"I'm… back from… Hell…"
RECKLESS/STRIKE!
"I… noticed… now I'll make you wish you'd stayed there."
If You Stand Still For A Second, I'll Crash Right Through You!
"Not if I make you first."
The tiger pounced. The lioness lied in wait.
"HM-"
"KH-"
Dina pivoted with the lunging foot, on seemingly a dime. Her rear heel dug into the ground, ready to dig into her opponent with her real attack.
"!?"
Only after the fact did she realize — if she HADN'T done so, Kora would've dashed right into her with an instantaneous blow primed from her side.
"—!"
"—!"
A stroke of intuition, knowledge of the opponent. Both factors had saved and screwed the fighters, resulting in a split stalemate.
Bolting forward and darting to the back, armed with a shovel hook and a kage tsuki, the two cleared their heads of thought and struck before the other could think.
There was a brief flash and a surge of heat before both swung in either direction. It looked like both had been struck by an asteroid – one in the face, the other in the liver – and yet, for having taken such attacks, neither seemed much worse for it.
Both caught themselves with their own brief single-foot skid.
"(The bitch…)"
"(The prick…)"
"(We've leveled out!)"
[ OP: Minami – Rude Loose Dance ]
"Say…"
Wiping off the blood trailing down her chin, Dina cocked an eyebrow. "A chat? Now?"
Kora was unbothered, using the uncertainty of the re-neutralized ground. "I noticed you're not using your trump card, Ms. Super Saiyan."
The half-blood sneered as she continued to wipe off the blood trailing down her chin. "Kora, dear, I appreciate the gesture, but we're in the middle of a fight at the moment. You can thank me for not murdering you AFTER I'm done beating marks into that smug mug'a yours."
She wasn't wrong about the otherwise-reserved saiyan's guise. "On the contrary. Dragging this fight out to appease your ego makes you look immature, especially when you'd win so easily if you'd just transform."
Kora's opponent, now furiously wiping the blood still trailing down her chin, sucked her teeth. "Shit, ya went n' chipped it, bastard…" She spat to the side, regaining what little composure Spaurk Dina was capable of at any given moment. "Mh-no. Just wouldn' count for much of anythin', then."
"Huh?"
"I'm not doing this for you. If I could use the bloody level, I would — it's otherwise my full power, after all. But that's just the thing… I can't use it."
Kora ever-so slightly furrowed her eyes.
Dina pointed to a certain allegedly-pure-and-just announcer. "But SHE can."
Wha?
"At HER level, it's an extension of herself. A Super Her. And I could swear it's like looking at a goddess."
With the straight forward, dead-serious manner the student put it, Son couldn't suppress her blush, much to Trunks' confusion. Wait, I don't recall you ever going-
I-IT SEEMS THIS HUMBLE ANNOUNCER, WITH NOT A SINGLE HORSE IN THIS FIGURATIVE RACE MIND, HAS A SECRET ADMIRER! I-I'LL WARN YOU, STUDENT DINA, THAT'S ONE LONG LINE YOU'RE STEPPING INTO!
Dina ignored it and continued. "But where I am now… the longer I'm in it, the longer 'I' start to fade out. It's only a matter of 'when' before it swallows me whole, even now. And when that happens, I stop bein' myself when I'm in that state... I'm just a Super Saiyan." Dina's fist clamped shut, and raised. "So if I don't need it, and until I make that state MINE, I won't use it. Besides,"
The same fist tore back and popped her button-collar, revealing a chain holding, centered across her collarbone, a badge. "At this very moment, Super Saiyan isn't me at my all."
"Ah." All the bearing in the universe couldn't hide the small vein atop Kora's forehead. "So what? You're using some amulet to boost yourself?"
"On ThE cOnTrAry, dickhead," Dina corrected, "It's a curse. I got the idea from a friend."
Trunks gave Son the fiercest side eye. "(Something's adding up…!)"
Ha…! Ha ha…!
Dina rebuttoned her collar. "With this on, it's like I never had Super Saiyan in the first place — there's a 'ceiling' separating me from the 'next level'. But honestly," said Dina, removing the dour cowl over her with a hand flung onto her hip, "Who questions an advantage? What if I'd just forgotten the darned thing? You'd be screwed out ya mind right about now, yeah?"
"I guess it was a whim. After all, I've completely dropped any reason to squeeze Super Saiyan out of you. I just wanted to know why you'd completely cripple yourself before I get you out of my way and become a patroller."
"Mraww~ look who became an adult."
"I wish I could return the COMPLIMENT!"
[ BGM: Hiroyuki Sawano – MKalieZ ]
A sea of tiles beneath her shattered under the force of her backfoot.
It happened in a heartbeat, if that — Dina's life flashed before her eyes in the same span of which a photon would live out its own.
Kora had jumped. In more than one sense.
Dina's forearms crossed themselves in desperate defense, the force of the palm heel-laden blow rattling them to the marrow as she flung backward in an uncontrolled tumble.
"...!"
The saiyaness wouldn't give her the courtesy of a single blink, before charging her with a kick to her-
Dina raised her guard to her head, seeing a glimpse of the kick to her hea-
Gut.
Dina gagged and swallowed iron pellets behind strained eyes, violently rolling across the floor before shattering a tile of her own in an effort to brake, nanoseconds before Kora's foot plummeted toward her from above, sending a zone up in debris. With a predator's eyes, she locked onto a crackling red light.
"Kuark…!" the half-breed growled behind red-stained teeth, before sending a giant lightning bolt toward her oppressor, finger-gun style.
Kora just-barely tracked it, but she'd trained herself toward a level where "just barely" was more than enough. With a swing of her arm, the ionized current made a sharp turn.
Despite the burning sensation…
"(Hardly even a TWITCH!?)" Dina glared in heart-sinking realization.
"(Tch…! That DID something!?)" Kora glared in disappointment. Her arm relaxed and re-tightened.
A wizard in the audience stifled a chuckle. "KUARK!?" he wheezed. "A SEMI-FINALIST!? USING KUARK!?"
"WHAT IS THIS?" More magi of wizardry and sorcerous variety seemed to join in. "A STREET MAGIC SHOW!?"
"OH I KNOW, SHE'LL LIGHT CANDLES NEXT! NO WAIT, CARD TRICKS!"
Overhearing them, Selaine groaned. "(What do you expect, you dafties? She's been a sorcerer for all of a week…)" She turned back and grinned. "(That said, however dull the girl may be, I've seen for myself how far her own intuitions can take her magecraft.)"
Konus abruptly pulled her away from a very fast object, one that sent the callous mages sailing. Her head creaked upward.
Kazikum stood motionless, brick in hand. His head, too, creaked upward.
"WHAT'S UP, BETCH!?" Devine shouted, both her friends belligerently turning a blind eye each. "WANNA KEEP TALKIN' SHIT!? 'CUS WE CAN GO, LIKE, NOW NOW, YOU TACKY WEIRDOS!"
Kazikum shrugged and hurled his own projectile at the one sorcerer still clinging on to consciousness. "Keh..."
Selaine cleared her throat and returned herself to the battle on-screen and below. "(Go on then, Spaurk…!)"
"(I don't have an inch of wiggle room at this point, bastard'll lob my head off if I don't use this!)" Dina uprighted herself, taking a harsh breath and thinking as fast as she really, really needed to then and there.
"(Kuark…!)"
Kora seemed to finish her mental picture of tearing the poor girl apart, and began to advance.
"(Storm!)"
Altering her perception of the lightning bolt from one mass to a torn mess of light tendrils, so was it brought forth from the nothing.
Kora paused. Not a moment passed before she flipped the switch from physical to ranged warfare, based off her full-stop and raised palm. Dina made a call.
A kiai clash resulted. Her bet was rewarded with a nosebleed from a punch to the face from a dozen meters out, but at least a cosmic truck hadn't slammed into her at thoughtspeed.
The black-haired warrior's hand glowed bright red. Dina took note and rushed her without any further plan.
"(She has a faster reaction speed in that state, not to mention she's faster in general, but only in bursts…)" Dina's climactic duel with Kazikum whizzed past her head, and Kora snatched what she needed before it sailed away. "(And it doesn't seem to hold any bearing on her ranged emission. It's an infighter's technique.)"
As Dina recklessly closed distance, hoping for a ki blast along the way, Kora lowered her stance. "(What if I test just how fast it amps you?) Here, kitty…" she whispered to herself.
