Sakura, Donnie, Mag Launcher, and Ryuji
in
A Really Big Fight
Word Counter: 9,576
Sakura Level 2 11/20 + 3 = 14/20
Donnie Level 6 45/60 + 3 = 48/60
Mag Launcher Level 1 0/10 + 3 = 3/10
Sakura would quiet down and would preemptively indicate for Ace Cadet to do so as well. She hadn’t realised that Peach was also royalty, which made sense. Could Bowser and Peach marry each other and create a kingdom? Maybe they already were. She really had no idea what to expect from this world.
The teenager would be greatly moved by the Princess’ speech, cheering and waving her hands in the air. This Smash City was a place where fighters came from all over to beat the heck out of each other and get better. Sakura, for one, could not wait to begin. Plans were beginning to be made about splitting up, but Sakura was already partially tuning out as she began to think of the possibility of sparring with one of these fantastical looking people in her general radius.
As soon as the speech ended, Sakura span and then literally cartwheeled away from the main group to get a better perspective.
”Okay, who wants to fight me!?” Sakura asked, challenging everyone in the room. She punched the air, her strong arm rocketing directly upward. This was an opportunity that had never presented itself. It was already a dream to fight warriors from around the world, but now she could battle warriors from
other worlds. Despite how bad their situation was, there was no way not to find some joy in this for the young warrior.
A man, clearly in his late twenties to early thirties, raised his ornate armored hand. “Bit of a weird time, but I’m up for a fight. That’s the point of this city, right?” He walked up to Sakura and offered a hand. “Name’s Donovan. Yours?”
Sakura made intense eye contact, her raised fist going down with a slap into Donovan’s extended hand, shaking it.
”Pleased to meet you, Donovan! My name’s Sakura and- I mean- yeah! Let’s do it! Thanks! This is gonna be great. Do you fight with the armor on?” Sakura ended her rambling with a question, shaking his hand all the while.
Donnie retracted his hand (Sakura was shaking it for quite a while, honestly), and said. “Well, normally I
do, but only for adventuring and missions. For a friendly battle, I wouldn’t. It’s enchanted. Improves agility, mastery, versatility in combat, the ability to find weakpoints in an opponent, and it’s incredibly durable in the first place. I’d probably need to take all of this off if we were going to use these ‘battle sims.’”
He looked around. “Speaking of which, we should probably go find out how to set that up….”
Sakura shrugged and glanced around, wiping her hand on her skirt that had become sweaty pressed against her fighting glove and the metal glove.
”Um, I dunno. Let’s go ask.” Sakura jogged along, looking for someone who knew like they were doing.
Deep in the crowd, a really short teenage boy heard Sakura’s call for challengers and he raised his hand.
”Ooh! Me! I’d like to!” he called out, but he was too short to be seen over the much larger crowd around him. He hopped a few times trying to get attention, but to no avail. Her challenge was met by another man, a huge guy, and the two went off together.
Darn it, Mag! he thought to himself.
Why didn’t you use your airacomet to get attention? That would have made more sense. By the time he fought his way through the crowd, the two were gone. Darn, where’d they go? He took off toward the various battle chambers, but knew that unless he got lucky it’d take some time to find them.
Briefly, Sakura stopped by Isabelle’s desk.
”Hey, uh, I guess I’ll go to the island. I’m pretty good at swimming. Or just put me with whichever group has the least people, it’s all fine with me!” She said cheerily.
“Dead Zone, full stop.” Donnie said with a grimace at the thought of going back
there again. “I can cure diseases and poisons with magic, and the Dead Zone is full of zombie plagues. Any group that goes there needs to have me with them.”
After a bit of searching they found an administrator who gave them the low-down on how all the fighting worked. They could go into some kind of magic/sci-fi arena that could give them a gazillion different fighting arenas to choose from, which was awesome!
”Come on, Mister Donovan, this way!” She gestured for him to follow. Eventually they found a large empty fighting room with a small screen next to the door that would allow them to choose their arena. Sakura began pressing buttons and switching through different options, clearly not sure what to pick, or even how to pick it. She was working that out on the fly.
”It’s like a fighting game!” She exclaimed in amazement.
”But in real life!” “This technology is incredible!” the monk exclaimed as he poured through the stage select. “I don’t even think the Titans made things like this!” Donnie was experimenting with different button combinations to try and figure out how this thing worked. It was surprisingly intuitive. He just hoped it wouldn’t explode or fail spectacularly like so much Azerothian tech….
“You’ll have to show me a fighting game sometime. We don’t have things like that where I come from,” Donnie said as he fiddled with the console.
Sakura smiled, squinting over at Donnie. Going by the armor and him talking about Titans, he was probably from a fantasy world. Well, from her perspective, anyway. From his perspective it was
her that came from a fantasy world. But in this case, she knew a little bit more.
”It looks like we get to pick stages to fight in. There’s a flying island, a big grassy island with a castle, a big factory with lasers.” She swiped from screen to screen.
”This is all great, but I kinda wanna fight you, not the environment.” She said.
”Some of this stuff seems kinda like casual party game stuff rather than real fighting game stuff.” She added dismissively.
”What about this one? Three floating platforms over a big floating platform.” She indicated the image on the screen, called ‘Battlefield’.
Donnie put a hand to his chin. “I mean, maybe, but those platforms look like you could easily smash your head against them at ground level, or, worse, break your neck if you hit the edge the wrong way. They probably have some kind of safety mechanism, but I’d rather not find out.”
He pulled up an even simpler-looking stage, basically a flat octagon floating in space with lots and lots of sci-fantasy decoration. “How about this one?”
Sakura stuck out her lower lip, evaluating the stage.
”Sure! I guess we won’t really fall into, like, infinite nothingness.” She said, figuring that it would probably only be a drop of a few feet.
Since that was the one that Donnie suggested, and she had no objections, she went ahead and pressed the start button. With that, the large room turned into a replication of space, and a big floating platform in the middle. Floating discs appeared just on the other side of the door frame.
