A Spider's Obstacle

Pressure wells within your throat as it carries the entire weight of your body dangling beneath it. Your legs uselessly kick at nothing but the very air you are denied from even inhaling; which in turn only increases the swelling packing in your brain with hot blood. It boils your thoughts. When faced with pain and danger, the impulse is to thrash. Fight becomes flight, without any careful consideration. Any struggle is better than no struggle. And yet...your thoughts longer on Jackal and Gold. They're all the likely struggling too, relying on your one chance to get them out. Don't waste it by kicking at empty space; kick the evil arachnid tugging you ever closer to her. Surely she wants whatever crude clutches she has in store for you, but the last thing you'll reward her is your submission, let alone your fruitless failings by squirming in her trap.

As she feeds the silken whip's length closer to her hilt with numerous pulls, fishing her desirable Lucario catch from the floor all the way to the webbed ceiling she hungrily crouches along, your legs find themselves to waver. For Valentina, this was wonderful news. A defiant mutt like yourself reaching your limit just meant she can return to work with a bountiful new prize. A rare find like a Lucario wasn't a mere daily occurrence. If anything, you're a miracle. What could she extract out of you? How long will it take to break you in? What honors will her great monarch offer her in stowing the escaped prisoner...?

The Ariados' optimistic delight dazzles her eyes, blind to your refuting prepwork. Your black paws sway idly forward and back as a lazy pendulum, at first ragdolled to recuperate whatever sense you can muster...all before the momentum of them is added upon by your intent. The swing arcs more strongly to keep an even direction and your defiance holds true in place within your heart. Your eyes and nose flare, and with a glare up to the wild spider woman, her violet eyes witness your resolve. In a sudden swing of your legs, you curl your backing tight with the help of your hands exchanging upwards. Instead of uselessly grabbing the collaring chokehold of the whip, your hands grip tighter up the rope closer to her, acting as a better brace for you to bring your knees at your chest in a tightened ball; but the momentum of your swinging aims you to now face up at your captor.

"Wh--?!" Valentina is taken back by your acrobatic maneuver, only to be blinded from both Lucario paws smashing upwards, colliding into her face. The pads strike true, bashing the back of her head against the ceiling she mounted out with venomous spittle sputtering from her agasp mouth. "---gughk!"

The act works, feeling the whip spill from her fingers and the pair of you returning to gravity's natural pull. Your upside-down body unfortunately contorts awkwardly in a disorienting twist, confusing your vision as the world attempts to correct itself in your eyes. The plummet has your hip landing first, enticing an odd bark out of your mouth as energy rolls you longways along the floor. Despite the recoil of the impact, your bark is followed with a much-needed take of air. Cool oxygen surges within your lungs before exhausting as a **** cough from how intense the whip's chokehold had been. Your gullet flexes in the moment as your body comes to rest, in which your brain gets the draining reset required for your bearings. Your muscles pound, but your vision and hearing come back together for you in a granting sight of the workshop's waxy floor in a sideways view. Valentina herself slammed to the ground as well, with even less grace as your fumbled landing. Her leg is caught is by a table, contorting her figure to crash in a back-curling position that makes your own spine sting. The wild hiss you hear seething out of her fangs is more than enough to hint her frustrations with you, but that doesn't stop her outcry of "...D-Damn you dog!"

Time is of the essence. You needed to get up, fast. Your pelvis gives its own shriek with a pulsating ache that now stiffens your hip, but you soldier through it to correct the world upright again. Stammering onto your hinds again, you see Valentina curling in place on her hands and knees, staring down with a disdain unforeseen by you. "How dare you..." She practically burns her voice her throat as she clenches up a volatile fist. "How...how dare you..."

Valentina repeats the vexed phrase as the shaking fist clenches loudly, daring to creak and crack her own exoskeletal palm. In a crazed, bash, her fist slams at the ground, crushing an invisible target that was not there, but it takes little imagination that she's picturing your skull underneath it. The knuckles crush at the chalky wax, crackling small dents and fractures with a spray of residue in her will tantrum. The spider's fist repeatedly punches down with reckless, fast abandon. "How dare you, how fucking dare you! You stupid mammalian excuse, how dare you refuse me!"

You give a dry swallow, keeping your fists up in readiness to keep this brawl going, intent on continuing this trend of defiance...but it was odd to see her poised evil suddenly crack into mania. Her violet eyes gleam when her head twists up to leer, growling a gutteral noise in her own throat, and staggering from her knuckles into a hunched stand. Her voice, her face; the Ariados paints her feelings obvious to her prey. She finds you disgusting.

Whatever life she may have had here, your existence has not only thrown a wrench into it, but something about you specifically has stricken her wrath. You had been striking her before, but it's only now that her persona took the full blow.

