Circle of Vengeance - Glimmering Shell Pt. 4

Winning Vote:[X] Fish - Barrel

--Shoot Glimmer, a lot

--Try to maneuver her into the crossfire from other gangsters shooting at you, using your own movement and positioning as well as the shots you take

--If she closes use Burning Venom Palm and Wind-Style as needed to tear at points of weakness and fragility along her torso or head

---

The slight pause before your next breath hangs in the air for a small eternity. Neither you or Glimmer move, your eyes locked on each other in an unwavering stare. Something of an understanding passes between you, a comprehension more pure and unwavering than anything else you’ve ever felt. It overwhelms you, drowning out everything else - your thoughts fade, your pain vanishes, your identity falls away. Every grievance you have against Glimmer evaporates like a rainbow in the sea air, leaving only the utter certainty that in the next few moments, you will do the best you can to break your enemy, and they will do the same in return. You find yourself comforted by the clarity this brings to you. You will either kill, or you will die.

No other options exist.

You breathe out, and the hint of serenity that had been balanced on a knife’s edge falls away. Everything begins to move very quickly.

Your hand darts to your waist and snatches up your last pistol. You cock the gun, aim, and fire in one smooth motion, born from years of practice since you were naught but a suckling babe. You’ve done it so many times you know without even looking that you’re right on the mark, the eye-searing bullet sailing straight and true.

You also know that Glimmer’s already dodged it before you pulled the trigger, so you continue the motion, tracking your arm a little to the left and pulling the trigger two more times, sending red-white sparks searing through the path the navigator always defaulted to when they were forced to go empty-handed versus pistols. Always a duck and spin to their right - they’d caught you with it many times, and you remembered it well.

Of course, Glimmer had always picked up on their mistakes faster than you, and they spin towards their left instead. Your bullets fly through nothing but empty air, and you barely have time to pivot, trying to bring your guard up as they dash towards you with a powerful spring, closing the distance between you in a handful of strides.

You’re too slow, still off-balance by the time Glimmer reaches you. Your head snaps back as they slam a hooking punch into your jaw, the flames on their hand leaving the stench of singed hair in your nostrils. You stumble backwards and Glimmer follows you, moving with textbook precision. They send a looping overhand screaming towards your head, then dig a brutal uppercut into your ribs when you raise your hands to block. Something crunches inside your torso and you gasp as a sudden, sharp pain stabs you in the side. Your breath won’t go in or out and it takes an effort of will to un-blur your vision. Your eyes snap back into focus just in time to see the flaming club that is Glimmer’s shin searing towards your face. There’s no time to think, only react.

There’s no blocking something this close, or even dodging. You roll with the blow instead, ducking your head and letting the kick catch you on the shoulder. It knocks you down, and the force of the impact makes your teeth rattle, but you were ready for this. You catch yourself as you fall with one hand, inverting yourself in an elegant whipping motion that lets you slam a foot into Glimmer’s head with a sickening thwack. The Deep One stumbles back, a bruise already forming along the side of their head, and you pounce at the opportunity, pushing off the ground with both feet as soon as you land. You crash into Glimmer with a flying stomp that sends them tumbling backwards, and quickly pick yourself up again. Bullets begin to zing by you as the lower-ranked Scorpions see that you’re not entangled with their leader anymore, and you quickly duck behind a pillar after grabbing a pistol from a nearby corpse.

You poke your head out and quickly retract it as a hail of flaming rounds come screaming toward you. The other gangsters have spread out to the corners of the room where at least one of them can get a shot off on you no matter where you are, and it quickly becomes a hassle as you’re forced to focus on dodging their fire rather than shooting Glimmer. You dart from cover to cover, keeping a wary eye on your rival as you do. The one advantage of the crossfire is that Glimmer is forced to take their time in closing with you again, giving you a little time to catch your breath. After one bullet comes dangerously close to tearing your coat, you turn and shoot the offending gangster in the head, and you see Glimmer’s teeth clench as they suddenly charge towards you.

Glimmer crashes into you like a flaming riptide, but you’re ready for their assault this time, and you dance nimbly backwards, the fast rhythm of Wind style letting you ghost out of the way of the Deep One’s heavy, bludgeoning strikes and pop swift, snapping punches and kicks of your own in the short gaps between their techniques. Glimmer’s forward pressure is unrelenting, and they don’t seem to even notice it when you hit them, so you continue flitting back, evading everything they throw at you like a leaf tumbling on the breeze.

