[center][h3]Bad Fur Business[/h3]
[i]starring Susie Haltmann and Miss Nadia Fortune[/i]
[b]Word Count:[/b] 4197 (+5)[/center]

Susie listened to all that was being said and their plans. Apparently this place called the “Dead Zone” was on the way and had been destroyed by some kind of explosion, but a ‘guardian’ still existed there that the seekers had to destroy. Susie hadn’t seen any guardians herself, but she remembers something about them, but she can't remember what at the moment. They were also waiting for another team to return with information about some ‘fast travel’ network that relied on trains. Well, that sounds good overall, she wouldn’t mind a train ride. 

The rest of the report offered up by… Hey! Susie knew that penguin! She made a clone of him at some point. What was his name? Triple D? Susie did know he was friends with Pinky though. And they mentioned something about… an Eggman and him escaping? And he was good at tech? Perhaps Susie should go and find this walking egg person if he was good at tech; she doubted it’d compare to Haltmann tech, but it’d be a nice change of pace. 

Still, Susie just smiled as Mewtwo continued talking and suggested that while they waited for “yellow team” that they should split up and spar to warm up or learn new things. Susie figured this would happen at some point, she’d have to show these seekers what she could do after all. And she was matched up with… a cat girl? Well, considering she was a seeker and had purified the ocean from some apparently horrible abomination, she had to be strong. And at least it was sparring, although could this place handle her blaster? Time would tell she supposed.

Seeing the matchup, Nadia came up to Susie, quoting what Susie could only think of as some old western thing, although the joke fell short since they were both ladies. [color=ec008c]”Hm. Sure. Lets hope my blaster doesn’t hurt too much~.”[/color] Susie said with her cutesy voice.

“Lucky I don’t hurt easy,” the feral shot back good-naturedly, baring her teeth in a feisty grin. While the other pairs met up to work out where and how they’d be fighting, Nadia strolled away from the Garfont Center’s round table and led her prospective opponent down the hall back outside to the spotless white metal and soft green rim lights of Alcamoth’s spacious Ark Mall. As confident as she might seem, Nadia had absolutely no clue where she was going, instead trusting that Smash City would have one of the ‘many arenas’ that Mewtwo mentioned no matter which way she went. Her eyes drifted between all the circular doorways that branched off from Ark Mall, each leading to a [url=https://i.imgur.com/50bCukc.png]little dome[/url] with that both provided a view of the beautiful Eryth Sea through curved glass windows, and a teleporter to one of Alcamoth’s other floating domes. Rather than wander the halls, Nadia crossed her arms and went with eeny-meeny-miny-moe in her head to pick a random portal, bobbing her head in each direction as she did. “Okay, that one!” she announced, twisting her head almost one hundred and eighty degrees to glance down at the diminutive Susie over her shoulder. “C’mon!” Susie internally flinched at seeing Nadia’s head rotate like that, but she figured ti was just one of her powers or something.

Nadia set off at jogging pace, so full of eager energy that she bounced with each step. At that speed it took her only a few moments to reach the teleporter, and after bracing herself for the bizarre experience of being warped around, she jumped through. The next second Nadia appeared in the middle of another atrium, albeit much smaller and [i]much[/i] more colorful than the one in the main area, although for a moment she was far too dizzy and disoriented to contemplate the scenery. “Hurk…” she groaned, trying to steady herself. “Can’t believe people get used to this.” After shaking her head, she looked around to found herself in the middle of a [url=https://oyster.ignimgs.com/mediawiki/apis.ign.com/nintendoland/9/9e/NintendoLand_main_hub_overhead.jpg]vibrant plaza[/url] completely covered in all sorts of patterns, the whole thing houses snugly inside the city’s futuristic dome. Everything looked garish, angular, and bright, from the decorated booths around the place to the big, very pink, and very fake tree that stood close to the central spire. In total, twelve curious archways stood in front of the walls of the dodecahedron-shaped plaza, and all featured a [url=https://i.imgur.com/ISqtAOu.png]symbol[/url] of some kind on the wall overhead. “Yeesh, this place is like a purr-sonal assault on my eyes,” Nadia remarked, blinking a whole bunch as she tried to take everything in. Her eyes landed on Susie once the robot warped in beside her. “Guess we go through those to the arenas. Any catch your eye?”

