punchtheflowers | 4th bloom

4th bloom

[Vinnie had been spending a lot of time on his own outside, watching the flower buds peek through the snow. Had he been actively avoiding certain people? Hell yes. But he was privately trying to console himself with the slow return of spring.

It was getting warmer. Greener. All his hopes for the future lay in the coming month.

All are welcome to bug him as he mopes in the melting snow.]

= = =

I wanna get back into training again. At least doing something. I'm sick of waiting around and feeling like this. I've been getting into fights anyway, so... I should've told you about those.

I know I've been pulling stupid shit lately. You can lay it on me for that.

= = =

...Sorry for being such an asshole.

There's a girl that likes me. I don't know what the fuck t'do.

So if you guys have any ideas on how I should stop fucking up my life, I'm all ears.

By the way, Smoe: those nose things work really well. Thanks.

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Vinnie scrambled to his feet, finally out of the dirt and snow. God, it felt like a lot of blood on his face. The taste of metal just wouldn't leave his mouth, even as he tried to spit out the excess. It felt like he swallowed his fair share too, and for someone who was very strictly no meat, the thought of that turned his stomach.

Oh, right, and Char was breathing warning flames. Well, that as more or less a signal that the human gloves were off - not that it made a huge difference in Vinnie's condition right now. Not that he ever thought twice about fighting a Fire Type, either.

All right then. The Venusaur anchored his stance - he was wet and muddy and aching and disgusting, he couldn't breathe out of one nostril for the blood clots and his stomach was squirming, but he was ready for you. Anger was a hell of a rush to fight with, but it also made you sloppy.

"I'd be pretty pissed off too, having t'tell Green 'bout how a fuckin' cripple kicked your ass."

~~come at me, bro~~

Oh, that was it! He was gonna chew a hole right through the cocksucker!

A calmer, more civilized individual might have stopped to think this over. Vinnie was the kind of guy who could stand a lot of punishment. Char... not so much. Vinnie had given back at least as much as Char had dished out -- more, if you counted the arm hanging at Char's side, hand growing increasingly marred by the red still trickling down from that bite. Letting his temper outrun his brain had gotten Char into trouble before; this may not have been the best time to throw common sense to the wind.

But on the other hand, his horn had been grabbed. This was just Vinnie, anyway -- and watered-down version to boot! No Frenzy Plants or Sleep Powders to worry about. Char knew that even at his best, Vinnie would have lost to him out in front of the gates all those months ago. Even with six other Pokemon ganging up on him with attacks, even with the handicap of a torn wing, even with Vinnie busting out the best he had... Char was positive that if the team hadn't run away, he would have taken Vinnie out. Why should this be any different? The odds were stacked in his favor now!

It was reckless of him. It was way too cocky of him. But he was so goddamn done with this uppity Red-team bullshit. Vinnie wanted to bite? Fine. Absolutely fine. They'd see how a real predator's teeth compared to some wilted-ass grass-type's. Char shot forward with another raw animal cry, ready to meet Vinnie head-on.

Vinnie had one chance, and it was all thanks to being underestimated. Being both a Grass Type and a cripple, it was pretty easy not to perceive him as a threat to the Charizard - and in the blindness of his rage, it could be taken advantage of. If Char had the foresight to rush him with a Fire or a Flying attack, the Venusaur would've been done. Instead he was just charging recklessly in like the stupid douche he was.

Vinnie side-stepped towards Char's bloodied arm, flanking his weaker side so to stay in the offensive blind spot. It wasn't very smart if he felt like lashing out or blocking with a still-bleeding wrist like that. It'd take a split second for the Charizard to twist his head and unleash any sort of breath-based flame, Vinnie was going to strike first in that one precious interval.

You were gonna wish this was a Frenzy Plant by the time the day was through. Instead, a surge of toxic sludge poured out from the plant's half Poison stomach, raining a slurry of vomit and corrosive acid onto the humanized dragon. It was a noxious cascade, a veritable deluge of poisons. It could burn even a Fire Type. The smell and texture were both indescribable in their foulness.

Sure, literally barfing on your opponent wasn't too graceful. If he weren't in human form, he'd actually have enough control to fire grenade-like bombs of sludge instead of straight up projectile sick. Either way the result was the same.

Edited 2011-03-23 11:08 (UTC)

The good news was that Char had more than just that one arm to be blocking with. Char also had many years of experience butting heads with Vinnie, and happened to be on the same team as two poison-tyes to boot. He'd been an utter moron not to anticipate it, of course, but he'd have to be a blind moron to miss the warning signs once he was in range. He bowed his wing around him as soon as he realized just what Vinnie intended to do, trying to turn away from the inevitable.

