Iron Butterfly
By Moonrunner
Musclewoman combat in a jungle prison


This story follows on several months after the events in 'Performance Art'.
http://www.thevalkyrie.com/stories/1misc21/annabelle.txt

Nurse Rachel was waiting to greet Ms. Wargrave when her corporate helicopter
touched down. They stood together on the landing pad watching as servants off-
loaded a long wooden crate from the Bell 222B and carried into the hacienda
style house. Down in the cellar was the entrance to a passageway blasted into
solid rock and shored up with timber props. A flatbed rail cart stood ready to
ferry the box through these old mineworks, emerging in an area of near jungle
the mistress of the house had cordoned off with electrified fencing.

It would have taxed the imagination of Edgar Allan Poe to author the variety
of tales the estate's staff spread amongst themselves of this mysterious place
in the jungle, and the increasingly frequent deliveries of these coffin sized
packing cases. Rachel could have answered all their questions as she had first
hand experience of the goings on inside what was generally referred to as the
'Compound'. But Rachel kept silent, fearing nothing else on earth as much as
she feared being put back behind that fence. For while many wealthy people
collected art, Wargrave chose to collect musclewomen. These powerful females
were imprisoned within the Compound and regularly administered with a drug
designed to increase their aggression levels. As a result encounters between
them usually turned into brutal, bare-knuckle brawls over food or territory,
all of which Wargrave enjoyed via CCTV.

''We've already got overcrowding problems, yet you're still bringing home more
of them. I've had to leave the last three sealed in the cryogenic capsules
they were shipped in.'' It was a conversation Rachel had started countless
times, never to any effect. As a stop gap measure any woman injured in a fight
was being returned to cryogenic sleep. They were literally storing frozen
bodybuilders in racks until the Compound could be extended.

''This is a special case,'' her mistress insisted. ''The girl's father is a
Yakuzza boss who is unwisely trying to extort money from my Tokyo operations.
Hopefully the abduction of his favourite daughter will be enough warning to
keep him out of my affairs.''

The girl's name was Noriko. She had started her final year at Waseda
University, where her lecturers knew her in equal measures for her
intelligence and her rebellious nature. Despite being small in height (just
over five feet) her physical development was impressive, largely due to the
rigorous martial arts training her father insisted on for all his children.
Wargrave was sure those fighting skills would be a great equaliser against the
far larger Amazons that Noriko would be sharing the jungle with. Of course,
the habitually cynical Rachel took a different point of view.

''We're putting a minnow in with a tank of sharks. They'll eat
the kid alive.''

* * * *

Annabelle came upon the ruin at dusk; a pre-Columbian folly artfully draped in
vines. Wide stone steps led into a pit whose sides were adorned with Aztec
style carvings of serpents and racks of skulls. It didn't belong here any more
than she did. They'd both been cut and pasted from their natural environments
into this one, all at the whim of a lunatic. Wargrave had ransacked
archaeological excavations across the globe to provide set decoration for her
human zoo. Ancient temples had been transformed into exquisitely detailed
arenas for her pets to do battle in; the problem was getting those Amazons to
step willingly into the lion's den. Bait was required, and in this instance it
took the form of a khaki musset bag full of supplies, placed at the very
centre of the weathered flagstones lining the floor of the pit.

Each captive was thrown into the Compound as naked as Eve. Anything they
possessed from then on came from one of these bags. That made them the objects
of fierce competition. Earlier in the week Annabelle had tussled with a red
haired musclewoman for possession of one of these precious satchels. The fight
had quickly turned in favour of the redhead (built squat and heavy as an
engine block) so Annabelle snatched up the bag by its strap, intending to cut
and run with her prize. What she hadn't been prepared for was the primed
concussion grenade one of Wargrave's flunkies had concealed beneath it. The
redhead was thrown against a tree bole by the powerful blast, with Annabelle
slamming into her a fraction after. She'd opened her eyes again, her head a
Vegas slot machine of lights and ringing bells, to discover herself pinned
beneath the unconscious bulk of her stockier opponent and having to wriggle
herself free. Managing to gather together only a few of the spilled ration
packs, she'd fled before the redhead was in a fit condition to demand Round 2.
As a result Annabelle had been left critically low on supplies. She had no
option other than to risk the pit, becoming part of whatever entertainment
Ms.Wargrave had arranged for today.

Annabelle started on down the cracked steps and across the sun warmed flags,
alert for unexpected shifting of the ground or the tug of a tripwire about her
ankle. Crouching next to the bag she made a precautionary check for
booby-traps, holding the bag steady with one hand while gingerly exploring
underneath with the fingers of her other. Cautiously she unclasped the bag,
expecting to hear a hiss of escaping gas. It didn't come.

What sat in front of her was a perfectly harmless canvas satchel full of foil
wrapped rations and a few bottles of fruit juice. At last there would be
something other than water to drink. She ripped open one of the pouches and
devoured half a meal bar with a single bite. She took another one, helping
herself to a bottle of juice at the same time. All the while, Annabelle's
ravenous hunger kept arguing down the nagging voice of her paranoia.

