axehandle blow, the lightning chi exploding out of him in a tremendous downward wave. Alan himself is hurled backward from the force, spinning in the air like an acrobat before landing ramrod-straight back in the lot.

Normally, that's it. There's videos of this technique. It usually doesn't hit, disperse along the ground, and then come /back/ to shoot up into the sky with a roar of thunder.

COMBATSYS: Alan successfully hits Radha with Mjolnir EX.

[               \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  //////                        ]
Alan             0/-------/---====|>>>>>>>\>>>>>>>\2            Radha

[RADHA]
The Panda... FALLS.
The Alan... RISES.

Radha is in the midst of raising her stick up. High sticking, a traditional offense in colder climes, is unfamiliar to her. The bear shatters behind her, whimsy and hope and color dying into a cloud of rapidly expanding dust under the fell thrusting fist of the Killuminati. And as for Radha, she turns her head to look at Alan as he swings his fists down.

Her stick whips up. If that was a simple old fashioned Starfleet axe-handle then it is quite possible that Radha would have caught it. Even if it were electrically backed, the first part of what happens - the sundering of that piece of bamboo - would have been as far as it goes. You can do a lot with a stick that's been busted up - just ask Billy Kane.

But that is not all that happens.

"Well," Radha says before what she actually says is THRAKHOOM, because the entire lobby of the Lisa Frank factory explodes in a gigantic burst of screaming burning paint, glass blowing out everywhere as the amputated plaster head of a big friendly golden retriever puppy flies out, aiming almost directly at one of the cameras and nearly killing an intern. Happy Family Day, children!

(In her office somewhere in Scottsdale, Lisa Frank smiles - for you see, this factory is a white elephant, but the over-generous SNF insurance payouts... now, there's a way to get paid... But she must finish her meal of worms and insects, and reapply her human face, before the pay can be completed.)

Even in the midst of electrical chaos, though, Radha swings her burning, disintegrating staff round, raising a hand. That shimmering white light of divine judgement is lensed by a shimmering net that amplifies that strange touch of Power she'd brought in the past, turns it into something more paralyzing, more exhausting, more prone to make you cough and gasp for breath even if the feeling in your mind is pleasant.

But it's kind of a reflex. Radha herself ends up smashing into the receptionist's desk.

No sassy comeback. Alan R. B... has had the Final Word.

COMBATSYS: Radha can no longer fight.

[               \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  <
Alan             0/-------/---====|

COMBATSYS: Alan blocks Radha's Non-objective Art.

[                  \\\\\\\\\\\\  <
Alan             0/-------/-======|

[ALAN]
The Illuminati is aware of Lisa Frank's true form. One day, this information will be used to greatest effect. The world will tremble.

Alan hates the moments after using the Mjolnir. He lives with power thrumming through his body at every moment of his life. With only the bare minimum of training, he's superhuman in nearly every way and has never met anyone who could match his raw speed. For the Mjolnir, he concentrates all of his chi into his knuckles and throws it all in a tremendous wave.

For a few seconds, he's normal, reduced to the abilities of a fairly fit thirtysomething. He despises it. It's like being underwater. He hits the ground and sees the wave coming. His face is finally looking a little uncomposed as he backpedals at a nice, normal pace, his bolt of hair slackening. He crosses his arms, relaxing, everything slacking.

Spark.

Alan seizes that first flicker of power that runs into him and drags it out. A matrix of electricity wreathes his arms like a shield just as the psycho power smashes into him. Chi and Psycho Power don't interact well - he doesn't try to fight the power with his lightning, but rather himself, fighting the paralysis by jangling his own nerves. It's painful as all hell.

It works. Smoke rises from Alan's body as the wave of power passes by, leaving him still standing. The boxer draws a rattling breath and coughs into the back of his fist. "Not bad."

He crosses over the cracked battlefield, stepping over glass, pulling his phone out from his vest pocket. Alan crouches down over the fallen Radha, taking a few pictures, forwarding them to analysts. "You've got some interesting applications," he mutters. "We'll keep our eye on you."

Then he's gone, his afterimage collapsing into sparks.

Log created on 18:43:38 02/04/2017 by Alan, and last modified on 12:05:16 02/14/2017.