Round Two: Perverts'r'Klaus
Strop appeared in the middle of his room, in the abandoned clocktower of Armor castle and took a moment to stretch. It was a strange place to call home but having furnished it himself, it wasn't too much of a stretch anymore. He was about to start rummaging for his carrots when a rather annoyed Cenere appeared through the trapdoor. Even a ninja mask couldn't hide Strop's obvious surprise.
"Oh hi there, Cen, glad you could make it."
Cenere didn't speak, but sniffed. "Does something smell funny to you?"
Strop also sniffed, but almost didn't have to. There was definitely a distinct odour in the air. Not to mention that Strop's closet door was open (he always closed it), and so too was the door to-
Strop bolted into the ensuite latrine, which, in the style of medieval castles, consisted of a hole in the floor that emptied directly into whatever was below it. Which, in this case, was the Armor Moat. But one should not dwell on that fact... More importantly, somebody was squatting over Strop's latrine. A large brown furry somebody, who, on several occasions before, had broken into Strop's room, but this-
"KLAAUUUUUUSSSSSS!!!" Strop roared. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY TOILET."
As if to answer, Klaus the bear looked up at Strop and grinned, and dropped another load. Plop.
Strop, in a display rare to a ninja horse of his calmness, freaked out. "THIS TAKES THE CAKE! YOU'RE DESECRATING MY INNER SANCTUM!!!" Strop held up his hand and in it appeared his feared weapon of moderator bandom- Thor. Perhaps it had something to do with a phrase he was so fond of saying- that the key to a man's health were truly his bowels.
Just then, Cenere held up a hand. "Hang on a minute." His eyes wandered downwards, downwards further still until they were at Klaus' ankles. "Look."
Strop looked. There appeared to be a thin band of pink stretching between them. Then the penny dropped.
"KLAUUSSSSSSSSS ARE YOU WEARING MY PANTIES!?!?!?!?!?"
Shamelessly, Klaus flashed Strop a grin and snapped him two thumbs up. "A hundred percent cotton! Real nice."
Cenere looked slightly ill. Strop boggled, too furious to even be embarrassed about keeping panties. "NOOOOOOOOOOO THOSE ARE MY FAVOURITE. TAKE THEM OFF, YOU'LL STRETCH THEM!"
Still straddling the latrine, Klaus looked down, "Oh, I think it's a little too late for that."
It was right about this moment that Cenere knew that God truly had forsaken him, for in the little blessing, of not having to run, that had been bestowed upon him minutes earlier, he was now stuck in an impending brawl between a rabidly angry cross-dressing ninja horse with caffeine for blood, and an eight-foot tall bear wearing said ninja's favorite (now ruined) panties. Inside a crowded abandoned clock-tower three hundred feet high.
Things could only get worse from here.
---
Round 3: S***ing Bricks
Strop didn't even bother to wait for Cenere to pass him a ball. Instead, he snatched the whole bag from Cenere and pegged the lot at Klaus.
"OH SNAP" Klaus yelped and danced to the side as quick as his bulk and (Strop's cotten panties) would let him. The bag glanced off his shoulder, then split open along the seam Cenere had stitched the previous day. Several dozen Ball Revamped balls burst out, ricocheting between the walls, enveloping Cen, Klaus and Strop in a technicolour bubble pit. Klaus tried to waddle away, but being unable to even see his feet, he did not see them stepping onto a sea of balls, causing him to lose his footing.
Klaus flailed and fell back, legs kicking. Balls and residue fecal matter sprayed through the door of the latrine, along with Strop and Cenere. Klaus surfed the technicolour wave involuntarily, until he spilled in a heap at Strop's hooves. With the dawning sunlight spilling through the semi-circular window behind him, Klaus swore that from this angle, Strop looked like he was glowing. With incandescent rage. Furthermore, Strop was wielding something long, shiny and very sharp. That wasn't his banhammer, no. It was a katana.
