Tyger’s eyes narrowed as he came face-to-face with his opponent.
He went by the name of Johnny Powerpunch, and everything about him was as ridiculous as his name suggested, from the rainbow mohawk on his head, the red sunglasses on his eyes, to the parachute pants around his legs.
Oh, and who could forget the rocket-powered rollerblades on his feet?
The tournament announcer’s voice rang out across the arena. “This next match-up is an explosive affair between two badass brawlers! First, from Alttaelim; the Radiant, Radical, Rock-em-Sock-em Ranger: Johnny Powerpunch!”
Reina cupped her hands around her mouth as she leaned forward in her seat. “Boooooooo! You suck! And so do the Archangels!”
A venomous hiss came from her left-hand side, followed by a stern woman’s voice. “Hey! That’s my son you’re talking to!”
Reina’s head swiveled in the woman’s direction. “Well, then, you suck too!” she replied before breaking out into a giggle fit.
“And his opponent: hailing from the Thunderous City of Knuckles! The savage, ferocious, and wild Tyger!”
Reina jumped up onto her chair and howled into the sky. “Wooooooooo! Go Tyger! Kick his butt!” She plopped back down afterwards, excitedly craning her neck towards her neighbors in the row ahead of her. “That’s my friend! He’s gonna win!”
Johnny Powerpunch wheeled his way into the center of the arena, spinning in a full circle as he came to a stop. He threw his arm out in Tyger’s direction, finger pointing straight outward. “Sorry to cut your tourney run short, amigo, but Johnny Powerpunch is claiming first place tonight! But rest assured! Even Johnny Powerpunch’s opponents are welcome to the after-tourney autograph session!”
Tyger casually strolled to meet Johnny at the center of the ring, extending his fist and bumping it against his extended finger. “Cool. If I happen to be in outer space at that time, I’ll drop by.”
“Outer space?”
“That’s where yer ass is gettin’ thrown.”
The bell signalling the start of the match rang out, and Tyger exploded into action. His left fist slammed directly into his opponent’s jaw, completely throwing him off balance.
“And Tyger lands the first strike!” The announcer’s voice rang out across the arena. “Ladies and gentlemen, are we in for a surprise one-hit-knockout?!”
Johnny spat out a glob of saliva as he nearly flipped head-over-heels to the side. Luckily for him, the automatic balancers in his rocket skates adjusted themselves, preventing him from falling over.
Tyger came rushing in for a follow-up attack, but Johnny was quick enough to set up a defense. His hands made their way to his chest, forming an invisible ball between his palms.
ICE!
The three incoming punches from Tyger didn’t land like the first one hand. All they struck was the glacial wall that had manifested in the space between the two competitors. Each blow opened thick cracks in the ice and sent chunks flying off in all directions, but it was a strong enough shield to buy Johnny time to skate away, putting distance between himself and Tyger.
“An impressive recovery from Johnny Powerpunch! The ice wall prevents his opponent from clobbering him to pieces! Johnny Powerpunch is still in this, folks!”
Tyger snarled and stepped around the ice wall to get his eyes on Johnny, but was immediately forced to bury them within the crook of his arm as frost projectiles came flying in at him.
Install Ice was harder than most metals, and sharper than knives. While Tyger’s arm was enough to protect himself from suffering major damage from the attack, each one still sent a stinging pain through him, and one of them even managed to re-open one of the cuts he had received from fighting the Mistral mech.
“Johnny Powerpunch draws first blood! Is the Thunder City Tyger more fragile than he seems?!”
“Piss off!” Tyger barked, although none but himself could hear it as a roaring ball of red flames blazed its way over the arena floor. He gritted his teeth and rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding the flaming orb. “Ah, great, an elementalist….”
Tyger hated fighting elementalists.
Across the arena, Johnny Powerpunch gracefully skated around in wide parabolas, adding twists, and spins as his hands alternated between firing balls of flame. He didn’t seem to be putting much effort behind the attacks, so none of them had any major chance of actually striking Tyger, but that wasn’t his intent. He was using them simply to keep Tyger at bay, while also buying himself enough time to wink and blow kisses at any female audience members he skated past.
Reina stood up and cupped her hands around her mouth once more. “Tyger, c’mon! You gotta get in close!”
Sidestepping another blast of flame, Tyger growled under his breath. Playing dodgeball wasn’t gonna win him the match, especially when he didn’t have his own ball to throw. He was going to need to close the gap, but there was no way he’d be able to do it cleanly. Johnny had too much of the arena covered by his constant barrage of fireballs, and they didn’t seem to be noticeably taxing on him to the point that he could likely keep it going for hours.
