"You want to test me from long range, Master Mitsuba? Here, test THIS!" Jaffur, exulting, whirls, twists in midair. Rockets away at his best speed, trailing a plasma sheath he's not quite old or deft enough to suppress. Not at fourteen million. Gouts of fire trail away from him, and you can tell he's starting to gather energies for an attack, but they dance and flare and stutter a little.
And you are worrying, starting to fly after him but he's opening the range faster than you can follow now. You call out at the distant figure of the little child. "Scion, watch out! Keeping this up- at your age? You'll tear yourself apart!"
Jaffur's energies tighten up again. "I can stand... anything I... have to! Got to learn to stand... this- HYAAAAA!"
The prince shifts stance in midair, over a kilometer downrange. Going for a beam duel. He cups his hands and screams, firing off a blast. Related to the Galick Gun, but not quite the same- silvery with polychromatic hints, instead of the usual violets and blues. And that's
not bad thinking- not if he can somehow power through by sheer grit. Which he... you know, you can almost imagine the tyke doing it, even as he is. Somedow. Someday.
Mitsuba: "Ardent" fires.
But not today. Your grimace is half a smile as you respond in kind, your Masenko slamming into his blast in midair.
Come on, kid, let's tucker you out and put you to bed...
Jaffur Two-Handed Blast Research: Progress rolled, Project Incomplete.
He's trying to narrow the silver beam down in mid-joust. Half-smart. Good idea, and if he'd led with that, it'd hit like the end of the world. But-
don't change horses in the middle of the stream. There's a lot of that kind of thing, you're finding. Jaffur makes- not rookie mistakes, amazingly. Journeyman mistakes. Exploitable- but not easily.
He'll learn. You can tell he'll learn.
Jaffur General Ki Projection vs. Mitsuba Masenko: 78 vs. 97
Your stance for the beam duel started out relatively relaxed. You tighten your arms, will a bit more of yourself into the vortex of power at the heart of the storm. But not into directly contesting the slender silver-white. You let it roll forwards a bit, gaining a meter at a time. You almost hate to let the kid think he's going to win this one for a moment, because-
BOOM!
While he was shaping his beam, you had freedom to shape yours. And even with his strength doubling, you still have just that few-percent fraction of a power advantage. For today only, perhaps- but what you have, you use. A ring of energy washes out and around the Scion's narrow beam, splitting and whirling and constricting around him in a wash of yellow. Jaffur reels, falling out of the path of your Masenko before the rest of it arrives.
"HAAAA... aaah..." Jaffur recovers, close to the ground, gasping. Kid's a natural, kid's a genius- kid's a
kid. No older than Gohan was on Namek. Kaio-Ken drags down a grown man fast enough. How much can he take?
Clearly, a lot more. Look at him. He's happy. He just took the lead wave of a blast at cap, and he's
happy!
Reminds you of you, on your best younger days.
The prince's smile gets wider. An eager, boyish glee mixes into his fighting reflexes, enough to show he isn't
all about picking fights with whirlwinds and dangerous powerups. There's still some happiness in there, somewhere, enough to prove he
is at least in part a son of both Ancestors.
"That was good, I'll have to learn that trick. But you can't outtrick everything, can you?" His fists are balled so tight you see a trickle of blood on a fingertip when he flings his left hand wide again. You feel the power concentrating and gather yourself to reply. "HRAAAAAAH!" He bounds closer, coming in fast as usual, raising his hand-
SHREEE!
The silver lance from Jaffur's little palm starts out around five centimeters across. It widens, widens- somewhere between a blast and a ray, maybe what his new 'Focus Ray' would look like without containment.
Nasty close up, though, and even by the time it reaches you, attenuated into something half again as wide as your body, it's a good shot.
Jaffur One-Handed Blast Research: Complete
You twist aura around your fingers for a deflection, grin and swing in a backhand arc with your left arm. You think you can bounce it, and be back in position to defend by the time he reaches hand-to-hand. It looks a bit weak for fourteen million, even if it's a good shot...