Sakura whistled at the impressive display of technology. That was like something out of a TV show. Tentatively, she stepped onto the disc. When both feet were firmly on the circle, it whisked her away at high speed to the surface of the platform. She felt like she should have fell right off, but it kept her in place. Jumping off and landing on the platform, she looked back through the doorframe and waved at Donnie, who now looked like he was standing in a door frame in the middle of space.
”It’s beautiful up here!” She called out with a spin, taking in the vista of simulated deep space.
Donnie, for his part, was much more cautious until Sakura stepped on her disc. Years of adventuring experience had taught him not to trust incredible high-technology until someone else used it first. Odds were it would probably explode or otherwise kill you in some spectacular way.
He tentatively stepped on the disc, now that Sakura had proven it was safe, and was whisked up to the platform. This stage had been marked “Final Destination (Melee),” and it sure
looked the part. “I know this is just a sim, but this doesn’t look safe,” he said as he stepped onto it.
”I’m sure it’s fine!” Sakura said with unwarranted confidence, jumping and stomping on the platform to assure him of its sturdiness.
“I gotta hand it to whoever designed this th--WHAT THE HELL?!” The stage began moving at incredibly high speed through the field of stars. It didn’t
look like it was moving that quickly through the purplish space, but Donnie knew they must be moving at hundreds of thousands of miles per hour if they were in space. Worse, he’d been knocked off his feet as the stage began to rocket through the starfield. Weirdly enough, though, he wasn’t sent flying off to his doom, either a factor of gravity or a factor of the simulation’s weird physics.
Sakura yelped out and fell into a sitting position as she stared up, literally star-struck at the display. It was gorgeous!
”Sugoi…!” She muttered under her breath. She glanced over at Donnie to see how the monk was reacting.
Overall, the monk was dumbstruck as he got to his feet. He knew it was just a simulation, but usually he didn’t see tech this good outside of Titan installations..
“I’d give a part of my liver to know how this thing works…” the monk said, awestruck. “Anyway,” he said as he stopped looking at the sight. He turned to Sakura, in a fighting stance, before he realized something. “I...probably should have taken off my armor beforehand, actually. Just...uh...screw it, I can do it after, think fast!”
He moved significantly faster than a normal human could, as wind seemed to coalesce around his feet, allowing him to quickly start advancing on Sakura’s left side with a palm strike aimed for the side of her jaw.
Sakura had returned the fighting stance, but every once in a while glanced at the beautiful display around her. Donnie himself seemed unsure if they were fighting or not, and she didn’t get to do her bow before he zoomed straight for her. Think fast, huh? She can do that!
She glanced down at his boots, seeing the wind guide his jump. He came in with a palm, but despite how fast it was the attack was still fairly telegraphed. She ducked underneath it and exploded upward with a firecracker of an uppercut with enough force to stop the monk in his tracks.
”Shouoken!” She called out. Before he could hit the ground, she would quickly run under where he was about to land and launch another uppercut into his back. Despite the armor, her punches seemed to hit with plenty of force, and her knuckles weren’t damaged at all. Her Ki was focused!
As soon as the monk landed from the second uppercut she was upon him already, raising her leg high in the air and bringing it down in a floral kick.
Donnie saw the uppercut coming, but still got hit by it, and was sent soaring into the air. When he landed, however, he rolled out of the way to avoid Sakura’s floral kick, responding with a sweep kick from the floor, transitioning into a Rising Sun Kick (a chi-enhanced flip kick) as he rose and she fell.
Sakura’s leg was almost taken out from under her. She barely maintained enough of her balance to deflect most of the damage from the flip kick, but was still knocked stumbling backwards, not able to punish the kick.
While the fight progressed, it came under observation by a few spectators. Additional floating platforms appeared in the fighters’ peripherals, orbiting the stage at a respectful distance from beyond the boundary zones that promised to disqualify any participant launched through them. Their riders watched from afar for the most part, but a couple edged closer. One, a
high-school-age boy with dyed yellow hair, looked hyped up enough to be practically jumping into the fray himself. “Let’s goooo!” he shouted after an especially solid hit landed, pumping his fist.
Next to him was another high school age boy, albeit significantly shorter. It was the same boy that had tried to get in on the fight from the beginning, but didn’t make it in time. He was just as excited as the other spectator and braced himself on the platform, pumping his bionic third fist, the airacomet, high in the air while he cheered.
”Yeah! I call next fight! WOO!” Sakura and Donnie were once again squared up with each other a sizable distance away, but the japanese girl seemed briefly confused. Donnie had rolled to the left to avoid her kick. To the...left? Of course he did, duh, that’s a totally normal response. Still it...felt weird.
Shaking her head, she got back into a fighting position. Her back was to the crowd now. Sakura was extremely used to fighting in front of an audience and had learned to tune out most of whatever they said. Good or bad. One time she waved to a fan and got socked in the nose for her trouble.
Hand raised in front of her, Sakura asked Donnie,
””What’s that move called? You forgot to say it’s name when you used it.” Sakura reminded the monk.
“It’s called the Rising Sun Kick, but why would I say that in battle?” the monk replied. “It’s better to keep the element of surprise--”
”Watch, like this.” Sakura brought her hands in close to her body and leaned her shoulder towards him. Gathering in the middle of her cupped hands a bright blue ball of energy with a yellow aura formed.
”Hadoken!” Sakura shouted, firing the concentrated blast of fiery energy towards him at high velocity.
Donnie, taking advantage of the octagonal format of the Melee version of Final Destination, dodged to the right this time, out of the way of the blast, while responding with a projectile of his own. He moved his hands into the same position as Sakura, and in a fraction of a second, had gathered energy into his hands and fired off a Chi Burst. And if it landed, Sakura would notice that it
went right through her and still hurt!
