"Om."

The sound was that of all things, the vibrational frequency that defined existence. It was Brahman, the true form of all things. It was the most important sound, the first sound. It is ultimate, absolute. If Ādi-Buddha was the embodiment of that which is beyond definition, then Om was definition as a concept, and all other concepts which are all inherently derived from definition, combined into the most primal form.

The definitionless attack Ādi-Buddha sent met its antithesis, cancelling each other out.

The collision made an esoteric shockwave spread throughout and beyond totality, making the souls of the audience members fill with tremors.

What was most startling, most eye-catching to the audience, was the drop of Ādi-Buddha's aloof expression. The personification of enlightenment had wide eyes, his mouth just barely agape. His eyebrows moved up and down, sometimes simultaneously, and sometimes at different times. Ādi-Buddha was astonished that Lakshmibai had matched his strongest level of power. But, the fact he was shocked was what surprised him even more.

Every movement of Ādi-Buddha's face captured the deity's own attention. He never had facial expressions before. His facial features were still like a statue normally. It was unsettling for Ādi-Buddha to feel part of himself move, not from his own choice, but as a subconscious reaction.

He was feeling emotions for the first time, and he didn't like it.

Lakshmibai fired another tsunami of instant kill bullets at Ādi-Buddha who used his transcendent power to freeze them in place.

"Om."

The absolute word propelled the paralyzed bullets forward, Ādi-Buddha teleporting away, again flummoxed by the way Lakshmibai continued to keep up.

When Ādi-Buddha reappeared, he was face to face with the barrel of Death. Lakshmibai fueled the power of Om into her Ajna chakra to gain an accurate, if brief glimpse into where the Buddha would be.

Leaning just far enough back to dodge while yelping in surprise, Ādi-Buddha avoided the bullet and fired a definitionless wave at the Rani at point blank range.

"Om."

And Ādi-Buddha's attack was counted again, Lakshmibai firing Death again as fast as she could, Ādi-Buddha needing to teleport around the field with such speed it was actually tiring him, something he didn't think was possible.

Ādi-Buddha felt scared. Death felt tangible for the first time.

But, more than afraid, he was angry.

He was upset by the audacity of Lakshmibai. She dared to break his emotional torpor. He felt like it was an affront to the way he understood things that she continued to give him a hard time.

With a yell, he fired a machine gun fire of incomprehensible blasts.

"Om, Om, Om, Om, Om, Om, Om-"

Each assault was met with another Om, diffusing each.

With a groan of fury, Ādi-Buddha warped right in Lakshmibai's face and punched her, thwacking her right across the cheek with his indefinable power.

The only reason Lakshmibai was still alive was because she Om'd right before she was hit, blocking much of the damage.

"Finally!" Laksmibai cracked Ādi-Buddha across the face with her own punch empowered by an Om. "You were so boring before, but now you're fighting with feeling!"

"Just shut the fuck up!" Ādi-Buddha punched back.

The fight became a brawl, a fist fight empowered by each fighter's unique strengths. Ādi-Buddha's blows held the indescribable while Laksmibai's held everything.

The fight was a sloppy affair. Neither were fighting with any proper technique of strategy, even though they were both more than capable of complex forms of martial arts and tactical combat. This was a fight of feelings.

For Lakshmibai, such a duel was a common experience, at least in its emotionality. But, it was foreign to Ādi-Buddha. This was a form of exploration. He was discovering himself, though he didn't want to. He believed it to be wrong, against his nature, but he couldn't help himself. The ability to feel was too tantalizing a prospect, he couldn't help but explore it, and Lakshmibai was happy to assist.

Both the fighters were dueling, but it was more of a dance, a conversation between their spirits. Laksmibai was teaching Ādi-Buddha in the ways of feeling, her fists her arguments, Ādi-Buddha's fists his attempts at practicing what she preached.

The lesson ended when a punch got Ādi-Buddha in the gut so hard he dry heaved.

Stumbling back, Ādi-Buddha held his stomach, whimpering while Laksmibai put two of her many hands on her hips.

"How's it feel to, well, feel? Is it as bad as you thought it was?"

"I feel like I have these, these lights, lights flickering inside me. They're flickering against a dark background. I was unified in the dark, but now these lights I can't control in all these different colors keep appearing and they're making me unable to…guide myself. I'm not in complete control anymore and I hate it. I hate that I hate it. I hate that I hate at all. I've lost control of myself thanks to you."

Lakshibai was on the verge of crying again. "You really hate emotions that much? But you don't even understand them. You talk like they're happening irrespective of you, and that's not how it works, dipshit! They're not something that can infect you! They're a part of you! Yeah, with things like mental illness, your emotions can fall out of your control, but for most people they're not a symptom or a cause! In a way you could say they are you in the same way your memories are. They are your personality. That's so crazy! My point is that if you reject them, you really are just trying to abolish any sense of identity for yourself."

