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| \r\n\t\t\t \r\n\t\t\t\t \r\n\t\t\t![Daily Double 7+26 #1: Slammu/Tony the Tiger [REMASTERED] by StarRinger](https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/medium/2241/2241552_StarRinger_7_26_1_slammu_tony.jpg "Daily Double 7+26 #1: Slammu/Tony the Tiger [REMASTERED] by StarRinger") \r\n\t\t\t |
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Backstory:
There are moments when the flow of time grinds to a halt. All at once sensations become more intense, perceptions twist and grow skewed. Sounds fade until muted and then only thing that keeps the rhythm is the beating of one's heart. Ah, but the colors... the scents and tastes take on a vibrancy, which lingers even as time begins again to flow. They are what is imprinted on the soul. Past and present collide and long buried scenes rush back unbidden.
Tony experienced such a phenomenon when he saw a face from his past, before the burning wreckage of the plane that had crashed on his baseball field. He felt cold, even though the heat from the plane touched his bare fur, but his voice was steady.
“You.”
“Brother-in-Law! Fancy meeting you here,” Tai Lung said dryly, mockingly, “and so well attired!” Neither gave any mind to the panther crawling away across the grass, or the naked shark who ran to his aid. “Come give us a hug,” he finished with a derisive snarl, but Tony had already launched himself forward and closed the distance rapidly. Immediately they began, parrying and dodging one another’s attacks- punches, jabs, elbows, and kicks.
“What, no drink for your wife's brother? And where's my nephew? I can’t wait to catch up with him!” He taunted, dodged, and blocked until a hard right to the jaw rocked the assassin's brain against the walls of his cranium, stunning him for the briefest of moments. Blood and a molar hit the ground when he spit.
The taunts stopped as Tai Lung began fighting in earnest, gouging Tony's chest and reddening his eye, but after that, Tony didn’t give him any more openings. It became clear that, whether it was because Tai Lung had gotten rusty in prison, or that Tony had gotten that much better since they last met, Tony had caught up to Tai Lung.
But while Tai Lung fought for revenge for his imprisonment, Tony was fighting for someone else. And that gave him the edge.
In the distance, the disheveled panther and bewildered, naked shark watched on in abject fascination. Limbs blurred in the firelight, and suddenly Tony caught Tai Lung in a hold, and his claws were against Tai Lung’s throat. Nothing was said, but they both knew.
“Go ahead…” Tai Lung snarled, grinning. “Do It…”
Kill him, Tony’s instincts screamed at him. Avenge her.
“...then you'll never know…”
After a moment that seemed to take hours, Tony suddenly flung Tai Lung forward. The snow leopard only had time to turn before a vicious roundhouse kick from Tony connected with the side of his face. Spittle and blood flew from his mouth as he spun. His prisoner’s uniform fell and caught around his ankles, tripping him up, and sent him face-first into the ground. He groaned– thoroughly dazed, but alive.
Tony’s shoulders shook, his breathing ragged. Then something on the ground caught his eye. A phone had fallen from Tai Lung’s pocket as he’d fallen. Tony grabbed it, and began to dial before he situated himself on Tai Lung’s back when he began to stir.
He didn’t notice at the time that the phone had the same corporate logo that was blackening and burning some yards away in the flaming wreckage.
---
Exile was tired. His new position demanded much more of him, and while protecting the citizenry fulfilled his sense of justice, he couldn’t deny the longing for a quiet moment. News of a plane crash on the south side was just another thing to be stressed over–several emergency squads were already racing to the scene.
His phone began to ring. Hopefully not another source of stress. He tapped his dashboard to answer the call over the hands-free.
“Zdravstvujte. You are talking to Commissioner Mikhailovich, Da? Who this is?” Exile heard nothing at first, then irregular, heavy breathing.
“Zdravstvujte…?!” He asked again, annoyed.
“Hey Moroz. It's me.”
Exile’s breath caught in his throat.
“I’ve got some trash for you at the ballpark.”
Exile rarely saw or heard Tony angry. Hearing that tone in his partner's voice set him on edge.
“I am beink on way Frosty Tiger, please–”
“No no, don't rush,” Tony cut in, his tone unchanged, “I’ve got a lesson to teach him, first.”
