AVR1-3: Adieu

-------5 hours later, 12 hours remaining------


"AAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH!!!! QUARK!!!! I'M GOING TO STAB YOU SO MUCH WHEN I GET BACK!!!! YOU HAVE NO IDEA!!!" The knife sliced it's way though Xander's flesh, blood pouring in thick rivulets down his arm.

A cooked and partially consumed chunk of Smiles' leg hung over the fire behind Xander. Strange creatures sang to the moons. Azure lay, still unconscious, with a bloody piece of Xander's shirt covering a freshly delivered wound. The blue grass swayed with the gentle wind, uncaring of the visitor's pain.

Xander was more exposed than ever now, being outside of his armor for the first time. His entire body was slick with sweat, and now his arm had the added benefit of blood all over it, both his own and Azure's.

The disc of flesh hit the stone floor with a wet smack. Xander gasped before yelling as loud as he possibly could. Someone else probably heard that. He didn't care. Yelling made him feel better about having just cut off his own skin. Not a lot better, but he would take what he could get.

"Friggin...ow....ow....ow.....ARGH!.......buggerbuggerbuggerbugger....." Xander bit his other hand as his blood-drenched fist clenched. The idea was to make the pain in the other hand seem less bad due to the biting. It didn't actually help. It just made both hands hurt. "Okay...okay....I just have to put the skins in the slot now..."

He picked up Azure's strip of flesh and slowly worked his way to the delivery slot. "In you go, little buggers."

The flesh chunks made a sound, something like "Sploit," as they hit the inside of the container. The container snapped shut. The sound of internal mechanisms beginning a magical chain reaction of hope and love brought promises of getting out of this alive.

"Holy bean curd....this really hurts...."

"Not as much as this is going to." A very angry Azure stood coiled behind Xander, apparently having woken up at some point. Xander could see her in his minds eye, pissed as a rabid Smiles and holding that pole-axe with murderous intent.  

"Oh bugger." Xander remarked. In weighing the situation in the split seconds before death, Xander came to believe that this would not end well if he tried to fight the giant snake woman. He took a moment trying to estimate how quickly she could move, but then decided to just have faith that it was somewhere in the neighborhood of "slower than me." The unfortunate thing about faith is this: Eventually you must test it. In this case, by making a hasty exit to his left.

"You're not getting away from me, human!"

"Oh, I plan to get away. I plan to get away very much!" Xander shouldn't have been wisecracking, considering he was now running away from a pissed off snake with an axe on the end of a long stick, when all he had was a knife. Which, now that he actually thought about it, was currently way over there, next to the very useful piece of Symbiotic Combat ArmoR.

"Not if I have anything to say about it!" Azure's colors flared red as she thrust out her weapon, aiming to hit the human in the spine, if she could. Fortunately for Xander, she missed. Unfortunately for Xander, she only missed by a few inches...to the left.

The sensation of the spear at the end of a pole-axe being punched between your ribs and into your lung, for those of you who are wondering, is not a pleasant one. In fact, it very much feels as though you have been shot. The main difference being, you don't normally feel the bullet get pulled back out.

"AAAUUUGGHHH!!!" Xander roared as the door to the escape pod finally opened. If Xander's ears still worked better than his left lung did, it was around the corner on the opposite side of the central column from the delivery slot. The Zelians suddenly struck Xander as being incredibly rude.  He turned the corner sharply, his legs pumping him up to a full-out OH-MY-CRAP-RUN-FOR-YOUR-LIFE-YOU'RE-GONNA-DIE sprint.

A mental barrage slammed into his head as he dove for the awaiting hatch, more powerful than ever. He stumbled, feet away from the pod. His hands scrambled across the floor as he continued to propel himself forward, half sprinting, half falling. A mental cry filled his mind as he heard the poleaxe clatter around his feet, occasionally glancing off the sole of his boots or cutting shreds off of his pants. Xander dove into the pod with the rabid and terrifying snake woman right behind him, her curses and threats flashing in large, bright red letters across his thoughts.  The door slammed shut. The snake woman screamed into his mind and battered the pod with her weapon.  Xander looked around blearily in the darkness, his eyes focusing on a slowly blinking red dot. A blood-covered hand reached through the darkness, gently prodding the blinking light.

The pod shook as the thrusters came on. He had won...He had somehow managed to knock out his opponent , fight off the giant...thingie named Smiles, cut off some of his own flesh, and scramble his way into a waiting pod without getting stabbed more than once. Now, if he could just avoid bleeding out, that would be heavenly....

----------11 Hours later, 1 Hour Remaining, 16 hours until pickup-------------

Azure looked down at her bracelet. It was blinking in bright viridian.

"Yes?" She thought into the memory orb.

"Would you like to explain to me how your opponent beat you?" Viridian's colors were splashed with anger. Azure rolled her eyes, irritation creeping into her blue.

"No, I would not like to explain. You saw it all on the hologram. You saw what happened. I feel no need to give you a replay."

"You fought like an untrained child! What's wrong with you?!" Viridian's colors were very quickly approaching crimson. Azure was glad there was so much distance between them. "When you get back, I am going to--!"

Azure put the memory orb aside. She didn't want to talk to Viridian anymore. For the first time in months, she didn't have to be around that vain, pompous, and altogether irritating eggless. She may have lost, but at least she got a temporary vacation.

The spiral trees swayed in the wind, almost bouncing as they went. Their springy branches drifted this way and that, going tight and loose and every which way at the slightest hint from the wind. Their whistling fruit made a delicate chord through the forest, as though hundreds of flute players were hidden in the bushes. The grass shushed and whispered under the currents of air, magenta and cerulean under the light of the sun peeking curiously over the cliff walls. The light seemed to pour into the valley, slowly filling it with orange-gold illumination. Peace, serenity, and quiet. Azure breathed in the scents, her colorblind eyes closed tightly.

Thinking back, she probably could have used fire to quickly convert him from fleshy human to neat pile of ash....But it was too late now. She gave a deep shrug and sent out a small pulse of melancholy gray. Her companion didn't seem to mind.

Her hand reached out and brushed the suede-like fur of the animal she found hiding in the ruins after her opponents departure...It was cute, in it's own way. The sharp teeth and the leech head were a little bit hard to get used to, but it had it's own charming qualities. One of them being that it had yet to try to eat her.

She looked at the dented and scratched mess that was her opponent's robotic armor. Severed bits of wiring and plugs hung out of it and many pole-axe shaped dents pebbled its formerly smooth surface.  Okay, maybe that had been a little immature, but she felt better about things now. At least she had succeeded in giving him a hard time for the next few days. It was worth it.

Charlie liked the blue thing. It filled her brain with happy colors. It also stroked her fur in a most pleasing way. Oh, was that a fruit? Charlie REALLY liked the blue thing.

-------

<Xander's Log, 2/16/0090: Is this thing working? Good. It took me two days to fix this dang thing after that snake woman had her way with it. I shouldn't have left it there, but I guess living was still the better alternative....So, this makes 48 hours fixing dents, reworking wiring, and buffing out scratches. Quark and Nevermind came by to help me out. Say hi, guys. They said hi. Anyways, they came by apologizing about that weird cookie incident a couple days ago. Their expertise was endlessly helpful in reconnecting the neural uplink plug. It took us a couple tries to get the wires right, though...let me tell you, telling your right arm to flex and having your left knee bend is a strange sensation that I would rather not repeat....The wound is already healing up nicely, thanks to advanced Zelian medicine. It's good stuff, Zelian tech....Well, there's a party going on for the winners of Round 1. I guess I ought to shower before I show up. End Recording.>