[Round 1] Horror Carnival - Davy Jones vs. Ringo Starr

Spring Tournament 2009, Round One - Horror Carnival [Davy Jones vs. Ringo Starr]

As the battle progresses, just remember that each fight will go on for about 25-30 posts, the character that you choose for this first round must be the character you use for the entire duration of the tournament, and that Councilors characters (for example, in this thread, my character) will act as a referee for this thread and maintain balance. Try to keep posts at around 500 words max, and avoid controlling your opponent's character. With all that said, have at it and have fun!

IC:
Valdaria was perched atop the dead Ferris wheel, looking over the abandoned and mute carnival grounds. Her hair billowed slightly in the gentle wind as the sun hovered low over the horizon. Everything was bathed in a dull orange light, gloomy and devoid of any amusement.

A large circus tent stood in the middle of the carnival, although a large part of the canopy had been torn away. The centre ring was littered with circus props -- platforms, scaffoldings, balls, hoops, a lone water tank, and a multitude of fire hoops. Trapezes hung from high above, swinging idly in the wind like forsaken ghosts. The multitude of amphitheatre seats surrounding the main ring were completely empty, as if the audience had long left this place.

The vampiress jumped from the Ferris wheel and landed gracefully on the ground before it. She brushed off some dirt off her skirt and began to walk amidst dust-strewn gaming stands and food stalls. It seemed like it had been a very long time since people had walked down the path she was now following.

Moving further into the carnival grounds and circling the circus tent, she walked past a merry-go-round with horses and carriages, the glassy fake eyes staring at her as if they hid a soul within them. A bit further along she came across what looked like a mirror house, an eerie wind whistling just beyond the entrance. Beyond that followed a distinctive haunted house, a ramshackle of a wooden mansion which was impossible to tell if its dilapidated state was real or just a clever illusion.

Finishing her stroll around the circus tent, she gave an indulgent stretch and then darted inside the tent, sprinting up one of the support poles with a few quick hops and standing on the trapeze platform. The contestants were already backstage and would shortly be walking out onto the centre ring from opposite directions. Valdaria smiled to herself and prepared to watch the show.

Despite his being sent to this assuredly odd place to fight, Tacheon had not seen a single soul since he had arrived. He had been directed everywhere with signs, which he followed solely out of curiosity. It all seemed arranged well enough, he supposed.

Regardless of the fact that it was a perfectly nice day, the place seemed to reek of gloom and decay. Cobwebs were as banners softly waving in a nonexistent wind, and the colorless theme this demented playground adopted was a strangely appropriate black and gray. And now, as he stood like gladiators of many, many years before, waiting for the gate to rise that would allow him to enter the arena before him, he witnessed movement in the busted, moldy stands before him.

Somewhere in the distance, a sound more chilling than any he had heard in a very long time became audible. It was, he realized, that of a calliope, attempting to sound cheerful, but through some strange and highly implausible happenstance the tune had managed to perfectly transpose itself from a chipper major key to a foreboding minor one. As it reached what sounded like the first chorus, the grate before him slid open with a great grinding that cause all of his hairs to stand up on end. The noise echoed for perhaps ten seconds, which again had an unnerving effect on Tacheon as he stepped out.

The dirt beneath his feet was strange and foreign, obviously synthetic, which made him more than a little suspicious as to the nature of the place he was now in. The gate slammed shut behind him, and for the first time, he took a good, long look around him. Whatever being that he had seen moving earlier had since made itself scarce, but then, Tacheon wasn't really looking too hard, because as he gazed around, his hand resting firmly on Elanore, the gate directly across from him emitted the same noise as it too ground open...

Grundcull stood with only his SIG Saur pistol in his hand. He ran from one upright map to another in quick bursts of speed, taking a few seconds at each one of them to rest and listen. If he heard any noise he would raise his pistol and pause for four seconds, stopping his breathing and ignoring the sound of his own heart and listening with acute ears. Every time the cause of the sound was non-organic. Sometimes, the wind making rusting booth frame bars scrape together and sometimes a stray piece of metal rolling across the black earth, and colliding with a wall, like a sea of tar crashing against a rocky cliff face.

