- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
You got it!
And with that, either here or by PM, everybody has asked.
Dragon Ball: Days of Future Past (Dead)
- Thread starter The Fourth Monado
- Start date
- OOC
And with that, either here or by PM, everybody has asked.
KnightDisciple
Love God. Do Right. Fear No Man.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
I meant more in the sense of "does Bassoon figure out where they are with his Ki sense"; if not, he'll shift what he's doing in the scene. Well, he will if he can find them, too. Just a different approach. *Shrugs*
I apologize in advance for how much work it's going to be to write up all of Bassoon's techniques.
The Fourth Monado
S U B A R A S H I I
- Location
- Away
Oh.
Well... that'll be something IC.
You're not sorry, are youI meant more in the sense of "does Bassoon figure out where they are with his Ki sense"; if not, he'll shift what he's doing in the scene. Well, he will if he can find them, too. Just a different approach. *Shrugs*
I apologize in advance for how much work it's going to be to write up all of Bassoon's techniques.
Genon
Baron Awesomesauce the Magnificent
- Location
- Neptune
@PoptartProdigy
And now I finally have to figure out just what techniques Vector's picked up once and for all...
There's a lot of stuff I'm going to have to decide on, since she has never been in a battle on-screen without her suit or the equipment that entails. However, one constant that I'm going to use is that she got some training from the PTO and knows some Frieza Style techniques, but I'm going to have to know what exactly Frieza style entails and its full list of techniques (specifically, what you have edited it to have) before determining how much she's picked up.
While Vector doesn't especially like using Frieza Style, as it brings up a lot of bad memories and associates her with a certain sociopath more than she'd like, she nevertheless sees it as a very practical tool, as in Vector's age warfare is all about killing. Her era is much more in line with the real-life 20th-century concept of war as a brutal and nightmarish meatgrinder than the Dragon Ball concept of war as an epic battle decided by a few godlike entities, one of which may choose to spare the other.
However, after reading up on the way Frieza Style is viewed throughout history (and in Toki Toki especially), and knowing that there are thousands of innocents who need sparing in any given era, she has decided to keep her knowledge of Frieza Style hidden from those around her, not expressing any interest in it or using the style unless absolutely necessary--such as a situation when she's without her suit and needs to snipe someone quickly or bring out heavy firepower.
Her version of it, however, does not incorporate the especially-cruel and brutal techniques that Frieza employed (such as the delayed explosive attack that did in Krillin). and has more in line with a hybrid Piccolo and Krillin Style with its use of piercing and slicing attacks designed to kill efficiently.
I may also have her include some Ginyu Force techniques for shits and giggles, but I haven't decided on that yet.
@Nathaniel Wolff
And now I finally have to figure out just what techniques Vector's picked up once and for all...
There's a lot of stuff I'm going to have to decide on, since she has never been in a battle on-screen without her suit or the equipment that entails. However, one constant that I'm going to use is that she got some training from the PTO and knows some Frieza Style techniques, but I'm going to have to know what exactly Frieza style entails and its full list of techniques (specifically, what you have edited it to have) before determining how much she's picked up.
While Vector doesn't especially like using Frieza Style, as it brings up a lot of bad memories and associates her with a certain sociopath more than she'd like, she nevertheless sees it as a very practical tool, as in Vector's age warfare is all about killing. Her era is much more in line with the real-life 20th-century concept of war as a brutal and nightmarish meatgrinder than the Dragon Ball concept of war as an epic battle decided by a few godlike entities, one of which may choose to spare the other.
However, after reading up on the way Frieza Style is viewed throughout history (and in Toki Toki especially), and knowing that there are thousands of innocents who need sparing in any given era, she has decided to keep her knowledge of Frieza Style hidden from those around her, not expressing any interest in it or using the style unless absolutely necessary--such as a situation when she's without her suit and needs to snipe someone quickly or bring out heavy firepower.
Her version of it, however, does not incorporate the especially-cruel and brutal techniques that Frieza employed (such as the delayed explosive attack that did in Krillin). and has more in line with a hybrid Piccolo and Krillin Style with its use of piercing and slicing attacks designed to kill efficiently.
I may also have her include some Ginyu Force techniques for shits and giggles, but I haven't decided on that yet.
@Nathaniel Wolff
KnightDisciple
Love God. Do Right. Fear No Man.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
Ah okay, no worries then.