Valentina clutches at the side of her head when staggering up at her slender legs; though now that crookedly bend with less grace, keeping her tall body lurched. "...You disgrace my home, you taint my great work with your intrusion, you dare to lay your filthy paws on me like your own inferior kind..." The Ariados growls in her proclamation, flexing her clawed golden fingers, before bellowing, "...And you deny my grace? My mercy?! I was to spare you, Lucario, to grant your meaningless life purpose so that you could contribute to our Hive, to our world at large. And still...still you resist?"

You girl your brows, anxious to keep this momentum up and attack her, but you feel as though she's about to pounce any moment. If what you saw before was calculated grace and struggled against it, what was her wild frenzy like? It strikes you that your lack of giving in after her first attempt to sway you has already set her off. Denying her before she so much swung her whip was one thing, but her offer when strangling you up to the ceiling was meant to be genuine? Her life revolves around capturing those for the Golden Hive in assumed gratification by her great Majesty, and here you are, inside the very room of her purpose and you're successfully avoiding her ensnarement. Did all of the other men she captured her give in? You can understand some may, but, even the adept fighters? In spite of Valentina having only met you mere minutes ago, you've become a personal trial for her. If she can't dwindle you down into submission like her other prey, you threaten her very way of life. You're a rare breed that would be a golden egg to deliver, and despite in her element, her home advantage, you refuse and evade her collection. How could it not frustrate a petty creature like her? She's a spider through and through alright. One you'll still have to disappoint.

"Get your filthy eyes off of me, mammal. As if you should be granted any sight at all when you deny what is far more beautiful than your haired form." Valentina seethes. The spider's claws swing in place with a servant set of slashes, raking nothing unless you wanted to get close. It was a tantrum, but one that slashed and whisked faster as time went on. "You were to be a gift, a wondrous prize for my wondrous Queen, to impose me with her own grace, to one day..." Valentina swallows, revelling in her own addiction to the matriarch you have yet to meet, but threatens the very lives of your friends. Other Pokemon in this crazy nest seem to adore her, if not fear her, but Valentina came across as...obsessed.

Her arms clench over themselves, hugging herself up as if she was within the Queen's own embrace, shuddering in bliss, "...To one day see my great worth and finally realize how perfect I am by her throne, by her beck and call, her touch-" The Ariados was already close to moaning, signaled with the prop of her red breasts shelving atop an arm. Her fingers squeeze at her own figure, clenching a shoulder or bicep, all as her slender thighs smear together. The spider's voice happily shakes, "Complete. Utter. Reciprocation. Calling my name. At long last...h-hahh...hahahaa..."

A pleasured shiver trickles down her body with a visible heatwave cascading over her. For a brief moment, her eyes delight in a fantasy, seeing past you to instead soak in the desire at the forefront of her thoughts. She was in love with the queen, in a twisted and far-too reliant way, and one that likely was never indulged for the Ariados. It became more pathetic to see her in this fashion now, but it brings great evidence to Razz's concerns for you. You did not fully know life in the Golden Hive, of who or why the Bug-Pokemon are the way they are here, if it is entirely to be blamed on Queen Vexna herself or if the matriarch herself is fully deserving of this matricide; your capture and fate surely solidified your thoughts on that. But to see what a victim of her own people looks like with Valentina here seals that deal. Vexna needed to be stopped if it encouraged people like Valentina to thrive, whether that love is reciprocated or not. This was beyond the Infection. What point is granting stability to society if this is the kind of society that would thrive next?

Your fists clench tighter now as aura embers off from your now waving fur. Valentina huffs from the heat growing in her body, confusing in a mix of lust and fury, eyeballing to you now. Her breaths fume her words, "...But you, you stand in the way of us being together. Stopping her from seeing me. You are my obstacle, my revolting hindrance... She could never see my beauty with you in the way." The mental gymnastics this spider takes would earn her a golden medal from you, but in her mind, she justifies every corrupt feeling she has. You are her prime enemy. Failing to catch you is to fail her obsession; something that she would be nothing without.

You've heard enough from the crazed arachnid's woes and take precedent to finally end her proclamation. In a blazing charge, your blue flame crackles from the swift motion of your arm, delivering a palm strike towards Valentina. Without her infernal whip, you gain more confidence to attack her directly; the tool itself sprawled loosely on the floor without the clutch of its master and far from her reach. She still possessed a danger to her, but it was easily less dangerous than when she was trying to lash you from across the entire room. Here, you were in your element. Close combat--

"Vile runt!" She sears her voice into your ears when catching your wrist just before your palm could meet its mark. You grunt in dismay before finding the wind recoiling out of your lungs when feeling her knee slam into your stomach, bringing you down to a knee of your own, **** to hunker before her. A cough escapes your chops as her wrist-grip yanks your arm up high, granting your head to swing up with the jerking motion. There, she towers above you, hissing as you're knelt before her while her own breaths ventilate at a wilder pace; the horizon of her supple chest drifting and swelling constantly under the frame of your vision to meet her violet eyes. "I understand now, you are not meant for my queen at all. You are meant for me!"

