Some time later, Crow had finished deckbuilding...and a certain other ritual of preparation. At some point along the way Anput being there would've leaked strategies to at the very least Jackal, and so she returned to her supervisor.
Sutta reclined in the announcer box seating, so VIP he could do commentary if he felt like it. Not that he needed to, Wolf was right there doing the bulk of color while some generic man did play-by-play. Wolf's tournaments were scheduled for some nebulous time later, so she could build publicity and hype in the meantime. She had reduced her wolf-mask to a mere accessory hairpiece and adjusted its grey styling to a red-streaked white that could pass as deference to Inari kami. Sutta wasn't exactly sure what the entente was with regionally conceptuated divine spirits as distinct from gods, beyond the Turner of Wheels' firmly loose "I'll figure it out later, naps are important, they'll sleep until somebody bothers". Dreaming, death, convolutions of mitama... Certainly whatever celebrity idea Wolf was garbed in was charismatic and keeping Jackal's coterie happy, so, good for her. Sutta was pretty sure the generic announcer was one of Wolf's subordinate cultists or maybe Jackal's, but now was probably a distracting time to ask or scry.
Crow stood across from Jackal and his attendant Anput on the gym-like field of the stadium arena. It had been refloored with some artificial turf expendable and conducive to environment simulation. A smattering of props and stage-patches made it unclear whether the intended context was indoors, outdoors, or they were specifically fighting in some upscaled mess of patios and pavilions. Crow wore his usual. Jackal wore a grey business suit, green tie, and his mask in a full face-covering that might've just been an animal head (without checking Sutta wasn't sure if the Turner of Wheels still did the furry thing). Anput's suit was slightly redder, and she carried a waiter's cloth: perhaps some affectation of being casino staff. Possibly they hadn't chosen to change or clean up some previous event? Weirdly unprofessional if so, but Sutta had barely paid attention to the true bracket. Perhaps they were trying to encourage a sense of 'duel at any place for any reason and damn the collateral damage'.
Crow tilted his head and tapped above the ear with the base of his palm, as if trying to get out some stubborn water. In a trickle-glow of cyan light and swirling black crow feathers, an even more generic-looking young man in onmyoji costume manifested. The summon bowed hastily and took his place behind Crow, roughly correspondent to Anput's distance from Jackal.
The play-by-play commentator rattled off "The Crow challenges The Jackal! Both participants have chosen to temporarily modeswap from magi to medium for this duel. The Crow has summoned an Onmyoji-type facet to run his cards, while The Jackal will be backed by everybody's favorite flunky, Anput Nephthys!"
Anput flipped off the nearest camera drone and by extension the announcer. This camera feed was probably for the cult's richly insider group, given they weren't even bothering with fake names. Or anything approaching professionality, not that politeness would survive proximity to Crow.
Undeterred, Wolf jumped in with a "This will be an exhibition match for conflict!" and kept expositing. "No overt wager, but sexual consent given for antics along the way. Fighting will be to medium tapping out, or magi exploitation sufficient to force subordinate medium. We'd say dominance display but you guys have a history of keeping on keeping on. Energy depletion vulnerabilities are on you guys. Anti-lethality barriers will prevent anything dangerous from sticking."
To this, Crow gave a thumbs up and Jackal a dismissive shrug. The onmyoji vaguely adjusted his own crotch area and then Crow's for some reason. Sutta supposed everything was getting used to the Turner's latest entertainment preference, or that fluffing might actually be a show of intentional vulnerability here. Anput merely laughed in some way that probably set off dominatrix vibes but Sutta's preliminary course on the concept of anime suggested was more ojou-sama. Usually it was the master and not the servant who did that, though Sutta supposed it was a role reversal day or something.
"All preliminaries clear!" Wolf concluded, as countdown symbols appeared on various displays. "Three, two, one...go fuck yourselves!"
The Distortion Wars iconography blared with stock sound effects as the cards recognized a practice battle. An orchestral hum like a tuning call swelled, then a vague bell-like burst coincided with the initiating command.
"Anput." Jackal ordered, glancing to his attendant. "Start the strategy."
