This is a pure fluff action piece by design, written exclusively because I always wanted to be a fight choreographer growing up. The environments are largely inspired by the elaborate backgrounds found in fighting games and holodeck simulations.


The skunk stepped gingerly from the shore onto the boardwalk, creaking beneath her feet like a pirate ship’s deck. She wasn’t sure what lurked beyond those thick ferns and dangling vines into the waiting swamp ahead of her, but she was determined to find out. She found frog lying sideways on his back across the boardwalk, idly holding a 6 foot-long bamboo staff between his feet and hands, playing it like a flute. Seeing her approach, the frog glanced at her ostensibly, turning to face her with his staff between his feet looking more like a rifle now.

The skunk soon sped up her cautious approach into a zigzagging spring around the three darts the frog shot at her feet and legs through his hollowed-out bamboo staff like an oversized blowgun. Dragonflies skirted the water’s surface around them, seeing just how close they could get without going under, testing limits. As the skunk got too close for comfort, the frog went at her feet and legs with a series of low thrusts, forcing her to hop back on successive crane’s legs to avoid them.

As the frog threw his bamboo staff at her like a javelin, the skunk’s tail trailed behind her clockwise whirling dodge, knocking the staff out of its trajectory. Before it fell into the water, the frog’s tongue shot out of his mouth to catch it, yanking it back into his waiting, webbed hands. The skunk was doing what she could to ignore the bites of the mosquitoes swarming around them, keeping in mind that she needed to focus her attention on a much more dangerous adversary than flying pests.

The frog set his staff on the ground sideways in front of him, leaping into the air to stretch his tongue out around an overhanging branch to come at the skunk with both legs ahead of him like Tarzan. The skunk could only roll back under the attack back on her feet, turning around to face the frog with his staff still on the ground behind her. The skunk noticed tadpoles in the water around the boardwalk and, briefly, asked herself whether or not they were related to the frog she was fighting.

The frog’s tongue shot out of his mouth just at ground level, pulling his bamboo staff back toward his hands from the ground behind the skunk’s feet. She saw it coming at her from behind at the last second to do a back-flip in the air over it like a jump rope. Crocodile jaws snapped in the swamp water around the boardwalk, reminding her just how badly she wanted to avoid being knocked into it, as if she’d needed any other motivation for this than she’d already had.

The frog advanced relentlessly toward the skunk doing a figure 8 with his staff as he went. After a couple of back-flips on her hands, the skunk dove down into a front roll under the frog’s pole vaulting flying kick, grabbing his staff to turn around and face him with it, pulling the ol’ switcheroo on him, as she was wont to do. Fireflies illuminated the swamp around them and, briefly, the skunk asked herself if the frog had to make an effort to focus on the fight, not on bug snacks around them.

Just then, the frog stuck his tongue out all the way to the skunk’s staff, clinging to it hard enough to pull the whole frog’s body along with it when he retracted it. Bringing his legs forward sideways in mid-air on his way to the surprised skunk, the frog turned his manoeuvre into a drop kick, forcing the skunk to drop the bamboo staff so that the frog could take it back from her. The skunk noticed electric eels in the water around them, making her even more nervous than the crocodiles had.

The skunk jumped over the frog’s staff sweep, crouched under his staff swing, stopped his descending arc with an x-block up, and rolled back away from the frog’s rising staff. There were lily pads on the water around them, but they were clearly designed to support smaller frogs. He stuck his tongue on her midsection at a distance, pulling her close sideways headfirst at his upright staff. She grabbed it with both hands to swing herself around it, knocking him off the boardwalk in the water.


The cavern’s dankness hit her like an air conditioned movie theatre in the summer after the sweltering swampland. The lizard turned his head away from his campfire to face her, leaping down from his boulder to land on all four with his tail swishing menacingly overhead. Lifting her right leg over his right claw, the skunk turned on a dime to duck under his overhead tail whip in turn. Without missing a beat the lizard lunged with his jaws snapping at her midsection, forcing her to hop back.

The skunk would’ve assumed it would’ve been harder to see, but bioluminescent moss growing on the cavern walls around them made it possible for them to distinguish each other well enough. After the skunk jumped over his tail sweep, the lizard laid down on his back facing away from the skunk to send an upside-down front kick right at her head from below. Stopping it with an x-block, the skunk took the opportunity to punish the lizard for his attempt with a left axe kick at his head.

The lizard, showing off, stopped her kick swinging his left and right legs from right to left from the ground in front of his face, making her foot deviate from its trajectory. Cave beetles clicked excitedly around them, scuttling and fluttering away from all the commotion to observe it from a safe distance instead. The skunk knelt for a right punch down at the lizard’s head but he sat up just in time for it to miss him.

The skunk followed up with a straight punch at the back of his head, which he dodged with a face-down side-splitting manoeuvre. The lizard quickly turned his stance into a pair of much more offensive leg scissors, forcing the skunk into a left cartwheel over his leg. The skunk could hear bubbling lava and see smoke rising from it somewhere around them, reminding him that the cavern had much more troubling hazards than boulders and pebbles for him to worry about.

The skunk’s right leg shot into a front sweep the lizard lifted his right leg to dodge. Switching his momentum up like an uncoiling spring, the skunk’s right hand went to the ground as the top of his left foot went for the right side of his face. She stopped the low right backhand he knelt under her left foot to deliver with her right arm and the left high backhand with which he followed it up with her left, bringing his left arm into an arm lock to trip him and pin his shoulder with her right knee.

