“A body of unbreakable steel! Will it be strong enough to endure the earthen barrage?!”
That seemed to be the case. While Tyger’s muscles had done a fine enough job fighting through the pain and holding steady as concrete pelted into them, now that they had hardened like metal, the rock strikes were no longer registering in his nerves.
Johnny Powerpunch momentarily paused at the sight of his opponent’s incredible resilience to his projectiles, his bottom lip curling into a pout. “Man, this guy’s one tough nut….” He then shook his head, and took another finger-pointing stance, garnering heavy applause from his mother in the stands. “B-but nobody’s tough enough to withstand Johnny Powerpunch’s power punches! Oh yeah!”
Johnny went right back into his skating routine, firing off more earthen bullets.
Tyger continued forward in pursuit of his opponent, no longer slowed by the impact of the projectiles. And now that his body was no longer feeling bites of pain with each hit, his anger began to cool. Only a little, but still, it was progress towards a clearer head.
But there was still one problem….
Back in the locker room, Cain scoffed, so disgusted by what he was witnessing that he leaned back in his seat and turned away from the screen. “Even after all this time, you still only have the one Install….And you call yourself a fighter?”
The Metal Install was Tyger’s bread-and-butter; his go-to for when he needed to kick things up a notch in a fight. Well, it wasn’t like he had much of a choice, given that it was his only Install, but it tended to work for him: when set into his Body Slot, it granted his body heightened durability, and gave him tremendous amounts of physical power, something he was already very gifted to begin with.
The obvious drawback to the Metal Install was that it also made him incredibly heavy, and slowed him down tremendously. It wasn’t so detrimental that he couldn’t move — he could even still run — but he definitely couldn’t maneuver quickly.
So, given that he was fighting a long-range elementalist fighter who liked to run away on his rocket skates, a drop in mobility was a big deal.
Activating the Metal Install had been a gut reaction; an instinctual move in the face of Tyger’s mounting frustration at his inability to do anything in the fight. He hadn’t put a single ounce of thought into it; it was just something he did whenever he was pissed off.
And while it had helped soothe his irritation at the pain of having heavy rocks smash into the bruises and cuts from his prior battles, that relief had only been temporary. As he stepped forward to pursue Johnny, the realization that he was now too slow to actually catch him sunk in.
His jaw tightened. He’d screwed up. All he’d done was make things harder for himself, and time was running short. He was about to lose his fight against this Johnny Powerpunch clown; the very first fight in the tournament he’d been so confident he could win. He’d fail to get the prize money that his friends needed to stop Mistral. He’d thrown his chance to be a hero into the trash.
His anger overflowed, no longer able to remain internal. He roared out loud enough to shake the walls of the arena, and punched the ground in frustration, opening a massive crack in the floor.
* * * *
ULTRA PULSE
* * * *
Zeo, Kiria, and Annabelle continued to explore the pulse for several more minutes, and soon found themselves snaking around to another exit on the Radecross-side of the mountain. This presented a convenient opportunity for Zeo to excuse himself to hurry to the bathroom, as he had been holding it in since before the three had arrived at the mountain.
While waiting for him, Kiria and Annabelle began to unpack the bags that Kiria had brought, as the trio decided they would take a break from exploring the pulse to have a little picnic for lunch.
As Kiria unzipped a lunchbox and started removing the sandwiches she had packed, she asked, “So, have you been enjoying your reunion with Zeo?”
The edge of her lip twitched upward at Annabelle’s reactionary face-reddening. “O-of course….! It’s been really fun getting together with everyone again.”
“But especially Zeo, right?”
“Stop teasing me!”
She passed a sandwich over to Annabelle with a smug nod of the head. “As you wish, Lady Annabelle.”
The slight smile on her face died off as soon as she spoke the girl’s title aloud, its existence heralding the arrival of the topic neither wanted to recognize, but could not ignore.