Out flew a seiken.
Kora's technique held flaws measurable strictly by the angstrom. Her ki sank into a still state before, in what seemed like an instant, exploding full-tilt into a red, fist-laden force.
Dina lost something up there by evading it. Her slight stumble and nose eruption, visual indicators.
"(Go~t you~.)"
Kora then hacked spittle.
It didn't matter. Dina had already resolved to strike Kora, in a spot that wouldn't stop hurting for any small measure of time, with everything she had once she entered range. Her will saw it through.
So with a shark's whitened eyes and a roar deployed by the subconscious, an electrifying, centrifugal elbow crashed into Kora's side with every bit of Dina's weight, like a cannon had been fired.
"(GODS, YOU…!)"
"(GOD, YOU…!)"
Distance had been closed. Plans flew out the window.
"(FUCKING BITCH…!)"
Dina didn't stop at the elbow, nor did Kora linger on the pain.
The half-breed charged with a fist, only to pull back and under a tornado kick, and her attempt at re-engagement was halted by a reversed remix assisted by tail torque; however, Dina's leg smacked into the ground with enough force to send her in a flight-fancified fist toward Kora, who'd regained her posture from her prior attack. A forearm from her other side struck forth as a backfoot rooted her in place, kicking off a fierce flurry of blocks up an elevated patch in the expanding field.
"IS THIS- ALL YOU'VE- GOT?" Kora snarled amidst Dina's frustrated SHHU SHHU SHHUs. "I KNEW I WAS GOING TO WIPE THE FLOOR WITH YOU, BUT YOU CAN'T EVEN BE- BOTHERED- T-"
A punch slipped through. It stung enough for the second to land. The third one was greedy, Kora recollecting and parrying Dina's hook with an elbow, catching a glimpse of just how 'out of it' her expression had grown before shoulder-thrusting her back a bit.
— She appeared emotionlessly savage, like a starving carnivore pursuing prey. Less anger and more desperation coated her crimson eyes as her sweat vaporized the second it dripped a millimeter off her skin.
That desperation only grew after distance began to sprout, however stark a contrast it stood with her outer, thousand-suns grimace. She thrusted her palm outward, and what looked like a blue fireball careened toward Kora; as she swatted it away with a right-side arm, there was Dina right beneath, her knuckle having literally, VISIBLY skid along the now-declining tiles. Her body jerked toward her target, rear foot pivoting hard and fast enough to trigger embers.
Kora caught her wrist in-between her forearm and elbow.
FㅤOㅤㅤRㅤㅤㅤCㅤㅤㅤㅤEㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ.
It rattled her every cell. She grit her teeth with enough pressure to turn what little remained of her breakfast into fossil fuel. The Vegetaborne saiyan transitioned into another over-shoulder throw.
Around that same time, the blue orb of energy returned right beneath Dina.
Her heart fluttered, the gambit having paid off — the energy had remained in close orbit just to ensure she could close distance herself. Dina rocketed right back into Kora, allotting neither a chance to breathe.
Overwhelm with a tight and focused quantity, catch off-guard with quality when the opportunity appeared. Such was the hare-brained hunting plan set in place for what had once been her white whale.
ZIP, ZAP, POP, SNAP! IT'S AS IF STUDENT DINA CAN'T STAND STAYING IN ONE SPOT, WHILE STUDENT KORA'S PLANTED FIRM LIKE A TREE!
THIS MYSTICAL METHOD OF COMBAT LOOKS LIKE LIGHTNING, BUT IN RAW SPEED, IT LEAVES ANY OLD BOLT IN THE DUST! TO THE UNTRAINED EYE, IT'S MORE LIKE INSTANT TRANSMISSION!
The plan was a nightmare in regards to pain and stamina, but if it was even half bad for the subject as it was for the observer, it would work.
She'd trained herself to a standard. This pain was something she'd adapted to. Her will was superior. That was all.
In that moment, the same assurance washed over both.
"Seiken?"
Both Mashii and Renchiru turned curiously. "What?"
Katlij strained his eyes. "It's a form of fist used in an earthling martial art. The index and middle knuckles are extended in place of a flattened fist, ensuring the stronger two are at the forefront of every strike. It's an attention to detail that I've never seen outside those who've, at minimum, trained with earthlings." He pressed a fist of his own onto his chin. "I thought she may've been influenced by seeing other martial artists' movements for her other techniques, but… down to such a detail? That goes beyond just imitation…!"
"... How'd you even catch that?"
The pale Brench boy waved it off. "I have an eye for detail. Three years of 'Basic' guaranteed that."
Renchiru raised a brow. "... since when were such concepts reserved for earthling martial arts?"
Katlij's eyes slowly expanded. "You mean…"
"I mean, it's in the name, isn't it? Martial arts simply apply creative approaches to warfare, something Saiyans are exceedingly good at. If earthlings can create better means of destroying their enemies, then what makes you believe a Saiyan, never mind some other species with the same build, somewhere, some time, hasn't already done the same?"
Mashii folded her arms. "That's what's weird. Apparently, earthlings learned martial arts to defend themselves from stronger opponents."
Renchiru seemed surprised for a brief moment. Then, he sighed. "Then this is simply an inversion of that martial art, now designed to completely destroy. I'd expect nothing less from a descendent of the wicked clan."
Dina's blows began to bite deeper, her form beginning to disappear as she tried harder and harder. Kora's periodic bursts drew closer and closer, less visible to the point of escaping Dina's eyes. There was a constant reminder of the gap between the two, a gap steadily growing for a reason she'd only seen hints of from a video she watched a week ago and put off studying further.
Suddenly, an explosion of intuition in the heat of battle hit Dina. Something beyond what she could explain then and there.
"(I can 'see' it…!)"
She couldn't see the punch, but she knew where it would come from — the side, the trajectory.
She could pull a counter, redirecting Kora's force and sending it back toward her, plus a helping of everything left in her own tank. It would land and end this attrition dance.
The split-second prophecy was fulfilling itself before her eyes. Her body could move fast enough to pull it off.
"(YES! YOU'RE MINE!)"
And then her palm moved away from her.
"(Wait… what?)"
The fist was a trap. Her palm moved along with it's path, back toward Kora, despite lack of physical contact.
Dina realized the stance her enemy had taken. A reverse punch.
"(... no.)"
Kora was now "showing her hand."
Dina tried to-
!ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ..!ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ!ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ.ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ!ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ..ㅤ.
ㅤ..ㅤㅤㅤㅤ!ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ!ㅤ.ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ..ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ…ㅤㅤㅤㅤ!ㅤ.
.ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ?ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ.. ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ?ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ.ㅤㅤㅤㅤ…
ㅤㅤㅤㅤ.ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ—ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ.. ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ.ㅤㅤ… ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ.. —
?ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
"?"
Her name was Dina Spaurk.
She had to start somewhere. Her name was Dina Spaurk.
The reason that she, Dina Spaurk, would get back up was because there were people hurting somewhere… else… that she had to help.
No… no…
"(... do I have to?)"
Life on Earth has evolved to prioritize preserving itself. This led to innate contingencies: Fight, Flight, and Freeze. Such contingencies stood in case of predators, enemies, and other intelligent threats to life. In these cases, "Fight" served to deter the lowest of threats.
Dina Spaurk, who was half born of such life, and had lived for 16 years amongst such life, now had to consciously undo "Freeze," stave off "Flight," and force herself into "Fight." Even after finally wheezing up an entire pint of blood.
8!
She didn't have a "Default Fight" response, like full-blooded Saiyans or strange creatures that called themselves "Neoru." Summoning the will to fight something that hit like that, out of nowhere, was… stupid.
9!
"(... but what if I could?)"
And just like that, she tested herself for the hell of it.
"(... to alleviate… the burden…)"
In the next moment, reason set upon her choice. THAT was why. To help shoulder the burden of patrolling.
If she couldn't endure the pain — that was all this was, after all, pain — of ONE attack, she could never hope to help shoulder a weight like that.
She supported herself onto a knee, bangs having gone wild in her erratic toss across the arena. A sole red eye was visible in her mess of sharp, drooping hair, the girl gritting her reddened teeth.
"YES-" Pan caught herself with a cough. DES-DESPITE THE MONSTROUS IMPACT SENT FROM OUT OF THE BLUE, STUDENT DINA IS BACK ON THE SPOT!
