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@LeeRoy

"HRAH!! Fine hike that was! What be this, a festival?"

Gonad clambered into the courtyard, soaked in sweat. He jogged past a lounging goddess, casually yoinking her toga right off her body and toweling off with it. She blushed and looked away, refusing to meet the eyes of her fuming god-husband who just so happened to be both bald and beardless.
Gonad waddled up to a table, flossing with the toga to dry his loins. It made squeaky noises. He seized a hoblet of wine and cocked his head back, downing the sucker whilst tossing the toga over a shoulder and into the nude goddess's lap.

"Now that thirst of Gonad is quenched, Gonad must drop ballast! If not, never will Gonad reach village for dinner with wives next month."

He picked up a peach, examining it.

"A girly fruit! Gonad needs PROTEIN!"

In a bound he was on the table, platters clattering, wine spilling, and peaches tumbling, his tassets and loincloth around his ankles. He kicked them off the table and squatted down resolutely.

Silence

Then...

A concerned grunt, strained at the end. Thighs tensed, Gonad began to strain.

Some stared in utter bafflement. Others squeezed their eyes shut and looked away. It started with a raw, dumpy fart, one that stank like rancid eggs. A great looping coil of rich brown poo decorated the peaches like tinsel on a Christmas tree, spindling into a fat pile of fudge. Gonad cast his eye up to the heavens, a single vein throbbing between his eyes, face slowly turning red from the effort. A space in the clouds opened, and as if by divine intention a ray of bright sunlight fell upon him like a spotlight.
"Grrruuuhaaawwww!"
A thick malodour packed the air, pressing in on everyone's sinus cavities like an encroaching wall of stench. It just kept churning out. Flecks of shit suddenly shotgunned out of the barbarian's ass to the accompaniment of a sharp bout of stuttering flatulence, dung-speckling the fruits of the gods. Gonad groaned and took a step forwards, the tendons in his neck straining as a colossal log emerged from his recrum. It plowed directly onto a single, solitary peach, velvety and pure...

The peach was squashed unceremoniously with a table shaking thud, the doorstopper turd reducing it to a pulp under a pile.

"Now Gonad can make good time!"

He was mindblowingly oblivious to the company he was in.

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@LeeRoy

He'd had already jogged halfway out of the courtyard by the time the Jade Emperor introduced Shin. Their words, their faces, their food. Gonad saw but he didn't see. He'd been on autopilot, going through the motions, traveling, training, with only his eight wives emotionally anchoring him to this world. These days everything seemed to pass by him in a bland haze of noise and light, behind which wafted fond memories of grand battles past. He'd heard something just then, however, that cut through the disconcerting fog of boredom he'd been living in.

>"A perfect match for you... The Man who will kill you!"<

Dusty gears began turning. He turned around, eyes big, wide, and brimming with innocent hope. He ignored the Jade Emperor, focusing only on Shin at that moment.

"I am Shin Zhou, born of China to the late Ming Dynasty. It is a pleasure to fight in the company of my people's Gods, and a pleasure to meet you despite your unfortunate circumstance."

Mirth radiated from Gonad's infectious grin, a giddy chortle escaping him and his single eye rolling up with joy. There was a swagger to his step as he made his way back into the courtyard, sending tables skidding recklessly out of the way with his feet to make room. He'd stop four meters from Shin, looking the little fella up and down, unable and unwilling to hide his delight. He glanced over at the Jade King beyond Shin, apparently 'seeing' him for the first time.

"Hrah... The Gods...?"

Gonad slowly turned a full circle, studying the setting in earnest. By the Sky Yak, he really was in the company of gods. They all shone with beauty and color, and they also stared at Gonad as if he were a goat with an extra head on its ass. Gonad's eyes shot open even wider.

"BWAH! Gonad has found a divine place, and the gods themselves grant Gonad the desire of Gonad's heart! Gonad has no choice but to accept this challenge! Gonad sees Shin Man. Gonad be Gonad Yaksplitter, from Village of Gonad! If this be duel honored by the gods, then Gonad will fight with the purity of birth, and no other way."

