Claws that Catch
Tally Marks drifted down to the canvas, cow-spotted and dainty, holding a microphone to the slender line of his mouth. His back hooves never touched the canvas, the lazy sway of spotted wings enough to hold him aloft.
"Good evening ladies and gentlecolts!" His voice was a cannon boom over the microphone, seeming much too loud for his delicate frame. "And welcome to the thirteenth annual Underground Equestria Games!"
Though a body occupied every seat in the subterranean coliseum, the crowd offered only a dull roar and low applause. The atmosphere was more dark-movie-theater than sunny-sporting-event, and the ring of ponies haloing Tally and the squared circle stared with the semi-nervous eyes of stallions and mares preparing to enjoy a peep show.
Tally hovered in his usual lighter-than-air way as he explained the rules of tonight's matches to any newcomers in the audience. Big Macintosh Apple tuned out his cannon-blast voice, already well versed in the ways of the secret games. He had been here many times. So rather than listen, he craned his neck and scanned the crowd from his second row seat, ogling all the mares he might mount tonight.
He spied Carrot Top from the Bitter Root Plantation not two miles from his own farm, her mane the bright orange of fresh baby carrots and her lips likely as sweet. Two rows down sat Flitter and Cloudchaser, their cheeks blushed and noses powdered. They caught Mac gazing their way and leaned into each other, tittering.
Rose sat directly below him in the front row. The floral scent of her perfume wafted up into his nostrils, and beyond, venturing deeper to tickle his brain with lewd thoughts of throwing the mare to the canvas, pinning her, mounting and rutting and claiming her.
Oh, it was all in good fun, of course. In the dozens of sexually charged matches Mac had enjoyed, few mares had actually been interested in beating him. Most rolled and tumbled about playfully, offering a touch of resistance here and there (mostly for the crowd's amusement) before willfully succumbing to his superior strength and masculine charms. A match was won the moment one fighter brought the other to orgasm, but victory or defeat was hardly the point. Like most fighters, Mac was just looking for a good time.
There were several matches scheduled ahead of his, most of which were intense and exciting, making a rod of his flaccid meat and wringing trickles of pre from its tip. His favorite matches featured mares he knew from around town.
There was Bon-Bon with her bouncy two-toned curls, who scored a win over Thunderlane by sucking him off as she crushed his skull in a reverse headscissor; and her on-again-off-again lover Lyra, who brayed like a beast in the field as Golden Delicious mounted her and rutted her from behind. The best moment of the night came when Pinkie Pie lost her match by pinning Twilight's face under her crotch and riding the alicorn's snout to a shuddering, squirting orgasm. Though she controlled most of the match, and likely could have won with ease, Pinkie chose her own pleasure over some meaningless victory -- a choice Mac often made himself while rolling naked in the ring.
He was good and rigid by the time Lightning Dust and Rainbow Dash squared off in the ring; theirs was the last fight scheduled before his. Neither mare gave an inch from start to finish, and after twelve long-and-short minutes of tumbling, each brought the other to a hard climax, a sudden and much needed release, their mounds bumping and grinding in the kind of leg scissor that didn't asphyxiate. They came within a second of each other, and since it had been too close to call, Tally declared the match a draw.
It wasn't as good a finish as Pinkie humping Twilight's face, but it was close. Mac had wanted to cool the burning between his hinds with a few strokes, as many in the crowd had done, but he fought the urge and the urge lost. He took great pride in his self-control, both in the ring and out. Mac wasn't the best wrestler, but he could outlast most any stallion, and even a few of the mares (who always had an unfair advantage, since it usually took more work to get them off).
His cock engorged and bobbing with his trot, the head repeatedly swinging up to tap his underbelly, Mac made his way to the start position in anticipation of his match. Like every Pit fighter, he didn't know who he was facing tonight; the competitors never found out until Tally made the announcement.
"I hope you're ready fight fans, because it's time for the moment you've all been waiting for, our main event of the evening!" began the ring announcer, wings flapping to hold him aloft. "Introducing first, set to approach from my right, and fighting out of the red corner. This Greco Romane wrestling phenom comes to the ring with a record of 8 victories, 3 defeats, with 5 wins coming by way of missionary. Joining us from the small town of Ponyville, and fighting out of Sweet Apple Ache Gym... fight fans, make some noise for everypony's returning Pit favorite, Big 'Dick' Mackintosh!"