"Should I become an over emotional wackjob like you then?"

"I can control my emotions, so I'd say that's a good idea. My emotions spike like they do because that's who I choose to be. I like to be lively in everything I do, make every little feeling matter."

"You're ju-"

"I'm deluding myself, yeah, yeah. You gave the spiel earlier, don't need to hear it again."

"It's true, though."

"This whole debate between us really is just that you think the suffering emotions cause outweighs the joys they create, and I think it's the reverse. You're a pessimist, I'm an optimist."

"I suppose that would be the summation of this argument at its core."

"Then, let me ask you something. What is there to be gained in giving up? If you got what you wanted and humanity was erased or nobody could feel emotions anymore, there'd be nothing, no good or bad. Reality would just be a corpse, essentially. If we continue to live with feelings, at least there's a chance that things can work out. Your option leaves no such room."

"Because it is the painless option." Ādi-Buddha snapped. He was irritated by Lakshmibai's insinuations.

"And the joyless option. What's the point of nothing? It has none. It is meaningless. As long as time marches forward and life does with it, a positive outcome always has at least a chance of coming to fruition. It can be hard, and it can end up being fruitless, but it's better than giving up because it seems too hard."

Ādi-Buddha bellowed out at Lakshmibai's temerity, about to punch again when the human struck him with all her uncountable hands at once, fueled by an Om, flinging him head first into the barrier, his head breaking through the shield. The Buddha growled as he pulled his dome back into the battlefield.

"The Ten Realms: Śrāvaka!"

Clones of Ādi-Buddha, an endless flow of them began sliding out of the original like a raging river towards Lakshmibai. The replicas were using their own bodies as projectiles.

A repetition of Oms were sent to meet the deluge, creating a battle of attrition that the Rani couldn't win. Each copy was as strong as the original, and the original was able to survive the strength of Om, so the best that the rapid fire of the word could achieve is creating a constant pushback against the ever growing ocean of Ādi-Buddhas that wouldn't be constant for long.

Realizing the losing battle, Lakshmibai warped reality to teleport away, but like the original, the Ādi-Buddha's could warp around as well to follow her. Everywhere she went, Lakshmibai would be surrounded by the Buddhas again. Thanks to funneling power from her Oms to her third eye, she could see ahead where the Ādi-Buddhas would go so she could react in time and teleport away, occasionally creating more Om barriers when she wouldn't be able to escape in time.

Despite how one sided the fight had become, Lakshmibai wasn't getting worn down, she was able to pace herself as she searched for a weakness to exploit.

"The Ten Realms: Pratyekabuddha!"

The clones all stopped their pursuit and collected around the original Ādi-Buddha before fusing back into him. All the identical Buddhas combined into one, their power being collected and multiplied so the original was now stronger than the combined strength of all the clones, Ādi-Buddha's power now continuously rising without any sort of limit.

The new and improved Ādi-Buddha closed the distance and punched Lakshmibai in the solar plexus with such speed and force that even though the Rani Om'd just in time, she still felt the demonstrable increase in Ādi-Buddha's power as her elemental form flared and nearly fell apart at the seams.

If she took a few more hits, she was dead.

Lakshmibai teleported away, but Ādi-Buddha was next to her again before she even finished her faster than instant warp.

A kick that was barely softened in time by another Om hit Lakshmiabi's side so hard the force of the blow resonated and travelled through the human's whole body, breaking her entire unending supply of arms into nothingness while the rest of her form fluctuated and nearly dissolved.

Ādi-Buddha felt ecstatic for the first time. Getting to beat the woman that had tainted him, as he saw it, was cathartic.

All the Buddha's emotions were maximizing the power of his attacks, pushing every bit of energy he had to its limit.

Lakshmibai combined two of her techniques, focusing her power into Death, but also powering it with an Om.

A black beam shot out so fast that even the newly amplified Buddha barely avoided the instant death touch of the laser. Using the beam like a blade once more, Lakshmibai nearly hit her target but Ādi-Buddha teleported away. Fueling more Om strength into her arms and senses, the human swung her weapon around in a way that seemed wild, but was actually pin-point precise at all times, the deity having to warp constantly to survive.

Ādi-Buddha managed to teleport to and grab Death, holding it in place with the barrel pointing away from himself, squeezing with intent to break the relic.

The champion of humanity teleported her relic, the musket reappearing next to Ādi-Buddha's head, barrel against one of his temples.

An akasha hand pulled the trigger while Lakshmibai punched with all six of her Om empowered fists, each coming at the deity from a different angle.

Swerving out of the way of the black bullet, Ādi-Buddha deflected four of the six arms using his two own limbs, but two fists hit their quarry. One punch got his chest, the other his liver, the godly fighter feeling the blows dig into him. Holding both places he got hit, Ādi-Buddha warped away again.