Sakura raised her hands to block the fireball, only to have it phase right through her arms and pass through her chest and out her back. Sakura gasped in surprise as the ghostly ball of pain casually phased through her body. Wow!
“In my adventuring career, calling out my techniques will just tell the opponent what I’m about to do,” Donnie explained, as Sakura could see the bruise under his chin from her Shoryuken healing before her eyes. “It’s a quick way to get beaten or even killed if my opponent knows what they’re doing.”
”Well, that didn’t seem to help you dodge my Shouoken,” Sakura teased, sticking her tongue out of one side of her mouth. It helped that she technically said it
after she hit, but she got the gist of what he was saying.
Then, Donnie leapt forwards and rocketed towards her, spiraling through the air like a human corkscrew! When he got close enough, he jerked to the left at the last second and, once past her, aimed a chi-enhanced flying roundhouse kick right at her back! Sakura had intended to once again counter and interrupt one of his telegraphed lunges, but the mid-air maneuvering of the masterful monk caught her unawares, and the strike collided hard with her back. Sakura grunted from the hit and fell forward onto her face, but was back on her feet quickly and whirled around. Sakura lunged forward at the empty space, realising that Donnie wasn’t where she thought he was. Sakura turned around ahead, expecting he had somehow made it behind her. But he was nowhere to be seen.
”Uh, Mister Donovan?” She asked.
“I’m down here!” he yelled, from below her. Sakura looked over the edge and saw the monk clinging onto one of the purplish protrusions hovering around the ball of darkness in the center of the stage, rotating in a circle.
“How did I overshoot?!” he asked incredulously. “And how do we turn this thing off?!”
”Um? I dunno?” Sakura said, giggling a little bit. She laid prone on her belly and extended a hand downwards.
”Can you jump from way down there? You can fly a little bit, right?” She offered good-naturedly. It sure looked like Donovan was about to fall into the endless void of the universe, but if she remembered correctly it wasn’t that far. Still, you’d have to give Sakura at least two thousand yen to get her to jump into that illusion.
“I can dash horizontally or up a ramp, but not vertically,” he said as he continued spinning. “Though I suppose I could try it…” he said. “Or I could just jump down, I know it’s just a sim but I don’t know how far it is.. Not worth finding out.”
He then tried clambering up the stage. He was agile, but this would be difficult. He jumped diagonally off the platform, flipping in midair, and making sure he aligned with the edge, and then used another of that dash technique, managing to make his way back onto the platform.
“Okay, let’s just switch stages,” Donnie said. “I think I saw a boxing ring of some kind in the selection, how do we stop this?”
Sakura watched as the monk vanished from her view, her helping hand being rendered useless. She moved it and ran it through her hair, as if that was always her intention. Rolling onto her back she sat up and kept herself supported with her open palms.
Sakura looked at the spectators and raised a hand.
”Hey you floating guys!” She waved.
”We wanna get out of the Cosmos now. How do we do that?” She asked, blinking as suddenly they were upside down. Above them there was a cloudy sky and a distant landscape.
”Wuh~” Sakura made a strange noise and tried to dig her hands into the cold stone beneath her. Then she chuckled. How do people fight in these conditions? This was seriously intense visual noise.
Donnie was lucky he was a sailor’s son. As the platform transitioned into ever-more bizarre backdrops (was that a
cylinder of land?), he knew that anyone with even a bit of motion sickness would be throwing up all over the place by now. Thankfully, Donnie wasn’t susceptible to seasickness, and it seemed like no-one watching was either, but this seemed like a major safety hazard.
“Hang on a second, I’ve got something I think we can try,” Donnie said. Summoning his magical Luggage from thin air, he unzipped it, reached inside, and pulled out a length of chain. You never knew when you needed to bind something, and the chain would stand out wonderfully against the bright backdrop. The girl made an impressed noise.
Walking over to the edge, he unspooled the chain and dropped it into the void to gauge the distance. Once it pooled up, he unsummoned the Luggage, causing it to vanish as quickly as it appeared, and then, knowing how far the drop was, jumped over the edge, landing safely with a roll.
And then an ear-shattering explosion-like sound blasted up from the floor and he was surrounded by the signature bright, color-tinged pillar of light of the infamous Smash blast box being set off, as an announcer yelled, “GAME!”
Sakura yelped and then scuttled over to the edge.
”You blew up!”Donnie was instantly dazzled and disoriented so badly that when the light stopped, he was on the floor, covering his eyes. “I think it worked!” he called up to Sakura.
She nodded, still looking impressed, and then lowered herself over the edge. Kicking off, she landed effortlessly.
”I don’t get the appeal.” She said with a shrug.
After a moment the skybox started turning off, cell by cell. The stage itself descended to the floor and disintegrated, leaving just the room itself. At the same time the spectator platforms drifted down, depositing their occupants on the floor. The boy who’d been cheering earlier wasted no time running up to the fighters. “Hell yeah! Just watchin’ you guy’s got my blood flowin’!” He smacked his fists together, grinning goonishly. “You guys got any more fight in ya? I’m dyin’ to bust loose!”
“I do...after I stop seeing stars…” the monk said as he got to his feet, still covering his face with his hands as his ears rung. “Whoever came up with that explosion thing needs to be kicked in the crotch!” Sakura smiled and shrugged in ambivalent defence of the blast creators
. Mag Launcher came running up alongside Ryuji, his airacomet folded up in its carrier so it only looked like a big hunk of metal attached to his shoulder. He punched his steel-gloved hands together.
”Hello. My name is Mag Launcher. I tried to volunteer for your original fight challenge, but nobody saw me. They tell me I’m a pretty good fist fighter.” He flexed his right bicep, but the effect was lost thanks to his small body and how his thick jacket blocked any view of his (admittedly impressive) muscles.
Sakura looked at the new boys and bowed to them.
”Pleased to meet you both! I’m Sakura. This is Mister Donovan. I’m always up for a fight.” Sakura punched her gloved fists together.
