“Today we have a special treat Deadman Wonderland fanatics!” An over eager announcer blared his obsessively eager commentary through an echoing speaker that made it hard for the little hatchling to discern his words. Her Japanese was mediocre at best but the echo was throwing her off. “Two new birdies will be fighting it out for your enjoyment! Here for the first time ever in a Carnival Corpse, straight from the USA: The Robin!” A light flooded over her and she covered her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater. This was a strange place, the cage like metal bars stretched over a glass enclosure. Outside cards of cheery animal faces loomed over her like judgmental giants. She felt like she was in a particularly nightmarish Disney cartoon. “And the Cuckoo!” The announcer shouted gleefully as the light left her to blind the other person walking out into the arena.
“For Coco-Puffs!” Robin added helpfully her hands thrust into the air in a V shape. She was met with a sort of half awkward silence, the cards tilted toward her. “S… sorry.” She switched her language back to Japanese as she bowed apologetically.
“Now, without further interruption,” the announcer seemed not to enjoy her cereal-related references, “let the bloodshed begin!” The lights flare up, revealing an awkward penguin statue suspended from the top of the cage like structure. There was a tree like mass crawling up one wall. Robin looked across the vacant arena her eyes landing on her opponent.
“Hey! Marik!” She was happy to see him. After all, they had met in the kitchen and he seemed nice enough. Today however he seemed to be in a foul mood. His hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders hunched hair in his eyes. He looked to her, gave a half nod.
“Gwen.” He said her name with some difficulty as it was hard to say in Japanese. They stared at each other for a moment before Marik decided, unsurprisingly, to speak his mind. “This is stupid.” He grumbled looking at the animal faces watching them with unmoving expressions. “I saw that video, I’m not gonna fight! It’s pointless!”
“Video….?” Robin frowned thoughtfully, index dinger resting against her lightly freckled alabaster cheek. She vaguely remembers something of the sort, lying down on the doctor’s table, eyes forced open. She had been told it was a checkup to make sure she was capable of participating in this… game was it? To be perfectly honest, her invisible friends had kept her otherwise occupied during the film. However she was regretting that now as it seemed to hold some importance for this event.
“Come on! FIGHT!” One of the cards, an old raccoon faced one, turned toward her aggressively, a voice calling out from the card in anger. The other cards started sifting restlessly.
“This is boring!”
“Bring back the Crow!”
“Someone needs to break these newbies in!”
“S-stop…” Robin didn’t like all the noise, didn’t like not knowing where it was coming from. But like always, her voice was soft, unable to stretch out and fill the cage. She was not a songbird. She looked to Marik, he looked irritated, not upset like she was feeling, just annoyed, like this was keeping him from some other, more important task. Her mind was feeling fuzzy, all these voices shouting at her, the happy faces on the cards were angry with her and she didn’t know why. Her left arm wrapped around the top of her head gripping her right ear tightly, the upper part of her arm crushing the sound out of her left ear, her fingers dragging her head so her neck was forming nearly a perfect 180 degree angle with her right shoulder. Her right arm slipped behind her head, her wrist twisting into a right angle as her left knee bent outward, and her right leg tried to wrap around her left one, toes curling inward. Her mind went completely empty as her body went rigid, freezing in place.
“The Hell?” Marik looked over seeing Gwen freeze in the most uncomfortable twist of limbs and ligaments. With her head twisted around, her fingers grabbing at her flesh, and her body frozen like a statue she looked like she was doing some sort of weird new age yoga routine. He wasn’t worried for her, the dark eyes looking at the mass of bones and flesh with only confusion and frustration, trying to piece together what exactly the girl who had cooked for him was doing frozen like an ice sculpture in the middle of the arena.
“Seems like the Robin has frozen up!” the announcer’s voice blared over the growing chant for blood that was building up in the outer arena as the cards demanded their entertainment. “Let’s say we give Cuckoo the hand he needs! And to try to get your money’s worth; let’s try to get the Robin to wake up!” There were two long BANG sounds. Marik stumbled forward from momentum as something sliced by his elbow. Robin collapsed to the floor still frozen, blood dripping from the ankle that had been knocked out from under her. Slowly she uncoiled herself trying to piece together why she was on the floor, her ankle bleeding.
“Now you’re just pissing me off!” Cuckoo turned around seeing two penguins with guns. One aimed at him, one at Robin. He felt something warm, viscous and sticky, dripping down his arm. He looked down, the bullet had grazed him, but took a bit from his upper arm leaving it bleeding, dripping down to his hand.
“That hurt…” Robin looked at her feet, her ankle was hurting badly, and it seemed the bullet may have cracked a bone when it drew blood from her. She could hear that sizzling sound again, the sound of radical ions interacting with an otherwise stable substance. She looked down seeing the dripping blood burning a hole straight through the floor. She tried to stop it, wiping the blood on her hands trying to stop it dripping. The acid did not burn her flesh but as she stood out her ankle gushed out a bit more blood and it sizzled again, continuing to burn the floor. “Marik?” She whipped around remembering the other person in the arena. Her dramatic arm motions sent flecks of the sticky burning blood on her fingertips flying, a few drops landing on Marik’s hand.
“AH!” He wiped off the acid onto the floor, leaving little burn marks on his hand where it had fallen. Instinctively his blood reacted to the attack, gathering into an elastic barbed grappling mechanism that launched forward. “It’s back…” he stared in wonder as the mechanism, his self proclaimed blood guardian, reacted to the acidic attack. It lurched and snapped, hurling forward. It flew forward, aiming for the beating muscle that rested beneath Robin’s breast. Much to his dismay however, she moved quickly, her coat fluttering with the movement as the barb hooked into her shoulder rather than her heart. Still, it connected, that was all he needed.
