Very few competitors remained in the tournament.
Even fewer than Ryuna would have expected as she walked into the usual dueling room. While many of the students remained even after losing their matches to stay and watch the remaining fights, or perhaps because they had nothing better to do until their designated return trips home, it seemed like the crowd had withered away considerably.
“Where is everyone?” Ryuna asked one of the competitors who had been eliminated the day before, but he ignored her. For a brief moment, she considered punching him, but the back doors opened, and out came Master Kirin and the other members of her monastery entourage.
As usual, the woman who kept things running stepped forward to greet the crowd. “Welcome, everyone. As you may have noticed, there are considerably less of you here today. Some have left because they are no longer eligible to become Master Kirin’s disciple, but a few others have also decided to no longer participate in the tournament.”
Ryuna let out a fairly loud and aggressive tongue click. While she wasn’t bothered by the leaving of the eliminated, she was insulted by the departure of those who hadn’t been. What kind of fighter bowed out early like this? Even if they know victory’s unlikely, a fighter always fights through to the end, right?
“Cowards….”
“Because of this,” the woman continued. “The tournament will end a few days early. We also no longer have an even number of competitors, and thus, one of our matches will have to be a three-”
Ryuna raised her hand up and stepped forward. “I’ll fight in the three-way.”
“Oh, but of course,” the woman said, not even looking in Ryuna’s direction. “We will need two more competitors.”
The first to step up was Zhen, one of the few women participating in the tournament, and someone Ryuna had been itching to fight. The woman was a few years older than Ryuna, with colorful tattoos stretched across her muscled arms and legs.
“Nice!” Ryuna said with a smile, holding her fist out in Zhen’s direction. The latter obliged, but kept her stone-cold gameface on the entire time. Perhaps the fiery eye contact was for intimidation, or perhaps it was just her usual pre-fight ritual.
Ryuna then looked to the rest of the crowd. “C’mon, boys! You got two girls waiting here! Who wants to man up and throw down?”
When none took her up on the offer, Ryuna jabbed her tongue into the side of her mouth. Again with the hesitation!
Finally, someone decided to enter the three-way bout. It was Tang Lung. He was the competitor Ryuna wanted to fight the least; not because she was scared by him or anything, but because he fought with a whip, and, truth be told, Ryuna didn’t quite respect the whip as a proper fighting weapon. It just….never felt right to her, and probably wouldn’t be very fun to go up against either.
But she was willing to suck it up to get the fight on quicker. Plus, with Zhen also being in the fight, perhaps it’d be easier to get a fun match out of it.
All three competitors formed a triangle at the center of the room, and took their stances as Master Kirin called for the match. “Begin!”
Zhen and Tang Lung locked eyes with one another. With a synchronized nod, they both turned their attention to Ryuna, and angled their bodies towards her.
A smirk appeared on Ryuna’s face as she hopped in place. “Oh, you two gonna gang up on me? Fine by me. Bring it!”
Tang Lung fired off a crack shot with his whip, aiming it right for Ryuna’s face. She was able to slip by it easily, but both of them knew the attack was just a diversion.
Zhen came charging in like a bull, throwing a shoulder and two heavy punches. The timing between her and Tang Lung was quite impressive; you’d think they rehearsed a few tag-team maneuvers before the match.
As one of Zhen’s flurries ended, Ryuna’s moment to counter was cut off by the presence of Tang Lung’s whip, nullifying the opportunity, which then gave Zhen another opportunity to go on the offensive.
The beefy woman definitely had boxing training with the technique and power put on display with her punches, which brought Ryuna back to her own roots. Bobbing and weaving through powerful jabs and hooks had practically been encoded into her muscles, and she had the grit to withstand the ones that needed to be blocked rather than dodged. But the whip was throwing off her usual fight flow; it was like a snake had been thrown into the ring.
But before Ryuna could figure out a way to switch things up and turn the momentum around, her opponents did it for her. Zhen suddenly hopped away, and before Ryuna could close the gap and go on the offensive, Tang Lung’s whip suddenly cracked and snapped in multiple directions, forcing Ryuna to continously flick her wrists out to deflect the snapping bites.
Deflecting the whip strikes wasn’t like deflecting normal attacks; while it was quite easy and the contact sting was considerably less painful, Ryuna could tell that it was also considerably less effective in actually creating an opening for herself. Parrying a punch gave her the window and positioning to knock them out; parrying a whip did no such thing.