Patches of ice also covered this or that part of the ground around them, making the skunk wonder how the cavern’s temperature made both ice and lava possible. The lizard wrapped his tail around the skunk’s neck, face down on the ground. The skunk got up yanking on his tail as she did, only to find it coming right off from him in her hand, throwing it away from her as it wriggled horrifically on its own. The lizard regrew his tail right in front of her, daring her to pull it again.

Mushrooms somehow seemed to find a way to grow on the cavern walls around them, as unexpectedly as the lizard’s tail itself. The lizard dove face-first between the skunk’s legs, sliding on the ground to get up behind her pulling on her ankles as he got up facing away from her. As the skunk fell forward face-down herself, the lizard stepped back over her legs with one leg, flipping her over on her back then continuing his movement to swing her whole body around him and throw it away.

The stalagmites and stalactites she noticed around them in the cavern made her feel keenly just how much of a gamble being thrown wantonly through it could prove to be. As the skunk crouched under the lizard’s tail swing, he grabbed and pulled both of her ankles to make her fall on her back again, bringing both of his claws down on her from above. She sat up to stop his claws with a rising x-block, pulling on his arms while pushing on his chest with her leg to send him flying behind her.

You could see the two of them reflecting on some of the rock formations around them as they fought, which she could only guess must’ve been made of some kind of crystal. The lizard came back up from his crouch under the skunk’s right tornado kick with a right uppercut. The skunk turned her counterclockwise whirling dodge into a reversed left elbow at his midsection. He barely stopped it with an x-block, but her left side kick got through, sending him flying into a nearby pond.


The warmth of the beach proved refreshing in its own way after the cold darkness of the cave, but she wasn’t here on vacation. At first she just found a seemingly empty upturned shell on the sand before both of the turtle’s arms, both of his legs, then his head finally popped out of the five holes around it. He swung himself onto his feet to face the skunk quite easily proving that this turtle, for one, did not need anyone to help put him back on his feet when he ended up on his back in some way.

When the skunk opened with the ol’ one-two at his chest then a stronger punch at his abdomen he just stood there. He descended into a horse stance without even bothering to dodge or block any of the three attacks, just to show off his shell’s resistance to them on its own as his heels kicked up dust behind him. The white clouds in the sky above them seemed like they could’ve looked like various kinds of recognizable shapes, if either of them had had time to really look at them.

The turtle pulled his head back down into his shell under the skunk’s left jumping, back spinning heel kick, popping it back out just in time to see the skunk’s following right hook coming. Stopping it with a left in-out block, the turtle turned it into a charging shoulder attack, forcing the skunk to block it but not completely, still getting knocked back and stumbling to regain her footing. This guy was giving her more trouble than she expected, she thought as seagulls squawked overhead.

The turtle pulled his head back down under her right spinning back heel kick, lifting his right leg over her right low kick then stopping her high right round kick with another left in-out block. She sure was getting all the mileage she could out of that leg, the turtle thought as crabs scuttled away from their fight. The skunk stopped his right punch at her abdomen with her left arm and his right backhand right her right arm. She crouched under his left backhand to block his following headbutt.

They were lucky they hadn’t stepped on any of the jellyfish around them yet, as neither of the fighters had even noticed them. The skunk tried to catch the turtle’s protruding head between two colliding palm strikes from each side, but he withdrew his head into his shell to avoid them yet again. What a neat trick that must’ve been to have had on hand when you needed it, she couldn’t help but think to herself as her low x-block stopped the turtle’s left knee.

The turtle stopped her double punches with double in-out parries, matching her move for move before the double palm strike he unleashed in response actually connected, knocking her down a peg into a back roll on her feet. The seashells around them sang their songs of the sea to themselves, unheard but untroubled. Answering the skunk’s taunt, the turtle’s right leg shot forward into a front sweep under the skunk’s right crane leg.

The turtle brought his right hand on the ground as the skunk crouched under the back of his left heel, stopping his right descending elbow with a rising x-block from her crouch. She couldn’t imagine how much work must’ve gone into the sand castles around them which, in the end, would just get swept away by the ebb and flow of the tide. The skunk grabbed the turtle’s left punch with her right then left arms flipping him forward on his back to sit on his chest before he pried her off with his legs.

The starfish on the beach around them seemed dead to the world, but they were definitely alive, and aware of the fight in their own way. The turtle pulled off an algae whip he’d been wearing as a belt, swinging it at the skunk over and over forcing her to arch her back, bend over forward, leap into a sideways butterfly twist, and go down into a dive roll at him under it. The skunk went down on her hands to send her legs forward around his shoulders to bring both elbows down on his head at once.

Arching her back, the skunk sent her hands back to the ground behind her, borrowing the torque from her movement to pull on the turtle’s head with her legs on her way back. Withdrawing into his shell from the shock, he ended up sliding all the way toward the ocean near them. He even continued to skip across it like a pebble having been thrown across a pond by a playful schoolchild before disappearing into the horizon where sun met sea, not to be seen again for a while.


“Computer... End program.” The artificial environment disappeared around the skunk as quickly as it had appeared before her, leaving her to return to her duties aboard her starship. She was really happy with this one. She did design those for a living, but what was the point of making games, if you never took the time to play them yourself, after all? And why should anyone else play it, if not her...?