AND WITH NOT A SECOND LEFT TO SPARE, MIGHT I ADD! HOWEVER, JUST HOW LONG CAN SHE LAST AGAINST STUDENT KORA'S LATEST TECHNIQUE!?
Kora stared nonchalantly. She noticed Dina's focused glare and smirked, opening her hands. "You get one guess."
"..."
"... looks like you need a tip." Kora made a horizontal flat palm in the air, then made a pointing finger that dropped to the ground without control or resistance. Her arm followed suit, limpening.
Hand unchanging, using her shoulder, she dragged her arm back up, training the pointer onto Dina.
Three uneasy breaths and a very, very, very bad experience from the half-breed rang out before the answer. "... gravi…?"
"Bingo~."
"That's a crock'a shit. Gravity goes down, everyone knows that. How the hell would you even learn how to screw with GRAVITY in the first place? Wait…" She paid attention to the new chassis. "That piece of armor… so it's more than artsy saiyan social commentary, issit?"
To avoid confusion, Kora ignored her and moved on. "I get that you're what Earthlings call a 'highschool dropout'" –
Dina would've lunged at her if her everything didn't hurt so much.
– "So I'll try my best. Gravity isn't as complicated as that. It's just bent space. Everything has a certain field attached to it, and the greater the amount of matter that 'thing' has, the greater its force of attraction, the more space bends around it. Planets, for example… a denser core means a greater pull. Planet Vegeta isn't much larger than Earth, yet there's an over ten-times difference in gravitational acceleration. 100 meters per second, squared."
Dina missed fighting Kazikum.
"Right now," Kora placed a hand on her chassis, "This is multiplying the field around me whenever my body gets comfortable, placing just enough strain so my body continuously grows stronger. And also…"
She balled a fist. Dina's backfoot slid back an inch as she tensed. "For one second, I can extend, direct, and amplify that force with my ki. It's just a matter of 'tricking' the technology by focusing my energy in tandem with any dead cells or drops of blood, mimicking my own body. With this, just the air pressure of my hits can slam into you at a thousand times the gravitational force you're used to."
"Wait, GRAVITY!?" Archi scratched his head. "But I thought that was YOUR thing!"
Palming his cheek, Akaki shrugged. "I don't remember throwing any trademarks onto a universal constant but, hey, thanks for the idea." Beneath his bored exterior, he seethed. "(I wasn't wrong about what I said…)"
"Not really. It'd be obnoxious of me to think that I, some brat who sits in his room all day, could best a honed warrior with years of battle experience."
"(But even still, to think something as simple as this was never so much as a spitball thought in my head…! Never mind the level of mastery she exhibits with her ki…)" He thought back to Kora's method of attack that nearly knocked his head off in their initial exchange, and of the attack that ultimately did him in. "(Seriously… how the hell does she come UP with this crap?)"
"... wait a minute…!" exclaimed a nearby spectator. "That weirdo Kora didn't have that armor in the first place until after she fought Akaki…!"
Another noticed the voice and turned his direction. "Hey, actually, you never did anything like what SHE's apparently capable of in any of your fights…"
In real time, Archi watched Akaki somehow shapeshift while maintaining his form. "Uhh… Y-yeah, you got me…" he muttered after a small, startled leap.
"Going behind other contestants' backs just to make sure one of them wins, huh?" a girl crossed her arms. "I don't care if it's allowed or not, that's just scummy."
Akaki bashfully scratched the scruff of his neck. "I get where you're coming from, but… all she did was ask, y'know. Even if she hadn't, it was the least I could do for taking my 'villain' act so far in our match."
Yet another girl sprang up. "Aw~! That's so nice!"
The one formerly chastising him found herself blushing in shame. "Y-yeah, well I g-guess that checks out…"
"Wait… all she had to do was ask!?"
Akaki nodded his head in a manner balancing meek and casual. "'Course! That's all anyone ever has to do, really. She asked for a way to one-up magic, so that's what I gave her. The rest, she just wound up figuring out on her own! I love making cool stuff like that!"
"(That's just 'cool stuff' to him?)" A young man with rounded glasses and gizmos of his own approached the sapphire-haired techie. "Actually, can I talk to you about-"
"Hey! I was talking to him first!"
"Can it! If anything, that means I get first dibs!"
"I've got notes we can compare on g-matter, if you don't mind!"
Akaki gave a nervous laugh with an air of excitement. "Oh, wow! I-I should warn you guys, I still need to pay for my materials, so-"
Archi glared as the amassing small crowd waived the cash requisites and continued picking his brains, price ranges, and/or relationship status. "Shitty sleazeball…!"
All the while, the savant sneered inside. "(I take it all back. Shine on, you psychotic gem…)"
"... why are you telling me all of this?" the red-eyed scrapper asked, one hand ruffling her hair in annoyance.
The tall saiyaness lost her smugness all of a sudden, and her face became aloof, zoned-out. "I… don't know actually…" She turned back to Dina with the same expression, raising a finger to her bloodied chin. "I guess… a handicap?"
With a flash of burning blue ki, an enraged Dina reeled a fist and sent energy soaring at her opponent.
Who flicked, and sent it bending back toward her.
As it would figure, one thousand milliseconds was a very, very long time.
Dina vaulted clear over in a startled fit, only to encounter Kora's chambered fist in wait. She audibly yelped before throwing herself backward, skidding back along the ground.
"(IF I GET HIT BY THAT AGAIN…!)" She didn't need to give a logical conclusion; the fear associated with the mere prospect was enough. "(BUT FUCK! MY ONLY ADVANTAGE WAS INFIGHTING! SOD TO SHIT, THIS ISN'T EVEN FAIR ANYMORE!)"
She felt the burning metal around her neck she'd grown numb to, and thought about it.
"(... oh piss off, if that's all I can do versus someone stronger than me then I'm WORSE than useless! ACTUALLY FUCKIN' THINK IT OUT, DINA, YOU TWIT!)"
She noticed Kora raise her arm, and mentally groan-sobbed. "(Crying out…)" The girl began to brace, before remembering something.
"Dude, you're WAY too stiff when you take a hit."
"Sorry I'm not intent on being knocked flat on me arse? I don't get you."
Neoru groaned. "Dumbass, when you're all stiff n' shit, you wind up takin' the ENTIRE hit. Actually, screw it, hit me."
Dina punched Neoru half across the ocean. "Ah- I DIDN'T EVEN HIT THAT HARD, DICKHEAD!"
"NO SHIT, THAT'S WHY I BARELY FELT IT!"
"COME AGAIN!?"
The violet-eyed brunette leapt back in front of her, sopping wet. "I dunno how it works, but when you roll with the hit, let its force flow through you and go a bit limp… it spaces it out even, and it hurts a lot less. Same way a brick breaks apart, but a piece of paper is just dandy."
"So, what, I'm peachy-keen if I loosen my jaw before a hit?"
"What? No, ya still got resistance everywhere else, your shit's gone if you do that. Less specific spots and more your whole body. Say, yeah, this should help out with that dumbass counter you're makin', right?"
"'DUMBASS'!?"
A lesson reinforced across the entire tournament, especially by herself. She'd almost forgotten.
[ BGM: Evan Call – World on Fire ]
"(It'll hurt. It's fine. Roll with the punches. It's fine. It's fine…)"
It wasn't exactly fine, but it was much better to be a crumpled sheet of paper than a brick before a budoka.
Dina flung back so quickly, it stunned even Kora — the young woman briefly looked over her hand in subtle astonishment.
As the space between the center and the spectators extended, the miles of rubble kicked up by the plucky balayage soared toward Kora.
"(I have a kit.)"
The tailed warrior weaved through the majority, feeling out each one for signs of a runaway Dina before, one by one, the debris began exploding. Kora had neither the time nor patience to deal with such, and simply flew above the mess, with a stream of blue ki bolts on her tail soon after.
"(... an entire assortment of potential techniques and strategies. The moment I lose confidence of the fact, and cling onto power gaps and spontaneous power-ups, I have failed as a fighter.)"
After skillfully weaving through them, preparing to do the same to the next wave of flares, she paused; just as much hate and discontent was raining from above as from below.
She couldn't feel the ones above her. She could see the growing red flashes, though.
"(Get a stranglehold on fundamentals! Flare in imagination, flare in creativity! That's how I'll grow!)"
