DISCLAIMER: I do not own Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GT, Dragon Ball Super or Dragon Ball Heroes.
Chapter 8: A Broken Limit, the Power of Fighting for Survival!
Embryo jumped high, dodging my forward charge. Turning in the air to chase after him, I saw a golden buzzsaw of energy flying straight towards me, intent on cutting me in half vertically! Releasing a burst of power from my side, I swerved out of the way at the last moment—
Embryo had taken advantage of my distraction, flying at me and slamming his foot in my midsection. The sheer force of the hit sent me flying down the—apparently—bottomless crater I had blasted him into. While flying downwards, the darkness of the hole encroaching from every angle, I saw Embryo's hand start twitching. Plates of deep blue chitin formed over the hand and wrist, sharpening and hardening into a sword.
A shockwave erupted from Embryo as he flew towards me, his aura flaring around him as a golden fire. I caught his sword at the forearm, gripping hard and stopping him in his tracks. I pulled as hard as I could, twisting our bodies so that Embryo was beneath me as we fell. Quickly raising my free hand, my fingers outstretched and the palm facing Embryo's chest, I fired an energy sphere with as much force as I could muster in scant seconds.
The attack carried him even further down the crater, lighting up the darkened chasm in a deep blue light.
Blue?
Taking a moment to glance at my arm, I saw that at some point, my aura and skin had changed color. My skin, normally a blue or sky blue in color, was now a much darker blue. The white bone-like forearm protector also seemed to be darker in color, like it lost saturation. My aura was also a dark blue, with lightning crackling all around me. I had quite a few questions, but I probably needed to ask them later.
If I survived to ask them later, that is.
A sudden red light clashed with the blue, my sphere attack suddenly being flung sideways and exploding on the cavern wall. The impeding smoke didn't stop my energy sense, still showing me Embryo flying through the smoke like a spear. His power had doubled, and his energy felt chaotic and barely controlled. Taking a risk, I flew towards him myself, swerving around him and dodging the lunge he made with his sword-arm in the smoke.
Keep up the momentum. These words played on repeat in my head as I grabbed his tail and slammed my foot in his back. Using my hand-like foot to grip onto where my energy sense told me his tail and back connected. Gripping as hard as I could, I pulled on that sword-tail with everything I had.
I heard a nauseating tearing noise as I saw the energy shape of his tail separate from the rest of his body. A sword of dark red chitin cut through the smoke as it swung in a downwards slash at my torso. My body moved on instinct, and my hands collided with the plated sides of the weapon to stop it. Embryo's aura erupted out of him, blowing away the smoke and knocking me backwards.
I didn't feel it, but I could tell from sound alone that I had collided with the wall. Now able to see Embryo, I could see that his skin and aura were once again dark red in color. Deep red, with emerald slit-like pupils, and the sheer power I felt from him. This was dire—
His tail wasn't regenerated. In fact, looking closer at it, it didn't look like it was going to start anytime soon. He dulled his sense of pain, but there was no way he couldn't have noticed his tail was pulled off… couldn't he?
Everything slowed to a stop, like before when I needed time to think. Think Arcos; why wasn't it healed, what changed in the last few moments, what was different? His eyes were still cerulean, but his skin was red.
Embryo's body is the same as Cell's Imperfect-Form, a huge cicada monster made from the cells of Saiyans, Earthlings, Namekians, and Arcosians. Saiyans could unlock the Super Saiyan form, a dramatically powerful transformation unlocked when a strong Saiyan suffers intense, negative emotions like rage or grief.
The Kaioken is a power multiplier technique that puts incredible strain on the user's body. Goku admitted in the show that he couldn't use them both at once, as the sheer rage that came from the Super Saiyan form caused it to not mix with the Kaioken. The conflicting abilities would immediately destroy his body
Destroy… his body?