”That wasn’t even a warmup!”Donnie’s vision and hearing had recovered by this point and he shook his head to clear off the last of the disorientation, then nodded at Sakura’s statement. “I agree. We need a proper match this time! And not in an arena that looks like a fever dream!”
“Alriiiiight! Let’s pull up another arena.” The boy crossed his arms, glancing at Sakura. “Ryuji, by the way. Ryuji Sakamoto. Saw you back in that medieval town, remember?” He examined Donnie, wondering what he was from, as he waited for another stage to arise.
Sakura narrowed her eyes a little bit, it took a moment before she recognized him.
”Oh, yeah! I don’t think I got your name at the time. If I did,” She shrugged, looking a little embarrassed.
”Sorry. I won’t forget you once we’ve fought, though, I promise.” She did another little bow before jogging over to the control panel.
”Boxing, boxing...you wanted a boxing arena, right?” Sakura swiped through the various options. Finally she found what looked like the ultimate boxing ring- the World Circuit. Punch-Out!! She liked their enthusiasm. Straight to the point. With an eager little smirk she tapped the confirm button and turned around to see what would happen to the simulation room.
”I’ve got an idea. I’ve been here for a while so I can use the panel to setup a team match, if that interests you? Ryuji and I got to see what the two of you can do, so to keep things fair one of you can be paired with me and one of you can be paired with Ryuji. How does that sound?” Mag stepped up to the panel and began punching in new commands.
As he plugged in the specifications, the stage began to take form. Rather than become a sky, the walls of the simulation room changed color and texture to serve as the interior walls of a grand indoor stadium. Rows of audience seating cropped up from nowhere to surround a giant boxing ring that spray to existence with runways on either side. A huge metal scaffold with attached lights hung from the ceiling, lowered into place like a chandelier. The fighters stood outside the ring between it and where a few spectators were settling into the ready-made accommodations.
“Man, this is gonna be great!” With a wild smile Ryuji made for the ring and climbed inside. As for which team he happened to be on, he gave no preference, or even acknowledgement.
Sakura once again marvelled at the impossible technology on display. As Ryuji climbed inside, Sakura pondered the idea of a two on two battle. Like a tornado tag match, or something. It would be a first for her, but…
”Okay, little guy, you’re with me.” She said, nudging him on the shoulder.
”But, uh, are you sure you’re up for this?” She asked with a concerned smile. She didn’t want to insult his pride but she also didn’t want to see a kid get beat up. But at the same time anything was possible.
”Um-well, I guess, where I come from, little kids don’t usually fight. I don’t wish to be disrespectful.” She said honestly. When she was 14 people told her she was too young to fight all the time. But Mag Launcher really looked like he wasn’t even out of elementary school yet. She wouldn’t want to see a ten year old get beat up, even if he was super capable.
Donnie responded simply. “I mean, isn’t this a whole city that doubles as a fight club? I’d assume everyone in it is qualified to be here, and that includes Mag. Besides, there’s a difference between a friendly sparring match and an out-and-out fight. Kids learn martial arts the same as everyone else.”
Mag simply shrugged off Sakura’s concern.
”Don’t worry about me, I’m actually 16, and I took over my family’s adventure business 3 years ago. You might say that I’m pretty handy to have around, hahaha!” Man, that joke was going to hit them harder once he showed off his secret surprise.
“Well, you’re quite the entrepreneur!” Donnie said, visibly impressed, “I was still in monastic training at that age!” It was clear he didn’t find the joke funny though.
Still smiling at his own joke, Mag finished setting up the rules by determining the teams.
”Alright, team Smash, 2 v 2, Mag Launcher and Sakura VS Donovan and Ryuji. We’ll be Blue Team and they can be Red Team. Aaaand done!” The settings were entered and the match was confirmed.
“A team battle, huh? I’m onboard with that,” Donnie said as he climbed into the ring and readied himself for a fight, getting into fighting stance that
screamed “kung-fu.” He didn’t take out the two small katar-like blades at his hips though. No need to slash and stab people he was just trying to have a friendly fight with. “Now that we’re in an actual arena and not a fever dream,” he said, with a fiery expression, “I can show you why I’m a Grandmaster!”
Sakura seemed relieved.
”Oh, great! Okay. Alright, Blue Team, let’s do it!” Sakura exclaimed. Then she ran over, jumped up and front flipped over the ropes with practiced precision. This wasn’t her first time entering a boxing ring. Then she cart wheeled over to a corner and stood up on one of the corners. She brought her hands to her lips and kissed them, then moved her hands outward in a display of showmanship several times in a row. There weren’t many people in the audience but it was fun to do. Finishing her routine, she turned around and hopped onto the mat, and with overt casualness leaned her back against the ropes.
Mag followed suit and hopped into the ring himself, situating himself a few feet in front of the ring ropes. He put up a fighting stance that was reminiscent of boxing, but clearly self trained. With a friendly smile, he waved at the competition.
Ryuji cracked his knuckles. The fellow paired up with him looked like he knew his way around a slugfest or two. On the other hand, finding out that little kid on the other team was 16 meant he and Ryuji we're about the same age. The possibility that he might be the youngest among those present made him fired up to prove himself. Anyone who looked down on him was in for a hell of a surprise--after all, how could they possibly anticipate the card up his sleeve? "Alright, tough guy. Let's show these dorks what we're effin' made of!"
With combatants all set, the countdown began. Ryuji lowered himself into a runner's stance, bracing to launch forward.
"THREE...TWO...ONE...GO!"
"Yaaaaaaaaah!" Ryuji bellowed as he literally exploded forward. From a blast of blue flame he ran forward, clad in a
thuggish getup and skull mask. The former trackstar moved like lightning, crossing the ring in just a moment's time, a metal pipe brandished in his hand. He went for Mag Launcher first, winding up his arm only to lead with a stomping kick instead and follow up with a pipe swing.
