The Honor Circle Returns! (IC)

[Yugo]

Kaela lept backwards as the blur of a moving wooden table passed into her peripheral vision, smashing to pieces against Bart's knuckles in a spectacular display of wooden bits  and splinters. She hesitated as she watched Andrace and Bart struggle on the ground, Andrace landing vicious full-force blows about the chin and cheeks. It was amazing to Kaela that Bart could withstand such punishment and remain conscious. The camraderie she had acquired with Andrace pressed Kaela to interfere on her behalf, but her personal sense of honor would not allow it. She certainly didn't want to give Bart the idea that the fight was rigged against him, and there was also the burning curiosity to see Andrace's full strength without having to be on the receiving end of it. She took a step back, leaning against the bar to catch her breath, and watched the brutal combat rage on with muted interest.

[SpottedKitty]

Andrace began to realise how much trouble she was in when the hairless critter stayed conscious after she whacked him on the side of the head. Frig, he's not weakened me that much already with th' stranglehold, has he? she thought with a worried frown. That little lovetap shoulda laid out any o' th' others 'cept maybe Irene — what th' blazes is he?

She realised what Bart was up to a moment after his free hand started moving towards the angle of her throat. He just had time to get his fingers into position and started putting pressure where it would do her the least good. She'd already started to throw her left arm up in a forearm block, too late for it to be stopped by the brief flash of paralysing agony that ran all the way down her arm. His hand was knocked away before she felt the effects for more than a second, then she reached out with both hands and grabbed his shoulders. Her hair had fallen forward during the struggle, shadowing her face and muzzle, but Bart could still clearly see gleaming fangs bared in a snarl, and glittering eyes that appeared to be fixed hungrily on his jugular.

Y' fight like m' baby sister, she thought, but that's a move m' big brother likes t' use on us. Let's see how y' like what I taught Eugenie f'r her fourteenth birthday... A growl rumbled deep in Andrace's chest, and her grip on Bart's shoulders tightened. Suddenly she dug her claws into the floor and threw herself violently sideways, tumbling both of them over. The lioness drew her legs up to her chest as they rolled. If she could plant her paws in the pit of Bart's stomach and kick out... if he let go her throat, he'd go sailing across the room. Maybe he'd even land on Kaela (where'd she go, anyway?), and if not, well, it might hurt a bit more, but at least he didn't have claws to rip out her throat with.

[Tipod]

Bart awkwardly smacked at Andrace as she tumbled to the side and launched him through the air. Strangulation wasn't something he wished to resort to (just yet), and so he allowed himself to be vaulted from the floor, past Kaela's head, to the wall, and back down again with an *oof*. It took him a moment to get his bearings and stand. No more floor-rassling. She certainly had a much better aptitude for close-quarters manuevering than he did. "Okay," he spoke, adjusting the sleeves on his jacket and doing a quick shuffle, hopping up and down lightly.

"Sassau au' ritek." He gave an odd gesture with his right hand: almost like the Vulcan greeting sign, but with the thumb, index and middle fingers crooked, and the ring and pinky fingers spaced a little closer to the other digits. "Stand and deliver." He rolled up the sleeves of his jacket up to nearly his shoulders, revealing a part of inked flesh on the right upper-arm. A small hint of some gang tattoo, one could surmise.

[Stygian]

Andrea flinched, but watching Dani's look and hearing the tone in her voice, she realized her mistake quickly enough. She was actually trying to find a way to lighten the gravity of Stygian's actions! It was easy enough to see, and for her to feel, that this stemmed from a concern for Sylvie. But everything indicated that it extended beyond that. And she thought she had been able to sympathize with the woman...
   'You've seen him down drinks, but that's water compared to some other stuff that he does,' Andrea replied gravely, staring the Red down. 'Don't dare to think he's likable without some poison though. I wouldn't be surprised if he's worse then.' She scowled, then turned her gaze away again, uncomfortable with being confronted with questions that she wanted to answer, but couldn't.
   'But in all likelihood toxins barely affect him anyway, meaning that he's responsible anyway. If you want to know what happened still, you're going to have to pry it out of him, because I can't tell,' she admitted, then hardened her glare as she turned her eyes toward the other women, daring them to challenge her words. 'What I do know is that I've seen him do things that you wouldn't understand, and certainly wouldn't enjoy having showed to you, for no apparent reason. Even worse, I've seen him do things to people.' Her gaze was as set and steady as her words. 'He is no man. He is a monster. In all he says and does. And whenever he's ar-'
   Andrea did not get to finish her sentence. The sound of the gunshot was muffled, yet produced a discernible snap that was hard to put a direction to. The crash of medical equipment though, could be heard clearly from within the infirmary.