Jaffur [Unnamed Blast] vs. Mitsuba Ki Control: 115 vs. 102. Silly Piccolo stylist, you forgot to DOOOODGE!
-
AAAAH! Too good! Hell, but that hurt! The shot didn't look like it was carrying that much force. That hit like a shot from a pro. Your arm
aches, and you feel twinges as you flex your wrist. You run a flow of energy into it, restoring the strained tendons.
Inhale, exhale. There is no pain.
Falling prey to one of the great, eternal weaknesses of the saiyan race, Jaffur gives you a chance to finish the job. The little boy grins wolfishly, high-spiked hair swaying slightly and coming to a halt fifty meters away.
"How do you like
that? I know! I should call it Demon's Breath!"
"
Piccolo Style already uses that name! Come up with your own!" You glare at Jaffur, stung a little too far by the precocious prince. For a wonder, he nods.
"...
Fair. YAAAAA!" He darts in close again, and you let him. If he hasn't blown up yet, he can handle close combat... and it's easier to keep control of how hard you hit, while still striking hard enough to make an impression on someone as resilient as Jaffur's proving to be.
You can't fault the Scion's giant-battling reflexes. You're genuinely trying, and he's defending himself with every scrap of agility and insight he can manage. He's making, again, only the journeyman mistakes. He twists, dodges, punches and kicks, zipping around you and landing blows with his little fists and feet at a pace that'd do tolerably well in the Cap Circuit. Pretty good. He'd at least make a decent showing in the elimination rounds, fighting like this.
You can herd him, hammer home with strikes that thump against his sapphire-flame aura. You can knock him away... But you can't knock him down. And though veins stand out from his skin as they never should on a child so young, he has control enough to keep up the Kaio-Ken that gives him his equalizer against you. At least for now.
He lashes back, darting close every time you bat him away, launching kicks and jabs and doing everything he can to minimize your advantage of reach. One exchange of blows after another rains out. Shock waves like bomb blasts rattle the air around you in an endless, standing wave of thunderclaps. You land more hits than you take, but the prince's blows carry the thumping weight of Cap-level power, thanks to the Kaio-Ken. And Jaffur's got a good enough eye to be going for the elbows. You have to be careful on the offense to keep him knocking an arm out of commission.
His instincts are remarkable. He's learned more than you'd thought possible.
But instinct isn't armor, nor is it training. You're bigger, with far more reach, and you've been practicing for four times the length Jaffur Vegeta has
existed. He's fast, but you're too close for him to get up a good turn of speed. He's dodging, twisting, and you see the moment when Jaffur decides to open up the range again.
You might have been able to stop him working free of your hand-to-hand. Instead, you encourage him. But as he disengages, you howl cross your arms, then spread them wide, your aura hardening into a bubble of force and slamming outwards like a bomb. The Explosive Wave.
Teach him to be careful of an opponent who gives him
too much of the opening he's looking for. Not to get greedy. The prince goes tumbling, gaining even more speed, even faster, than he was ready to control.
Jaffur Flight vs. Mitsuba Flight: 59 vs. 98
The air becomes less like a roadway to him, more like being caught in a rockslide. For moments only, Jaffur's flailing instead of flying. And you? The sky is your friend. In moments only, you phase back into range and grab him by the ankle.
Mitsuba: "Ardent" refires.
Time to tucker him out and put him to bed. He's a hardy little one, he can take it.
You grip the heir apparent to half of Exile civilization firmly by the calf. Then you whirl, twist your body, and shot-put the boy into the floor. He hits ground at a speed that would carry him halfway to the moon, if he'd been going the other way.
Jaffur slams to earth in a pile of rubble left from earlier clashes, rubble that abruptly smashes into a billowing cloud of dust under the hammer of a hypervelocity impact. His ki and grip on the Kaio-Ken ripples, wavers- re-establishes itself, as he rockets back up out of a crater in the stone, an arm's length deep and two meters across.