It won’t work forever, of course. You’re evading damage for now, but you can already feel your lungs starting to burn from the strain of so much movement, and Glimmer’s settled into a rhythm you recognize, one they can keep up for many minutes at a time. If you stay on the defense you’ll eventually slip up. You’ll get cornered against a wall, or stumble, or simply get too tired, and that’ll be the end of you. A sour taste comes into your mouth as you realize what you have to do.

”Sometimes, my dear kitten,” your father once told you, ”There is no avoiding the things which hurt in our lives. You have to press into the fire which is burning you in order to snuff it out.” Your father is a wise man, but you really wish he wasn’t right all the time.

You time it just right - Glimmer swings a flaming fist at your head like a meteor descending from on high, and rather than ducking it like you had before, you throw your hands into a basic Burning Venom Palm posture called Rising Flame and explode forwards, catching the burning hammerblow on one upraised arm while your other hand snaps forward in a picture-perfect palmstrike to the face. As your foe’s head jerks back, you extend your fingers and rake downwards, and feel the tips of your nails catch and slice into something very soft.

Glimmer staggers back, hands clasped over one eye. Blood flows like a river from underneath their fingers, and you leap at the opportunity, your heart soaring in vicious glee. You throw any notion of conserving your stamina out the window and simply hit Glimmer as many times and as many ways as you possibly can. Your fists and feet fly in scattered, irregular patterns, battering your foe from every direction and angle, landing upon them like leaves blown on the wind. With each blow struck, your breath gusts out of you in sharp exhalations, the hissing noise of rushing air rasping in your ears until it is the only thing you can hear. Glimmer is blown backwards like a piece of debris in the face of an oncoming gale, and you strike them half a hundred times in the space of seven heartbeats.

Perhaps, in your eagerness, you overextended. Perhaps it is a feature of a stylistic weakness, the manifold yet individually weak attacks of Wind style Thundering Bell proving a poor match against the grisly resilience of Burning Venom Palm. Perhaps it is that, despite everything, you did not truly believe that Glimmering Shell had it in them to truly commit to a fight. That once things got truly serious, became a matter of life and death rather than mere practicality, their soft heart would show.

Perhaps you simply had not anticipated that your former friend would so quickly learn the same lesson that your imprisonment taught you - that when you felt [color=red]real[/color] pain, the only thing you wanted was to inflict that feeling on others.

They always were a quick learner.

You’ve just grabbed hold of Glimmer’s fingers as their hands rise towards their face, intending to twist and snap, when it happens. Your rival twists their wrists sharply and jerks downward, breaking their own fingers in a chorus of gruesome pops in order to pull you off balance. You aren’t expecting it at all, and your head goes flying forwards, only to be met by Glimmer’s forehead. Your nose crunches inwards and all you can smell is blood. You reel back, suddenly choking on blood as it pours down your throat, and you’re suddenly on the backfoot again, desperately blocking heavy, rhythmic hammerblows from Glimmer’s forearms and shins as you cough and sputter. Blood runs down your chin and soaks into your fur, and the scent of it - yours and Glimmer’s both, you realize - is so thick you almost retch.

Glimmer’s hands have come down from their face, and the cut you made to their eye is on full display - a jagged, torn line going right through the middle of their pupil. Blood and clear, viscous fluid slowly leaks from the wound, and the remaining yellow of their eye has a pool of red leaking into it. The eye clearly can no longer see, and yet it seems to be looking right at you, its stare just as damnably calm as its unharmed twin. Something about the tranquility in that eye pulls a horrid tangled ball of vitriol and fear and vulnerability up from your stomach and up into your throat, even as you frantically fend off Glimmer’s renewed assault. Your chest grows tight and your limbs become weak and the furious panic inside you rises higher and higher, until finally you move just a hair too slow.

The kick smashes into the already-broken ribs on your left side like a flaming steel bar. The pain is as if your lungs had suddenly burst inside of your body as you practically fly backwards, the skin under your robes red and blistering from the heat of the flames swathing Glimmer’s shin. The ground deals a second blow to you as you land heavily on your back, and you seize up in paralyzed agony as you feel several things abruptly stab you in the back and side. Your breath hisses from you in an involuntary wheeze, and it occurs to you in a detached fashion that you’ve probably got a punctured lung. You try to move, but your only feeling starts and ends at the pain in your chest. At the knotted panic and resentment and confusion that’s been growing inside you for weeks.

“Kill me.”