"This isn't grounds for banning, Klaus." Strop said in a dangerously calm voice. "This is grounds for slicing off your balls." And with that, Strop raised his sword and with a shrill whinny, swung it downwards.
"YOW, THAT'S NOT MY BALLS!" Klaus did his trademark lightning sidestep, ordinarily used to cover up after he fell flat on his face, but in this case, it saved his balls. Or rather, his head, because the katana flashed through the space it had occupied a millisecond earlier and gouged a gully deep in the wooden floor. With a grunt, Strop jerked it out and swung the katana back, murderous intent in his eyes.
"On second thought, I really like my balls where they are, thanks," Klaus managed before scrambling up the bookshelf just in time to avoid Strop's second swing, this time aimed directly at his crown jewels. However, even fully laden, Klaus was at least half as heavy as the shelf again, so with a comical creak, it teetered back and fell with a resounding crash on top of Klaus, books, penicorn plush toy, horsey figures and all. The shelf broke, sending clouds of sawdust and wood splinters up that parted to reveal a cowering Cenere in the corner, muttering a very fast prayer.
"Third time's the charm," Strop cackled, kicking pieces of shelf off the dazed bear, before raising the hilt of the sword high, tip pointed downwards, and plunging the blade at Klaus' crotch.
Ridiculously enough, the blade snapped in half with a metallic ping. Strop's eyes bulged out. Klaus regained his senses, and grinned. "Can't be Klaus without balls of steel, amirite?"
Strop discarded the broken katana and lunged for Klaus, but he sidestepped again, reappearing on Strop's bed. "You are so dead," Strop gritted before bending down and hurling everything in his reach at Klaus. Stryer's Textbook of Biochemistry 5th Edition mercifully whisked past Klaus' ears but the Kandell & Schwartz Principles of Neural Science 4th Edition nailed Klaus on the nose. Klaus teetered backwards, his hindpaw catching on the windowsill, but he caught himself just in time to avoid a stack of giant ringbinder folders (one for each semester), full to the brim with notes. As Klaus weaved and ducked, other books, box sets of DVDs, folders, the horsey figures and even the penicorn plush toy shot out the window of the tower.
Klaus wiped his brow. With the exception of the neurology book, somehow he had managed to dodge most of the really heavy stuff, so naturally he was feeling a little pleased with himself. Just then, something sharp whizzed over his head, slicing off the tufts of his headfur. He yelped and rolled off the bed, smashing into the desk as his legs got tangled in his panties, but he kept on rolling anyway, a string of shuriken lodging into the wall just behind him. Then he lunged for the closet and slammed the door shut just as several darts and knives slammed into it.
Breathing heavily, Klaus couldn't help but sniff. "Are those fresh panti-" was as far as he got before the door was suddenly ripped off its hinges. Without even pausing to contemplate that his "non-regular" posters previously pasted to the inside of the closet door were now being exposed to the world, Strop swung the door at Klaus. It shattered into splinters and sent Klaus through the side of the closet, where he bounced over several stray balls and caromed headfirst into the stone wall. While Klaus wasted valuable moments swatting at the birds tweeting around his head, Strop picked up his oriental weapons rack in its entirety, so that when Klaus finally faced him, he had him well and truly cornered.
"Dodge this", Strop said, before hurling the entire rack at Klaus. Ninjato, sai, Shaolin halberds and tasseled spears all simultaeneously launched from the rack as it flew towards Klaus, who did the only thing he could do: freeze.
All the weapons lodged into the wall around Klaus, tracing out a bear shape in the wall. The rack bounced off Klaus' ample abdomen and clattered to the floor.
"OH FFS HOW LUCKY CAN YOU GET!?" Strop yelled. Klaus extricated himself from the wall as fast as he could, but was hampered by the panties which were still around his legs. He looked around only to be smashed for a homerun by Strop's workdesk. This time, he saw stars as he collapsed onto a pile of fresh panties. He tried to get up, but the scent of the panties overwhelmed him, and he went limp.
Breathing heavily, Strop strode over to Klaus. Once again he held out his arm and Thor poofed into it. He raised it high.
