"Shit! Shit! Shit!" John cursed, as she hit the ceiling - How nostalgic... - and plummeted to the ground. Fortunately, as she was thrown - this time, God knows about the next - into the ceiling, her fall was more manageable... once she got her wits about her. Luckily, that came before she came face-to-ice-spiked-fist with Bjorn’s thrown punch/attempted-murder-via-icicle. "Dude! It’s not that serious!" John yelped, as she clapped her hands around the concentrated ice, and used it as a springboard to stabilize her descent. "So, I slept with your sisters, cousins, whatever -- "

"You didn’t sleep with them! You defiled them! Burned them! Brought them shame for generations to come!" Bjorn shouted, each punctuation followed by a brutal haymaker with intent to murder via the conical spears of ice that had replaced his forearms. "Okay, okay, when you put it like that, it sounds bad," John admitted, as she deflected the stabs with flaming slaps. "But, I swear, it’s not as bad as you think! They got a little drunk, and came on to me - well, the lower half of me. Okay, just a part of me. But, I mean, it’s a good part of me, like, really good -- SHIT!!!"

A sudden projectile of ice came flying at her head, causing her to duck, and putting her in range of a savage uppercut to follow - if uppercuts came with spears. John meeped, before flooding flames out of her feet, and forcing Bjorn to retreat - his uppercut slicing the tip of John’s nose. "Ow. Fucking ow. Duef, mah noes. Nao, efreefing’s gon’ smell liek blud..." John lamented nasally, before she suddenly seemed to vanish, and Bjorn found a fist driven into his nose. "Tif fer Taf, bish..."

"So, so, the Witch does have tricks to go with her treats," Juniper chittered, amused. "Almost didn’t even see her move."

Bjorn snorted, blowing bloody mucus towards the floor, before his bloody nose froze over, as he rubbed it with his left hand. John placed her left hand on her hip, and rubbed her nose with her right; flames closing the gash, and drying the blood.

"So, so, back to Square One it seems..."

"At the risk of you screaming at me, or whatever it is you savages do when confronted with the outside world, I can, at least, plead my case, no," John asks.

"Do it in ten words or less..." Bjorn snarled.

"Bruh..." John groaned, before holding up ten fingers. "Your. Sisters. Really. Liked. Sucking. My. Dick. And. The. Wax." John looked up with both fist furled, and smirked. "Hell yeah, that was ten on the dot."

"Congratulations..." Bjorn said, before shifting his feet, and launching a cascading of ice at John; upon which, he skated, and closed the battle distance within moments.

John had precious time, and countered by setting fire to her skin, and melting the ice - it did nothing to dull the impact of Bjorn’s targeted kick of big brotherly honour, as it drove into her pelvic floor. John’s eyes widened, as she buckled, and grit her teeth - struggling to hold back from throwing up the banana she had for lunch.

Hundreds of thousands of alarms were going off in her body, as it struggled to maintain composure, and assess the damages downstairs. For a brief moment, her eyes flashed red against the drain of her glasses, and she moved forward just a half-step - driving her fist upwards in retaliation against Bjorn. Even if he wanted to defend, in the heat of battle, things happened in split-seconds without warning; especially, in fight club.

"Well, there are no rules about hitting below the belt..." Juniper snickered.

“Asshole/Bitch!”

John bit back tears - cool and awesome tears, of course, but tears nevertheless - as she slumped onto her ankles, supported by her knees and the balls of her feet. Looking forward, she saw Bjorn in a similar state of concentrated agony. Around them, the crowd was eating it up; laughing their asses off, as they struggled against the abject misery brough by their temporary castration. There were some sympathetic expressions from the women, but they were marred by the mirth in their eyes. Underground fights weren’t the high-brow entertainment of coliseums; they could just devolve into sheer clownery and hilarious bullshit at a moment’s notice, and, as long as a victor was announced and everyone was sufficiently drunk, nobody cared.

It was all a part of the show.

"Feeling better," John asks, once the waves of nausea passed.

"I should kill you..." Bjorn says.

"Wait until I’m rich, at least," John groaned, as she shakily rose to her feet.

"You’re Averton. Rich is how you’re born," Bjorn says, as he gathered himself to stand.

"Sorry to disappoint, but I’m broke as a joke," John says. "Turns out, compensation money is a quick way into debt," she sighed, "Hush money. Travel fees. Bribery. Politics. It’s all costly."