[Boog]

"Right then, no perscription medications or painkillers. Would you like any? I've got a few." Dr. Holic fished around in his coat, "I've found lollipops to be an insufficient reward for good behavior, such as insulting psychiatrists. Oh, right, one other thing." He made a quick jab with one of the needle-fingers and injected Witt with something at the elbow above his wound. "That should flush out any of the infection that's already started spreading into your system. Try not to use that arm too much for a bit." He said, as the syringe-finger slowly emptied its contents into the hedgehog's arm. He glanced over at Dekuyaketh, "And yes, you may leave."
The sound of the gunshot was muffled, yet produced a discernible snap that was hard to put a direction to. The crash of medical equipment though, could be heard clearly from within the infirmary.
Boog stood, key again held out, shifting and livid. The bullet hung in the air amidst some of the smashed components of the light rig. It was still on out of the sheer bloody-mindedness of the arguments that had been used in its construction, but that wasn't going to last.
"Hey, shiney chick." The muse said, his voice extremely even and calm in that special way used by people who aren't actually all that calm, "You know him better than I do. What, if you'll pardon my impertinence for asking, the hell?"

[Angel]

Dani listened, feeling a little indignant about Andrea's warning about thinking Stygian was more likable without drugs or alcohol. What part of 'I'm not going to excuse whatever he did' didn't she understand?! Especially considering what she just told me... True, she somewhat respected Stygian, and may have been feeling a little soft because of Sylvie's connection with him, but that didn't mean she would hesitate to kill him (or try to) if he became too dangerous. The explanation she'd requested was simply her police logic at work. If a man kills his wife and her secret lover after finding them together, he has a good explanation for his actions, but that doesn't mean he won't serve jail time, nor does it mean everyone who knew him will forgive him.

There was a bang in the air, and these thoughts, as well as Andrea's answer, were cut off. Then there was a metallic crash. Sylvie's eyes half-lost their harsh look, and she moved to stand again, but there was another snap, this time, from Dani's fingers.

"Syl. Not yet," the guard said quietly, through her teeth. Sylvie hesitated, but all she did was tighten her grip on her staff and lean to get a look at the infirmary door. She knew better to argue with her friend right now. The last time Dani had used that tone on her was when she'd still identified the Green by a five-digit number.

[Stygian]

Stygian's groans and growling sounds grew high as he rose up off the table, his back arcing as he seized up, gun pointing toward the Boogeyman now. Sahlena, meanwhile, had shifted her weight into a low stance, looking ready to pounce upon the thrashing 'man' in a heartbeat. Her sensors flickered and shifted with alarming speed. If she'd had the energy stream gun in there...
   ':i don't know! how can-' she started, only to be interrupted by another roar on Stygian's part. In response, she moved forward and snatched the gun from his hand, cracking her reinforced elbow into his jaw.
   'Unngh! C-collld! Ne-eeed-d...!' he growled, a wound on his cheek sealing within moments. 'Get th-aaaugh! Aaawaaay! Hsssss!'
   ':hold him down!' the machine commanded, throwing the dangling chains back on his right arm haphazardly, before darting back to a cabinet. Rummaging through drawers and boxes, she retrieved the strongest, most vicious sedatives and paralytic agents she could get her hands on, readying a couple of syringes.
   'N-nooh! C-cold! Fffssss-...! D-drrk...! G-get... in th-he darkk...!' Stygian thrashed, but the machine wrenched the gun from his hand before he could get off another shot, dashing over just in time. Pushing him back down into the bed, which creaked and whined underneath the pressure, she stabbed his neck and injected the potent cocktails of drugs violently and fast. The man didn't react immediately; the toxins sizzled through his system, but were not only resisted for the most part, but started metabolizing too fast as well. Still, after some residual twitching and twisting, Stygian fell relatively silent and slack to the table, though he still shivered and seized visibly. The blackness, smelling like burned pitch now, twisted and rolled all over his form. Its scent was beginning to fill the air, at about the same pace that his shuddering was dying down. His eyes flickered and flared, their glow fading slowly.