"You know what to do, Onmyoji I haven't named yet!" Crow called out excitedly, reaching back and ruffling his magi's hair as the poor summon began sifting through a handful of levitated cards. From what he was paying attention to, Sutta recognized a few key parts. Core roster of Shifts with extra utilities, a few 'what do I do' and 'get to the point' utility Stratagems, enough Strikes for the magi to provide fire support (but Crow favored cross-role utility Strikes), Snares to counterplay the most problematic bits... and a few fresh-minted Echoes from Sutta test-driving his other deck parts.
Anput leisurely plucked a card from some form of arm-brace, previously concealed by her waiter's cloth. It flickered with the light of activation.
"Archaic Gigantes!" the play-by-play announcer read off, in exact tune with Sutta's ability analyzing the same (with a second thread specifying the announcer was using a Transformation Analysis Stratagem to get the basic card data). "Variable size increase and inherent magic adjustment!"
"Fee," Jackal said, wolfish maw widening into a grin as he became larger with each step forward,
"Fi," clothes straining or passing away into stormcloud,
"Fo," a degree of canidae trait expressing furriness in the way that oni and rakshasa might,
"Fum!" four arms of stormcloud-thunderlight-marble to back the fleshly two, like an asura or greater forms of Sutta himself.
"Behold food, good to eat, sufficient for my hunger!" Jackal boomed. It was unclear whether he intended to vore or that was just traditional. How tall he stood at the apex of transformation seemed to fluctuate, simultaneously a giant and fifty-feet and arena-tall and dwarfing the arena and impossibly measureless to man and yet 'about the height he already was, but standing up a bit straighter'. This contradiction phased nobody, even the onmyoji being passingly familiar with this trait of even lesser gigantes.
"Fum fi fo fee," Crow mused as his onmyoji played a card, "I'll make that difficult for you. Not the first time I've taken Paul Bunyan dick or dodged Anput's big stride."
"Forge Fairy Trickster!" the announcer echoed Sutta's ability, "Short king physique, fire resistance, winged and wingless flight, crafting specialty, inherent magic adjustment, and a bunch of secondary stuff we'll leave for later!"
Crow seemed to scrunch down even as he jumped up, shortening and readjusting some exact thickness as he went from lanky to shortstack. Cyan-green wings of raggedy marsh-fire blossomed from his back in butterflyish configuration. Sticking his tongue out, Crow dismissed his clothes save an amulet. His dick shrank down to something of a chode, and a bit of stubble grew in on his face. Something leafy and colorful like a flower crown manifested in Crow's hair, nestled gently above the visor of his naming-mask. Not exactly cherubic, at best hauflin and probably a hint of stoner.
"Don't they ever tell you it's not size, but how you use it?" Crow teased, flaunting his diminished package. "C'mon, I'm lowering all these defenses just for you. Have a snack."
An apple manifested in Crow's hand, and he threw it vaguely in Jackal's direction where it accelerated like a bullet. One of Jackal's wreathing stormclouds moved to parry it, exploding in a burst of lightning and applesauce that took more effort to block than Jackal would've liked.
"Evasive Pattern, Paper Rider." the play-by-play rattled off as the onmyouji cast a Stratagem for some form of origami flying carpet to ease battlefield movement. Sutta's ability had more room for secondary statistical specifying, as the support casts began coming in. "Personal Shield Generator."
A rose-like scifi blossom in cyan plopped down on the carpet and emitted some form of bubble-like protection around it and the rider when the onmyoji grabbed it and stuck it to his shirt. Sutta supposed that Crow was putting a lot of energy towards that magi exploitation in case of physical binding rather than magic tricks, but where exactly in either Jackal or Anput's tactics that was expected he didn't really get. Must be a psychological play.
Anput cast more conservatively, but she did cast. "Status Snare." the announcer read on the resulting card, managing to append "Absorbs next negative status effect inflicted on those protected. Targeting Anput and Jackal by the look of it." Sutta suspected she was going to just tack on a few utilities and let physical power do the rest: Jackal might like having certain magics but he did not need them here. Crow suspected most of his cards were for fiduciary implications or affectation of wealth, anyway.
"Complex suite Shifts are pretty versatile," Wolf commented as card casts slowed down. Crow began flying around at decent speeds, chucking more accelerating-apples at Jackal to probe his swatting blows with storm-arms. Both Anput and the onmyoji hung back from the battling mediums-at-the-moment. "They get some card-equivalent prefabricated actions, but their real benefits are in magical improvisation. Transformations that include broad skillsets can leverage them in several ways. Even if they don't use all the options available, just the threat can-"
Crow managed to zig-zag past a stormcloud and deck a particularly large momentary-upscale of Jackal in the face, planting a kiss on the cheek to add insult to injury.