Mares swooned as Big Mac cantered down the runway, flinging more than a few marriage proposals and breathless declarations of undying love his way. It was embarrassing, but he'd gotten used to it during the year and a half he'd been coming here. His erection had started to flag now; it grazed the middle rope as he climbed into the ring. Even only semi-erect, Big "Dick" Macintosh more than lived up to his ring name.
Tally ogled Mac as the apple-bucker settled into his corner, seeming to forget himself for a moment. Mac eyed him back, his red face flushing redder. The swooning mares he'd learned to deal with, but the stallions... he was still working on that.
The sound of receding cheers seemed to rouse Tally from his Mac-induced trance, as if the crowd's volume was burgeoning instead of dimming, the silence a roar in his ears. He flew higher and said, "And last but not least, set to approach from my left, and fighting out of the blue corner. This catch wrestling conundrum comes to the Pit for the very first time, with a clean record of 0 wins, 0 loses, and 0 draws. Joining us tonight from the dizzying heights of Cloudsdale, and fighting out of Crazy Horse Gym right here in sunny Los Pegasus... denizens of the Pit, let's give a warm welcome to Gilda "Grift" Gryphon."
Mac was less nonplussed than the crowd as Gilda swaggered up to the ring, not seeming to care that her entrance was met with silence and cautious stares. Gilda was the first non-pony to ever wrestle at the Pit, and a good many of its denizens appeared weary of her brass-colored beak and claws. She climbed into the ring as if she'd purchased the metal, plastic, vinyl and leather needed to build it with her own money. Mac had stood in this ring many times, staring down mares of all sizes and skill levels, but under the intensity of Gilda's leer he felt like a stranger.
A zebra referee beckoned each fighter to meet where he stood. Once up close, the sinuous lines of Gilda's peaked shoulders arrested Mac; they were iron rondels clad in a wealth of brown feathers. And that faint sheen coating her body from end to end, was that olive oil? She came closer, teasing Mac's nose with her earthy scent.
She looked him up and down, somehow making him feel even more naked than he was. "Well aren't I a lucky bird," she said, smirking. Mac couldn't tell if she was being sarcastic or sincere.
The ref gave his perfunctory "are you ready", and both fighters were. Reared upright now, each raised their forelimbs and lowered their hips, eyes all afire: Gilda's with focus, Mac's with anticipation and lust.
When the bell dinged, both fighters clinched and began pummeling on the inside, each seeking an advantageous hold. From the very start Mac realized his disadvantage. Being an equine, he had to rely on the bends of his knees for snatching and snaring ("hooking", the pony wrestlers called it, after the shape of their bent knee joints). But Gilda had two speedy claws that reached here, groped there, and then caught, seizing the nape of his neck. She stuffed his head down between her thighs, then locked her arms around his middle and flipped him off the canvas and onto her shoulders.
Mac was too shocked to even cry out; he'd never been manhandled so deftly during any match. He scoped the surrounding crowd from his perch of feathered shoulders, his eyes gaping, thighs straddling Gilda's face.
He blinked, found his senses. His sudden paralysis fled, and as Gilda jackknifed to slam him down, Mac scissored her neck and threw his shoulders back, riding the momentum. They cartwheeled together, and when Gilda's back struck the canvas it was the pony who'd come out on top, sitting astride her face.
Mac was hard again, excited by his harrowing flight. He seized Gilda's temples and tried to force his cock into her beak, handing her an easy victory.
She turned her cheek, refusing. "The fuck are you doing?" she said, one eye closed as Mac poked her face.
"What're you doin'?" he countered clumsily. "I'm practically givin' ya the match?" He fumbled around with the head between his legs, trying and failing to hold it still.
"You put that thing in my beak," Gilda growled, "and I'm biting down."
Mac backed off, believing her. His grip slackened, and with a few bucks and a lot of wiggling, Gilda overturned and pinned him. She snagged a foreleg and started to twist it, but a strong shove sent her tumbling from her mount.
