Rarity wished she could find a way to bottle and sell the essence in the air before a fight. It was much of it a smell, something like a cross between over-eager gym-sweat and grumbling, musky testosterone, but that was only the half of it—the tension between everypony bumping together in the crowd was another part of it, the sense that a fight could break out at any moment not including any of the ponies that were on the card for the evening. Everypony there was bubbling underneath the surface with at least one thick layer of 'it could have been me', and losing a string of bets could run a pony up this side of a salt-lick, so to speak. Rarity had fantasized about putting out an erstwhile hoof and tripping somepony to see the resultant explosion of blood and brawling hooves, but she restrained herself every time. There was enough of all of that to happen as planned anyway.

Analysis wasn't a feat she enjoyed, but perhaps she was prone to it, as a pony with a hoof in both worlds, always doing her best to translate dreams and impulses into tangible objects that could be lusted over by like-minded ponies who saw the same flashes of inspiration in fashion that she did. It was hard not to feel everything, and, in feeling it, think endlessly on the bits of the sensation that made her tingle along every inch of her coat. Between her legs especially.

Firstly, you had the fighters. No, leave them aside for a moment.

Firstly, you had the crowd. It was a throng—she liked that word, 'throng'—a mumbling thrush of separate bodies in a common instance of intent. Everypony was there for some version of the same thing, biting out the bloodshed that day-bound society disallowed them from expressing. It didn't matter if you were grappling in the ring or just estimating your expectations from the sidelines—you always had something on the line close to your dignity, and anypony who was up in bits or points for brawling had bragging rights over the simpler-minded and less able. It was a proving grounds, she supposed. Maybe that was what made the sense of the air so thick and deliciously toxic. It tickled her in a dark and naughty place that remained buried in all other contexts, the tiny fragment of her consciousness that wanted to be dragged by her mane into a dank cave and ravaged solely for the sake of the stallion interested in breeding her. She wanted to be used up by somepony, a shell around the surge of adrenaline he was riding to slam his cock into her, an empty vessel for his pleasure.

Ooh. It gave her shivers. And here the match hadn't even started yet.

That was her main focus of the night, aside the pervasive and intoxicating aroma of stallions mingling with each other in various degrees of musk and body-odour. Rarity inhaled deeply and savoured the mix of scents, impossible to pull one stallion's cologne from another's. It was like dunking your head in a thick, virile soup. Sometimes she never wanted to come up for air.

Ooh. But there was the card. She'd paid special attention to that, there was a dark black pegasus of particular interest, and hopefully one she'd get at least a little time with before the match started. Rarity pushed her way subtly through the crowd, winnowing in the gaps between ponies like an invisible current vanishing through river eddies. Her steps took her along a practiced route, passed the bookies and food vendors that had to yell loud enough to be heard over the constant crowd-murmur, until she was at ring-side, and from there could see the sectioned-off pens on either side that the fighters were sent to wait in. There, she could see the familiar dark hue and gruff expression over a set of feathers that she'd set her eye on since seeing him last time. Surely, one could devote one's attention solely to the top-scoring contender in a given event, and surely, Rarity was capable of pivoting her interests in a sharp but subtle enough way that she could and had spent many a month hopping from prize-fighter to prize-fighter... but Thunderlane was special, and Rarity sensed in him a certain youthful hunger that she was certain would translate to the bedroom. She'd spend more than a few evenings sprawled out on her bed, face buried in her pillow, picturing Thunderlane's engorged stallionhood slipping into her from behind, making her quiver and moan and ache with how thickly it parted her lips and slid into her passage, and she would howl like a possessed creature in the primal night, and frig herself between her legs mercilessly, and cum buckets, fountains, waterfalls, and have a lot of laundry to do the next day, as well as needing to prepare an excuse for Sweetie about how she'd recently been onset with a batch of particularly cruel night terrors. Fucking somepony could be a lot of work, at the end of the day.

There was the other contestant as well—that hulking, egg-white deformity and his miniature wings. Bulk Biceps had started as something of a running joke in the underground fight community, something of a de facto moral lesson on how size did not necessarily equal strength—but after a combination of intense training and hush hush performance enhancing substances that somehow evaded regular screenings, Bulk was back in the game in a big way, and was tonight set to cement the seventh win in his growing victory streak. 'Lucky Seven' was the name of the event, and Thunderlane and Bulk were at the top of the card. Never mind weight-classes—Bulk Biceps broke most of the categorization conventions anyway. Him and his hippopotamic land-mass of a body.