I think we are in "sorry not sorry" territory, yeah.You're not sorry, are you
The Fourth Monado
S U B A R A S H I I
- Location
- Away
Mato Vs. Bonny
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
Woo!
Who is ready for a Bonny and Mato Omake that takes place pre-arc 3?
Its a touch on the long side! (and includes a little fudging of power levels for narrative sake!)
Who is ready for a Bonny and Mato Omake that takes place pre-arc 3?
Its a touch on the long side! (and includes a little fudging of power levels for narrative sake!)
White.
If there was one thing Bonny had began to get used to since joining the Time Patrol, it was the color white. The training rooms were filled with it, supposedly a side effect of the Room of Space and Time. She'd never been able to find that in the enchantments though, so it was possibly just Chronoa's idea of a joke. It was useful to have a place to vent some stress without risking cross fire or casualties though.
While mindless destruction did do wonderful things for her Saiyan heritage, it wasn't the most pleasant thing to consider when in a crowded potentially threat heavy environment. Admittedly, she was nowhere near as potentially destructive as her would-be opponent for this spar. But then, he actually wanted the power he possessed, to the point where his had dramatically increased the most out of the team.
And speaking of Mato…
Bonny's fellow saiyan dropped out of the sky and gave her a brief nod. "Bonny. You wanted a spar?" Mato had been surprised to hear from Bonny, especially with a challenge to a training spar, but he wasn't going to turn the opportunity down. He'd come as quickly as he could.
"Yes."
Her reasons for doing so were many, but pretty much boiled down to wanting someone she could theoretically fight at close to an even level. Or at least someone who it would be less patronising to ask to come down to such a level, considering at one stage she'd been higher. She didn't want more power, but that didn't mean it wasn't at least a little upsetting to be surpassed seemingly so easily, thanks to something that appeared so easily unlocked and played around with.
"I need someone to spar against, and I figure you'd be the most likely to see the value of it, without requiring me to use Sage Mode".
Mato nodded. "Excellent choice. What brought this on?" With a flash, he powered up to fifteen million in silent deference to her own power level. "I was under the impression that you much preferred to use your own magic in combat."
He disapproved of that stance, of course, but it was her opinion. He didn't need a feud with another teammate -- not that Cynthia seemed to be aware of theirs. Yet.
Smiling to herself, Bonny's tail formed an arrow that was pointing up, a silent hint that he should raise it a little. Well ok, technically it was a hint that he should raise it more than a little but in this particular case she wasn't trying to be annoying or rely on one particular thing. Even if it was something of an unspoken understanding that she was much stronger magically then with Ki.
"I suggest 16.5 or so. I never said I wouldn't be using magic after all, just that I won't be directly augmenting my Ki with it. I'm trying to understand something, so I need to keep them… separate for now"
Mato cocked his head, considering leaving it where it was. She was not the first magic user he'd ever fought, after all, and he had techniques to cancel out her own stuff. But then he decided to raise it. No need to piss her off, and magic could get unpredictable. His aura pulsed as his power level rose some more, and then he brought it back under control, the aura flickering and dying away entirely under the sheer ease with which he could hold at this level.
"Sixteen point five," he said. "What are we trying to accomplish with this one?"
Bonny replied, "Like I said, I'm trying to understand something about myself. While you won't be as fun to punch in the face as Cynthia would be, it should still prove to be fun at least, especially since any time I can cut loose on a mission is when we are in massive trouble."
She still had a rather massive grudge against a certain power house due to certain actions. Sure, she'd decided to teach the pain Ki Healing, but even that had strings on it. Not least of all because Bonny wouldn't let her go near an actual patient until she was sure the girl wouldn't kill them by accident. But then, that wasn't the teammate she was currently dealing with.
Mato snorted. "Well, there's something we can agree on. Any ground rules? Beyond, 'keep it clean and try not to kill each other,' that is."
"Have fun."
Drawing into the air, Bonny retrieved a good old fashioned club, imbedded with the smallest spike of pure kachin. While she could have forged something more, she wouldn't have been able to lift it just yet. Making a good old fashioned 'bring it' gesture, she left it to Mato to make the first move out of politeness. After all, it wasn't a sneak attack contest, they weren't trying to ambush Vector.
Mato slowly drifted forward until he was a second's dash away from her and then started lazily circling, content to wait on her.
There was a vaguely amused smirk on his face as he did so. "Are you waiting for something? This is supposed to be for your benefit."
"Now now, I know you old timers need your sleep!"
