thearena | Moth Delivers a Message [Closed]

WHO| Black Tom and Lord Zed; Black Tom, Gary and Kurt; Black Tom, Dorian, Maxwell and a cameo from Bayard
WHAT| Superpowers showdown, then Gary and Kurt die!
WHEN| Week 3
WHERE| The forest
WARNINGS| Death! And gore!

For a while, Tom lies dormant, like a volcano awaiting the proper tessellation of tectonic plates to erupt. He coils into himself in the trees, inward-focused, self-absorbed on his own grief for Molotov, even as he suspects he'll see her again. With the exception of Arya, he interacts with no one, waiting out the weaklings of the Arena and preparing to assault the survivors of the final week. He outlasts the voices calling people into the woods. He's immune to the bats, which have no interest in his bloodless form.

But he becomes bored, and eventually he pulls himself out of one of the trees he's occupying. It cracks as if all the sap inside has frozen, and he emerges from it neither man nor plant, but some foul combination of the two: barky skin, black sockets for eyes, moss and algae and leaves forming a ruff of hair that extends from his crown down his back. And he tends to his cache of supplies, folded into the knot of another tree, looking over the note that Molotov sent him and wondering when the next time Arya will retrieve the goods will be.

The air is warm again, and he cricks his neck back to look at the sky, appearing more mutt than Tribute. His nostrils flare, pulling oxygen into lungs that have all but collapsed from disuse. With a splintering sound, he opens his mouth and frees his teeth.

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Zed just laughs at this. "Hardly." Lost traveler? Him? "I'm the darkness itself." Which isn't anything he'd be proud of under normal circumstances, but here? His pride won't let him admit to otherwise. He's got power in this place, and he strides forward towards that slithering snake-monster like it's the most boring, unimpressive thing he's seen all day.

"Then I might finally have an enemy worth his spit, don't you think? I've been so bored out here with nothing but magicians and mutants shambling around."

And with that, the beacon above Tom's head blazes as he whips vines out to try and bind Zed. The branches and ivy come from all directions, trying to restrict Zed's arms; roots surge upwards from the earth to try and trap his feet.

"I'd say you've bitten off more than you can chew." Zed's response is automatic, and his own marker lights up. He tries to jump out of the way, and there's a pulse of darkness around him, swallowing him up. When it clears, two things happen. The first is that Zed's form has changed. He's humanoid, but not human, and he is now holding a sword.

The second, more pressing one, is that the punishments for using powers are still in effect, and that there's now suddenly fire raining down on him from above. It's meant for him, and it slams into him as he tries to parry those branches with his sword, for there's no way he could have managed to dodge both.

Maybe he got lucky and some of it hit those vines, but maybe he didn't. He's just going to try to ignore that pain and try to keep hacking at those vines. He has also failed to realize that the tail of the long coat that comes with this monster form is still on fire.

"I'd say we'll see the answer to that soon en- what the devil?" Tom is more startled by the fire than he is by Zed's transformation (he's seen some shit from the X-Men), and the branches and vines surrounding Zed - the ones that haven't been sliced off - recoil. Tom yells. A cry emerges seemingly from a hundred voices, as if each tree around them is howling in pain. Fire races up some of the drier parts of his body, making snapping, crackling, popping noises and giving off a scent that's less like woodsmoke than it is like burning hair.

"Did you do that?" Tom retreats a bit, moving less like a person than like a wave, pulling up the grass around him in a sort of serpentine roll.

Well, at least Zed's got the satisfaction of making this jerk yell, even as he's trying to put his own fire out. He's smoking, though if there's any odor to burning darkness, it's masked by the strange smell Tom's giving off. He most certainly did not do that, but he doesn't want to let Tom know that. It triggered when he changed, just as rats had attacked and ceilings had collapsed when he'd used his powers earlier..."Do I look stupid enough to set myself on fire?"

And really, he'd love to follow that up with a pulse of darkness, but he's not willing to set himself on fire again after saying that. He's regained a little of his own footing, and he's charging at Tom with his sword.

"Do you really want the answer to that question?"

Tom doesn't meet Zed with vines, this time, but instead with those foot-long claws that ornament each of his fingers. The sword slices through two of Tom's fingers, and he shrieks again, slashing at Zed's stomach in an attempt to disembowel darkness itself.

Around them, the dried grass and forest burns, filling the air with choking smoke.

Zed starts to laugh in satisfaction once he's successfully removed two of those fingers, but it's cut short when Tom slashes at his stomach. It's not successful enough for a disemboweling, but it does connect, and those claws raking across his midsection make Zed stumble back as darkness oozes from the wounds.

"So. You bleed after all." He's emboldened by the hit, although he still has to overcome the intense pain the fire's wreaking across his extended and decentralized nervous system. Another vine shoots forward, although this one less like a whip and instead pointed, looking to puncture deep into Zed's chest.

"Not like you." Zed sidesteps that vine. It's not enough to escape having it make an angry gash on his arm, but he was bracing for that. After all, if he escaped it completely, he wouldn't be in range to try to lop it off with his sword. He'll be feeling these wounds later, but for now? He's angry enough to try to push through the pain.

"Ah, but yours must have limits." Tom hisses when the vine comes off, but as soon as it does he has another whipping for Zed's wrist to try and disarm him. "You could continue cutting daisies all day on me and I wouldn't tire. Maybe you should run."

It's all talk, all boasting and puffery, because this isn't a fight Tom knows he can win. "If I let you."

Zed knows he shouldn't be hanging around for too much longer, either. He's already weakened from the fire, and though this is a dark forest, it's still daytime. He's weaker during the day--it's a bad time to fight. But he's not about to stop his boasting, either. He swings the sword to block that vine, too, though it's not as fast as he'd like. "What, and miss out on this exercise? It was getting kind of boring around here before this."

"A true lament," Tom grunts, trying to lift up the grass beneath Zed's feet to trip him. "Perhaps we should call this a tie, so we can continue to entertain each other in the coming weeks."

Zed laughs. It's a good cover for the way the grass has made him stumble. Not enough to knock him over, but enough to throw him off balance. "Alright. We'll meet again for a real fight once some more of the less-entertaining people are out of the way."

"Consider it a promise, then, lad." Tom backs away, pulling with him the grass and tendrils of plant matter. "Until we meet again."

Spoilers: Tom has no intention of meeting him again.

Moth Delivers a Message [Closed]

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thanks, rng, for suddenly fire

i went to the store to get more FIRE

FIRE BAD

FIRE BURNING ON THE DANCEFLOOR

ALL FIRE ALL THE TIME

This Thread is on FIIIIIIRE

just a hunka hunka burnin' thread

great threads of fire

burninating the countryside

you're gonna hear me burn

disco inferno

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