"Oi, Matty! You wanna go surf?"
The voice of his friends woke Matty up from a seemingly eternal slumber, and as he tossed aside a piece of tropical tree leave off his eyes and rolled up to sitting, his head was spinning and his mind sluggish. The visions of his friends running along the beach was blurry, and they looked nothing more like pale yellow dots in a blue backdrop of the sky and sea.
That blue, however, is the ocean that surrounds the entirety of the Down Under place, the south-most island of the known Olympus prime world, and it enjoyed the tropical weather year round, giving birth to a relaxed culture that Matty grew up in.
Matty rubbed his eyes before yawning lightly and standing up from his wooden bench when he heard the ruffles of the leaves from besides him.
"Heya, sleepy head." A girl with dark hair and round fluffy cheeks smiled at him before she nimbly ran past him while wearing slim pieces of fabric around her breast and waist, "Wanna go do something?"
"I'll be...right there..." Matty said, smiling before he ran after her. Then, as his friends approached the ocean, they all jumped up into the air before projecting their hands down as the Wave surged from underneath their feet, creating constructs of surfing boards before they leapt on and started swimming towards the nearest rolling waves.
This was paradise. If it were up to Matty, he would have stayed in the Down Under place for all eternity, but reality is often...equally surprising and disappointing.
Out of all of his friends and most others on the Down Under island, Matty was the most talented of them all when it comes to the utilization of Waves. The majority of the population on the island are Casters, and their smart little Casts served their daily lives well. However, Matty was born different.
Instead, he was born a Manifester, and his manifest never settled. The islanders had never seen or heard of a Manifester before, and thus, Matty was never registered as one. Being the free-spirited person that he was, he never cared to fully stabilize his manifest. Going from one thing to the other, he instead used his manifest to copy and master every single of the Casts ever known to the people of the island, and it wasn't long before he became the number one Wave user there.
He was literally the king of his very own paradise nation, and he was happy with where he was at.
Then, one day, a red head girl with a rough haircut and delinquent behavior stumbled into the port of the island, drunk out of her mind. Matty was on guard duty at the port, and he was called there.
"I...burp...I need more booze..." The girl said, grabbing onto Matty's collars with her slim wrists before rubbing her red hair all over his face, "I heard the Down Under Place has great beer?"
"Watch yourself, outsider!" Matty said, standing firm before gripping the wrist of the girl. She slowly tilted her head up, and her gaze sharpened before locking onto Matty's face as an aura of power surged out from within her. It was as if a monster had arrived from the other side of the ocean, and brought along a gift of doom.
The other people around Matty immediately stepped away from the two of them, yet Matty stood firm as the girl continued channeling the Wave throughout all her body and continued to intimidate Matty.
"You...are not scared....burp...Of me?" The girl asked, glancing at the fearful crowd before turning her attention back towards Matty who's still holding onto her hand.
"I am the number one Wave user on this island, and I will not backdown from you." Matty said, "Leave, now."
"I...I just wanted to get away...and get some beer..." The girl yawned, pushing Matty away and turning around with a flurry of messy steps. However, before she could stumble her way back onto her ship, she made a sharp stop and spun around smoothly on her tippy toes like a traveling dancer, "How about a challenge? We fight, and if I win, you will do whatever I want?"
Then, she revealed herself to be Yuna Hu, the daughter of the grand master of one of the three greatest Wave Channeling martial arts, the Surging Tiger.
And after Matty's quick insignificant defeat, she took him in as one of her underlings, dragging him to the Infinite Academy as part of her travels and forcing him to call her Yuna-sama for the rest of their time.
"Come, I will show you the world." Yuna said, emerging from the dust clouds and opening the door to Matty's future as he stared into her. Then, he reached out and took it.
"Matty may have been able to copy the Casts and methods of Wave Chaneling...but this is something he has never faced before..." Braka said as he gripped his fist tightly. In the meanwhile, Yuna, the red haired girl that started everything for him, said in silence and watched Matty closely.
"He will never back down, not from me, and not from her." Yuna said, "Cause that's just who he is."
Braka turned towards Yuna, and the intense look on her face was something that he had rarely seen.
"Try and copy this!" Ver declared, swinging the massive Kraken's tendril around before she propelled herself forward with jets of water coming out from the bottom of her feet. Taking full control of the battlefield with the reaches of the Kraken's tendril, Ver didn't even need to utilize the extra range from her Sky-Splitting Sword now.
As the earth-rocking slash landed on top of Matty and created a smokescreen that rose through the air, Matty's figures shot out from within like a bullet, dashing high up into the air before he threw his hands out, recreating a massive shard of ice from a Cast that he encountered in the battle royale before slamming it down towards Ver.
