Cohost writing prompt: @Making-up-Magical-Girls — Magical Girl Who Has The Villain Right Where She Wants Them
Cohost writing prompt: @Making-Up-A-Villain — Villain who is in danger…of having a very good bad time
Pretty Sunshine Soldier Cirrus hurtles into the alleyway, stacked sheets of corrugated box cardboard sliding under her Doc Martens.
"Halt! The righteous sky commands!" she yells breathlessly, and pulls up short.
The alley dead-ends in a 12-foot brick wall, which a rail-thin, gangly middle-aged woman is leaning back against, cigarette dangling from her lips. A snake-themed mask is sitting nearby, on the closed lid of a dumpster.
Their eyes lock. Cirrus involuntarily mouths something that looks a lot like fuck, before pulling herself together. "We've taken down the Nightmare Panjandrum once and for all! Don't think we're letting his lieutenants squirm away this time, Slithera—"
"No, no," Slithera says, and taps ash off her cigarette. "Clearly. Here I am, bang to rights."
Cirrus swallows round something bright and sharp and bile-flavoured. She doesn't move.
"Come on, then," Slithera says, matter-of-fact. "Hit me."
The something is swelling Cirrus' throat until she thinks she's going to gag. Her fists are tightly balled. "Don't taunt me," she says thickly, vicious. "I fucking will."
"I know you will," Slithera says, takes the cigarette out of her mouth, exhales, and holds it out to her side as if the problem is that Cirrus is worried about burning herself on it.
She tilts her chin up, a dare, an invitation.
Cirrus can't hold in the shriek of fury that punches up out of her guts, and feeling dislocated from her body, as if puppeted by it, she lunges forward and takes a wild swing right into Slithera's mouth. It knocks the villain sideways, staggering several steps and catching herself against the brickwork. Cirrus feels like she's splitting open, an overripe fruit, oozing a hot, wet sap of hate—
(This is not the first alleyway. On even thinking the word hate there's an internal slideshow, a near-subliminal montage of split seconds: Slithera, face down over a battle-smashed car; Slithera, black-eyed and ziptied; Slithera, slapped down into a heap of wreckage, lean leather-clad thigh wedged between Cirrus's, watching as she grinds and snarls — Slithera Slithera Slithera Slithera—)
Slithera slowly straightens, hands visibly shaking, and gingerly touches her split lip with the extended tip of her tongue.
Moans.
"Sicko," Cirrus hisses, and slams an elbow into her solar plexus, knees her sharply and repeatedly in the thigh, shoves her violently over. "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you—"
Slithera falls and lies there like a ragdoll, arms around her head.
Cirrus tries to rein in her voice, bring her breathing under control. "Get up," she demands, and when Slithera doesn't immediately, just parts her elbow to peer out between them, "it's not a trick. I'm not going to kick you in the fucking face!" She can hear herself sounding wild, unhinged. "Get up."
Slithera does, slowly, hands on the wall, on her abdomen, grimacing and breathless.
"Fuck you," Cirrus says, stumbling into her, hands frantic on her. "Fuck you I hate you—" with a hand in Slithera's pants, barely touching before the villain's hips jerk sharply into her, once, twice, and Slithera folds up, face in Cirrus's shoulder, groaning long and low.
It makes things quieter, inside Cirrus's head.
(After a handful of cooling seconds, that lets her think. Which is. Not better.)
Slithera limply rearranges her head, lets out a breathless, meaningless little laugh. Reaches down for Cirrus's hand, bloody-knuckled from Slithera's face; brings it gently to her, mouths a kiss to it.
"I fought so hard," she says, in a cracked, dreamy way. "Cornered. You had to go hard on me to get me."
"Fuck you," Cirrus says, trying to sniff back tears. "Fuck you, why don't you. Why don't you run," and Slithera laughs again, in her loopy little endorphin sort of way.
She murmurs something into Cirrus's shoulder. It sounds like it might be, "Get what's coming to me." Or might not, who knows.