She fell on her right knee and growled in turmoil.
“Grrrr,” she slammed the ground with her fist, causing it to crack apart and rattle the Colosseum to near-destruction.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Nasty, dust-filled oxygen, that rammed against her lungs like a rusty cheese grater.
“Gwwwuurggh,” she licked her mouth and spat a lump of phlegm to the floor.
Each grunt and growl rumbled through her body and whirled around the bizarre makeshift arena around her.
“I’m—I’m,” she tried as she staggered to her feet once again and tried to keep her balance, “Going to—”
Mastazita roared at the top of his lungs.
Jelly’s ears flew back, as did her eyelids. A bizarre wall of spaceship parts formed a section of the arena’s curvature.
“Is that y-you?”
Jelly was surprised at the tone of her voice; sounding less like a woman and more like a monster with a guttural growl.
Two silver circles five inches apart appeared in the darkness behind the pilot’s seat.
They snapped to black and returned to their original size and color in an instant. A waft of gas flew to the ground from underneath them, indicating that whatever was watching had a nose.
Jelly swished her heavy tail in response. It accidentally wrapped around her left thigh and hit something a couple of feet away.
The sound of shifting of rocks from the darkness rumbled through the ground. Jelly’s actions were working.
“Come… out,” she grunted from the pit of her stomach and clenched the infinity claws on her right fist.
Growl.
The creature stepped forward and out of the darkness. It ducked its head as it stepped past the pilot’s seat and arched its back.
Mastazita roared as he stepped to the side of the pilot’s seat, and past the random segments of the ship that led to the makeshift Colosseum.
Jelly sidestepped in the opposite direction and tried to buy herself some time.
The two circled each other, slowly, never breaking away from each other’s gaze. The longer the torment went on, the more furious each of them became.
Jelly grunted and scraped her infinity claws along the stretch of the ship’s cabin - a deathly, spine-shattering noise that upset Mastazita no end.
He punched his fists together once again, making damn sure Jelly knew she was in trouble.
Burst of fire blasted from Mastazita’s nose, spraying around like a flamethrower as he shook his head.
Jelly stepped back, away from the wall and raised her paws. Her hind legs swiveled across the dusty ground, a foot apart.
She was ready to kill.
Mastazita stepped forward. He crossed his chest in a diagonal motion with his right paw, keeping his left by his left hip.
He cracked his knuckles and licked the side of his paw, before shifting his hind feet through the dusty surface and up to Jelly.
The back of her right paw connected with his.
He was ready to kill.
Jelly’s pupils dilated as she stared at his face.
Mastazita grunted, his silver pyramid-shaped pupils thickening across his eyes.
The two grunted and heaved as they pressed the backs of their wrists against each other’s.
It was just a matter of who’d attack first.
Mastazita roared in her face and pushed her right arm out with his own, forcing her to attack.
Jelly squeezed her eyes shut and tried to wrist-wrestle her right arm against his. His strength far outweighed her own. It didn’t stop her from squeezing and grunted and pushing back.
A teardrop ran down her furry, striped cheek. She licked her mouth first, then ran the tip of her tongue across her teeth.
Jelly grunted and spat at the floor, determined to kill the creature.
“Heh,” Mastazita grunted and squinted at Jelly, “Whur,” he tried, “Tcha, tcha—Jell,” he munched back his words and decided enough was enough.
Jelly struggled with Mastazita’s sheer power. She scowled and applied all the strength in her arm, pushing his vertically against his chest.
Jelly threw the first punch with her right paw, but missed.
Mastazita ducked to the side and let her fly forward. Her fist connected with the wall. Chunks of rock shattered around her wrist.
“Grrr,” she used her left paw to yank herself out of the wall, and spun around to face her assailant, “Come here.”
Mastazita moved forward and swung at her. She blocked his punch with her arm and socked him in the gut. He doubled-over in pain, affording Jelly an opportunity to swipe the side of his head, which is exactly what she did.
Jelly pushed the giant wolf back a few steps. He recovered instantly and lunged at her. His fist blasted Jelly in the chest, sending her staggering back a few steps
She spat some blood on the ground, lifted her head and faced her foe, “Miew.”
Mastazita stomped forward, one paw after the other, ready to deliver the final blow.
“Nuuh,” she growled. “Nuuh.”
He reached for her head with both paws, ready to tear her head away from her neck.
She tensed the muscles in her right arm as he lunged forward, preparing to kill her.
Jelly’s rammed him in the jaw, the force of which pushed him several feet into the air. She stepped back as he crashed feet-first to the floor, cracking the ground.
She wasted no time and delivered a series of punches to his face and body, before fanning her claws and throwing a vicious swipe across his chest. He stepped back in the nick of time, avoiding contact.
Mastazita spluttered and raced forward with another punch.
His fist met with her wrist inches from their faces - the tips of their noses millimeters apart, grunting against one another.
“Grrr.”
Jelly removed her wrist and allowed the force of his full body weight forward.
Mastazita threw a left punch, only to be met with resistance from Jelly’s right arm. A quick succession of blocks from each of his ten punches.
Jelly kicked him in the waist, sending him back across the arena.