"Hihi…!" Kora wound back with a fierce 540, timing it just right with the sudden strikes, ensnaring it with a localized gravitational pull dwarfing anything in Earth's solar system, sending a ball of ki-charged lightning toward the standard volleys.
"(AND HOLD IT ALL TOGETHER WITH GRIT!) KUARK!" Dina roared amidst the aggravated light show above, just as Kora began to send a colossal current of mystic lightning at its caster.
A red-white bolt of lightning, coated in traces of static, natural brethren, suddenly leapt from the ionized cloud of dust and ki, climbing the ladder of life-energy as the two traded enough volts to vaporize a planet's oceans in one strike. Whatever signs of a successful hit was drowned out by the sound of the bolts striking and, even louder, the thunder.
A supervolcano couldn't compete.
The floor dissolved from every transpiring factor, along with layers of each monolith. The dust formerly polluting the area seeped away, the dust from the colossi slowly coming in as what seemed like otherworldly turquoise mist.
"A—ah…!" Dina hissed to herself, recovering. The innate Saiyan ability to grow stronger from exposure hadn't failed her, and she managed to – injury withstanding – bear the pain of her own attack. Kora hadn't directly targeted her, after all. Was it kindness? Or- oh who was she kidding, she acted in a heartbeat and didn't care if it hit or not.
"TCH…! DAMMIT!" the red-eyed tomboy ranted. "I'M SICK'A USIN' ME SHITE BRAINS WHEN I'M FIGHTIN'! ALL THAT DICKHEAD NEO HAD TO DO WAS PUNCH, GET UP, N' PUNCH HARDER!"
"OH OK, FUCK YOU TOO THEN!"
"But that WAS all you did..."
"OH OK, FUCK YOU TOO THEN!"
"WHY'M I THE SORRY SOD WHO'S ALWAYS ON A CHESSBOARD!? IS FUCKIN' PISS, THA'S WHAT IT IS!"
"Shut up, moron."
"STUFF IT YOU'S!" she bit at the sky, only to realize what happened.
Kora had stolen her magic.
"(When a warlock uses magic…)" The red and blue lightning coursed across her body, carried through currents of plasma generated from her own ki, and pulled around the forming orb of fused cosmos above her palm like light around a black hole. "(Its output invokes a portion of their own life force, however small it is, amplifying their spell and making the magic their own.)" She was in visible pain, but her fixed gaze was steadfast.
Selaine crossed her arms. "Come on…"
"(That's what makes those who can use ki and magic so dangerous…)" She thought of majin and namekians, especially those she'd seen across the stage. "(And Dina's managed to bridge the gap between our power by going farther with that fact…!)"
Selaine tensed. "This is quite lit'rally the second fundamental spell you possibly could've learned…"
Her face moved at an odd angle. She ignored it. "(And you say you hate using what brains you've got…!)"
Selaine grit her teeth. "Even YOU could catch this in a week, come on you dunce…!"
It spontaneously moved into one hand, in the shape of an ellipses as if a photon. "HAA—!"
The lightning thief returned to a sender who, frankly, could've gone without it.
That said, Dina had outstretched her hand to receive.
"TSITIL!"
Every individual ionized charge shattered and rechanneled into Dina's own life energy.
Or, as martial artists called it, genki.
Selaine leapt into the air. "THANK THE ALL-FATHER, THE CLOD'S HALFWAY STUDIOUS AFTER ALL!"
Konus raised a hairless brow. "All-Father…?"
"WHO KNOWS!?" she giddily replied. "NOT OUR PROBLEM!"
After quite a tumble – Kora had still charged it with her ki – Dina made a quick recovery.
"(ASSORTED PARENTS IN HEAVEN, IT WORKS!)" Dina internally squealed, small sparks of charges crackling around her. "(DIDN' EVEN NEED TO WAIT ON A BLOODY THUNDERSTORM TO USE THE DARN THING!)"
Dina quickly realized that whatever thunderstorm play she could've had was now out of the picture. Another card from her hand.
"I KNEW IT!"
Also, Kora was about to reverse-strike her again.
Dina ducked it, was tugged ever-so slightly into stasis, and was elbowed in the face.
"OF COURSE YOU CAN ABSORB CHARGE NOW!" Kora bashed her away with a one-inch shin to Dina's side. "WHY STOP AT EMISSION!?"
"(The prick is still growing!?)" Dina caught herself. "(But we're even closer now…! I can patch the gap before it grows, I know it!)"
[ BGM: Yoshimasa Terui – Resolve (0:32) ]
Kora caught up at the exact same time that Dina began to take a mobile orthodox stance.
"(As long as this feeling keeps surgin' through me…!)"
For an entire millisecond, they stood still, trying to anticipate.
"(I CAN SHOOT PAST JUST 'KEEPING PACE'!)"
They lashed out and broke off.
"HA!" Dina yelled, speeding back toward Kora. "I JUST REMEMBERED SOMETHING, YA SPASTIC! IN A FORCE-OFF, ELECTROMAG'S WAY STRONGER THAN GRAVITY!"
"There goes Dina Spaurk, relying on CRUTCHES!" Kora counter-charged, hiding her giggle.
"YOU…!" Clash after clash happened in a flash, each one dodging the other's blows handedly before both went mobile. They disappeared, and the surfacing of reverberating shockwaves signaled the successive first contact of fists and joints that rocked the ever-burdened battlefield's regeneration and split the eclipse-darkened clouds above them. They reappeared periodically across the grounds, tit-for-tat in explosive debris-clad intervals of visibility.
A small feint by Kora created an opening in which Dina's hook was blocked, opening her up for a quick palm-heel jab that had the scrappy sorceress lurching forward for a moment, only for the former space merc's subsequent snap kick to be bobbed clean under, as well as the three attacks afterward as Dina used her shoulder as a quasi-shield, her footwork in a backward rhythm as she waited out her opponent's aggression until a mistake was created, moving into a blind spot and punishing her eagerness with a quicker, sleeker jab that sent Kora's head flying back, weaving the retaliatory zoning kicks that went as low as her thighs and using the momentum to roll into a cross that was parried, the two returning to defense and fading out once again, shockwaves taking to the skies before both, in a dart that towed the line between particle and wave, passed each other with a bright red-and-blue line that visually severed the moon-concealed sun.
Dina smeared the resulting cut along her face with a thumb.
Kora wiped the resulting cut across her cheek with two fingers.
The half-breed swiped the thumb across her tongue.
The saiyaness licked the streaming droplet as it crossed her lip.
They leapt back into the fray.
"(EVEN NOW, SHE'S STILL GROWING JUST A BIT STRONGER, JUST A WEE BIT STRONGER THE MORE SHE GOES ON! EVEN THE WEIRD GRAVITY SHITE'S GOT A BIGGER RADIUS!)" Dina noted with a frantic savagery across her face, even amidst the ongoing torrent of attacks demanding her full attention.
"(EVEN NOW, SHE'S STILL WEASELING HER WAY THROUGH MY EVERY LAST ADVANTAGE! SHE'S EVEN STARTED USING ELECTROMAGNETISM TO REPEL HERSELF AWAY!)" Kora noted with a dead focus across her face, even amidst the ongoing torrent of attacks demanding her full attention.
Her enemy noticed her progress before she could, herself hapless before her own zen-like rhythm in the other's hurricane, the opponent in a struggle to overcome it with whatever her three worlds could conjure in a subconscious burst.
Her own nukite whiffed after nearly fooling Dina into guarding, Kora parried her reciprocative left straight with a slammed forearm, her high kick launching the crimson-eyed striker into the air. Kora went so fast it was like she was teleporting, returning behind Spaurk with an axe kick laden with red energy at its heel.
"(BUT THIS IS WHERE IT ENDS! I STILL HAVE TO WIN, THERE'S NO OTHER CHOICE! THIS WAS NEVER ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE!)"
Dina sprang into Kora and dual-knee'd her, the girl's own heels burning with a different breed of light.
They split violently, Dina clutching out to and curving around a spiraling tile platform as she regained control of her momentum, and promptly bounding off it before a blast destroyed what was left.
During her desperate, woozy flight against the planets' worth of power and gravity in energy, her own knowledge of what her magic, of lightning and its properties, streamed back to the forefront of her mind. Without knowing its meaning, simply to prepare the attack, she formed a vyagraha mudra in one hand and blasted away with the next.
With a bloodstained scowl, Kora extended a hand. She caught each blast before it could leave, each one stuck in an orbit with one larger beam before Kora aimed and fired, the blast donning an ellipses geometry once again before razing the lower realm.