"You'll thank me for this later," Strop said, as Thor began to glow with the charge of its banpower.
"Strop, no!" With an uncharacteristic burst of speed, Cenere shot from the corner towards Strop, but it was too late. Strop was already swinging downwards with all his might. Cenere collided with his shoulder, knocking him off course.
"Wha-" was the last thing anybody heard before the head of Thor plowed through the floor of the clock tower. The supporting struts that held the clocktower together splintered into smithereens, and the very stones of the tower shook and cracked with the shockwave, all the way through the three hundred feet of tower and into the base of Armor Castle. Horribly, inexorably, the tower fell apart, the rumbling building until it was deafening and the room itself split into several pieces.
"OH SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-" everybody collectively yelled as the clocktower, Strop's private room, disintegrated and plunged into Armor Castle, blowing through the ballroom, the kitchen, and finally the dungeons, destroying everything along its way. Then the walls of Armor Castle itself, the home of the creators of the land of Armor Games, caved inwards and fell with a final crunch.
A stony silence pervaded the ruins that was Armor Castle. Surely of all the architectural calamities ArmorGames could suffer, this was one of the worst. Now when the users of ArmorGames looked up, it seemed no longer would they envisage the silhouette of the castle hidden by fog, kept distant by the secret forest that surrounded it. Not even the developer's pavillion had escaped the destruction, for it lay completely flattened under a giant cornerstone.
Just then, a bandaged hand broke through the top of the giant rubble heap. Strop hauled himself out, dusting himself off before standing and looking all around. He slapped his forehead.
"Aw man, I knew it. I think I'll go tender my resignation now."
"Naw, surely it's not that bad?" The voice was muffled by several layers of brick, so Strop stooped down, digging through the wreck before hauling Cenere out. Cenere glanced around, before adjusting his glasses. "Actually, it really is that bad."
Strop sighed. "Seriously, how am I going to explain this to the administration?"
Cenere was about to remind Strop that he wasn't thinking about any of that when he was off wrecking just about every other venue in ArmorCity, but decided now was possibly not the best time to do so.
"Besides, why did you deflect my shot? Not that it matters..."
"Well, it's just that he didn't actually break any of the rules of the city, so banning him would have been inappropriate..."
Oblivious to everything, Klaus stretched as he climbed out of the hole Strop had dug. "Man, that was the most awesome dump ever."
A pair of hands wrapped themselves around his neck and lifted him up. Klaus gagged, then his eyes bulged as his neck started cracking from the pressure.
"This is your fault, you little s***," Strop snarled. "So here's how you make it up to us- you're going to rebuild ArmorCastle. In fact, you're going to fix everything that got wrecked in the course of this trial, starting with the Imaginarium. And it had better be picture perfect, or I'm going to shove the head of Thor up your rear end so hard you're going to think you were reamed by a draught horse. Got that?"
At this point, Klaus was oxygen starved, so he was hardly equipped to consider the intricacies of Strop's very plausible threat, so he just squeaked "Yes."
Strop let Klaus go, and Klaus collapsed in a heap, gasping. With that, Strop suddenly looked a whole lot less angry. In fact, he just looked tired.
"Right, well, I think that's a wrap. Thanks for the help, Cen, you can take a break until the start of the next round."
Cen sighed with relief. It was still baking hot and the suit (and his body) had suffered far more abuse than he imagined possible in the space of a mere week. Now he could go home and soak his feet again, and maybe even study for his impending exams. Just...
"Strop, where are you going to sleep now?"
"Oh," Strop waved dismissively. "I'll figure something out." Cenere figured there was nothing more to be said, so he nodded a brief, "See you later," then walked across the drawbridge- the only surviving piece of ArmorCastle, and through the gates of the Armor Court of Great Justice, and out of sight.
Strop similarly began walking away aimlessly, but turned back to the recovering Klaus. "By the way, Klaus?"
"What?"
"You better replace my panties too."
---
Yeah, I have to say that's dangerously close to "oh God that's a ban" material.