In this way of quick bursts and stops he made his way, slowly, methodically, stealthily, towards the circus tent. Its cloth was stained and filled with holes, some as large as a doorway and some just small enough for a golf ball to slide through, but from the shape and the vertical stripes it could easily be recognized as a circus tent. A single white flag stood at the peak of the building. It appeared that moths had left the bright gold lettering alone so the words "Carnaval des Horreurs" stood out easily. Even to those who didn't speak French, the meaning was clear.

As Grundcull entered the tent the wind blew through the various holes in the cloth and created a whistling that made him feel like someone had infused his spine with liquid nitrogen. The whistling was not only spine-chilling but incredibly aggravating. Every cell of Grundcull's body told him to plug his ears, turn around, and get away from the decrepit cloth, but he wouldn't allow himself to take the easy route. He would continue through the dilapidated carnival and face the horror it presented. He would prevail.

As he made his way through a narrow passage where holes were less frequent, Grundcull found he wasn't the only living thing there. He heard the scurrying of many feet around him and stopped. He didn't raise his pistol because a bullet wouldn't do any damage if these thousands of creatures he heard attempted to attack him. When he stopped moving the scurrying slowly died down and was replaced with a ticking sound. When the word "tick" entered his mind Grundcull smiled. Of course this was the death watch beetle, searching for wood to eat. The eating of wood was not the cause for his smile, though. It was the myth that the sound of the beetle's ticking was an omen of death. Even the small six-legged creature knew what was happening.

Grundcull continued walking now, no longer bothered by the movement around him. He approached a rusted iron door. It resembled a storm drain. Grundcull held the pistol in his left hand and with the left he laced his claws into the rectangular opening and gave a hard tug upward. His tug produced a shrieking sound that was nearly as bad as the whistling. Thankfully, perhaps by some mechanism that was still working even after being unattended for who knows long, the grating scraped open the rest of the way by itself with the same eardrum-shattering shriek.

The area Grundcull entered was lit by a large beam of moonlight that filtered through a large hole in the right side of the ceiling, which kept the left side in shadows. Grundcull's mind was snapped back into the present as the door behind him slammed downward. Grundcull jumped to the right and crouched behind what looked like half of a platform, perhaps people used to climb it to mount elephants. Grundcull brought his mind away from the past and attempted to anchor it in the present. He crouched and waited for the horrors of the carnival to be revealed.

OoC: I realize this is over the max but next post will be shorter, seeing as I won't control Tacheon.

Movement. The faintest whisper of footsteps hit Tacheon's ears like raindrops hitting cotton. It was a sound he had not heard for the longest time, and one that he had hoped not to hear for an even longer one-- the sound of a creature whose distinctions between man and beast were all but skewed. Memories of his fateful trip to Fort Tiberius assaulted him and caused him to kneel to the ground, overwhelmed. His foe, for whatever reason he was to fight Tacheon, would not go down easily if it all. He hoped that, at the very least, it would not hold a grudge against Tacheon for what was about to ensue.

"Hello," Tacheon called, and his voice returned to him thrice over, each time being further dampened by the musty mausoleum of a tent that he was in. Nothing responded to his cry but for a strange ticking noise. Tacheon drew his blade, Elanore, and let her nuzzle her tip in the ground beneath his feet. "Hello?!" he called again, and as if on cue, the calliope began its unnervingly cheerful minor hymn anew.

Tacheon looked around desperately for a source to the music, but found none. Its volume and intensity slowly built. A highwire turret stood to his left, spanning across the main ring to its twin directly across from where Tacheon stood. He walked over to it, ascended, and surveyed the area, but to no avail. Wherever his enemy was, it was playing Tacheon for a fool.

The calliope music reached the peak of its crescendo, sending blaring chords throughout the air at deafening decibels. As it did so, the edge of the ring the combatants were now in burst into flames, which towered and illuminated the area with furious beams of light. Tacheon concentrated and forced the air around him to whip with a cutting edge, slashing at the turret across from him. As it fell, it caught flame.

"You can hide, but you can't run!" he shouted, leaping off his own platform and condemning it to share the same fate as its sibling. Honestly, sometimes his dark humor amazed even himself.