"The Ten Realms: Bodhisattva!"

Lakshmibai was hit with never-ending blows, or rather, she was already hit by endless blows. The deity's newest offensive was one imbued with definitionless power that was untied to the concept of sequences. The attacks hit before they were thrown. They preceded any defense, so Lakshmibai couldn't use Om to defend herself, or at least that was the goal.

Om is everything, including all points within a sequence and even things outside of any sequences. It can enforce a sequence to the Buddha's blows and so the Om could block them.

An equal number of Oms blocked each and every incomprehensible attack sent by Ādi-Buddha. While Om could defend against the strikes, it couldn't nullify them. Lakshmibai still took damage, getting put on the brink of death.

Ādi-Buddha's heart was beating so hard it was like a sledgehammer pounding the inside of his chest. He was down to the last of his Ten Realms techniques. If his last one failed, he would be out of tricks. Ādi-Buddha didn't want to die. He wanted to live. He was a machine before the tournament began, but now he was begging to live. The emotions inside him stimulated his will to live and he began to wonder why he wanted to live in the first place. He never felt such a need before. These emotions inside him were here to stay, and Ādi-Buddha couldn't help but wonder what exploring them would be like, if he would enjoy it.

He already had been. Every hit he landed on Lakshmibai felt good, every miss frustrating. He felt excited before every attack. It had become like a game, one he found vivifying. Everything started being interesting, every minor action, every tiny bit of stimulus, became a hit of energy. Life itself had become a rainbow when it had merely been monochrome before.

Not even realizing he was smiling, Ādi-Buddha prepared his final attack.

Ādi-Buddha was meditating with Gautama, the personification of enlightenment's golden body dwarfed the normal Buddha's form as they sat cross legged across from each other atop a cliff's edge, overlooking an expansive forest.

The duo were engrossed in their introspection and inner peace. The calmness inside them was like an ocean that had been made still, without a single ripple or wave. But, a single undulation formed in Gautama's waters.

The smaller Buddha opened his eyes, exiting his meditative trance.

"Ādi-Buddha, may I ask you a question?"

Eyes staying shut, Ādi-Buddha responds, "Yes."

"Do you ever think that existence could be made better? That erasure of being isn't the only way to escape suffering?"

"No."

"But, have you never thought it may be better to at least try and create a world that has no suffering, or at least less? One pleasant enough that the mercy of erasure of existence isn't necessary. It doesn't have to be perfect, but better. A world that isn't horrible isn't out of reach, I don't think."

"That is impossible."

"Please, tell me why."

"Humans are inexorably intertwined with their emotions, and those emotions are nothing but a source of conflict and avarice. Only rare exceptions like you can transcend those emotions and rise to Buddhahood."

"If I am capable of it, then it shouldn't be impossible for all humans to do so, at least to a degree. As long as they achieve a great enough level of control over themselves, they should be able to create a near utopia."

"Near isn't good enough. As long as the seed of emotion remains, any human society shall inevitably collapse."

"Why do you find emotions so detestable? You have never even experienced them for yourself."

"Emotion is poison, a toxic road to depravity."

"But, without emotion, there is truly only indifference, the kind that can enable tragedies to happen without the slightest care being put towards averting them."

"Are you implying we Buddhas are flawed?"

"Well, you say that as if we Buddhas can't feel emotion."

"You feel emotions, still?"

"I have control over my emotions, more so than most beings, but yes, I can still feel them."

"In that case, you are a failure." Ādi-Buddha stood up, his eyes opening and looking at Gautama with a mechanical dismissal.

"Are you really free from emotions?"

"I will never be poisoned by emotions, I am beyond their reach."

"The Ten Realms: Buddha!"

Reappearing at the top of the battlefield, Ādi-Buddha's hand was engulfed in light that shined down like the Sun. All the power the deity had was concentrated in his hand. Every bit of nonphysical strength Ādi-Buddha had would be released in one blast.

A chill went down Ādi-Buddha's spine as he thought about the dangers of using the move, of how it was his final gambit. Like a thrill seeker playing Russian roulette, Ādi-Buddha was feeling an intense excitement from the anticipation.

Thrusting his palm down towards the ground, and Lakshmibai, a tremendous wave of energy shaped like Ādi-Buddha's hand flew downward, barely fitting within the bounds of the battlefield. Dodging was impossible, for the energy that would be released upon impact with the ground would overtake the entire battlefield.

As the falling palm drew closer, Lakshmibai was desperate, trying to think of something she could do to survive the oncoming light wave. The power wafting off the attack was so potent it made the Rani want to regurgitate. It was overwhelming, intense to a degree that she had never felt so closely.

Going with the single idea she had, one she had no inkling as to if it would work, Lakshmibai morphed her amorphous hands that came from her back into an unending chorus of mouths of all kinds that each sang out an endless song of Oms. A barrier of all encompassing vibrations was created around Lakshmibai, ready to meet the Buddha's palm of light.

As the light hit her shield, Lakshmibai could feel the nonphysical hand try to crush her, to press her into the ground, pop her barrier like a bubble, and flatten her to the point that all that she was ground down until there was nothing left.

The endless manifold Oms were getting pushed to the limit like never before. The sound based shield struggled against the all encompassing light that had, at this point, filled the entire battlefield, yet felt focused only on pulverizing Lakshmibai.

Both fighters had devoted their full energy to this last exchange. In many ways, it was just a matter of waiting to see which side won out. No more variables to consider, strategies to employ.

Watching from above, the godly champion's anticipation grew. He clenched his fists as his body swayed. He was so excited. He wanted to know what would happen.

The spectators encouraged their respective sides with cheers so loud that people felt their voices get hoarse, yet they refused to stop. If there was the most miniscule chance their words could give their champion the tiniest bit of strength needed to win. Lakshmibai's family and fellow citizens of Jhansi were letting their emotions run wild as they heaped praise on their beloved Rani. Gods all prayed to Ādi-Buddha for his victory, desperate not to lose and potentially cause all of godkind to get wiped out.

Sin and Astaroth were yelling out as loud as Lakshmibai's family was. They wanted Death to live. It was as simple as that. Their plan was already guaranteed to proceed as planned. All that was left was for Death to make it out alive. That was all they were concerned with.

There was a break.

A hole formed in the barrier around Lakshmibai.

Light poured through the lacuna and Lakshmibai was unable to escape, trapped by her own barrier that existed to prevent anything and everything from passing through, even through methods such as teleportation.

Lakshmibai felt the light assault her, tear at her.

Sin's heart stopped as she watched the light become so bright that nobody could see.

When visibility was restored, the battlefield itself clearly took no damage, mainly because all the power of the attack was targeting Lakshmibai alone, who was lying on the grass, all her transformations undone. She was in her base form, bloody, beaten, burned. Death was decorated with cracks now, but still in one piece.

"Everyone, it seems that Lakshmibai is down, her powers are all deactivated. I think the result of this match is already clear."

Sin's fingers gripped her own arms so strongly they stabbed into them. Her face was not covered in tears. She wasn't wailing. She felt empty. Despair was her only emotion.

Ādi-Buddha landed in front of Lakshmibai who stumbled to her feet despite her current state.

She observed Death's current state, remembering she's not the only one who will die.

"Ādi-Buddha. Can I request something of you?"

"Depends on what it is."

"Let me undo my bond with Death so he doesn't have to die. He doesn't need to, only me and Brahman as part of the deal with Azathoth. Let him be spared."

Sin perked up, the shell of despair around her cracking.

"Sure." Ādi-Buddha spoke with a smile and pleasant tone. "It's the least I can do since you convinced me."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I can't lie, you got me. Emotions are, I dunno, nice. Everything just seems more."

"Seems more?"

"I can't explain it any other way."

Lakshmibai snickered.

Death returned to his normal form. He and Lakshmibai looked at each other, having a moment of mutual understanding and respect. Lakshmibai hugged Death, who hugged back, before they released each other and Death stepped back.

"Sorry, Brahman. We can get away with letting Death live, But Azathoth'll probably get pissy if you get spared."

"It's okay. I'm just glad I'm going to die alongside such a kind individual."

"I just don't want any unnecessary deaths. I saw far too many during my lifetime."

Ādi-Buddha tone became more grave. "You ready?"

"I'm ready. Brahman, you ready?"

"As I'll ever be."

"Alright." Ādi-Buddha held his hand up, ready to make a chopping motion. "Thanks, to the both of you."

A horizontal swing of the arm, and Lakshmibai's head hit the ground.

The body, still standing, dispersed into photons.

Lakshmibai and Brahman's consciousness' faded away, gone forever.

The gods celebrated harder than ever, the threat of erasure making them appreciate life on a new level.

Humanity mourned. Lakshmibai's family and followers all wept tears with all their heart and soul, for they knew she wouldn't want them to hold back.

Sin was latched onto Astaroth, halfway between crying with relief and having a panic attack. Death was alive, but Lakshmibai and Brahman had died on her watch. And, now it was time for the final battle. The last round of Revelations. It had all come to this.

Azathoth's smile was wider than it had been in a long, long, long time.

"The winner of round twelve of Revelations, Ādi-Buddha vs Lakshmibai, is Ādi-Buddha!"

Round 12

Ādi-Buddha vs Lakshmibai

Victor: Ādi-Buddha

Match Length: 12 minutes and 4 seconds

Deciding Move: a hand chop

Gods 6-6 Humans