trans_9 | In Which the Overlord Wonders What Happened [Backdated to immediately post-tournament]

If there was one thing Mindy prided herself on, it was keeping her emotions on poker face when she needed to. As Mindy Macready, she could act all upset about the recent deaths and espouse concern for fighting all while serving up some food. She got into this part so well that most people forgot the bruises and cuts she sported, blowing it off to them as injuries sustained by cooking. She was short a cook, after all, and had to do that herself.

As Hit Girl, however, she knew exactly how she sustained those injuries and more other people couldn't see, and it gnawed at her. A stalemate that took her right out of the tournament, and she had to chew on THAT bitter pill in silence, not fume and slam things for sake of giving herself away.

But of course, she would eventually had to touch ground with the Overlord, and that was not liking to have her feeling any better. She walked through the gates, refusing to show any of the weakness she felt even as she was still smarting days after the fight.

Ruffnut however was oblivious, still proud of herself for having gotten as far as she did. Her helmet was still dented and she had tried to tape the horns back on, causing them to wobble and hang ridiculously on the sides. She still hadn't seen Hiccup to get her battered and abused gear fixed.

But all and all she seemed content.

The Overlord eyed them sagely from his forbidding seat, for a long quiet moment.

"...to hell with this," he finally said, as a minion scooped him up. "Get over here, you two."

The minion carried the book towards the couch and the armchairs nearby. Now that they'd shown up, Zetta found himself not at all caring about the damn image. He wanted to hear their stories!

Ah crap. Man was she still irritated about this. She had no choice but to recount in full detail how she had not come as far as Ruffnut-no, as far as she wanted to come. But it was still the Overlord, and if she answered to anyone, of course it would be him.

She walked over, picking an armchair and sitting cross legged, rubbing her temple.

"Where do we start?"

Ruffnut flopped onto sofa much more relaxed then Mindy, After all what did she have to be nervous or irritated about.

"Second place. I ended up mutilating my helmet just to draw some blood on the last guy. His scales were too thick and he just drank up my lightning."

"What kind of freaking lack of detail is that?!" the Overlord sputtered. He straightened up in a brief fit of fury... which immediately dissipated when he realized he was talking to Ruffnut. He should've expected that.

"... let's have some highlights at least, okay? I'd like to hear some details."

Highlights. Yeah, hit girl COULD go into detail, since that was exactly the kind of thing she would have done. Hell, she had to at least come clean with how she wound up not even going past third round.

"First guy I took on had these pretty sick powers, actually: had a claw that came close to taking me out, could spike the ground, and he was super strong. Had to pull out the gun, throw my magic at him, levitate and depended on my barrier jacket, but my explosives got him in the end. Obtained his claw hand and spiked floor shit too. Next round was a ranger guy, he was easier, but he was still a pain."

She sighed. "Got eliminated in third round. Stalemate."

"Maaaan I wish you could have kept that badass claw thing. It was all gross and creepy looking." Ruffnut's twisted grin made it clear just how she felt about those adjectives.

"And that last round was crap. Seriously anyone could see you were winning."

Well, this wasn't getting anywhere. Zetta rolled his eyes while they were bantering, then looked at them. Hit Girl specifically, first. "You're not gonna get all depressed, are you?"

Hit Girl closed her eyes, willing away how pissed off she was at the Overlord's statement. After all this bullshit, he was making a crack about her being depressed.

"Depressed? Nah, just pissed off. I can do better than that. But Ruff was wrong: that guy was tough, had armor up the ass, and had a REAL fucking problem with me using magic. It was a hell of a match, and I'm mad I lost. But fuck man, it was a match worth having."

If they were to look to the left, the others might spot a Lash walking through one of the tower's many arches, zombie-like as she marched onward in what looked like...a morning robe of some sort. Her hair was a mess (well...more so than usual). The last few weeks had been a mixture of inventing, preparing and doing Council stuff. Sleep? Pah! She knew she could handle it...but even the Wunderkind had a limit to how much her body could carry her. It was incredibly rare for Lash to reach her limit, but last night had been it.

She had just awoken, rubbing her eyes showing that she hadn't really slept that much at all this week. Maybe a good six, seven hours today? Who really knew in this place, but it was better than before. There was still a lot to do, she couldn't really slack off. Without even looking who was there, she just waved at the assembled entourage, assuming that only Zetta was present with a lot of minions.

"Give 'em a little pep talk?" her voice was devoid of its usual energy. It was a side of Lash the others probably hadn't seen before. Early morning Lash.

"Bah." Ruff didn't want to accept that Mindy was right even if she knew that clearly Mindy was in a better position to judge how the fight had turned out.

"They should have given you more time. You would have cleaned his clock." Now she was just making excuses. After all they were all subject to the same rules.

The outcome of Lina's participation in the tournament was...well, less than satisfactory to the sorceress - she didn't quite get to blow off as much steam as she wanted. So now she had taken to the city for exploring.

Zetta's fortress caught her eye - it seemed like the kind of place she'd go scrounging around for treasure in. If anything, it should prove to be at least interesting and a distraction from her current frustrations!

Would it be so simple as to just walk through the front door, though?

Well, the gates were open, no one was guarding them, and the battlements, such as they were, were unmanned.

So walking through the front door? Easy enough.

