Patricia exited the waiting area and approached the side of the pit. This would be her first fight in the looser bracket. She was out of room for mistakes. One more loss was all it would take for her to be eliminated. She had done well, but not well enough.
Her opponent this time seemed to be an older woman. In fact she wasnt just older, she was old. Her wrinkled face held a grin. When the two approached each other, patricia introduced herself politely.
"My name is Patricia ma'am. Im a Breeder from the Leach Stalker guild. It is a pleasure to meet you."
The old lady perced her lips. "Do you introduce yourself so formally to all your opponents. I may be a few decades past my prime, but im not so ancient I need young people to be folding themselves in half for me." She raised her chin a little. "My name is Serena Mandeena. I am an independent Tamer. Don't expect me to go easy on you because you show courtesy."
Patricia was a bit taken back, but recovered quickly. " Ah, yes ma'am I won't let my guard down or go easy on you!"
Serena shook her head. "I could do without the ma'am but I'll settle for you not taking me lightly. I'll let you know that though I am in the looser bracket, I only ended up here because I faced that brat and his monstrous ape. Now that was a battle. That kid had no manners at all. Didn't even introduce himself." She smiled at the memory.
"Ah, sorry ma'am I dont mean to be so formal.... its just my Uncle would be cross with me if I didnt behave properly." Patricia tried to explain.
With her eyes struggling to look anywhere but the woman's face, she eventually settled on examining her beasts. To her suprise there were only five cages, and each cage held the same type of beast. Each one held a upside down creature hanging from a bar. they had a fuzzy body, an eye less face, two large antenna, three hairless feet with claws that stretched to grasp the bar, and two curled wings that seemed to have an odd pattern on them.each time one shifted a small cloud of dust particles fell from their bodies. Patricia had never heard of anything like them and began to grow apprehensive. Was she walking into another disaster?
The old woman was examining Patricia's beasts as well. "I see you are also an enthusiast of a single species, or are you just short on cash?"
"Neither ma'am! I mean, I do have a special connection to my stingers, but they are just part of a project for my guilds independent study!" Patricia explained flustered again.
"Well either way this will be a strange match. It seems Neither of us has diffrent variants so we will both be choosing our beasts only on their individual strengths." She turned her back and walked away. "I hope you know your beasts as well as you seem to think you do. My Bugbats are no pushovers."
Back at her side of the pit patricia looked at her beasts. With only four to choose from her options were quite limited. She quickly decided to nominate Buzz, Hope, and Tox. Since the Bugbats didnt have eyes or other noticeable week points she didnt think Blister had much to offer.
With that decision out of the way she had a harder one to make. When Serena nominated her three beasts, patricia struggled to see any notable differences between the three. She hadn't chosen the largest or smallest of her beasts so that didnt help. If anything she thought one might be tiny bit fluffier than the other two, and maybe that other ones claws were ever so slightly sharper.
She shook her head and decided to focus on them as a species not individuals. Their sharp claws and wings suggested they may favor quick strikes and solid maneuverability. But as she looked closer she decided the wings were not built for speed but for gliding. If that was the case the claws were most likely for defense not offense. She noticed two of the legs bent one way and the third bent the other making it difficult to target a space they wouldn't be able to reach. But how did they attack? There was no way they were passive defenders. A team made up of those would leave too many vulnerabilities to exploit for her to have made it so far. Hard hitting beasts had more options for dealing with diffrent types of enemies. She once again noticed the dust that fell from one of the beasts as it shifted. That one seemed extra dusty.
"Maybe that's the clue i need?" Could it be some kind of toxin that interfered with a targets ability to fight back, or maybe even outright defeat its enemies. "I'll have to bet on it." If that was the case then she needed to plan to face a slow moving but defensively capable beast that relied on its dusty covering to disable or eliminate its victims. The dust seemed to be shed from the beasts fuzzy body and maybe its wings. That meant she would have to aim for the legs if she wanted to avoid being affected by the dust. "Damn, should have gone with Blister after all."
If she couldn't use Blister, then Hope would be her best bet for getting in without getting caught in the dust. Patricia looked at the smallest of stingers. She turned and handed her token to the arena representative.
"I choose beast #1 Dust Devil"
"I choose Beast #4 Tox"
As tox was lowered into the pit, Patricia was tense. She had chosen to bet on Tox's venom being able to win the bout before the dust took her out in turn. She didnt feel good about relying on this but she felt she had taken enough precautions. She had brought a few bottles of various anti-venoms and antidotes from among the medical supplies, especially for her own stingers venom. She wasnt going to let an opponents beast suffer lasting damage because of her. She would pay Francis' selfless act forward and do her best to inflict no more suffering than necessary to win her fights.
As the cages came to rest at the bottom of the pit, she opened a connection to Tox and was startled by what she found. She nearly stumbled and lost balance but managed to hold herself upright. Her senses and that of her stinger seemed to blend together until it was difficult to tell where one ended and the next began. Tox shook her head from side to side, clearly experiencing something similar.
Normally she would be able to get a vague idea of what a beast was perceiving and feeling in a physical sense, but this was so much more. She could see through the numerous lenses of her compound eyes, feel the vibrations and taste the air with her antenna, feel the way her legs scraped against the metal cage bottom. At the same time, she could see the whole arena from above, could see the representatives deploying a net across the pit since both beasts could fly, could feel her arms wrapped around Flicker protectively. She turned her head and looked at Serena across from her. Simultaneously Tox leaned her head forward so she could keep the Bugbat in sight.
The experience was disorienting and mind blowing to patricia, but she didnt have time to explore its intricacies. For now she purposefully weakened the connection until both could differentiate between their own and the others sensations.
Tox calmed and regained her focus at the same time the reps finished their count down. She took to the air. The Bat did the same unfurling its mothlike wings and flapping slowly to begin its ascent. As it moved a cloud of dust swirled in the air around it and slowly settled to the ground. The blizzard of dust successfully covered the bats body, only growing thin several inches away. Even the legs, which had seemed to be a possible vulnerability, were folded flat against its stomach and back. Tox would have no choice but to face the storm of dust if it was to have any chance of delivering its venom.
Patricia abandoned her plan to target the legs and picked a new target. If she was going to end bout as fast as possible she would have to choose a target more central.
Tox shot forward and up, out climbing her opponent without trouble. She continued to rise as she flew forward keeping herself at an altitude slightly above the bat's. As she began to close in, the bat suddenly shifted. It opened its mouth and let out a sonic pulse ment to disorient. Then, began flapping its wings to create a gust of dust that flew in tox's direction.
But the pulse seemed to fail in stuning Tox. In the same moment the sonic attack struck her stinger Patricia forgot to hold herself back diving fully into the shard state once more and willed her wings to push her upwards. In the moment Tox should have been completely stunned, her wings beat awkwardly and rapidly. So, when the gust of dust reached where the stinger should have been, instead she was just out of reach of the attack. Tox recovered in the next instant and patricia once again pulled back.
Tox flew forward again and then folded her wings to plunge into the the thickest part of the dust cloud, directly at the Bugbat's central mass.