In time, the burning acid got the better of her and made Verdandi a liar: she found herself in a screaming contest with Maki after all. Ibuki’s stomach was unforgiving of the assassin’s flaws, and unfortunately for her it considered having flesh a flaw. Both Ibuki and Trish watched with amusement as their distended bellies bucked and thrashed from their victims’ terror and pain as much as their will to live, colliding into each other in their panicked frenzy of intended violence. It was as even as a belly fight could be; though Verdandi had a decade of professional killing on Maki, she was also in a stomach well acquainted with mulching live humans. Maki had the benefit of dealing with a second-time pred, an advantage she did not have time to appreciate. She was busy with her skin sizzling off her body, her exposed muscle sloughing off her bones and dissolving into a bloody soup that only seemed to get more greedy with each passing second, her bones slowly softening until they broke down completely. It was pain beyond description, and Maki’s head was filled with nothing but the deafening inner screams to escape it somehow, anyhow. Put simply, Maki was in a bad way and she had no way of knowing how much worse her opponent was doing, though she might have been heartened to hear Verdandi was doing really bad. While Maki’s legs were being whittled to nothing in a rising pool of acid, Verdandi’s whole body was battling acid up to her chin. Her clothes were long gone and most of her skin had joined them in exile. With each punch or kick the acid splashed back on her face, taking whatever it touched with it as it dribbled back down into the swamp that was increasingly her own body, percentage-wise. Verd had to hold up one hand to protect her remaining eye after a low blow from Maki had given her an extra helping of chyme to the right side of her face. That hand was rapidly vanishing in the chaos of Ibuki’s eager belly...Verdandi was struggling not to consider that there might not be enough of her left to save when she was done crushing her playmate. On the outside, meanwhile, Trisha was trying not to make too much eye contact with Ibuki as their stomachs massaged each other. It’s an awkward social situation to be in, you know, when you and a suspiciously similar stranger are essentially using your bodies as a human death match arena and you’re getting pretty horny about it.

After what seemed to the prey like ages of fighting, the battle came to a conclusion when Maki summoned all her fury into a single strike that punched through Verdandi’s (much softer) face. The Drayden Elite’s last thoughts were of her mothers, Helena and Elizabeth, and the elf reservation she would never save.

And then she was gone.

“We have a winner!” crowed the Ultimate Musician. “Sorry, uh…..oh I didn’t catch her name. That’s a bummer.” Ibuki sighed in regret.
“Uh….do I have to...let mine out….?” Trisha had been hoping Verdandi would win. As much as she was afraid of the Underworld legend, Verdandi probably wasn’t going to be as mad at her as Maki currently was (though with the epithet “punisher,” Trish was probably in for a beating either way).
“Well, I made a deal with mine, but I didn’t hear you say anything to yours. So it’s probably fine! Unless you want to let her out?”
“Th-that would probably be a bad idea. She’s pretty mad in there.” A shriek of rage punctuated Trisha’s point as her belly jerked back and forth.
“All right then! Let’s just relax and let our bellies do the heavy lifting!”
“WHAT!? YOU GET ME OUT OF HERE RIGHT NOW, I WON!” Maki roared in disbelief. Ibuki flashed a grin to Trisha, who was emboldened to show off a little of her stage persona.
“That’s right, bitch. You won the honor of being tit fat on the underworld’s top guitarist!” Trisha faked her best sneer. Ibuki looked impressed.
“YOU’RE GONNA BE THE UNDERWORLD’S TOP CORPSE WHEN I GET OUT OF HERE!” shot back her lunch.
“That’d be metal as fuck, being the top corpse. Too bad you’re not getting out! I don’t know if they’ll even qualify what’s left of you as a corpse after I’m done!” Trish turned on her stage persona to impress her audience of one. It was a self-defense maneuver; no audience in the underworld had ever been as likely to eat her as this one.
“Well, now that the battle’s over how’s about we pick a nice spot in the shade to enjoy ourselves?” Ibuki loved exercise as much as the next apex predator, but there was nothing like sitting back and watching a human outline become a skeletal one, and then breaking the softened bones with nothing more than some gentle pressure. The two sat down under a palm tree to watch the waves, and the slow death of Maki Harukawa, together.

Drawn by  NyxonDyx for the anniversary of the death of Knights Chronicle. I wrote the story. I decided to use their less known attire: trish's 4-star outfit and ibuki's despair arc outfit. I fudged the details a bit on verdandi, this was her regular 6-star outfit but I gave her the Awakened hair streak (though obviously she's naked now).
why am I telling you that. it'll never matter to you

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