Through a world of pain, despite fumbling a verse or two down the line, Dina hung onto her dinky little poem. She roared out in an explosion that canceled out her previous blasts, before forming a…
"KA, ME, HA, ME-!"
Kora's response was damn near knee-jerk. "GALICK…!"
"HAA!"
"GUN!"
In the moment of stationary struggle, finally, it donned on her.
And she defined her spirit.
"AND SMILE, WITHOUT FAIL, ENDLESS SEARCH SHAN'T DIMINISH! (DINA, YOU WORDY TWIT!) JAKAAAAAA—!" Taking the inevitable loss with an aviator roll dash-off, in an erratic spin of a flight, Dina charged an ionizing vortex in her hand, crackling with ki and magic all the same, a roving ball of low-level plasma and a fourth-rate spell. All Trades, nothing less. "BEEEE—AM!"
"FINE BY ME!" Kora released her blast – the destructive aftermath casting harsh shadows – and extended her hand — all of her adversary's will was coming at her in a desperate last roar. "(I'LL TAKE ON EVERYTHING YOU HAVE, AND THROW IT RIGHT BACK AT YOU HARDER THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE!) HAAA—!" Kora raised her every octave of ki, and its control over the chassis' artificial field, directly in front of her. "(I NEED THIS MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE, RIGHT!? THEN PROVE IT TO THEM, TO THE WHOLE DAMN WORLD!)"
"Last shot…!" Dina gulped, focused, and filled her diaphragm. "CHANGE JAKKAAA—…!"
Kora's eyes widened. The rest of the blast was willing itself into a sphere, without the aid of curved spacetime.
And it became very, very loud.
Dina's lips pursed like they were holding back a bomb. They were about to release something worse.
"BALL."
The saiyaness's eyes had a moment to expand in horror.
Kora's idea exploded in her face. Her screaming shadow was visible if only one didn't blink.
The thermobaric supercell encased the area, its charged tendrils lashing out at every monolith, tearing the clouds and the ground asunder. Even the monoliths shattered, filling the stage with a lingering fog far past the point of audible calm.
Dina crashed onto a shoulder, her opponent nowhere to be seen. The red-eyed tomboy pushed herself upward, inch by agonizing inch, and stared into Ground Zero with a fist slowly clenching.
Within the cosmos, there lives a race of warhounds.
One so brutal, so tenacious, they left their own world devastated beyond repair.
One where self-preservation is a show of weakness, and where valor is dictated solely by the victors. An ever-adaptable warrior species that seized the summit of their ecosystem before turning their lust for conquest and evolution on themselves.
Ebony eyes slowly emerged from the dust cloud.
Within the blood of that contestant…
They widened before a torn-glove fist hammered into their sides.
[ BGM: Shocking Lemon – Inner Light (TV Size) ]
There also happens to run Saiyan blood.
"HRAAAAAAA—!"
Dina's eyes blanked, as if she'd forsaken thought entirely, as her teeth were bared in full, every savage noise that rolled from her mouth in a perfect harmony with her now-bleeding fists.
The pain from every prior action was nulled; she'd rewired every shock to her fists, making them swing harder, faster, fiercer. The magic it took for such, the focus it took for such, was given by the mere thoughts that came with the outcome if she didn't pull off her unbridled follow-up attack;
Being punched like that again.
Losing.
Possibility of Pan and others like her would suffer in silence.
Possibility of Neo and others like him would die, even if she could've helped otherwise.
It became worse and worse as she thought about it. Punching made the thoughts go away. So she punched.
Her entire body weight went into each individual swing and joust of the fist, every hook and cross. Kora tried to block for a moment, and was met with an overhead packed with every iota of Dina's desperate rage. Another was pierced by an uppercut. Dina ducked under a tail lash and smashed Kora's side before laying into her core and jaw almost simultaneously.
If she lost the advantage she'd been clawing tooth and nail for, all along, she'd never let herself live it down.
LIKE A BAT OUT OF HELL, AND WITH DOUBLE THE INTENSITY! SPAURK RUSHES HER OPPONENT WITHOUT SO MUCH AS LETTING THE DUST SETTLE! JUST! HOW! BAD! DOES! SHE! NEED! THIS!?
SHE'S DEFINITELY STRIKING AS IF HER LIFE DEPENDS ON IT, IF-NOT THROWING HER LIFE INTO EACH AND EVERY PUNCH!
As if feral, her red irises came back into focus, pupils still vacant. The magic that was no longer enhancing but borderline replacing her bioelectricity was beginning to pulse outside of her body like a radioactive isotope.
Kora suddenly barged into her with a feral roar of her own.
Dina began using her own forehead like a fist.
Kora slowly, surely lost her grip. Dina, without warning, kicked Kora in the thigh, enough to make her gasp and stagger, like something had clawed straight through.
"(SHE CAN FUCKING KICK?)"
The girl was moving much, much faster than she herself could register. Each thrashed fist was the result of a movement she'd done over and over again, without end, ingrained into her every last muscle. Every last movement from the moment she'd begun to charge forward felt like a lucid dream.
Spaurk Dina would continue to strike until a) the wall before her fell, or b) her fists dissolved. That was the directive she'd carved into the core of her being.
PLNK!
She stopped moving.
"... you've changed a lot, Dina. It's incredible."
Her chassis had fallen. The chains around her could no longer be exploited as weapons.
"But I need to win this fight."
That said, Kora was now unchained.
"Sorry about this." Kora lifted her head, two event horizons tunneling into Dina's soul. "I fold."
[ BGM: Norihito Sumitomo – Beautiful Murderer ]
Her consciousness returned in full. Dina looked up in confusion.
She fell diagonally, toward the direction of her broken shin. "... ah…"
Kora took a shaky step back, herself still reeling internally from Dina's consecutive surprise attacks. That said, she felt a great deal lighter. 50-fold lighter, even. "(Akaki must've installed a failsafe behind my back in case I ever reached a certain point… jerkass… and Dina pushed me to that point all on her own, huh? That same Dina…)" Her fists tightened. "(No. I can't afford to think like that. All that matters is winning.)"
She looked back up, and Dina had already gained enough distance to stand back up — one leg holding more weight than the other, of course. "(Even now, I can't take my eyes off you for a second…)"
Trunks sweat bullets, as if he were in Dina's shoes at the moment. W-WITH THE FALL OF HER CHESTPLATE, FORGET THE ROOF, STUDENT KORA'S POWER HAS SHOT THROUGH THE CLOUDS! EVEN AFTER THE RELENTLESS BEATDOWN BEFOREHAND, THIS JUMP IN POWER SEEMS... Unsalvageable, oR IS IT!? IT SEEMS THE SUPER SAIYAN SHOUJO'S SOLE HOPE LIES IN HER GOLDEN NAMESAKE AFTER ALL!
Pan stared at the ground, concealing her wincing. "(... Fuck.)"
"(FUCK.)" Instead of any grand counterplay or so much as a quick reassessment, Dina found herself repeating the exact same phrase over and over. Kora taking a single step triggered what desperate unfried neurons were left in her brain to force her into a sprint for somewhere far, far away. "(There's no counter anymore, she's just THAT much stronger!)" Her gums bled from the pressure that squeezed her gnashing teeth together. "(What can I even do? What the FUCK can I even do at this point!? DAMMIT! No…! Think. Think! I have a kit, now! If I just focus on what I can do with what I've got, then somehow I'll find a way to-)"ᵎ
8!
Dina's eyes snapped back open, her body jerking awake. "(I was… knocked… out?)"
"Have a nice nap?" asked a voice up ahead.
She'd been so rocked that she didn't even recognize it initially. She couldn't even concentrate.
A monument. Not like the four far off in the cardinal directions. One so unfathomably massive, it loomed above the clouds and sat above fog. Something so large that something as small as her should've escaped her notice.
Something like that was giving her undivided attention.
She scurried backward like she'd stumbled upon a body.
Kora stood back up from her bent posture. "Come on, what's gotten into you? I barely touched you. I mean, I'm only at around 5% right now."
"Piss… off…!" Dina stammered, shaking everywhere.
The stronger saiyan sighed. "Grow up. The fight's over anyway."
"Tell me wHAT'S OVER YOU BITCH!"