Mag was impressed by his opponent’s burst of speed, it would definitely give him the edge in this fight and force Mag to battle defensively. What surprised him moreso was the pipe Ryuji pulled out!
”I thought this was a fistfight, not a game of Clue!” he joked. As Ryuji wound himself up for the foot stomp, Mag just flew backward as though pulled by an invisible force. He had activated the airacomet, but kept it behind him to stay out of sight and used it to grab the ring ropes and yank himself back, where he then slingshot forward with his normal fist extended like a rocket. The longer he could keep his ace in the hole a secret, the better. He lost most of the parts to his cyframe so it only had basic hand parts now, which won’t be too hard to figure out in the fight.
Elastic force propelled Mag at Skull quickly, but not quite quickly enough to take his opponent by surprise. Though his overhead swing missed, he saw no reason not to put his strength into a hefty backswing and clobber Mag across the chest as he came in for a punch. With the range of his pipe added to that of his lanky arm, he could land a solid whack before the short archeologist got close. “Get rekt!”
”Uh oh!” Mag tried to twist so that he’d minimize the impact and guard with his other hand, but that pipe still hurt! It hit pretty hard and Mag realized now that this opponent wasn’t someone to hold back on. As he took the hit the airacomet extended out of its holder and moved to grab Skull’s pipe arm at the wrist, then spin and slam him toward the mat.
Totally unprepared for a throw, Skull got bowled over with a yelp. He hit the ground pretty hard and lay there for a moment, but gathered his strength and wrenched out of the other boy’s grip. He got back to his feet and stood in a menacing low stance, hunched over. “Awlright, awlright,” he said, grinning. He then pushed off his bent knees, propelling himself forward again. He swung wildly with the pipe three times, moving forward with each, right, left, and finally overhead.
Mag’s opponent barely even registered the airacomet’s sudden appearance, apparently just rolling with the punches and coming right back. Alright, well there went the element of surprise. While Skull got back up, Mag did the same, and he was back on the defensive against a flurry of pipe strikes. Fortunately the airacomet had good range and was quite large, so the pipe strikes were all blocked by the bionic hand.
”Ryuji in the boxing ring with the lead pipe? I don’t think so!” he shouted. Using his right hand, Mag slammed down to the floor, his cyframe mimicking the movement and hitting the ground hard enough to shake the whole place.
”Mag in the boxing ring with the fist, that’s more like it!” He leaped forward with his right hand outstretched to punch Skull with his normal (albeit steel plated) hand. After all, the airacomet could accidentally paste someone!
The masked hoodlum stumbled back when the arena shook, calling out, “That all ya got?!” As Mag took to the air, he banished his pipe with a flick of the wrist and brought out a
shotgun instead. He fired at the incoming fist, the force strong enough to nearly blow him backward, but Mag’s airacomet breezed through the buckshot and planted its hard edge straight into Skull’s mask. “Guh!” he tumbled backward, ending up on his forearms and knees with stars in his eyes. “Damn!” he groaned. “That thing packs a punch.” He got up once more, his shotgun in his hands, and emptied the remaining two shots at Mag. Then the firearm disappeared. He pulled out his pipe and pointed at his chest with his thumb. “But you shouldn’t be callin’ me Ryuji. Call me Skull. And while we’re callin’ stuff, lemme introduce ya to my second-best friend.”
The air seemed to flux, like the tide pulling out before a great wave crashes against the shore. Grinning, he bellowed, “Persona!”
Behind him, a blue flames exploded out of nowhere. From the azure firestorm emerged a leering black prow, then an entire pirate ship floating on air, and atop it a huge pirate skeleton with a cannon arm at the ready. The whole entity hovered behind Skull, riding the ship like a surfboard, awaiting Skull’s command. He obliged. “Shock ‘em, Captain Kidd!”
-to be placed when the flow is nice and good-
When the fight started, Sakura was eager to do as she usually did- attack! Ryuji had zoomed by to attack Mag Launcher, but she would prefer not to punch somebody in the back of the head. Even if it was a 2v2. That would be a first. Sakura always hit people in the front. Sakura dashed forward, going from a stand still to a sprint very quickly, making a bee-line towards Donnie. Once she was a few feet away from Donovan she jumped into the air in a spin kick.
”Shunpuu Kyaku!” She exclaimed quickly. She was spinning around very fast, her leg looking to slam into Donovan’s face with a powerful kick to the side of the head.
Donnie, meanwhile, hadn’t actually moved. He had been waiting for her to make the first move, which allowed him to brace for impact. Normally, he would try to dodge, but that attack would have been a nasty one to avoid. Instead, he raised his arms to block the strike. When the attack landed, the titanic force of Sakura’s kick connected with Donnie’s raised forearms. The impact of the attack was a difficult one to tank outright when he wasn’t in the forgotten Ox style of the Brewmaster’s discipline, and so his arm was shaking as it held back Sakura’s leg.
But now, Sakura was right where he wanted her. He made to grab her kicking leg, attempting a reversal by twisting it, which, if it was successful, would send her straight to the mat and open her up for a leglock, and from there, a submission hold.
Normally, Sakura’s opponents couldn’t stop her leg. At the very least she was always able to get back on her feet for their counter attack, but Donnie stopped her outright. Her other leg dropped to the ground, her right leg being held by Donnie’s hands. The last thing she wanted was to get into a wrestling contest with this guy, he would probably win.
Whichever way he twisted her leg, she would sense it and spin her entire body with it to bring her still free leg around to kick him across the face. Doing a 180 with the kick she would attempt to scramble away, kicking away at his grasp with strong if slightly un-coordinated force. With a leap she turned once again to land her back, channeling a small hadoken to fire at Donnie to give her more space to get back to her feet.
