Dragon vs Noctowl

Both bats are released on opposite sides of the cavern, madly falpping their small wings to stay afloat. They eye eachother, wondering if that’s what they actually look like - tiny, fuzzy, big-eared, big-nosed things - before Muffin, rather tactlessly, decides to voice these thoughts. Even worse - he figures he’ll mock Macaroon’s fighting abilities, too - a tiny funny looking bat surely can’t be much of a fighter, eh? Probably a tiny weasel, planning on fleeing first change it gets…

Macaroon gets so infuriated, her face gets all red with anger, she loses all focus on what she was told to do - and instead barrels head-first into the mocking woobat, swinging her tiny wings and gnashing her teeth and whipping her tail so much she surely ends up with some bruises herself. Muffin finally shoves her off of him, flapping wildly to get back up and clear his mind - that didn’t hurt so much as shock the living daylights out of him.

He shakes his little head and concentrates, bringing up tiny sparks of lightning around his fuzzy mane. With a solid flap, the sparks arc towards Macaroon, melting into her black fur, into the muscles, seizing them momentarily; she let out a tiny shriek as she dropped in the air, unable to keep flapping, until the spasm stopped and she thrust her way back up. She had to work twice as hard now - everything was slower - but at least she wasn’t falling.

Creekily, she dove towards Muffin, tiny teeth chattering with fury at her predicament, and she bit down.

The force of a tiny bomb, so hard, the impact stunning both of them; they couldn’t breath, couldn’t see, a white light from Macaroon’s tiny fangs flashing across Muffin, draining his life, spreading in a wave about the cavern. It hurt too much to even scream; Muffin just opened his mouth to silent air.

It felt like minutes they waited, but quite suddenly Macaroon let go, the flashing light disappeared; she kicked off the woobat and swooped back, suddenly exhausted. A gaping bite wound marked Muffin where Macaroon had bit him, slowly dripping blood; Muffin was too stunned, adrenaline keeping him going, to realize how bad it was.

Which was probably good - he still had to keep fighting. He closed his eyes again, summoning up more lightning, a tiny beam of sparking yellow energy zipping towards Macaroon and skimming her on her hide. She glanced down as it smacked her, not overly concerned.

Though most of her fury at the taunting from earlier was faded, she still felt she had to put up one last show, and so was entirely unaware of what her trainer had ordered. Instead she flapped painstakingly back towards Muffin, slamming into his damaged side once more, and earning some new bruises for herself.​

While Muffin waits to see what Macaroon decides to do, the noibat quickly erects a protective shield, agreeing with her trainer that it’s best to avoid another one of those catastrophic bites. It takes Muffin no time to decipher this, and so he closes his eyes, focusing all his spiritual energy as quickly as he can. He feels a bit more ready, though the adrenaline is wearing off, and that giant gaping wound on his side is suddenly becoming clear to him now…

He hacks a bit, gagging, and spits a glob of phlegm at Macaroon just as her shield shimmers away. The poison smacks her across the face, sinking into her skin before she can shake it off - and indeed, she can’t shake at all. She’s suddenly seized by paralysis, only barely able to stay afloat, completely aware of the poisons seeping into her bloodflow as she literally watches it in front of her eyes.

Her attention is suddenly ripped from the toxic as a sudden pain wracks her brain, so intense she has to clench her tiny jaw to stop from screaming. Her muscles finally unclench and she flaps wildly, trying to flee from the pain, but it follows her, focused directly on her mind, a clawing pain like needles inside her skull until it finally lets go - she pants, flaps tiredly, relief flushing her face. Muffin grins; revenge is sweet.

Macaroon keeps panting, flapping her small wings harder and harder, though she stays in place. Only a bat could maneuver so well - flapping so tireleslly, carving the air around her, building up a solid torrent of wind that begins to push at her back. She finally stops her flapping, but the air continues, a billowing gust that allows her to coast without having to flap so hard. She sighs with relief, closing her eyes for a moment to catch her breath.​

Feeling confident after that last psychic, Muffin decides it’s time to resume the verbal beating he’d started earlier. If he’s any less confident after the trauma it brought, he doesn’t let it show; instead he invites Macaroon to show him what she’s got, if anything - he’s beginning to wonder if she can even stay afloat with those piss-poar wings! Using a tailwind to help her stay airborne, hah, pathetic. Macaroon grinds her teeth; she’s getting sick of this…

But she can do nothing - she just floats there and takes it. Her body freezes on her again, despite her internal desire to cause massive damage to everything around her, and instead she has to wait.

Muffin seems a bit bemused. He didn’t expect nothing to come of his taunts, but he certainly can’t complain. A bit more trickery is in order; he closes his eyes, focusing on the grouped energy of himself and his opponent, and with a bit of psychic agility, the two are easily manipulated, criss-crossing to the other body. Nothing noticably changes - in fact Muffin himself has to wonder if he succeeded, but he won’t know until he has a way of trying it.