She rolled to a stop and sprang up, looking pissed, though Mac couldn't fathom why. Any mare would have jumped at the chance to suck him off and claim her victory. Unless Gilda was like him... fighting for an orgasm and not a win.
"The fuck are you smiling at?" said the gryphon as she edged closer, cautious this time.
When they clinched again, collar to elbow, Gilda's claws didn't give Mac as much trouble. She was strong, easily the strongest wrestler he'd ever rolled with. But Big Mac was Big Mac -- out-muscling him simply was not done.
He felt her up as they pummeled and traded takedowns, his hooves sampling every delight of her supple body. He especially loved the feel of her back, the texture of it, so populated with ridges and swells, with dips and curves and nuances unknown to equine kind. Its muscles burned warm against his barrel as he took her back and sank in a sleeperhold.
Once she'd faded a little in his grip, he slipped his hocks inside her knees and flared her feline legs. Keeping one foreleg looped around her neck, he found her clit with his free hoof and started rubbing. She was helpless for the first few strokes, her body shuddering in betrayal. Then her claws snared Mac's leg at the fetlock, her grip firm.
"Get off me!" she shouted, her voice resonating from the liminal space between fury and ecstasy, the sound as much a moan as it was a curse. She shouted something else, threats with the wavering timbre of pleasured whimpers. And though her tone and starting-to-flush face said one thing, her brassy talons said another, the latter more violent, more menacing.
Growling, she ripped away the leg constricting her neck and tucked it under her arm. Her expert use of wrist control (fetlock control in Mac's case), forced the farmer to abandon his back mount. He scrambled away, or tried to, but the death-grip on his fetlock was unbreakable. Her talons squeezed the joint until it bruised, forming an ugly purple ring on the skin where Gilda held him.
Mac started to panic as Gilda wrestled him into a sitting position, gripping both of his fetlocks now. Kneeling behind him, she drove a knee between his shoulder blades and wrenched his legs toward her chest, sending waves of pain crashing along the tissues that connected muscle to bone.
But pain wasn't the cause of Mac's panic; it was the length of time Gilda held him, yanking his forelegs, stretching muscles and inelastic sinews. Most Pit fighters only used submission holds to tire their opponent, or for a few seconds of fun, because matches could only be decided by orgasm. Pinning and riding was the more effective strategy, but Gilda wrenched as if intent on forcing a submission... Or ripping his legs from their sockets.
"What are you... doing?" he managed, holding back a cry. "This ain't how ya win a match."
"I know," was all Gilda said in response, eyes flickering with malice. She dropped to her butt and lashed her legs around Mac's forelimbs. His hinds kicked as the pain streaking through his shoulders spiked. He flexed his back and arm muscles, trying to power his way out, but Gilda's superior leverage kept him trapped.
"Seriously?" she said, her tone mocking. "Did you really just try that? I swear, you ponies don't know shit about grappling." She squeezed tighter, wrenched harder. "Well lucky for you, I'm in a teaching mood tonight. Stay conscious now, and you might actually learn something."
Gilda dropped to her back, rolled to her left and planted Mac face-down on the mat, her hold still in place. He started to utter some pointless plea for mercy, but screamed instead when his legs popped loose from their sockets. Pain twisted his face as she held her punishing hold. He shot a pleading look at the ref, but he only watched with a twinkle of discovery in his eyes, as though he had just stumbled on some great treasure previously unknown to him.
"Get her off me!" he shouted, the pain mounting, spreading. Still, no help came from the referee. The match technically wasn't over yet, as neither fighter had reached their climax.
"Still awake, huh?" said Gilda, her grip slacking a bit. "Lucky you. I was planning to only give the crash course, but it looks like you're tough enough to handle the whole lesson."
Laughing cruelly, she broke her hold, forced Mac to his back and threaded a foreleg between her legs. With one feline thigh laid across his chest, the other digging in under his chin, she arched her back and lifted her hips off the canvas, slowly... so slowly... taking her time, savoring it.
