Chronicles of the Doomcat
Part 3: Fighter
By: Miss Special
The Doomcat made less noise than the gentle dawn breeze as she jumped from balcony to balcony up the building. The few who saw her passed her off as a dark shadow quickly and silently zigzagging upwards.
She came to the roof and stopped, looking over the cityscape. Cybertron's sun was barely peeking over the horizon.
Today was the day Cybertron, and Destroyer Angel herself, would witness the abilities of the Doomcat. But that was later. Right now, it was time for flute practice.
What was that tune? Spirit thought foggily. The wind was playing it. The song started with a B- Bol... something. Bolero. She sat up and stretched. That's right- Ravel's Bolero. And it wasn't the wind playing it, it was Destroyer Angel's flute. She yawned.
Hmm, she thought, it's not bad, waking up to a flute concert. What day was it? She turned on the video screen.
"Today's the day," the newscaster said, "of the Tournament of Champions." Of course, Spirit thought. The big day.
"Last year's winner," the newscaster continued, "stunned fans last week by announcing he would not compete. This leaves the top slot wide open. Although nothing is certain, the public is favoring big contenders from previous Tournaments, like the gigantic Rumble. And don't forget the wild card entrees, who have been known to cause stunning upsets."
"Hey, Cyberkitty, think I'll cause a 'stunning upset'?" Spirit jumped, obviously not having heard Angel's entrance. The Doomcat sat beside Spirit, grinning hugely.
"You'd better. Everyone's going to be there."
"Almost everyone. Remember Botanica? What'd she say, something about fighting for money being immoral?"
"Ah, but you're not fighting for money."
"That's right! I'm fighting for the honor of Doomcats! To prove their prowess in battle!"
"That's funny, I thought you were fighting for the trophy."
"That, too. But honor sounds nobler."
"Let's get going. Crowds are going to be pouring into the coliseum before long, and I don't want to have to wait in line for too long."
The Tournament was a series of elimination battles where the weak got weeded out and the strong continued to the next round. Contestants could only fight with built-in weapons, which meant most projectiles weren't allowed. Contestants capable of flight were only allowed to fly a little ways off the ground. These weren't battles to the death; the battle would be won when one contestant either gave up or couldn't get up off the ground.
Destroyer Angel stepped calmly out into the arena, not scared, nervous, or afraid in the least. She was a Doomcat. Doomcats feared nothing.
Her opponent, on the other side of the arena, also appeared fearless. However, he was not a Doomcat. He would fail, whether he knew it or not. At that moment, he was showing off to the crowd, which was cheering loudly. For him, by the sounds of it. But Angel's ears could pick up familiar voices rooting for her:
"All right, Destroyer Angel! Show 'em who's boss!" Spirit wasn't being her usual reserved self. And all the other Beast Warriors (minus Botanica) were cheering just as loudly. It was nice to have friends.
"Now," said the announcer, high above the arena in his announcer's box, "we see the Predacon warrior Sid, whose secondary mode is a stick insect." The crowd cheered louder. "And on the other side of the arena, we see Destroyer Angel, whose secondary mode is a Doomcat. Are the contestants ready?" Sid took an absurd wanna-be Kung Fu fighting stance. Angel just stood there. "Begin!" A bell rang.
Sid launched himself at Angel. She sidestepped, and he tasted ground. Of COURSE this was easy, Angel thought. It's only the first round. All the morons still needed to be weeded out.
Sid hadn't gotten up yet. Angel calmly walked over to him, nudged him with a footpaw, and laughed. Sid had landed so hard he'd knocked himself unconscious. Destroyer Angel won without lifting a finger.
"Did you see that?" Cheetor exclaimed.
"There wasn't much to see," Spirit answered. "According to the odds, Sid was the longshot of longshots. His popularity comes from being a ladies' man." Spirit looked down at the program.
"Hey, what's it say about Angel in dere?" Rattrap asked.