Susie thought about it, she had to agree with Nadia, this place was a bit too bright, although unlike her she was a lot more used to brighter colors. [color=ec008c]”How about the one with the triangles? It feels a bit more ‘sane’ compared to the others.”[/color] Susie said, rubbing her chin as she thought about the available choices. If she had to choose she’d prefer something more high tech, but this area was already showing it was some kind of hologram or holodeck like thing, so at least there was that.

“Works for me!” Nadia set off for the neon-green gate beneath the symbol that her sparring partner selected. Even on the short trip over though, she couldn’t help but be distracted by everything this arena hub contained. All throughout she caught sight of random fighters, as well as a number of miis, either going to or coming from the gateways, or crowded up in front of them. One such assembly stood around the archway right next to the one Susie chose, and over the heads of the spectators the keen-eyed feral could make out some sort of action, fast-paced and hard to follow from a distance. Intrigued, she muttered some half-hearted excuse to Susie and wandered over to see.

At first she thought she could see people fighting in some impossible space inside the arch, but after a moment she realized that she was looking at another two-dimensional screen like the Spirit Board back in the Garfont Center. It really reminded Nadia of the motion pictures that seemed to be all the rage back home, although in this case a little less electronic and a little more mystical, like seeing something in the haze of a crystal ball. In this case, the viewers got a live feed of a match between Diddy Kong and R.O.B., played out on a [url=https://i.imgur.com/3wTN7N5.png]creepy mansion[/url] in the dead of night, and as events unfolded the spectators either cheered them on, bemoaned them, or took notes. “So, this is a fight in progress…” Nadia glanced between this arch and the empty one. “And that one’s open! Purr-fect!” She hustled back over, and with a final beckon at Susie, charged into the wall of fog. Everything went white, leaving Nadia adrift and directionless in the mist, but after a moment the haze began to clear, and with its departure came the radiance of a golden sun amidst crimson clouds.

[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/Lzk6r3G.png[/img][/center]

Nadia whistled, impressed yet again by the fantastical World of Light. She stood atop a long and narrow bridge of stone, precipitously perched above a yawning gorge, and in front of her unfolded a sprawling vista of autumn-yellow hills, distant crags, and scattered pines, dominated by the silhouette a medieval castle against the imminent sunset. Somehow it seemed to be dusk, despite the morning sun that shone upon her just seconds ago. Even stranger was the fact that she seemed be wearing a tan trench coat, her hands casually slung in her pockets. It was just like the time she sacrificed a previous coat for the sake of her coolest entrance of all time, which naturally meant that she got to do it again. A sound behind her made her ear twitch, and her head swiveled around to face her opponent with a cheeky grin. Her body launched into a tornado-like spin, shredding the trench before [url=https://i.pinimg.com/originals/cb/2a/d9/cb2ad9c3eb16661dbbb0ea2e6fa41fcf.gif]Ms Fortune[/url] adopted her fighting stance. “Hope you’re ready to get your ro-butt kicked!” she taunted.

Susie nodded, she was interested in how the dimensional space of all of this worked, as she saw the same things Nadia did, but now wasn’t the time for that. Pulling out her blaster and giving Nadia a wink while doing a cute pinup pose with her blaster. [color=ec008c]”Let’s not hurt each other too bad, ok?~”[/color] Saying that, Susie pulled out a remote and pushed a button, but, much to how it had been in the past, nothing appeared. With a small sigh, she readied her blaster and shot at Nadia, keeping her range. Seeing as it was a big bridge, there wasn't much space for the cat woman to really go.