It was, sadly, a little too slow to totally shield him. He did avoid getting any Venusaur puke in the open wound on his arm, but not all of him made out quite that lucky. Oh god, the stink of Vinnie was probably never gonna fully wash out of his clothes. Oh god, he'd have to spend forever under the shower trying to get himself clean again, and even just the thought of all that water was making his skin itch...

Oh, no. Wait. That was the ACIDIC VENUSAUR SPEW. Another very obvious downside to using your own wing as a barf umbrella: wings also happened to be made of skin. Skin which was not very poison-friendly. Already, he could feel a horrible nauseous, dizzy feeling growing in the pit of his stomach. He gave his wing a sharp flick, sending the noxious stuff coating his wing spattering to the ground. It was a common rule of thumb that attacks like this were generally a lot less threatening when the user had turned human. Sludge Bomb was the exception to that rule. This was a thousand times worse than just the regular stank-ass ooze oh god.

"Jesus, what the fuck is wrong with you?!" Char stepped toward Vinnie, trying to come out with one more Flamethrower before he entered a whole new vomit-saturated level of hell. He still had some time before the poison set in. Enough time, at least, to reduce Duke Hurlington here to a pile of cinders.

...Oh. Maybe he had a little less time than he thought.

Q: What happens when a Pokemon tries to breathe fire and violently empty the contents of its stomach at the same time?

A: THE WORST THING POSSIBLE.

Fire vomit. This was a new one. Usually his opponents had enough sense left so they could tell when they were about to throw up as well. Char, sadly, not so much.

A burst of flame lit up the air between them, singing Vinnie before he had the time to dart backwards. But that hiccup of a flamethrower was all Char had managed before what came out of his mouth just disintegrated into a chunky stream of flaming vomit. It was like some putrid flambé of what looked like half-digested animal, enveloped in glowing embers.

He wasn't as skilled in projectile vomit, but that didn't mean Vinnie was scott free. His skin felt seared and his toes caught splatters of fiery puke and his hoodie was catching on fire actually oh fucking shit--

Welp. Off his back and onto a pile of slush it goes. Idly, Vinnie stomped the fire out as he waited for Char to get up again. If in fact Char ever was going to stop throwing up and get up again. "Looks like I found a way t'shut your fat fuckin' mouth after all."

Just. Give him a second, Vinnie. He's almost-- oh god. Nope. That might have been a chipmunk once.

But wait, there's more! Okay. Who even knows what that was. It's not even done yet dear lord. A nightmarish outpouring of steam and sick. Oh my god this was so horrible fuck you Vinnie just fuck you. Charizards were not meant to use Lava Plume oh god there was still one more round.

A fit of coughing and dry heaving, and finally a thin splatter of some kind of oily fluid and a short-lived little sprinking of sparks. Char stayed where he was, just trying to shake off the shivers, get his breathing back to normal. Oh god this place was literally the worst-smelling place on earth. The only thing worse than Vinnie's venom-upchuck stink was Vinnie's venom-upchuck stink mixed with burnt digested-dead-thing-slurry.

"Come over here so I can kill you," he quietly told Vinnie.

Edited 2011-03-23 12:24 (UTC)

Somehow, the contents of the Charizard's vomit were more repulsive to Vinnie than the poison sewage his own stomach generated. The smell of dead animals, cooked or not, was far from appetizing for him - so the fact that they were on fire and half digested made them abominable.

He scrunched his nose in disgust, taking a step back as Char emptied out the menagerie he had apparently eaten earlier that day. If he really had the strength to pull off flamethrowers after that mess, it would've been a surprising feat. Not one particularly advantageous for the Grass Type though, hence the distance. A poisoned Charizard wasn't necessarily a defeated Charizard.

"Yeah, that's real tempting," spat Vinnie as he pulled his nose piercing from his bleeding left nostril. It would've been a good idea to take that out before getting punched multiple times. "I think I'd be more worried 'bout whether you could find an antidote before you pass the fuck out."

Yes, this would have been a very excellent time to just cut his losses and go looking for an antidote. A fight that had really only started because Char couldn't resist the urge to make allusions to his oh-so-clever phone pranks definitely wasn't worth letting poison eat away at him until he collapsed.

No such luck here. This was Vinnie. Vinnie had grabbed his horn. Those two facts were enough to apparently make risking the passing out worth it. Char straightened himself up, stumbling back a pace or two. Dragged the back of his hand over his mouth. "Only thing you gotta be worried about is the unholy ass-whoopin' headed your way," Char growled.