She decided instead to grab hold of the whip to stop the onslaught of strikes, with her plan being to tug on it and bring Tang Lung closer to her. However, the instant she started doing so, a loud, booming voice erupted around the room:
FIRE!
Zhen suddenly set the whip alight, and the flames spread across the length of the weapon, all the way to Ryuna’s hand.
“Agh, shit!” Ryuna hissed at herself, releasing her hold on the whip. That gave her opponents an opportunity to strike. Tang Lung brought his whip around in a wide arc, cutting a thin line across Ryuna’s shoulder.
Zhen returned to the frontlines next. Ryuna was able to block the first punch, but a second shot hit her right in the side of the gut, throwing off her balance.
She took another directly to the chest, which sent her stumbling backward towards the wall. Zhen pursued her relentlessly, fists glowing with faint orange auras of light.
Ryuna’s jaw tightened. The onesidededness of the fight was beginning to piss her off. Despite being at a clear disadvantage in the two-on-one situation, Ryuna was disgusted with her performance, and she just knew the crowd felt the same. She was getting exposed in front of them all. Hell, they were probably happy with it, too, with how cocky she’d been up until this point. After all, losers always liked seeing winners fall from grace, didn’t they?
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With fury guiding her body, Ryuna suddenly snapped around in a backhand. It was much, much quicker than one would expect from the maneuver, catching even Zhen off guard. The hand blasted her right on the jaw, killing her charging momentum and sending her rolling onto the floor. It was a bit of a wild move, but it had worked.
Ryuna’s foot slammed right into the side of Zhen’s head, sending the woman even further skittering away. She wasn’t out of the fight, but she was definitely dazed, and would need some time to recover.
During that time, Ryuna knew she’d have to deal with Tang Lung next, and boy was she looking forward to that. As she heard the familiar cracking of his whip from afar, she brought her hands to her chest.
EARTH!
With a heavy stomp to the ground, Ryuna awakened an angled pillar of rock underneath her that sent her jetting across the room. The move was enough to not only avoid Tang Lung’s incoming whip strike, but it also instantly closed the gap between them.
Ryuna kicked her foot out and stomped it right into Tang Lung’s face, knocking him down with a heavy thud. The impact had sent enough shock through his body to force him to release his hold on the whip as well, which Ryuna caught.
“That’s enough of this thing,” she said. She tucked the whip over her shoulder before cupping her hands together once more.
FIRE!
She took hold of the whip between both of her hands, and sent a surge of flames across the weapon from both ends, making sure to put some extra force into it so that, rather than simply send flames crawling along its length, she burned the entire thing and turned it to dust.
After wiping the ashes from her fingers, Ryuna looked over to Tang Lung. He was still struggling to get back to his feet, which elicited another click of the tongue from Ryuna. “Dude, really? I hit you one time. Get up!”
WATER!
Ryuna brought her arm up just in time to block the long-range water whip strike from behind. It seemed that Zhen was ready to tag back in.
From across the room, the woman sent out a few heavy punches, each one hurling a blast of water.
Blocking and avoiding each strike was easy enough, but the projectiles alone definitely weren’t what Zhen was banking on. She was probably trying to get Ryuna to try closing the distance and punishing her in some way, or perhaps she was just trying to poke from afar to keep Ryuna distracted and allow Tang Lung to recover and strike from behind.
Zhen had obviously chosen a Water Install to counter Ryuna’s Fire one; if Ryuna tried to match Zhen in the long-range game, the water would simply extinguish the flames if they made contact, and wouldn’t give Ryuna any headway in getting closer. She would definitely have to change things up.
Once she felt she had some time to act in between the incoming waves of water attacks, Ryuna once again switched out the Install she had set into her Heart Slot:
ICE!
She quickly spread her hands out in front of her, forming a thin barrier of ice in the space between. As Zhen’s water projectiles splashed into the barrier, they froze in place. “Eat this!” Ryuna yelled as she jumped and spun around, thrusting her foot out in a powerful kick to the back of the barrier.
Zhen’s water blasts, which had been completely frozen, launched directly back at her. The chunks of ice easily blasted through the next incoming volley of water strikes, completely negating them.
Zhen’s eyes widened as the mass of ice came flying in, barely having enough time to duck beneath it. However, a second followed soon after, striking her right on the shoulder with a thick, heavy crunch. When the third one slammed into her, it was enough to throw her off her feet entirely.
