A fist flew at his face. It was an ugly fist, not the worst of the eight that had pummelled him so far – that had been the wombat with the poor hygiene, whose meaty hands had stunk of mud, of blood and of faeces. This fist was an odd orange colour, and considering its owner a fairy, the colouring had to be artificial – whether engineered before birth or not, that was another question, and an answer he didn’t care about. A question that was only a distraction to the pain. The fist hit him, and he knew it would form a bruise.
He swung back, but the fairy easily danced around it. Fairies were hard to fight – they didn’t stick to the ground, they didn’t stay the one size during the fight and they always found a way to gloat. Often in several languages.
The bell rung and the fairy was declared the winner.
Ryan slipped through the ropes and into his corner. The grouchy gnome who had been assigned to him – Trailing Tomas – grunted, and made the same remarks about his lack of fight club prowess as he had done after the previous seven rounds. Cold water was offered, but he pushed it away, not wanting the shock to his system that it would provide. He rubbed the dirty towel over his face, sopping up most of the sweat before discarding it.
The announcer began to talk up his next opponent. A gnome this time – which excited his assistant to no end. Four minutes with a gnome – significantly easier than some of the bouts he’d already survived. Gnomes were easy enough to fight with enough practice – they didn’t have the same bag of tricks that fairies did, instead relying more on their solid structure, and insignificant psychic power.
The psychic power was nothing more than a distraction – they’d either lost the ability to do more with it over time, or never had it to begin with – their historical records were unclear on the point. It was a whisper in the ear, a shade in the corner of your eye, barely anything at all – unless you were also trying to counter blows to your body, and fight back. Not fight back to win necessarily, there was no need to win – but fight back enough to draw, to not be knocked out, to survive until the next round.
The next round was all that mattered. Surviving the day. To pay what was due before putting the entire painful affair aside for another year. The announcer called him – by race, not by name – and he moved back up into the ring. Today he wasn’t a person. Today he was nothing more than “the agent”.
The gnome was dark green, just over four feet and no match for him. Whoever had done the skin colouration had apparently also had a special on hair. Twigs, leaves and thorns were woven in – a nymph look, a hob look. The gnome – Hurried Horace, according to the announcer and the crowd – gave him a half-bow. He extended his left palm before snapping it closed – the traditional greeting for gnomes, then looked to the announcer.
The fairy announcer – as he has done for the previous eight rounds – began to count down from ten as he spread his wings and rose above the ring, and out of the way of flying fists.
Four minute rounds – long enough for a good show, long enough to allow his opponent to get a few good hits in, short enough to allow the multitude of rounds that were ahead of him. Forty-nine rounds today. More than enough to make him hurt, which was all she wanted. He was grateful for the lack of ceremony – the only thing that made the day even longer was the one-hour lunch break, and that he was grateful for – it allowed him to get some sleep in if he needed, or to do some of the paperwork he had smuggled with him in his duffel bag.
The entire bar booed as he knocked the gnome onto its back. The entire bar – and that included the few storage facility staff that had come to watch – or had already been there drinking. He listed their names, and made a note to let it affect them negatively during their next performance review.
The minutes passed quickly, and with the gnome lying bleeding on the ground, he was declared the winner – for only the second time that day.
He slipped out of the ring and into his chair. He closed his eyes and wondered if he could run a thirty-second sleep program. A bottle of water was pressed against his open palm, and he opened his eyes. A tiny hand held the bottle. A familiar tiny hand.
‘You do know,’ Stef said, ‘that the guy who was here was cheering for the other team, right?’
‘No one cheers for the agent,’ he said as he sipped at the room-temperature water.
‘I will,’ she said as he towelled the sweat from his face, and hair – fluffing it like a mother would to a child. ‘I don’t have any great advice, this is two blokes fighting, it’s never very interesting to me, so…keep your hands up, do whatever with your shoulder, dance around and do whatever else you’re supposed to do.’
‘That’s very good advice.’
‘Oh shut up,’ she said as he threw him the tape so he could rewrap his hands.
‘You haven’t asked,’ he said.
She took the bottle of water from between his knees and took a sip before replacing the cap. ‘Don’t need to know.’
‘Stef-‘
‘Tell me later if you want to. For the moment, I’ll assume that whatever the reason you’re doing this, you want to win, yeah?’
‘I need to finish. Forty more rounds.’
‘Then focus on the punching. Talk later.’
She dabbed some wound sealant against his few cuts, and he felt the slight pinch of skin as the artificial scabs hardened. He smiled at her – at the tiny amount of confidence shining through. ‘Thank you.’
‘Thanks for not wasting five minutes bitching me out cause I’m not supposed to be here.’
‘If I did that every time you did something like this, I’d never have time to be somewhere else that you weren’t supposed to be. You got bored?’
‘Bring me back when my security clearance is high enough so I can play with the cool stuff.’
The announcer called for him, and a strange look came over her face as he stood.
‘What?’
She shrugged. ‘You’re naked, I didn’t know you could do that.’
