[ Self-Contained OP: Rise Against – The Violence ]
Taking Control in a Pre-Destined World! Two Shattered Souls Bound To An Immovable Fate!
[ BGM: Hiroyuki Sawano – sisirc (0:00-2:45) ]
Hell had seeped from beneath the ground.
Fires swept through every corner of the city. No, the horizon had been set ablaze, in the middle of the day. Smog, ash, billowing smoke from an untold amount of structures and facilities once used to venture through the stars, appease the gods, and provide the entire planet with energy that neared limitless, now clouded the skies in a deep black. Amongst the shrill, agonized cries of men, women, and children alike, the panicked, distraught, hopeless broadcasts had made it clear, if the violent tremors and ear-shattering booms traveling across the globe weren't enough.
The end times had begun.
"QUICKLY! INTO THE VESSELS!"
A final, crumbling bastion stood, surrounded by a howling, ravenous inferno stalking closer and closer with every passing minute. Halo-crested citizens were hastily led through underground tunnels by large warriors donning dual-spiked helmets and bulky armor of a mystic breed of metal.
"THE CHILDREN AND ELDERS, ALL MUST BOARD FIRST! DEFEND THIS STATION WITH YOUR LIVES! ENSURE THEIR SURVIVAL AT ALL COSTS!"
One of the older citizens turned, resisting the hand guiding him along. "W-WHAT OF THE PRIMUS!? WHY HAS HE NOT-"
"THE INVADERS ATTACKED THE CITADELS FIRST! THERE'S NOTHING LEFT OF OUR ORDER, NOTHING LEFT ON THIS PLANET!"
Before the elder could fully descend into madness, the knight shoved him into the small ship.
"Curses… if the citadel's Forge was too weak to fend off this assault… then of what opposition do WE pose?"
"Hold steadfast, brother! We are no longer here to survive on a forsaken world! Our people must be allowed some form of hope!"
His panicked eyes hidden, he hesitated before giving a passionate nod. "OF COURSE!" The trepidation still leaking through his roar was palpable, infectious even.
Hysteric tugs at another soldier's hand drew his attention. "NO, MY LOVE! I CAN'T LIVE IN A REALM WITHOUT YOU ALONGSIDE ME!"
"THAT'S RIDICULOUS! YOU HAVE CHILD!"
"SHE MUSTN'T GROW UP WITHOUT HER FATHER, BELOVED! SHE MUSTN'T! PLEASE, COME WITH US!"
The exquisitely-decorated warrior struggled, before reminding himself. "You must understand, we're undoubtedly in the safest position on the planet, at this time. Their technology, their scouters, they will not reach this far underground, never mind an area so secluded. We shall see each other once more, after the hapless have been evacuated. Now hurry!"
For a faint moment, his words had some effect on his betrothed.
And then her face slowly descended into a deep, silent horror.
Her glance was not fixated on him. Once a body from a fallen comrade finally landed, breaking across the splitting floors with a grisly thud, the knight slowly turned. His comrades were equally as motionless as the citizens behind them.
From above, scanning the crowd without a hint of emotion, was a horror masquerading as an armored little girl with a furry tail.
— A battleborne destroyer of civilizations. Frieza's hellhounds.
The lot of them stood petrified, in silent horror. Any movement would trigger its predatory instinct. Deer caught in headlights, a frivolous attempt to delay the inevitable.
"Sa… Saiya…"
Someone screamed, and the last bits of Hell broke loose, swallowing them whole.
"IT'S A SAIYAN!"
The child stepped off its makeshift perch, digging its heels into the cavern wall and sliding down as it picked its prey from the herd. Civilians clamored and stampeded over each other in despairing screams, self-preservation overriding altruism. Only the knights dug in their heels, roaring at the tops of their lungs to steel themselves in the face of death, spawning massive supernatural weaponry from thin air. All they'd done was prove themselves the cream of the crop.
The saiyan vanished from their sliding descent, leaving in its wake a massive crater that ran off as fissions that destroyed the walls of the underground fortress.
By the time the warriors had noticed its next position, four had already perished.
"BEHIND-"
The knight's helm was crushed into itself like a tin can by the alien's punch, before it bounded off his chest, shattering his armor completely. It kicked another out of its way, breaking his comrade's body with his own corpse, as the saiyan slaughtered its way toward a larger warrior in decorated armor. He saw the saiyan coming, ordered his men aside, and swung down his colossal sword as if it were made of bamboo.
"BY THE WILL OF THE PRIMUS, YOU WILL SPILL NILVARUM BLOOD NO-"
It crashed into the ground, the saiyan having kicked the blade in mid-swing before disappearing. His arms made a ghastly sound and extended unnaturally as he groaned in agony, being bashed back and forth like a caged diver in the midst of a starved shark, seeking to break through. Suddenly, a searing steam rose from a section on the back of his helm and both his shoulders. With an invigorated speed, he turned back around in a fit of madness, searching for his aggressor, who'd disappeared.
It then reappeared atop his head, hands together. A light fired from its palms, and amidst the primal yowls of a nerve-ridden life form being cooked alive, magenta fluid shot from the few minute orifices across his forged suit before crashing into the ground face first courtesy of a flip.
"TRIBUNUS!" Several screamed in panic. The fear in their voice marked the end of their resolve, as the saiyan wiped away a satisfied grin and eyed the rest with the expressionless black eyes of an event horizon. And with their final screams, they ran toward what turned into a slaughterhouse. The citizens watched in horror as their protectors were thrown about like ragdolls, broken bodies flung weightlessly across the cavern by something quite literally a quarter their size.
And then it turned to them.
Some broke down in laughter. Some fell to their knees and prayed. Some buckled under and sobbed. Most were silent.
"(It's not like they'll make it far, anyway. It wouldn't even take much effort. So why don't I just kill them all, now?)"
She thought about it. It was, after all, her first time eyeing down quarry too weak to fight back.
The young girl primed energy in her extended palm, her eyes narrowing, and sent them all away with a kiai. In a haste, the few ships thrusted off to who-knew where.
"(... what pride is there in kills that mean nothing?)"
Kora eyed the corpse of the "Tribunus," and picked it up.
"(I'll definitely be able to shove this in Ganbo's stupid face. He'll regret sending me underground when he sees how much stronger my prey was…!)" She hoisted it over herself, and shot a hole through the surface above, vanishing.
She didn't transform when she heard what happened to him.
"(LOSE IT.)"
Or when her father was murdered.
"(LET GO OF EVERYTHING AND LET IT ALL BOIL TO THE SURFACE.)"
Or when her mother was killed right in front of her, both women powerless to do a thing.
"(LET IT GO, AND TEAR EVERYTHING DOWN.)"
Not even after her pride had been kicked through the dirt, as a snobbish earthling had touted the form with less than a tenth of her power. Not even after being ensnared by an outer force, after having her family's honor desecrated.
"(... LET GO OF THAT. THE HATE I HOLD FOR IT. FOCUS THERE.)"
Yet others, an amount of saiyans she'd seen over the years that may as well have been countless, had achieved it through nigh-identical, if not even lighter means.
"(ON THAT FORM, ON THOSE FAILURES... ON THAT USELESSNESS, ON THAT WEAKNESS, ON THE PEOPLE I CAN'T HOLD ANYMORE. LET IT ALL…)"
She couldn't let go of it. The weight her family had placed in that distant dream had confirmed it within her mind. Seeing in action twice, if-not thrice, had sealed it in her heart.
"NU-RAAAAAA—!"
— it had finally happened. Countless years of failure and bottled rage, years of pushing herself far past exhaustion in training, of studies and observation that only led her to the exact same conclusion, culminated into one event of helpless strain.
Something severed. Kora had finally lost it.
In a mindless, uncontrollable fit of pain and rage, she'd torn its embers from the bottom of her spirit, forcing golden flames across her body that snarled and bit at the air. And she lashed out at the sole enemy before her.
"Like clockwork."
While she steadily lost what little sense she'd clung on to, Akaki had allowed a flat, inward-bent device to fall from his pocket and roll across the floor before falling from its side.
"(And remember: Have fun!)"
[ BGM: Jamie Christopherson – Stains of Time (Instrumental) ]
The punch that followed flew a few centimeters from him before the entire world turned upside down.
"ANTI-GRAVITY BOMB!?" The gunman laughed aloud, allowing himself to lose control. "THAT'S NUTS!" His boots lit up, as he bounded from chunk to chunk of uprooted planet amongst the upward-falling rains, racing his current predator to the top before flipping through the air in a somersault and turning on her. Kora slammed into him before any rounds could be fired, only for Akaki to somehow turn into a rock that she slammed into. Gunfire assailed the saiyaness soon after, and she whirred around to see her target with both GMGs fully extended into Force Multiplier form. She barreled into the island-sized structure he was on, shattering it completely only to realize he was gone once more. Over and over, he seemed to be in two places at once, driving her further down her berserk state as she grew faster and faster to no avail, the constant sound of heavy plasma booming through the air and hitting their mark an ever-present indication of failure. Pretty soon, Akaki began falling around her, Kora blasting and clawing at his every last location and whiffing each time as the tsufruian went up in a mess of holographic polygons any time she got close. Kora snarled before emitting a world-ending amount of energy all around her, sending everything around her in a vaporizing sphere of light.
Now spiraling through the higher atmosphere with smaller particles, Akaki continued his giddy giggles as he inspected a gauntlet. "Alright, let's push this thing into reverse!"
"GRAAAAA—!"
"AAAAAND SWITCH!"
Kora was suddenly stopped, before being pulled back along with everything else. To say that the rain came down hard would be the understatement of the century, as it started making swiss cheese out of solid rock, everything but the announcer in a swirling vortex of water, earth, and bits of magma in a makeshift black hole. Akaki sprinted up a bridge of rotating, descending debris, taking pot-shots at the struggling saiyan; slowly but surely, she was growing accustomed to the immense gravitational pull, and beams of ki shot from her glare, tearing through large swaths of the airborne environment. Akaki proceeded to sprint across the dust itself, Kora in gradually-faster pursuit.