"Direct hit!" the play-by-play announced.
"Yeah, speed is how you get offense where it needs to be." Wolf agreed. "Picking up where I left off, threats don't always come from the expected vectors. But you still have to cover your bases with something, or you're asking for a cheap little curse to take you out or down a peg."
"Backup plan." Jackal rumbled and grumbled, Anput promptly reaching for another Shift.
"Pack of Dogs, Jackal variant." the play-by-play read off. "As you can see, Jackal is expanding his awareness to run a secondary squad of bodies."
Sutta analyzed the per-body semi-random difference in focuses as jackals dripped down from the stormclouds, running down Jackal's body and leaping off his legs. Jackals weren't traditionally as pack huntery as wolves, and so they tended to form up in pairs. Sutta was able to view Jackal's threads of will parallelizing, and their intent to vaguely corner where the onmyoji could flee then brute-force the bubbleshield down. And probably fuck the guy just to assert dominance, it was only aesthetically bestiality if you were the beast and also an intelligent human piloting a distributed swarm. As much as the onmyoji was primarily a concept lensed through an aspect of Crow, Crow was comically DTF and probably did not even care...
"Pass me a triplicate!" Crow shouted unnecessarily. One of the advantages of summoning contracts was the ability to issue orders over them, and this wasn't even a misleading play.
"Triune Form, stacking shift." the play-by-play read off. Sutta already knew this one and didn't need a card for it: two more instances of fairy-form Crow puffed out of the original like overlaid film frames. Each trailed a bit more fairy dust and formed some form of triangular energy cannon circle. A magilaser rippled out, punching through one of Jackal's stormcloud-trails but being halted by a mudra of darkness from Jackal's hover-arms.
"I don't think Crow's only going for power here." Wolf speculated. "Anput can probably recast that status block up no sweat, but it'll start costing her if she has to pop it every count of some petty attack."
(Buff me.) Crow signaled, the order to Onmyoji only apparent to Sutta because of divine sight and shared domain. (Equip up.)
"Demerit Wand." the play-by-play continued as Onmyoji grabbed a card and the carpet veered higher to avoid leaping jackals. "Echo for provisioning short-term comedy debuffs."
Wolf rattled off some examples: "Ugliness, cartoon pancaking, covered in ash, fighty-cloud, accordion, pie launcher, knockdown, we've all seen the classics at our age."
Sutta chuckled as the flowery rod manifested at hand for one of the Crow bodies, and began repeatedly baffling Jackal with debuffs that Anput cast defense snares against. Jackal shook off whatever things got in between the rotation and barked an order to the effect of "Change tack."
Jackal tolerated the rotating selection of visual gags and Anput switched to healbotting, casting a simple restorative card for every serious injury the other two Crows managed to inflict. One of them realized the DPS rotation wasn't sticking, and split off to pick off the animalistic jackals beginning to wear down the onmyoji's bubbleshield. Enough fire caused the canids to flicker out of existence, relevant essences decompiled back into the greater Jackal's essence like many clone techniques. Wolf's commentary digressed into some local zoo news and the quality of her drink, neither of which concerned Sutta. Less caught up in piloting, the onmyoji opted to arm his protector and swap out matters later.
"Echo, Sexy Injector." the play-by-play read off. A cartoonishly large syringe loaded with some magic stand-in for aphrodisiac appeared, mounted on a harpoon gun. The Crow-body equipped with it flew off, allowing the unarmed one baffling Jackal to cycle out. A low shot actually managed to get Jackal in the leg, injecting its payload before being retreated. Jackal managed to swipe through the rope on the way back, leading to the equipment dematerializing.
"What, getting me hot and bothered for you?" Jackal smugly noted as his erection rose. "I could beat you with my dick."
That immediately stopped being a hypothetical: the fairy-Crow with the Demerit Wand misjudged the distance Jackal could cover in a step and the flight column to avoid it, getting dickslapped hard enough to spawn cartoony stars. A slight resize-down allowed Jackal to grab the stunned Crow-instance, and a further resize down made spreading his victim's cheeks trivial.
