Description: In theory, this whole little Metro City tournament thing has been doing a really good job of keeping matches well-tracked, and minimizing outside interference from other, er, interested parties. As obscure Mad Gear member Sid attempts to officiate a supposed semi-final fight between some young Japanese man enamored in the 1950's US greaser culture and a very shady physician slash agent, things take a quick turn for the chaotic between a Greek Cypirot who fails to count to one in a single elimination tournament and a very large masked man with untold numbers of tricks up his sleeves down in the subway. (WINNER: MURDERHOUSE)
Metro City! What can you say about it that hasn't been said in so many logs prior? It's Metro City! Where there's Metro City, there's the sad, barely organized remains of Mad Gear hanging around together and doing what they do best.
Okay, the thing they do second-best, considering what they do best is get beaten to a pulp by Mike Haggar and friends. You really can't find a finer bunch of folks that are better at being victimized by virtuous public officials than these people.
Moving on to more imminent business.
The subways are being particularly rowdy at this late hour here in Metro City. You don't really see many people on the trains other than hoboes and a couple of super late-night workers. Edi E., who normally seems to be working the patrol shift around here at night, is off on another wild Cody chase - but it's debatable as to whether or not he really cares what those people down there are doing. Any passers-by are giving it all a wide berth.
"Allright, simmer down fellas," comes the effeminate-looking Sid, who we don't really talk about much. Not because of any feelings about his perceived lifestyle as measured by cultural standards, we just don't really have much to talk about when it comes to him. He's kind of that unremarkable. "We got a fabulous bloodsport!"
He speaks among a bunch of rowdy locals who are equal parts spectators and possibly enforcers, all crowded around near the walls and sometimes dangerously close to the gap.
"Get on with it! We waited all night!" Growls out a large, overweight spectator in suspenders. Which one is it again? Bill Bull? Who cares.
"To my leeeeft," Sid gestures widely to some Asian guy who looks like he stepped out of both the wrong decade /and/ wrong culture for a crazy pomade-soaked pompadour and fine leather jacket, "this greasy fellow!"
"Hey, someone's cruisin' for a bruisin', am I right?" The guy asks with an extremely thick Japanese accent. Very, very thick. He's not from here, and it shows (...sounds) as he deftly spins a comb in his hand before taking a few quick swipes at his hair with a winning smile. Well, more like a participation award smile, he's missing quite a few teeth.
He doesn't get much cheers.
"To my riiiiight," Sid swings his arms the other way, "the doctor is iiiiiin!"
"Hmph." Another man of Asian origin, a fair bit older, with long upper back-length black hair and designer sunglasses in a bizarre, almost fashionably tasteless mix of a business suit and a robe, as though modern capitalism sensibilities and old-style mysticism are clashing incredibly poorly. He actually has some renown as both a physician and agent, but with organized fighting suffering a recession, even he has no choice but to indulge in something like this. "Normally I'd charge more for my time," he mutters in much better English but still slightly accented (Chinese?) as he points his hands outward.
"Boy oh boy," Sid seems excited, "is it time for the blood? Mayyyybe..."
It had been so long, and the man known to the world only as MURDERHOUSE Mick was as mysterious as he was elusive. After appearing out of nowhere to beat the stuffing out of Dan Habiki some time ago, it seemed he had disappeared again. And in his absence, the world had moved on.
In fact, a place where he should have been right at home was housing some sort of fight, some vicious dirty affair that would never have been sanctioned by the ever so squeaky clean Saturday Night Fights, that Ken Masters-owned bit of bubblegum that was more about some grand spectacle than it was about savage barbarism. And here were two men about to beat the stuffing out of each other. Well, Mick wanted in. It was time to come back, and come back in style!