He held his arms in a defensive position in front of him and started charging in. While he’d try to avoid whatever fireballs he could, he knew he was going to have to take some head-on as he approached his opponent.
Tyger really hated fighting elementalists.
* * * *
ULTRA PULSE
* * * *
LIGHTNING!
Zeo fired a bolt of emerald electricity across the room. The blast cut through the air like a bullet, exploding as it made contact with the stone carapace of the pulseon — rare creatures who seemed to exist exclusively within ultrapulses.
This pulseon in particular was built like a crab, if crabs had long, snakelike tails with machetes on the end. The stone-like purple armor encasing its body had proven highly resilient against Zeo’s swords, but the lightning bolt seemed to have done the trick, temporarily stunning the monster in place.
Zeo came flying in from an overhead angle, swords pressed together to form a fine point with their tips — a point that he lodged directly into the sole, thin gap in the pulseon crab’s shell.
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His aim was true, and the blades pierced deep into the monster’s flesh. The machete tail fell first, the metal clanking rhythmically as it hit the ground. The purple armor-encased body came next, slamming into the floor with a heavy thud.
Zeo retrieved his swords from the monster’s corpse, sheathing them before turning around. “All clear, ladies!”
Kiria and Annabelle made their way into the room proper, with Kiria holding aloft her blue cyber rod torch to guide the way. Zeo had been very grateful for Kiria’s presence, as the torch granted him vision in the darkness, and allowed him to fight more freely with his Lightning Install, since he no longer had to keep the Fire one active.
“This should work,” said Kiria, scanning the room. It was a large, almost-completely empty chamber deeper into the pulse. It wasn’t quite as large as the mining operation room they had found the other day, but this one was also completely devoid of forcestones in the walls, which was exactly what they were looking for, as Annabelle could try them herself without causing a chain detonation. “Open your hands.”
The elven girl complied, palms up. Kiria dropped a small marble of orange forcestone she had dug up from the wall into Annabelle’s waiting hands.
“We’ll start small,” Kiria instructed. “This shouldn’t be any more explosive than a small firecracker.
“Um….what do I do?”
“Focus on the forcestone. Keep your eyes on it.”
Annabelle nodded, aiming her pink irises directly at the orange crystal bead in her palm.
“It’s made up of fire and air particles. Fire and air particles that combine into an explosive burst. Picture the image in your head, and think hard about what you want the forcestone to do.”
“Okay….”
She took a deep breath as Kiria continued. “Think of an orange burst of flame….Think about the heat, the sound of the crackling fire, and the image of an outward blast of flame. Like a ripple….or a pulse….”
* * * *
ULTRA PULSE
* * * *
The fireball exploded in an outward burst as it struck Tyger right on the shoulder.
“Tyger rushes right into a blast of flame! He’s still going, but you can feel that burn from the other side of the arena! Hot damn!”
The flames bit at his jacket, burning holes into them to gain access to his skin. He gritted his teeth through the pain, charging forward at a heightened speed.
Johnny’s eyes widened in surprise behind his red sunglasses. He’d expected the fire ball to slow Tyger down some so that he could adjust the trajectory of his skating path, but his opponent had apparently decided to run at him even faster.
He wouldn’t have time to redirect his path naturally, so he activated the rockets within his skates to do it for him. His body jerked backward in an instant, causing him to lurch forward from the recoil.
The maneuver was on time by the tiniest margin, as Tyger rushed forward and threw a punch hard enough to displace a chunk of air, causing a loud burst of sound to explode around the arena, like a rocket lifting off.
“Wowee, the sound on that whiffed punch! Johnny narrowly avoids getting turned to dust with the use of his unique rocket skates!”
Tyger’s violet eyes shot to the sides towards Johnny. “Tch! Coward,” he grumbled.
A bead of sweat formed on the side of Johnny’s head in response to the mental image of what receiving that angry fist would have done to his body. It was clear that the fire wasn’t going to keep Tyger at bay for much longer, so it was time to change strategies.
EARTH!
And by “strategies”, I mean “elements”. Because, truth be told, Johnny Powerpunch only had one strategy: skate away while shooting projectiles. And, to be fair to Johnny Powerpunch, it had worked for him thus far. And it could work here, too, given the tournament matches’ fifteen minute time limit. He’d only have to keep himself at bay for a few more….
“It’s time to rock, baby!” Johnny howled into the air, pointing his finger at his opponent. Three chunks of the arena floor broke free from the ground before darting at Tyger, like dogs being sicced onto prey.
“Another elemental Install shift from Johnny Powerpunch! How many more does he have up his sleeve?! And will any of them prove to be the tiger’s fatal weakness?!”