Salty, tangy juices began pooling between her thighs -- not much, not yet, but enough for Mac to feel the moisture wetting his tricep. The pain flaring in his elbow was almost unbearable, and thanks to his dislocated shoulders, trying to fight back only made it worse. He was a fly to Gilda's spider, trapped in her parlor, and when he pulled against the fibers of her web, they pulled back.
"I bet you just love feeling up your little mare whores in this ring, don't you?" She bent her knees and raised her hips to near their zenith, holding his joint right at its breaking point. "Well go on, big boy, feel me up." He didn't budge. "Do it, or I'm ripping this leg off and taking it home with me tonight."
Moving his free hoof to touch Gilda's leg was pure agony. His shoulder throbbed as he just barely grazed the knee bent around his neck; any more and the tears gathering behind his eyes would have flowed free.
"I said feel me up," Gilda growled, the rumble in her throat distinctly more lion than eagle. "What's wrong? You weren't shy about touching me before."
To Mac's surprise, the tears didn't pour out as he touched the thigh that laid across his neck like the trunk of a fallen tree. It was thick, ribbed with muscles, but still held an effeminate curve. Caressing it would have been bliss, had Mac still been capable of feeling pleasure.
"That's it," Gilda cooed, her juices flowing faster. "Touch me right there."
Her muscles relaxed, and for one cruel moment she sighed with pleasure and let Mac believe his suffering had ended. In the following instant, her stomach flexed hard against his snared foreleg, her thighs against his neck and chest, and her hips leapt up to their apex. Mac's elbow gave with the audible pop-snap-crunch of torque and leverage working in tandem to splinter bones. Ligaments snapped like rubberbands stretched too far, and bone fragments scraped together, jagged edges on jagged edges.
Mac screamed. Darkness framed the edges of his vision, and he kicked in a fit of reflexive spasms, but still Gilda held on. She tucked his fetlock under her arm, crossed her ankles and rolled face down to increase her leverage. Then her talons twined into a brass ball and her back arched, shredding tendons and breaking smaller bones as her chest came off the canvas. A moan flitted from her lips, a bellow from Mac's. Finally, just to be thorough, she sat up on the back of his head, extended his leg and gave his fetlock a sharp twist, snapping it as well.
Blackness spilled in from the edges to wash over everything. Mac plunged. He heard a cruel laugh from miles away, and a rumbling noise that might have been a few dozen ponies wailing from a depth of thirty leagues. His nap was peaceful, but far too short, and he woke to the sting of parasprites gnawing on his hind leg.
"Lesson two," Gilda laughed, smiling as if happy to see him again. "Begging for mercy. It rarely helps, but if I were you I'd give it a shot."
Mac bellowed from new hurts. He was laying on his side now, his hind leg caught in a stifle-bar. His leg was pulled straight across her chest, his stifle braced against her pelvis. She locked her arms around his back fetlock and drove her hips into his stifle joint, prompting him to tap frantically on her hip. She ignored his tap out, and by this point he knew she would, but the pain racking his body had made him delirious.
"I give! You win, Gilda! Just please... please..."
"Please what?" She arched her back for better leverage, hyper-extending his stifle joint.
"Please..."
And then he screamed again, screamed until his lungs gave out, his stifle shattering like a glass paperweight, his hind leg bending all wrong, all wrong. It bent the right way again when Gilda transitioned to a calf slicer hold, her shin lodged in the bend of his stifle as she wrenched Mac's hoof back toward his rear. The hold lived up to its name and then some, rending muscles in both his calf and his hamstring.
A groan lulled from his throat, as weak and limp as his broken limbs. He tried to crawl away on his good foreleg, but a keylock hold made short work of that ambition, killing his other elbow and then wrenching a few seconds more for good measure. His final hind leg she destroyed nice and slow, transitioning from an ankle lock to a heel hook to a hold Mac had never seen before. Then she coiled her arms around his middle and started to haul him up, but stopped and set him back down.
"My bad, big boy," she said. "There's still one limb we haven't mangled yet." Her smile was predatory and joyless, the curve strange and natural. It shouldn't be able to grin, Mac thought, his consciousness wavering. That beak... no lips... shouldn't be able to grin...