He took a few slow steps toward Vinnie (around the minefield of ex-woodland-creatures, not through it, thank you), gauging just how bad the poison was throwing him off, gauging the distance between them. Too much for fire, if he even had any fire left in him after that. But maybe not too much for the air.

A minute tensing of Char's wings was the only warning Vinnie'd get before he flared them out to their fullest, then brought them down in a sharp, sudden flap. It wasn't a misguided attempt to get airborne: he was firing off an Air Slash. It didn't quite have the same dramatic effect as puking on anyone, but a razor-sharp blade of wind could still leave a decent mark on a grass-type if it connected.

In that instant, Vinnie's eyes widened as he tried to dodge - but that was the problem with air, most times it was pretty hard to see. He hadn't figured Char to use Air Slash in human form, considering how much smaller his wingspan was. He hadn't calculated the arc formed by the blade of wind. So when he tried to step out of its trajectory, the Air Slash still managed to cut through his side.

Thankfully, it wasn't so sharp that it could actually tear through the Venusaur's torso, but it was enough to rip through the shirt he had on, and leave its mark on his thin human skin. The sheer impact of the precision gust knocked him back a step, like he'd been hit with a blunt sword at point blank. In fact, it would've hurt less if it had been a blunt sword, rather than a Flying Attack, damn his leaves for being so vulnerable to them. Almost immediately the bruises blossomed in bright reds and purples.

Vinnie staggered backwards, the look of disbelief on his face quickly succumbing to simple exhaustion. That attack was the straw that broke the Camerupt's back - the hurt that had been suppressed by adrenaline all came back, crashing down on him in waves hard enough to make his knees buckle. Even has he tried to fight to stay upright, his human body had just taken too much punishment.

Unsteadily, Vinnie gasped, "You little shi--" before he toppled over and hit the ground.

Edited 2011-03-28 10:07 (UTC)

The second Vinnie collapsed, Char with hit with a rush of what could have been triumph or lightheadedness. The poison was making it kind of hard to tell by that point. Really, he had nothing to be proud of: he had only just narrowly won a victory against something that was weak to both of his types, and only had access to one of its attacks. And a Pyrrhic victory at that; sure, he got to prove... whatever it was that he'd been trying to prove, but Vinnie had messed him up real good. His hand was red and sticky with his own blood; he was gonna be feeling that bite for days, no doubt. He was muddied, bloodied, bruised, and splattered with vomit. The sludge that had trickled off of him already left behind angry red, burning skin in its wake. Little more than a symptom of what was going on inside his system: that poison hadn't gone anywhere. He needed an antidote fast if he wanted to stay standing much longer.

So naturally, he continued to favor being an utter shitlick over having any sort of sense of self-preservation. "What was that, Vinnie? Couldn't hear you." Sardonic and savagely proud, no matter how rough his condition. Few things could beat the raw satisfaction of taking down one of Red's. He continued those slow, wavering steps toward Vinnie. Were they getting unsteadier?

"Don't even know why you keep tryin'." Were his words a little more slurred than a second ago? "Y'can't win. You goddamn failure." Was he looking at Vinnie? Since when had things gone so blurry? Another step. Another. They were getting... harder, somehow. A dull, throbbing ache that spread and intensified with each movement -- it was in his skin, in the pit of his stomach, burning in his throat, pounding in his head. White-hot stabs of pain bloomed like starbursts, cloudied his vision even further. Char was vaguely aware of his arms wrapping around his stomach, of bending double, of something warm against his forehead. All Vinnie's fault. Oughta kick his shit in. But somehow... his leg wouldn't move?

Oh. Because he was bent double on the ground. Right. That explained what the warm thing was, then. Vinnie. A trembling hand braced itself on Vinnie's stomach and strained to push Char upright again, but the poison had claimed too much. He couldn't do it. If he'd only had a few more seconds in him, if he'd thought to bring a Pecha berry, if he'd just set the punk on fire from the get-go... Ah. Screw it.

The pain was getting worse, his breath coming in strained, feverish pants. He was in for one hell of a ride before the poison was going to pass from his system. Even so, the last cloudy, muddled thought in his mind before unconsciousness claimed him too was how incredibly worth it that all was.

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4th bloom

poopular

FUC i can't counter a poop pun

checkmate

JUST YOU WAIT

oh no i regret

just as plaaughuhhblauughf

and then hatesex happened

red-hot pukey hatesex

and then they made out in midpuke

we call that HARDCORE FRENCHING