Robin took a deep breath as the tender skin of her shoulder was pierced as a barb of blood sunk into the skin, hooking into the muscles. The sting grew tense and she was jerked forward toward him. She tried to brace herself against the force but the damage to her ankle made it nearly impossible. She planted her foot down and was met by shooting pain. She jerked it back up as her body was yanked forward into Marik’s. However, the barb had drawn blood from her so as her chest pressed against his the acid seared into the man’s chest, burning through the clothes. “So I can’t get close to you.” The barb unhooked from her as she fell backward.
“Th… that hurt…” her eyes were clouded over as her mind started warping the setting around her. Her invisible friends were screaming, screaming and fading into the darkness. The monsters were coming. Her world started to warp, the cage walls melting into bloodstained shadows. The cheery animal faces turned into reaching hands, long knurly fingers and chipped nails scratched toward her always an instant from touching her skin. “M-Marik!” she called out to him, turning his face started to drip, the flesh plopping from his bones in bloody heaps. The bone underneath was solid, gaping mouth and eyes formed in TV static on his face.
“Seriously?” Marik rubbed his ears with his palms as Gwen fell onto her butt and started staring at him like he was growing a second head, her mismatched eyes wide, mouth slightly agape. Suddenly, and with incredible gusto for such a small framed young woman, she started shrieking. Screaming she jumped to her feet and tried to run in the opposite direction. As her foot hit the ground it gave out and she collapsed again on her stomach this time. “This is actually getting pathetic.”
Knowing he couldn’t touch her directly, his blood guardian welled up again, lashing out, and digging into her back. The crimson rope lashed out and this time lifted her up, thrusting her into a wall instead of pulling her toward him. Her body connected with a loud TWACK. The weight of her was considerable, lifting something as large and heavy as a young woman was something his blood guardian had not attempted and the barb ripped her back badly with each movement, slipping out of its hold. And her constant thrashing and screaming didn’t help. He slammed her again and again; until the hook tore free of her shoulder and she fell to the ground. The impact seemed to shake something in her as Gwen sat up looking happy.
“I get it now!” she clapped her hands three times. She got back up dodging the barb this time as she limped away. The hook lashed out again, it struck her arm but she yanked it away. She managed to get to the tree and started to climb it, leaving burning pools in her wake as she gritted her teeth through the pain. “We’re going to fly on the balloons and clouds!”
Marik was staring at her, clearly something in that little brunet head had snapped. He let his guardian lash at her again as she stood on the top of the tree. It hit her in the side, drawing a stream of sticky blood.
“No no no!” She tried to pull away, her blood starting to coil around her; it snaked up trying to strike the penguin hanging from the top, the red acidic snake licked the top of the statue but the barb jerked her down faster than she was anticipating. She fell to the ground curling up into a ball. She was weak, blood dripping from her shoulder, her arm, her cracked foot, her side, and her back. She was losing more than a small woman could handle. She started rolling in a circle on the floor like a cat trying to get comfortable on a hardwood floor. “All the rain will fall and wet my face and I well drink it like helium from a cotton candy cloud exploding out of balloons dripping from sunshine!” she babbled nonsensically rolling in the floor.
Marik stood back, not out of fear, but more out of self interest as she was flinging acid everywhere in her movements. His dark eyes cast upward, his hand brushed his hair out of his face. He was doing well, better than the psycho rolling on the floor; that was for sure. He heard a snapping noise and saw the penguin hanging from one chain, leaning heavily, and ready to fall. Seemed the way to end this had announced itself to him. He smirked as he let his blood guardian control the hot, radiant, crimson whip lasted out, hooking onto the penguin, in the tine hole the acid had burned into it. He jerked his arm backward and snapped the remaining chain. The penguin fell crashing horizontally on top of the small brunet whose delusional eyes never saw it coming.
“Looks like we got more bloodshed than we counted on!” The announcer cried over the excited screams of the animal cards surrounding the arena. “Through a stunningly glorious and delightfully brutal crush it seems that Cuckoo is the-” the announcer cut off. Robin pulled herself out of the penguin, holding a piece of it in her non bloodied hand. Before Marik could figure out why they had gone quiet she smacked him hard in the back of his head knocking him out. “I DON’T BELIEVE IT! LADIES AND GENTELMEN IT SEEMS THE ROBIN HAS KNOCKED OUT THE CUCKOO!” The crowd went wild as Robin collapsed heavily in a heap on the ground.
Stunned and curious guards ran into the arena, lifting Mark putting him on a stretcher. They had to wait until Robin passed out to touch her. Luckily however she was so low on blood she lost consciously almost as soon as she hit the ground. It took three guards to roll the massive statue off where it had crashed. Examining the damage, it became apparent how Robin had survived.
When Robin had been having her fit, rolling recklessly on the ground, she had been spreading her blood beneath her, burning her way into a small indentation, just deep enough so when the penguin fell, it laid over her without hitting her full on. However, judging by the rather dark bruising on her arm, it had hit her slightly, at least fracturing her shoulder, but she was able to burn her way up through the inside. As the stretchers were carried off the cards watched with frozen smiling faces.
“What a fight Deadman fans!” The announcer brought the event to an end, both gladiators out for the count. “Remember to tune in for the Punishment game! It’s guaranteed to leave at least our lucky little Cuckoo in stitches!”
I hope this is all right. It was very hard playing smeone else's OC, also, Astrid, I hope this looks enough like Marik for you))
But, please oh please do not take offense to this, but I have to agree with Diritus; it was a bit unclear. But overall I loved them both! They each were suspenseful and fast place like any fight scene ^^