"Not much. She's in the middle of the longshot range as far as odds go, it mentions her being the only reformatted contestant, and goes on to say how she beat that gang last week. It uses her as an opportunity to explain reformatteds are generally poorer fighters than norms, because they're forced to go to beast mode if their energy levels fall below a certain point."
"That's it?"
"Well, she IS virtually unknown in the fighting world."
"Not for long."
"Nope."
Round two. This guy was built like a tank. Actually, he WAS a tank. They let him keep his turret because it was physically attached to him. And his name? Panzer. Which means "tank".
Still, he was BIG. And, to match, his turret was also BIG. Angel didn't have any long range weapons. This was going to be a great deal harder than Sid, now the laughingstock of the tournament.
Panzer had the audience's favor, Destroyer Angel noticed as she walked towards the center of the arena. The announcer announced the contestants, and the bell rang, starting the match.
Panzer immediately made use of his advantage, firing at Angel as soon as the bell rang. She'd seen this coming, and took off running in a wide circle around her opponent. Her speed was the only thing keeping her from injury, and she needed to develop a strategy before she got tired. She sensed- she didn't know how- Panzer's turret heating up. It would overheat soon. Destroyer Angel could wait that long.
Panzer stopped firing and looked angrily at his turret, which had suddenly stopped firing. Knowing this was the time to move forward, she transformed to beast mode and jumped onto Panzer's back, just above the turret.
Panzer, obviously not happy with having the Doomcat on his back, could do little about it. Since he was a tank, he was ground bound, and there was no way for him to get off something on his back.
If Destroyer Angel struck now, she would fry herself on the overheated turret, so she had to wait again. If she waited until the right time- when it was coolest- she could win this battle with one blow.
The time came, and Angel took it. She used her powerful Doomcat jaws to crush the barrel of the turret, effectively blocking it. Panzer was too preoccupied with getting Angel off his back to figure out what she was doing. She leaped down onto the ground and sat down a short distance away.
Panzer, thinking his opponent was stupid, seized the opportunity to blast her to kingdom come. His turret promptly exploded and rendered him offline. Destroyer Angel transformed and quietly headed into the inner workings of the coliseum to wait for her next battle.
Round after round, Destroyer Angel quickly and effectively beat her adversaries, making her odds rise and winning the crowd onto her side. At least, for the bouts she was in. Rumble, whom she hadn't had the opportunity to see, was still the overwhelming favorite.
Angel leaned back against the cool wall, wondering whom she'd have to fight next. She had made it through fifteen rounds without so much as a scratch. The next round coming up was the semi-final, and she still hadn't come across anyone who gave her any trouble.
"Excuse me, Miss Destroyer Angel?" A smallish bot walked up to her. "You're up next." Angel nodded, and the bot left.
The arena was empty when she walked out. Where was her opponent?
Her question was quickly answered when she felt, then heard, the ground shaking with what seemed like footsteps. The crowd cheered louder than she'd heard it all day. Glancing at Spirit in the stands confirmed what she thought. Spirit looked worried, and so did the rest of her friends.
Rumble's shadow fell over the Doomcat as he walked towards the center of the arena. Angel eyed him up and down, knowing a challenge when she saw one. If Panzer were built like a tank, Rumble was built like a mountain. He loomed twenty feet over Angel, sneering down at her. She stared back passively.
"What, is the little kitty scared stiff?" His voice was too low to be even described as bass. It was felt more than heard.
"I am a Doomcat. Not a little kitty. There's a difference," she replied calmly.
"Whatever. You all look the same when I peel you off the bottoms of my feet."
The announcer spouted out all relevant information, including how Rumble's beast mode was one so alien no one couldn't pronounce its name.
The bell rang, signaling the start of the battle. Neither Rumble nor Destroyer Angel moved. Rumble may have been huge, but he wasn't stupid. He was an experienced fighter, and not one who would make any rash moves.