"YOU JERK," Akaki cackled, "SAIYANS AREN'T SUPPOSED TO ADAPT THIS FAST! TURNS OUT YOU'RE SPECIAL AFTER ALL, AREN'T YOU!?" Akaki made an X hand gesture, and an invisible force slammed into Kora. She had literally began foaming at the mouth in rage, before opening her maw as death rays shot from her mouth and eyes simultaneously. The gunman cackled like a child seeing fireworks as he evaded the smaller ocular beams, his weapon splitting apart before aiming at the mountain-dwarfing inverse cone spiraling from her mouth. He shot a jet of plasma that shot him even higher as the blast staggered mid-air in the face of concentrated gravity, Akaki falling alongside the mammoth ki attack and raining down fire upon his foe. He landed feet-to-face, leaping off in a show of disrespect that rendered a vacant eye of Kora bloodshot. She whirred around to the upside-down marksman and screamed with enough force to knock him away, some of his wind flying out of him in the process.
"KA… HA HA, OH MAN, THAT'S DANGEROUS!" Akaki wheezed, shaking off the disorientation before Kora practically blinked toward him. The tsufruian reciprocated by instantaneously blinking away, leaving yet more debris to be reduced to dust by a violent roundhouse kick that sent everything in front if it dashed to the wind by sheer subsequent wind pressure.
He was literally shaking as he fell once more. "GOLLY, I COULD DIE HERE! WOULDN'T BE YOUR FIRST KILL, THOUGH, WOULD IT!? SAY, HOW MANY OF THEM ACTUALLY DESERVED IT HUH, YOU POOR, POOR SAIYAN!? WOULD I BE YOUR FIRST!?"
"(HA! Where'd THAT come from!?)"
"(I can't help it, I have my OWN vendettas! Besides, I'm not that big on your philosophy! A choice is still a choice!)"
"(Ooh, that stings! Well if nothing else, we can agree that at least I'd deserve it!)"
Aka… ki… grinned. "(I try my best to stay 'in-character'!)" He then made a "Minus" gesture, causing the inflamed Kora to sail far-higher than she should've into the sky, before reforming an X and causing her to descend at the same unprecedented speed. "IT MUST BE NICE TO BE ABLE TO BRUSH OFF THE WEIGHT OF YOUR SINS SO EASILY, RIGHT!?"
"(C'mon, now you're just being mean!)"
[ BGM: Jamie Christopherson – Stains of Time (0:23) ]
"LET ME HAVE THIS FOR A BIT!" Akaki yelled at nothing in particular. The scenario began to shift to what looked like a chain of devastated moons, before shifting back to a rainy Planet Vegeta, Akaki getting a bit disorientated before landing on a rapidly-spinning tectonic plate piece about the size of the original arena.
"(FO—CUS. That could've gone MUCH worse, and the gravity bomb's reaching its time limit. Once that happens, BOOM.)"
"(... HEH. SORRY, MISTAKE ON MY END!)"
Kora then sprang back onto the platform, despite Akaki having never released his X gesture.
"(HEY, DON'T THESE ADAPT TO ADAPTATION!?)"
"(She's something else, you said it yourself! I'd cross my fingers, at this point!)" Akaki fired shot after shot at Kora as he held his hand sign in another hand and hoped for the best, the saiyaness slowly stepping toward him with a downright-monstrous expression. Before she could outright lunge at him, the gravity bomb hit its time limit, spewing everything out in every direction and lodging Akaki into the side of a tectonic plate.
"(Whelp, perfect opportunity to test the stim upgrade!)"
"(ALREADY ON IT!)" His weapon folded back into his gauntlet before he lurched forward in pain.
"(YEP! GOOD TO-)"
"RUAAAAAAA—!"
"(... ALRIGHT, SINCE YOU'RE SO INTERESTED IN IT, HERE'S YOUR SUJU-PO PERFORMANCE EVALUATION!)"
Akaki sprang back up, eyeing the enraged, burning saiyaness careening toward him. "(ROGER THAT!)"
He then reversed Kora's fist-laden charge, casting her toward the ground like a comet before leaping off the falling platform, shooting several ki blasts out of the sky before redirecting Kora back and forth, up and down, all around himself in a desperate sail to the bottom, blasting her with a repel shot several times to further aid in his hectic descent before a sudden appearance from behind him sent him blinking into the air.
"(SHIT…!)"
"(Pace yourself, come on.)"
"(I'M TRYING…!)"
"(You know you don't have to win, right?)"
"(IT'S A BIT MORE THAN A TECH EXPO FOR ME, AT THIS POINT!)"
"(... alright, if you insist.)"
"GLADLY!" Akaki whipped out both extended hand cannons, firing at the ground right before Kora could grab and crush him, skidding across the terrain with labored pants.
"(Also um, why is your field down?)"
"(WHY USE IT ON SAIYAN BEING A SAIYAN!?)"
"(Use the damn field, man, remember why I'm paying you.)"
"(FINE.)" Akaki scowled and smacked his gauntlet. The dust and rocks falling around his feet descended slower before blinking into the ground, without so much as a louder thud — if anything, the small thuds happened faster, instead. Kora's speed followed suit, Akaki reading her every move as she lost control of her body's movement with every whiffed punch. Her ki was sent all across her body without any source of gathering or focus, as she repeatedly scampered and slammed across the ground in a tripping mess that grew faster and faster with every pass — Akaki even threw in his own punches as he guided her force, effectively forcing Kora to take her own force repeatedly, as if using her as his self-beating puppet. One particularly hard one to the jaw sent her skidding back and hacking spittle, before she stood in place in a low, resentful growl. Kora then roared, guiding ki through her body with an ease Akaki hadn't seen before.
Akaki chuckled before-
"(Alright, let's count this as your win. I'd like to take stage again.)"
"(But-)"
"(We'll talk post-match. I'd REALLY like to jump in.)"
Kora then threw her entire weight, every octave of her ki and physical force, into a solitary punch. Akaki went from a Suju-Po stance, into a…
Dust briefly concealed the two, a massive gust shaking the surroundings through sound alone as ki erupted from the rear in a massive, backwards explosion.
.
.
Akaki stared.
Kora stared.
The punch had not a lick of force behind it.
And so, Akaki had tanked it head-on, hand just-around her wrist without touching it.
"... huh?"
Akaki proceeded to snatch the fist, toss her by the wrist joint over his shoulder and into the ground, and light her the fuck up. His neutral, lifeless expression repeatedly flashed in yellow-black light as he watched his own gunfire, before stopping with a steady exhale.
"You know, that strategy takes me down a corner of Memory Lane that I'd REALLY… REALLY rather-not travel down again."
"fuckin'... bitch..." Neoru mumbled to himself.
Kora spat blood, hands and knees on the ground. "(But… how…)"
Akaki then used her as a stool, femininely crossing his legs and pressing down on his visor as he maintained his hold on her wrist and, by extension, her arm. "It's a sad day for rain when a HUMAN thinks of something before you do. I'm not gonna hide my disappointment. I mean, at the end of the day, we both proved my point. Though there's something I forgot to mention. Tsufruians are, ultimately, spiteful little hypocrites that hold grudges far past expiration date, only to fall back and do the exact same thing they show SUCH contempt over. '(No offense. You're not exactly a Tsufruian, anyway.)' "
"(None taken. You saved my bacon, after all.)"
Akaki smirked, before returning to neutral. "And Saiyans? Well, they let it all out in a giant, mindless explosion, and then it all quickly falls away. Anger, grief, guilt. That's a quality I admire, honestly. One of your greatest strengths as warriors. Because unlike Tsufruians, who have to make up lofty rationales for why things are why they are and their roles in that state of affairs, you guys just passively accept how we're simple products of our respective DNA and cultures. Nothing to hold any sort of grudges over-"
"You're wrong."
"... Hh-hh-hh." Akaki rolled his eyes behind his visor, shaking his head to the sky with a sigh. "Is that a fact?"
Suddenly, his hold on her began to loosen. "...?"
"If Saiyans really are all the same… if everyone is so inherently alike… then…" She began to shake.
Droplets fell from Kora's eyes.
"Then why… why aren't I?"
"... pardon?"
[ BGM: Hiroyuki Sawano — sisirc (2:46) ]
Kora's arms began to shake and falter. Akaki hopped off her back, the surface growing unstable.
"I try so hard to lose myself in rage, but I can't… others have to try so hard just not to do something so simple, something that comes so naturally to everyone else, but… but I can… barely… feel it…" She steadily, gradually broke down. "Don't I care about my family? Don't I care about this stupid legend? Then why can't I… I get angry over it…?" Kora broke out into stutters. "I don't even feel anything when I'm fighting someone strong, or crushing someone weak… there's no thrill or enjoyment or pride from it, it's all just a need… I never even agreed with the reasons I've killed so many people, I just did…! I never thought it was good or evil, I just killed…! Even for a Saiyan, I'm unforgivable…!"
The way she sobbed wasn't indicative of a rising anger or cooling down. It didn't sound like something was breaking. It sounded like rubble.
"I'll never meet an expectation… I'll never defend anyone… I can't even bring myself to feel strongly about anything, it's all useless, anyway…! Why? Why was someone like me ever born a Saiyan? It's not fair! I…!"
She'd actually begun coughing. "Why am I even here!?" she asked, all strength leaving her voice as she wailed pathetically, finally giving up after eighteen years. "Why couldn't I just die with mom?"
"(Aww~, is the little Saiyan-)"
"(Not right now.)"
"(... huh? Wait… don't tell me-)"
"(I said…)" Akaki let go. "(Not right now.)" He sucked his teeth, before raising a pistol. "(... tch. I've gone and found a kindred spirit.)"
He side-eyed Pan. "If you're so mind-numbingly inept that you TRULY BELIEVE she hasn't utterly given up until a white flag goes sailing through the air, then fine. I'm going to shoot her until she falls unconscious."
Pan stared, unsure.
"... Humans. Humans, Humans, HU-"
Akaki pulled the trigger in anger, shutting Kora up.
"They just STAND THERE and LET THINGS HAPPEN, KNOWING THAT IT'S WRONG, too EMBROIDLED in their unCERTAINTY to ACT with any SENSE-" He pulled the trigger over and over.
"TEN PERCENT. THAT'S TWENTY SHOTS UNTIL SOME, 'MIRACLE FROM LITERALLY NOWHERE' HAPPENS!" He pulled the trigger again. "NINETEEN! EIGHTEEN! SEVENTEE-"
"OK I GET IT!" Pan yelled, putting herself between the gunman and the living corpse. The winner of the twelfth round is-
"KOOOOO—RAAAAAAA—!"
Akaki slowly turned his head right.
Pan slowly turned her head left.
Archi stood near a tear in reality.
"... HOW IN THE FU-"
Everyone stared at the tear in reality, and at the source, in abject terror.