Like a car piece socketing into the right spot on accident, it all clicked. Normally, using both techniques would simply kill the user, but Embryo must be in a constant state of regeneration to counterbalance the negative effects! He's layered the Kaioken and Super Saiyan, but judging from his stump of a tail, lost the ability to actually recover.
In a bid for more power, he's sacrificed the one thing that made it impossible for me to put him down for good, ironic.
Time crawled forward once more, and I got a front-row seat to Embryo rearing back his sword-arm. Dense, red energy surrounded the sharpened blade, solidifying and shaping into a sword of ki. He moved in slow motion, but I was also moving in slow motion as I dug my feet into wall and kicked off.
It was like that was a trigger, like the rubber band of a slingshot snapping forward to fire its payload. Time rocketed back to normal as a huge slash of red ki cut through the rock wall I had been at less than a moment ago. In an instant Embryo was upon me, swinging his ki-infused sword-arm with reckless abandon. Each swing sent forward another slash of raging energy, and each slash I dodged cut through the crater's walls.
Lightning danced across my body as I flew backwards, barely staying out of range of that murderous blade. I had an idea, risky and would get me killed if I didn't time it right. If I focused all of my power into one attack, a single strike that detonated within Embryo's own body, I could end this! The obvious problem is how that would leave me completely defenseless for a few seconds, maybe more.
I needed something to distract him.
I couldn't fly backwards anymore for some reason.
"Got'cha!" Embryo said, flying towards me like a spear! Thinking fast, I descended as quickly as I could and watched his entire arm vanish into the stone wall.
"I must admit." Embryo said, removing his arm from the rocky face with ease. "Killing you will be the hardest thing I will have ever done."
The crater we were in started rumbling and shaking violently. In my peripheral, I saw the original hole Embryo carved, and how magma started flowing through it. In fact, with a quick glance around, lava started pouring through all the other holes Embryo had made.
Was it lava or magma? Didn't matter, melted rock was melted rock.
"It must be the Saiyan DNA." Embryo said. I took the opportunity to look upwards as he talked, seeing just how far our fight had taken us down the crater. I almost couldn't see the hole at the top, it was so small now. "Pulsating through me and circulating through my very cells, but I believe I will miss you, punching bag, when you are gone."
"Well, you could always leave." I said. This wasn't good. This wasn't the distraction I needed, and every second we talked was a second I was running out of.
This form wasn't going to last forever!
"No." Embryo said, his needle-like teeth glinting in the light as he licked his beak-like mouth. "I shall absorb you, and make you part of me."
So much for an easy way out, I thought to myself.
"Well if you want me so bad." I said, my aura flaring around me as lightning danced across my body. "Come and get me!"
With a burst of power I launched myself through the air at Embryo. Confusion flowed through his aura as he swung his sword-arm. Then time slowed down to a crawl once more. Everything slowed to a stop, his blade mere inches from the bridge of my nose. My body moved on instinct, and I felt like a passenger in my own flesh.
Even when nothing was moving, while time stood still, I moved ever-so-slightly. An inch, then another, and then a couple more. Time shot back to normal like a rubber band snapping, and Embryo's blade swung beside me instead of through me. I swerved around him, feeling huge bouts of confusion radiate through his ki as I flew right past him.
I could've landed a strike on him with that dodge, but that wasn't my goal. Flying into the first hole he carved in the crater wall and into the pool of magma was my goal. I couldn't do something cheesy like playing dead, he might regrow his tail and drain me, and he'd be able to sense that I still had energy. I couldn't simply try to catch him off guard and blindside him, he'd still just sense me coming or cut me in half.
But if I did something crazy, something absolutely insane, then there was no way he'd know to counter it!
So in the middle of the lava, I gathered all my energy into my fist. My reserves depleted as fast as they were restoring. The energy protecting my body from the lava dispersed, swirling into the dense blue sphere around my hand. The lava burned, but I didn't feel it. I couldn't see anything but the molten rock around me, but I could tell I stopped sinking as my feet touched the molten ground.