Laying prone on his back, Mac stared in helpless horror as Gilda kicked his hinds open and knelt to nudge his cock with her beak. He was as flaccid as the day he was born, but that changed little by little as the griffin nosed and kneaded and licked his cock and balls.
His member betrayed him; it stood up straight and tall like a private school colt eager to please his teacher. He was awake enough to enjoy the warm hug of Gilda's sex as she took him between her thighs, her legs folded and straddling his waist. There was something like pleasure washing over his shaft, making it shudder and spit pre, but the feeling was faint. The relief he experienced was a single ice cube propped in a pot of boiling water, hardly there to begin with and already melting away.
Gilda dug her claws into his chest as she rode him, the pain a single pinprick compared to the jagged glass shards lodged between the fissures of his broken bones. His limbs were fleshy, tubular trash bags filled with scraps of loose debris, ready to be walked to the curb. Still, this was easily the best part of this horrible night, if only because, for once, Gilda didn't seem utterly terrifying. Her eyes were screwed shut with ecstasy, her beak parted ever so slightly, and the dollop of flush reddening her face was almost cute.
Mac started to settle down as he waited for the end, but no, even this peace she denied him. She took a strong breath mid-stride before clenching her stomach and flexing her inner walls -- hard. Her warm hug became a searing vice grip, and muscles Mac didn't realize she had crushed his shaft, throttling the neck of his second head.
Beyond screaming now, he wagged his head like a feverish colt, a hundred pathetic bleats and bays tumbling from his pain-gnarled mouth. They were so low he couldn't even hear them over Gilda's moans or the crowd's cheers.
The crowd was perhaps the worst part of all. Instead of one of them leaping to his rescue, they sat and cheered and ogled and masturbated, utterly swayed by Gilda's dominant performance. Mac shut his eyes and tried to block out their hoots and jeers, too humiliated to face them.
Gilda's rocking grew harder and faster, her moans louder, her grip tighter... tighter... tight... er...
Her orgasm was a wet nightmare of squirting juices and shuddering muscles. Mac felt like his dick was underground during an earthquake. As her pussy gave one final clench, Gilda's eyes rolled back with ecstasy, and Mac's did the same, but for a different reason entirely.
Mac had just come himself when the ref finally stepped in to stop the routing. He said something about Mac winning the match, having come a few seconds after Gilda had -- and then he pitched backwards, his jaw the victim of a brutal backhand.
"Now where were we?" said Gilda, looking away from the ko'ed ref and back to Mac.
He was a rag doll pressed to her chest, helpless against the brawny arms that hoisted him off the canvas. With her bearhug cinched in tight, she widened her stance, bent her knees, lowered her hips.
Mac felt a warm breath plaster his chest fur. Under different circumstances it might have been pleasant, like the sigh of a lover waking up sprawled across his body. He pictured what Gilda would be like as that lover... and then the crushing started.
He couldn't fight back with his limbs broken, couldn't scream with his lungs empty, couldn't do anything but hang there and let Gilda compress his ribcage into a fine powder. Her wings flared and stiffened, and an intricate arrangement of ridges and diamond shapes surged along her back, writhing from the strain of her squeezing.
Mac hardly felt anything before the first few ribs splintered -- and then he felt everything at once. New agony jump-started his shot nerves as his ribcage imploded, and his spine snapped and his viscera turned to pulp and mulch. Tears poured down his face, acting as the last physical illustration of his agony. And when he finally passed out, he wasn't taken by darkness, but a retina-searing flash of white.
He was still seeing white when he awoke hours later (or perhaps days), only this white was tangible and cool and not so bright. He was resting in a hospital bed, almost fully encased in plaster and surrounded by peeping monitors. He felt tender. Sensitive.
He craned his neck to look around, discovering that such an effort was hardly worth the pain. Still, as torturous as his injuries were, his heart fluttered when he saw the pile of gift baskets and get-well-soon cards stacked on a table near his bed. One card was standing upright, leaning against a basket.
Reaching for it was a near-fatal endeavor. When he managed to get the thing open, his eyes scanned the words, and neither his heart nor his head knew what to make of it.
"FINAL LESSON," it said "RECOVERY."
It was signed: With love,
Gilda