Every single last article of clothing and equipment fell to the floor in turn, and was kicked unceremoniously to the sidelines. The eyepatch, a necklace of animal teeth, large steel bracers, tassets, loincloth, big-ass boots... In less than a minute Gonad would proudly stand before Shin, before the palace, before the gods, buck naked and armed with nothing he hadn't emerged from the womb with. Before Gonad might have been likened to a bull, armed with hooves and horns and sheer mass. Now, however, he seemed to almost appear as a god himself, unburdened by the world and free to let his presence expand. He hid behind nothing, had nothing to hide, ready to leave the mortal world in the same way he'd entered. With simple nudity he'd become a singularity, complete within itself. Practical sense had nothing to do with it, and neither did divinity. The gods themselves might flinch before the spirit of a mortal.

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@LeeRoy

The barbarian kept pace with Shin as he circled, like they were going for a walk, maintaining a few meters distance as he considered Shin's guard. Shin clearly wanted to avoid being knocked out early, and seemed eager to use his hands and claws to counter. As Gonad understood it, a stance or a guard is one thing, but an attack is another. Some moves just flow better from certain positions, is all.

He pointed at Shin with the hand nearest, crooking a grisly nail at him.

"Training of Shin Man must be great, tanned like the hide of the Sky Yak in the light of the Yakmother's solar teat, for never such a body has Gonad seen. Still, more than training alone has Shin Man endured, and more to endure is to come!"

Before those words made any clear sense, Gonad abruptly faced Shin and declared his attack.

"SUNNY G!"

A stream of pee arced over towards Shin's chest. Gonad probably didn't have a lot in him considering he'd been thirsty. What a golden blessing.

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@LeeRoy

Gonad's mouth wrinkled into a small 'O' of surprise as his pee was slapped away, Shin's hands a whirring blur. It didn't take a speedometer for Gonad to see right off the bat that he was at a disadvantage in speed.

~Bwah! Fast then he be, but no more than ten stone should Shin Man weigh...~

Having roughly estimated Shin's casual speed, Gonad extended his left arm in a 'thumbs up' as his opponent hopped in, intending to plant his thumb against Shin's forehead to give him a light push backwards as his attack commenced, thus forcing him out to Gonad's arm's reach and preemptively locking him out of his effective ra-!?

Gonad, to his utter bafflement, was forced backwards partway through his thought, rocking onto his right heel.

~Bwuh!? Heavy!?!?~

Shin's mass, although still far less than Gonad's, had been substantially more than Gonad had expected of a man of such stature. If Gonad succeeded in pressing his thumb against Shin's forehead, instead of casually holding back Shin he himself was pushed back by his own counter. He'd been in a neutral stance as well, neither foot in front nor in back, thus ill preparing him to accommodate the momentum of Shin. The double fisted blow came short of hitting the barbarian, but Shin's message came through quite clearly; weight classes weren't going to decide this fight so simply.
Gonad knew as soon as he was off-balance that he'd have to recover immediately to afford no further openings. He'd be wary of his opponent attempting to grab or strike his left arm as he staggered back a step. With barely contained excitement Gonad decided to assume that his opponent had even more speed than initially showcased, just to be safe, and also reevaluated his initial assumption of Shin's weight. Ten stone? More like fifteen or sixteen at the very least.

At the highest level of martial arts, one no longer seeks merely to 'win'. The ultimate goal of the warrior is to achieve victory at any cost in any situation, but a martial artist strives for self improvement, eternally seeking their 'perfect self'. Gonad had always fought with both ideals in mind, but as he matured he'd learned which was more important. For the weak, mercy affords enemies more chances to slay them. For the strong, mercy means your foe can challenge you another day and help you achieve greater heights. The fear of death only serves as cheap motivation for those who don't have the will to risk their lives and learn from the same foe twice.
The berserker arts were designed purely for warfare. A supreme offensive effort that applied every last asset the body could offer to the sole purpose of slaying all enemies in an instant, with no regard for one's own safety. The last time Gonad had needed to go berserk had been against a shapeshifting demon that could take the strength of those it had eaten. He could distinctly feel a similar threat level from this little Asian half his size.
Gonad would have loved to go all out every time he fought, but the martial arts are not about appeasing one's nature. It is discipline, understanding, and growth. In war, one should pull an opponent up by the roots. In martial arts, you prune your opponent and your opponent prunes you. Gonad sought not to remove weeds, but to nurture fruit.