She rolled her eyes. "Tell you what. Until you stay down, I'm gonna hit you harder and harder. If you try tearing off that amulet, I'll jump to full power, and whatever happens after that, I'm sure the healers will fix. You've died before, right? You can take it."
It took Dina everything she had not to lunge at her in a rage. That "everything" was called self-preservation — a trademark of life on Earth, and a weakness to humans who'd never had it forced to the surface.
"Starting nᵎ
6!
Dina jerked back into consciousness. This time, she coughed up red spittle.
"10%."
She mentally sprinted past every encounter she'd ever had with a stronger opponent. She failed to remember Voshyo, nothing she'd used against Kazikum wouldᵎwork-
Dina yelped back into reality. "(Kit… Kit you f-...!)" She keeled over — something in her hip was splintered. Her fingers dug across the ground, no longer listening to Kora's haunting announcements.
[ BGM: Santa Esmeralda – Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood ]
Every second was one more until another hit. She almost lost with the last one. So she stopped thinking of everyone similar to Kora and looked back on her best.
She felt stupid, coming to the – well, an – answer so fast. "(That one… I could win… with'at one…!)"
She'd used two consecutive definitions of her spirit beforehand — using the intrinsic mystic of words in tandem with a meditative introspection. That "beforehand," she'd done so once under her breath after several rehearsals, and the next in one take. She was absolutely gone for the rest of the day after the stunt, but she was able to conduct both a "True" Jakkaball and… that state.
Turning her opponent's own aura into a strike of lightning, using their own power directly against them. Thinking so quickly, the world was practically frozen around her.
It was not a surefire victory. It was hardly a chance. But hardly a chance is a chance.
"Therefore…"
"?"
…
The magic of Spaurk Dina entailed Lightning.
She could manipulate it with two spoken spells: "Kuark," emission of a lightning bolt, and recently "Tsitil," the breakdown and conversion of charge into stable energy.
Both were laughable on their own, but with implementation of ki, and imagination on the user's part, they could hold their own handedly. Dina's magic, on an occasion which she didn't yet understand, could transmute ki into a burst of charges. The most likely story was connected to her own emotions, as it'd only occurred in her super saiyan state. However, she could possibly mimic that state of high-emotion low-thought in that state.
…
She smacked her hands together and muttered something.
Kora's confused stare turned into a glare. She didn't have an aura before that moment.
Kora's stipulation was that she could not kill her opponent. That left Dina an ultimatum:
Hold herself together or give up.
The warrior clad in black marched toward the scrapper in white. "Silly little Earth bitch wants to play Chicken with a Saiyan warrior…"
She stopped right in front of her. Dina slowly stopped moving. So did her own aura.
"Okay." Kora pulled back her fist taking her time, Dina unaware to perceive the speed difference. "I'm gonna make the sick bay WORK for your sorry ass, Dina…!"
9!
Lightning ran through her mind.
The words of her sonata weren't coming to her.
She began to get up, and then she saw Kora's foot.
9!
Lightning ran through her mind and body.
She tried thinking about it, but thinking wasn't very easy at the moment. Something was fractured up there, now.
Her fist curled. It wouldn't fucking stop her.
All she heard was Kora's kiai somewhere, and-
Ni-Nine! Trunks yelled again, his voice beginning to waver. To his chagrin, with a crackle of red lightning, Spaurk popped back up arms-first, and then her eyes reopened, and then Kora kicked her, and then she went back to sleep.
"Dammit…!" the lilac-haired suit cursed under his teeth, vaguely able to be made out. A hand rested on his shoulder, causing him to turn.
"Their choice, right?" Pan reaffirmed. Trunks gave her a look with a lament she could feel, looked back to Kora's own distressed face, and turned away and silently cursed himself.
"That said…!"
Son suddenly sprinted toward the walking corpse, sliding her way once in range.
123456789-
"AAH!" Like an invisible defibrillator, she shocked herself back to life.
SO YOU ARE FAKING! Son yanked Dina by the collar. SPAURK, IF YOU WASTE MY TIME AGAIN, I SWEAR I WILL PUNT YOUR ASS OFF THE STAGE SO FAST YOUR HEAD'S GONNA SPIN CLEAN OFF!
Dina stared at the angry lady in front of her for a perplexed second, before another crackle of mystic charge broke across her head.
Without a world, she repelled herself free and back toward Kora.
Kh…! Well folks, Dina's jet-set on wasting our time again, wow what a shocker! NOT! "(Don't die…! Please, figure something out, but DON'T DIE!)"
Kora stared in bewilderment. Then a foul-hearted chuckle set on her. "You dumbass…!"
Time. It was time. Dina would use it. She felt something coming on, anyway.
Though, words were starting to escape her. The only thing that could think about with any sort of ease was lightning, and only because she had to.
She still had an idea of her soul from moments ago. However, now, the bits of rationale she had left had the gall to start overthinking it.
The saiyaness held her temple in a thinly-tempered rage. "You, you have no FUCKING idea how EASY you have it right now, DO YOU!?" she laughed. "I'm so much stronger than you that I'm struggling not to KILL you! You're like a godsdamn ANT to me right now!"
Dina tried concentrating on her last resort. Tried. Keyword: tried.
Kora belligerently rolled her eyes, before knocking her out again.
Pan rushed her down again. 12345678-
"DAH-...!" Dina resuscitated herself, choking back a sob before pounding the ground, wobbling to attention from a knee, slight levitation imitating a stance despite her devastated hip.
Kora gave an exasperated breath, looking down at her electrified, erratically-twitching hand before making a fist. "I'm being… I've been, so, so NICE to you, you know?" she exclaimed with hand gestures. "If I were ANY OTHER SAIYAN on Vegeta, I would've KILLED YOU the DAY you talked out of line! Oh my-... I LOSE IF I KILL YOU! IF…! EVEN IF I DO SOMETHING AS SIMPLE AS BREAK EVERY BONE IN YOUR FRAIL LITTLE BODY, I STILL RUN THAT RISK! HELL, WOULD THAT EVEN WORK ON YOU, YOU FUCKING PSYCHO!?"
"This is awful…" Akaki gloomily shook his head, standing up to leave. "I'm sorry, but I can't watch anymore of this…"
His sleeve had been gripped too tight for him to move any further, and he accepted his fate with a twitching lip.
Before someone could so much as try telling him off, Archi bolted out of his seat. "JUST END THE MATCH, YOU PAIR'A MORONS!" he roared. "THIS AIN'T A FIGHT ANYMORE! YOU WON'T EVEN GIVE HER ANY OTHER WAY OUTTA THIS, ALL SHE CAN DO IS KEEP HITTIN' THAT MORON! HEY! THIS IS BULLSHIT!"
"EXCUSE YOU, DUMBASS!" Devine shouted in retort.
"THE HELL'D YOU SAY!?"
"YEAH, YOU CAN DROP THE SUPERHERO ACT, JERKASS! THEY BOTH MADE UP THEIR MIND THE SECOND THEY STEPPED IN THE RING! YOU CAN CRY ALL YOU FUCKING WANT, IF SHE'S STILL FIGHTING, YOU DON'T GET TO CALL SHIT!"
"ARE YOU BLIND!? THAT IDIOT'S GONNA GET HERSELF KILLED, AND KORA'S THE ONE WHO'S GOTTA DEAL WITH IT!"
"OH BY GODS, SHUT UP, JUST SHUT. UP! DINA KNOWS WHAT SHE'S DOING, I DON'T CARE YOU'RE TOO STUPID TO GET THAT!"
Watching the outburst, concealing his own Archi-leaning feelings, Wabi looked to see if Kaz would feel any different.
His eyes were covered by a clawed grip that dug into his skull. His usually fanged grimace was concealed by lips akin in shape to a bowtie, a tucked snarl absent of his usual blind certainty.
Dina grit her teeth. Between the constant image of haywire lightning and Kora's words, she could hardly conjure a single verse. It was something about that one thing she loved as a kid, she knew that.
Gradually, stripped from her by the same tapering red streams that'd run through her and jump-started her synapses, the negative seeped from her, and she delved into an even deeper focus.
As she did, the lightning she'd kept flowing in her mind began to lose its concrete shape, devolving into smaller, abstract patterns. The poem that once split her attention was slowly, surely converging.
What was the significance? Why that? Why-
-
With another surge of red lightning, Dina struck the ground again and fell on a broken arm.