Mastazita zipped forward and delivered a punch to her face, forcing her to spin vertically in the air before crashing to the ground.
The granules of sand lifted into the air as she kicked herself to her feet.
Mastazita ran forward and bent his arm.
He jumped into the air and shifted his weight onto his elbow, intending to ram her against the ground.
“Miew,” she gasped and rolled out of the way as he hit the deck, cracking the ground.
Shafts of white light blasted through the streaks that cracked out from the ground.
She scowled at Mastazita as he picked himself up from the floor. He inspected his bleeding arm and licked the wound, slowly, all the while staring at Jelly’s face.
She lifted her ears and held her paws up, ready to kill the beast once and for all.
Mastazita fell forwards, and flung the swatches of blood from his wound against the wall. As his foot entered the shaft light, the fur on his leg singed into smoke.
He moved his leg away to stop the fur barbecuing from his flesh.
Jelly snorted and glanced at the crack in the floor. She knew to avoid the three beams of light shooting up from the ground. She clenched her infinity claws once again and prepared to attack as Mastazita ran toward her with a waft of burnt fur behind him.
She timed her attack perfectly, or so she thought. Her right claw flew forward, headed straight for his nose.
As her arm traveled through the air, he ducked his head and held out his arms.
His head connected with her abdomen like a battering ram. He wrapped his arms around her legs and pushed her against a shard of spaceship sticking out from the ground.
Mastazita shoved Jelly back-first against the piece of the ship, and rammed his head into her exo-suit.
“Gaaoooowwww,” she squealed as her suit’s a
bdominal plate cracked apart, revealing her bare midriff.
Jelly extended her arms and battered the sides of his head with her claws, “Uggghhh.”
She expanded her infinity claws on her right paw. She closed her thumb and two smaller cuticles, leaving the longest two up.
Mastazita knew he was in trouble. He lifted his right hind leg and slammed the wall segment with the sole of his foot.
She threw her paw to the side of his head, intending to puncture his skull.
Too late.
He shifted his head back as her infinity claws swung past and missed their target and, instead, sliced open the front of his chest.
A mound of wolf blood slapped against her face as her two cuticles ripped the flesh from his front.
Mastazita rammed Jelly against the wall once again - this time, with ten times as much power due to the intensity of his wounds.
“Mieeeewwwww,” Jelly closed her eyes and screeched in pain. She felt her spine give up the ghost and bend around the protruding ship wall, which busted apart on impact.
Mastazita released his grip on Jelly and stepped back, before catching a shaft of light blowing through another crack in the ground.
The blinding force of energy shaved the side of his face clean off, cooking the flesh under the singed clumps of fur.
“Roooooaaarrrr.”
He stepped back and held his burning face as Jelly slid to the ground, completely out of the path of the light. She rolled onto her side and clutched her stomach in pain.
Her energy was near depleted. The beast was nowhere near dead, yet. For the first time in her short life, she knew she was losing the fight.
Mastazita growled in agony as he lifted his paws away from the right side of his face, taking some of the flesh with it.
Jelly lifted her head and winced at the sight.
The right side of Mastazita’s face burned clean off - his stomach tore and bled, as did his arm.
Mastazita caught a glimpse of Jelly groaning on the ground. Her face battered and bloodied; her exo-suit cracked like the walls, accompanied by dangerous, jagged split-ends that would pierce flesh like a knife through butter.
He grunted and rolled his shoulders, spraying saliva around the arena as he ironed out the pain from his neck.
Jelly climbed on all fours and prepared to launch herself forward.
“Heh,” he grunted and held his paws in front of his face, ready for her.
The two beasts zoomed towards each other like a pair of angry bulls.
Jelly ran through a shaft of light emitting from the ground knowing it would singe some of her fur.
She was right.
The quickest half second of light-on-face scorched the fur from her cheek, but she ignore the pain and kept on running.
Mastazita waded from side to side as he lifted his arms into the air, ready to punch the life out of Jelly’s body.
Jelly opened both her infinity claws out and attempted to smother the beast.
He tightened his fist and stopped running as Jelly bolted towards him.
He landed a near-fatal uppercut to her face, which lifted her into the air. The jagged, busted ends of her exo-suit wrenched clumps of flesh and blood from his fist as she flew away.
Jelly hurtled towards the ground and fell around Mastazita’s shoulders. She vomited a clump of thick, pink blood down his back.
He growled in pain and grabbed her hind legs, keeping her secured to his back. He placed the sole of his foot against a broken segment of ship and kicked himself up and around.
He landed shoulders-first to the ground, his fall cushioned by Jelly’s top half.
Jelly’s exo-suit bust apart as she hit the ground, crushed under the weight of Mastazita’s body.
“Bwuuurgggh,” she yelped, feeling her lungs turn to mush as his spine rammed into her chest.
Mastazita rolled onto his front and pulled himself to his feet in one, swift action.
He took a moment to catch his breath, all the while trying to savor the squeals of sheer agony coming from Jelly.
“Heh,” he coughed and spat a mound of blood down his front.
The shafts of light billowing through the cracks in the ground resembled an infrared security scenario. Movement wasn’t much of an option in the arena, now. More than two seconds’ worth of exposure to the light would be enough to burn through any living entity and kill it.
