70. Fist fight

It started with a punch. A swinging hook that decked me in the face. Ow. Followed by a second gut punch to my, well my gut. Then came a third fist that woulda hurt like I felt, that I barely managed to catch. Hand wrapping around the Cyclops's own.

For all of a half second before it hit me with a dropkick. Two enormous feet coming into contact with my chest - and yes I mean the fleshy bits, which is how you know it hurt - and sent me reeling back. And if it weren't for the whole, lack of legs, thing I would've wound up flat on my back.

Instead I coiled up like a spring. The length of my tail catching me, twisting in on itself before propelling me back onto the fight like a bolt out of the blue. Sword coming in from the side, two portal opening up behind the cyclops and my fangs bared.

The Cyclops caught my blade with one hand. His other two grabbed the lengths of tendrils that came at him and strangled them.

I didn't stay idle.

My tail came up from behind and jabbed at him. All too many tons of it. A blow that created a minor shockwave on impact. Air thundering with the noise, sticks and stones flung into the air in the aftermath, and a ruin of a tree bending at the middle.

The Cyclops was completely unfazed. His face, a swollen mass of black and white, flower in the center of his eye, was unblemished. His arms, which had gone from two to three, tightening. Bristling with undeniable muscle and power as he looked down at me.

And then he head butted me. Once, twice, three times. All at once I couldn't tell up from down and tasted blood in my mouth. And then I was being swung about. One arm grasping me, two more wrapped about my expansive waist. Working in tandem to lift me off the ground and spin.

I willed my flesh to become sharp and steel. Stomach suddenly enflamed with a gnawing hunger as the price. And before the Cyclops could react to my change, I punched him. Decked him in the jaw hard enough that he actually let go and started falling backwards.

It was an opportunity I immediately jumped on. Tail coiling together to launch me at him once again.

And then he teleported. Appearing right behind me, arms already around my neck and locking me in a chokehold. Which, for anyone else, might have actually been threatening. Unfortunately for the Cyclops I was practically a living pincushion at this point and erupted into points.

Teeth came screaming out my back in a shower of soon recovered gore. Stabbing into the Cyclops behind me. Morphology bending them into hooks that kept him in place. Holding him there as I wrapped my tail around his leg and pulled, yanking him free from my back and dragging him to the ground.

He hit the dirt face first. Barely got a moment to try and get up before I was dragging him. Tail whipping him around me and into a throw that would've sent him sailing into what few trees remained standing.

He teleported before that. Arriving at his previous destination on his feet, a tree plucked out of the ground and hurled my way.

I dodged, ducking low and slithering under it. Core burning with fire as I rose back up, already on the move and dashing toward the Cyclops. More trees came. Each thrown one after another.

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I shattered the first with a note of song. The second I twirled away from. The third I shattered with my fist, splinters and shrapnel flying everywhere.

The Cyclops jumped at me through the cover. Tackling me and bringing me to the ground back first. Fist raised high and already on the way down. Only to stop short as I released the fire that had been building up within me. It came as a cone of red and splashed against the Cyclops. His body wreathed in flame from head to waist.

Again, he vanished. Reappearing on the other side of the clearing. Trying to put the flames that covered him out. A chance I didn't let him have. Belting out notes of sonic song that zipped through the air and hit him. Impacts strung together as I closed in.

He stumbled, balance lost for two breaths. And in that time I closed the distance. Stone and stick and dirt crushed beneath as I slithered toward him. He barely managed a look my way in time before I struck. Fists coming down in a quartet of blows. Battering him down into the dirt.

Portals opened up and spat out limbs to strike and bind. Fists armed themselves with teeth and steel and flame. An additional set of arms bursted from my sides and joined the fray, and spells of fire, ice, and gravity rained down from above. All the while I drained him of his essence. Stealing it away in droves.

I brought it all too bear. Ground cratering beneath us as he burned. Tremor sense painting a picture of ruin within him as he screamed. My blood boiling as he was bruised.

Nose broken. Teeth blasted away. And skin a painting forever scarred.

He was dying. Strength leaving him faster and faster. Like a candle being blown out by the wind.

And it was when he was almost gone. When I drank almost all of his essence and sapped him of all strength that Paradox spoke out.

Stop! That's good enough. We need him alive now.

She screamed. Words blasted into my ears from within. And I almost didn't listen. There was some part of me, feral and bestial that wanted to see this finished. That wanted the cyclops dead and his essence made into a meal.

Maybe it was greed. A want for his teleporting ability. Or a simple plain old desire to see vengeance fed.

Either way it didn't matter. I stopped. I did. Fists slowing their onslaught. Spells ceasing their brutal barrage. And all but my portal bound tendrils relenting, keeping him bound in place beneath me.

"Why?" I asked a moment too late. Long after I should've.

She didn't chide me for the lack of control.

The flower. He still has it.

"He ate it." I snarled back.

Yes. But that Cyclops was a vulgar thing of the Beyond's twisted imagination. The flower is still salvageable.

And suddenly, I very much didn't like where this conversation was going.

A theme with Paradox, I noticed.

Oh, please. It's not as if it has guts for you to be disgusted by. All you need do is dig, which you probably would've ended up doing anyway if I hadn't just stopped you a moment ago.

I did not admit that she was probably right. Nor did I argue the point, and instead I got to "digging" as she put it.

... And for the record, it did have guts. Not corporeal ones like I assumed myself to still have. But moreso metaphysical manifestations of organs. Like a heart that didn't actual beat, didn't have any blood running through it, but simply radiated essence. Releasing it in waves that would've been flowing through the Cyclops body were it still within his chest.

Even so, despite the lack of blood or gore, I still found it gross. Just for the general concept. Grosser still was everything that followed down to it's stomach.

Which was, uh, just a literal sack that conveniently had the flower sitting inside along with a mound of dirt.

For lack of space I tucked it away within my cleavage. Cleavage that I had more of than I was used to seeing. Not that, that was a bad thing. Before all this I had been of a very average size for a girl my size, I liked to think. But I was a lot bigger now, and was glad to see that some of all that weight had still managed to find it's way to my chest.

Better than it going to my middle, I suppose.

In the back of my mind I received a chorus of dissenting voices. Voices that soon turned on each other and began arguing about whether that weight would've been better placed on my already enormous behind, or steadily growing belly.

I chose silence.

Personally, I'm more of a belly version of you in case you were wondering.

I chose silence.