"Go… Go save her, Lover Boy…!" Kaza whispered, tears streaming angrily as she balled a fist.
She thought she was hallucinating from the mental strain and damage sustained. Or maybe her mind was showing her something that'd make her vaguely happy, to keep her heart from imploding. But then she noticed the other two's glances. "Ar..."
"KORA, YOU DUMBASS! CAN'T YOU HEAR YOURSELF RIGHT NOW!?" Archi shook with anger, genuinely furious with the one who'd said such horrible things to the woman he loved. "WHY THE HELL ARE YOU STILL TRYING TO LIVE UP TO A BUNCH'A DEAD PEOPLE'S STANDARDS, HUH!? AFTER HOW HARD I'VE SEEN YOU FIGHT, YOU'RE WILLIN' TA GIVE UP ON EVERYTHING JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE DIFFERENT!? WHY'S IT ALWAYS SMART PEOPLE THAT DO SUCH STUPID SHIT!?"
Archi attempted to calm himself down, to no avail. His hair began to attest to the fact. "YOU WANNA CALL YOURSELF A MONSTER, WELL FINE, I'LL GIVE THAT TO YOU! WHAT YOU DID, THE WAY YOU USED TO LIVE, IT WAS HORRIBLE! NOW STOP USING THAT AS AN EXCUSE TO KICK YOUR OWN ASS ABOUT IT DAY IN AND DAY OUT! BECAUSE I'VE SEEN IT… YOU'VE COME SO DAMN FAR FROM THAT POINT YOU WERE AT… EVERY DAY, I'VE SEEN YOU PUSH YOURSELF HIGHER AND HIGHER…! YOU EVEN SCREAMED WITH CAPTAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME LAST YEAR…! AND YOU'VE GOT THE NERVE TO SAY YOU AREN'T PASSIONATE!? THAT YOU SHOULD BE DEAD!? WHAT THE HELL'S WRONG WITH YOU!? I SHOULD… I SHOULD KICK YOUR ASS!"
Archi stared glowing gold, his own tears streaming, the over-passionate jerkass he was. "YOU'RE THE REASON I… YOU'RE THE REASON I'VE BEEN ABLE TO PUSH MYSELF SO FAR, TOO…! SEEING YOU WORK, WHEN I FIRST MET YOU, IT LIT A FIRE IN MY HEART OR SOMETHIN'... DAMN IT! I CAN'T DO SHITTY SPEECHES, ALRIGHT!? I JUST KNOW, ALRIGHT!? I KNOW YOU'RE TALKIN' A BUNCHA BULLCRAP LIKE A MORON!"
His hair was going yellow.
"Fucking shit, he really CAN, now."
Renchiru couldn't stop the smile growing across his face. "Unbelievable…"
"SAIYAN PRIDE AIN'T AS SIMPLE AS LEGENDS OR ANGER OR BRUTE FORCE OR ANYTHIN' AS STATIC AS THAT THAT, YOU BIG DUMBASS! I THOUGHT SOMEONE LIKE YOU'D FIGURE THAT OUT BY NOW, BUT YOU KEEP RELAPSING... IT'S LIKE YOU CAN'T STOP FALLIN' OVER YOURSELF... AND NOW THIS!? HONESTLY, I... CAN'T EVEN CONTROL HOW PISSED OFF I AM AT YOU RIGHT NOW… IT'S EATIN' AT MY SOUL…!"
His muscles bulged uncontrollably, as his hysteric eyes burned teal.
"HOW DARE YOU…! HOW DARE YOU…!"
Archi realized that miracle for her.
"HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT ABOUT KORAAA—!" Archi roared, a Super Saiyan. He held the form for all of a loud, enraged five seconds, before crashing onto a knee.
"... archi?" Kora asked softly, silent tears falling.
Pan and Akaki shared the same, mystified glance.
"... pFFFFT-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Akaki began laughing. Not maniacally, or angrily, or what-have-you — it was almost pure. Something just beneath the surface kept it from being a genuine, good-hearted laugh. "Aaah, it shouldn't even be POSSIBLE for you to be here, but there you are, in the nick of time!" He held his head. "She really IS the protagonist of this chapter!" He turned to the announcer. "Apologies for acting so rashly. OF COURSE, some miracle was going to happen, I just got impatient. See? Look at her, she's already giving herself a subconscious pep talk!"
Archi glared daggers at Akaki. "JUST YOU WAIT, YOU LITTLE TSUFRUI CREEP! KORA'S GONNA-"
"Oh I know EXACTLY what she's going to do to me, what new spectacular power she'll doubtlessly awaken because of it." He rubbed his chin. "I'll admit, she's a tad wonky as far as saiyans go, tragically so, but hey, it just takes a moment longer for some. Happens in every species."
The scenario began slowly changing. Akaki stared up. "Oh, that's quaint. Whelp, buckle up. Now we get to visit a tragic point in time where I get to lose… what, three? Friends and an old man that taught me how to flip things good, because Tsufruians are weak and Saiyans don't play nice."
Terrain shifted to once high-tech structures, vehicles, signs and the like, now at-best tattered with holes and torn apart.
Archi stared in surprise. "This is…!"
"Yep. Planet Plant, or Vegeta as you're comfortable with labeling it. Age 729. One year from now, we'll see a full moon, and the tsufruians will be kaput. For the good of the universe, of course! If you'll look to your left, you'll see the area in which my fellow students were slaughtered, and if you look juuuust about next to that broken half of building, there's where MY sorry hide would be staining the ground after being blinded! I can always demonstrate, if you'd like!"
The saiyan looked over to him with horrified disgust. "How do you talk about something like this… LIKE THAT!?"
The tsufruian gunman smiled. "Like I said, it was just a matter of inevitability! The past is the past, after all, nothing I can do to change it! But that's all there really is to cover concerning this dull shithole, so unless you'd like a tour of devastation until our heroine rises to the occasion, new and improved, then-"
The scenario began changing again.
"...?"
It changed to a different view, of a different destroyed city.
"... heh heh, um, alright, I guess that's happened before." Akaki cleared his throat. "Weird. Anywho-"
It changed again. A different destroyed city.
"Alright, that feature is clearly malfunctioning."
The announcer seemed ready to concur, but then it changed again. And again. And again, and again, and again, and again. All to different destroyed cities. Some looked distinctly tsufruian.
Some looked distinctly like those seen after the saiyans established themselves.
Akaki muttered "Why the hell is this happening?" too low for anyone to hear. "Al… Alriii~ght," he said, slowly turning toward the announcer. "Not telling you how to do your job, but… any way to cut this out?"
Pan lifted her gauntlet.
/"No."/
"Wha?"
/"It's not a malfunction. It's working fine."/
She stared at the gauntlet, then at the shifting scenario. They'd begun spinning at such a high speed, it was creating a stream effect with the moon, pulling it across the sky in an orbiting light.
"But… Trunks, look at this."
/"I see it, of course. But there's a reason it's happening."/
Archi stared up in amazement, somewhat cursing how something so cool was only implemented after he'd lost. Then he looked at the tsufruians.
He looked like he was doing his best to hide the fact that he was losing his sanity.
/'You see, Akaki… isn't a part of the STEP program. Nor is he a survivor from a demon-doomed timeline."/
"Then... that means he..."
Trunks nodded.
"He's criminal, just like me."
Amongst a group of corpses, one began to move its fingers.
He slowly picked himself up and inspected the area.
"(Well I don't FEEL dead. So maybe playing dead worked. Ow…)"
Judging off the absence of the others' spiritual emissions, they had died. Including the old man whom the boy had been used as a wager for.
He tried walking forward, only to stumble and fall on something — the wrinkles of his hand made it clear who the body belonged to. He turned onto his back, and took it all in.
— he felt hollow. Not because everything had been taken from him.
It felt like nothing had.
"... was it worth it, old man?"
He remembered their philosophies on temperance and abstaining from the affairs of the world outside.
The situation around him, he felt, spoke for itself.
"Thanks for the know-how, at least."
It took him four months. One to hone his ki and find his way to the home he'd constructed while keeping his head amidst the planet-wide warzone.
He thought about it during that time, as the blobs he saw began taking form.
"Truth be told, my boy… I'm willing to bet that we're all tired of this fighting. Even if it's merely a temporary truce, I'll take it. Saiyan, Tsufruian, we're simply beings with motives to survive at our cores."
He reclined back in a chair, having made it to his underground den. "(... what if I could…)"
He began giggling to himself, at how stupid the idea was. The harder he giggled, the stupider the idea sounded in his head, the more he wanted to go through with it. Just to try. Just to somehow prove one kooky old man right.
"What if I MADE the affairs of the world?"
No. Both.
He used two months. One to create a visor that'd fix his eyes and map things out – theories, equations, schematics, resources – and one to create it.
He'd built, and rigged himself onto, a mechanism that gave him sustenance and removed his need to sleep. With that, and his own neuro-linked building system, he created…
"A machine capable of jumping so fast, at such a high frequency, that it escapes timespace itself!" He giggled to himself as he set down the yellowprint and beheld his creation— a broken-down northern car, heavily modified to the point where it outshined any newer model, and stickered-to-hell on the inside with his favorite book quotes and tokusatsu heroes, as if they'd give him strength. "I can reverse or accelerate from there! It's like something from a comic book!" The boy breathed in for a relieved sigh, disconnected from his no-sleep contraption, and then slept for a month. Every day, he lived a different life, one where something new, somehow, remained constant.
Akaki woke with a violent stammer. The quaking on the surface of the world, and every city-consuming blast booming across the planet, had failed to wake him for all of that time.
"(I can… I can still remember each one…!)"
He held a new, burning desire.
"(If…! If it really is parallel worlds, then…!)" He began laughing in excitement. "(If that theory's true, then this is just a tiny little dot where something went wrong! I'll have infinite tries to make something out of this crap!)" He grabbed and checked through all the gear he'd potentially need, before tossing them all into his makeshift time machine.
"Give me strength, Nashiman…" he nervously chuckled to himself. "I'm about to save a world."
He turned on a tsufruian equivalent of a Walkman, flipped a switch, and the vehicle began vibrating, filling the small room with enough concentrated energy to fuel a space fleet, before poofing away.
From there began his journey. His mission: create an impossible world where saiyans and tsufruians could coexist peacefully.
His first attempts were reserved, quiet, focused on stopping certain events before they could happen and push both species closer together from behind the scenes. However, entropy always found a way, and something would go wrong at the exact moment where it couldn't. Countless failures in that department led him to begin developing an idea of how things could continuously descend into madness. Paranoia, stoked pride, an idea of superiority stemming from either species' strengths — every attempt either prolonged or hurried the inevitable.