[SpottedKitty]

Andrace grunted and dipped her ears as one of Bart's flailing fists connected with a less heavily muscled portion of her anatomy. Still, she allowed herself a moment of satisfaction as her roll-and-kick move came off perfectly, and the hairless critter went splat against the wall. While he scrambled to his feet, she glanced around. Kaela still leaned against the bar, catching her breath. Tables that hadn't been knocked over (yet) there, there, and...

...And she realised Bart didn't seem to like closing with her for a good punch-up. Too bad. Yeah, this could work. The lioness took a running jump onto the nearest table, bounded from there onto the bar, then leaped high and fast, right at Bart. As she kicked off the top of the bar, she took a deep breath and roared.

Several years ago, as a teenager, Andrace had been given voice lessons. Like her brothers and sisters, her roar could be heard clearly almost a mile away on a cool night. In a small enclosed room, at a range of only a few yards — fewer every second — her roar could be heard very clearly indeed. There were no words in the roar, but it spoke eloquently of feral savagery in the night, and gutted carcasses found half-eaten in the morning with their throats ripped out. As her leap ended, and she descended on Bart like the wrath of... well, of a P.O.'d lioness, Andrace grinned exultantly. She reached out with her left hand to grapple him, while with her right, she threw a punch aimed right at his chin. A good solid hit anywhere would do quite nicely, though.

[Tipod]

Bart tensed up as he saw Andrace make her hop-along across the furniture towards him, putting up his dukes in preparation for a nice, strong blow. But as soon as the roar hit his eardrums, all Bart could do was jump back and throw up his arms in a semi-instinctive cower. Due to the bad positioning of his right hand, Andrace's fist bent the thumb back with a sickening crackle as her fist struck it and continued on to pound him dead in his eye, causing a sudden little eruption of red. Two very painful, distracting injuries, and caught by the neck in her grip as she brought him back down to the floor. He couldn't help but wonder how much less pain he'd be in had he just grabbed her with both arms or did anything other than act like a frightened rabbit.

And to think this was something martial arts could've helped with. If only he'd listened to his grandfather all those years ago... 'Bartholomew, take heed, for what I teach you now will--' '*Zznnnkk--*' 'Wake up!! Oh, why do I bother? You may as well just sit in front of the idiot-box and watch professional wrestling all day. At least you would pay attention to that.' '...hell yeah!' While emulating the WWE and improvising helped for taking on more practical foes, a lack of formal combat training would be his downfall at the hands (or, claws) of the disciplined lioness.

He stared up at Andrace through his ruined cornea and gritted his teeth, grabbing and squeezing her left wrist with all the might he could muster with one good hand.

[SpottedKitty]

Andrace's grin widened as she felt bones crunching under her fist. At last, she'd managed to hurt Bart with more than a few bruises, or at least make an impression on him. Her other hand clamped around his throat as she slammed him into the floor and crouched over him, her knees planted firmly in his stomach. He looked ready to panic, though, and she realised why that might not be so good when he clamped his unhurt hand around her left wrist and squeezed. Hard.

Ow-ow-argh-frig-he's-strong-it-hurts he's breakin' m' wrist! she thought desperately as she laid her ears back and yowled. Her grip around his throat loosened, only her weight keeping her hand in place. She wasn't sure if she could hear her bones creaking, but it certainly hurt enough. Drilled-in reactions took over. Her right leg drew back, then her knee hammered into Bart's groin. With her free hand, she punched him hard in the solar plexus, then reached up and grabbed his wrist, digging her thumb into what she hoped was a pressure point on his weird anatomy. "Let go, y' little squirt," she growled through clenched fangs.

[Tipod]

Bart yelled out a pained hooting as Andrace knee'd him directly in the manhood, which was mercifully cut short after the winding blow to his abdomen. "Haaaooww--" He croaked piteously under her grip. God--...damnit!! She'd hit him so hard it felt as though his already messed-up eye would finally vacate the socket by transference alone. His breathing was quick and infrequent, and the grip slowly weakened as Andrace's thumb pinched into the radial ulnar. Half of his body screamed to give in before the Amazon decided to just rip both his arms off and toss him to the side like a piece of meaty tissue paper.