789-
With another surge of red lightning, Dina struck the earth with a shoulder, blasting herself upward with a small repulsion.
Something donned on her.
She now had one functioning leg. Kora had broken both of her arms.
"Might as well try, right!?" the saiyaness shrugged with a decrepit chuckle, tendrils of Dina's magecraft reaching from the cloud and beginning to strike her, transferring over to her the half-breed's own intense emotions that amplified her own. "You really, really are, so damn sad, aren't you? The more I think about it, your every win, has been LUCK. If it weren't for one small little detail, your ass wouldn't've gotten past the FIRST block, never mind the second! Yet you always TOUT yourself with that stupid fucking ego of yours! Where'd you get it, Spaurk? No, who GAVE it to you!?" She sneered as Dina clenched her teary eyes shut. "You think the Time Patrol needs another moron like you? Someone who throws themselves into danger without any sort of plan? Oh wait, you DO have something on you that could even the odds, DON'T YOU, SUPER SAIYAN EXTRAORDINAIRE!?"
It was odd. For a moment, the sheer shock of the breakage struck through her nervous system like lightning, threatening to override her brain. But as the red ion stripes left her, she seemed to care less and less. Her highest-riding emotions were being transmitted through the same lightning resuscitating her, transferring them from her being to her environment and causing a lingering light storm throughout the cloud of dust around her. But again, she could hardly notice. Her rationale was too damn focused on…
The significance. Why was it so special to her? Why something she liked as a kid?
"YOU HAVE SOMETHING RIGHT THERE, SOMETHING YOU CAN USE TO FIGHT BACK, YET THERE YOU ARE, WAITING TO TRIP AND FALL ONTO YOUR HAPPY ASS OVER SOME SPUR-OF-THE-MOMENT CHANCE TO WIN, ALL THE WHILE JUST… LETTING ME PUMMEL YOU! YOU THINK I LIKE DOING THIS TO YOU!? HUH!? YOU STUPID FUCKING CUNT, DO YOU THINK I LIKE HURTING A DUMBASS WHO CAN'T EVEN FIGHT BACK!? BUT YOU KEEP GETTING UP, AND WITH NOTHING TO SHOW FOR IT! THAT DOESN'T MAKE YOU BRAVE OR A WARRIOR, THAT MAKES YOU STUPID!"
"..."
"..."
"... well?"
Zinco shifted his stare from the ground to the question. "What is it?"
"Aren't you gonna try n' stop it?" asked Neoru, who'd practically glued his eyes to the screen.
"... if I did, you'd just stop me. And it's not like what happened with Kaza, or you. She still has an option."
Neoru's frown was set to drop right off his face.
"Do you want me to stop them?"
"... mh… no, 'course not. She's got her own path. She'll see it through, that's what she's been doing."
Zinco watched Neo's shifting eyes, and his own fell back to the screen.
Kora yanked Dina forward, her every breath a snarl as the strikes assailing her grew stronger. "I NEED TO WIN THIS! IF I DON'T, THEN EVERYTHING I'VE EVER DONE, EVERYTHING I'VE EVER TAKEN, EVERYONE I'VE EVER HURT MEANS NOTHING! I CAN'T LET THAT HAPPEN! SCREW YOU, I NEED THIS MORE THAN YOU EVER COULD! SO WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SO ANGRY ABOUT!? WHAT GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO BE SO DAMN ANGRY!?"
"... end… less…" Dina's mind began to slip. "Deri… sio…"
She'd stopped thinking very hard. By no fault of her own.
— in that moment, it had seemed so fitting. Now, it seemed hollow. The dauber only sought the endless search. Dina had a concrete mission. Such a poem surely fit Devine or Neoru much more than it could Spaurk Dina.
The saiyaness hurled her nemesis away from her by the collar in a rage, forgetting to leave her with another debilitating punch. The now-red bioelectricity in her body abruptly restored her muscles' functions, strained and supplementing bone structure. She reached for her amulet.
Kora stopped her advance. "(No…! Move! Move, dammit! TAKE HER DOWN!)"
Dina's grip tightened around the chain, of which was conducting portions of ions both mystic and natural, surging back and forth around the dust-coated environment.
"STOP WAITING AROUND!" Kora screamed to… "DO IT, DUMBASS!" In a roar packing an emotion indescribable, she dashed into the girl, full-tilt punching her in the face.
Something squished.
…
..
.
.
..
…
YPD.
"(... ah.)"
Yarg. Police. Department.
"(I just… really liked dinosaurs.)"
A waste of time. She was looking for meaning that wasn't present.
In a storm of negative components and failures comprising her past, that small childish interest had been her eye within it all. The past…
It slammed into her all at once and left just as quickly, like a lightning strike. A single moment, composed of countless smaller particles, flowing into each other. Positive, negative.
"(I wanted to change… right?)"
The plasmatic strands of lightning that once proudly ran through her mind as classical bolts had been reduced to bubbles and waves, racing around each other like water. A far cry from something a god would hurl down.
"(Why'd I start goin' on about… a tournament, again?)"
"Man… still bites, though. Not mattering anymore, 'n all…"
"No matter what, I'm hellbound now."
"So I don't give a shit anymore about what it changes. I just want to kill him, just once."
"I don't wanna know that people can kill them and feel nothing, so I'll do it…! I don't wanna hate anyone else, so I'll hate myself…! I don't want people to feel guilty, so I'll keep being…!"
"(... ah.)"
"... What does it matter if there's nothing left here for me to care about?"
"(Not just myself. Right.)"
"I'm just sick of it, Dina."
"You could break it. You're the only one who could."
Suddenly…
Things started to chain.
In the same way, the abstract concept of lightning began to make sense. No… "sense" didn't do the idea justice.
A bubble lit up and spilled a wave from its radius, waves that spilled into others that lit up and did the same. Each one gave and took from another, altering the one after it, altered by the one before it.
Even before the singular bubble. Within it, more. So deep to a point where waves looped into themselves, forming bubbles from seemingly nothing.
But it wasn't nothing. An infinite ocean, one colossal wave. A bubble in itself.
An endless stream of interacting bubbles and waves. Branching off eternally.
One last burst of red lightning surged her back to… mobility. Pan hardly had the chance to count her down.
The five senses calmed. Reason itself rested in silence.
Dina's state of matter began to flicker.
[ BGM: BACK-ON – Chain (2:38) ]
"Pre-Zero, Post-Ending."
"Chance Meeting, Assured Convergence."
"Flash by Heaven, Blackening Earth."
"Push Back, Drawn Together."
"Seamless Loop, Altered Path."
For less than one picosecond,
"Therefore,"
Dina manifests a Dao.
"SㅤPㅤAㅤRㅤKㅤIㅤNㅤGㅤ."
She broke down into a flash of red plasma. All positive charge, sapped from her, transferred a ways up front,
And right behind a comparatively-colossal mass of positive charge named Kora.
The bioelectricity within, the magical lightning beyond, and the natural charges in between, were poured into with every drop of qi she had. Each facet converged onto itself and became one emission.
The links fluttering about the manifold were materialized and made into her own. The energies, in that single instance, continuously fed into each other, accelerating the flash of light past any other.
Barreling toward the saiyaness mid-charge, using her own bodyweight as an additive force lever, becoming one with the natural phenomenon, imbuing its strike with her very soul, Dina transcended form ever-so briefly. An absolute bolt, an ever-changing pattern, aimed at no living target, firing through space and seeking only to advance.
That said, at the moment of contact, Spaurk reclaimed mass, knuckle-first. A spiraling fist took shape — one moving just like a corkscrew punch.
Dina had made lightning itself her steed, as a manifestation of her conceptual becoming. The moment the rest of her existence caught up with her, the first thought that sprang to mind was a name; one she'd already thought up for a former attack she would now never use.
マキシマム
{ MAXIMUM }
雷道 ?
ライド ?
{ RㅤAㅤIㅤDㅤOㅤOㅤOㅤ — ! ! ! }
In the beyond-brief moment within which it occurred, it struck with a force a thousand times Dina's current output. No less.
Kora couldn't react, the strike leaving her skeleton briefly visible. With it, the sight of her solar plexus visibly shattering, as a gigantic jet phenomenon enveloped her and flew into the sky, a blue eruption that streamed outward in violets, rocketing off in a deep red taper.
Ki and Magic's seamless blending had formed an ultimate reality, for less than a moment.
And with that…
"..."
