“Burn! Burn! Ahahahaha!”
Ryuna rolled her eyes while simultaneously rolling to the side to avoid a spew of acid raining down upon her. As soon as she did, she immediately had to flip backwards to dodge the second stream coming from the copy of himself that Caedo had created.
He’s almost as annoying to fight as he is to listen to, Ryuna noted to herself as she swiped her hand across, summoning a wave of red flames to consume another dumping of acid.
The ground around her was starting to sizzle as Caedo’s acid ate away at the floor. She flicked her hand outward, throwing out embers to burn the acid away, but with two foes buzzing around above her, attacking from on high, she didn’t have the time to properly focus on that task without risking getting burned herself.
“How long are you going to run, you arrogant little snake?!” Caedo sneered from the sky. Another, more distorted version of his voice accompanied him on a half-second delay, likely coming from the purple echo he had created of himself. “Ahahahaha! You were so adamant that you were going to win this tournament, yet here you are, scurrying about like the rat you are!”
Ryuna threw two hooks at a diagonal angle, throwing out two waves of flames, but Caedo and his echo both avoided them with ease, and paid Ryuna back in full with two waves of acidic vomit.
She only had time to avoid the first, and suffered a splash on the back of her right leg from the second. With a yelp of pain, she scorched the acid away with her red flames, then brought her hands to her chest.
EARTH!
The ground around her burst upward, like a body hidden underneath the floor was rising to its feet. A dome of rock and concrete swallowed her body, providing her a bubble of protection from Caedo’s assault.
Within the safety of the earthen dome, Ryuna knelt down to take a look at the back of her leg. Unlike the first splash of acid that had hit her, this one had managed to dig into the flesh, and wasn’t that far off from bone.
But the pain had already disappeared, and as she watched the acid burn, she noticed that it, too, was beginning to fade away. It wasn’t until she realized the dome, which should have encased the area in complete darkness, was brightly lit by the warm golden glow of her chi aura.
She could feel the chi repairing the damage done to her leg; wound healing was something she had experienced time and again with her chi, but this time it was acting much more quickly, most likely due to whatever enhancement Master Kirin had bestowed upon her.
“Oh, right, my chi!” she said aloud, slapping herself on the forehead for forgetting something so obvious. “I bet I could turn that idiot to dust now that I’ve got it channeling constantly!”
She kicked herself back up to her feet, but just before she could command the earth dome to open up, she hesitated. Indeed, she likely could use her enhanced chi channeling to really give it to Caedo and make his ancestors regret procreating, but wouldn’t that play into exactly what his beef with her in the first place was?
He’d accused her of already having prior experience with chi, having a leg up on the competition from the beginning, making it “unfair.” There were so many conflicting feelings she had about his accusation, and she didn’t even know where to begin, or which one was how she truly felt.
Part of her agreed with what he said, but didn’t see the fault in it. If you were more talented and better skilled than your competition, how was that your fault? No one — the other competitors, Brise, Master Kirin — had told her she was “too good” to compete in the tournament. She wasn’t breaking any rules of qualification. So how was anything about her unfair? When a tournament is held, someone has to win, and everyone else has to lose — that was just how tournaments worked.
But even then, she hadn’t actually been trained in chi channeling at all. She’d picked up a few things from her own experimenting, sure, but that was something any one of them could have done. So what exactly was he crying about? The fact he hadn’t practiced at all beforehand while she had? What a bitch.
On the other hand, she couldn’t deny that her biology could be argued as an advantage. She was an Energizer; someone whose body produced a specific energy signature, and lo and behold, hers happened to be chi. Perhaps he had a point there, she begrudgingly admitted to herself, before scowling and tossing that notion aside when she remembered that he was a seven-foot-tall armored bug man flying in the sky spitting out deadly acid.
Her chi aura pulsed, crackling like electricity around her fists. “Ugh, to hell with this!” she said. “I’m gonna pulverize that little-!”
But she stopped again, staring at her hand. Staring at the golden glow, the swirling, crackling energy of the chi aura.
She’d never seen it so….clearly before. She’d never channeled it for this long before. She didn’t know that this is what her aura looked like; beautiful, radiant, but also quite violent and unnerving at the same time.
All it would take was one good punch, and he’d be splattered like a bug on a windshield.
The dome began to heat up, and static flicked at her hair and skin.
But again, she hesitated. Would using her chi to produce an overwhelmingly powerful attack to clinch her victory not be playing into his hands? Reaffirming his accusation? She didn’t want to give him, or anyone who had overheard and agreed with him, the satisfaction of proving their claim right. It’d just piss her off.
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Or….perhaps that was for the best? Ignore their whining and firmly establish your dominance over them. Make them realize just how much stronger and better you were. After all, that was the way the world worked, right? It didn’t matter how good you were at something, if you never proved it, if you never beat out your competition, if you never sold that talent to people in a sexy little package, you’d never get anywhere.
Her skin grew hot, and her hair began to dance, buffeted by the strong winds emanating from her chi aura.
She thought back to her very first match in this tournament, against the professional fighter Winslow Wing. She’d had no trouble deciding to tone herself down, fighting him on equal footing with raw martial arts to make up for his lack of Force Slot usage. So why wasn’t she able to make a decision now?
It was probably because, unlike Winslow, she had no respect for Caedo at all. He was whiny, and he didn’t even fight like a true fighter, buzzing around spitting poison everywhere. Dickhead.