Uncertain of her intention but finding plenty of reason to avoid finding out, you swing your good leg against one of her own. Her femur takes the full brunt of the kick which loosens her grip enough for you to slip your wrist out and immediately skid back, kicking off from her when rising up to an even stand again. You had hoped to sweep her off her hinds, but you'll take safe distance over a risky situation any day.

She simply stomps forward with a single step of progress, growling with fingers sinking together at either hand, forming a chopped extremity that seems to grow in sharpness. Her claws strain to pin-point thinness in sweeps of her arms, an odd dance of air-cutting swipes that eventually radiates her with a faint red light. The crimson aura wades off of her body as your own flaming kind, giving you the concern that she's somehow granted herself some type of boon; a boost in her offense...and a worse situation than before.

"You are mine! Mine to execute, dog!" Valentina shrills with a manic joy and finally charges at you. The clacks of her hinds barely have time to register in your ears as you see the red and black spider launch towards you in a skittering sprint, trailing her ruby aura behind her with a faint trace of purple lines of her eyes. Her golden striped arms ready like swords, keeping each major finger sidled together in an effort to stab or slice you; either is preferable in her favor. An awkward step back has a chopping motion just miss you, but her body keeps going, smashing into you and forcing the two of you to barrel over. Her workshop was never intended to house a battle, as your hip suffers another blow when rolling right into a wax column of the room and her body collides to table, sending herself over it in a shoved screech, all for her to climb back over while low on all fours, huffing in delight. "Mine...~!"

As though you've ignited some kind of bloodlust into her, you strain yourself to rise with the column's aid, clutching at your injured hip all the more. Falling from the ceiling didn't indulge any favors to your side, nor did ramming it again to have you hunching more towards one way than being properly upright. Razz had warned you not to encounter Valentina under any circumstances, but you felt as though he still managed to somehow undersell the threat-level she was. The trapsmith is insane.

"I'm no one's. And you're completely nuts." You huff in return, readying up your arms again to now play on the defensive side. Valentina has managed to come across as a worse problem than that of any Infected.

The arachnid simply cackles and leaps off from the table, sending it rolling behind her as she bounds to you in a dual downward stab of her arms. The sharp fingers dig into the waxy ground when missing your kickstepping figure, but she's easily quick to unplug them each at a time to take individual swings now. Even her fangs snap together in bites close to your face, hitting you with a faint purple mist from the venom drooling out of her mouth now. She was starved for ****, from a mere setback; you'd hate to see what she would've been like had you helped Razz take her precious Majesty down first; she hunt you down viciously to the end of the world.

Evading her blades, always keeping just more than just an arm's length away from her, Valentina's hands miss their **** mark against you while you manage to sidestep, backstep, or weave out of harm's way. Retaliating was ever a difficult task; her ferocity led for little opening. Attacking her would guarantee a hit, but would assuredly lead you to getting struck as well. A trade would work better in her favor, as her strengthened aura had yet to dissipate and a strike of her clawed fingers could inflict you with the venom laced behind the spider's sharp ends. Already you are injured, and with a leg that has not been granted the time to heal thanks to your journey; the fight was looking to be in her favor after all despite your impressive maneuver to disarm her.

This is only solidified as you attempt to duck from another attempt of a stab, just to feel her other elbow catch you by the cheek. "Gkuah--!" Your head twists around by the strike, and with it, so too does your body, pivoting you around to face your back to spider. Valentina hisses a wild laugh as she scores a triumphant slash of her claws up the length of your back. An awful noises escapes your vocal chords as they **** on the noise itself, leaving you arching your spine up tight and standing tippy-top on your hindpaws, as if to evade the floor as much as possible.

Your eyes waver in place as the searing heat of her slash finally kicks in, with venom biting at your back muscles. You stagger dumbly forward and attempt a turn of your body to face her again. Yet, you over-exert the basic motion and find yourself showing your side instead as you stumble in the opposite direction. The drunken motion at least has her miss with a follow-up swing, but bumping into a wall has you at a grave disadvantage now. Focus is difficult to achieve now from the ever-present stinging sensation alarming you of the damage you sustained. Pain was an annoying reminder of the obvious, but now it hinders your movement. Unless you land something decisive, Valentina was going to have her way.

Already she steps towards you, licking over her clawed fingers with one leg in front of the other. Hints of her superior demeanor return with the rewarded confidence that she could have you after all; the strike just now bringing back some stability to her movement, even if she still retains that crazed look in her eyes. Her thighs brush together with the clacks of her hinds, bouncing her breasts in place with an almost obvious purpose to them. Valentina felt better than you, and it shows in her body language now once more. The sultry motion may have tempted even your eyes had you not seen her true colors at this point, but an intense worry weighs on your shoulders.

How will you win this one?