Donnie didn’t really expect this tactic to
actually lead to a tap-out situation. Sakura was clearly a skilled, if less-experienced, martial artist, and he knew she wouldn’t let a man twice her size get her into a situation where he could leverage his superior muscle mass to force a quick victory. Thankfully, the agility boosts conferred by Xuen’s Battlegear allowed him to react quickly to her kick, jerking his upper body backwards with inhuman speed and deftly avoiding her foot. However, this came at a cost, as it both distracted him and eliminated his leverage, allowing Sakura to easily slip out of his grasp.
Good. He wouldn’t want this to be over
that quickly. Not after the letdown that was Final Destination.
However, what he didn’t expect was the Hadoken that came next. It smacked him clean in the chest, and the effect was not unlike being hit in the ribs with a mace. Donnie grunted in pain and was pushed back slightly, but he’d felt
far worse.
“Very good!” the monk said. “Now, let’s kick things up a notch.” He ran forward, feinting with a right punch only to launch his true attack, a palm strike to the face with his left hand, and from there, he would unleash a full-fledged combo. A back fist, a right hook, a knee to the stomach, a Blackout Kick (read: chi-enhanced roundhouse kick) to the side of the face, a Tiger Palm (read: chi-enhanced palm strike) to the sternum, a sweep to the leg, and finally, a Rising Sun Kick to launch her up into the air.
Sakura had quickly gotten to her feet and smiled, but otherwise said nothing as the monk prepared his combo. Sakura took a step forward but realised he would be faster on the attack. Narrowing her eyes, the street fighter gathered her focus. High, high, high, high, high, low, low.
Blue light flashed with each deflected strike as the excess force from Donnie’s strikes was absorbed and released. With a focused and borderline serene, Sakura met and matched each and everyone of Donovan’s strikes. The Sun Kick glanced off her arm and as Donovan recovered from his ambitious Sun Kick, Sakura took the moment to channel the focus from the combo into a V-Trigger. Pumping her right arm like it was a shotgun, her fists glowed with a wild blue crackling energy.
Almost all of it was released right away with a devastating short range blast of energy, Sakura basically touching Donovan for maximum effectiveness. She went low and struck him in the knee, and released the rest of her burst of energy in a final move of the combo.
"Direct hit!" She exclaimed, striking Donovan in the center of his torso and then working her way up to his jaw. A single uppercut that possessed the power of ten, the lone strike rattling like a machine gun against his armor.
Sakura followed through and span in the air, landing on the ground with a big dumb grin on her face. Donnie, for his part, saw the telegraphed strike and responded by holding out his hand, a strange bluish-white “X”-like symbol appearing over each of the fighter’s heads. And then he just let the massive punch connect.
The massive quantity of force imparted into his armor
did send him flying, as was typical for Street Fighter super-moves, up into the air and right into the plywood floor of the ring. But a glob of green energy shot back from Donnie into Sakura, and it
hurt like hell. About two-thirds of the amount of pain and damage her punch would have inflicted was being spread out across her body as Nature Magic damage over the next six seconds. The effect was not unlike literally bathing in punches.
Donnie sprung to his feet, utterly unharmed. “Touch of Karma. Classic monk technique. Redirects damage. Nice punch though. Who taught you that?”
Sakura’s smile had quickly faded and she just kind of sat there and frowned for a little bit as she absorbed the punch. It was also very disappointing to see her powerful strike hadn’t hurt him at all. A classic monk technique that redirects damage? The circle now faded, Sakura realised she had a lot of pent up energy she needed to unleash. With both combo exchanges and the Touch of Karma giving most of the damage back to her, she felt like she was just about to be able to pull a big move. An Extra Special move.
At his question though, Sakura beamed.
"I’m self taught!" She declared proudly.
It was at that moment that the two could feel the pressure in the air and witness the arrival of Captain Kidd. No sooner had the ship-riding skeleton appeared, floating in the air behind his user, than Skull sicced him on Mag Launcher. Kidd raised his cannon-arm and released a blast of lightning that crossed the distance between the fighters instantly to pump Mag full of electricity. Skull pumped his fist. “Deeeerect hit! And let’s make a twofer! Get ‘em, Captain!”
The Persona leaned forward and rode outward toward Mag. Once close enough, a twist of his skeletal body brought his ship around like a board to clobber the boy across the front.
Mag shouted in pain as the electricity ran through his body. Having the airacomet grab the arena helped ground it out, but damn it still hurt! If only he had his Electric Parts, then he could have completely absorbed the current! There was no time to think about that though, because the skeleton pirate was headed straight for him!
Now this was something Mag didn’t have to feel bad about punching full force with his cyframe. As the ship came toward him, the bionic third arm pushed against the ground, and at the same time Mag jumped. The result was a powerful leap that sent him high up, where he flipped over the persona and unleashed a big wind-up swing at the thing’s back before landing on the mat! The Captain, however, barely flinched, and spun about to continue his pursuit
Sakura turned around, her jaw dropping, as Ryuji unveiled his secret technique.
"Nani…?" It was...a skeleton pirate!? Sakura had no idea what to make of it. Whatever it was, it was really gunning for Mag, essentially making it a 2v1!
The sound and light show of what was obviously some kind of magic got Donnie’s attention immediately. “Nice. Haven’t seen that spell before. You a necromancer?” the monk said casually, completely unfazed.
Sakura turned away from Donnie and sprinted toward the ideally preoccupied Ryuji.
"Shunpuu Kyaku!" She cried out again, hoping to close the distance quite quickly. Like a wild helicopter blade she leapt the distance, her spinning form aiming to collide multiple times with Ryuji. Expelling some of her Extra Special meter, her entire body flashed yellow and her already powerful kicks now had an explosive after taste.
“Oh no you don’t!” Donnie said, running back towards Sakura and reaching out to grab her by the arm. He leveraged the enormous muscle mass that all human men from his world seemed to have for some reason and attempted to hurl her away, but her enhanced hurricane kick knocked back his grasping arms as she plowed heedlessly onward.