He sighed. ‘I’m not naked.’
‘You’re not wearing a shirt.’
‘My suit isn’t glued on.’
‘Mine is,’ she said as he stepped up into the ring. ‘But only a little, I had an incident with my stationery drawer.’
He smiled, then turned to face his next opponent.
Love the joke 🙂
This is an interesting change, and unexpected!
I think it has to be in the top ten cutest things she’s said.
And…unexpected is good every once in a while. ^_^
That’ll keep me amused for days. Yes, I am easily amused 😛
YAY for more Stormy writing! 🙂
Tribune analogy reminds me that this is fully tiny bulbs flowering and being pretty/or something.
*pot of flowers that have cookies for seeds for Stormy* (which I so wiiish were available IRL)
I should be able to bang out the next chapter at lunch – for once, I’m writing a short that isn’t going to balloon out into something much larger than intended. *sigh*
Tribune analogy reminds me that this is fully tiny bulbs flowering and being pretty/or something.
Tiny, tiny bulbs that are no where near done yet! I know we don’t have a regular rhythm or anything, but I still intend on doing this for the next 50-100 years. 😀
*pot of flowers that have cookies for seeds for Stormy* (which I so wiiish were available IRL)
They sound like something Wonka would have…
I still intend on doing this for the next 50-100 years.
YAY! I am always sad when awesome things end. I’m glad to know that this will be going on forever! (or as near to as matters :P)
…but I couldn’t imagine not writing the series. Even when I’m not publishing chapters, I’m always writing in my head. Listen to a song, decide it’s going to be Stef’s battle music. See something weird on a billboard, decide to give it to the techs in a future books. Sit quietly at a bus stop, then start trying out dialogue.
I can barely go ten minutes without thinking about the MV in some degree. >_>
I, from the start, have designed and world-built so that I wouldn’t have to build different ‘verses every time I felt like writing a different kind of story. I mean, here, I can do anything from a full-on fantasy (yay fairyland), to a space thriller (yay for acknowledging life on other planets), to a procedural (if I got bored, or wanted to turn Parker into Dexter), a love story (think I’m writing one of those right now), or whatever. It’s got enough weird, crazy and random shit packed in here to mean that any story I want to write, I’ve already got the backdrop for it (and it’s so fun to have a secondary, tertiary and cameo cast to pull from).
I don’t plan on having another massive breakdown and consider quitting forever, though if I do, I promise I’ll at least release all the notes etc, beforehand, and keep the server running. And probably release it into the public domain.
Public domain is probably going to be the ultimate fate of this ‘verse anyway, I’ll have no use for it after I’m dead, so why not let people run rampant with it? There’ll be no need to wait 70 years before people can call their Taylor/Jonesy fics real.
Mostly the Parkers as Dexter bit, have to say 🙂 I do love dexter 🙂 (I think maybe I get a bit too fangirly about commenting here, sorry :P)
…apologising for fangirling here? Here? ARE YOU CRAZIER THAN STEF IS?
It’s not like I drop Firefly quotes for the lulz…except that’s exactly why I do it. Here is nothing if not a safe space for fangirling/fanboying about whatever makes you happy/angry/hot/nerdraging.
The Parkers doing a Dexter thing…yes, that would be awesome, and it makes me do the little giggle thing to think about it, so I guess that means I’ve got another book to add to the pile. 😀 (No idea what the plot will be, but I think we require a Parkers-centric book at some point, don’t you?).
Or does it go down some circular reasoning rabbit hole and never come back?
A Parker-centric book would be amaze. I’ve almost certainly gushed about it before: but you truly are my favourite author Stormy 😀
You do not get to apologise. Instead you will be punished.
Your punishment is two-fold.
First, drop and give me five of your favourite quotes. From anything. Just things that make your little fan-heart happy.
Second, that when I want to do the Parkers book, or feel like talking about the Parkers book, I get to bounce off your brain, and you have to put up with me in chat talking about the Parkers for hours on end.
1. Human bonds always lead to messy complications. Commitment. Sharing. Driving people to the airport – Dexter 😀
2. Bye now, have good sex! – Kaylee (Firefly :D)
3. Can I make a suggestion that doesn’t involve violence, or is this the wrong crowd? – Wash 😀
4. I shall assume an air of raucous and disruptive behaviour, if it makes you happy? – Monstrous regiment of women (which is one of my fave books and no-one’s ever heard of it 🙁 )
5. ‘And what do we say about personal responsibility?’
‘Dump the blame on them and deny them baked goods?’ – which is in MH 5, because there defo needs to be an MV one somewhere, but I still haven’t had enough time for a massive archive trawl :O
Wooot! Parkers! 😀 I shall diligently stay up late into the night making proper appreciative comments 😛
1) Dexter, seriously, I think is my favourite narrated show/movie. It’s just…wonderful. And funny. And geeky on a lot more occasions than people think.
2) That’s in Kaylee’s top ten lines.
3) “This land” still beats it out, though this one better shows off his position as the only sane man around. Geese juggling aside of course.