Could this foe, designated by the gods, rekindle Gonad's warrior's nature and make him fight without consideration for the life of his opponent?

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@LeeRoy

Gonad hadn't forgotten the last time he'd gotten the wind knocked out of him. Worthy foes were treasured in memories past. Here was another gem for the collection. The barbarian was familiar with the concept of the one inch punch, and could perform similar attacks, but he'd never met anyone else who had devoted as much or more effort into mastering it. He'd thought he was in a position of relative safety, only to be struck when he least expected it. Gonad skidded back, bracing his left foot behind himself this time, single eye bulging, two fresh, bright red marred knuckle imprints left by Shin's fists. He'd been forced to cede ground twice now.

From Shin's perspective, he may have fancied himself in a position of safety as well. He'd connected flush with his blow, the perfection of his Kung Fu reverberating throughout Gonad's body like a ripple. It would have stopped any other martial artist cold. This was something very different. Even as he closed in and landed his attack, Gonad had been in the process of showing Shin his own cultivation. During that second of pause where Shin had concentrated his power, Gonad's left hand moved with a venomous flicker, the thumb that had been pressed against Shin's forehead jagging down to plunge into his empty socket. Should the point blank gouge succeed, a fearsome pressure would immediately overtake Shin's orbital bone as it was actually pinched between the barbarian's finger and thumb, the hulking warrior finding a grip right off the bat as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and for him it was.
One trained as a berserker gives no quarter to pain, an ultimate opportunist who siezes the moments between life and death.

Shin would be jerked after Gonad, the hairy, thick fingers not budging despite the two-fisted blow having landed at roughly the same time. Gonad's toenails scritched across the damp floor, and before he even finished sliding he'd seek to take advantage of Shin being potentially pulled off balance. Gonad's rear foot left the floor as he spun on the ball of his lead right foot. The fast, low roundhouse glided in on a cushion of silence. All the weight of that silence was in dynamite. If it struck it'd bowl through Shin's shins and, in conjunction with his skull being hauled to his right, would launch his body into a searing mid-air cartwheel that'd culminate in his head hitting the ground before his feet did, and his feet winding up where his head had been.

Whether or not the traffic accident of a kick landed, Gonad's stomach churned shortly after the exchange, a hot swell rising up too fast to stop. A cocktail of everything Gonad had consumed in the last few hours flooded his cheeks and spewed out from between his lips, a partially digested stew of bile slapping the ground. He'd been hit in both the chest and the belly, and now that a few moments had passed, the full effects of the two fisted blow had begun to manifest. The impact had been more than he'd expected, just like everything else involving this strange, Eastern warrior. He wondered if this was on purpose. One blow voids the lungs of air, as the other threatens further suffocation by voiding the stomach. An enemy gasping for oxygen, then choking on vomit. A two-fisted attack with a two-fold threat.

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@LeeRoy

This time the technique Shin used was something Gonad had never seen before. When a wild beast encounters the unknown, the first instinct is to retreat. Find safety, wait out the storm and prepare better for the next time. Survival is all that matters. It's easy to assume that Gonad has the same instincts as a wild beast, and would try to evaluate anything suspicious from a safe distance.

Such thinking was the bane of all warriors. One who seeks to preserve their life loses it, as only prey flees. For some, fighting is like driving a car. Going by the book, you stop at red lights, go on green, avoid contact with other vehicles, and obey the speed limit. If Gonad were in a motor vehicle, he wouldn't even dignify the traffic lights with a glance. He'd take a shortcut through a government building and then careen off a cliff.
Despite the technique being new to Gonad he was able to discern it in a heartbeat, waylaying all inessential information with the astute simplicity of a child and siezing his next opportunity without hesitation. Instead of retracting his leg immediately after the kick, Gonad paused a moment to see how Shin recovered and then stepped forwards during the second revolution, vomit still running down his beard.

