Rat In A Cage

[The Honeless Beard]

Travis had often heard of people describing the world slowing to a crawl.

It was a dramatic statement, one born of too many action movies and romance novels where something big, something important occurred that demanded the viewer or reader stand up and take notice. Often, when he’d encountered these passages or these moment’s he’d rolled his eyes.

And yet, here he stood, watching the knife once in Charlie’s hand go flying through the air, the back of his hand ringing from the contact of skin on metal, watching her face change from shocked to angered, and all he could think was well, fuck, maybe they were on to something.

Time caught up, then. So did her fist.

[Namira]

((from Cademath))

The instant Dyne started to move, everything began to rocket forward at a hundred miles an hour. Charlie saw the way his eyes narrowed just slightly, the way he stepped inward and his hand drew across to lash out. She saw. Reacting in time? That was another matter.

Might as well have asked her to take wing and fly out of this death game.

The knife went skittering away off somewhere and Charlie didn’t look to see. She didn’t have time to look. She didn’t have time for anything but Dyne.

That may, under other circumstances, have been possible to construe as romantic.

Those circumstances did not particularly fit the bill of Charlie launching a frantic overhand punch with her right hand, which had been tucked in close to her side.

He’d disarmed her, and disarming her could have only one motive.

[The Honeless Beard]

A bomb went off on his cheek, snapping his neck to the right and driving his chin into his collarbone as her knuckle caught his jaw. He felt something give and his jaw hinge howled in pain as he threw his hands upwards in defense, fisting the collar of her shirt with his left hand and trying to fend off her next blow with his right.

[Namira]

Her hand rang with the impact, rattling every single bone. She vaguely recalled from somewhere—probably the training corps—that if you weren’t careful, you ran the risk of injuring yourself with improper form. Charlie had never really thought about that until her knuckles began to protest just seconds after the connection.

It looked like it hurt Dyne too, but it didn’t slow him down. She jerked back and away as he grappled her, and there was a delicate ping as the top button of her shirt popped off. Charlie swung at him once, a then again, glancing punches off his raised forearm, her weaker hand, still complaining, grasping at Dyne’s wrist to try and dislodge his grip.

[The Honeless Beard]

She very nearly succeeded, but Travis grit his teeth as she pulled him closer as his meager forearm defense crippled even under her weakened blows. He rapped his knuckles against her stomach at a pitiful power, grimacing even as her grip on his hand and his grip on her shirt closed their distance, forcing his neck back to keep eye contact with her.

[Namira]

Charlie grunted as he landed a blow to her abdomen, not enough to knock any breath out, forgotten a second later. They twisted around one another, circling, but locked together around the point where their grips matched, a vicious waltz. He kept moving though, almost forcing her to chase him with the repeated strikes with her left hand. She growled in frustration and then locked her feet, letting Dyne get another handful of her shirt but allowing her to lunge inward, bringing across her left elbow straight for his face.

[The Honeless Beard]

His head snapped backwards when she made contact, but it came back at double speed, an elastic band snapping as the crown of his head slammed into her eyebrow, stars erupting in both of their eyes.

[Namira]

The hit was solid and for a second Charlie thought that was going to be it and he was going to go down, and then maybe she could finish—maybe they could talk this—then he’d be down on the ground.

And then Dyne’s head roared back with a vengeance. Her vision went black, and then red, and then it was Charlie on the ground, the back of her head thunking hard against lacquered floorboards.

[The Honeless Beard]

Stumbling forwards as Charlie suddenly wasn’t in his grip anymore, Travis pinwheeled his arms wildly, finally landing overtop of her, knees straddling her waist. He blinked back the dancing lights in his eyes as he cocked both fists back, thrusting both towards her face in glancing blows that had him tilting too far forwards, his shoulder near hers, her breath hot against his lips.

[Namira]

Charlie had been bodychecked playing hockey and been knocked flat before.

This was much worse.

She still couldn’t see straight by the time Dyne was on top of her, head aching and something hot and wet streaming into her eye. Charlie twisted violently from side to side, Travis’s hands lunging for her, glancing from her cheek. His weight was on top of her, pinning her down and she couldn’t fucking see and all she knew that if she couldn’t get her arms out from this position and couldn’t get him off then she was dead.

His face was right by hers, and Charlie didn’t think, just acted, and went for him with her teeth.

[The Honeless Beard]

The pain around his nose and lips was first to register, forcing him to jerk his head backwards, trying to flee the sensation. All he heard was a wet ripping accompanying his own shocked, indignant scream of pain as his face moved, but the skin around his nose, most of his upper lip, did not.

They remained, dangling from Charlie’s teeth, like a twisted chewtoy.

He screamed properly then, scrambling backwards, both hands pressed against where his lip was, his nose, as blood squirted through his fingers, splashing Charlie’s shirt, his neck, soaking into the hollow of his throat.

[Namira]

A passing second held the thought of what the hell she was doing as her teeth sank into his face.

By the time Charlie jerked her head back in shock and disgust it was much, much too late to back out. If anything, it only doubled down.

She made a noise that was somewhere between a scream and a roar and even Charlie couldn’t have said which was which.

There was blood and flesh in her mouth, and Charlie spat frantically, unable to dislodge the rusty tang nor the horrible sensation of having a piece of someone between her teeth.

Still too late to back out. Charlie let a shout and dove for him.

[The Honeless Beard]

He was out, gone, finished. She drove him into a wooden chair, splinters dug into his back, pierced into his tailbone, his neck as he collapsed on top of it, under her weight. He tried to say please but it come out a gurgle, tried to say stop but it came out a wet groan. His hands still cupped his face, eyes squeezed shut, and he just…

waited.

[Namira]

Charlie’s slick hands scrabbled, tried to push him down, but they kept slipping, sliding over Dyne’s neck and face—or what was left of it—as she grasped and grappled at him.

Her fingers dug into soft flesh, and then slid off, then pushed down hard on what had to be his windpipe, and then slipped again because he was covered in blood and she was covered in blood and christ.

Somewhere in it all, a frantic stream of babbling that barely counted as words.

“Staydownstaydownstaydownstaydown—!”

[The Honeless Beard]

The lights dimmed as his arms went up, reaching for and grasping at nothing. He couldn’t see, if he could just see-

He tried to gasp in a breath, and nothing came, a crackling filled his ears as his lungs burned, nails started to slash wildly into her face.