Spinning around with a surge of energy, Bonny's stance and attack was seemingly unsuited for the weapon she was wielding, seemingly meant for something both smaller and lighter than the massive club, one that wouldn't make contact. Which is why it began to twist and distort as she attacked, forming into a spiked chain with much longer reach.
Mato's eyebrows shot up, and he ducked under the first swing, turning into a spin that, as he came out of it, launched him directly at Bonny with a surprising amount of momentum. Using the energy from the spin to accelerate quicker, he launched at her before throwing his ki out behind himself, reaching top speed in an instant and phasing even more quickly than his power level should allow. He swung at her stomach as he approached, waiting to see if she blocked.
"Restructure."
Speaking a single word as the attack approached, Bonny calculated quickly even as the chain splintered and disappeared into metal fragments. Fragments that began to combine back in front of her to form something of a shield/barrier, but not quite quickly enough to do more dampen the attack if Mato continued to thrust forward.
The small katchin fragment on the other hand, floated behind her in preparation for a counter attack.
Mato powered through, keeping vigilant as he burst through the cloud of fragments. The instant he impacted, he used Instant Transmission to pop away several thousand feet.
Taking the solid blow to the gut, Bonny swore briefly but kept on her feet. It appeared first blood had gone to him, even if she didn't really want to admit it. But then, the fight would end up going to hers, even if he did manage to vanish. Disappearing herself in a shower of light, she kept careful ears out even as she began to form a number of smaller hand axes and one massive battle axe.
"Lance Strike."
The whisper couldn't possibly make it all the way over to Bonny from where Mato stands, but she'd sense the attack before it hit. The question was if she'd be able to evade it in time with the warning she had. Mato honestly hoped so; he was looking forward to seeing what exactly it was she was trying to achieve, and it would be boring if the spar ended with her leg being blown off seconds in.
Some people would have bothered to evade. Bonny cleaved the oncoming attack in half with a thrown axe, a brief shimmer visible as the only warning to how it was possible. Either way, her version of a 'ki blast' was making its way towards him, an axe thrown with her greater than expected strength. It however was only a distraction, as her katchin spike tried to nail him in the foot.
vip
"I can't help but feel like that's cheating," mused Mato as he came out of the transmission punching Bonny in the face. "Just a little bit."
Before the fist could connect, Bonny herself vanished in a sparkling shower of light, albeit one that wasn't quite as fast as the vipping. Hers was much more stylish however, so that got her extra cool points. Rather than resolving into one Bonny however, she reformed into three each of which picked up a hand axe.
"Shouldn't get too reliant on it though… you are not the only one that can do something similar."
He grinned, settling back into a defensive stance. "Indeed! Now you're getting the hang of it. But now...show me what you've learned lately."
"How interesting.. You rarely seem to go on the attack. Don't worry, I can handle that." Launching a trio of homing axe attacks, the three Bonnies began to move as one. Each forging a pair of near identical spiked shields, they began to move forward into a series of attacks, two attempting to impale him through the impact.
Mato proceeded to demonstrate precisely why he preferred the defensive. With minimal movements and no wasted energy, he shifted out of the way of the first charge and kicked the first Bonny in the direction she was going in in order to launch her far away -- after all, she seemed so eager to be getting there, as fast as she was going. He used the momentum of the kick to launch himself clear of the second, and then moved into his typical evasive routine.
Even as the clone was hit it shimmered briefly and disappeared. Not that Bonny particularly cared all that much, considering there was two more moving quickly after him, shields drawn and shouting war cries. It wasn't the most efficient attack and it definitely wasn't the most likely to succeed. It was however amongst the most fun, which was the main thing she was trying to have. It also helped her analyse his style though, to find the weakness.
Plus if he stopped for a second, she'd club him over the head with spikey edges.
Mato bared his teeth in an eager grin and-
What?
Bonny watched, stunned, as Mato kicked off of one of the shields by managing to fit his foot in between the spikes. And once he had distance-
"Meteor Crash!"
"Restructure."
Slamming together the shields to unleash a barrage of tangling Chains, the Bonnies bared their own teeth straight back him, taking advantage of the distraction to scatter away in a burst of light and smoke. Unlike before, only a single one reappeared, forging a seemingly simple wooden bokken. Seemingly from nowhere, dramatic sounding chanting began to echo around the arena, admittedly in her own voice.
"Oh, brilliant!" Mato howled with laughter, appreciating the dramatics immensely. "Here's my reply: Flicker."