Macaroon is none the wiser, still floating with an occasional tiny twitch of the wing. Her body spasms occasionally; she looks like a frozen statue floating in the air. The one good thing that comes of this is she finally lets go of her anger; it was weaker than before anyhow, and she’s tired of holding onto it for so long with no results. Maybe letting go will somehow… let the paralysis go, like an emotional release.

Unfortunately, that’s the only good thing she’s got.

A flash of white light is all that warns of Muffin’s attack before his teeth clamp onto her side, a familiar explosion of energy sapping the cavern and the noibat of air - everything seems to slow down, the bats looking each other in the eye, they know exactly what’s happening and neither one can stop it - Muffin’s teeth dig deeper, deeper, using all his energy to get as much power as he can before -

Everything stops, he kicks off Macaroon, leaving a scathing bite wound mirroring his own. The two bats flap across from each other; Macaroon’s bite is slightly smaller, if inspected closely, but more notably the noibat is beginning to flag. Occasionally she misses a beat of her wings and droops a bit, a shocked expression on her face. Muffin looks over her with exhausted pride.

Now asked to sacrifice further health, Macaroon hesitates a moment, glancing around slowly for material. Finding none, she begins to cough, spitting up globs of phlegm; she scrapes off some of her fur and sticks them together with the spit, scrunching them up until they resemble a miniature noibat. Scrunching up her face, she concentrates, then breathes onto the toy - a breath of life. The miniature suddenly bounces to life, flapping dully to her side, ready to protect its master. Better late than never.​

Still awash in a prideful glow, Muffin is more than eager to resume Macaroon’s beating. He closes his eyes, honing in on the other bat’s mental signal, and unleashes an unholy nightmare of psychic noise, so loud Macaroon’s eyes cross, her ears swivel, she can’t think - for a moment, everything is just pain. She forgets to flap and is kept afloat only by the still-strong air current drifting under her, her face the picture of pain, until finally Muffin’s focus runs out and Macaroon slips from his psychic hold. She flaps and ducks away, as if she could physically flee.

Growing ever closer to the brink of collapse, the warring desires to fall asleep and tear Muffin a new one tie momentarily in her head - until she shakes herself and glares at her foe. No, she’ll go down with a fight. Angrily, she smacks her wings against the air, again, harder and harder, blowing more wind than it seems like there should be in the cavern up and up towards Muffin - circling harder, harder, a solid wave coming towards him - but it veers just off, zig-zagging wildly, and dissipates against the cavern wall. Muffin eyes it as it fades, then turns to look at Macaroon, a bit of worry in his eyes.

Hopefully there’ll be no more of that… He concentrates harder, closing his eyes again to go back into her mind. It’s an open book to him, as he wrips into another psychic scream; Macaroon skull feels like it’s shrinking on her brain, crushing her, she tries to claw at herself instead of continuing to flap and she sinks rapidly towards the ground - it hurts so much, more than last time even - and suddenly she can’t hold on, it’s too much, she falls motionless and is quickly enveloped in a beam of light before she’d hit the ground.​

Fletchling caws upon being released, flapping easily and taking a moment to scan her environment. Nothing really interesting to see except the woobat, and he doesn’t appear that threatening, exhausted and bleeding as he is, so she hurries up with her commands. Spreading her tiny wings as wide as they go, she kicks up the lagging winds, bringing them back to life behind and below her, billowing her up so she barely has to flap at all. She’d barely finished her work when Muffin starts to snort at her - what kind of a lazy-ass bird can’t even be bothered to fly? Is that how she’s gonna be the whole battle, is she even gonna fight at all, or is she just gonna hide on her nice cushy wind currents like a baby? Fletchling fumes - she worked hard on that tailwind! - she’ll show him who’s a baby…

Though both birds - er, bird and bat - are already quite high up in the air, fletchling flaps hard and soars up even higher, 10, 20 feet above Muffin, just barely in earshot. While she takes the time to aim, Muffin relaxes a bit, calming himself and focusing his spiritual energy like he’d done before. He manages to get more powered up this time, and he can feel the psychic energy quite a bit now.

Up above, fletchling grins, tucking her wings tight to her body and letting go of the wind. Nothing compares to her speed in a dive - except her further evolved forms, of course - faster, faster, so fast she’s just a red blur, spreading her wings out last second, talons out and SLAM - she scrapes hard across Muffin’s backside, leaving more red marks to join his bite wound. She circles round, grin widening at Muffin’s muffled whine.

He won’t let that go unanswered. Exhastion and pain clear on his face, he flaps his way over to her, wings a bit panicked in their attempt to catch up to her. The white glow is clear now around his fangs, but poor fletchling doesn’t know what they foretell - and when he finally catches her, biting into her side, her expression could not be more shocked. Her red colour seems to drain, going dullen gray, fading into Muffin’s dull teeth as he chews down - until suddenly his eyes go blank and he lets go, his wings giving a final flap and he plummets to the ground below. Fletchling doesn’t spare him a glance, even as he’s withdrawn into his pokeball; she’s pecking feverishly at her new bite wound, trying to stop the bleeding somehow.​