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Every year in the spring, when the cherry blossoms bloomed, Master Viper went to a remote hideaway for two weeks of seclusion and private training. Every year, something like this happened.

"Viper," hissed the other snake. "I too am a viper. Unlike you, I have fangs."

He spoke the truth. He was a thicker, heavier snake than she was, stronger and more muscular. His broad jaws gaped to show curved fangs that would pierce pierce clothing as easily as flesh. Mottled darker patterns covered his body, which had none of the elaborate ornamentation of her own. Master Viper's bright green scales were dyed in kanji patters that spelled out a koan; his scales were simply scales.

He was shorter in body length than Viper but not by much, and much thicker.

"Do you have a name," Master Viper said, "Before the Guild takes its revenge?"

Truth be told she wasn't sure which guild he represented. The obvious one would be the Assassin's Guild, which the Furious Five had foiled again and again. He could easily be from the Thieves, or the Slavers. Or maybe one of her many other enemies had hired him to kill her. It didn't really matter. She could see from the way he held himself that he was skilled.

"I am Du," he hissed. Well, that was startlingly unimaginative. Du meant "poison". She couldn't really point fingers, though, even if she had them. After all, she was Master "Viper"...

There was no more talk. He was thick and strong and he was fast too. Quick as lighting his fangs lashed out, but she wasn't there. His dripping venom hit only air as her tail lanced out and jabbed him in the side.

His form was more like the Tiger, not so much the Snake. Each time he bit at her it was like a clawed hand trying to grip or rend. Except if he hit her even once his poison would weaken her to the point of helplessness if not kill her outright. He struck again and once more she slipped away from his fangs.

He was strong and he was quick, but not as quick as Viper. As he struck for the fifth time she allowed him to very nearly bite her. In his effort he overextended and her tailtip stabbed with expert force behind his head. Du hit the floor with a thump, muscles numbed by the nerve strike.

"You are as skillful as I heard," he hissed. Still he coiled to strike her. "Perhaps I will see the hidden prison now."

"What prison is that," replied Viper.

"Each year we send someone to kill you. Each year the assassin vanishes. We have agents in all the prisons. The assassins are not there. You must have a secret one for the ones like me."

"I do," Viper said, and watched as he made ready to lash out again. Slowed by the nerve strike it took him a moment to get ready. "Let me show it to you."

And then for the first time she struck not with her tail but with her jaws. Just as he finished coiling to strike at her she reached out like a flicker of lightning and caught his head in her mouth.

Master Viper had no poison, no front fangs, that that didn't mean she lacked teeth. On each side of her mouth were dozens of sharp little teeth that curved toward the back of her jaws. Like a soft hand her loose jaws snapped shut around Du's wide head and her sharp teeth sank between his scales, locking his head in her mouth.

Du was stronger than Viper but the nerve strike left him slow to respond. He tried to pull away, thrash himself loose from her grip, but she was atop him now, pinning him as best she could beneath her lesser weight. Neither was a constrictor, but they still wrapped around each other as they fought.

This was how snakes mated. They were not mating now. Du struggled with all his might as he realized what she was doing. The moment her teeth latched onto him her jaws began to work, pushing one side forward, digging in its teeth and the pushing the other side forward in its turn. By the time Du recovered enough to put any strength into the fight his broad head was down Viper's throat and her jaws were working side to side as she swallowed his long thick neck.

Without poison, Viper had trained in the Snake style, and her strikes were lightning quick and precise. She could stun a foe larger than herself with one blow. The numbness passed, in time, as she chose not to kill in most fights. She could have killed Du when he was slow and weak from that first hit.

Instead she had seized his head, for Viper rarely had the chance to feed the way a mere dumb snake does. Alone here in her hideaway, cornered by an assassin, she did to Du what she had done to previous assassins. By the time his strength returned, her jaws were stretched wide around the thickest part of his midsection. Bit by bit her jaws worked their way laboriously forward and Du's mottled scales vanished into her maw.

Du, knowing the horror of one swallowed alive, began to fight. It was too late. It had been too late the moment she got her jaws around his head. Lacking her skill at striking with the tail all he could do was thrash about as he was eaten. His fangs were deadly if they hit, but the long slick chute of her gullet squeezed his jaws tightly together. Even if he managed to open them, there was nothing to bite.

One snake fits perfectly inside another. It was why so many were cannibalistic. The bigger, heavier Du was a formidable meal to get down, but Viper persevered, though his thick body stretched her until pale skin showed between her scales. The long bulge moved further and further down her slender body and began to take on a rippled shape.