She took her time unwrapping her own sandwich, as though it were an action consequential enough to actually push the discussion of the topic back further. But the plastic was stripped free from the bread in one tug, as though it were a bandage from a wound. “Are you ready to leave your feelings for him behind?”
The answer was not immediate, but Kiria hadn’t expected it to be. Annabelle just quietly nibbled on the edge of her sandwich, eyes staring off at nothing in particular. When she spoke, her voice was just as hollow. “Of course.”
An unconvincing performance, but again Kiria hadn’t expected any different. She moved over beside Annabelle, allowing the pink-haired girl to rest her head against a comforting shoulder. “From what I’ve heard, the viscount’s son is quite the gentleman. Perhaps you’ll come to love him as well?”
The statement was devoid of anything other than good intentions, but that was all Kiria was really capable of providing at the moment. She had no personal experience in the practice of nobles offering their daughters as brides, nor of being a slave to your hopeless love for someone you could never have. While Annabelle frequently came to her for advice and practical guidance, this was something far outside of Kiria’s wheelhouse.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
Sensing the arrival of tears, the Royal Guard retrieved a handkerchief from her pocket and offered it to the elven girl beside her. While Annabelle cried it out, Kiria kept watch over the mountain trail so that she could provide a warning for Zeo’s incoming return.
“Thank you, Kiria,” Annabelle said softly, returning the handkerchief and wiping away a residual tear from the edge of her eye.
“Do you want to return to the hotel?”
The elven girl shook her head. “No, I’m okay, really….” She took her first true bite of the sandwich. “I want to keep exploring the pulse….That’s what we came here for, right?”
The two of them glanced over to the end of the trail as they spotted the returning Zeo, waving his hand up from the distance.
Annabelle smiled. “I want this trip to be fun. For all of us. I want us to make memories we can all cherish for the rest of our lives, you know?”
With a sigh, Kiria leaned over to the bag to retrieve Zeo’s portion of the packed lunch. “ Fighting against terrorists is certainly one way to go about doing that, I suppose….”
* * * *
ULTRA PULSE
* * * *
“The tiger looks angry, folks! Has he given up already?! Only three minutes remain!”
A guttural growl escaped Tyger’s throat. “Shut the hell up….!”
On the other end of the arena, Johnny continued to skate around in wide circles. The rate of his fired projectiles had not ceased, but it had definitely slowed, as he was now blasting them with one hand. The other hand was now exclusively utilized for waving to the audience as he passed by the stands on all sides.
An image of throttling Johnny’s neck popped into Tyger’s head. It felt good to picture, but it also felt disgusting to feel good about at all.
As anger flared up inside of him, the veins all throughout his body began to push upward and outward, like they were desperately trying to break free from the prison doors of his skin. The boiling blood inside reddened his complexion, overpowering the usual bronze color.
He was no longer moving forward. His feet remained locked into place, the Metal Install pressing them two inches into the floor. Johnny didn’t seem to pay him much mind; he was still absentmindedly throwing rock projectiles, but most of them were missing. The ones that did land weren’t particularly strong, either, to the point that even if the Metal Install were not present, Tyger probably wouldn’t feel them much anyway.
Ordinarily, it might have been a good window to advance forward; for most fighters, the combination of Johnny’s slowed pace and lack of focus would soon present them with the opportunity to make one mad dash to close the distance and get back into the fight.
But Tyger couldn’t move at all. His body had locked up, with the only movements being strained vibrations — bulging veins, tensing muscles, fangs grinding harshly together. His eyes were aimed in his opponent’s general direction, but they weren’t locked onto anything in particular. In fact, they weren’t even functioning at full capacity. With each pulse of anger that flooded throughout Tyger’s body, his vision was washed over by a blur of black and reddish-orange.
Up in the stands, Reina’s lips curled into a frown. “Tyger….? What’s wrong?”
Back in the locker room, Cain’s eyes were narrowed into blade-like lines of judgment. “You fool….Always a slave to your emotions.”