As he turned his head to the side and shut his eyes, his right hand pushed along the floor, finally managing to shove the thumb into a close enough position for his bones to crack it back into place and reattach. Oh, sweet Jesus, much better. Now-- His renewed hand grabbed her other wrist and squeezed right back. Now it was a pretty awkward setup: her left hand to his neck, his left to that wrist, her right to that wrist, and then his right to her right. "Forget it, you broad." The ropey, ruptured texture of his right eye had already smoothed out and was beginning to take on its previous luster. "You're not dealin' with some small-town chump, here. You're dealin' with a Thompson Fury Boy." It took so much effort to speak normally with the intense aching in his loins.

[Boog]

Boog stood there, watching the machine work and thinking furiously. What the blithering hell was Stygian talking about? Eugh, the man never does think straight inebriated or otherwise. Maybe just completely cut off his access to time so he can't keep siphoning himself more, or just reduce his coefficient of friction to zero so he slips and falls if he tries to do anybloodything. Leave him in a closet until he can-
Sahlena felt a tapping on her shoulder, the metallic clink of needle on metal.
"Excuse me." The creature blinked once, its eyelids apparently being slightly translucent, "Was he talking about needing the cold? There's a closet in the back that's been altered in some way that heat can't enter it. I use it to store the transplant organs, but if your friend needs it..."
Marya started snickering again. "Yeah, stuff th'creep inna closet. I like this idea..."

[Angel]

After the noise died down, you could almost hear Dani and Sylvie's muscles unclench. Both still had wide eyes as they looked at the door, some faint burnt smell in the air and each feeling a little cold. Some colder than others.

For a time, neither of them moved at all. Then finally, the elf shifted in her seat and stood up. Dani looked at her, her eyes holding a firm, but protective air. "Sylvie. You don't have to - "

"Yes I do," she responded, but not with the vehemence she'd had earlier. Her tone was not quite flat, but it was disappointed and weighted down a bit. The girl looked at Andrea for a moment, her gaze resigned, and it was clear she had sunken quite a bit. But even underneath this, there was something else, some understanding mixed with need. When and if Stygian was able to do so coherently, they had to talk. And the entire time they did, she was going to keep what he'd done to Piix fresh in her mind.

[Stygian]

The last suggestion seemed to cause some sort of response within Stygian, because he gritted his teeth and made a twitching, shuddering motion that could loosely be interpreted as a nod, followed by a groaning sound from somewhere down in his twisting gullet. Sahlena just stared at the doctor-thing for a good, long bit, then turned and surveyed the sizzling man. What Holic had just said went against all the knowledge that she had of Stygian's physiology and behavior, and what she had seen so far. Or did it? She didn't have an organic mind; didn't have, and didn't trust, anything like 'intuition' or 'hunches'. Yet, in this case, when she had no way of knowing all the symptoms, perhaps...?
   ':alright', the machine said, after a long, tense wait of weighing the risks against each other. If they stuck him in some dark place, at least there was a much less severe chance that he'd die. How they would work from there on though, was impossible to decide. ':let's just... open it up then. make sure it's dark. and if you have any organs that you want to keep...'
   Roughly hoisting the blackened, seething, half-limp thing off the medical bed, Sahlena turned toward the back of the infirmary, looking to Boog for directions.

[Sunblink]

...Dekuyaketh:

After spending a good moment waiting for the doctor's answer, Dekuyaketh tested the responsiveness of his limbs and sighed, waiting for his mechanical arm to fully activate. Once it finally hummed to life, reconnecting with an affirmative click in the back of his head, he climbed out of his bed and stood. He sighed, still pointedly ignoring Sahlena dragging the disfigured mass of charred black away and out of the room, then muttered a quick "thanks," to the good doctor before leaving. Although Dekuyaketh had just emerged from an almost catatonic state, he felt elated knowing that the person responsible had gone through a great deal of hell.

[SpottedKitty]

Andrace had yowled before: when Bart unexpectedly regained the use of his other hand and clamped another crushing grip on her right wrist as well, she just moaned and gritted her fangs. The sudden pain made her tail fur fluff up, and shocked her into extending all her claws, including the one on her right thumb that was digging into Bart's pressure point. Something snapped audibly in her left wrist, and she yelped and started to fall forward.