So he began interfering directly. From the moment the saiyans landed, he was there on the scene, providing them with all manner of technology to provide adequate farmland, communication, etc.
But the saiyans began to grow impatient. Despite being on par with the tsufruians, they wanted more and more power, faster and faster. It wasn't good enough to be equal — they wanted to surpass what was in front of them. One in particular, a genius among them that expanded upon what they'd been given fivefold, ignited the flames of saiyan conquest without much effort, resulting in an invasion and subjugation that took three years instead of ten — the sole tsufruian advantage was in possession of the saiyans, therefore they were absolutely inferior, and deserved to be eradicated.
Witnessing the outcome via jumping forward, the event almost shattered Akaki. The blistering hatred he had for all saiyans almost swallowed him whole, but he didn't allow himself to leave again until he could check himself.
"... it's not their fault. They're a warrior race. Conquest's in their genes." He rubbed his eyes with a palm, lifting his visor.
"Say… what if we remove that bad apple?"
So he focused his rage on the one that sparked the whole to succumb to their nature.
He moved onto finding and killing King Vegeta, an anomalous saiyan born with an intellect on par with a tsufruian alongside every revolting saiyan trait, before he could get any ideas. His existence, and what it would inevitably cause, sparked the thought in the back of his head — that some species shouldn't possess certain qualities. He created superweapons capable of tearing through saiyan hides and meddling with ki reinforcement, toying with properties of gravity in order to create tools that accelerated particles at speeds dwarfing light.
"Hah… hah…"
He also discovered how effective Suju-po was, when in tandem with a single-handed weapon, in the process. Standing over saiyan corpses as a single tsufruian did wonders for his already-narcissistic self-esteem.
"MMMH. Mh, that felt good."
But his death made him a martyr. The obvious happened soon after.
"Whelp, that was stupid of me," Akaki said to himself, watching the hastened war unfold from the side of a plateau, within his jikan-jumper.
"... so I'll make it look like an accident."
And he did just that, by studying the technology the saiyans left behind and creating a means of targeting one sole vessel with an imperceptible wave, causing the king's ship to tragically break apart in orbit. From there, he repeated his initial strategy, and to great success. His past experiences with the saiyans netted him friends, even a small puppy-love fling with a bushy-tailed girl. At least, she saw it that way; he slowly began realizing he didn't quite care for romance at all, as disconnected as he was from people that hardly felt real. Talking back-and-forth between different saiyans and different tsufruians taught him a lot about what people looked for in people, how to sway who with what. Having infinite tries helped, but he found himself needing only three. Politics ran in his blood, after all, and the fact that he was an approachable kid that could talk and think like a "grown-up" gave him novel appeal.
He slowly lost an idea of who he really was, but he had hope for the future.
And then the tsufruians grew uppity. They began giving the saiyans dirty looks, angrily insisting on their ill-deservance of tsufruian gains. The tsufruians upped their advancements in preparation for a war that wasn't coming. Akaki took it upon himself to speak out against it, having come so close to victory that he'd become invested in that sole timeline, willing to nurture and make it his own as a public figure,
And then he, a child, was shot. By his own people.
"HOW ABOUT YOU DIE WITH THEM, YOU OVERSIZED, MONKEY-SYMPATHIZING BRAT!"
He barely survived by escaping. The boy nursed his wound, but stayed in the timeline, desperate to see it flourish after he healed.
In months, war broke out. This time, the tsufruians seized victory, subjugating the invaders.
He mourned it from a distance, considering giving up. But there were still means he hadn't tried.
"Maybe… maybe it's how we see each other…"
— an invasive species on their prosperous land, an inferior species with a land they didn't deserve.
"If I can fix THAT… then maybe…"
So he further fixed up his jikan-jumper, and went further back. He learned more on saiyan history and tsufruian history alike. His primary weapon of choice, future technology, was used again — only now, he loaned them to ancient tsufruians, allowing their advancement sooner. They soon set out for the stars, and intruded upon the ongoing civil war before it could get out of hand, supporting the side that favored peace over conquest. And the war was won. The saiyans and tsufruians had bonded, and at long last, there was some sort of recovery. He stayed for a year, just to see where things went, and to his joy, both planets had established contact with each other, constantly trading and intermingling.
From Planet Plant, looking off into a night dotted with ascending lights blasting off into the sky, Akaki smiled without a word. It was the start of something beautiful.
He then eyed his machine.
"There's no way they haven't made Nashiman 6 by then. No way."
Out of curiosity, he set the new starting point to this new, brighter past, wrote it down as a failsafe, and cranked the output to a thousand years in the future.
He left his car and discovered his personal Hell.
[ BGM: The Smiths – There Is a Light That Never Goes Out ]
The saiyans had become slaves.
He saw them being owned. Owned by tsufruians.
Sadala had become something out of an industrial apocalypse, shown on a floating screen as if there to mock him.
Akaki backed up. "No, no, something's wrong. I did everything right, how-Damn it! I screwed up the starting frequency!" He jumped back in, only to eye the paper scrap like a cosmic horror. Shaking his head frantically, he loaded it again, and traveled to another timeline with the exact same time elapsed.
He found something worse.
"H… hh…"
He did it over and over and over and over, for what was ultimately days on end, to the same horrid result: Tsufruians used their partners' kindness for weakness, and either killed them off paranoia, enslaved them with animalizing rhetoric, or both. At one point, he broke down into screaming fits inside his car, kicking the dashboard as he cursed his blood and insistence on ruining something that worked. Then he set it back — right as the tsufruians interfered in the war.
"It can't be worse than this," Akaki whispered to himself, wiping off vomit, sweat, and tears. But he surprised himself.
It was worse.
In one, tsufruians made saiyans attack dogs. In another, experiments. In another, scapegoats. In another, mutant shells. In another, replacement bodies. Alongside so many others.
He sped through space-time, desperate for some happy ending where prosperity reigned for all parties involved.
And then he found one. One where the tsufruians didn't exist.
The world was an inhospitable, barren, empty ball.
"... h-h-h-he-he-he-he-he-"
That was the punchline.
His kind's prosperity was the worst thing to happen to the universe.
It was a good joke, so he laughed. It was a cruel joke, too, but it was all in good humor. Besides, he'd doomed thousands of timelines by tampering with their events. He totally earned it.
He slapped his knees and gasped for breath as he laughed.
There was no one present, so he could laugh as long, as loudly as he wanted.
Despite his dead, hollow face, he could laugh just fine.
It felt good to laugh.
So he laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
Akaki shook himself out of it.
"... huh." He stared up. "Huh."
[ BGM: Wasei Chikada – Loneliness 1A ]
The scenario still couldn't make up its mind — everything was still violent, everything was still bright, everything, everywhere, all at once and nowhere at all, at the beginning and end of time.
"... mmh." He eyed Pan again. "Ummm—"
"Trunks told me." She crossed her arms, though her eyes held something like sympathy. She opened her mouth one more time, but as if she'd forgotten what to say, it closed again.
Akaki's lip curled. A trace of his teeth showed for a quarter-second before he recomposed himself. "Yep, he'll fuck me the first chance he gets, no surprise."
He looked up to the sky. "(... I wonder. How many people am I responsible for bringing here?)" He sighed. "(Too many to count. Right.)"
By the grace of gods, an aura pulsed behind him.
"(Oh yeah, I'm an evil villain, or something.)"
"(You uh…)"
"(Oh, you're still there. Was scared that I'd overwhelmed you back there.)"
"(You did. So you… you wanna talk about this, once you get back?)"
"(Not really, no.)"
"(... alright.)"
He started turning around. "So after that fun little miracle, I take it you've been given your second wind! Isn't that right-…" He frowned. "Seriously?"
Kora stared back. Her sky-blue aura had returned, ebony eyes and hair unchanged.
"... that's really… really boring."
Kora turned back. "Thank you, Archi. That was amazing." She smiled at him, triggering a blush. "Now please go away."
"EEH…!" The saiyan felt something go through his heart. "Y-you know, no one's stopping me from, y-you know, cheerin' ya on from-"
"Like, now."
She was still pretty darn scary, even without being a Super Saiyan. Archi booked it out, and Kora turned back to her-
BANG!
Her head snapped back. The shooter looked at his weapon, disappointed.
"... hm. Damage got halved."
As if on cue, she slowly brought her gaze back up.
"You tried to change the past, didn't you? This scenery… it's all different stages of Planet Vegeta."
"No, we're not doing this."
She then dodged a myriad of shots, standing in place as she did so.
"... or Planet Plant. Right?" Kora asked, holding a simmering piece of plasma that dematerialized between her fingers. "That's why you have that ideology. There was something you couldn't change, so you needed a way to justify it to yourself."
Akaki stared. "Oh my god, we are actually doing this."
"Gods."
"I'm familiar with divine hierarchy you fucking dope, it's a figure of-" Akaki reeled himself in, noticing the small smile that briefly flashed across the saiyaness's face.
"What, are you proud of something so stupid?"
"Proud?" Kora asked. "... It's strange. All this time, I've been trying to find pride in the ideal of the Saiyan, but all I've done is hold myself back. I'm... different. I can't work myself up like others can, I don't burn with the same rage. I just calm myself down too quickly, I guess." She clenched her fist. "There are tons of aspects of Saiyan life that I never understood, but tried to emulate anyway. For approval, to fit in, to live up to something, because it was 'right'. I regret some aspects more than others. Some that I won't let go, that shouldn't be."
Kora let her tightened fist loosen. "I think I finally know why. Why I'd feel the same thing that any other Saiyan would after overpowering their enemy... from finding a way to get a facetious ass like you to lose his temper." She tensed herself. "So I'll give it a shot."
Akaki retired his FMGs, relaxing into an open-palmed posture without defensive form. "(Accounting for rise in power, aaaand...) Fine, whatever'll help you sleep at night."
[ BGM: Ken Ashcorp – Absolute Territory]
"(Do you-)"
"(No, you've done enough.)" He tapped his visor and ran up a number. "(It's a sizable jump, for sure, but all she's really done is get back up. What comes next won't take long — she still has no definitive answer to anything I can do, so I'll just show her reality, forfeit, do some touch-ups, and take a nap. Since you're so hung up over it, why don't I make this closing act dedicated to you?)"
"(Aw~, you shouldn't have!)"
