Battle Royale Between the Midget Mentals

A complex and protracted mental duel between Azure, three-inch-tall blue fox of mathematical and musical motivation, and Zeta, albino squirrel second-in-command of the Society of Evil Doers, ended in stalemate, with as-yet-uncertain cost to both combatants’ mental states, Friday night on the beach of the Rose Shore, Quodlibet.

Azure

Previously Azure had already taken on Aina 4-72, a member of the SED’s paramilitary tiger clone corps, and defeated her soundly. Aina 4-72 later went AWOL for a period of time. Afterward, SED head wallaby Morticon expressed the assurance that “Yes, she did return.”

The motivation for this fight seems somewhat obscure. Earlier, slightly mutated rabbit Fuzzy asked Morticon why he arranged for mental combat. Morticon explained, “So I can conquer Azure. Azure is not conquerable any other way.” When further pressed on the reason for this conquest, Morticon said, “Because Azure is the entire universe.” However, the true reason may be a bulletin posted approximately a month ago by Azure, titled “What is to be done?” which referred to the SED as “a spectre … haunting Spindizzy,” accused its members of “murdering the innocent, attempting to assassinate mayorial candidates,” and requested “the mayor to appoint a sheriff and the citizens of Spindizzy to elect a judge.” Perhaps the SED’s challenges to Azure are attempts to quell counterrevolutionary tactics (such as the recently announced Society of Good Doers) before they can start.

Attached via electrode-encrusted headbands to a device which linked their minds and showed the results for the benefit of onlookers, combatants Azure and Zeta soon became unconscious while their mentalities locked in combat.

Azure’s mental landscape consisted of a brightly colored cityscape including a silver sphere labeled “Seat of the Soul”, a jukebox playing mood-setting music, and a factory, all manned by small blue foxes like himself. Zeta’s meanwhile formed as a Go board with blue and white stones suspended in a black field circled by glowing geodesic spheres around what seemed to be a golden sun.

Azure attacked with a mortar shot of euphoria which, as he described, “flows from and feeds back on an intellectual pursuit, in my own inner world”; Zeta responded with sensations of petting and tickling. Azure’s mental army fired off a geometric proof, which Zeta subverted into the construction of a heptadecagon while sending some of the geodesic spheres into Azure’s territory, where they opened into all-seeing eyes. Zeta dotted Azure’s landscape with white stones. Azure disrupted their order with blue stones and held off the eyes with nonsense verse and trivial information, causing more spheres to light up in the darkness, revealing its shape: The golden “sun” was one of two eyes of a monstrous, world-straddling mental image of Morticon himself!

Azure’s army attempted to hold off the demonic wallaby with feelings of unresolved longings and desires, and his factory crew blasted the massive mental Morticon with a firehose spraying fear and uncertainty. Undeterred, he stalked across the cityscape, casting a deep shadow that twisted everything it fell upon to his desires.

By now Azure had discovered a small dim sphere in a remote corner of Zeta’s mind. Whispering “beauty” to get in, Azure found himself in the parlor of a rather polite, courtly black squirrel; Zeta’s “initial programming,” as she described herself.

Zeta

The battle raged outside: having failed to recast Morticon as a windmill of Zeta’s mind, Azure sent out a horde of trickster spirits making mischief. He pummeled her image of Morticon with ideals and virtues, but even these became subverted to the will of the monolithic macropod’s will, who soon came upon Azure’s “Seat of the Soul” — which proved to be a decoy loaded with memories of Morticon’s defeats and embarrassments. Despite the temporary setback, Zeta’s image of Morticon rapidly recovered, strengthened by her own memories of his triumphs and determination.

Within the parlor, the black squirrel told Azure, “If her sense of joy, love, and pleasure are wrapped up in that sable pear then so are her darker emotions: her only fears, her shame, the only thing she’s afraid to lose.”

Rejuvenated by a nice cup of tea, Azure departed to rejoin the battle proper: not in his own mind, but in Zeta’s, where he constructed his own image of Morticon, disinterested in anything but his own welfare, coolly pronouncing Zeta obsolete and introducing her to her own replacement.

That was the turning point of the battle; Zeta howled with anguish and the giant image of Morticon collapsed and fell back into a black hole, clawing at the edge for a grip. Azure attacked the Morticon-monster’s fingers with a hammer, but the giant wallaby didn’t lose his grip entirely until, incredibly, Zeta slashed through his fingers, leaving the image to recede into the hole and vanish.

Shortly after this, the monitor image cut out and the combatants regained consciousness.

In the aftermath, Azure seemed in muted spirits. “I am intact, not under the dread sway of Morticon,” he assured bystanders at first. However he seemed to feel a mixture of fear and guilt toward Zeta, hiding from her and avoiding her gaze. Eventually he gave an apology to Zeta — an apology she dismissed as “not required.”

For her part, Zeta seemed visibly shaken, refused all offers of comfort and sustenance, and quickly fled the scene, presumably for SED headquarters. After she left, Azure remarked, “Honestly I kind of wish I’d lost.”

Anyone encountering Azure or Zeta is urged to be cautious, as the battle has likely taken a severe toll on their respective psyches.