Pulled in by Viper's jaws and squeezed down her gullet by powerful, well practiced swallowing muscles, Du's broad head slithered through her lengthy stomach until it hit the bottom. He could proceed no further until her digestive juices had done their work and yet she continued to swallow him. She was over the thickest part of his muscular body and the feeding was easier now. Her strong throat muscles sucked him in and when there was no more room in her stomach their force caused him to bend inside her.

A bulge appeared on one side of Viper's swollen body, and another on the opposite side further toward her jaws, and then again one on the first side ahead of that. As Du's thick tail slipped into her jaws Viper swallowed one last time and lay there gasping. Two-thirds of her long body was swollen, distorted in a wave pattern that showed where Du lay inside her. Her inner muscles had forced him into a sine wave. He was nearly as long as she was stretched out, but now he fit inside her stomach, albeit barely.

Sudden motion as the still living Du thrashed inside her. Viper twitched where she lay as though in sympathy. His struggle made her wriggle from side to side. Just the same he was the one on the inside. Soon his struggle would weaken, and then stop. Soon Du would merely be food.

It would take a week or more to digest prey this size. First would go the parts at the bottom of her stomach, where the acids were strongest. As Du's head and neck dissolved away, room would be made for more of him in that caustic pit. The heavy bulge of swallowed snake would gradually smooth out until all that was left was long, slender Viper. Two snakes had fought. Now there was just one.

Padded footsteps as someone approached. Viper, swollen around her meal and sluggish with its weight, bent her head around as Master Tigress approached.

"I was hoping they'd send two again," Master Tigress purred. Carefully she gathered the swollen serpent up on her arms, aware that a snake may vomit up its prey if startled. Of course Viper was not. She curled her neck up past Tigress's shoulder and looked around.

"There's a nice sunbeam over there," she said, and Tigress nodded. Viper let herself be carried rather than slither her bloated way across the tiles. Tigress lay her down as carefully as she'd picked her up and Viper sighed happily.

"Nothing like a nice warm pool of sun and nice warm floor to get the old digestion going," she said, and as if in reply the long wavy bulge in her slender body twitched. Du could hold his breath for a very long time. It would have been better for him if he could not.

"I wonder who they will send next year," Tigress purred. She stroked Viper's swollen body gently. Stretched so tightly around the heavier Du that pale skin showed between her scales, Viper was vulnerable now. Only a good friend would be allowed near her as she settled down to digest such a huge meal.

"Last year they sent those two meerkets. They were very skilled," Viper hissed. The brother and sister assassins had worked so well as a team she'd needed Tigress's help. In the end the sister made only a slight bulge in Viper's middle, and the brother a hardly bigger one in Tigress's. Barely snacks, really, but tasty.

"Before that was that warthog," Tigress purred. "It took you the whole morning to swallow him once you stunned him with your tail."

"That was a good meal," Viper mused. "Remember what a big bulge he made? Not long and - oh, still wriggling," she said as Du twitched inside her. "He's a stubborn one. Not all long and wavy like this one. That hairy pig made the lumpiest bulge."

"Maybe they'll send another big one," Tigress purred. Her eyes went distant as she remembered. "There was that ape thing they sent the one time. I never did figure out his species. No fur except on his head, and muscular. You couldn't get your jaws over those broad shoulders. Luckily," she ran her hand down her own belly, flat and muscular now, but once distended around a great lumpy bulge, "I did."

Viper squirmed, pushing her swollen body up against Tigress. Warmth from any source was welcome when the time came to digest a big meal. It wasn't the first time she used Tigress as such a source of heat.

Every spring Viper went into seclusion to train. Every fall Tigress did. And every time, though they went to a different place each time, without fail an assassin found them. Somehow, the Guilds always knew where to send their fighter. It was almost as though someone was letting them know just enough to find them, without revealing that there would not be one Master waiting, but two.

Each time, without fail, the assassin failed to return. Viper and Tigress had a deal. Viper got the smaller ones, Tigress got the big ones, and sometimes the Guilds sent more than one and they shared.

The Guilds were certain Viper and Tigress had hidden prisons they locked the assassins away in, never to be seen again. The Guilds were right. It just didn't understand the nature of the prisons their assassins disappeared into, or the brief nature of their stays. An assassin might visit Viper's "prison" for a week, or even close to two for a particularly large meal. Assassins sentenced by Tigress were lucky to last much past a day. The lucky ones suffocated almost before they were swallowed. The unlucky ones, like still-twitching Du, had all too much time to contemplate their fate.

Many were the times that the various guilds tried to locate their lost assassins, or at least the bodies. They failed in each case, not realizing there was simply no assassin, nor even a body, left to be found.

"I wonder who they'll send in the fall," Master Tigress purred, and licked her chops.