Akaki smirked, and beckoned Kora forward. Kora complied, and…
Stopped.
"(...)"
"(...)"
Kora stared at him expressionlessly, from two meters away exactly. He took a few startled steps back, and she took the same domineering steps forward. He shifted a bit, and she followed suit.
"(... she's feeling out my 'bubble'.)" He noticed where she was looking. "(Damn it, am I kicking up dus-)"
She suddenly side-kicked a hail of rock at him, ones that constantly changed size and shape in accordance with past and future erosion.
"(Tch… wouldn't that be simple?)" He raised his palm, firing upon each one before extending a gauntlet into a Force Multiplier. Kora dodged the oncoming shot almost instantly, eyeing its trajectory. Akaki maintained fire, slowly putting his free hand behind his back and advancing as she steadily moved back. By the time he'd begun dual-firing – one weapon behind his back – the saiyaness had already stomped a small boulder into one hand, clad in her ki and guarding her skull, her chassis left exposed. He focused fire on both regions, before retiring one firearm and X-ing his fingers, sending Kora and her cover to the ground. She coughed drops of red in the process, the sensation like taking punishing blows to the gut, before Akaki leapt atop the rock and maintained his crossed fingers with a gun pointed at Kora's head.
"Seven."
"One."
The ground suddenly erupted in ki, sending everything in range kilometers into the sky — "in range" being a city's worth. Akaki had reappeared in the air, as if he'd been there from the start, after Kora made her gradually quickening ascent, leaping from chunk to chunk.
"(What, does she think she's some breed of cat, now? Grow up.)" He smirked, crossing his fingers again and seeing her crash through a plate she'd landed on. She slammed onto the reforming ground, sprawled out like a feline predator, twitching tail, growing fanged smirk and all, before tossing herself forward again. Her trip to the top happened even faster, no matter how grueling, as she pounced through a column and perched upon its top.
Akaki sucked his teeth. "I'm sorry, have we been here before?"
"You should choose your words more carefully."
He aimed at her again, and Kora at Akaki. The Tsufruian smirked.
So did the Saiyan, as she aimed down.
"... oH-"
Akaki had reappeared in the air, and then in the air, and then the air, and then the air, and then the air, and then the air, and then-
Kora zipped through the scene as Planets Plant and Vegeta went back and forth, incinerating his and her respectively-former homes with a shower of spirit blasts, she and her adversary locking aim ever-so briefly in the middle of yet another transition – a chance to damage his visor that she took with a small handgun-born ray – before the saiyaness lit the sky ablaze in a flurry of colors, the gunman locked in place between three spots on the ground as if a light dancing to her tune.
"Prettyyy~..." Zinco cooed at the lightshow.
"I-hi-know, dude..." Archi cooed as well, grabbing the half-blood's shoulder wiping off a bit of his own drool. "She sure is..."
Kaza almost lost her mind.
Neo rolled his eyes. "He's talkin' about the colors, you-"
"What a shameless lech..." Mei deviously hissed, hiding her smirk.
"(yep, you're still a nutcase, got it)"
Akaki smacked his gauntlet and stopped, catching his bearings as mechanical parts started pitter-pattering down in electrical sprinkles.
"(ALRIGHT… CARRIER DRONES… EXPLOITABLE AFTER A CERTAIN POINT…!)"
Massive pieces of debris began to fall all around him, and he stood back up, visibly unfazed. He tapped his visor, only now accompanied by a rotating, yellow-black graphic tracing something unseen before stuttering and exploding in pixels.
"(Damn it, the bio-electric sensor's glitched…! Fine. Hide your ki all you want, like it'll matter.)" He returned to his GMGs as scurrying footsteps approached him, Akaki popping off minor shots at all and any debris in sight before Minus-ing his finger to the ground, forcing everything to take flight in anti-gravity. He then X'd his hands, making all debris fall like asteroids as he held his shield.
One piece of debris happened to have a small ki mine attached to it. "Well, that won't do much of anything. Wait."
It went off, enrapturing the area in an explosion; one with a slow-motion startup followed by a dispersal that was instantaneous, even for an explosion.
"(That was her chassis.)"
He remembered the look of it, amidst the haze that'd now enraptured the scenery. "(Now that i think about it… I've done nothing but hit that specific spot…!)"
He recalled how she'd chosen to safeguard her head yet leave her abdomen exposed, how she'd opted not to fly but instead physically run and climb to catch up to him, how abnormally-quick she could adapt.
"(SHE DID THAT ON PURPOSE!)"
He reactivated his sparse carrier drones, looped around with a hand raised, and-
In literal slowed time, Kora's stance was like a penguin's.
"—"
"—"
"—"
Thousands of t hㅤoㅤㅤuㅤㅤㅤgㅤㅤㅤㅤhㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤtㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤsㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ-
WHP!
Her tail slammed into his torso like a tachyon shot from a railgun, accelerating forward in time so fast that even Kora spun longer than she'd meant.
"HAHA!" Kora laughed girlishly. "I DID IT!"
Akaki's HP dropped to a tenth of its original value, as he spewed blood and spiraled and crashed across the ground that promptly split apart with a resounding stomp.
"(His 'bubble' doesn't tamper with gravity, it tampers with TIME! That's how he always has the upper hand; his opponent slows down before rubber-banding, resynchronizing with Conton's time stream at a speed they can't control!)" Her heart practically fluttered as she dashed in on the still-staggering Akaki, shooting a Ki blast past him as she prepared a fist.
"(... this feeling. Figuring out how my opponent works, when all odds are against me, and finding a way to win…)"
She smiled, and let out a war cry.
"(... I've found it. Kora's "I forfeit!" true pride-) eh?"
Akaki had somehow uprighted himself, his scarred white irises on full display. "MMH-HMM. Mh. I forfeit."
Kora stared, figuratively stuck in time. The blast right behind him whimpered away.
She sank back to her feet. "... what? Why!?"
"Are you stupid?" Akaki took out a handkerchief and coughed into it. "At best, you've bruised my internal organs. The fact that there even IS the possibility of a 'worst' is taking me out of any fight in the foreseeable future."
"... but…"
He turned around. "Honestly, I don't know what compels you idiots to fight to the death over DISAGREEMENTS, but I don't want any part of it. I will also need copious amounts of therapy after reliving all of that trauma. This was enough excitement for one day, thank you very much."
He turned to the announcer. "Take it away, and please, take me with it."
Pan stared.
And then started cracking up. Something so mundane, and she'd been so stunned by it. She was grateful, as she recomposed herself.
AND THE WINNER OF THE FINAL MATCH OF THE QUARTERFINALS IS… KORA!
Akaki turned back around. "(... I was right, after all.)"
Kora didn't look satisfied or excited about her victory.
It was almost cute how angry she looked. Like a pouty child.
He smirked — his eyes allowed for no hidden intentions. It was a fun, schoolhouse-teasing smirk. "(In a lighter sense than I would've admitted, sure, but… if nothing else, saiyans will get uppity over anything.)"
[ Self-Contained ED: Go Betty Go – C'mon ]
Kora watched her former foe get away with not being punched in the face.
"... OOOH, COME O-"
.
.
"Now, bucko," Archi said, still gripping Zinco's shoulder, "I know we'd both kill for that bombshell, but if ya get any ideas, I'd have to 'take care of you,' m'alright bud?"
"Uh..."
Kaza proceeded to grip the boy's free shoulder. "HE DOESN'T HAVE ANYTHING TO WORRY ABOUT, JERKHEAD! HE'S GOT ENOUGH ALREADY ON HIS MIND! ISN'T THAT RIGHT, ZINCO!"
"Uhhh..."
The two proceeded to shake him like parents that shouldn't be parents.
"NOW NOW, BRO, THERE'S NOTHIN' WRONG ABOUT ADMIRIN' FROM A DISTANCE! JUST ADMIT IT!"
"Y-YOU'RE N-NOT ACTUALLY FALLING FOR SOMEONE ELSE ALREADY, ARE YOU!? A-AM I DOING SOMETHING WRONG!?"
"Uhhhhhhh..."
Neoru and friends looked on in sympathy. "(Damn kid's about to break down over lights...)"
Mei, not a "friends," slowly turned to him with a growing scowl. "AND WHAT ABOUT YOU!?"
Neo almost broke his neck turning to her. "EH-" he spat before Mei kicked him in the back of the head. "YOU STARE AT THE ENEMY WITH PITY!? YOU STUPID DUMB WEAKLING! STOP SITTING ON YOUR PITIABLE RUMP AND GO READY YOURSELF!"
"WHATTHE-FUCK-STOP-FINE, FINE, FUCK, I'M GOING!" Neo whined, running as Mei opened pursuit.
"'GOING' FASTER THEN, FOOL! YOU WILL NEVER FLY AT THIS RATE, YOU MORONIC ASS-ENDED SNAKE!"
Katlij and Mashii stared. They slowly turned to silent sniffling.
"She was-totes-goin' thru-so much-and I-like-popped off on her-but like-she'd never-like-say any-thing to-meeee—!" Devine sobbed into a hanky.
"It's not your fault, amada..." said Tengano, lending her his shoulder. "Just let it out..."
"It's like 50/50, maybe kinda-sorta more, but still..." Baubi whispered, holding out a tissue boxes as she hugged her. "Don't hold it TOO against yourself..."
Katlij and Mashii stared at each other.
"I'm gonna go take a nap."
The Hera woman yawned. "I'll have what you're hav-"
Someone suddenly kicked down the door, drawing everyone's attention.
"Now where's my little Super Saiyan...?" The vacant-eyed wrath goddess bellowed, scanning the room before locking onto a quaking Archi, hiding behind a startled Zinco.
"H... hey, Kora... y-you-know you... you're the reason I could transform in the first place, y'know, so... uh... t-technically you-ACK!"
She proceeded to drag him by the tail out of the room. "We have some training to do, you, I, and my new little 'friend'..." she hissed through grit her teeth over Archi's weak screaming, almost demonically.
"... never mind, I can't sleep anymore."
Mashii sucked up snot. "Dammit."
Kaza frantically turned back to Zinco's spooked expression. "W-WHY'D YOU LOOK AT HER THAT WAY!" She began push-shoving Zinco in order to get his attention, unknowingly rattling his brain across his skull. "I KNEW IT, I'M STILL NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU, AM I! JUST SAY IT! I PROMISE I CAN CHANGE! I'LL DO ANYTHING I SWEAR!"