In one camp of the crowd, you had ponies saying Thunderlane could never do it—Bulk Biceps was the next Pony Joe Fraser, and Thunderlane was another destined-to-be-eventually-nameless stop on his journey to the top.

Then you had the other side. The way Rarity saw it, big things fell harder. They sometimes fucked harder, but they also often ran out of steam early. She was no fighter, but she'd seen enough ponies attempting to tear out each others' throats that she could feel an upset coming in her bones. In her lady-place, if it was a really big one.

This one had started tingling when she woke up in the morning. She'd rubbed one out before breakfast, and Sweetie had persisted in asking 'what's that smell?' until Rarity sent her on a made-up errand at the bakery by bribing her with a promise of a treat. Then she'd rubbed one out again while Sweetie was gone, and cleaned up in the shower before the innocent little thing got back. She'd used her treat money to buy a cream-filled long-john, and Rarity had needed to excuse herself upstairs to her room after a few bites. To touch herself again, of course.

Because being underground, and technically 'illegal', the accommodations at ring-side were a far reach from those at a professional fight. There was a lot less blood to clean up at a professional fight, for one thing. Luckily, the first few fights of the night that Rarity had missed were mostly clean, and only one pony had lost any of his teeth, which were promptly swept up and returned to him, a little dusty but otherwise none the worse for the wear. Rarity could sidle up to Thunderlane's corner easily, without even getting a sideways look from his coach, who was so deep in pre-game strategy that he seemed not to notice her at all. Thunderlane noticed her, but gave no indication that he had done so besides a brisk, almost nod, and a tiny grunt that only Rarity could just barely hear through the constant murmur of the crowd. She stood and watched him for a bit, drinking in the sight of somepony this strong and virile in preparation for a task that would push him to the fullest limits of his abilities. Maybe that was the part that she ached for most insatiably—seeing somepony put his everything on the line, to achieve that which was only possible through sheer, physical willpower. You couldn't move a rock up a hill by talking it up, or dancing it, or playing it a nice tune and then asking it to move. At the end of the day, sometimes, you had to push a fucking rock. And these ponies had pushed so many rocks, they had started to ask themselves if it was possible to move the earth with enough force and a determined shove in the right direction.

Now, Rarity thought to herself, how best to approach the business ahead of us...

"'scuse me, Miss," came a voice from behind her, a young mare's, with a vulgar out-of-place city-street's accent that reminded Rarity of the same pork-pie fat that Pipsqueak had one day congealed in.

Rarity turned away from her greenish-silver-maned mark to address the polite interruption.

An earth-pony with long pig-tails and a blue vest on smiled up at her, given the height difference between them. She had a bright shiny set of teeth that nevertheless looked horribly askew.

Rarity smiled back, no stranger to courtesy even surrounded by the heady smog of a hundred blood-hungry stallions. Hopefully she could get this over with before the fight of the night begins...

"Yes, darling?" She only dropped such poison-drenched 'darlings' in special circumstance, but impatience was a cruel and insistent motivator.

"Just noticed you eyeing the fighters, Miss," the earth-pony with the pigtails said. "And I bet all the bits in your pocket against my fancy gold watch that I can pick the best fighter."

Rarity raised and lowered an eyebrow.

"A bet, dear? Really, go see the bookies for that sort of thing. We're interested in a more intimate profile of tonight's events than your winnings will provide..."

"It's a real fancy gold watch, Miss. A Tirek's. I swear on me Mum, miss."

"Please go away. You're obnoxious in a special way it would take us the better part of an hour to describe properly. And your mane is atrocious. Split ends everywhere, darling."

The pea-soup-with-ham pony trotted off, her gold (?) watch and pride in toe. Rarity paid her no more mind than a mosquito that had missed its bite.

Now, where was that hunk of hunk of smoldering pegasus she had her eye on for real...

Ah, yes. Still gritting his teeth and staring down an invisible version of the hulking monstrosity he was about to grapple with. Well, this was where Rarity was to have her say, and nopony had an objection big enough to get in her way for long.