That scared the blue husky even more. The new Commissioner of Police slammed the accelerator pedal hard and the sirens echoed in the distance.
---
Khan grimaced; an expression he would have suppressed, were he anywhere else. It felt like a personal injury that Anthony was using the cellular Khan had provided Tai Lung to call in his legavyye.
“I knew it!!!” His kusuma rakta–who was the one who had insisted on pet names, Khan would point out–snapped, at the same time he snapped the riding crop across Khan’s back. “Nothing gives you that face but bad business! You do have a bluetooth in your ear! Slattern!” Several more whips accompanied the near-racial-slur.
“I never claimed otherwise, my kusuma rakta,” Khan replied with unnaturally complete composure. When he had to suppress genuine anger, he did tend to suppress everything else as well.
“We agreed, Khan!” Snap! “No business during a scene!” Snap! “Not until one of us ends it, Khan!”
So much for pet names.
“I would argue, my dear kusuma rakta,” one of them had to retain decorum, “that I ended the scene when I made ‘that face’. And,” Snap! But he continued, “You have a bluetooth and your implant.”
“Beside the point!” His kusuma flung the crop across the room and knocked a bottle of good scotch off the end table. Khan only scowled for effect; his kusuma liked when he thought Khan was fretting over waste. “I’m observing Mufasa in distress! For us! You know what his pain does for me! And how else am I supposed to get worked up enough to suit your highly demanding standards?!” He took his hand to his forehead in mock distress so quickly it slapped.
“By accusing me of breaking our rules, apparently,” Khan muttered dryly, “but I’ll have you know that until that moment, I was also engaging in schadenfreude. Until the situation went sour.”
His kusuma’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, but after a moment, they widened.
“That was today?” Khan didn’t doubt he had genuinely forgotten. Khan had trouble keeping up with his own plots unaided, let alone his kusuma’s.
“Indeed. But it seems my gambit has failed.”
“Oh, no,” His kusuma’s face fell, and suddenly he had Khan’s face buried against his chest as he stroked the tiger’s neck. “They both lived, didn’t they.”
“I was playing the odds that at least one of them would perish, but alas,” Khan nuzzled into his kusuma’s mane, “Tai Lung has obviously gotten out of practice in his incarceration, and Anthony’s killer instinct has clearly been dulled by fucking a lawman.”
“Oh, my poor hebenon...And that damned lawman sniffed out your only remaining man in the department only last week,” his kusuma tisked and shook his head. Khan didn’t bother to point out that he himself hadn’t said anything about his mole in the Battle Creek PD being exposed, the same way his kusuma had said nothing when Khan had revealed he knew about his kusuma’s implant. Another step in their peculiar dance, as it were.
“I’m afraid I’m not much in the mood anymore,” Khan sighed, but his kusuma was already unlocking the frame Khan was attached to.
“Of course, of course, my hebenon, no point in being punished when you feel you actually deserve it in the least,” his kusuma muttered, though his tone was sincere. “Shall I send for a servant?”
“No no,” Khan replied as he stood and stretched out his sore limbs, “two of my biggest problems yet draw breath.” His kusuma was already up against him, tracing clawtips along Khan’s stripes, and Khan held him close. “Let us together toy with something...that will put up a fight.”
His kusuma rakta chuckled playfully.
-----
Commentary:
Here it is. This is where I stalled.
I had some pretty good momentum going with these remasters. But then I hit this one and just...stopped.
I don’t know why, exactly, and I wish I hadn’t, but I did. I keep hitting slumps that drag on and on until I wonder if I’m an artist at all, anymore.
Maybe that’s the problem? The longer I go without creating something, the more significant and heavy the next thing I do feels. Which I think ties into my problem where I don’t really sketch anymore. Everything I work on has to be finished and polished.
I think that’s what happened here- there was so much I just had to fix. This wasn’t my “early” days anymore, the mistakes were less forgivable and harder to ignore. But the effort of those fixes became intimidating, like, I dunno, a battle-frenzied kung fu snow leopard or something.
Anyway, here’s a significant plot point in the overarching story I clumsily built up to and clumsily executed.
giantheadsgiantheadsgiantheadsgiantheadsgiantheadsgianthead
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