Just as expected, Nadia’s opponent opened the game with a volley of ray gun fire. Though they looked and sounded pretty puny, the little pew-pews sped her way, and Nadia began to move. She darted back and forth in a zig-zag pattern, skirting along the very edges of the bridge when necessary, relying on her agility, her ability to turn on a dime, and her slender frame to avoid Susie’s shots. While easy enough to execute, that strategy didn’t allow her to gain much ground, which meant that if Susie kept moving backward she was in for quite the slog. After a few moments, however, the reason why Nadia hadn’t been jumping became clear. Suddenly she crouched down in a trackstarter stance, like a runner at the starting line, and all the water pressure built up in her legs and the base of her tail erupted in a riotous burst of vital fluid. Nadia cannoned through the air, sailing over the robot’s laser bolts in low arc, and with claws outstretched pounced at Susie at a breakneck pace.
Susie was surprised at the sudden speed of Nadia, as she hadn’t seen her fight before, but her low arc as she dashed at the robot girl was predictable in a way. Dodgeable? Not fully, as even if Susie pulled out her transport to fly away Nadia still clipped her blaster out of her hand, but the cat didn’t get any kind of grab or anything. The fact Susie didn’t have arms also helped her deal with the incoming attack. With her propeller out, Susie flew into the air out of reach of Nadia, and while high in the air, she went from holding onto her transport to strapping it on her back and charging up to do the same thing Nadia did to her.

The near miss left Nadia momentarily sprawled out on the ground, her would-be prey just barely slipped through her fingers. “Oof!” She made it sound like a bigger deal than it was, however, and the next second she rolled back onto her feet. The noise of Susie’s rotors drew her attention skyward to reveal that her opponent had taken to the air as well, spooling up some sort of turbine slam. “What’re you doin’ up there?” Nadia crouched down, smiling. “Cruisin’ for a bruisin’, looks like. Fiber Uppercut!”

As Susie dove down to strike her, the feral launched upward in her heavy [url=https://i.imgur.com/nlw5qVi.png]Fiber Upper[/url], a hard-hitting reversal that stretched so far that she could smash her feet right into the robot’s oversized noggin all the way from the ground. As if that wasn’t enough, Nadia immediately retracted the rest of her toward her feet, snapping her right up into Susie’s grill with a flip. “No x-scrape!” she announced, lashing out at at her opponent with a point-blank [url=https://i.imgur.com/9CyGAW4.png]cross cut[/url]. 

Susie really couldn’t dodge this one, and to be fair Susie was thinking she could suplex Nadia like she did those waddle dees, but the cat girl’s double kick slammed into her well before the robot could grab hold of the main body. After getting hit by Nadia’s follow-up, Susie sho downward a ways, taking a fair amount of damage but being alright otherwise. She pulled out her transport to stabilize herself in the air and brushed the tuft of hair out of her face. Blaster it was then, as Nadia airdashed toward her, Susie shot at her with a newly summoned blaster as she slowly descended. 

The first few bolts took Nadia by surprise, since after disarming Susie earlier she did not at all expect another gun. “Me-ouch!” she yelped as they zapped her, forcing her to go on the defensive and airblock until she hit the ground again. True to her boast earlier, at least, she didn’t feel much from those shots, even the ones that struck home. Since Susie wasn’t that high off the ground any more, Nadia took off running on all fours, closing the distance between them. Knowing that she didn’t need to worry about the stray shot anymore, Nadia closed the distance fast, and once in range detached her head for a [url=https://i.imgur.com/KaLMErN.png]High Brow.[.url] She followed up by letting go of her head, then jumping in order to [url=https://i.imgur.com/bU5SemO.png]spike her head[/url] at Susie as a projectile of her own. With her hair hardened her head hurtled down like a sawblade, a grin on her face the whole time. “Heads up!”

Susie did her best to dodge Nadia, who wasn’t taking too much damage from her blaster and just started to tank the shots but while she could dodge the first move, but loosing her balance with her transporter, which left her wide open for the second attack where Nadia threw her own head at her! Susie wasn’t expecting that at all, which knocked her away again and hurt, especially when she hit the ground. She got up though and pulled out that new, larger, ‘blaster’ she had bought. Might as well test what this thing can do she figured, and she fired a few rockets to blast both Nadia’s body and head as she landed, the energy rockets having some nasty splash. Susie could only fire 4 before she had to reload the thing by cranking it, which felt weird. 