Here he comes, dusty but little the worse for wear, just rattled enough to let target fixation start to settle in. The Light Grenade and its weaker variant the Demon Wave are perfect for this.
Made for this, ideally, if the scholars have the legends of Mister Piccolo right.
This time, you
won't let him into his favorite combat range, good little boy though he's been.
You cup your hands, pulse your spirit forwards and
blast! The lesser form, the 'evil' explosion, rolls out from your hands in a sun-bright, directional burst.
KRA-KOOM!
You can mostly track Jaffur's ki through the blast, as he slams back to the ground- this time leaving less of a crater and more of a patch of cracked stone. Thaaat should settle his hash...
[JAFFUR DICE POWER MAXIMUM!]
Huh. He's getting up. Impressive.
"HYAAAAH!" The Scion comes on, rising like a homesick meteor, trailing smoke, still trying to close. Jaffur's ki is starting to flicker, the sapphire flame stuttering a bit at the edges. Stubborn as the rock, but he's wearing down. Better thwack him harder this time. He should be backing off and sniping, putting that good training to use, until he can recover from the hit.
Wonder-boy though Jaffur is, if he's letting that rattling knock the good sense out of him, he'd be mincemeat on the Cap circuit. And precocious kids who don't learn to fight
smart at a young age may never learn at all. So... time to repeat a lesson. Louder this time.
You pulse into cupped hands again, adding that extra twist that enhances the blast and tightens it up. Though you withhold a little- you're not
sure how he'd take this shot at full force. You put in enough to burn into his defenses and shut him down- but not enough to burn
through.
The power gathers as Jaffur closes to within a hundred meters, and you cry out-
"LIGHT GRENADE!"
The sound is beyond sound, and into the realm of blast overpressure. The air flashes into plasma like a nuclear fireball- though possibly that's giving too much credit to the Bomb. You squint against the white-out, the dissipating storm of your ki attack blinding your sixth sense as the light dazzles your eyes.
Merely
loud roars begin to echo from the Hall wards. Dust rolls in thick clouds, as little flecks of magma recondense. For a moment, the Scion's ki falters, as though he's dropping the Kaio-Ken. For a moment.
[JAFFUR DICE SMASH PUNY LAWS OF PROBABILITY!!]
Then Jaffur's kiai reaches you, as the dust parts, the Scion rocketing back into the fight for one more dance. Straight at you.
Almost as fast as before. For a long moment you simply gape.
HOW?
Okay, there is
no way he can take another Light Grenade on the chin. He'd roast if he tried. Couldn't do it.
No way. Cannot possibly happen.
...Can it?
Doesn't matter! NO taking chances, plus... frankly, you're starting to get a bit tired yourself. Though you don't want to
think about how worn down the Scion is.
What a kid!
He's getting closer. Quite a bit closer. You notice your jaw still hanging open. Welp, Demon Wave it is!
KRA-KOOM!
[JAFFUR DICE STRONGEST THERE IS!!!]
By this point, you should have been expecting the surprise.
The budding warrior prince's sapphire flame twists- he's starting to learn from the aerial tricks you pull with your aura, the sudden reaction jet, adapting
fast- it doesn't carry him out of the fire entirely, but it carries him far enough.
Singed and smoking, weaving unsteadily, Jaffur twirls through the edge of the zone of effect, and comes for you again. His face is starting to show the characteristic bruises of the Kaio-Ken, capillaries bursting under the strain here and there where the lesser ki meridians cross them-
And he has
gotten close, right up close and personal to you, when you had no intention of letting that happen. Not... bad at all.
Jaffur blurs into screaming activity, resuming his close-quarters assault with a mad energy you've never seen in a child. But though he is if anything faster than ever, he is not- quite- the same as earlier in the spar. Sheer exhaustion is starting to wear on him. The body tires, the spirit can be depleted. Even the will isn't-
entirely- infinite, and even the most determined hero can only control so much, so long. Staying this high is
hard for him, hard, at the dawn of his life, with the pounding he's taken. Easy for you, atop your mountain of practice and refinement.
