Tournament of Darkness: Scale vs Valentine

    Scale walks along the beach of the island.

 

  “Okay,” he says aloud looking at the green orb that magically appears in his hand when he calls for it, “so I’m in this now…so…how do I get off this island.”

 

   “Nooo neeed,” buzzes the bee girl known as B. Mai Valentine appearing from the brush, “Ieeee challleeeenge yoouuu!”

 

   “Oh please,” says Scale, “I’m a lizard, you’re a bug, sure bees are scary when they’re in a swarm but you…you’re just one bug, and just a woman with some bug parts on her at that.”

 

   Valentine smiles as her human flesh parts shift into the black and yellow smooth carapace form.

 

   “O…kay…” says Scale getting into the martial arts stance he hasn’t used since early high school when he took lessons.

 

   Valentine hovers in the air.

 

   “Going for a sting,” thinks Scale.

 

  Valentine holds out her arms and large golden energy sigils that look like honeycombs form. She brings them together, merging them into a vibrant singular form while yelling, “Hive Swarm!”

 

   Energy bees fly out at the speed of darts. Scale barely manages to leap out of the way as they rip apart the beach.

 

   “Holy crap!” exclaims Scale, “fine take this!”

 

   He takes a deep breath and blasts out a beam of blue plasma. It hits a hexagonal golden energy barrier with a bee symbol on it, which has formed in front of Valentine as she holds out her arms.

 

   She *zips* up in a flash and goes for her “Hive Swarm” move again. Scale turns invisible and rushes down the beach, realizing as her bee bolts are right on his heels, one even hitting his tail and stinging like a dozen bee stings, making him glad he is covering in reptilian armor, that she is following his footsteps on the beach; and she is fast enough to keep up with him.

 

   Suddenly the sea and sand explode as dozens of pink tentacles emerge from below the two combatants.

 

   “Noooo!” yells out Valentine as they wrap around her waist, around her stinger abdomen, pin her ankles together, and her wrists.

 

   Scale has little time to react as they move faster than he can process them as they wrap around his body and lift him into the air. Paramalia herself emerges from the sea, her eight thick octopus like tentacles supporting her human body. Looking at her one could not see any way in which these tentacles from the sand, or the ones waving about in the water could possibly be part of her body.

 

   “I did not give my permission for this contest to be held on my island,” says Paramalia.

 

   A white light envelops Valentine and Scale. Scale finds himself after the light fades standing on the floor in a large round room, a woman who looks to be in her mid thirties with long black hair looking at him.

 

   “Who are you?” she asks, “and how’d you get in here like that?”

 

  Scale would have expected a far more terrified response from some random stranger a lizard guy just teleported in front of.

 

 

   “I’m…Yoshi,” says Scale, “but people just call me Scale these days…I…I think I was teleported here miss….”

 

   “I am Elaine Maximof,” she says, “head of the New England branch of the Foundation for the research and preservation of supernatural and paranormal beings, and this facility has an anti-teleportation field in place…”

 

   “It was…this sea goddess,” says Scale, “um…Para…Paramalia.”

 

   “Well I guess that explains it,” says Elaine, “care to discuss the whole ordeal over tea? If you were on the island I take it you were one of Prof. Frad’s prisoners before Paramalia liberated you?”

 

   “No…” says Scale, “I…it’s kind of crazy,”

 

   “I’m a three hundred year old woman talking to five and a half foot tall talking lizard man,” says Elaine, “yesterday I had a long conversation with a centaur and an elf over the rights to a magic rock both races were using as a dimensional door…trust me…crazy is my bread and butter.”

 

   She listens intently as he tells her about his world, his life, and seems concerned when he gets to the part about a scientist sending him to their world.

 

   Elsewhere Valentine’s trip is significantly shorter, being sent only back to the Hive.

 

   “We go Justin,” she says, “weee gooooo, take big boat…goooo and fiiiight. I wiiieellll beeecoommme theeee Queeeennnn.”