"Uhhhhhhhhhhhh...!"
"How is it possible for someone to come so close to ascension and still not..." Renchiru shook his head. "What a bizarre saiyan warrior I've had the privilege of fighting..."
The hybrid saiyan accompanying him suddenly shot up from his slumped posture, turning to the door behind him. Coughing was now audible, and he swung open the door.
"K... Kaz...!" Dina delicately called for him.
He ran over. "Dina...!"
"I... I don't have much time left... please...!"
"WHAT!?" Kazikum pled in desperation, kneeling. "WHAT IS IT!?"
With agony, Dina pointed toward her face. "I've been cursed with Hocus Pockitus... and the only cure is... True Love's Kiss...!" She puckered up. "I'm sorry but... on the lips may be too weak... maybe a bit of... tongue would dUE-"
Visibly hurt, Kazikum flipped her bed over. "Fucking dipshit."
A few hisses of pain later, Dina got back up, in giggling fits. "Aah, but you totally would've gone at it, I saw!" She noticed how his face had sunken in sadness. "Oh, Kaz..." She headbutted his chest. "Didn' mean to scare you with that..."
"Tch...! It's not that, it's..."
"Mrrrh- you're not blamin' yourself for me bein' a dickhead, are you?"
The half-spawn pouted at the celling.
"If you don't hurry on up forgivin' yourself, I'm gonna kiss you."
"Khh...! Why the fu-"
Chu!
Kazikum silently stood in place.
"If you insist~" Dina winked with a smile. "Trust me, love. I'll do much worse to myself in the future, and over much less than un-monsterfying you. If you're really that insistent on blame though... make it up to me noon tomorrow. Lunch, your treat!"
Renchiru joined in on her giggles, and she noticed. "Oh wow. it's the bloke whose clock Kora cleaned right out!"
"(So that's all I am to you people...!)"
"Say, that reminds me, the girl of the hour's match is gonna start soon!" She held her chin deviously. "I wouldn't be much of a rival if I didn't study her bout, now, would I?"
"..."
"..."
Dina looked back and forth. "... what?"
The toruutsu wielder delivered the bad news.
"WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!?" Dina roared, suddenly grabbing the two by their collarbones. "WHY THE PISS-SODDEN HELL DIDN' ANY'A YOU DICKHEADS WAKE ME UP!?"
Kazikum seemed genuinely too scared to answer.
Renchiru WAS too scared. "(This... power...!?)"
"GHH...!" the half-breed tossed them both aside in hysterics. "GAAAA—! I'LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU JERKS! AAAH-HAH I'M SUCH A BAD PERSON, WHO THE FLYING FUCK SLEEPS THROUGH THEIR RIVAL'S MATCH I'M A FUCKING JYOOO—KE!" She wailed, losing breath as she descended into mania.
"I-"
"GOD AND FRIENDS, THERE'D BETTER BE A RECORDING SOMEWHERE OR I'LL FUCKING FINISH WHAT I STARTED IN MY OWN STUPID MATCH, SOMEONE FUCKING SHOOT MEEEE—!"
Dina fled down the halls in tears.
Neoru ran away from a small angry girl.
Kora marched down the halls, a Super Saiyan's tail in hand and still pouting behind the inexplicable silhouette guarding her face.
Zinco slowly lost his mind as a large upset girl shook him in a way he was too rattled to respond to.
Somehow, some way, in a tournament chock-full of hell-birthed monstrosities and one-and-a-trillion prodigies, these four had advanced to the semifinals.
... there is no ominous closing note, this time.
God help the Time Patrol.
"(I'M TRYIIING!)"
ㅤㅤ-signed, The Supreme Kai of Time
.
.
"Of course. It's the least I can do to make up for before," said Ayeva, amidst Tarubei's destructive, celebratory hyper rampage in the background.
"Thanks," replied Pan. "That stupid old man just does whatever he wants, I swear..."
Ayeva laid out what looked like a mess of waves, placed a combination of numbers off a notebook Pan had given her, cast out line after line onto the sheet, and zoomed in on a certain dotted portion of wave which she'd cut off from the rest — revealed was an entire timeline. The more translucent circles and cones showed up, the more Pan's SSJDD-riddled brain wondered off.
"Ummm should we stop her or-"
"Age 846, Earth. Wait..."
The daughter of Gohan held her chin, her attention drawn back to the matter at hand. "That's Dina's timeline. At least, a derivative."
"But why...?"
"... you ever think it's weird, how a 17-year-old girl without ANY connection to Goku or Vegeta has the same sort of DNA as Gohan and Trunks... and was born in the 800s?"
Ayeva's eyes slowly widened. "... add her first match, where demon realm magic was apparently a hidden practice, and...!"
The two women came to the same conclusion.
As did Trunks, smirking just a smidge.
"Just how the hell has this been hidden for so long...?"
EXTRA_STEP: Stupid Revengeance Reference #4: End of Memement
"How pleased you are to HULK OUT, Hulkora the Hulk!"
"What the fuck did you just call me you son of a-"
"My name is Not Important. But nothing is and yet I give things value, therefore I am Akaki."
Kora stared. "... yeah. I guessed as much."
Akaki landed superhero-style. He hit, like, a power pose. Man, I... I hate it so much when people use either to describe that type of landing. Shit sounds weak.
"Good for you. Do you wanna know what 500x gravity feels like?"
"... yes."
Akaki shot her in the face.
"AH, WHAT THE-" she shouted, before face-planting into the ground.
The tuff tsufruian had a lil' chuckle, before turning to Pan. She sighed and shrugged. "dude i don't care i'm basically a war criminal just do whatev-"
"yeah i don't care about your apathy anyway FEASTING ON THE CIVILIZATIONS OF YOUR ENEMIES...!? How easily you ignore the loss of life, when it suits your CONVENIENCE."
"Duuude she's just doing her job-"
"She's JOBBING to her job."
"I'm jobbing to my job pretty hard not gonna lie."
"So tell me..." Akaki stopped his stroll through the rain. "Who saves the weak from the woman who saves the weak?"
"... you were the ones exploiting them... you took advantage of their weakness..." Kora stared vindictively. "Of course they'd get hurt, when you set them up as your human shield!"
"you know you're talking to a tsufruian so, the funny thing is that you're not even wrong."
Mei sadly eyed the ground. "the tragedy is that she is not even wrong."
"I mean, kill or be killed, Kora!" Akaki's stupid smug smile fell. "Planet Plant taught me that."
"Oh wow, no one's called Planet Vegeta that since... when'd it get conquered?"
"730."
"Oh. I feel pretty bad for not knowing that off the top of my head, actually."
"Don't worry you're all Cro-Magnon cretins, anyway."
"HEY!"
Akaki chuckled. "Yes, you aren't the only one to grow up on the killing fields. War is a cruel parent, but an effective teacher. Its final lesson is carved deep in my psyche: that this multiverse, and all its people, are a DISEASE."
Kora was silent.
"Free will is a myth."
"GH-HH!?"
"BOOO!" Neo yelled.
"Religion is a joke."
"NY-HH!?"
"BOOO!" Renchiru yelled.
"We're all pawns..."
"HHH!?"
"Controlled by something greater..."
"ANIME GASP!"
"Memes."
"."
"."
"."
"."
"."
"."
"."
"."
"."
"The DNA of the s-"
"PFFFFFFFFT- HAAAAAAA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA-"
"... they are the cul-"
"HAHA, HAHA, HAHA, PGFWAAAAHAHAHAHAHA, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA-"
"... E... env... en- ARE YOU DONE!? CAN I KEEP GOING!?"
"M-M-MEMES!? MEMES!? OH MY G-... THE FUNNY INTERNET PICTURES!?"
"This is literally a founded, studied subject, there is literature dedicated to JUST THIS PHENOMENON'S EFFECT ON SOCIETY-"
Kora gasped for air. "SO-SOC-SOCIETY...! HE SAID IT, HE SAID IT, I CAN'T-"
"wh- I LITERALLY HAVE MY SOURCES RIGHT HERE-"
Pan joined in, between her wheezing. "HOW ABOUT FULL OF SHIT!? IS THAT A MEME!?" she gasped, before breaking down alongside Kora.
"... hhhh... hnnn... you can't fight nature, Akaki..." he reminded himself as he rubbed his temple. He then shot Kora in the fucking face. Again.
"OOOOW!"
Pan looked at her, then him, and then slowly backed up, hands in the air.
"AHEM." Akaki took a side-to-side stroll. "Wind blows, rain falls, and the strong prey upon the weak."
Kora gagged.
"'Sources' tell me you see your mind as a tool. Something that solves problems, a means of thinking rationally and tactically." Akaki pointed toward her dynamically. "Now THERE'S a pretty meme! Exquisite!"
"please stop using that word"
"Cry about it, it's a valid term that predates your zoomer humor."
"aren't you younger than me tho-"
"It's given you the burden of all the lives you've taken... RIDDLED YOU with guilt when you failed to enjoy it... that is, until the illusion was broken." Akaki pranced around her again. "Don't be ashamed, it's only nature running its course." He summoned his Force Multiplier Guns (that's what I'm calling them, huh? Sure, Gravity Manipulation Gauntlets, Force Multiplier Guns...) and did sick flippy shit with them. "You have no choices to make, nothing to answer for... you can die with a clear conscience..."
"... you're wrong. About me, I mean."
Akaki rolled his eyes. "No sources, no evidence, concession accepted."
Ayeva stared at her hands. "Is... is that what I sound like?"
Tarubei stared up at her with a smile.
"Ye."
"I knew something was... off. After dying, I thought I could walk off the battlefield and... live a normal life. But here I am, surrounded by bloodshed, arguing philosophy with EDGELORDS... I told myself that this was about anger, about losing control and unleashing some primal beast trapped within... but I was WRONG..."
"... Then you... DON'T... admit it?"
"I learned young that outsmarting your enemies felt good. Really good. In Conton, my friends, my 'family'... they helped me forget the genius inside... but who am I kidding? I was," she punched the ground, as is Dragon Bal Z tradition, "BORN to think!"
"Uhh..." Akaki scratched his temple, as Pan crossed her arms in vague confusion, deeply frowning.
"The bit about my mind — that 'means of thinking rationally and tactically' stuff? I guess it's there to keep The Beast in check, when I'm knee-deep in bodies."
Akaki was beginning to get pissed off, with how off-script Kora was straying from the point of the original scene from the hit game Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. He'd know, he was incessantly checking it every few seconds. "You...!"