The Greaser moved that comb through his nasty, slick greasy hair, when he suddenly looked to the left at an aluminum bat whistling through the air, and smashing into his face. The sound echoed off the walls, and the now Crater-Faced Greaser fell to the ground, all at once bloody and delirious. But Mick didn't stop there. Bringing the bat overhead, he sent down a barrage of whacks until that bat was bent and ruined, and the big man in jeans and the Pantera shirt stood tall. White hockey mask adorning his face, hiding that visage, his eyes looked around and locked right on the strangely dressed idiot.
MURDERHOUSE says, "What's up, doc?" His voice sounded a bit out of breath, and it was clear he was going to be delighted in sharing some violence. The crowd was quiet and confused now, but nobody dare made a move. They knew this man, knew enough to stay the fuck out of his way. It looked like Mick was in the semi-finals...of a tournament he wasn't even aware existed!"
"Oh, no! No no no," Sid shakes a finger scoldingly as one of the competitors is beaten within an inch of their pathetic, culturally outdated lives as he actually shows the stones to come close to MURDERHOUSE, "you're much too late to come play! You're in the middle of--"
"Hmph, does it matter? The fighting world is full of unfortunate accidents. Single mistakes can leave lasting injury," the shady physician-agent guy cracks a smile at the ensuing chaos as he wonders if he might have found a new client to be a horrible leech to again at last as color dances at his fingertips, "as I will be soon happy to demonstrate t-- GHAHWHOA!!"
A smaller shadow descends upon the finely(?) dressed man, one hand crushing his windpipe in one hand as he is unceremoniously pulled down onto the ground where the (somewhat, to these folks) more familiar visage of a certain totally unladylike lady just wails at him for a while with her fists. She doesn't look like she's had a shower in a while - there's still fresh bloodstains all around her, teeth bared as her knuckles go bloody with every punch. A shattered pair of glasses bounces across the subway floor.
"What's going oooooon?!" Sid panics. "This isn't the show we were going to have tonight at all!"
"Ain't she already been beat up once?" One guy asks another as they point a thumb at Varvara.
"Broad probably can't count to one." The other shrugs. "But hell if this ain't gonna be a better match than those two bozos!"
Varvara's bloody business with this guy for whatever reason done with, she stands up, arms raised with palms open and facing downward, one knee raised ever slightly as she sizes up the (much, much) larger man in the hockey mask. Is she afraid? Does she understand where she is or what she's even doing?
"Is he the next one?" She asks, but whether she'll get an answer out of the stir and chaos of a crowd that may actually be pleased with this turn of events when the overseeing guy can't seem to really keep a hold of things is up for debate.
COMBATSYS: MURDERHOUSE has started a fight here.
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MURDERHOUSE 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Varvara has wandered into the fight here.
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MURDERHOUSE 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Varvara
There was a bit of blood on that white mask, drops and splatters of red that made the blank, emotionless parody of a face look absolutely sinister. His long black hair in his face, he merely sizes up the smaller looking doctor, and watches the ensuing beatdown at the hands of that smaller woman. And when she looks over and sizes him up, he just stares right into her eyes unblinkingly. Though Mick didn't know or understand this, that latent Psycho power in his rose up instinctively just at the sight of that stare of hers. He instantly understood who she was, what she was doing here. They had more in common than the garbage here, and all at once he wanted to break her face at the sudden knowledge that he respected her. He adjusted those black fingerless gloves of his, starting to pace around, until suddenly he blitzed at her. Little training, no technique, just a savage intensity and a hatred that few fighters could match. His fist came up, and was launched right at that face of hers. He didn't hold back. Not at all.
COMBATSYS: MURDERHOUSE successfully hits Varvara with Fierce Punch.
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MURDERHOUSE 0/-------/-------|=====--\-------\0 Varvara
"Erroso." She says in the void of anything to really be said between them, though the unfriendliness of her very face - narrowed eyes, clenched teeth, the very feeling she's about to just string and probably try to wring someone else's neck in some sort of haze of bloodlust, hunger, desperation, or some combination of the three.
MURDERHOUSE's greeting is his fist. Those not in the know might consider the application of great, big fist to face to be some sort of obscure cultural equivalent of a handshake, the sort that ends in someone flying into a wall hard enough to make lots of spider cracks.
Like, right now, blink of an eye, she's over there by the wall, having tripped over the unconscious body of the shady agent/physician guy.
"Umm, okay," Sid squints, hand over his eyes to look to the distance. "All right, big guy, maybe, maybe I'll just look the other way, looks like you got her too, I'll just say you won and we'll get on our way--"
"Shut up!" Varvara calls out, left side of her face swollen and bruised as she ambles back towards the lot of them. She's nearly two feet smaller, roughly a hundred and fifty pounds lighter, and... well, she's still moving, a stagger accompanied by hissing and a wobbly gaze.
The crowd likes it, of course.
It's slightly telegraphed in how she draws back her left arm, but her hand isn't clenched - with an open palm, she throws it straight for MURDERHOUSE's right knee as she goes to a low crouch (she may have tripped over something again, maybe the greaser guy).
COMBATSYS: MURDERHOUSE blocks Varvara's Medium Punch.
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MURDERHOUSE 0/-------/------=|=====--\-------\0 Varvara
The big man's attention is drawn on Sid, but as the little man talks, Mick just starts walking toward the owner of that grating voice that set him on edge. It's unclear what Mick planned to do once he closed that distance, but he -was- closing that distance, slowly but surely.
Of course, this mission is interrupted by Varvara, who shouts in such a way that it echoes off the dingy subway walls, and then she drops down to try and smash Mick's leg in a horrendously ugly way. And though Mick is a big man known for taking everything his opponents have to give, he has no interest in going through -that- type of injury.
So, his right leg goes up on its tiptoes and pivots to the side, still taking that strike but mitigating it and trying to spread it out to keep any of that usual damage from hitting. And with Varvara on her knees, Mick already decides what he's going to do. He spins around, and grabs at her wrist even as she pulls it between his legs while he faces away from her. And if all this works he would roll, to land on his back and smash her down as well. But the real point of the attack would be the armbar he'd have locked on her as a result, even as he wrenches at her joint, trying to pull that delicate limb right from her body!
"Wanna play, bitch? Let's play."
COMBATSYS: Varvara interrupts Improvised Throw from MURDERHOUSE with Hill of Futility.
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MURDERHOUSE 0/-------/----===|=======\-------\0 Varvara
Swollen as she is (in terms of physique and not just that side of her face, which actually is pretty swollen post face punch), there is absolutely zero comparison in regards to what physical strength both have to muster. MURDERHOUSE is a physically superior opponent in almost every way imaginable in terms of physical strength, reach, and quite possibly even agility as he snatches up her wrist.
Blood dribbling out the side of her face and a violent twitch in her arm from the strength of his grip threatening to pinch even her very nerves, she makes use on the spot of the one quality she has over him on the onset - her much lower center of gravity.
As MURDERHOUSE tries to take to the jump to go for the arm bar, she twists into it with her other arm, attempting to redirect his momentum to shove him right back down onto the ground even as her snatched arm surges in pain from the simultaneous dangerously circulation-cutting grip and how she lets it get twisted around the outer limits of how far her shoulder and arm should really bend.
With one arm /still/ in his grasp but at least on her feet, it takes a visibly herculean effort on her part to find it in her to try and pull him back up for the second toss, strained muscles bulging and teeth gritted to nearly breaking point as she violently twists her upper body with the movement to lift him back up by his pants to try and simultaneously loosen/relieve his hold and simply just slam him back behind her. Regardless of how he takes the falls, the damage to her previously caught arm is visibly done - she's going to be taking a moment to pull herself back up to a proper fighting stance while surrounded by a bunch of particularly unsavory men in an echoing subway tunnel that would not show much particular sympathy for the effort.
Not that she's particularly looking for it. If anything, someone might be particularly uncomfortable with how her unfocused eyes might be looking to that far off trash can.
It surprised people, how agile MURDERHOUSE Mick could be. But really, every wrestler was at least one part acrobat, however faintly. Theatricality and deception were equally as important as the strength to throw each other around, and Mick had just enough of each to do his job well. Of course, given his current opponent, that first part might not be so obvious.
Because at the moment he leapt into the air, intending to hit the ground in a roll, she trips him up and sends him mask first into that dirty ground. Of course, he still kept that hold locked in, pulling and wrenching even then even knowing this doesn't look as "good" in a fight, that it's still as effective. She manages to get him to cooperate, to almost get to his feet, and though he intends to keep working that arm, the sudden surprise of his first landing surprised him and let her worm that arm away. And when those two arms find themselves locked around his hips tightly, he doesn't have the wherewithal to try and keep himself off the ground. Instead, dazed, he tries to jump and worm out of it, and manages to give her just the right momentum she needs to drive his back, and the back of his skull, right into that ground a second time.
Of course, as she got up and woozily shifted around, he worked to his feet, dusting off his shirt and jeans as he shrugged off that attack. He noticed that 'Sid' motherfucker saying something and trying to gesture to something else, but Mick only heard blood rushing in his ears. In any case, his 'answer' was a quick punch to the little man's face, and before he could collapse, Mick grabbed him by that sad, skimpy babyshirt. No words, no fancy quips, just a small metro styled Metro City Mad Gear, being launched for the general body mass of Varvara!
COMBATSYS: Varvara overcomes Thrown Object from MURDERHOUSE with Thrown Object.
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MURDERHOUSE 0/-------/----===|======-\-------\0 Varvara
"Pfee!" It's a very odd squeal of pain from Sid as MURDERHOUSE clocks him cold. As Sid is the only thing maintaining a semblance of order or even tourney officiating... between two utterly demolished 'actual' opponents, a bored crowd taking a lot more interest in the fight between these two lowlives, and Sid now being hurled like a ragdoll, is this even an underground tournament match any more?
No. This is a fight.
Varvara has no time to clutch her arm in pain with Sid flying at her. Shouting something completely unintelligible (foreign curse word?), she just cold cocks the mid-air Sid with her better arm. His momentum sharply jerks back the other way as his body bounces against the bloodied Subway floor once en route back towards MURDERHOUSE Mick - some impact probably lost in the bounce, but there's still a body flying back towards the masked marauder to deal with all the same as Varvara puts her better hand on her opposite shoulder.
"Stoooop!!" Sid cries. Pretty much no one is going to listen - even within Mad Gear, any given Mad Gear thug is apt to become the butt of physical comedy. Such is their lot in life.
COMBATSYS: MURDERHOUSE overcomes Thrown Object from Varvara with House of Fire.
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MURDERHOUSE 0/-------/----===|======-\-------\0 Varvara
While Sid was flying at the ugly young woman who would probably like to sit and nurse that injured limb, Mick was already reaching into his jeans and pulling out a diabolical weapon. Of course when Sid was then launched at him by a wild haymaker, Mick's original plan...had to be changed.
This was not Guile's usual brand of hairspray. No, this was something else. A brand with Dan Habiki's face and only ever manufactured in Brazil where the standards were overall much lower, Mick was surprised when, spraying in front of a lighter, a large violent fireball lobbed out and engulfed the flying effeminite man, and Mick was shocked that it had enough force to actually reverse his momentum and send him back toward the little Greek girl. Though he might be flying at her slower, the fact that he was an inferno more than made up for it. A lesser fighter probably wouldn't want to let that touch them...
COMBATSYS: MURDERHOUSE successfully hits Varvara with House of Fire.
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MURDERHOUSE 0/-------/--=====|=======\=------\1 Varvara
In all fairness, a fighter of any level of talent or ability really wouldn't want to be touched by /Varvara/. Look at her! When's the last time she actually washed her hands? Or trimmed her nails evenly instead of leaving slightly jagged tips from when she peels/chews them off herself (the jury is really out on that and won't be coming back, they're getting out while the going's good).
The game of Sidball takes a much more macabre turn when MURDERHOUSE decides to set the 'ball' on fire. Sid doesn't fly at Varvara so much as start running blindly screaming as he forgets the basics of stop, drop, and roll as he runs in a panic in Varvara's direction.
Much faster than she's comfortable with. She goes to a low crouch as he draws near, springing up when he comes close... and she doesn't quite make it as he headbutts her in her mid-air midsection, forcing her into a clumsy and painful forward tumble.
One of the Mad Gear guys present yanks out a fire extinguisher from its glass case, deciding that's gone on well enough. Funny as it is to have occasional crossfire, it's not like they want their buddy Sid to burn to death. The few who show any real concern above and beyond engrossment in the brawl all start crowding around him. It's almost heartwarming on some level, to see moments of real caring and brotherhood between scumbags.
Wincing and finding it suddenly prudent to clutch her stomach instead of her arm, Varvara comes up to a stand again with the help of a nearby bench, sizing up MURDERHOUSE top to bottom as she spits a wad of bloodied saliva.
COMBATSYS: Varvara focuses on her next action.
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MURDERHOUSE 0/-------/--=====|=======\=------\1 Varvara
Mick ain't focused on Sid who'd being wrapped in coats and patted down, he's not focused on anything but the girl who fights to her feet while clutching that bench. And it's true, who would want to touch her? Not Mick, but then, he isn't -really- touching her. In his eyes, the act of wrapping his arms hopefully around her torso, and then lifting her in the air so suddenly and violently that she either lets go of the bench or it rips out of the concrete ground, and then smashing her into that concrete viciously wasn't really -touching- her.
Neither was lifting her up again, and smashing her back down in the exact same way, only harder. Mick lived in blood, in carnage and ruin. While he wasn't gonna be taking her on any steak dinners, truth be told, she had more business in his world than anyone else. And he was happy to show her the sights.
COMBATSYS: MURDERHOUSE successfully hits Varvara with Brutal Throw Chain.
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MURDERHOUSE 0/-------/-======|=======\=======\1 Varvara
That is totally touching her. That is touching all the grime, sweat, blood, and condiments that have accumulated in an... unspecified amount of time. Truth be told, she does hold onto the bench.
The bench's top splits in half as he yanks her violently off her one place of stability as she hits a low fluorescent light to a shower of sparks as she craters onto the ground.
It's almost a mocking trick from her own book that he lifts her up effortlessly again as she dazedly peers upwards, smashing her through the /bottom/ half of the bench that splinters into wooden, plasticky shrapnel that probably finds a few places of vacancy in her upper back while sparks continue to shower down from the damaged dangling light. She is not shown the sights so much as having the lights being knocked right out of her.
Blood starts visibly going down her back as she scampers back up like some sort of animal on a flight or fight response, adrenaline rushing through her numbed head as she circles around MURDERHOUSE with murder very clearly seen in one eye (not so much the other, swollen shut by his first punch). It's one of the damndest things about women, especially ones that stand and fight.
Sometimes it feels like they fight less for dominance and a lot more to outright kill, fists balling up tight as she roars loudly, all but plowing herself into MURDERHOUSE with a series of very rapid punches (one arm far less rapid than the other, but she's sure trying), ending it as she tries to get her better arm somewhere around MURDERHOUSE's arm, wrist, she's not particular where she tries to wrap a hand around his upper body.
What's more important is that she tries to finish it by squeezing it as hard as she can, air very visibly going out the cracks between her fingers as though she were clenching so hard that almost nothing could still be left between whatever's there - if he lets her.
COMBATSYS: Varvara blitzes into action and acts again!
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MURDERHOUSE 0/-------/-======|=======\=------\1 Varvara
COMBATSYS: MURDERHOUSE endures Varvara's Binding Seeds.