Partway through that second horizontal spin, when his back was to Gonad, Shin might abruptly feel an immense weight settling firmly onto his inwards pointing thumbs, temporarily pinning his hands in place and killing a significant portion of his potential energy on the roundabout, perhaps damaging his arms with his own momentum as well. He'd be able to see what had happened immediately. With a downright scary sense of timing, Gonad would have trapped the thumbs under the ball of his left foot, the same he'd just kicked with, and bearing down with his quarter-ton of weight would invade Shin's personal space prematurely and grab him by the hips, transitioning into a belly to back waistlock as he wrenched Shin into the air like a sack of spuds while stepping off his thumbs. The spinning leg(s) might whack against Gonad's right bicep if Shin could stretch enough, but the power would be relatively insubstantial and far from the stopping power required to slow down the behemoth.

Should this occur, then a brief feeling of weightlessness would accompany the sight of the sky flipping overhead. In two blinks Shin would be staring at the Jade Emperor from his perch atop Gonad's shoulders, the Jade Emperor staring back, bewildered by the strange counter. Gonad had swung Shin's 250 pound body up into a backwards piggyback, and would hold him in place with the waistlock, forearms squeezing into his opponent's love handles. From there Shin could easily wail on the brute's head, strangle that thick neck between his thighs, or any number of other fearsome attacks, but... There it was again. That heavy silence, the air thick with the vaccuum tension of an impending disaster.
Entertainment wrestling was likely something Shin had never seen before, and Gonad wasn't a paid actor, yet even then it wouldn't be too difficult to visualize what was going to come next. Shin had enough time to try a quick thing or two, but if he got lifted he'd be at ground zero. One of Gonad's kicks was akin to a low speed motorcycle crash. If he applied the strength of his entire body in conjunction with his and Shin's combined mass, the next attack would surely do justice to its name.

It was a fallacy to assume Gonad was unarmed. When one uses the very bodies of their enemies as kinetic weapons, there is always another weapon within reach, each a hundred times greater in weight than a mere blade, exponentially more devastating than the blow of any club, and as difficult to evade as tenfold bear traps beneath a blanket of snow.

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@LeeRoy

Shin had been caught, but not flat-flooted. Like Gonad he was able to act inbetween the moments that most would have spent stuck in indecision. Shin too was an engine of deadly efficiency, but there was a vital difference in this particular scenario. Shin had traversed many lands over many ages, and surely had mastered many arts besides Kung-Fu. He'd likely even touched the Way of the Void, that ultimate skill of learning to learn, adapting on the fly to new circumstances without any self doubt.
Gonad's realm of experience was somewhat different. Born amongst Neanderthals who desired only physical strength, he created from scratch a complete art of bare-handed slaying and through trial and error perfected it. When it came to grappling, Gonad did not need to guess or improvise. He already knew what to do and so did his body, from his fingers to his toes. Thus, as soon as Shin began pushing on Gonad's head, a singular feeling lit up within the barbarian, one as familiar as each face in his family. That feeling was...

~~~I know what to do~~~

As Shin began forcing himself up, Gonad immediately helped him. He slid his hands back into a clamplike grip on Shin's lovehandles and thrust him up overhead, using Shin's own convenient intentions against him to morph the simple powerbomb into...
An elevated powerbomb. The Undertaker utilized this move under the name 'Last Ride'. Although Shin's head would be just roughly eleven feet above the ground, the landing would be comparable to a fall from an eight story building.

Should Shin be elevated, then with a great heave Gonad would turn to the right and bow faster than a Japanese salaryman who farted next to his boss in an elevator. A table stacked with platters of peaches. It'd practically explode as Shin's body whipped through it, but it'd help to break his fall a bit. He'd still slap hard against the floor with a noise like a thunder clap, but he'd not sustain any mortal injuries. It was a good thing he was so stacked, any other human would have died on the spot, cushion or no cushion. Gonad would release Shin as he hit the table, sinewy hands sliding down his plummeting opponent's legs until they latched dextrously onto either ankle, such that Shin upon impact would still be in the barbarian's clutches, legs held up off the ground as Gonad beamed enthusiastically down like a child in a toy store.

"HRAH! Good warm up such was! Enough sparring this be, now have real fight we can."

There was no irony in Gonad's voice.