“Nyuh!?” The feral bugged out as her opponent produced the Cow Mangler, staring up at the bulbous nodules of Susie’s shiny doohickey with no way to dodge at point blank ranged. “Where were you keepin’- EEYOWCH!” she choked out as a series of energy blasts blew her body and head apart from one another, leaving the latter behind Susie and the former a ways in front. Though a little scorched, her body jumped nimbly upright, its wounds already starting to heal. Her head, meanwhile, rolled across the bridge’s stone brick until it came to a stop upside-down, scratched and dirtied. Even from there, however, she could recognize Susie reloading that weapon of hers. “Nuh-uh! Here, kitty-kitty!” Her body sprinted at Susie to scratch her with [url=https://i.imgur.com/mZQcIha.png]El Gato[/url], while her head [url=https://i.imgur.com/68th2yj.png]stood up[/url] and, rather unnervingly, skittered toward Susie from behind. “Pinch her maneuver!”

Susie found the fact that Nadia could move her body and head together like that really weird, especially since she could move her head. While she had reloaded a single shot from the cow mangler and had to put it away to transport away again as she found herself being sandwiched between the cat girl’s body and head both rushing at her, an ear-splitting horn went off nearby. Both Susie and Nadia wondered what was going on as King Bulblin thundered across the bridge on a fearsome giant boar. Susie snapped out of her distraction a bit faster than Nadia, who had to cut short her axe kick follow-up, and transported herself back into the air as Bulblin dropped a bomb on the center of the bridge. This gave Susie enough time to finish reloading the cow mangler in the air, although she had to stop using her transporter to do this. She made sure to avoid the bomb on the bridge, not knowing how badly it’d destroy the bridge, although she’d find out she miscalculated a bit and took some chip damage from the bomb’s blast radius. At the same time Nadia had scooped her head up and cheesed it, but even her most panicked, headlong rush didn’t get her out of harm’s way in time. Bulblin’s bomb detonated with enough force not just to send the feral hurtling away to tumble painfully along the bridge, but to destroy the center of the span, dropping its bricks into the great chasm below.

“Uuuuugh,” Nadia groaned after her wild ride came to a stop. “Feline like something the cat drug in…” As the flesh torn up by the bomb blast knitted itself back together, she tried to pick herself back up. Susie also picked herself up from where she had landed. As the two girls got up from getting blasted, they found they were on opposite sides of the now destroyed bridge. Something that gave Susie quite the advantage. So much so that she figured she’d try out the ‘charge’ button on her Cow Mangler and see what it did. It took the entire clip, but when Susie pushed the button, nothing happened except power building up near the front of the launcher, Susie tapping it out of annoyance to try to get it to fire. Nadia, meanwhile, looked a little annoyed herself, but her irritation quickly turned into a smug smile, her eyebrows lowered. “Cats, outta the bag!” She lifted her hand, then swiped it to her side. Two copycats zooped out of her, formed from her blue blood, and together the three started running.

First order of business was to cross this bothersome gap where the bridge used to be, without getting blasted by whatever Susie was cooking. When the Fortunes reached the edge, the original used one of her copies as a springboard, sacrificing it in a high-pressure burst for a superjump with her other clone. At the apex of her leap Nadia hurled her other copycat like a living projectile down at Susie, flying in to deliver the axe kick that Nadis saved from earlier.

The copycat, being the thing between Susie and Nadia, took the cow mangler charged shot head on as it finally fired after building up for as long as it did. This shot caused the copycat to flash full of energy as it disintegrated mid air, the copycat catching on fire for a moment before it got vaporized. [color=ec008c]”That will need some work…”[/color] Susie said as she put the Cow mangler away, attempting to meet Nadia head on again with another charged dash using her transporter on her back again, building up power before dash toward the cloud of vapor and energy. There she met Nadia in the middle of a blood-boosted dive, and the two clashed in an epic collision, forearm to forearm, strong enough to blow away the surrounding midst. Feral grin met cyber stare, and like cowboys at a quick-draw, both moved at once. Nadia attempted an airgrab, but Susie’s command grab blew straight through, and snatched her right out of the sky.

Having grabbed Nadia finally, Susie let out a battle cry as she zoomed around, Nadia in hand, in an adorable heart shaped flight path before crashing the two of them into the bridge below, slamming Nadia with her metal body and causing the feral to bounce a couple times on the bridge like a rock across a lake.