"Darling," she called from cage-side, choosing the special musical lilt she saved for bar-room flirtations or coy winks as she walked home in the evening. Again, Thunderlane noticed her, but pretended expertly he hadn't done so, continuing to stare rigidly forward and make the show that his ears were only for his coach.

Rarity was unperturbed. She knew how to get into a stallion's head more than one way. This just presented a more promising challenge.

Instead of speaking, Rarity made her way around the proximity of Thunderlane's waiting space a few times. She flicked her tail over her backside, careful not to give more than a peek of anything resting underneath, the rest of her figure hidden by the pale brown jacked she'd selected for the evening, the same colour as a doe in a meadow at springtime. It her experience, the prey-like nature made her all the more appealing to a hungry pegasus who probably hadn't gotten off in ages, busy with all his training. Rarity acted oblivious as she made her rounds, but by the third trip, she had decidedly captured Thunderlane's attention, and noticed him staring at her backside even when she was just turning idly, doing her best to seem uninterested in the hulking specimen only feet away. Both of them were playing a game of 'don't catch me looking', but Rarity was reigning champ, and unlike Bulk Biceps, had no intention of surrendering her winning streak any time soon.

"You do intend to dethrone that deformed heap of muscles, don't you, dear?" Rarity asked the question as though she was uninterested in the answer, pleading a case to Thunderlane simply for the satisfaction of hearing her own sultry voice. Again, it seemed to be working; Thunderlane's ears perked at the sound of Rarity's voice, and his eyes couldn't help but drifting in her direction even when she was facing forward, drinking in the sight of her heavy eye-shadow and lush, red lipstick. Rarity considered the fight as much an event for herself as a viewer as for any of the contestants.

Thunderlane grunted, but this time it seemed in direct response to Rarity's question. She pushed on, smirking inwardly at having finally gotten the first hoof-hold of progress. A shame she hadn't been born with a natural proclivity for lifting heavy things and throwing her body around—well, that second one was a matter of semantics, because there was one type of throwing her body around she was very good at...

"It just seems to me you're in for a bit of a struggle... he's undefeated on his new run, you know. Surely you've been paying attention these past few months."

"Bigger they are, harder they fall," Thunderlane said. His voice was low, gruff, but not unwelcoming, it reminded Rarity of thick boughs of lumber and the sensation of being physically lifted off her feet by her father as a filly, being carried to her room and giggling as the two of them tickle-fought into exhaustion. Rarity's father had never been a pony to fit in the ring like this, but still, she thought of him sometimes.

Rarity grinned openly. Time to reel him in.

"You're quite confident for a young upstart." Rarity began to wander around the pen again, waving her tail expertly over her tush while making it seem as natural as possible. "I trust you've gotten your wagers all in place before the fight... ready to put your money where your mouth is, so to speak."

"Don't do it for the money," Thunderlane shot back. His coach had wandered off, presumably to prepare for the fight, which was set to start in less than fifteen minutes. "That's not the important part."

"Mhmm... you're just in it for the thrill of the fight then, is that it? The look on the other colt's face as you send him tumbling down like a sack of potatoes, faced for the first time with the fact that all his strength and practice won't save him from somepony who's just better than him?"

Thunderlane turned his head to the side, doing his best to appear as though he wasn't staring at Rarity like a starving, slobbering hound. He raised an eyebrow and scrunched his face up a bit.

"What's your name?" he asked.

Rarity winked at him.

"Oh, let's not spoil things with too many details... why don't we save that for after you've claimed your prize, hmm?"

"It's just a belt," Thunderlane said. "I already told you, I don't do it for the—"

"Oh, not that prize, darling." Rarity giggled and swished her tail over her backside once more for good measure, then spread her legs ever so slightly, giving Thunderlane his first proper glimpse of her soaking-wet marehood.

"I was talking about me."

She snapped her legs shut before he could get used to the show.

"Good luck, dear," Rarity said, and blew Thunderlane a kiss as she vanished into the crowd. "Hope to see you soon..."

Thunderlane stared at Rarity's ass as it walked away. When she was gone, he lowered his head, shook it, and drained his water bottle until it was empty.

The fight was in five minutes.