Embryo's power was flying right towards me, most likely blowing away the molten rock with the force of his flight. He had to know I was gathering power, but the sheer density of it was going to serve as a smoke screen for the rest of me. He knew I was gathering it, but there would be no way he could tell what for.
I only had once chance!
Kicking off the ground, I lept through the lava towards his oncoming energy. My dense gauntlet of energy split the magma with its presence, lightning sparking all around it as ribbons of erratic ki wrapped around my arm. I could see his power, swinging that vicious blade and parting the lava in front of me.
A savage yell tore through my throat as I swung my gauntlet forwards. My gauntlet and his sword collided… and his sword shattered! The fragments of disrupted ki detonated, blowing away the lava and striking my unprotected body.
But my attack was unimpeded, and tore right through Embryo's chest. My fist was embedded deep inside him, where a normal human's heart would've been. The ribbons of erratic ki flowed from my arm and spread through his body, and I was witness to seeing cracks form all throughout Embryo.
"My name," I growled, watching as lightning sparked throughout Embryo's body, "is Arcos!"
Blue light shone through the cracks on his body, and then he exploded. A massive detonation, one that blew away all the lava and destroyed my arm up to the elbow. There was no sign of Embryo, just the flowing of magma as it filled in the resulting crater. I managed to fly upwards and out of the lake of lava as my reserves filled at an astonishing rate.
I was too focused on the fight to really take notice of it, focusing more on—
It vanished. All of my energy vanished in an instant. Saturation returned to my skin and armor, my recently reformed aura turn from blue to white, then simply faded away. I was falling, and I could feel I was falling too. Whatever lock I had put on my ability to feel pain had been lifted, and I had mere moments before the pain would come swooping in like a tidal wave.
I tried to stop my fall into the lava; to summon my aura, a ki blast, something! Except, I couldn't feel any of it. It was like it was just gone!
Then the pain hit, and I could feel the burns all across my body. My broken arm, where the bones had been fused together with ki alone, brought with another tidal wave of pain. My other arm, the one that channeled the desperate attack that destroyed Embryo, didn't exist from the elbow down. My head felt like it was about to explode from how much I overclocked my psychic powers. And then there were the bruises and cuts from Embryo's broken ki sword, detonating right next to my exposed body.
For a few moments, all I knew was agony. Agony and Hell, a torturous pain that not even the worst human beings would be capable of recreating. A pain so great that for those horrible moments, I begged for the sweet release of death.
But as I fell towards the swirling vortex of magma, the spiraling river of molten rock that flowed to fill in the hole my explosion caused, I thought about Saiya. Saiya, who for the past month-or-so had been my partner, my friend, and one of the greatest people I had met. Thinking of her made the pain lessen, but only a bit.
I did it Saiya, I beat him… but, I don't think I'm coming home. Those were my final thoughts, before the pain was too great, and I lost consciousness.
But, before my eyes closed and my mind shut down, a little black cloud entered my field of vision. Swirling, cartoonish patterns, on a small black cloud that shot across the surface of the molten rock.
Nimbus? And then my eyes shut, and all I knew was silent oblivion.
AN: Yo!
This chapter took a while, mostly because I never got around to writing it. Sorry.
But, this one was actually a lot of fun to write! I'm happy a lot of you take the time to read this silly story of mine, the fact more than 10 people even care enough to keep up with it still astounds me, even after it's been up for some time.
I know I usually say you don't have to, but I really want you guys to leave a review this time around. I want to know what you think of it so far, what you like and dislike, and how you think it could be done better. I have the end already planned out, and certain things will be explained in due time.
Also also, even if you don't have anything to say except that you like or dislike it, then you can just say that! You might not think it, but a little statement like "Keep it up!" or "I'd like to see more!" are really good confidence boosters!
That's all for today, I'll see you all next time!
Ciao!