"But you – all this – is a wake-up call to what I REALLY believe. What I REALLY am."
Akaki noticeably scrunched up. "What the fuck are you saying!?"
Kora smiled. "I'm saying, HULKORA, IS OVAH."
Akaki lost his fucking mind, his favorite video game speech besmirched as he looked over to two drones. "KILL HER!"
The drones flew at Kora, only to be stopped on some Neo shit.
"uh-"
NO! NO, NOT YOU! YOU WWWEAK, LAZY, PATHETIC FUCK!
"oh."
"Archi! Turn off my IQ Inhibitors!"
Archi looked over in shock. "W-WHAT!? That's... that's CRAZY! You're based on MID DBZ-BASED OCS! You-"
"DO IT!"
Archi almost shat himself. Little fucking bitch. Would NEVER be me.
"Al... alright..."
"ᴷᴼᴿᴬ, ʸᴼᵁ ᴰᵁᴹᴮᴬˢˢᵎ ᶜᴬᴺ'ᵀ ʸᴼᵁ ᴴᴱᴬᴿ ʸᴼᵁᴿˢᴱᴸᶠ ᴿᴵᴳᴴᵀ ᴺᴼᵂᵎˀ" ᴬʳᶜʰᶦ ˢʰᵒᵒᵏ ʷᶦᵗʰ ᵃⁿᵍᵉʳ, ᵍᵉⁿᵘᶦⁿᵉˡʸ ᶠᵘʳᶦᵒᵘˢ ʷᶦᵗʰ ᵗʰᵉ ᵒⁿᵉ ʷʰᵒ'ᵈ ˢᵃᶦᵈ ˢᵘᶜʰ ʰᵒʳʳᶦᵇˡᵉ ᵗʰᶦⁿᵍˢ ᵗᵒ ᵗʰᵉ ʷᵒᵐᵃⁿ ʰᵉ ˡᵒᵛᵉᵈ. "ᵂᴴʸ ᵀᴴᴱ ᴴᴱᴸᴸ ᴬᴿᴱ ʸᴼᵁ ˢᵀᴵᴸᴸ ᵀᴿʸᴵᴺᴳ ᵀᴼ ᴸᴵⱽᴱ ᵁᴾ ᵀᴼ ᴬ ᴮᵁᴺᶜᴴ'ᴬ ᴰᴱᴬᴰ ᴾᴱᴼᴾᴸᴱ'ˢ ˢᵀᴬᴺᴰᴬᴿᴰˢ, ᴴᵁᴴᵎˀ ᴬᶠᵀᴱᴿ ᴴᴼᵂ ᴴᴬᴿᴰ ᴵ'ⱽᴱ ˢᴱᴱᴺ ʸᴼᵁ ᶠᴵᴳᴴᵀ, ʸᴼᵁ'ᴿᴱ ᵂᴵᴸᴸᴵᴺ' ᵀᴬ ᴳᴵⱽᴱ ᵁᴾ ᴼᴺ ᴱⱽᴱᴿʸᵀᴴᴵᴺᴳ ᴶᵁˢᵀ ᴮᴱᶜᴬᵁˢᴱ ʸᴼᵁ'ᴿᴱ ᴰᴵᶠᶠᴱᴿᴱᴺᵀᵎˀ ᵂᴴʸ'ˢ ᴵᵀ ᴬᴸᵂᴬʸˢ ˢᴹᴬᴿᵀ ᴾᴱᴼᴾᴸᴱ ᵀᴴᴬᵀ ᴰᴼ ˢᵁᶜᴴ ˢᵀᵁᴾᴵᴰ ˢᴴᴵᵀᵎˀ"ᴬʳᶜʰᶦ ᵃᵗᵗᵉᵐᵖᵗᵉᵈ ᵗᵒ ᶜᵃˡᵐ ʰᶦᵐˢᵉˡᶠ ᵈᵒʷⁿ, ᵗᵒ ⁿᵒ ᵃᵛᵃᶦˡ. ᴴᶦˢ ʰᵃᶦʳ ᵇᵉᵍᵃⁿ ᵗᵒ ᵃᵗᵗᵉˢᵗ ᵗᵒ ᵗʰᵉ ᶠᵃᶜᵗ. "ʸᴼᵁ ᵂᴬᴺᴺᴬ ᶜᴬᴸᴸ ʸᴼᵁᴿˢᴱᴸᶠ ᴬ ᴹᴼᴺˢᵀᴱᴿ, ᵂᴱᴸᴸ ᶠᴵᴺᴱ, ᴵ'ᴸᴸ ᴳᴵⱽᴱ ᵀᴴᴬᵀ ᵀᴼ ʸᴼᵁᵎ ᵂᴴᴬᵀ ʸᴼᵁ ᴰᴵᴰ, ᵀᴴᴱ ᵂᴬʸ ʸᴼᵁ ᵁˢᴱᴰ ᵀᴼ ᴸᴵⱽᴱ, ᴵᵀ ᵂᴬˢ ᴴᴼᴿᴿᴵᴮᴸᴱᵎ ᴺᴼᵂ ˢᵀᴼᴾ ᵁˢᴵᴺᴳ ᵀᴴᴬᵀ ᴬˢ ᴬᴺ ᴱˣᶜᵁˢᴱ ᵀᴼ ᴷᴵᶜᴷ ʸᴼᵁᴿ ᴼᵂᴺ ᴬˢˢ ᴬᴮᴼᵁᵀ ᴵᵀ ᴰᴬʸ ᴵᴺ ᴬᴺᴰ ᴰᴬʸ ᴼᵁᵀᵎ ᴮᴱᶜᴬᵁˢᴱ ᴵ'ⱽᴱ ˢᴱᴱᴺ ᴵᵀ… ʸᴼᵁ'ⱽᴱ ᶜᴼᴹᴱ ˢᴼ ᴰᴬᴹᴺ ᶠᴬᴿ ᶠᴿᴼᴹ ᵀᴴᴬᵀ ᴾᴼᴵᴺᵀ ʸᴼᵁ ᵂᴱᴿᴱ ᴬᵀ… ᴱⱽᴱᴿʸ ᴰᴬʸ, ᴵ'ⱽᴱ ˢᴱᴱᴺ ʸᴼᵁ ᴾᵁˢᴴ ʸᴼᵁᴿˢᴱᴸᶠ ᴴᴵᴳᴴᴱᴿ ᴬᴺᴰ ᴴᴵᴳᴴᴱᴿ…ᵎ ʸᴼᵁ ᴱⱽᴱᴺ ˢᶜᴿᴱᴬᴹᴱᴰ ᵂᴵᵀᴴ ᶜᴬᴾᵀᴬᴵᴺ ᶠᴼᴿ ᵀᴴᴱ ᶠᴵᴿˢᵀ ᵀᴵᴹᴱ ᴸᴬˢᵀ ʸᴱᴬᴿ…ᵎ ᴬᴺᴰ ʸᴼᵁ'ⱽᴱ ᴳᴼᵀ ᵀᴴᴱ ᴺᴱᴿⱽᴱ ᵀᴼ ˢᴬʸ ʸᴼᵁ ᴬᴿᴱᴺ'ᵀ ᴾᴬˢˢᴵᴼᴺᴬᵀᴱ ᵀᴴᴬᵀ ʸᴼᵁ ˢᴴᴼᵁᴸᴰ ᴮᴱ ᴰᴱᴬᴰᵎˀ ᵂᴴᴬᵀ ᵀᴴᴱ ᴴᴱᴸᴸ'ˢ ᵂᴿᴼᴺᴳ ᵂᴵᵀᴴ ʸᴼᵁᵎˀ ᴵ ˢᴴᴼᵁᴸᴰ… ᴵ ˢᴴᴼᵁᴸᴰ ᴷᴵᶜᴷ ʸᴼᵁᴿ ᴬˢˢᵎ "ᴬʳᶜʰᶦ ˢᵗᵃʳᵉᵈ ᵍˡᵒʷᶦⁿᵍ ᵍᵒˡᵈ, ʰᶦˢ ᵒʷⁿ ᵗᵉᵃʳˢ ˢᵗʳᵉᵃᵐᶦⁿᵍ, ᵗʰᵉ ᵒᵛᵉʳ⁻ᵖᵃˢˢᶦᵒⁿᵃᵗᵉ ʲᵉʳᵏᵃˢˢ ʰᵉ ʷᵃˢ. "ʸᴼᵁ'ᴿᴱ ᵀᴴᴱ ᴿᴱᴬˢᴼᴺ ᴵ… ʸᴼᵁ'ᴿᴱ ᵀᴴᴱ ᴿᴱᴬˢᴼᴺ ᴵ'ⱽᴱ ᴮᴱᴱᴺ ᴬᴮᴸᴱ ᵀᴼ ᴾᵁˢᴴ ᴹʸˢᴱᴸᶠ ˢᴼ ᶠᴬᴿ, ᵀᴼᴼ…ᵎ ˢᴱᴱᴵᴺᴳ ʸᴼᵁ ᵂᴼᴿᴷ, ᵂᴴᴱᴺ ᴵ ᶠᴵᴿˢᵀ ᴹᴱᵀ ʸᴼᵁ, ᴵᵀ ᴸᴵᵀ ᴬ ᶠᴵᴿᴱ ᴵᴺ ᴹʸ ᴴᴱᴬᴿᵀ ᴼᴿ ˢᴼᴹᴱᵀᴴᴵᴺ'... ᴰᴬᴹᴺ ᴵᵀᵎ ᴵ ᶜᴬᴺ'ᵀ ᴰᴼ ˢᴴᴵᵀᵀʸ ˢᴾᴱᴱᶜᴴᴱˢ, ᴬᴸᴿᴵᴳᴴᵀᵎˀ ᴵ ᴶᵁˢᵀ ᴷᴺᴼᵂ, ᴬᴸᴿᴵᴳᴴᵀᵎˀ ᴵ ᴷᴺᴼᵂ ʸᴼᵁ'ᴿᴱ ᵀᴬᴸᴷᴵᴺ' ᴬ ᴮᵁᴺᶜᴴᴬ ᴮᵁᴸᴸᶜᴿᴬᴾ ᴸᴵᴷᴱ ᴬ ᴹᴼᴿᴼᴺᵎ"ᴴᶦˢ ʰᵃᶦʳ ʷᵃˢ ᵍᵒᶦⁿᵍ ʸᵉˡˡᵒʷ. "ˢᴬᴵʸᴬᴺ ᴾᴿᴵᴰᴱ ᴬᴵᴺ'ᵀ ᴬˢ ˢᴵᴹᴾᴸᴱ ᴬˢ ᴸᴱᴳᴱᴺᴰˢ ᴼᴿ ᴬᴺᴳᴱᴿ ᴼᴿ ᴮᴿᵁᵀᴱ ᶠᴼᴿᶜᴱ ᴼᴿ ᴬᴺʸᵀᴴᴵᴺ' ᴬˢ ˢᵀᴬᵀᴵᶜ ᴬˢ ᵀᴴᴬᵀ ᵀᴴᴬᵀ, ʸᴼᵁ ᴮᴵᴳ ᴰᵁᴹᴮᴬˢˢᵎ ᴵ ᵀᴴᴼᵁᴳᴴᵀ ˢᴼᴹᴱᴼᴺᴱ ᴸᴵᴷᴱ ʸᴼᵁ'ᴰ ᶠᴵᴳᵁᴿᴱ ᵀᴴᴬᵀ ᴼᵁᵀ ᴮʸ ᴺᴼᵂ, ᴮᵁᵀ ʸᴼᵁ ᴷᴱᴱᴾ ᴿᴱᴸᴬᴾˢᴵᴺᴳ... ᴵᵀ'ˢ ᴸᴵᴷᴱ ʸᴼᵁ ᶜᴬᴺ'ᵀ ˢᵀᴼᴾ ᶠᴬᴸᴸᴵᴺ' ᴼⱽᴱᴿ ʸᴼᵁᴿˢᴱᴸᶠ... ᴬᴺᴰ ᴺᴼᵂ ᵀᴴᴵˢᵎˀ ᴴᴼᴺᴱˢᵀᴸʸ… ᴵ ᶜᴬᴺ'ᵀ ᴱⱽᴱᴺ ᶜᴼᴺᵀᴿᴼᴸ ᴴᴼᵂ ᴾᴵˢˢᴱᴰ ᴼᶠᶠ ᴵ ᴬᴹ ᴬᵀ ʸᴼᵁ ᴿᴵᴳᴴᵀ ᴺᴼᵂ… ᴵᵀ'ˢ ᴱᴬᵀᴵᴺ' ᴬᵀ ᴹʸ ˢᴼᵁᴸ…ᵎ"ᴴᶦˢ ᵐᵘˢᶜˡᵉˢ ᵇᵘˡᵍᵉᵈ ᵘⁿᶜᵒⁿᵗʳᵒˡˡᵃᵇˡʸ, ᵃˢ ʰᶦˢ ᵉʸᵉˢ ᵇᵘʳⁿᵉᵈ ᵗᵉᵃˡ."ᴴᴼᵂ ᴰᴬᴿᴱ ʸᴼᵁ…ᵎ ᴴᴼᵂ ᴰᴬᴿᴱ ʸᴼᵁ…ᵎ" ᴬʳᶜʰᶦ ʳᵉᵃˡᶦᶻᵉᵈ ᵗʰᵃᵗ ᵐᶦʳᵃᶜˡᵉ ᶠᵒʳ ʰᵉʳ. "ᴴᴼᵂ ᴰᴬᴿᴱ ʸᴼᵁ ˢᴬʸ ᵀᴴᴬᵀ ᴬᴮᴼᵁᵀ ᴷᴼᴿᴬᴬᴬ—ᵎ" ᴬʳᶜʰᶦ ʳᵒᵃʳᵉᵈ, ᵃ ˢᵘᵖᵉʳ ˢᵃᶦʸᵃⁿ. ᴴᵉ ʰᵉˡᵈ ᵗʰᵉ ᶠᵒʳᵐ ᶠᵒʳ ᵃˡˡ ᵒᶠ ᵃ ˡᵒᵘᵈ, ᵉⁿʳᵃᵍᵉᵈ ᶠᶦᵛᵉ ˢᵉᶜᵒⁿᵈˢ, ᵇᵉᶠᵒʳᵉ ᶜʳᵃˢʰᶦⁿᵍ ᵒⁿᵗᵒ ᵃ ᵏⁿᵉᵉ⁻"
"YRAAAAㅤAㅤㅤAㅤㅤㅤAㅤㅤㅤㅤAㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤAㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ!ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ!ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ!ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ!"
Kora shrank onto herself, un-stupiding at rates unprecedented for the Saiyan race.
And then her eyes glowed... oh. Oh, wait. They didn't glow. At all... Cus like, black can't really glow. Huh.
"Mind games... this is way I fight..." she growled, before her aura... well I can't really say exploded... you know what? We'll talk about it down below. Fukkit.
"This is my normal... my nature..."
Akaki angrily shook, vibrating with motion. I stole that line. I stole that line from a product that someone expected people to pay for with money they could've spent on Wendy's.
"You've lost your mind..."
"Literally the opposite... but whatever..."
She picked up a rock with her tail, tossed it toward one drone, and then watched it ricochet into the other, destroying Conton property for some reason, chuckled, and then pointed toward Akaki. "Who's next?"
"(OH SHIT, DOES SHE KNOW ABOUT ME!?)"
"(Who cares? SHE'S MIIIIINE...)"
"(... hm. You're the boss.)"
Akaki grinned. "I misjudged you. You ARE like them, after all! Just in... a bit more of a roundabout way, I guess..."
"Now you're just being nasty!" Kora said with a cackle. "M-memes..."
"Shut up, YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP GODDA-"
"Gods! Just say Oh My Gods!"
"... I will say this once. What kind... of MORONIC... DROOLING... SHORT BUS-CHAUFFERED... SUB-ROOM TEMPERATURE IQ FUCKING MONGREL... would say that with even an OUNCE of self-awareness?"
"... that phrase you 'like' so much... you wanna know where OP got it? Actually..." She slowly placed her inexplicable phone in her invisible PS2 Game pockets. "Why doesn't she give you a demonstration?"
Akaki then felt angry grey eyes staring through him.