The lioness turned the movement into a downward lunge, a snarl like ripping cloth coming from her throat as she ducked her head into the tangle of arms and opened her jaws wide to sink her fangs into Bart's right forearm. She wasn't holding back any more, if she managed to tag him this time, she was going to bite. Hard. If it was something his healing ability couldn't handle... too bad.

[Tipod]

Bart immediately yelled in agony as Andrace's claws and fangs went through his flesh like a hot knife through butter. It was, in fact, something his healing factor could handle... provided he had enough breathing room for the wound to close up. He couldn't very well recover while she was still clamped down on his arm. "Shit, shiiiiittt!!" Now he was getting scared and sweaty, not unlike a wildebeest in the deathgrip of a bigger, toothier predator. And to think things were going so benignly in the first few moments of their fight.

"Get your teeth outta my arm you damned savage!!" Bart had to admit the outlook wasn't too good. Despite all his violent struggles, her fangs were still dug deep through muscle and sinew, leaving his right hand dead while failing to worm his left out from the stabbing grip of her claws. He could stand being in such a position longer than most other beings, but Andrace obviously wasn't going to give in anytime soon, and anything else from that point on was just going to be much more debilitating. He did nothing more than thrash spastically, waiting for the other shoe to drop and flatten him.

[Yugo]

Kaela watched Bart and Andrace systematically destroy one another with muted interest, noting the way each one of them fought and storing it away in her mind for further use. It was involuntary of course, a habit of a seasoned soldier, but that did not make it any less useful. She admired Andrace's brutal, if perhaps predatory and animalistic, method of fighting, wincing as Andrace drove her knee into Bart's groin, although she certainly didn't look forward to facing it.

Bart's sheer strength and toughness shocked her, though. She flexed her bicep pensively, looking at it, and did not imagine for a second she could cause such obvious pain simply by closing her hand and bunching up the muscles in her arm. There was certainly something more to him than at first glance, that much she could gather. If he came out victorious, which was quite possible, she would have to tangle with him, and she doubted she could beat him in a combat of strength. She was not as strong and spry as she once was, but it did not seem honorable to use a blade. Kaela sighed, arms pressed against the bar, and watched the continuing fight.

[SpottedKitty]

Bart's flailing about did actually give a benefit: he whacked Andrace on the ear and thumped her broken wrist, twisting it in a direction not suitable for her anatomy. She opened her mouth to yell, and immediately realised she'd let go of his arm. She sneezed Bart's blood out of her nose and rolled quickly away from him, doing her best not to damage her wrist any more. She had an idea now how quickly he could recover from the immediate shock of an injury: much too quickly for her comfort. How about if she injured him a bit more... or a lot more?

As she came out of the roll, Andrace snatched up the longest plank she could reach from the shattered table. Perfect. Rising to her knees, she turned back towards Bart with her left arm dangling limply. "Jump up again from this!" she snarled as she swung the plank with all the strength she could muster one-handed and brought it crashing down towards his head.

As she did, she caught a glimpse of Kaela again. What was the old wolf doing? Had she given up? Was she waiting to see who won? Was she taking it easy having a drink? Probably with an umbrella in it?

[Tipod]

As soon as Andrace let up and rolled away, he tumbled off in the opposite direction, gently cradling his punctured arm and panting tersely. He'd heal, but that didn't mean it wasn't one of the more painful experiences of his life. "...jump up from wha--" The plank smashed Bart's dome straight down into the floor, causing both legs to lift up and quickly thump back to the ground. His body twitched... and stopped moving entirely. A great fatigue soon settled over his mind.

Andrace may not have downed him entirely, but that blow left him feeling very, very sluggish. "...m' gon' lie down 'ere," he muttered, face still buried partway into the floor.

[SpottedKitty]

While Bart was out for the count, Andrace climbed to her feet, took a few steps away, and leaned heavily against the bar. Working quickly, she took hold of her left wrist and — grunting and laying her ears back — pulled hard until the bones crackled and popped back into place. She took a bandage pack from a hidden pocket on the inside of her belt, ripped it open with her teeth, pulled her sleeve up a little and wrapped the bandage tightly around her injured wrist. Finally she murmured a few quiet words and made a grabbing motion with her uninjured hand. A soft, sparkling green light appeared, flowing like syrup between her fingers. She spread the light over her wrist, where it sank through the bandage.

