Taubitha cartwheeled away from a blast of fire. Her face was getting sweaty and her eyes were itchy, which meant her makeup was running into them. How frustrating!
"Like, oh my gods, this fight fucking sucks!" she said as she hurled herself towards the fire-breathing dragon with a closed fist.
Punching a dragon didn't necessarily seem like the most logical option to many, but to Taubitha it made perfect sense. Her [skill] made her skin hardened and powerful. The inside of the dragon's throat wasn't protected by scales as far as she knew. So, Tabitha punched straight down into that snakey dragon's mouth and did her best to roar like a lion, though really she sounded more like a angry fitness instructor telling someone to 'dig deep.'
And then, the pain. The terrible pain. The agony, even!
Tabitha yanked her arm out of the dread dragon's jaws and kicked the terribly lizard beast away with a scoff. "Like, oh my gods! It does have scales on the inside of its throat, Princess!" Taubitha groaned as she quickly pulled each painful scale that was embedded in her arm out, and watched as each wound slowly but surely closed up thanks to her powerful [skill].
The dragon roared in distress as Princess barfed more acid, this time at the beast's face. It screeched as the acid melted through its scales and into its eyes. Soon, the dragon was clearly blinded. The scaly beast squealed and shrieked and shook the ground below it with fury as it realized its fate.
"Wow, Princess, good shot, girl!"
Princess huffed.
The dragon thrashed and writhed like an inflatable at a used horse and buggy dealership. Taubitha walked up to it and, in spite of herself, laughed.
"I'm going to, like, finish this thing off, Princess. Unless, um, unless you want the honors, of course."
Princess huffed. That settled it.
Taubith walked up to the dragon, spit on its scaly face, raised her right foot, and stomped on the beast's head. In a decisive and dreadful crunch, blood, brains and scales shot through the air.
[Fire dragon is dead]
"Like, fuck yes!" said Taubitha, raising her arms up high in triumph. The crowd cheered and whistled for her. Taubitha was certain at this moment that despite the dragon detritus covering her body, she must've still looked very cute in her sleeveless chest armor. Some people threw flowers, others gold, others still small scrolls with conch shell numbers scrawled on them. But the most interesting thing, was what was said over the announcement.
"Congratulations, Taubitha, on an excellent first fight! Everyone give her a warm welcome!"
The crowd cheered.
"Warmer!"
The crowd cheered louder.
"Warmer, damnit!"
The crowd cheered so loudly that they sounded in pain.
"Excellent work, Taubitha. Please accept our congratulations on your skilled fight. One of the owners of the arena would like to invite you to their annex to pay their respects to you as a newcomer, if you are amiable."
And Taubitha was indeed feeling amiable.
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"Omar, you absolute fucking goon," said Hauff with a shake of his head.
Kahli held Froufrou tightly. Even if this gross, squelching beast was here to usher forth the apocalypse, she really had grown quite fond of her.
"Omar, I really can't put into words how stupid you are. You must be descended from a rare lineage of sentient dung beetle. A dung beetle lineage that starts back before taumans even existed, a dung beetle lineage that someone injected itself into our tauman DNA and said to the rest of us taumans that no, it is not a dung bettle it is a tauman. But your true nature is coming out now, as is the stupidity of your ancestors. Only a manure brained imbecile would destroy something as powerful as a dimensional Gate, something that took me so much energy and power to build, especially considering how clandestine this location is, in order to fail an attempt to kill a harmless pollinating insect. I mean, Omar, in this instant, I truly hate you. In this instant, I want nothing more than to put a permanent and interminable curse upon you that will follow you like a black cloud for the rest of eternity, to the end of this life, to the end of the afterlife, to the end of all existence and to the end of whatever comes before and after that, too. I want you marked, Omar, I want to brand you and your essence as one of foolishness, one of imbecility, one of an ill-evolved, an un-evolved, a negatively evolved individual, a black hole of nothingness where ignorance grows and wisdom withers and dies upon but a glance of your event horizon. You are a pit, a pestilence, and a pox that decays like a horde of ants picking away at a half dead wasp for hours on end. If I were given the opportunity to do so free of worldly consequence in this moment, if I were able to settle for more than just words, and if the bounds and limits of time and space were but a subtle suggestion instead of a material reality that cages my every movement, I would reach betwixt every atom that makes up your corporeal form and twist them so tightly they would experience a torsion of which would be comparable to that of the male gonad. Then, once you were but a crumpled jumbled ball of what makes up your form, I would take the codes and the keys of your identity and determine the specific makeup of the slug that is you, Omar. And I would take that determination and I would extrapolate it backwards and forwards and up and down and diagonally through the universal planes of existence. And I would laugh as I would wipe every single reference or even minor similarity of you out of this and every other existent plane until even your name, Omar, a fairly common name, sounds only like gibberish to tauman beings. I would erase your existence and I would erase every possibility you would ever, ever have for even being referred to as an existent entity by another tauman being. And then, I would laugh, I would laugh and I would think of your face as I see it right now, old, and wooden, and with pitiful and disgusting facial hair. You are a disgrace."