“We’re in the final stretch now, ladies and gentlemen! Sixty seconds remain in this bout! Who will emerge victorious and progress to the next round of the tournament?!”
Another growl bubbled up from within Tyger’s throat, this one even more animalistic than the one before. Though he remained in the same place, the pace of his body’s pulsations was now heightened. Sweat was dripping down from his black-and-white hair, and his nostrils were flaring like hands clenching and unfurling.
His jaws pressed into each other more aggressively, and his clenched teeth were now beginning to draw blood from the gums that soon leaked from the edges of his mouth. His Metal Install had shut off moments ago as well, his body unable to properly fuel it any longer.
Johnny was beaming. He could see victory on the horizon, approaching him like a beautiful woman on skates gliding across the rink to his manly embrace. “Was there ever any doubt? Johnny Powerpunch wins again!”
The audience began to count down the final thirty seconds of the fight, having mentally checked out of it when it ceased to become a real match. Their voices were devoid of the usual excitement at a collective counting down; likely because, rather than anticipating the end of an exciting event, they were actually counting down until the next fight in hopes it would be more entertaining.
Reina pressed her palms over her ears, not wanting to hear the taunts of Johnny’s mother when the match came to its conclusion.
Johnny coiled his arms around and flung himself into a rapid tornado of spins — a perfectly stylish way to cap off his victory.
Tyger’s anger exploded around the room, guided by the roar of his voice. His hands sank into the concrete floor, fingers digging through like lances through flesh.
His hands grabbed hold of a massive chunk of the ground as he spun in a full circle, hurling the thing with no intended target. It was a violent outburst of rage, and nothing more.
Johnny’s spin came to a perfect stop, his arms spreading out into the perfect pose for photographers to capture his victory.
But it was not the snap of a camera that announced the end of the match; instead, it was the snapping of all of Johnny Powerpunch’s major bones as the colossal block of concrete Tyger had thrown struck him head-on with the force of a bullet train.
The arena was stunned into silence for the final four seconds of the match countdown. When the buzzer declared the match as officially over, the announcer’s voice rang out, reverberating around the arena. “Ladies and gentlemen! In a surprise final move, the Thunder City Tyger has claimed his victory!”
Reina jumped as high as she could, screaming out a cheer a half second before the rest of the audience followed suit.
Peeling his eyes away from the screen, Cain scowled, stood up, and walked away. “Pathetic.”
* * * *
ULTRA PULSE
* * * *
Tyger dropped down onto a bench in the locker room, eyes staring down at the floor. His body was still covered in sweat, and he was still panting quite heavily. He then brought the bottle of sports drink in his hand up to his lips and gulped the entire thing down in a single guzzle.
He’d won the match, but there wasn’t a single ounce of positivity in him in that moment. It was a sham of a victory. He’d lost that fight, and quite pathetically, too.
He tossed the empty bottle into the nearby recycling bin, then stared down at his palms. The skin around his fingers had been scraped up pretty badly when he’d angrily clawed into the floor to grab hold of the chunk of rock, and he was bleeding from a few spots. It didn’t hurt, but it served as a nice representation of his failure in that fight. In all of his fights over the past few days, really.
He thought back to Cain’s words; his jabs at the injuries Tyger had suffered battling the mech and the kaiju. There was a television screen in the locker room showcasing the next match; he was sure that Cain had watched his, and no doubt had a whole diatribe armed and ready.
But Tyger couldn’t even get upset at the thought. He deserved it. He deserved Cain’s earlier ribbings, too.
He clenched his fists as tightly as he could muster at that moment, but it wasn’t much, as most of the energy had been drained from him. His jaw tightened. What kind of hero throws temper tantrums in the middle of a fight? What kind of hero only wins fights through dumb luck?
His fist smashed against the random locker beside him, completely caving in the metal door and exploding the padlock into pieces. With a growl, he mentally chastised himself for damaging someone else’s property like that, then pushed himself to his feet, storming off.