The lioness sighed with relief. The whole process had taken only seconds; while her wrist was nowhere near completely healed, it didn't hurt as much, and it should hold up until the end of the fight. She grinned toothily and turned towards Kaela. "Right, granny," she said almost cheerfully, "your turn..."

[Yugo]

Kaela smiled, impressed by Andrace's use of improvised weapons. She wrote a reminder to herself in her mind to watch out for that in future. As Andrace fixed herself up with both traditional and magical methods, Kaela watched her silently, before slipping off her breastplate and pauldrons and tossing them to the ground beside her rather loudly. The rest of her armor quickly followed, and she finally stood without it before Andrace, dressed in black cargos, leather boots, and a simple black sports bra. Ceremoniously, she drew her long knife from the wood and cast it through the air, catching it deftly in her other hand. "Good, I was getting tired of waiting," she grinned, flashing her fangs as she sprung forward low and hunched to the ground, kicking out at Andrace's ankle as she aimed a wide slash at the lioness' abdomen. Her blood began to sing at the prospect of a duel.

[SpottedKitty]

Andrace cocked an ear curiously as she noticed Kaela stripping off her armour. Well, that makes things a bit more interestin' all round, she thought, th' doggie don't want t' be weighed down too much, so she can move faster. An' she's not so worried 'bout losin' th' protection o' her armour as she was grousin' 'bout. The lioness stood poised, her tail swishing languidly from side to side, her hands hovering over her hips just like she'd pulled her knives out of their hidden sheaths earlier.

The waiting ended when Kaela tossed her long knife flamboyantly, caught it, and charged. Andrace's hands dipped and drew her own knives, although there was a loud ripping noise and a chunk of her left trouser leg — where Bart had torn it — fluttered to the floor exposing more of the sheath strapped to her thigh. She hopped out of the way of the wolf's sweep kick, and brought her left-hand knife forward to block the slash aimed at her stomach. Her ears dipped for a moment as the blades met with an almost musical clash: the impact sent a warning twinge through her injured wrist, but she forced herself to make no other visible reaction.

Andrace twisted sideways and stepped clear to let Kaela charge on past, raising her right-hand knife and stabbing forward in a probing attack at the wolf's face. She didn't expect to score a hit so soon, but watching how Kaela avoided being sliced up might come in handy for working out tactics later in the fight. In the meantime... maybe she could be annoyed into making a mistake.

"Nice strip act, granny," she called with a cheerfully lecherous grin. "Bit noisy, though, was that y' creakin' old bones I was hearin'? What d' y' do f'r an encore, wag y' tail an' dance? Or do th' thing wi' th' pole?"

[Yugo]

Kaela shifted to the side slightly as Andrace's brilliantly polished blade sailed gently over her head, ripping open one of her ears in a brilliant ribbon of scarlet. Her knife hand twitched sharply as steel clashed against steel with a resounding clang, sending bolts of discomfort jarring up her arm. She ignored both the pain in her arm and head, twisting on the spot with a joyful smile on her face and blood running through her fur.

"I wasn't aware you were so interested," Kaela snorted derisively, her lips twisting into a smirk. "Then again, some people just like fit, older women." She wagged her tail teasingly before turning about and sending the sharp end of her elbow sailing towards Andrace's gut, following it up with a rapid slice aimed at the thigh intended to take a chunk of muscle, fat, and perhaps even bone. While Bart and Andrace may have brawled, Kaela played hardball. The lioness was clearly skilled with her blades, and Kaela was curious to see just how good this clan warrior was. At least she could take comfort in the knowledge that there was medical assistance nearby should one of them fall.

[SpottedKitty]

Andrace grinned impishly at Kaela's reply to her taunt and looked down as if she were admiring the old wolf's swaying rump and swishing tail. This might be a fun fight as well as an exciting (and dangerous) one. She hadn't dropped her guard, though, and the sight of blood dripping down the side of Kaela's head from her slashed ear made the lioness think quickly for a moment. So, she's not afraid t' take a minor hit or two. Whittlin' her down wi' lots o' little cuts prob'ly won't work, then. Okay, plan B.