Her eyes began to shift from their natural green to a golden yellow. The veins in her head became more pronounced, and her jaw tightened. A pulsation of force exploded from around her, blasting into the earthen dome, lining the interior with cracks.
She felt her heart begin to hasten as her control over her chi rapidly slipped away.
* * * *
ULTRA DRAGON
* * * *
“Bah! Coward!” Caedo hissed from atop the rock dome. He kicked at it, not with any real intent to break through, but more so to get a read on how solid and thick the dome was. While his acid was strong enough to eat through the top most layer, it definitely wouldn’t be able to melt through the entire thing.
Wings buzzing, Caedo zoomed back up to the sky, joining his echo. Ordinarily, he would not have been able to continue manifesting the purple clone of himself, but due to the amplification of his chi aura, he felt confident he could keep it around for the remainder of the duel.
A crazed laugh burst free from his lungs as soon as he’d reminded himself of Master Kirin’s enhancement. So this was the power of chi! he screamed within his mind. How invigorating! He felt as though he could soar into the very cosmos with this energy coursing through and around him.
For a moment, he even considered doing just that, leaving the tournament and the monastery far behind. He’d already attained exactly what he’d come here for; why even bother with continuing the tournament?
But that was stupid. Master Kirin could likely strip him of the power once she realized he was leaving. And while he had been considering abandoning the tournament even before being granted the enhanced chi aura, now that he was actually up against that pompous whore Ryuna, he actually did want to stick around specifically to embarrass her in front of the entire monastery and personally eliminate her.
He knew exactly the kind of person Ryuna was. Cocky, egotistical, narcissistic….The kind of person who always got exactly what they wanted, often through underhanded means. The kind of person who had been born more blessed than the rest of the world, and was still given more opportunities than anyone else on top of that.
There was little Caedo enjoyed more than to spite those types of people.
And so, rather than point out Ryuna’s cowardice as an obvious forfeiture of the match, he instead waited above the dome, up near the ceiling. Genuine anticipation rose up within him.
Come on out already, you arrogant worm! His fingers twitched. Come out from there and be vapori-!
The top of the dome exploded as a hole was blasted through the rock. It rocketed into the sky with the force of a bullet, striking Caedo’s echo and dissipating it completely.
Before Caedo could react, the entire room was lit in the bright golden light of Ryuna’s chi aura, exploding outward from the hole in the dome like an active volcano.
Ryuna came flying out from the dome even faster than the rock had, coming to a natural stop just before striking the ceiling.
Caedo didn’t even have time to twitch a single muscle in his body before a golden, flaming kick thrashed into his skull.
His head struck the ceiling with incredible force — force strong enough to then send him bouncing back down to earth. Smoke from the flames burning away at his own chi aura trailed behind him as he fell.
Ryuna continued through the motion of her kick, twisting around until she was facing the falling body of Caedo. Her body began to descend from the vertex of her jump, and she pulled her fist back, ready to finish him off with one final punch.
And then, in the next instant, Ryuna was soaring across the room at an angle, her own body limp and covered in smoke. Her chi had detonated, striking her from within with the force of a lightning bolt.
Gasps from those in the crowd resounded around the room, but a simple wave of the hand from Master Kirin quieted them all.
The room was dead silent for a few moments, with all eyes shifting from the lifeless body of Ryuna to the lifeless body of Caedo. Both fighters lay motionless, covered in blood and surrounded by smoke.
After observing the both of them, Billy closed his eyes and folded his arms across his chest. Both of their chi auras had completely dissipated, making it impossible for him to deduce which had emerged the victor.
A replay of Ryuna’s sudden emergence from the dome, and her one single strike against Caedo, appeared in his mind’s eye. That explosive burst of power was the perfect showcase of what made Ryuna a threat to any foe, and that second explosive burst from within her was the perfect showcase of what made Ryuna a threat to herself.
As more time passed and neither fighter moved, tension and worry began to bubble up within the hearts of almost everyone in the room. Even Brise, who was ordinarily quite the unflappable woman, turned to Master Kirin with a look of concern.
But Master Kirin did not return her gaze. She kept her eyes focused on the two downed fighters. While the glow of their chi auras had vanished from the eyes of everyone else in the room, Master Kirin could still see them crystal clear. Or, rather, she could see Ryuna’s.
Finally, Ryuna began to stir. Her fingers were the first to twitch to life, grasping at nothing in particular. She slowly lifted her head next, her green eyes just barely managing to shine through the darkness of her hair, as well as the red mask of blood that had been painted underneath.
Master Kirin held her hand up. “Match! The winner is Ryuna!”
* * * *
ULTRA DRAGON
* * * *
The line had been thoroughly exhausted from front to back, and not even the rotation system could keep any of them energized. The forcewell continued to blast them with streams of ULTRA Force particles like machine gun fire, and there was nothing the wellers could do but take the bullets head on.
For a time, Bron considered calling for a retreat, but with how unstable the forcewell was, he feared it would severely harm the village, and perhaps even sink it completely.
The wellers could see the conflict of decisions battle it out across Bron’s face, and agreed to take that decision out of his hands by declaring their intent to stay in the forcewell, no matter what.
They all chose to stick it out, despite the fatigue, despite the pain, despite the fear of injury — and perhaps even death — that awaited them.
When the first explosion came, it buried three men before Bron could even blink.
But the wellers held steady, even as rocks from above collapsed upon them, bruising flesh and breaking bone.
A second blast of ULTRA Force flared out from deep within the cave, reducing one man to specks of blue light carried away by the wind.
The wellers continued to maintain position, desperately hoping for the end to come soon.