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MURDERHOUSE 0/-------/=======|=======\==-----\1 Varvara
COMBATSYS: MURDERHOUSE counters Lion Crush from Varvara with Cemetary Gates.
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MURDERHOUSE 0/-------/=======|=======\======-\1 Varvara
She launched at him, hatred and murder in that one good eye, and as she launched that flurry at him, he brought his arms...behind his back, and even bent slightly at one knee to give her a better target, to let her lay into him. Every punch and flurry should have hurt, and to be fair, it did bruise flesh and leave him sore for the next morning. But he never took his eyes away from hers, and never let himself register or even react to the pain or the damage. He want her to know, as she tried her best, that he was better than her best. It wasn't enough to destroy and tear down her body, he wanted to take a shit on her brain and her spirit as well.
And as she stops to woozily grab out at him, his arms finally come back around. His left hand smacks her grapple attempt away from him, and his right hand, it reaches out and practically 'slaps' around her throat as he squeezes tight, tight as he could. He growls out in a voice much lower and much more ragged than usual, animalistic and vicious as that Psycho Power finally boils to surface.
"LOOK AT ME!"
His eyes...they changed. They never changed color and nothing started glowing, but Varvara would know. She would feel that difference the longer she stared into his eyes, feeling every bit of shame she'd ever felt about herself. Every negative emotion she ever threw at the mirror in the morning, every bit of self loathing that she directed outward would all be brought to light. That horrible, horrible light of self, a place where she couldn't lie, she couldn't make excuses, she was laid bare, for all intents and purposes.
For that split second, anyway. And Mick didn't know any of this. All he knew is that, as she stopped struggling, he'd violently lift that arm up, tearing her away from his own horrible gaze, and smashing her back down to earth. He'd chokeslam her like god was spiking a football, and would roll his neck and step away. He'd admire his handiwork, and also make sure that she didn't try and pull some sort of Underdog out of nowhere. He fucking hated it when they did that.
'Look at me,' was MURDERHOUSE's demand. This extended to pretty much everyone down here. The people watching the fight, the people putting out the fire on Sid, Sid himself, and some people who weren't even paying attention to any of this prior. The entire subway goes silent with Varvara held in MURDERHOUSE's choking grasp. She struggles with the best of them - and the worst of them, both hands prying against his hand uselessly. She can't look away from his eyes. It's mesmerizing in all the wrong ways.
She stops struggling. One or two guys murmur to one another wondering if she suffocated entirely, but no, she's still drawing breath. She stares emptily, into every little bit of negative... feeling. What is she afraid of? She doesn't say. She can't say, not out of shame - there is literally nothing to say, as she is chokeslammed into the Subway hard enough that a portion of the floor erupts into a huge dust cloud with scattering debris everywhere.
She doesn't get up.
The greaser does, somehow, missing a new tooth as he blearily sees the physician/agent guy face down in a pool of his own blood. "So I won, uh, and I don't even remember, dig it?"
Someone points towards the two other brawlers, where MURDERHOUSE still stands tall.
It all comes back to the greaser guy. He suddenly takes a few steps back before going into an outright run for his life.
Sid isn't going to say anything. Nobody is going to say anything to MURDERHOUSE. They saw what those two did to the actual intended competitors - and what the big guy in the mask did in turn to that crazy hungry homeless lady that has been roaming around these parts.
There might be a tear in her eyes as she lays in a slump, but it's so caked in dirt and blood that it may well be impossible to really see.
Absolutely no one is going to contest MURDERHOUSE here. If he walks back that way, they're getting out of his way without question. There is no contesting him tonight.
COMBATSYS: Varvara takes no action.
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MURDERHOUSE 0/-------/=======|
COMBATSYS: Varvara can no longer fight.
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MURDERHOUSE 0/-------/=======|
COMBATSYS: MURDERHOUSE has ended the fight here.
Log created on 16:43:53 05/20/2013 by Varvara, and last modified on 20:10:03 05/20/2013.