"I think it's time for 'Wise Girl'..." Kora grinned. "TO LET 'ER RIP!"
"... i don't get it is that some kind of magnus chase reference or-"
A blonde half-blood deuteragonist then beat the shit out of him.
"uh-"
NO! NO, NOT YOU! FUCKING DUMB SHIT!
"oh."
Yo! OP Her-
"YOUR MEMES... END HERE."
...
"I'll leave."
Run.
6/4/2023 Patch Notes: Changed BGM choice for Kora's breakdown/Archi's transformation. Supreme Kai of Time dropped by to mope.
Anyway, that... THAT was the entirety of the quarterfinals. All of it. I'm... I'm freakin' shocked. That was over 40k words of, like, me rounding out my OCs.
Except for Voshyo and Ceushius, yeah, but they're always doing their own thing.
So uh...
Let's talk about those intros I used for each second fight. There WAS, in fact, a theme I was going for, for all of them. Arpeggios was supposed to be Neo and Mei shouting at each other, Rapport was meant to be Jin and Kaza's confession to each other (my favorite one btw), Rasen was Dina and Kazikum cursing themselves, and The Violence is Kora and Akaki's respective introspection. This series of fights was meant to be their ideals coming to the forefront and shit, but moreso the characters against the now-semifinalists.
Well, on that note, let's talk a bit more about Akaki — the one who was established by these chapters. 'Cus before this, he only had 2 whole chapters as a primary character. Antagonist. He's really adamant on being an antagonist, yes. Well, as set in stone by this here fight, it stems from his deep, deep self-resentment for the timelines he's created and his own species. Like, shit. Imagine doing everything you can to settle a dispute between your guys and a side responsible for their destruction, only to discover that, no matter how much went right, either side would wind up devastating the other; ESPECIALLY yours. That kind of existential horror is what I based Akaki's ideals off. My main influences for him were always gonna be Lin Xue Ya and Xiao Kuang Juan from T-Bolt Fantasy, but nihilists like Monsoon and Johan just kinda clung to him pretty neatly. I expounded off his old Neo-Fight model to make him both understandable AND completely fucking hateable. As for his situation... yeah Tuffles and Saiyans just can't get along when there's a planet full of both. That's literally just nature running its course. But both races are capable of good and evil, it's just that, here, Saiyans just leave that bad of an impression on Tuffles that they go loco on the rest of the cosmos, and most deviously at that. Funny thing is, in Zinco's timeline, Humans ALMOST do the same thing. Just not nearly as evil, them ningen just kinda go "if you come anywhere near us we will send you all to valhalla, fuck off." As for determinism itself, I dunno. Interesting philosophy.
What's the voice in his head about? Next chapter. When will Akaki REALLY get his? Next chapter.
OH, settling it now. FMG is Akaki's Hand-Cannon function, GMG are his normal gauntlets, and it is SUJU-PO, not SUJU-DO. That's me being dumb. Sorry.
Also, you probably noticed a trend. Zinco v Kaza, Dina v Kazikum, both wound up with them being a couple. Neo v Mei is pretty-obviously leading to something (I wanna slow-burn type deal because this story can go literally ANYWHERE by design.)
As cute as a Stoic Socially-Awkward Muscle Mommy x Smol Smug Twink thing would be (It's seppuku if I ever speak like that again), no. Fuck no. Cycle ends there. Akaki don't swing that way, regardless. So what's Archi's role in all this?
Kaz needs a rival, I guess. So does Archi. Yeah, I didn't do this to that one bully jobber from Chapter (IDFC I AIN'T CHECKING RIGHT NOW) purely for Kaz's sake. Archi's character has genuinely become kinda likeable for me. Simple views of the world are refreshing, and he helps talk sense into nutcases like Kaz and Kora.
So Kora. My little frickin' Hiei-type project.
Won't lie, the only place I plan on taking that Chekov's Hyper-Realistic Painting Of A Gun from right before the first RESET-MET match is like, an immunity. Her power-up was just her honing Shoki to bolster Yuki and Genki, realizing what truly makes her happy instead of molding herself after an ideal. Yes. The power was inside of her ALL ALOOOONG. Funny thing is, without that desire to meet that expectation of what a saiyan is, what a LEGENDARY saiyan should be, she'd've been evil as fuck. That inner turbulence pretty much saved her soul.
Is that all now? Man. I guess so.
I'm probably gonna take a fierce break after this. It's been... something. I want the bits before the semi-finals to be fun training, more bonding, further exploration, and... yeah. I can die happy if I finish the semis.
Last Note: My total views are over 9000. That pleases me. Yes, that pleases me immensely.
That's about it. See ya.