Finally recovering from his earlier knockdown, Tang Lung charged in at Ryuna from behind. Now weaponless, he had to rely solely on his hand-to-hand skills. While they weren’t quite on par with his whip fighting abilities, they were perfectly adequate at taking on adept martial artists.
Unfortunately for him, Ryuna was no adept. She’d passed that level quite some time ago.
And so, when Tang Lung began to throw his chops and kicks, Ryuna couldn’t help but giggle as she deflected each one with ease. “Aw, that’s adorable.”
It was like his movements were in slow motion to her. Parrying his attacks was child’s play, and she barely felt any power in them. At that point, taking him down would have been easy, and she could then focus on beating Zhen. It would only take a second.
But….that wasn’t what Ryuna wanted to do. That wasn’t what she should do.
After the embarrassing beginning of the fight, after being made a fool of, after having her status as the undisputed best fighter in the tournament opened to doubt, Ryuna needed to make a statement. She needed to show just how goddamn good she was, and to make sure everyone in the crowd saw it. She needed to put on a show for them, and give this fight a nice, big finale. She needed to beat her opponents with style.
Tang Lung threw out a kick towards Ryuna’s ribs, but she easily caught his leg. Molding her hand into a finger gun, she shot a blast of ice directly at her opponent’s single grounded foot, encasing the entire thing in ice and locking it in place.
As Taung Leg tried to break his leg free from the ice, Ryuna released her hold on his other leg, throwing it away with a bit of force. She shot another ice bullet at his foot, which caused the thing to stretch out far enough to put him into the splits.
He was not a naturally flexible man.
Several of the men in the crowd instinctively reached for their own crotches in sympathy. In the meantime, Ryuna turned back around to face Zhen, who was just getting back to her feet. “Just you and me now, babe. You ready?”
Zhen’s chest was heaving from fatigue, but she powered through it, pounding her fists together, once again contorting her face into an aggressive staredown. “You’re going down.”
Zhen placed her hands before her chest, forming a sphere between them.
FIRE!
“More elements?” Ryuna called out. “You’re not bored of this yet?”
The logic was fairly obvious: the fire would be used to melt through the ice, which had been a very effective weapon in Ryuna’s arsenal. But Ryuna wasn’t planning to keep playing around with elemental attacks anyway. She wanted something a little more….exciting to cap this fight off.
And she knew exactly what that something was.
Closing her eyes, Ryuna brought her hands together, but not in the usual motions for activating an Install — no, this was just a simple pressing of a fist into a palm.
She took in a deep breath. Then exhaled.
The air around her began to glow in a golden light. It was faint, and the edges of it danced around almost like small sparks of electricity.
A crack opened in the ground beneath her feet. Upon seeing this, the monastery woman worriedly turned to Master Kirin, but when the latter held a reassuring hand up, she calmed herself.
The chi aura was faint and slightly unstable, but not wholly uncontrollable and dangerous. Not yet, anyway. Ryuna did her best to keep it to a sustainable level, although she didn’t quite know what that level even was.
When she slowly opened her eyes, the entire room could see that they had transformed from a bright green to a radiant yellow, matching the aura around her body.
Zhen hesitated momentarily at the sudden transformation, but quickly readjusted her focus. Between her palms, a swirling ball of flames was forming, and rapidly expanding in size and intensity.
She put all of her energy into the fireball, until it was strong enough to whip out in all directions around her, creating scorch marks in the floor and even the ceiling.
When the ball was right on the cusp of becoming too powerful to control, Zhen planted her feet firmly and launched it. It sailed across the room like a cannonball, bathing the room in a red glow as it crossed the distance between the two remaining fighters.
But the attack never made it to Ryuna.
The instant Zhen launched the attack, she suddenly found Ryuna standing right in front of her.
SUPERCHARGE!
Ryuna pressed her knuckles against Zhen’s stomach before gently pushing the fist forward.
The golden glow that exploded around the room prevented anyone from seeing what happened next. The exception being Master Kirin, who was able to keep her eyes locked on Ryuna’s attack whilst the rest of the room had to turn away and bury their faces into their arms.
“Very impressive….”
Seconds later, the golden light died down, and was replaced with a less intense white glow. It was light reflecting off of the snow outside and into the room through the massive hole that had been blasted open in the wall.