And yet, and yet. Jaffur's still aiming his little fists where they'll do good, still seeing most of your blows barely in time to pull out of the way, but he's weakening. Not losing power, just losing the
edge, the fine-tuned concentration that provides judgment and foresight. Fatigue dulling his wits and senses. Kaio-Ken exhaustion, plus a couple of big blasts to the noggin. Not a good combination.
He can dodge, he can block... with teeth-gritting difficulty, he can strike back, he can
hit, he can dodge your ripostes, and his counter-counterkick still
hurts. He can keep it up, on and on, and you are more than a little tired yourself, weary as though you'd fought a fellow Circuit duelist. He fights, howling, the blood singing through his overcharged veins, eyes red and flecks of foam on the boy's lips as he refuses to release the Kaio-Ken, battling on long enough that your heart cries out for an end, for him to just
give in...
And that, the boy prince cannot do.
He's slipping, slowing, numb. You bat him away, hurtle after him and knock aside a few wild energy bolts he fires to slow you down. This time he doesn't manage to resist the initial rush, and you cannon into him. He's near the end, you can tell, and he slams back to the earth. Still at fourteen million- well, thirteen.
You flit down after him before he can stir, picking him up by one arm-
Willpower Check DC: I'm afraid to ask.
But you can tell his energy is shifting, for reasons other than being on the edge of collapse. And something in the way he clenches his fist stirs reminders in your brain. Enough to trigger ingrained instincts.
Mitsuba DOOOODGE Check DC: Success
Jaffur's gasp turns briefly into a strangled half-shout.
"HAAAaaa..ah!"
You flip in midair, until your feet point skyward, your arm whirling to keep your grip on the Scion whose feet still dangle down-
SHREEE!
-as he fires off the same lancing, one-handed beam that he sniped you with earlier. The one you'd have been smarter to dodge. Probably his best attack, for now. The beam burns like the breath of Hell, hotter than it has any right to, and no more than a few fingers wide, this close to Jaffur's hand.
And it would have slammed you right in the gut, if you hadn't seen it coming and shifted your grip, spinning to leave him dangling in midair faster than his battered little body could have reacted. Hell of a last-ditch move.
Willpower Check DC: I think we broke the universe.
You watch Jaffur, upside-down, as the red tinges at the edge of his liquid-fire aura fade. His over-tensed muscles relax involuntarily, bruising spreading farther across his skin.
The Kaio-Ken boost goes down.
Jaffur's beam spears out from his palm, the beam still swift and intense, even as the child moves in slow motion. Rainbow flame erupts from the Hall wards where it strikes them, the silvery blowtorch cutting into empty air and magical barriers. The Scion tries to bring his hand around, back onto you, willing motion into weary muscles. But that last attempt to wrestle with a concentrated firehose of ki is too much, too much for what vestiges of strength are left in the exhausted child.
The beam destabilizes as Jaffur's power level slips from fourteen million to seven, seven million to five, then three and sinking.
A last, irregular blast
whuffs out as his control falters at last, crazed cracks and smoking patches spreading across the ring floor from the last shot. You recoil with a squawk as the nameless beam loses containment entirely, washing silver fire across your face- but by now it's no more than a startlement, a remnant of the crisp intensity that lashed out from his holdout attack at first.
Jaffur Vegeta, Scion of House Vegeta, slumps, hanging from your hand, numb to the world from absolute, utter exhaustion of mind and body. You sweep your ki senses over his little body, probing for physical injuries and preparing to heal anything consequential. You hope you won't find anything, hope he didn't push himself to
that last extremity...
You shake your head wearily, patting out a smoldering patch in your tightly braided and coiled hair with your free hand, as your sixth sense looks Jaffur over. Three more years, maybe four. Let him perfect some of those weird tricks he's playing with. At this rate, the kid'll be so tough, he won't
need to go super-saiyan to dismantle things.
Things like mountain ranges. Small armies. Planetary champions.
Ow.