* * * *
ULTRA PULSE
* * * *
Like a bursting balloon, the ULTRA Force particles within the forcestone exploded free from their shell. They let loose a bright orange pop of embers — far too small to cause harm to anyone, but it was still surprising enough to scare Annabelle.
She shrieked and jumped, reflexively yanking her hands back to her body. It was a cute display that garnered a chuckle from both Zeo and Kiria, which then led to Annabelle pouting defiantly.
“Hey, you did it! Good job, Annabelle!” said Zeo.
It took a moment for the realization to settle in, but once it had, the elven girl’s face lit up as she glanced between her two companions excitedly. “I-I did?! I did it?! I used ULTRA Force?!”
Kiria nodded. “Yes, you did. I’m proud of you.”
Smiling, Zeo asked, “So how’d it feel? Was it what you were expecting, or….?”
She looked down to the palms of her hands. There was nothing there to actually look at, but it did help her think back to what had just transpired. The flicker of candlelight dancing within the crystal bead, the puff of warm air surging across her skin, the flash of orange sparks….
“It felt….exciting! Like, um….like my heart beat really strongly, I think….?”
“That sounds about right,” Zeo said. Being a Burster, he was most experienced with his Heart Slot, and was thus used to his heart experiencing a wide variety of strange and powerful sensations. “Maybe if you were an ultranian, you’d be a Burster, like me?”
Annabelle cocked her head to the side. “A Burster?”
It was Kiria who answered. “Bursters are ultranians who specialize in the Heart Slot.”
“It’s what lets me do stuff like this!” Zeo conjured up a small ball of green electricity. A ball that quickly spread out, dancing around his fingers before dissipating. “The red fire I used as a torch is from my Heart Slot, too.”
“What other kinds of ultranians are there?”
Kiria held up her first two fingers. “There’s two others. Mentalists like me, who specialize in the Mind Slot, and Frames, who specialize in the Body Slot.”
* * * *
ULTRA PULSE
* * * *
The flying chunks of earth and rock (well, concrete, technically) were a lot harder to push through than the flames had been, as smashing through them shoulder-first was a much more physical affair.
Tyger was tough and durable, but not so much that he’d be able to brush off Johnny’s Earth Install cannonballs, especially given that he had come into the fight injured in the first place.
“It seems as though the tiger has been pinned down! Can Johnny Powerpunch put him down now, or can he turn this ship around in the last eight minutes?!”
Tyger scowled, ducking beneath the next projectile. If he used his Metal Install, he’d be able to fortify his body enough to withstand the barrage of rocks, but it’d slow him down in the process, and with Johnny’s rocket skates, that would only make it harder to actually catch him and knock his ass out.
Cain had been watching the match play out from the locker room, arms folded across his chest. The disappointment in Tyger’s performance was clear on his face. He’d known going into the match that Johnny was going to be hell for Tyger to get through, despite Johnny being a one-trick pony.
And that was because Tyger was also a one-trick pony.
“Still useless at range,” he practically spat onto the locker room floor. “Still only the one basic Install. Frames are pathetic.”
A massive chunk of earth soared across the arena, and it was too quick for Tyger to dodge. Trying to block it head-on would have been almost pointless, so he was forced into punching it directly.
The rock exploded around his fist, keeping him from taking the brunt of damage upfront, but the impact sent a jolt up his arm that locked it into place long enough for Johnny’s next spray of rocks to pound into his body.
“Tyger’s brute strength continues to impress! But his swings aren’t getting him any closer! Whatever will he do from here?!”
Up in the stands, Reina clenched her fists together in front of her in suspense. “You can do it, Tyger! Go, go, go!”
Johnny’s mother’s voice somehow managed to pierce through the uproar of the crowd. “Isn’t my son just incredible?”
Reina grumpily bit into her final hot dog.
“Five minutes to go! The judges have practically got their scorecards finished! Has this bout already been decided?!”
Johnny cackled in glee, adding a pelvic thrust as he shot his next earth bullet. “Of course it has! The outcome was never in doubt! Johnny Powerpunch always wins in fisticuffs, amigo!”
“You don’t even throw punches, asshole!” Tyger roared, tanking a projectile head-on before transitioning into a sprint.
“Tyger charges in once more! Can he close the gap, or will Johnny Powerpunch continue to keep him at bay?!”
With a smug grin, Johnny activated the rockets in his skates, launching himself away from Tyger at an angle. The skates were much faster than Tyger even while sprinting, and there was plenty of room in the arena, even with the gaps in the floor Johnny had been creating with his Earth Install. The keepaway game would have no problem continuing for the next five minutes.
Tyger came to a stop, punching another rock into smithereens. The anger on his face had grown even more apparent, with a vein opening up on the side of his skull.
He slammed his fists together aggressively.
METAL!