4) Well then, tell us about it. *pulls up a chair*
5) 😀
I’ve been archive-trawling lately. I tend to find that I almost never read MF anymore, MH I’m disappointed with, though read sections of it, MS I read fairly often, but start about halfway through (or read specific bits), but GE I seem to be able to read over and over. It’s weird. I a) never thought this book would get beyond like, 50k and b) never thought I’d really like it. -_-
No… we use “this land” waaay too much here, much as I love it, I’m almost bored of it. Though, tbh, those are the quotes that I just remembered from a day last week where I marathoned it with my bf who’d never seen it :O
4) It’s by Laurie R King, it’s the second in a series, about a girl who meets Sherlock Holmes after he retires and becomes his apprentice. Pretty much sounds terrible, but it’s amazingly well written – really great world descriptions and characters and I actually just love it. First one’s called Beekeeper’s apprentice and I heartily recommend for good detective novels. 🙂
I tend to read books over and over again cos I miss the awesome when they finish, which is probably why I haven’t gotten around to re-reading yours yet, cos the awesome is on-going. However, I have nothing to do today 😀
I marathoned it with my bf who’d never seen it :O
O_O
I’m glad you educated him before it was too late.
First one’s called Beekeeper’s apprentice and I heartily recommend for good detective novels. 🙂
Ah! I’ve heard of the Beekeeper’s Apprentice. I may take a trip the library at lunch tomorrow and see if I can track them down.
you have just made my day. i spent the last two weeks racking my brian trying to remember the author of the beekeeper’s apptrntice so that i can introduce to my mum to them.
Someone else who reads them? Wow.
They are my very favourite books, so I’m glad the love is being spread 🙂
i like lots of books i’m a bit of a bookaholic really
Taylor/Jonesy? Noooo! Must… Bleach… Brain!
…that you don’t want me to tell you that hints of Taylor/Jonesy were going to be canon…
I originally had it in mind that Taylor had had a crush on Jonesy, and proecting him was the reason that Carol had managed to corner and kll him. >_> It went by the wayside once Grigori entered the picture. Taylor/Grigori is one of my favourite ships, even if it’s just sex, and no romance. 😀
I got all confused cause of the title. Thought it was the next Grey Edge update because of the “49” and then I thought “Where’s 48?” and then I figured it out.
I didn’t even think about that! Sorry. -_-
I had the same problem! Might i suggest calling it “Forty-nine Rounds”? Though, that will only be an issue while it’s on the front page….
Yeah, ok!
Me too! Except I wrote it off as sleep deprevation and stress. When I came back to read it (didn’t have time when i saw the update :-[ ) it all made sense.
Sleep deprivation is fun! I keep trying to go to bed early this week, and it doesn’t work. -_-
…unexpected, I read the firs half of this going “what in the world…?”. But I like!
And love the shirt joke, so cute! ^_^
You go, Stormy! Welcome back! 😀
…starting it earlier in the story, including the set-up and whatnot, but decided that would lead down the path of stories getting way longer than Stormy planned, so jumped right into the middle.
As it is, I think it’ll reach four chapters, when I thought I could keep it to three.
I love Stef!
I love it when she gets to be cute, without necessarily being crazy at the same time. 😀
Love the stationary drawer!
knocked it back – can be an idiom referring to how you drink something, so it sounds like he actually drank the water
‘I will,’ she said as he towelled – is that supposed to be “she towelled”?
I was confused, too, only realizing it was a short story after I saw some of the other comments.
Love the stationary drawer!
Don’t ask me what she was trying to glue…I just figure she’s capable of it, even when she could require two things to be stuck together. 😛
can be an idiom referring to how you drink something, so it sounds like he actually drank the water
>_< This is why I should pay attention when I write (not as easy as it sounds!). is that supposed to be “she towelled”?
Yeah…though it’s better than “she trolled” as it started off as. 😛 My fingers just go there when I’m typing a word like that. Like how I’m nearly incapable of typing step without typing Stef first.
I was confused, too, only realizing it was a short story after I saw some of the other comments.
Hm…maybe I should do some sort of header banner for when I do a short? It’d be an immediate visual cue that we aren’t in Kansas anymore…(thinking about this, cause I think I want to write a lot more shorts…).
The different header would help. Maybe if titles also had cues, like ‘Short: “Title” post 1’?
…perhaps, perhaps.
Then again, this particular short is getting absorbed into a novel, so I won’t rename it.
Hey, you ever consider quitting, you have my email, yes no? Writers support group. We get to you before the itch in the brain from not writing turns you into a murderer.
…everyone’s email. I can see them all as site admin. 🙂
And I wouldn’t turn into a murderer, if I had enough drive to do that, and all the clean-up involved, I sure as hell would have enough energy to write. 😛
Well now fighting different species of people would be hard, and tough to survive.
Yelling at Stef for doing something she isn’t suppost to do every time she does it would get tiring. And I like the comment on the shirt as well, it would take Stef a second to reboot after noticing.