For a moment Ms Fortune tumbled along, stunned, but then a fire seemed to ignite inside her. The pupil of her dark eye flashed a brilliant azure as she zeroed in on Susie, a wild grin on her face. She backflipped one last time and landed, as any good cat would, on her feet, sliding backward with her claw carving through the stone to slow her momentum. “Hell yeah!” she hissed. “You’ve got some spirit after all! Let’s do this, Sooz!”

In a blast of blue blood she zoomed toward Susie once more. “River-carving rapids!” she yelled. “Cat-aract!” From her eye a torrential beam of water blasted forth, sweeping over the bridge. Though imprecisely aimed, it forced Susie to either block or evade to escape heavy damage, giving Nadia the chance she needed to close the distance. By the time the torrent died, the feral was too close for comfort, with her head held in one hand. Susie brought her Cow Mangler around to block with, but Nadia sent her head along the bridge like a bowling ball. It rolled right past the robot in order to cross her up and nail her in the back with a jet of blood from the stump of her neck. As her body closed in, the head rolled back onto her neck with a smile; a better chance she could not have asked for.

The combo began with a flying dropkick, and as her body recovered, her head flew toward it as a saw-blade to keep up the hitstun. Her head plopped back onto her shoulders as Nadia pulled off El Gato, slashing once, twice, thrice, then finishing with a hard-eared headbutt, but it wasn’t over just yet. Nadia extended her combo by blasting out a copycat in a low [url=https://i.imgur.com/DjCYmJc.png]Cat Slide[/url] that swept Susie off her feet. Before she could hit the ground, however, Nadia knocked her opponent back up with a [url=https://i.imgur.com/GkqbFie.jpg]golf swing[/url], only for her copycat -now behind Susie- to slam her back down with an axe kick. The stylish combo ended there, but the fight had yet to conclude. Nadia summoned another doppelganger to help the original pick Susie up and hold her in place, while she ran to the edge of the bridge and jumped off. She turned as she did, latching onto the ledge with her hands as her arms extended, swinging her under the entirety of the bridge in an enormous loop. A moment later she swung back up over the opposite side, and with the power of centripetal force, delivered the biggest dropkick the World of Light had yet seen to the robot’s back. Susie soared off the bridge and into the chasm, and the game was decided.

Everything disappeared, and both fighters got spat out of the fog back at the archway in the colorful plaza, a little banged up but not that much worse for wear. “Whew!” Nadia grinned, trying to catch her breath. “Good fight there, Sooz!” Doing her best not to look smug at all, the feral extended her hand to shake in a gesture of goodwill. 

Susie picked herself off the ground and brushed off her outfit, making sure her cloths and everything looked nice and proper before extending her hand to accept Nadia’s handshake. [color=ec008c]”You seekers earned your reputation. It's a shame I didn’t have my business suit, but that Galeem…”[/color] Susie said, glaring off to the side showing that she was a bit salty over losing, but she quickly regained her composure. [color=ec008c]”Well, I’m sure I can fix whatever is interfering with the Access Ark MK2 and finally get that going at some point.”[/color] She gave Nadia a smile, although if the feral was perceptive enough she could tell that it was more of a facade if anything, although Susie had perfected putting on a cute happy face. 

[color=ec008c]”Still, throwing your own head to attack people, that has got to be very disorienting. I don’t think any of our products do that.”[/color] Susie said, putting her hand on her chin as she thought about it. [color=ec008c]”Is that related to the water clones?”[/color]

Nadia shook her head, her enthusiasm waning to normal levels. Even if she’d been in control for most of the fight, she’d winded herself pretty thoroughly. “Nah, the copycats are new. Splittin’ up is a Ms Fortune classic.” She crossed her arms. “Ya did pretty good for a newbie! Really liked that fancy throw. Felt like a roller coaster.” The feral chuckled. “Once you get some more weapons on ya, you’ll be a force to be reckoned with, I bet!”

[color=ec008c]”Yeah. Maybe I’ll find something new as well. That ‘Cow Mangler’ did some damage, even if it kinda looks like an older Haltmann Works device. I’ll need to spruce it up though, that charge shot took way too long!”[/color] Susie said.