The words have escaped your bloodstained lips before you even realize it, but faint as they are, they halt Glimmer in their tracks immediately. The Deep One straightens up, the light from their flaming limbs flickering ghoulishly off their brutalized face from below. They look like a walking corpse as they stand there, thoughts hidden behind the shredded gelatin of their maimed eye.

“Should have done it that first night,” you continue, after a moment of silence. It’s hard to talk - your voice is thready and weak, and you have to pause every few words for a shallow breath. You persist. “Would have been a kindness. If you just wanted me gone. Better than … this. Just end it clean.”

Glimmer stares at you for a long, long moment, then silently shakes their head. Anger and grief rise into your mouth as blood bubbles out through your teeth. You shout, though you can feel things inside your chest tearing apart. “We were friends! I trusted you! We told each other everything! Did you hate me this whole time?” You cough, and wet crunching sounds rattle from within your throat.

Glimmer stands very still for a long, long moment, then takes a shuddering, unsteady breath. When they speak, it’s just as irritatingly calm as ever, but there’s an undercurrent of conviction that hadn’t been there before.

“When you and I were young, we promised each other we would be friends for the rest of our lives. I still hold myself to that bond, even if you don’t consider it valid anymore. I…” Glimmer pauses, and blood begins to leak from their damaged eye, leaking down their face in rivulets. “I messed up, Cait, and you paid for it. I can’t take that back, and I don’t blame you if you hate me for it. All I can do is try to make it right.”

“Right.” You chuckle, a crackly, phlegmy thing. “Hard to know what that even means. What will you do, then?”

“You’ll come with me back to the Captain,” Glimmer states emphatically. They step forward and drop to a knee, looking intently into your eyes. “We’ll explain everything, you’ll be reinstated into the Crew, and everything will be like it was. Better, even! You’ve spent more time alive around the Death Orchid than anyone else in this city. That means you know better than anyone what she’ll do next, and we know she’ll come for you if she hears word of where you are. We can stop her rampage before anyone else has to die.” They shake their arms, snuffing the flames there out with a whumph, and reach a hand out towards you.

“Please. Help me and I’ll help you.”

You look at that outstretched hand, the last opportunity you’ll likely ever have to go back to your old life, and…

[] You grasp it for support as Glimmer helps you up. (Accept your defeat at Glimmering Shell’s hands, and accompany her back to the Captain. Whether you intend reswear your loyalty in truth or simply want to gather information is up to future votes.

[] You crush it with the grip of a demon. (Activate Spark of Rage. Auto-resolves the battle with ??? result.)

[] Write-in: If you have a plan to fight Glimmer without the use of Spark of Rage, or some other course of action, put it here.

Alya Condition: Burns on upper chest, both arms and legs, various patches of the torso and face. Glancing gunshot wound to right shoulder. Left ribs shattered, punctured lung. Broken nose. Right hand coated in entrails.

Glimmer Condition: Mangled intestines; cauterized. Partially broken nose. All fingers broken. One gouged eye. General bruising pretty much everywhere.

Situation Update: You fought as hard as you could, but the whims of fate were not in your favor. You’ve been seriously injured and Glimmer’s resilience seems to have increased tremendously since you last saw them. It would take a stroke of genius, or a madman’s fury, to eke out any kind of a victory in a situation like this. ???-3 rounds until Granny Flowers’ arrival.

So this went awful quiet for a while. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t even initially intending to continue writing this quest since I wanted to focus more on my other projects, especially since I’ve not been getting a ton of time to write as of late, buuut I was feeling stuck on RYE and this called to me, so, uh, yeah. Thank my fickle muse, I guess.

RYE updates are in the pipe still. This one's gonna stay up on Patreon for at least a day until I post it up to the thread.

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Rolls, since I can't invisitext on Patreon:

[color=transparent]First Volley, DC 50: 29, Miss[/color]

[color=transparent]Defending the Rush, DC 40: 18, Fail[/color]

[color=transparent]Regaining Distance, DC 50/75: 88-10 (Off-Balance) = 78, Success! +10 to next shooting attempt[/color]

[color=transparent]Second Volley, DC 40: 13+10 =23, Fail[/color]

[color=transparent]Ride the Wave, DC 40: 43, Success, +10 to next melee roll[/color]

[color=transparent]Face The Flames, DC 50: 42+10 = 52, Pass[/color]

[color=transparent]Keep Your Momentum Up, DC 30: 22, Fail[/color]