Her musings were interrrupted just then as Kaela broke off her posing and returned to the attack. Andrace managed to twist her body just enough to let the wolf's elbow sideswipe her stomach instead of hammering into her gut. That would not be good, she thought, as she suddenly realised all the booze she'd poured down her throat in the last hour was doing more than making her drunk; she could feel an unmistakable pressure on her bladder that was beginning to build up. One good punch — or worse, a stab — in the wrong place would really leave her hurting. Maybe she should have gone to the little kitty's room before the fight, after all.

She saw Kaela's next move start, almost too late to do anything about it. She thrust her knives down and across each other in front of her leg, just in time to catch the descending blade... almost. The point of the wolf's long knife stabbed at least an inch or two into her left thigh before she forced it back. Andrace gritted her fangs and scowled as blood spurted, then started trickling down her leg. The same leg Bart had bruised back at the start of the fight, dammit. She grunted and forced Kaela's knife arm further back, then she flicked her right-hand knife away, lashed out across the wolf's chest, then scrambled quickly backwards to clear a little space between the two of them. She was limping slightly on her bruised and (now) stabbed leg.

[Yugo]

Kaela gritted her teeth, blood streaming down into her left eye and her mouth as she smiled devilishly, happy to be engaged in a one-on-one battle with an equally matched opponent. It was a wonderment to her that she found the concept of battle and bloodshed to be fun. Was it an intrinsic trait to her people, or was she simply an unstable person? Whatever the case, it was what it was, and as she struggled to push her blade into Andrace's leg, she knew that fighting like this was what she lived for. She could've retired and earned a comfortable living years ago, but that would be boring.

She broke from her thoughts as Andrace suddenly pulled one of her knives back, sending the old warrior off balance and off guard. Cloth and flesh tore apart with a spurt of blood as Andrace raked her blade across Kaela's chest, passing just beneath the woman's clavicle. Stumbling backwards, Kaela checked her wound during the brief lull in the fighting, giving the two fighters a bit of breathing room. Andrace's weapon had bit down hard, exposing dark red flesh and creamy white bone beneath Kaela's fur. "Good blow," Kaela complimented the hefty lioness with a smile, spinning her knife in her hand idly, waiting for Andrace to make the next move.

[SpottedKitty]

Andrace muttered a quiet "gotcha!" in a satisfied tone as she saw and felt her knife slice across Kaela's chest. Not an immediately dangerous injury, but — as she knew from painful and messy experience — a cut like that would bleed a lot, and hurt a lot. She crouched slightly forward, rocking from paw to paw, watching the old wolf's reaction. Her own injury wasn't too serious either, she thought: she could feel the patch of blood-soaked fur slowly spreading down her leg, but at least it wasn't gushing out, and it wasn't slowing her down yet. They were more or less even, then. Time to change that.

The lioness bounced more energetically from paw to paw, ignoring for the moment the sharp pain shooting up her leg, her ears and whiskers perked forward, and her tail flicking back and forth as if with excitement. "Wantin' a rest already, granny?" she said with a cheerful grin, and her left-hand knife flicked out in an obviously feint attack at Kaela's eyes. "Can I get y' anythin'? Rockin' chair?" Right-hand knife, feint at the throat. "How 'bout a walkin' stick, or nice warm slippers?" Left-hand knife, feint at the right leg. "Or maybe a lie-down in a comfy bed!" At the last word, almost shouted, Andrace lunged forward into striking range.

Leaving her left knife free to parry or block if Kaela counterattacked, the lioness roared nearly as loudly as she'd done at Bart, and thrust forward with her right-hand knife. She was aiming at the centre of the wolf's body, but the strike could easily be turned down to slash a leg, or turned up to stab at throat or chest, depending on how Kaela reacted.

[Boog]

"Right, it was, ah... That way." Boog marched toward the back rooms, Sahlena and Holic in tow. Aspects of the building around them got strange the further down this hallway they went; supporting pillars where one wouldn't seem necessary, exposed wooden boards bent in loops, light fixtures swinging slightly with no noticeable force to have moved them. Eventually, after walking down a ways that one would be almost CERTAIN would have been too far to still be in the building they reached a row of doors, each exactly next to one another. Holic opened one of them, reached in and pulled out a large and slightly lumpy sack of objects over his shoulder. Inside the room it was dark, and cold, and that was about all one could make out of it.
Boog jerked his thumb in the direction of the closet and looked around. "Lets hurry it up, this place gives me the creeps."