''What if the 'aggression drug' the nurse talked about is in these rations?'',
it asked. ''You'd have been self-medicating all these weeks''. More urgently,
what if she'd misjudged the nature of the threat here? Maybe someone was using
her as a stalking horse; leaving Annabelle to take care of any traps before
sweeping in to steal the bag for themselves?

Damn it! She could expect to suffer for letting her focus slip like that.
Annabelle was quickly on her feet and looking for the signs of danger that
only a wild thing sees; for instance, a light falling of dust from a ledge
above, even though there was no breeze to disturb it.

Eyes tracking skyward, she first glimpsed her assailant as a motion blur
against the fading light, somersaulting off the edge of the pit. The girl
kicked out while still airborne, the heel of her foot packing the force of a
heavyweight's glove as it grazed Annabelle's cheek. On touchdown the young
warrior (Asian, with black hair that had been hacked short) spun into a second
kick that knocked aside Annabelle's retaliatory punch and created the opening
for another attack. Noriko drove two fingers into her opponents shoulder,
resulting in instant paralysis to the right arm.

It just wasn't fair. Everybody except for Annabelle appeared to know These
tricky pressure point strikes. Her right arm now hung dead by her side. Nurse
Rachel had used a similar technique on her back in Paris, with devastating
result. A needed stroke of luck was that her good arm was the one still
holding onto the plastic drinks bottle. Though it wasn't an ideal weapon the
bottle had enough weight for her to use it as an ersatz billy club.

First it caught Noriko in the ribs, then smashed down on the bridge of the
girl's nose. Something vicious and primal had begun to stir itself, coiling
around Annabelle's thoughts; something that once aroused would not return to
the cage without a blood sacrifice. This was the dark legacy of Wargrave's
aggression drug, coming upon her more and more often during combat. She was
pulling back for a third swing when Noriko's deceptively delicate fingers took
grip of her wrist and twisted. Pain signals from the over-rotated joint raced
along Annabelle's nerves like a burning fuse, blowing her brain apart.

Her body turned cold and rigid; a piece of garden statuary destined to be
shattered by the girl's next blow. Defeat was coming, and here in the Compound
that would cost her more than the loss of a few ration packs. At the
resolution of every fight Wargrave's people morphed out from the treeline to
carry off the injured. Few of the women were returned. Annabelle could not
guess the fate of the Amazons that Wargrave had grown bored with, but the
dread of sharing in it brought her newly evolved survival reflex back on-line.
She was moving again, her mouth drawn to the nearest of Noriko's persimmon
sized breasts; incisors closing upon the bull's-eye of darker flesh at its
centre. The cry that erupted from the Japanese fighter climbed way into the
seventh octave before snapping off and ricocheting around the pit's rough
stone walls.

Aware of sensation creeping back into her right arm, Annabelle tested it out
with an uppercut to Noriko's jaw. Though it still felt like something grafted
onto her body, rather than her own limb, it appeared to do the trick.

Eyelids shuttering, the Japanese girl sank to the ground in a slow
genuflection. It was a well played deception; one that might just have made
her opponent drop her guard, if the gangster's daughter had managed to keep
that triumphant smirk from her lips a little longer. Just as Noriko's fist was
rising like a piston towards the tender junction of Annabelle's thighs, the
older woman brought her knee up hard under the girl's chin. Noriko's head
snapped back, positioning her face to receive the first in a chain of blows
that would carry on well past her ability to resist. This iron butterfly was
about to have its wings crushed.

* * * *

Rachel's crew were suited up and ready to board one of the minecars when
Wargrave entered the cellar. Since the Aztec ruin was an exit point for the
underground railway they could collect their latest patient and return inside
of ten minutes. Still time enough for them to run into a whole peck of
trouble, and the nurse was going out prepared.

Cradled in her arms like an ugly puppy was her latest favourite gadget; a
multi-shot riot gun with a big rotating magazine that made it resemble a
cartoon version of a Chicago mobster's Tommy Gun.

It didn't have much of an effective range, but two well aimed sabot rounds
would bring down even an Amazon.

''Rubber bullets? Your lack of finesse offends me sometimes Rachel.''

The nurse snorted, continuing to load the oversized weapon. ''Screw finesse.
You've a dozen hand picked muscle-freaks running loose in that jungle and most
of them got a permanent rage on. No way I'm going out there without my ace in
the hole.''

Shutting the breach, glancing up, she asked, ''Which one of the bitches are we
bringing back?'' Wargrave didn't expect her to like the answer.

Being kicked through a plate glass window by a newbie such as Annabelle was
humiliating for Rachel. She'd been confined to her own infirmary for a week
while bones knitted and torn flesh healed. There was bad blood between the
pair; the kind that could only be settled after serious violence.

''Heck, I'd figured Little Miss Annabelle's winning streak was

due to run dry.''

''It will,'' Wargrave assured. ''I'm hosting a party next weekend and I've
decided Annabelle will have the staring role in a demonstration I'm staging
for my guests. You'll get to see her tamed before a jeering audience.
Whatever's left of her, dearest Rachel, I'll turn over to your tender
mercies.''