Her voice brought Skull’s attention, and as she spun his way he raised his pipe to intercept. Despite the strength of his swing, her leg knocked his bludgeon aside before proceeding to strike him in the shoulder and spin him away. “The hell!?” He charged at her and positioned his pipe for a backswing. Now that Sakura could get a good look at his fighting style, she could see that he fought like an amateur, without any real form or training, but with brutish aplomb.
Sakura, having knocked his pipe out of the way with an enhanced kick, still felt like she had the initiative. Landing quickly, as Ryuji readied his weapon, Sakura took a step inward and aimed a practiced jab right for at nose, looking to stifle his heavy swing entirely.
“Pfuh!” he yelped as her fist smushed his nose in with his mask and he took a step back. He swung anyway, trusting in his pipe’s range to make up the distance.
Sakura blocked the pipe, letting its momentum spin her backwards where she fired a hadoken back at Donnie. Then she completed the spin with a heel kick aimed at Ryuji’s- or Skull’s, or Captain Kidd’s, or whatever his name was, Sakura didn’t fully understand-, face.
Seeing the incoming foot, Skull rushed to guard his head with his pipe. “Hrk!” The kick bopped his head with the back of his own hand, causing him to stumble and fall on his back. As he hit the ground with a
thud amplified by the construction of the ring, Captain Kidd faded away. Skull, however, was far from defeated. “Hrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaagh!” he yelled, springing to his feet. His Persona burst into existence again behind him, facing Sakura. “Zionga!”
Kidd extended his cannon arm and let loose a heavy bolt of lightning. No matter how good she was, Skull knew this girl wouldn’t be dodging that, and one couldn’t exactly block magic. He pressed his advantage. “Now, Tara-! Taruka-! Jus-just do it already!” His Persona knew what Skull meant despite him fumbling the word, and he struck a dashing pose with his cape flapping in the wind. Red swirls started to surround Skull flying upward, increasing his attack, but for the moment his guard was down.
Sakura went to dodge, but the Captain’s aim was true and she was struck by lightning.
’Aah!” She cried out, her vision flashing white. She was knocked into the air, flying back towards Donnie and unable to move. Slowly she began to climb to her feet, but it was incredibly difficult and she kept falling back to the ground.
Shouldering his pipe with a smirk, Skull stood at the ready with enhanced attack. “Hell yeah! Next!” He looked around to try and find Mag Launcher.
”All that style, but no class!” Mag called out as he revealed his hand (pun intended). While Skull was busy and focused on Sakura, he had ripped out one of the ring’s elastic ropes and tied it into a lasso, which was now flying midair and about to tether the Phantom Thief around the torso. If successful, Skull would find himself yanked through the air and toward an oncoming fist.
The rope closed around Skull’s body and one of his arms, and with surprising strength he found himself yanked off his feet. Gritting his teeth, he twisted himself to keep his head from taking the blow, but the ensuing punch still hit like a truck. After hitting the ground, he couldn’t immediately get to his feet. “Agh...that’s bad…” He could still call out, however. “Headbutt!”
Captain Kidd adjusted his foot forward on his ship, and the whole thing pitched Mag’s way. The Persona homed in to deliver a weighty slam with his body noggin, a blow that didn’t just hurt but also had a medium chance to inflict Forget.
”Uh oh.” Mag’s eyes widened as the ship came in with the spectral pirate in tow. He readied himself and dug his heels into the mat while the airacomet held out open handed. The giant hand grabbed and pushed back against the ship (which really seemed more like a surfboard from the size and use), with intent to knock the persona off course and away, but he miscalculated Captain Kidd’s intention. He wasn’t about to get speared by the front of the ship, but whacked on the head by the pirate himself, which knocked Mag back and stung.
”Ow!” he cried, bringing both hands up to his wound, but his cyframe didn’t mimic his movements.
”What happened?” Donnie, meanwhile, hadn’t even had an opportunity to do anything. It turned out Sakura’s spinning kick behaved almost
exactly like a monk’s Spinning Hurricane Kick but moving, and with a hell of a lot more force, meaning that getting close wasn’t really an option. He wanted to help Ryuji, but that would leave Mag free to do whatever he wanted with that gigantic robo-hand of his.
However, Ryuji seemed to quickly gain the upper hand just as Donnie hesitated and...did he just give Mag a concussion? Amnesia wasn’t good. But surely Ryuji wouldn’t
actually have given him serious brain trauma. It had to be some sort of magic, since a mere concussion would probably knock him unconscious….
Screw it. He’d go with it, and get Mag checked after the match. Maybe if he was lucky it’d wear off.
Donnie ran back towards Mag and attempted a devastating Blackout Kick, aimed at the much smaller adventurer’s chest (not a good idea to strike the head after what just happened to him)...only for his leg to strike something else entirely.
’Bleh!” He hadn’t even gotten a chance to see what he’d hit until he turned around and saw Sakura flopping against Captain Kidd’s ship.
“Ryuji, above you!” Donnie called, which left him open. Rookie mistake.
At the same time, Skull turned Donnie’s way, having not heard him straight. “What?” He looked up as Sakura hit his Persona and fell, still sparking. “Whoa, no!” Taken aback, he didn’t get clear in time to avoid getting landed on, and the impact spread the Shock status effect to himself, leaving him paralyzed. “Craaaaaap!” he moaned.
My Detox doesn’t work on magic, shit! Donnie thought, finally turning back to Mag Launcher.
Both opponents were bunched up together! That was lucky, even if Sakura was there too. That just meant he’d have to be careful, but it’s not like his cyframe was indelicate, it was capable of being extremely dexterous.
”Got ya!” And hey, he could move the airacomet again! With his right hand he wound up a big punch, but the airacomet didn’t mimic his movements like he wanted! It was on target to his Donnie as intended, but he couldn’t control the swing! It hit all three of them with the force of a semi truck!