“Grrrrrr,”Jelly whined and whelped on the floor, barely able to move.
Mastazita turned around one-hundred-and-eighty-degrees and focused his eyes on the poor, near-dead freak of evolution - half-tiger, half-human.
“Muh, muh,” she clutched her chest in a state of near-hyperventilation. She shifted her back along the ground and widened her eyes in a state of shock.
Mastazita lowered his head and enjoyed her last moments of life. His tongue hung down his chin and slavered around his mouth. He could finish her once and for all - twist her head right off her shoulders and snap her neck.
Like mother, like daughter.
To finish, he could fry her body in the light and dine for a week.
A waft of black smog shot out from his nose. His right foot pained him so much he couldn’t think about anything else. It kept his anger at full tilt.
Jelly squirmed on the ground in a state of near-paralysis. Mastazita’s shadow crept up the length of her body as he growled, moving ever closer to her.
The beast enjoyed every moment of her anguish as he stepped over her.
His nose contracted, accepting the waft of death filling the Colosseum. A quick tongue across his razor sharp teeth, hungry for blood.
He roared down at her and slowly raised his hind paw, preparing to stomp on her head.
“Mwurgghh,” she shook her head from side to side, seeming to beg for mercy.
But mercy wasn’t an option.
A shooting pain thundered up and down her body. It felt as if her lungs filled with blood. A click of bone occurred and sent shock waves of pain through her throat whenever she moved. Her rib cage was broken.
Any moment now, the paw would come crashing toward her face.
She thumped the top of her paw against the ground and extended her infinity claws, desperate to grab anything close by.
The ends of her claws hit the ground. She’d given up and closed her eyes. A final intake of air and, at once, she was suddenly calm.
The pain would be over.
“Guuhh,” Mastazita roared and stomped his hind paw to her face.
He looked down to find his paw in Jelly’s clutches. “Ngggg,” she clenched his foot in her infinity claws with all her might, fighting the force away from her face.
“Grrrrr,” Mastazita’s grunts were so aggressive they shifted the minuscule grains of dirt across the ground.
“Ngggg,” she whined as she used the last of her energy pushing the deadly foot away from her face. The sole of the paw shuddered and jiggled, moving millimeters closer to her face.
Jelly roared and pushed against the force.
Mastazita slammed his paws against the wall for balance and lifted his free foot from the ground, shifting his entire body weight onto the foot above Jelly’s face.
His paws broke some of the rocks away from the spacecraft wall.
Jelly sunk her infinity claws into the flesh in his foot.
Mastazita yelped and kept his full weight pressed onto his foot.
Jelly pushed herself back and yanked Mastazita forward, sending him flying off of his good foot and down on top of her.
Face to face, they grunted at each other - half in pain, half in apoplectic rage.
Both wanted absolute execution, nothing less.
The fur on her face blew back as she opened her mouth and roared into his.
She slammed both her paws either side of his head and squeezed as hard as she could, “Ngggg.”
She pulled his face down to hers and clamped her mouth over his.
“Mffgggggg,” Mastazita tried to kic
k away, spraying blood up the ground from his injured foot. Jelly kept his mouth pressed to hers—
Both his and her teeth crashed together.
Jelly’s chest deflated, blowing the pink contents of her lungs into his throat. He had no choice but to withstand the action and breathe it in.
“Mwaarrghh,” he grunted, trying to move his head away.
He couldn’t.
She lifted her knee up and rammed it between his legs, forcing him to yelp once again.
She grabbed the fur on the back of his head and rammed his mouth against hers.
As she exhaled, a wisp of pink gas escaped from the sliver of the sides of their mouths.
Mastazita kicked his legs back and thumped both fists to the ground on either side of their bodies.
He pushed the top half of his body upright and punched Jelly across the face.
He leaned back and thumped his knees to the ground, still straddling Jelly, “Guh,” he wiped his mouth as a wisp of pink gas wafted from his nostrils.
Mastazita hadn’t a clue what was going on, but he’d breathed whatever it was that Jelly had given him. The substance played havoc with his head and face.
Jelly used this momentary pause to her advantage. She rolled to her side and forced Mastazita away from her waist, pushing him towards the discarded pilot’s seat.
“Miew.”
Mastazita tore the shattered spacecraft segments away from his body and hurled them at Jelly.
She ducked and clutched her side in pain as the bits of metal whizzed past her head and daggered into the ground.
Busted fragments of her exo-suit hung over her right shoulder. She raised her arm and swiped at the wall, flinging the last piece of suit away.
She held her infinity claws out by her waist - poised to execute the monstrosity standing before her.
Both of them stood bare naked, bloodied, and bruised.
Pink blood seeped from the fresh wound on Jelly’s left forearm and slung down her wrist to her infinity claws.
Jelly roared at the top of her lungs, training her gaze directly into Mastazita’s eyes.
He returned fire and shook his head, spitting blood from his mouth. His paws clenched, ready to kill.
A brief moment of hesitation fell between them as they both expelled the toxic air from their lungs.
Star Cat: Killer Instinct Page 23