Bjorn tilted his head. "I received a letter from home, baring news of an official from Averton, who had brought my sisters home, whom had a Jotun guard," he says, "He left them with money - more Mora than my village could make in a year’s harvest. But, officials from Walton came, and claimed it from my family as “burial fees,” and said, that my sisters were lucky they weren’t involved beyond sleeping with an Averton," his expression darkened, as he spoke the last bit of the passage, "as even savages deserve scraps at the table. Even if it’s one as messy as Johanna Wattsun’s."

John narrowed her eyes. "So, that’s the angle, huh," she says, as her hands and feet erupted into an uncontrolled flame that licked at her elbows and knees, "I might be inclined to burn down the so-called United Republic of Walton, now..."

"Enough talk," John says, as she drew into a neutral boxing stance, "We have a fight to finish..."

Cracking his neck, Bjorn nodded in silent agreement, as his hands and feet froze over - mirroring John’s own elemental shrouding - before he kept his entire stance relaxed, and his guard looser. "I agree," he says, "Though, it appears we have common ground after all..."

"Seems the preamble is over..." Juniper says, as the air grew stifling and the mounting tension choked the jovial mood out cold. "So, so, who will prevail?"

John moved first; a half-step into full travel, as she threw her right fist forward as a straight jab - an arm of ice blocked the flame, and barely melted under the thermodynamic pressure. Bjorn shifted his body, wrapping his free arm around John’s torso, and lifting her off her feet - only to slam her onto her back. Her lungs evacuated all air, as she hit, but Bjorn would find no purchase, as she threw a harsh left hook at his descending rib cage - disrupting all potential plans, as pain overwrote all thoughts for a brief moment; enough that John could stand.

Bjorn was clearly versed in a throwing form of martial arts; the portal opposite of her rigid, straight-forward boxing style. Approaching him would only result in her getting intimate with the floor more often than not, which would result in him overpowering her inevitably, if she couldn’t land clean hits to his ribs first. Still, standing around wouldn’t do much - as he’d shown, he would close gaps, too. It was all a matter of stamina, and John smirked.

She had plenty of that.

In - close the gap. Jab - put pressure on. Knee - block the grab. Hook - attack the ribs.




"Interesting..."

John slammed into the wood floor with a violence, but she didn’t go down alone, as she threw her leg out, and took Bjorn’s supporting leg out by melting the ice beneath his feet. Due to the commit, he couldn’t use his arms to catch himself, and while the back of her head cracked into the floor, the front of his had a literal crash course on what wood felt like on your forehead.

Yeah, it was a cheap shot on the way down, but there was no fighting fair and winning down here. Aching to the very core, John crawled over to Bjorn, and shoved him over, so she could straddle his waist. Her biceps and triceps bulged, as she wrapped her hands around his throat, and set to strangling him unconscious.

Suddenly, hands shot up and wrapped around her throat - Bjorn’s eyes were wide, focused on just her, and her alone, as he followed her lead in this dance for two in their warsong of fire and ice.

As powerfully as it had come on before, the urge to vomit was back, as cortisol and adrenaline surged in overdrive within John. However, unlike before... this time she listened.

There was no warning, as the Avertonian threw up upon the face of the Uveran beneath her, and completely threw off his pressure. Her neck freed, John pushed forward and down; applying the pressure needed to close off Bjorn’s windpipe and jugular vein long enough to render him unconscious.

Juniper watched as John’s chokehold loosen, and she finished throwing up on Bjorn’s chest, before she almost fluttered into the ring. "We have a winner! I know they say, never go to battle on an empty stomach, but I didn’t know you could win a battle by emptying your stomach!" she joked, raising John’s right arm into the air, though the unconscious Witch didn’t follow it. "Awww... isn’t that cute, a victory nap for sneaky sister-in-law! Oi, someone get these chumps outta the ring! And, take ten, you bozos, so we can clean the ring out! Cash your bets in, too! We ain’t paying you to stand around, after all!"

As if, a breath of fresh air, Juniper dispersed the foulness and raised the mood at the expense of, of course, the fighters in the ring. As the brightened crowd wandered off to cash in bets, gossip about the match, and get ready for the match-up - wondering if it could hold up in drama, ballbusting, and that climax.

Medics would retrieve John and Bjorn, and take them off to the recovery room to heal the woman’s burns and the man’s frostbite, as well as the broken bones. Magical healing was an expensive godsend for a business like this.

"You’re free to follow, Tizi-dearie," Juniper chittered, teasingly whispering, "unless you aren’t worried, so, so..." before heading off to Charles for his thoughts.