”Oh no, that wasn’t supposed to happen!”The weaponized arm sent all three flying like bowling pins with assorted degrees of yelling. It also transferred Shock to Mag, surrounding him with electricity and inhibiting his movements. As Skull soared over the ring’s boundary and over the liminal space toward the audience beyond, he attempted to twist himself and see his assailant. In the brief glimpse afforded to him he spotted Mag, paralyzed and wide open, and in that instant he came to a decision. “If we’re goin’, you’re goin’! Captaaain!”
Kidd manifested once more, appearing in midair just long enough to unleash a final attack-boosted blast of lightning Mag’s way. Skull saw it happen, but couldn’t get a view of the results before he passed the boundary and fell into the seating area. “Ow, jeez!” he bemoaned, lying sprawled across the chairs.
Still somewhat paralyzed from the last shock, Mag couldn’t defend against the attack in the slightest and was blasted back over the ring and toward the edge.
”Gotta! Grab!” He tried to snag onto the edge of the arena, but was too far away for his shorter arms to so much as brush against the ledge. In a last ditch attempt he tried to grab with the airacomet, and it worked! The bionic arm latched onto the edge as commanded… and then squeezed much MUCH too hard and broke the material! His last attempt at recovery a failure, Mag fell into the blast zone and reappeared next to Skull.
”Whew. That was tough, I should’ve gone all out against you from the start! Good showing!” He offered his fellow teen a high five… with his normal hand this time. Panting, Ryuji allowed his Phantom Thief outfit to disappear, and returned the high five.
Sakura had experienced a rough couple of seconds. There was a shock, a kick to the back, face plant against a ship, a fall, and now she had been sent sailing through the air. Right now she was at the peak of her arc towards the out of bounds, in that brief moment where she was completely weightless. Spinning, she saw Donnie in a similar situation.
Finally rallying, Sakura defied gravity and pushed herself through the air towards Donovan, raising both of her fists high above her head. Once within range, she would attempt to bring her hammer blow down on top of his head. Were this attack successful, it hurt. But the strangest thing about it would be that it would actually
raise both Sakura and Donovan higher into the air instead of sending Donovan towards the ground as one might expect. This was a move called the Sakura Otoshi, or Sakura Drop. If the first blow hit, she had two more identical hammer blows coming his way in quick succession.
’One!” She shouted.
Donnie, meanwhile, had turned back to Mag only to be punched in the face by his airacomet, and sent flying. Donnie knew he was flying out of bounds, so he maneuvered himself in the air to use his Chi Torpedo...only for Sakura to engage just before he could gather his chi. The first hammer blow hit, which propelled him upwards for some reason, but he managed to stop Sakura’s second hammer blow in mid-air by catching her fists in his grasp. Keeping her hands close together with his arms, he struck her in the face with a headbutt (which his helmet greatly helped with) and then made to rapidly swing her around and send her flying into the stands. Unfortunately, he himself was close enough to end up in the blast box before he could finish this maneuver, and instead awkwardly reappeared above a random seat with his hands still in the grasping position. He fell down, splayed on two seats.
“GAME!” came the clarion call of the announcer.
“Well, that was...abrupt…” he said as he sat up, still a little discombobulated by the fall.
Sakura tumbled down the seats, having been in a curled up position. A second later she was doing a handstand, looking up at her fellow fighters. She let herself fall into a sitting position and then turned around. She sniffed and put a hand up to her nose, the pain of a metal-enhanced headbutt fading. Her heart was still racing but she wasn’t sure what to do now.
’Is it over? Who won?” She asked.
“THE WINNER IS...BLUE TEAM!”
The electronic billboards surrounding the arena flashed shots of Sakura and Mag, and the big screen spooled up a replay of the fight.
Sakura gasped, turned around and watched the replay. She gasped again, turning around and looking up at Mag. In a moment she had exploded to her feet and began to cart wheel up the stands.
"YEAAAAAAAAH BLUE TEAM!” She shouted victoriously. In a moment’s notice she had scooped up Mag Launcher and put him over her shoulders.
Mag watched the playback as well, clearly impressed with Sakura and Donnie's martial arts skills. But when it came to that final moment when he caused a triple KO he winced. He turned sheepishly to Sakura, clearly embarrassed.
”Really Sorry about that. When that pirate hit me it did something that made it hard to control my cyframe.” But she clearly didn’t care, happily cheering and hoisting him up over her shoulders, which was a feat considering the airacomet wasn’t exactly made of plastic.
Sakura danced, sliding her hands back and forth in the air and feet back and forth on the ground, shifting her entire body side to side.
’Just do it on purpose next time! It could be our special Blue Team attack! You should come to the island with me! That’s where I’m going!” She exclaimed.
Ryuji watched as well, enchanted. Although a little bruised up, he seemed to be in good spirits, especially when it came to seeing himself kick ass. “Damn, that was pretty cool!” The recording allowed Ryuji to get a good look at the other half of the battle as well, and the martial arts prowess on display clearly impressed him. Although the sparring match had felt like a few seconds, the playback went on for a little while before freeze-framing on the finish. “Aw, we lost? That’s some ass.” He didn’t look too put out, and when he got to his feet from the seating, he waved before he turned to go. “Alright, thanks for the fight. I gotta see about lunch. See you guys later.”
Donnie, for his part, was suitably impressed. The enemy team, composed of an adventuring engineer with far less experience than himself and a self-taught martial artist, both half his age, had managed to best his team by a hair. Ryuji seemed like an unskilled teenager gifted with supernatural power, but instead, Donnie was the one who carried the least weight of the two.
It just went to show that you should never underestimate your opponents
or your allies, even in a friendly brawl.
“Nice job, you two! I accept my defeat.” he said. He leaned back in his padded seat, hands on the back of his head. “Now, I wonder what else this city has to offer with tech this advanced” He turned to Sakura. “You mentioned fighting games earlier? I wonder if they have any for sale here. Or what they are.”
1x Laugh