[Stygian]

As per the Boogeyman's guidance, Sahlena hurriedly, and with a great deal of evident and rather understandable disgust at the horrible thing she was holding, moved along, peering over it as well as she could so that she stayed on Boog's and Holic's tail. This kept her occupied, and had the fortunate side-effect of distracting her away from the building's layout, which in defiance of most basic guidelines of physics behaved however the blazes it wanted to. Finally, they arrived at a rather heavy- and solid-looking storage door, evidently airtight, which the doctor-thing swung open. Long, billowing clouds of condensation flowed out with the draft, turning the opening to the room beyond into a slate of mist, until natural laws that even the Circle was not exempt from kicked in and made it into a rolling, swirling mat instead, driven by the pressure exchange, over which Holic reached, behind the frame of the door, to haul out a large sack of some kind. Sahlena didn't even notice. She just stared past him.
   The storage room was indeed dark, and very, very cold. The walls to the sides were hard to see, and the back of it was merely a dark patch of nothing which even the machine's fine-tuned sensors couldn't pick up. Nothing immediate, at least; it gave off the impression of a wall somewhere, but it was in the same way that the dark entrance to a forest road at night gave off the impression of safety and a destination. It was far too easy to imagine that darkness just stretching on and on, the blackness swallowing up the walls until even they became insubstantial, and more than one type of horror that might be waiting somewhere at the depth of it. In short, it was a veritable playground for Stygian.
   For a moment, the machine did hesitate. It might seem logical to think that when in that sort of situation, faced with either just doing what needed to be done or standing around imagining all the horrid things that might happen if Stygian's power was given such a place to roam freely, the machine would naturally choose the former option; would even come to the conclusion that drawing too many conclusions and extrapolating too far would be a bad thing beforehand. The simple answer though, was that it was not so simple. Apart from the fact that such a choice depended on a mode of thought that was really too esoteric for a machine mind, it also faced a fundamental problem; machines too stupid to make it would just go on to imagining and predicting away, but ones that might have been smart enough to make it would already have thought out the consequences before they could stop themselves. And Sahlena was of the latter kind.
   ':aw, crap ', she said, at last, after a few seconds of hard staring. She had dropped Stygian, who had huddled up into something approximating a fetal position, his skin and shadow melting together and stretching for the doorframe as he shuddered and twitched. One big red lens glaring down at him, the machine thought hard. Would it be necessary doing what they were about to after all?
   The answer was obvious. At least to her. She didn't like it, of course, but that was just the way of things.
   ':bugger it all', she muttered, and kicked the curled-up shape into the shadows, then slammed the door shut before she had a chance to see what unpleasant things might result of it. She turned her back on the door, folded her arms, and for a moment Boog thought he could actually see her shudder. Then she looked at him, and just gave the tiniest nod, before making her way back through the corridor toward the bar with such measured steps that they had to be the result of tightly controlled fear.

[Angel]

At the threshold of the infirmary door, Sylvie and Dani stood and watched the motley procession down the corridor to the closet. It was almost impossible to tell who'd been trained to be a guard and who'd been guarded, the way the two women were standing. As time passed, Dani glanced over at Sylvie and noticed a strange look in her eyes. It was almost like the look Dani had had when she'd been waiting for Giles to wake up, but less impatient and more worried - though she knew that right no, Sylvie wouldn't admit to the worried part.

She tapped the elf's shoulder. "Syl - "

"Nothing wrong with me," the elf responded, in the same tone as before, but quietly and a little too quickly. Dani sighed.

"I'm gonna start counting the number of times you say that." She gave her friend an even expression. "Look, I know you want to talk to him, but I'm pretty sure he's gonna be...indisposed for a little while. If you sit there waiting all day, you might get bored or impatient. And if you get bored or impatient enough, you might do something stupid. And if you do something stupid enough..." Chaos only knows what will happen. "So humor me. Don't spend all day standing here."

For a little while, neither of them said anything. Then Sylvie let out a little breath, and looked at the Red. "Okay," she said, but made no motion to leave. She watched Sahlena heading back down the hall, and Dani turned a bit to face the bar, and the book on the counter. Sure, she was concerned for Sylvie, but she couldn't stand it when things were this quiet for this long.