So he did something simple. He jumped. Angel was standing close to Rumble, and the shock wave knocked her off her feet for the barest instant. She backed away, trying to put distance between herself and Rumble. This amused her gigantic opponent, who jumped five times in a row like he was jumping for joy. Angel's feet wobbled under her, and she had to stop moving so she wouldn't fall.
She had to get farther away from him. She could dodge the shockwaves if she had more time.
Rumble decided to do what he and his friends called his "One, Two, THREE" jump: a little hop, followed by a bigger jump, then leaping for the sky and coming down hard enough to crack the ground.
Angel fell. It was embarrassing. It took Rumble one stride to be right beside her, ready to squash her. She was back up in a flash just before Rumble's massive foot came crashing down. Annoyed, she decided she'd had enough with playing around.
She streaked onto his back, transforming along the way, and buried her claws into his head. He reached up, pried her off like she was some kind of parasite, and flung her across the arena. Her claws left rents in Rumble's head, but they didn't seem to bother him.
Transforming in mid-air, she eased her landing by backflipping and skidding to a halt. Rumble was going to pay for that.
"It looks like ol' Desty is running out of ideas," the announcer observed.
Destroyer Angel, for once paying attention to what the announcer's running commentary, glared at the announcer's box, growling, "Don't call me Desty."
Rumble was about to start rumbling again when a voice came over the sound system and said, "Stop the match. This battle has been placed on hold while an electrical fire is being taken care of in the announcer's booth."
"An electrical fire? I thought they were more careful about things like that," Cheetor mused to Spirit. The little white cat didn't answer. She was staring intently at Destroyer Angel, who was standing still while the match was on hold. "Spirit? Hello?"
"Something's funny. All of a sudden, the fur on the back of my neck's gone prickly," Spirit said.
"Yeah, and your tail's gone bushy." Spirit looked down and found Cheetor was right. She willed her fur to lie flat.
"When Angel snapped at the announcer like that," she explained, "I got this weird feeling. I can't explain it."
Oblivious to Spirit's "weird feeling", Angel waited patiently for the okay to battle again.
"Thank you for your patience. The fight may continue." Rumble grinned and started jumping again. Angel had to come up with some sort of strategy, or this would continue until the coliseum fell down.
The shockwaves came, and Angel dodged them more or less. Rumble was quickly getting on Angel's bad side, and her Doomcat pride was getting severely wounded.
Pride. That's it!
"Can't you do anything besides jumping? It's getting awfully boring." Angel feigned a yawn.
"All I need to do is jump and I can defeat my opponents, so why change things?" he laughed.
"Well, it's not defeating me, obviously. Look, the audience is falling asleep. Do you really think you can become the best fighter on Cybertron by jumping up and down like some little kid throwing a tantrum?"
"Oh, I have other tricks up my sleeve, you can be sure of that."
"Really? This is the semi-finals, and I haven't seen anything. C'mon, give the folks something to see. Transform or something."
Rumble laughed, "If that is the way you want to lose, then so be it. Beast mode!" He turned into a huge blue-green lizard-like thing, complete with razor teeth, orange eyes, and four stubby legs as big around as tree trunks.
Perfect.
Angel transformed, flew to Rumble's back, and dug her claws in as deep as they'd go. They weren't actually doing much damage, but to Rumble it felt like he was being bit by some oversized insect.
"Yeeeeeaagh, get off my back!" he bellowed as he realized he had nothing with which to pry her off. His legs were too short, and he couldn't bend his head far enough backwards.
"Not until you admit defeat!" Angel called back, now in a much better mood. "I can stay here all day, and night, if you'd like. In fact, I think I'll take a little nap."
"Too bad for you!" Rumble rolled onto his back, hoping to crush Angel. He had no such luck; she'd been expecting this and crawled out of harm's way.