She grunted and crossed the tendrils in front of her body, knocking the shards aside when bolts of lightning were then channeled from a darkened cloud above her, the bolts cutting up and propagating through the tendril and shocking Ver. As her short dark blonde hair became puffed up like an off-brand cotton candy, Matty steadied his breathe and powered up his Manifest further.
He has never had any troubles copying Casts using his Duplication Manifest, but what he's about to do next...will be difficult, to say the least. As he compressed his Manifest back into his body as if he was trying to stuff a balloon into a cup, the construct created solely by the Wave within him then became coated over his skin. Then, as he recalled the way she did it, his fist beginning to warm and glow brightly as a pair of semi-transparent tiger paws formed around it.
"Surging Tiger style: King of the Jungle!" Matty shouted, his body dashing through the air down towards Ver as his feet dug deep into the surface of the burning tendril before he used it as a springboard to get closer and closer towards Ver.
"He is trying to get close, little one!" The Kraken warned.
"Yeah yeah, Kraken Obvious!" Ver responded quickly and guided herself back with more of the tendrils extending out from behind her back, clawing along the ground and keeping up the distance between Ver and the closing Matty.
Then, as she sent a whipping shockwave through the tendrils in front of her, Matty's body was tossed onto the surface of the icy lake like a bouncy ball as he flopped and rolled, creating a series of cracks on the ice as he went. Adjusting his body position mid-bounce, Matty then pounced out of the hole that Ver launched him in and surged towards his opponent relentlessly.
"Try to get close then!" Ver said, rapidly expanding the size of the Whirlpool Black around her body as yet another tendril grew out from within and started wreaking havoc around the icy lake's surface, grabbing onto Matty's body and slamming him down repeatedly.
He never seemed to make a single sound even as his body became battered, bruised, and burnt up by Ver's frantic counter-attacks with her flmaing Kraken's tendrils. As he jumped back up towards Ver once again while wielding the pair of semi-transparent tiger claws, Yuna suddenly shot up from her seat within the restaurant of the Winter Wars Resort, her eyes wide open and veins bulging over her forehead.
"YOU GOT THIS, MATTY!" She shouted as the eyes from everywhere in the room drew towards her.
"Yuna..." Braka muttered her name lightly before smiling. Despite her usual expressions and vulgar mouth, she actually cared for Matty a lot more than she showed.
"Your fight is pointless, and you know it!" Ver said, her figure rising through the air as two more tendrils grew out from within her back, now reaching six arms for the Kraken, "You are nothing but a stepping stone for my victory!"
"That's only if you have something to step on." Matty said, smiling as his body was slapped away by Ver's tendril once more. Then, the thick layers of ice underneath Ver's feet and the Kraken's tendril suddenly cracked and broke into two separate pieces as she slipped in between the two folding pieces and started sinking straight down into the lake, the bone-chilling water swallowing her up instantly.
Ver cursed before she tried to latch onto the rest of the hard icy surface, but the crack in the ice was just the beginning of Matty's counter-attack. Over the countless times of Matty's seemingly pointless stunted attacks, he has been using the momentum granted to him by the tendril's whips to weaken the integrity of the ice around Ver while applying subtle Casts to create vibrations in the ice and weaken its structure.
He didn't know when the fruits of his labor will ripen, but when it eventually did, Victory will be his. Such is the true strength of the Surging Tiger style. Through relentless aggression, they will win, no matter what. Despite never being a true practitioner of the Surging Tiger style Wave Channeling martial art, he has been around a special person that just happens to know all about it.
This victory is for my people, my island, and...for you, Yuna. Matty thought, his hands raised over his head before the Manifest surged out from within his body and reformed itself into the lightning Cast he used before. Then, he slashed his arms straight down as the bolts of lightning slammed into the surface of the frozen lake, frying Ver alive as she became further submerged underwater.
"Through...through the cunningly clever setup, Matty Joels! The kid from Down Under! He has done it! He has..." Principal Khan tried to contain his shock when suddenly, movements coming from underneath the layers of ice started stirring up the water as bubbles surged from underneath. A looming shadow then materialized from within the darkness before piercing through the layer of shattered ice!
Massive outreaching tendrils scooped up the piece of ice that Matty's standing on before cracking it in half and slamming it together like a piece of bread being rolled into a sandwich. Then, as the monster in the water tore open the ice sandwich, Matty Joel's unconscious body rolled out from within it as if the filling was misplaced.
The entire world's breathe was held still at that moment as the Kraken turned towards the projection of Principal Khan whose eyes became as big as his mouth with the jaws on the ground. The scales over the head of the Kraken peeled away, revealing Ver from within.
"My name is Ver Fulgen, and the victory is mine, and mine alone!" She declared, her fist raise into the hair as a tendril wrapped around the battered body of the unconscious Matty Joel and held it up in the air.