"Okay, let me put it another way... did you have fun? Did you enjoy it?"

That question was purely for Hit Girl. Even someone as obtuse as Zetta knew better than to doubt where Ruffnut stood on the matter of fighting in general.

Clearly they had reached one of those legendary The Next Steps in their relationship, the time when they could stop being their polished, presentable public selves around each other and instead reveal more of their private, unprepared lives. If Lash had been 'polished, presentable, etc.' to begin with, some glamorous lady with perfect makeup and never a hair out of place, it might have been shocking, but... Lash was Lash, sleepy or exhausted or bounding around.

If he were more romantic, he'd describe her as 'lovely without artifice'. But Zetta couldn't bring himself to say something that sissified and emotional, so he settled for opining that early morning Lash was pretty hot in her own way.

"Hey, I wanted to hear glorious war stories. Been freaking forever since I could have an actual, real fight."

Hit girl snickered. "Are you kidding? Aside from the stalemate it was the best fucking time I had in awhile! No simulation, no hold barred, the possibility of getting fucked up bad even though you get healed at the end? Losing sucks, but the worst thing about it was that it had to end. Honestly, I was looking forward to facing Ruffnut for real towards the end of all this!"

Ruffnut laughed out loud. "Even when we do throwdown you're never gonna believe I gave it my all. We've sparred plenty of times where I've done my best. S'not like I'm gonna actually try to kill you if we're on the same side.

Actually Ruffnut hadn't thought about it, was it even possible? Probably not.

"Good. The last thing you ought to be feeling after a good fight is that you sucked and needed to do better. And let's be honest... you two will never be able to fight like your very existence depends on it anyway."

Zetta glared at them for a moment as if this were horrible, then relented. "Which isn't a disaster, I guess. Can't remember the last time I really laid into someone full-force. Not even Alex was worth that."

"Oh I wanted to win, don't get me wrong! But losing in a tournament is better than losing an actual fight with an enemy. That's a loss you can't actually come back from. Still, it got me moving, fighting and thinking. I wouldn't mind doing that again."

She winked at Ruffnut. "Let's hope it never comes to that. If we ever are fighting for real, there'll be a lot more things broken and explosions. But she would be a fucking sweet opponent."

Ruffnut blushed and coughed a little flustered by the praise, "Well my battles were pretty epic too." She sprang to her feet for a dramatic re-enactment.

"This first guy was HUGE! He was as big as a gronkle! But really dumb sounding he was all..." She contorted her face in an exceptionally dumb expression, "Fighting is too much work."

"And we were in this smelly mucky swamp. So I figured with all that wet my lightning would make things quick. But he was STRONG! So strong and he kept regenerating! At one point I climbed up onto his head..." She started scaling a pillar and clinging with her long legs, "Stabbed in his brains, punched my fist in and blew up his head with lightning and guess what? The big bastard's head grew back!!! Teeth and all!" She fell from her perch to the ground only to spring back up.

"And he was fast! Crazy fast like a blur of just...meat! So much meat! He musta knocked me a block away the first time he used that super speed. But the lazy jerk couldn't keep up the pace! I kept shocking him and blasting him and eventually he fell and stayed down!" She pumped her fists in the air exuberantly.

"For my reward I got his speed. It was such a rush. But I couldn't control it more then just turning it on and off. No steering. I could barely lift my arms up when it was on." She explained

It wasn't exactly a play-by-play, but it was the sort of passionate retelling the Overlord had been hoping for! He listened attentively with a grin, imagining it in his mind in ways that were as far from reality as possible.

"Sounds like your kind of fight, then."

"No one expects anything less of Ruffnut, least of all me," Hit Girl said, flashing the girl a smile. "A swamp against an enemy that keeps coming at you? Classic stuff. Really wish I'd been able to see it."

Not that her match hadn't been fucking awesome.

She cackled with wicked glee. "But that wasn't even the best one! The next round was even better! It was set in this HUUUUUUUUUUGE mansion." Her voice echoed in the chamber and she threw her hands in the air to represent how big it was. "And it was full of delicate really expensive looking crap! You couldn't take two steps without knocking something over and it would make this great smashing noise! Like shattering you know?"

"My opponent for that round was that guy Billy, you know the geeky one? Yeah. He was fast though. He had this tentacle power that kept me from landing a clear shot on him too fast. We TRASHED the place. I'd charge at him and he'd deflect and I'd go smashing into stuff. Finally got him though! It was great! I ran at him right? Full steam super speed just WHUMPF!" She was miming it out now complete with slamming into the tentacle. "And he knocked me into the air. But see that's what I wanted because I got up to the second floor, and used my buckler to drop a chandler on him!"

With froglike agility she sprang onto the back of the sofa and mimed throwing her buckler...before falling off the back of the sofa with a crash.

"Wait, you were having trouble against Billy?"

Something sounded totally wrong about that. Sure, the guy was a ~~Prism~~ Power Ranger, but Zetta couldn't imagine the guy being a proficient combatant on Ruffnut's level in the slightest --

His thoughts were interrupted by Ruffnut's crashing, which knocked him off the couch and face-down onto the floor.

In Which the Overlord Wonders What Happened [Backdated to immediately post-tournament]

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Some time later after the talk (So you guys can finsh the above stuff)

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