"Didst thou know of this? This outcome?" Tarubei turned, a crestfallen awe etched across her face. "Beest that the source of thy silence throughout?"
"... I'm…" Ayeva stared blankly, her surreal assurance she only questioned after its vindication. "I'm actually not sure…"
"What, in the actual fuck, are you feedin' that kid?" Kaset slowly asked.
"S-SHE DID THAT ON HER OWN!"
One side of the arena was left black and barren. The other, splintered and compressed, as if great hands had smashed it together.
"..."
In its epicenter,
"... oh…"
Dina.
She regained herself. And with that, of her limbs. Her striking arm was gone.
In exchange, she'd gained an intuitive understanding of charge itself, pulling her broken bones together at the sub-atomic level. It wasn't regeneration, but she could think much clearer. In fact, all of her senses had been amped to a considerable degree.
She took a step and almost fainted. No, she could not spur energy from the aether, and no, she wasn't immune to pain. In fact, all of her senses had been amped to a considerable degree.
She wasn't all too sure her mixed heritage would make the phrase "Monkey's Paw" offensive on her end or not, so she stuck with calling the situation a load of piss.
"Kua… khh…"
Before she could keel over, Dina looked back up.
With the dust having… exploded… there was no chance of mistaking it. There was Kora.
Leaking blood. From the mouth.
Her every breath sounded and felt like her last. The fact that she'd planned to strike Dina one last time at full power may've wound up killing the half-breed, and yet the decision ironically saved her own life. Among countless other damages, her sternum was destroyed, and her solar plexus was on the fritz.
Seeing that Dina was arguably worse off was all that kept her going. Until that point, all damage taken by herself was menial at best and, at worst, manageable with focus. This was as life-threatening as everything Dina had taken, combined.
"Get…!" Kora wheezed as she struggled to get off her back. "Get up…!"
Dina, with grit teeth, met her demands. "Not even a 'kindly', then?" she quipped with a shaky voice, holding her pre-cauterized stump.
Kora's fist balled as her aura pathetically hissed in a smoke, a far cry from the intense aura she could once emit.
Both shows of effort gave the girls a promise that kept them fierce:
"(... we've leveled out.)"
[ Self-Contained ED: Courage My Love – Bridges ]
In their opponent's current condition, they could win.
Somehow.
Because they had to.
10/3/2024 PATCH NOTES: Cleaned up Kora's gravity explanation. Cleaned up stray leftovers from the drafts. Quality of Life text to give story more flow. Punished OP severely for his transgressions.
1/9/2025 PATCH NOTES: Writing clean-ups.
2/15/2025 PATCH NOTES: Changed Dina's Dao name from "Fulgur" to "SPARKING." Latin is far too impersonal; there was an idea of Dina saying something not even she could understand to invoke some deepwr power, but the entire point of a Dao is for one to interpret and invoke a concept with their entire being. It should be personal, so the same way Mei says it in her language, Dina should speak it in hers. The spaces and capitalization are meant to emphasize that she's saying it in English. Also, yeah, Cha La reference is intentional.
Yo! OP Here!
Ten thousand praises to my GOAT Itadori's name and another ten thousand to my new GOAT, Rich Homie Kazuma.
I got to watch s-CRY-ed. I fuckin tore through 26 episodes in 2 days. I don't know how s-CRY-ed does it, but that shit is ass-to-seat. Anyway, yeah, Kazuma has Sanada Yukimura's VA and Date Masamune's mannerisms, with both of their spirits. Among various other factors, that shit marks him in my hall of fame. The idea of Alters is also cool as shit; using the energy from material in the environment and transforming it into power through force of spirit. Harkens back to shit like the Tao and chi.
On that, I got to read through more of Tao of Physics. "Physical Field." The legit concept of matter being born from the void. That shit is cool.
I talked about the ill shit I was doing beforehand to try focusing on discussion points for the chapter. So I guess I'll start with Dina having a fucking Dao now.
It's more so related to Dina being able to use both ki and magic. It's similar to old ki, i.e. "qi" in this story, in which an absolute harmony is established between inner and outer cosmic force. I.E. Dina holds potential to be a New Age Mei, thanks to Selaine. And also she's half-saiyan. What I'm saying is that she's Potential Woman. Unlike my GOAT HIMtadori.
On that, spur-moment lore time. Ancient ideas of qi in-verse made it exceedingly difficult to even harness, let alone master; in return, those who COULD understand and harness it could use it as if a blend of magic and ki, enabling creation, nigh-immortality, etc. As time passed and advancements were ade, Ki was broken down and became simplified, allowing more access while ultimately leaving it incomplete; now restrained to life energy, and no longer a cosmic essence. Someone like, to give a unique example, Beerus is from the former period, while Frieza is the latter. Earth-wise, Roujiamo is the former, Kaset is the latter. Conton City, which ISN'T bound by gaps in time and can access ALL information from history and all of its greater teachers, is the only place... ever... that holds the potential to perfect ki and, by extension, the Path Supreme.
Anyway, the OG idea I wanted to implement is that UI's silver eyes, in this story, are representative of the Dao and the user's manifesting of it in regards to a certain concept. For Goku, in this instance, it'd be something like "Self-Mastery," a divine Dao sought by even the gods. I scrapped it because it didn't happen to Mei. My dedication to consistency is in itself inconsistent. I apologize and will surely do it again.
The name Dina gave for her attack post-Dao state. It's inspired by the fact that the first time I ever heard the book title "Maximum Ride," I thought it was the it was the hardest attack name ever conceived on God's Green Earth. YA bird people tho. Apparently, it was good up until the last few books. Sucks to be them, I'm takin' your name. But besides that, it's a dual-meaning that I so """subtly""" inserted into the actual chapter: if you add a U to the end, it quite literally translates into "Lightning Path" or, more aptly, "Lightning Dao." There's an ongoing theme of the "intuitive mind" and act-without-thought in this chapter, thanks to me recently learning the specific name of the phenomenon. Dina thinks things through during fights, reluctantly, but a lot of her decisions are based on in-moment feelings, so giving her a Dao based on this, in tandem with her use of inner/outer energy, felt right. It's also in perfect contrast to Kora, a genius who struggles to use "feeling" effectively.
I also wanted a scene in which Dina tries to do the snappy, "Relaxation Into Explosive Power" or something that Goku did on Namek, and what Superhero Vegeta's stupid ass apparently thinks only Jiren was capable of. The point of that would've been to show that, yes, that IS high-level ki control, and no, Dina ain't even CLOSE to being able to pull that off. People like Neo, Zinco, and Kora, as well as Goku and Jiren and NOT YOU VEGETA, APPARENTLY, IDK BRO SUCKS TO SUCK BLAME TOYO, are martial prodigies, exemplified by being able to do as such. Only, Zinco has a hand-me-down spirit with compounded interest and Neoru is literally just thousands of years worth of dragon soul in a teenager's body and mind. Kora is just Kora and she's doing that shit. That's pretty fucking cool.
I cut it out because it gets established pretty early on that Dina is at a power disadvantage, so doing something she isn't sure of, with a menial payoff, would've been Not Dina-Stupid. You see Dina-Stupid all throughout this chapter, and it ain't that. Y'know, on that...
If it seems sometimes like I'm trying to rationalize people running into the UFC and getting CTE because I AIN'T HERE, NOBEL, I'm not, I swear. That's more so a Freedom of Choice thing. Remember that this is a world where magical beans are grown and, here specifically, there are literally folks that walk around with the ability to heal wounds with a touch. Don't try this shit at home. Not knowing when the fuck to stop is a steep hill of consequence. Whether or not you wanna pave that path is up to you, I'm just saying there are folks that can tell you it's not a fun life once it's over.
OKOK One more thing. Weird music choices for these middle chapters, right? Reason for that: I wanted it to be sort of like the character's singing it. Time And Time Again, Neoru, and Bridges, Dina. The goal was to match the character, both thematically and tone-wise (lyrics and energy); specific voices didn't matter as much. If I cared THAT much, life would be harder.
That said, if there was a female cover of Tuned to a Different Station, I would've used that. But Bridges does just fine.
Next Chapter: Big Saiyan Lady throws Small Saiyan Baby into trees, upsetting Big Human Man-Mom repeatedly.
That's about it. See ya.
five fucking chapters man, are you kidding me-
oh wait. as of now, four.
also,
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA-