Leaning aside just enough so that her fist whistled past where my head had been, I grabbed her extended arm and tugged, swinging her over my shoulder to regain a few seconds of space. But she caught herself with her feet down first, landing in a crouch and grabbing hold of my own wrist to use the momentum against me and throw me over her shoulder instead.
I smacked into the earth just hard enough to daze me slightly, but I deflected the incoming punch she aimed at my face with my free hand. Using my ki as a boost, I then rolled up, pulling my legs over to kick her square in the chest, slipping my arm free. I landed on my hands and knees as I heard her strike into a tree some distance away.
When I got up, she had just recovered, the tree behind her tilting from the impact and she reached a hand up to stop it from falling on her.
"You think I'm invincible and you still try to fight me," I said more to myself than to her. "And I just fixed that damn arm of yours too."
She'd have less energy than normal, considering the battle we'd all had earlier and her attempts to stop the crashing ship. Not only that, but she was almost exclusively a close-range combatant—like a wrestler, where she could maximize the use of her strength to throw me or hit me while I was down. All I had to do was avoid giving her that advantage. But there was no question she was assessing my weaknesses as well. I hadn't fully recovered from my fight with Yarrow earlier, and I could feel the beginnings of my scar acting up again. She'd seen me without my shirt, so she probably knew it was there, but did she know it bothered me? Had I ever poked at the damn thing while in her presence—
I saw an idea flicker across her face before she turned and wrapped both arms around as much of the trunk as she could fit and ripped it where it was already fractured.
She couldn't hoist it horizontally, thanks to the density of the forest around us, but that didn't stop her from throwing it at me anyway like a massive, clumsy javelin. I leapt aside and wood splintered in all directions as it struck. By the time my vision cleared of scattered leaves and broken timber she was running down the length of the fallen trunk, branches snapping as she barrelled through them, only stopping when she drew near and hurled herself at another nearby tree, booting it hard enough to send it toppling at me as well.
It caught in the branches of the other trees as it came down, but it fell far enough for me to have to raise my energy to strew away the spears of vegetation raining down on my head. However, the blast disturbed the nearest trees that were buckling under the impact of the first and they started to slip.
A straightforward punch sliced through a stray chunk that fell my direction, but when the debris scattered Ravi was there, too close for me to dodge and she slammed into me, bowling us both into the dirt.
Nonetheless, I was quick enough to catch her incoming fist from both the left and then the right, locking us into a momentary stalemate. She started pressing her full weight down, but not enough to break the hold and free her arms.
The collapsing trees above slid again, poised to give out completely and drop right on us within moments. At the same moment, what was left of Ravi's braid slipped over her shoulder, within reaching distance.
A proverbial lightbulb went off in my head and I released one of her hands without warning. The sudden movement gave me a split second where she was off-balance and, with one of my hands now free, I grabbed her hair and yanked it sideways—hard.
She yelped and I was able to push her aside, breaking the deadlock as I rolled up to my feet. Without wasting another second I shot off into the air, away from the caving range of the trees, and they succumbed to gravity on top of where I'd left Ravi within a moment of me escaping.
I landed nearby as the cacophony settled, waiting to spot where she would emerge. It wasn't long before she did just that, one of the timbers heaving aside to reveal the mostly intact Saiyan.
She blew an errant lock of hair out of her face and narrowed her eyes.
I crossed my arms and raised an eyebrow.
"You aren't going to draw your sword?" she said.
"Make me," I replied, mocking her earlier words.
She steeled her expression further before launching right back at me, raising her aura enough that I noticed her increase in speed.
However, she still wasn't fast enough. The instant before she struck I darted under her swinging arm and around her side, slamming my elbow into her kidney area. I was left to wonder how much she'd even felt it when she angled right back around and brought her fist downwards towards my head. I leaned away, narrowly avoiding the blow and flipping backwards to regain my balance.
Ravi was just within range to hit me again before I swung my hands up and fired an energy blast point-blank into her torso. I hadn't had time to charge it up enough to do real damage, and like my last attack she moved right through it, hardly delayed. Her fist smashed into my face and the kick she followed up with knocked me off the ground. I managed to reorient myself and skid to a stop.
"How about now?" Her breathing had just started to pick up.
I wiped my cheek with the back of my hand. A tiny smear of red came away. "You'll have to hit me harder than that." Then I spiked my ki and became a Super Saiyan, blasting away a radius of debris around me.
Her arm flew up, palm outward towards me. I braced myself.
But the moment drew on and nothing happened. Her face was the picture of concentration. A gentle breeze parted the quiet.
I scoffed. "Am I just supposed to wait around here for—"
A flash of brilliant green ki sparked into existence and burst from her hand, careening at me almost faster than my eye could follow. I formed a barrier of ki around myself and crossed my arms in front of me as the large, malformed cloud exploded around me, obscuring my vision of the world with blinding neon. I felt myself skid back, dirt crumbling beneath me.
When the blast cleared, I stood in an elongated circle of completely blackened landscape. My arms burned.
Ravi stood in the exact same place, hand still outstretched.
"That's a new trick," I said. "Though most fighters can do that as beginners, so I'm not sure whether to be impressed or not."
"Stop trying to distract me."
"If you want me to shut up you're still going to have to try harder." I could see I was indeed succeeding in distracting her, if only a little—she couldn't read my face and fully concentrate on anything else I was doing. So I kept talking, just to annoy her some more.
"I'll admit I'm curious to see what else you can do. Although you should've known that if you wanted to make this a dick-measuring contest, you were bound to lose."
"Hmph. Royal brat," she retorted, lifting both hands this time. However, I was ready and the moment she moved I dashed forward so that when her attack fired, I leapt up to avoid the worst of it and came down at her from above with a hammer fist.
She noticed me just in time to swing up a parry, though the impact cratered the ground below her. She pushed off, breaking our point of contact and forcing me into the sky before following after me.
I blocked or avoided the incoming volley of punches, landing a few here and there between that slowed her a little, but weren't enough to stop her. Her aura continued to steadily grow, but not fast enough to be on par with mine.
She was stronger than this—I'd seen flashes of it. But I wasn't sure why she wasn't going all-out, if she was so determined to defeat me.
I ducked away from her next two swings and quickly formed a ball of ki in my hands, detonating it between us. It had more force than last time and drove her back, so I used the distraction to dive forward and thrust my knee into her stomach. She curled in and I brought my elbow down behind her shoulder as hard as I could muster.
My attack struck dead-on and an instant later, Ravi plummeted from the sky and into the earth just below us.
I saw that she was already stirring a moment later, so I quickly put my fingers to my temples, deciding to use a technique Goku had taught me.
The moment she looked up, I struck.
"Solar Flare!" I declared, shutting my own eyes as a blaring light flashed from my body.
When I felt the light ebb I opened my eyes and summoned more ki to my hands, firing at Ravi who predictably was off-guard, her hands over her face in agony.
The blaze smacked into her and exploded in a cloud of dust and charred fragments. I descended through the clogged air, touching down near where I sensed her to be. The secondary flash and the smoke probably meant she still couldn't see yet—she'd have no way to know where I was coming from.
As the cloud thinned, I spotted her getting to her feet, still rubbing at her face. Then, she dropped her hands, eyes still shut. And froze.
I walked towards her. The breeze carried away the rest of the smoke and she stood completely open in the middle of yet another swath of landscape we'd chewed up. Her side was to me, and she continued to hold very, very still.
Though I made little effort to disguise my stride, I watched her carefully.
My boot crunched over fallen branches and strewn wreckage. As I got closer I angled into a circle, walking around to her back as I approached.
"What are you doing?" I wondered aloud, halting my steps when I was behind her. The setting sun was still barely lingering above the treeline in the direction she faced, casting me in her shadow.
Clearly, she was waiting for me to strike, or for her eyes to recover, whichever came first. But how did she think she was going to defend herself should the former occur? The wind was the wrong direction for her to get my scent, as long as I didn't cross in front of her or wander too close before attacking.
She shifted her posture, straightening her back and angling her head a little. I could see her eyes were still closed.
Then, ever-so-slightly, she smirked.
I didn't waste another second. Coating my hand in energy, I attacked, putting enough force behind my punch to break bone and moving so fast that the dust around me barely stirred.
And she turned and caught my fist in her hand.
The force of my blow slid her heels back a few inches, but the integrity of her stance and the firmness of her arm didn't budge.
She opened her eyes and our gazes locked. Her grin widened. "Gotcha."
Her aura spiked and she smashed her forehead into mine. While I reeled backwards I felt her hand fist into my shirt and then she slammed me into the ground, knocking the breath from my lungs. By the time I began to reorient myself she'd picked me up again and tossed me through the air. Vegetation lashed around me until I came to a halt when my back hit what must've been a boulder, the impact almost winding me again.
I refocused and got to my feet with one hand against the rock face to steady myself.
Ravi was only a few feet away.
I flipped back and away and her punch slammed into the stone where I'd just been. Cracks raced through it and the ground shook with the force, but the structure didn't break.
Still in the air, I fired a ki blast into the rock, detonating it in front of her. The fragments rained down around us both, but she took the brunt of it, battered with the cascading rubble.
I swept down and caught her off-guard with a left hook. She staggered, but leaned away from the range of my next blow and smashed her fist into my side. I tumbled and fell aside, but recovered in time to spring up underneath her guard and tackle her into a tree, my shoulder slamming into her stomach.
Before I could strike again she drove her knee into my torso, loosening my grip just enough for her to hit me again much harder and then break free, grabbing my right arm as she crushed me against the ground once more. This time, I was facing the wrong direction to shove her off easily and she pinned her knee into my back, forcing my arm up behind me into a hammerlock submission hold.
An immediately painful tautness spiked through my shoulder and upper chest. My arm felt as if she was about to rip it from its socket before I instinctively used my free hand to fire a ki blast backwards in hopes of hitting her.
As soon as she released me I knew I'd hit on target and I quickly rolled away and back to my feet, shaking my arm out for a moment. My scar throbbed.
I ran straight at her and leapt into the air, snapping my leg up at the same time to kick her in the solar plexus, then whipped around with a reverse heel kick to the face. She caught my second strike and grabbed my ankle to spin me around before throwing me.
Using my energy, I caught myself midair and raised both my palms, firing a barrage of ki after her as she attempted to dodge them, my view of her once again veiled by smoke.
When she rocketed off the ground to come after me again, I raised my aura higher and as we collided a shockwave burst through the air, scattering everything in a nearby radius.
I'd stopped her dead in her tracks. Electricity spiked around my body, the power of the Ascended state streaming through me. Her expression tightened and I felt a surge of her own aura in response—but it wasn't going to be enough to give her a chance.
I released a flash of energy, sending her back several feet through the air. Before she could recover, I was already in front of her and I drove my heel into her sternum, just shy of the strength needed to fracture it. In the blink of an eye she was smashing into the ground, hard enough this time that the sound reverberated around the forest.
I levitated downwards slowly, watching as Ravi rolled back to her feet. I thrust my hand out and released a blast powerful enough to knock her back down, driving a long path through the dirt. She got up again, slower this time, but still determined.
My arm still outstretched in front of me, I lifted my other one to join it and I fired at her again as I landed on the ground. With each successive attempt she made to get up, I shot her again. But she kept trying.
The final time she rose from the successive blasts, she was breathing heavily, movements lagging where they hadn't before. But her eyes were still sharp with resolve.
I brought a hand to my necklace and tugged the capsule off. In a puff of smoke, my sword was in my hand. I drew the weapon and swung the scabbard over my shoulder. Something nagged at me in my peripheral senses. I spared a glance to the still-intact forest some distance away to the side.
Daikon. And Goten. Not next to each other, but standing close enough to insinuate they'd arrived together at some point without me noticing. Both were the picture of barely-contained trepidation.
I needed to end this quickly. Either of them getting involved could make things a lot worse.
"I don't want to hurt you any more severely than I have to," I said, directing my attention back to Ravi. "Surrender."
She didn't even flinch. In fact, on my next step, she charged at me with a wild swing. I angled aside as it overshot past me and I jabbed the pommel of my sword into her ribs, then smacked her with the flat of the blade to knock her back over. She rolled up again with great effort, managing to get to one knee, leaning heavily on it.
"Are you really this stubborn? You have nothing to gain from continuing to fight me! What are you trying to prove?" I went on.
She said nothing. Her aura fluctuated, like she was having a hard time keeping it there—or instinctively trying to tamp it down.
Despite her exhaustion, I could feel how close she was to becoming something more. In fact, her physical state didn't quite match with where her current energy level was at.
Was she incapable of transforming? Or was she holding herself back on purpose?
"You told me you were a failed supersoldier. But your hearing loss wasn't the only reason they considered you a botched experiment, was it?" I said.
"Don't," she panted, "call me that."
I cocked my head. "A botched experiment, or a failure?"
She merely set her jaw and continued to glare at me, beginning to push herself back to a standing position. However, her leg gave out as she tried and she slid back to a kneel, bracing herself with one hand on the ground.
"We're done here," I said. I lowered my sword arm completely. "Come back to camp when you're done having a tantrum and we can figure the rest out."
Then, just as I'd done before, I turned and began walking away, my sword still in hand.
"No." I heard movement behind me as she presumably tried to get up again. "Don't you walk away from me." It almost sounded desperate.
I paused and turned my head over my shoulder. "Why? You can't stop me."
Then I continued on my way, off in the direction of Goten and Daikon.
The sun had dropped out of view now, settling the jungle into a deepening gloom, but still just light enough to see naturally by.
But when I got a good look at their faces, they weren't staring at me.
Something flashed green in the corners of my vision—something behind me.
Acting purely on instinct I whipped around, weapon raised. I hadn't sheathed my sword, just in case, but I hadn't expected this.
It all seemed to happen in slow-motion.
Ravi was wreathed in what I could only describe as green flame, vibrant as a falling meteor. I swung my sword forward, aimed so that it would skewer right through her if she didn't stop or shift aside—the bluff would force her off-course and diminish the strength of her inertia, as was too close for me to dodge.
Yet she didn't stop or even hesitate at the raised blade mere milliseconds away from piercing through her chest. I jerked the end of the blade up and angled my body, a desperate attempt to avoid running her through without sustaining the full force of her attack.
But it wasn't quite enough. The edge of my sword sheared deeply into the side of her face, decorating the air with a spray of crimson and severing a few locks of hair, the cut causing her to waver her trajectory just enough for her fist to strike me off-centre: the exact spot of my scar.
All at once, there was an indescribably searing pain, as if a superheated sharp object had been forced into the old wound and struck bone. The agony exploded across my shoulder and upper chest and shocked down my right arm, both hot and cold at the same time.
I dimly recognized that I'd hit the ground flat on my back, due to the pressing of the scabbard into my spine.
I couldn't feel the sword in my hand anymore. I curled over, trying to get up, and spotted the fallen blade inches from my fingers. I hadn't felt myself let go of it.
With my left arm I reached over to cradle my injured shoulder as I sat up. It felt like touching a foreign object, like someone else's body part. I tried to reach for the sword.
Nothing happened. My right arm wouldn't move. Every movement of my torso made the scar shriek anew, and there was residual tensing of the muscle that kept it from being completely slack, but the rest of my arm felt nothing. Only the slightest prickle danced over it in an area I couldn't even pinpoint.
Ravi grabbed me by my sleeve and lifted me halfway to my feet. I couldn't help the pained hiss that escaped my teeth. At some point after hitting the ground I'd returned to my natural state. I needed to focus—focus past the injury to Ascend again.
Yet the next blow didn't come. I blinked, focusing on my opponent.
Her burning, neon aura cast harsh shadows in the twilight, contrasted against my yellow one, making the blood painting one side of her face look almost black. She stared at my inured arm, but then her focus shifted off of me and onto her own hand, a shocked stare where she gripped me.
She abruptly let me go and I slumped back to the ground. She lifted both her hands, gawking at them, at the green cloud lacing her body, then back to me as she began to retreat, slowly.
There was something new on her face: fear. But not of me.
Her energy was surging madly in an effort to what I now understood was not her trying to power up, but trying to restrain herself. It wasn't a matter of whether she could transform or not. It was that she didn't want to.
Before I could say anything, a blur of gold was charging at Ravi's side. She leapt backwards to avoid the attack— to avoid Goten, transformed into a Super Saiyan, sweeping past me as he missed his target.
"Goten, stop!" I called out, managing to get to my haunches.
He ignored me and was quick to recover from his miss, hurtling after Ravi without letting up. Though he managed to drive her back, she avoided every one of his attacks. But she wasn't striking in return.
"I said stop!" I made it to one knee.
Goten stalled and spared me a glance. He looked furious.
"This has gone on long enough, Trunks!" he said.
I stood up, relieved to find that I had no major injury anywhere else. "This is between Ravi and I. You can't help here."
"It's my business when you get hurt! Don't you get it? If anything happens to you, we lose everything! You could have ended this fight from the beginning but decided to fuck around instead!"
"Quit it! You don't get to decide what happens here!" I strode towards him, trying to concentrate on getting even the fingers of my numb arm to curl.
"You think I'm just gonna stand there and watch you let this thing smack you around?" He jabbed a finger in Ravi's direction. "Look what she did to you! Look at what she looks like!"
"I'm fine! This is—there was already something wrong, this was just a fluke!"
Ravi's growl from nearby caught my attention. Daikon had apparently been trying to speak to her and their conversation had escalated.
"Don't touch me!" she snapped, her aura flaring.
When he reached out for her once more, her arm snapped up and she struck him square in the face. He went down instantly and much harder than I had, and not a moment later Ravi had taken off into the sky in a flash of light.
Daikon didn't bother to stand, sitting up only to properly wipe at the blood coming from his nose.
I'd reached him and Goten by the time the latter's hair deepened to its natural black.
"What's your problem?" I demanded of him.
"Are you seriously mad at me for sticking up for you?" Goten retorted.
"I asked you to stop. I'd won—it was over, even after she hit me. Now she's taken off to gods-know where!"
"If she's so important that you make her the Queen of All Saiyans after she just about fucks you over, then why don't you go after her?"
"Ten—"
"Don't waste your breath." He turned his back on me.
I couldn't even continue to reason with him before he too flew off through the air, in the direction of the Saiyan encampment.
And then the night was quiet and dark.
I let myself stand still for a moment. I heard the earth shuffling beneath Daikon a bit as he got up, but he didn't say anything.
I turned and walked to my fallen sword, pulling the sheath off my back before I slid the weapon into its compartment with my working hand and slung everything back over my good shoulder.
Daikon was still, hands tucked against his sides under his arms until he noticed the stare I was giving him, but quickly dropped his gaze back to the ground. He had no intention of pursuing Ravi, then, at least for the time being.
I inhaled, then sighed through my nose, the night air crisp but not cold. I turned around. "Are you coming?"
"Huh? Where?"
"For a walk. Back to camp." Goten would need space for awhile, whether I spoke to him in the morning or a few days from now. If he was even willing to explain himself yet. I didn't know how long it would take Ravi to want to talk to me again. She probably needed a medic to look at the gash on her face, but I didn't know if that would incentivize her enough to come back sooner rather than later.
"That's a long way to walk with me intruding on your space," Daikon said.
"I'm not sure how my night could get any worse just because you're here."
"Don't you need to see a medic, like, sooner rather than later? And all those people are going to be wondering where the fuck you went."
I glanced down at my unresponsive arm. With concentration, I could see my fingers curl a bit, although I couldn't feel them doing so. Slight improvement, at least. "Probably. But I'm already returning without Ravi, so I'm sure taking a little longer to come back isn't going to be the first thing on their minds."
I began to walk, not waiting to see if he responded. Within a few moments I heard his own footsteps following mine quietly.
For some time our boots against the earth was the only noise. I was surprised not to hear any nocturnal creatures scuttling nearby, but perhaps there weren't any on Terracotta. A half moon hung overhead in the sky, its glow thinned by a few wisps of cloud passing in front of it.
The silence left my mind free to fall into thought. The frustration simmered foremost, but as it cooled, guilt gnawed at me beneath. Like it always did.
A/N: * sticks one hand out of the grave to deliver chapter 25 to the internet *