"You spend all your time this horny?" Jackal wondered, storm-limbs at larger size swatting away the other Crow bothering him. "Do me a favor and be a dick warmer."
Turning aside, he ordered Anput to issue a preparatory Strike ("Instant Lubrication!" the play-by-play informed) and mounted the captured Crow on his cock more like a fucktoy than a man.
"Crow is indeed Like That." Wolf noted. "Part of how we used to get things over on him was letting himself get off to his own detriment."
While disruption and pain was more limited, Crow had no interest in turning down pleasure. The recovering one made an unnecessarily exaggerated moan while the other two received serious stimulus, but they managed. Onmyoji blushed for some reason, receiving a diffracted input of some sort.
"Why stop at one end?" the onmyoji-defending Crow sassed, ordering his magi to cast something specific.
"Teledildonics strike!" the play-by-play announced, an exaggeratedly large vibrating sex toy promptly stretching Jackal from behind. To his credit, he took it in stride and bounced Crow further, not even bothering to remove it.
Anput was well aware of what Wolf mentioned. The play-by-play read off her "Snare, multicast, reflecting past strike ex-three combo" and the other two instances of Crow were buttplugged to match, followed by the onmyoji. This did not particularly dissuade anyone, but Sutta found it mildly funny.
Jackal came inside, jerking off the Crow instance to completion. Not confident that overstimulation would stop matters, Jackal bothered to flick him in the head forcefully as 'attack', potentially prompting the body to despawn back into Crow and reduce the triune to bifold....but Crow didn't quite take the bait.
"It's been kind of fun to paste you." Jackal said, more in reference to past conflict. "You're not cute enough to eat, but you're a bastard enough to. Soft noms for you."
Jackal pulled the fucked-out Crow off himself, increased his own size, and then popped the fairy into his mouth. A bit of tonguing later he swallowed him whole to get back to business.
"Are you going to fight even a little seriously?" Jackal asked, adopting a martial stance that would've been imposing if not for the vibrator.
"Nope." "Nuh-uh." "Not expecting it." "Nada." rang out the voices of the play-by-play announcer, Wolf, Sutta, and onmyoji respectively.
"Oh, sure, if you're going to bait me out like that." the Crow-body kept at bay by Jackal's extra arms relented. Several people made unpleasant expressions, but Sutta meekly updated a few predictive models.
"Supreme Vanaras." the play-by-play announcer read off as the onmyoji rolled his eyes and played a new Shift. The onmyoji's defender remained a Forge Fairy Trickster, but the Crow in the sky elongated back to Crow's basic shape and began to churn. Feet redesigned themselves to hands, albeit a bit bigger than normal hands. A lightly-furred tail emerged from behind. The sustenance of flight switched from wings to clouds, more of a white-gold fringed with yellow radiance to contrast Jackal's storms. A yellow halo formed something like a headband, decorating but not binding the Crow-mask short-visor proper. There were a few minor adjustments: enlarging the ears, a little further increase in facial hair for the monkey-fringe and body-hair for the limbs, a slightly different nose, a bit better musculature to ease increased strength. "Strength, health regeneration, curative aura, removing obstacles, and-"
"Yaksha Club." vanara-Crow announced, spinning from nothing an iron rod. The iron rod unfolded into a beautiful blue-skinned red-haired man...who began repeatedly punching Jackal at incredibly high speeds. Jackal parried well, but was forced to use all his arms worth of effort to match it.
"Good thing Turner loves his references." Wolf snarked affably.
With the yaksha preoccupying Jackal, vanara-Crow was able to dart over to Anput. She entered a combat stance and the two started fighting more conventionally. Crow wasn't aiming to incapacitate and Anput was casually superhuman, but rapid regeneration meant that none of Anput's chip damage really stuck or let her gain advantages. With an accelerated backstep, she cast an Instant Loss 2koma to force him into a down position...under Jackal again. Jackal looked down at vanara-Crow. vanara-Crow looked up at Jackal.
"You were saving this?" Crow asked, mildly incredulous. "Immediately after asking me to get serious?"
Jackal responded by starting to fuck him again. "It's an expensive super-Strike." he eventually elaborated. "The practicalities are a movement Stratagem but it's supposed to beat you up a lot more."
Sutta looked at vanara-Crow's not-very-depleted and rapidly regenerating representations of health, and his very decent energy reflow.