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Kahli gasped. She'd definitely thought Hauff was an intense person, but this was on another level. She'd never heard a person berate someone else in such a biting and cruel way, and despite Omar's penchants for foolishness, corruption, and swearing, Kahli kind of liked him. She didn't really agree with how harshly Hauff had reacted to Omar breaking his Gate device, but she also was too scared and uncomfortable around Hauff to really say or do anything but stand there, hold Froufrou, and watch what would develop in the aftermath of the hot dog vendor's cruel soliloquy.
"Wow," said the mayor. "Hauff, I've got to be honest. That was... hilarious." The mayor chuckled. "Do you want a stogie?"
"No, I already told you, I don't want a stogie! And I definitely don't want one now that your idiot goon has destroyed my Gate! Repairs and testing for this are going to take ages!"
Repairs? Testing? Kahli groaned inwardly. So it seemed that the disaster of these three men getting a Gate into the universal data structure was not forever abated, instead, it was only put off for... however long Hauff's concept of ages was. How dreadfully inconvenient.
She held Froufrou tightly and whispered, "These idiots will usher in the end of the world over my dead body. I'm still on the fence about whether I want the world to end, but if I do, I want it to be because of me and you."
Froufrou squelched affectionately.
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Taubitha was feeling a little dazzled at the moment. She was in the nicest box in the arena, talking with a man who required she refer to him only as 'Big T.' Big T was older, but he had a young wife who'd clearly had lots of elective cosmetic surgery and multiple living wood grafts. Big T was clearly made out of money.
"Like, oh my gods, I love how you've decorated your arena box!" said Taubitha as she petted Princess.
"I didn't," said Big T. "I hired interior designers and world class artists to. I had Glolvachni spend six moon cycles painting the ceiling for me."
"Oh my gods, that's like, so cool!"
"Yes, yes, I'm sure it is," said Big T as he looked up to Taubitha. "Now, riddle me this, Taubitha. My wife here tells me that that um... that that fony you have there [paired] with you and gave you a system. Want to go into that?"
"Oh my gods, do I ever! First I went over to my mom's houseboat, and she had this egg, and it hatched, and then it [paired] with me!"
"Yes, but how? How did it [pair] with you?!" he growled, getting visibly impatient. His wife rubbed his shoulders. Her hands were bigger than his head.
"Oh, um, I'm not sure. It just kind of happened."
Big T filled a little bit more time with idle chitchat and then sent Taubitha on her way with a grim look. As soon as she was out of earshot, he pulled up a small, portable conch shell.
"Keep an eye on her. Watch her, follow her, see where she goes and what she does. I need to understand how she was able to [pair] so quickly with that beast, and I need to understand why she was able to [pair] when the last recorded system [pairing] event was several centuries ago!"
The voice on the other end of the shell answered affirmatively. Big T smiled and hung it up. He growled under his breath, "I've got to understand how exactly she got [paired] to that thing. There must be a way for me to get a system, if she has managed to. I just need to keep a close eye and she'll spill the secret without even realizing it."
And Big T cackled, and cackled, and cackled.