Then Rumble realized he'd made a mistake. He couldn't get up. He was stuck on his back. He writhed about, lashing with head and tail, but nothing worked. And all the while, the Doomcat sat and watched, amused.
The announcer declared Destroyer Angel the winner. She would move on to the final round.
By the time the last semi-final round had been fought, the sun had set, and the arena was lit up by floodlights. Angel, stepping out into the arena for the last time as the Finals got under way, had no idea who she was up against. All the favorites, including Rumble, had been defeated, so that meant she was probably fighting a wild-card.
A small figure walked out in front of Angel. Well, small compared to Rumble. It was a femme, slightly taller than Destroyer Angel, of about the same build. Angel sensed something was odd. Not amiss, but definitely odd.
The femme was introduced as Ladybird, a ladybug of all things, and she was a Maximal. Few Maximals entered the Tournament of Champions, and it was virtually unheard of to have Maximals- femmes, no less- in the final round. Some were billing it "The Catfight of the Year".
The bell rang. The femmes stared at each other. Angel looked somewhat surprised, but Ladybird's stare was cold and hard.
Angel shook off the surprise and took a step forward. So did Ladybird. They were within arm's reach. The audience was eerily quiet, waiting for someone to do something. It was Ladybird who struck first.
A lightning-fast jab to the left didn't catch Angel off guard, and neither did one to the right. Destroyer Angel easily dodged everything Ladybird threw at her. Then she sent Ladybird flying with a blow to the torso. Ladybird picked herself up and went back to Angel, who just stood there. Something was definitely odd.
Ladybird used her foot to sweep Angel's legs out from under her. Angel jumped in time and kicked Ladybird in the head, once again sending her flying. Again, Ladybird picked herself up- more slowly this time- and tried the same maneuver Sid had used. Angel looked into Ladybird's optics as she dodged the attack, and figured out what was so odd.
Destroyer Angel saw desperation in Ladybird's optics.
"You're fighting for something, aren't you?" Angel asked quietly as Ladybird struggled to get up.
"You wouldn't understand," Ladybird replied, getting to her feet. "They took my family. Told me I had to win the Tournament of Champions of I ever wanted to see them again."
"Who did?"
"I can't tell you."
Angel thought for a moment, and turned to the announcer's booth. "I forfeit," she said clearly.
"They'll go after you," Ladybird warned.
"Let them. They'll learn not to cross the Doomcat." Angel smiled warmly.
"Are you sure?" the announcer asked.
"Of course I'm sure! I forfeit!"
There was a pause, and then "Ladybird is the winner of the Tournament of Champions!"
"Thank you," Ladybird said.
"You forfeited?!?" Spirit exclaimed, eyeing Angel's second-place trophy. She had managed to get to the inner workings of the coliseum and meet up with Angel before any of the other warriors.
"Yeah, didn't you hear?"
"I couldn't hear what you two were saying. The crowd was too loud."
"Oh, well, you see, Ladybird's family was being held captive by someone, and the only way to get them back was to win the tournament."
"Don't you think that sounds a little fishy?"
Angel shrugged. "She was a Maximal. Besides, I have a shiny trophy, and I got to see how good I am. I would've won if I hadn't forfeited."
"Yeah, I could tell."
"Angel!" Cheetor called, running up to the two. "What happened out there? Why'd you forfeit?"
"She had good reason," Spirit replied. "Let's leave it at that."
"Okay..."
"Hey," Angel said. "I don't know about you, but I've been fighting all day, and I'm kinda tired, so I'm going home."
"Have you ever sat in a crowd of loud, obnoxious people all day? It's not exactly a walk in the park," Spirit replied.
"Well, then you should've entered." Angel grinned, picked up her trophy and started walking out of the coliseum. Spirit and Cheetor followed.
"And get my fur dirty? And I might break a nail! Oh, it's so horrible, I can't even imagine!" Spirit pretended to shudder.
As the three walked away, they were unaware they were being watched from the shadows.
End Part 3.