"I think the proportions are unfavorable." Crow agreed, one hand fiddling with himself and the other playing with Jackal's nipples to make a nuisance of himself. "Anput's good enough to make up for it, but as a snipe finisher you're supposed to deploy it before the foe gets their buffs up, not after. I think it's only a single-target yeet as well, I just reallocated from other bodies to fill the loss."
The yaksha deprived of an opponent shrugged. "Do you want me to, uh..."
"Pull out the vibrator and fuck him!" the still-active fairy-Crow shouted from the relative-sidelines, the Onmyoji waving and pointing in case the yaksha had missed the target's teleport destination somehow.
"I mean sure." the yaksha agreed, doing that. Jackal did not really care to resist at this point. Anput facepalmed. The other fairy-Crow laughed from inside Jackal's approximation of a belly, creating a muffled voiceover effect. Wolf chose to look at the soundboard and play a sound effect for 'awkward, but situationally funny'.
"Do you wanna, just..." vanara-Crow led, leaning into Jackal's thrusting. "That anti-refractory aphrodisiac is gonna last a while. We can call it here and then fuck around more casually."
"You may have me front, back, and center," Jackal noted, "but two of those are me fucking you. Do a bit more stage wrestling so we don't end on an embarrassment."
Jackal leered, and vanara-Crow punched him in the face. It didn't do much, but between enhanced strength and a compromising position it actually did something else. Inconvenient timing caused Jackal to cum on the spot. He slapped Crow a few times to make up for it but the moment was lost, and somewhere in there Crow ended up cumming on him in a way that was more silliness than erotic.
Anput actually seemed winded after casting one more healing card. She considered her retinue of cards for something cheap or energy-restorative, but Jackal waved her off.
"Tapping out." Jackal announced. "Just...fuck, Crow is such a bastard to deal with."
"We have a winner!" Wolf crooned, before switching to a flatter voice. "I'd say goddamn it, but Crow is really giving Alligator a run for his money on condemnations here."
Jackal coughed up the remaining fairy-Crow like a cat coughing up a furball, the resulting distortion of space looking a bit blurry before it corrected. The recently-vored Crow stretched a bit before sticking his tongue out, making an expression, and despawning. Various battle paraphernalia dismissed itself as well, equipment returning to abstraction and cardistry. The onmyoji flew over before dismissing the carpet. The other fairy-Crow despawned and Crow allowed his transformation to lapse, returning to human still on Jackal's cock. A bit visibly stretched, but not beyond human limits with Jackal still only slightly above the 2koma frame and pinned by the vanara. The yaksha pulled out, still hard but pretty sure this part was more or less over.
Jackal dismissed gigantes in turn, steadying his normal size and no longer inflating Crow. Jackal allowed his jackal-head to resume being a mask, then a smaller eye-masking visor more like Crow's. Anput produced some athletic inner wear from somewhere or other, allowing Jackal to cursorily dress. The yaksha and onmyoji made out for a bit while frotting, still expressing a distinct facet of Crow's habits.
"So that happened." Sutta stated, more to himself than Wolf or the announcer.
"Yeah." Wolf and the announcer both agreed.
On the field, Jackal bothered to say "Crow, you're just kind of an annoying lay. I can get off on swatting you but I'm not exactly Alligator."
He ruffled the undershirt he had put on, continuing "The cost-benefit analysis is in, and it's unprofitable. I'm going to go bang this out with some people I can stand to be around while Anput regenerates her energies. See you when you're worth something."
The businessman and his associate strode off, intimidating in loss but not to who they'd lost to. Jackal mode-switched back to magi with the conclusion of the fight, and cast a Grab-n-go to bring Anput with him wherever it was he satisfied carnal appetites.
"Man, they really had us on the ropes for a second there." Crow said to a nearby camera drone, making a good effort to show himself off to any watchers. "I'm gonna shower off."
A different camera drone got good footage of the yaksha and onmyoji cumming, giving each other a high five, and despawning on a high note. Crow rematerialized the onmyoji with an unnecessarily theatric grabbing motion and said "Hey, tables turn and I want somebody to do the intimidating look. C'mon, you can be medium next showcase. And scrub my back or something."
The onmyoji, being an extension of Crow, went along with the bit and made an affable exaggerated eyeroll-with-a-smile shrug. Leaning shoulder to shoulder, the two took a grab-n-go to the shower area.