And instantly his ki washed out of his body, not spiking but projecting out so far and vast that it swelled to fit available space and ran up against the fact that in here there was no end to the space. It swelled and swelled and swelled, turning the world blue and covering Bonny in a glorious song that sang of identity, and somewhere in the middle of that great swell she realized that she had no idea where he was supposed to be in all of that.
"We find things by contrasting them against the world," said everything. "So make the world like you."
And then something struck her from the side.
Even as she was struck, Bonny was already in motion. While it was clear that she still wasn't taking it completely seriously, she was at least moving and breathing like the combat veteran she on very rare occasions claimed to be. Even slightly wounded, and completely unable to see her opponent despite him being everywhere, she wasn't out of the fight. Plus the place they were in gave her an advantage, not that the opponent realized it.
"Paradox Strike."
To say it was an attack would be to claim that it could miss, that there was any doubt it wouldn't connect. Wherever there was 'Mato' there was seemingly sword, a strike that somehow hit at every point of him and not him at once.
"Aaaaaaaaaagh!"
Mato recoiled in agony, snarling. Pulling himself back down to a point, he put his fists together and crossed his legs, entering a meditative stance and closing his eyes. "I am."
And ki. Something bizarre, but recognizably ki. It rushed out and swirled, purging anything that wasn't him from his immediate space and making him glow like a sun.
And there was the faintest tinge of magic about it, as well.
Seemingly unconcerned from where she was, Bonny 'attacked' her sword swinging at air. Then with something of a surprised look, she watched it crumble and fall apart. 'Pulling' another one into existence, she gave it a Katchin core, almost too heavy for her to actually swing it. The smell of magic was concerning however, considering she was fairly sure he didn't possess such a power.
"Paradox Strike."
Mato vanished, the light of his passage turning into a cloud as he flashed about the space. The second strike bounced off of the sheer core of being.
But his patterns of behavior had shifted. In a heartbeat he was in Bonny's face, throwing a knee at her midsection. He went on the attack as aggressively as she had ever seen him do, bringing the entirety of his lethal skill to bear on her in a flurry of blows.
"Now that's more like it."
Even as he attacked, she once again swung at air, the sword hanging there for a few seconds even as all but the core was stripped away.by his aura. Moving into something of an archaic combat stance in response (about one not really known outside of earth) she met his blows with her own, taking the knee to the mid section but deflecting each of his other blows with the core of the sword.
Mato realized that it was cheating, but the sword didn't have an edge. Mid-kick, his leg hooked and clamped down around the core, dragging it down and away and pulling himself around into a snapping kick to Bonny's face.
And then he vipped away, his presence subsiding in a great rush. "Gonna need to call a break there!" he panted, sinking down to a knee.
Tanking the blow with her face, for a second an almost feral grin split her face… at least until another Bonny tapped her on the shoulder and healed the damage. Spitting out a quickly replaced loose tooth, she sighed almost in disappointment. Sending the multiform over to heal him as well, she fixed up the damage she took to her ribs and other assorted injuries.
"I thought you were about endurance?"
He waved off the clone. "I'm not injured. And generally, yes, but this is a fun spar. I would've just pulsed if this were a real fight, instead of keeping it up. I only need to be burning away identity-targeting magic while it's being directed at me, after all. But this is about fun and testing."
He pressed in on his forearm, and Bonny heard a faint click -- a reminder, if she'd forgotten, that he was partly mechanical. "The implants will have me up and ready to go in a little bit. In the meantime, have a seat."
"That wasn't identity targeting magic. I can't actually use Paradox Strike outside this room."
Ignoring his attempts to wave her off, the clone poked him between the eyes and sent a jolt of energy through his body, a lot like drinking half a dozen coffees but without the crash. It was an old time patrol medic trick, that she had picked up when she originally thought she'd be on medevac duties.
"I've spent quite a bit of time studying this room's enchantments. So I simply looked back in time and hit you in every point I saw at once. Only works in here because time is distorted, would be too expensive normally for me at the moment."
He perked up in interest. "Really? Time magic? I hadn't thought that would work with that kind of stuff. Might have more utility than I'd imagined." He climbs back to his feet, testing the boost. "Hm. Well, what do you know? Learning already. Anything else you wanted to test out today? Something you wanted to see?"
"It's only time magic if you squint at it cross eyed while at least partially drunk. It's a half ass hack job that I pulled together from rubbish, scraps and several shots of something I probably shouldn't have conjured. Pretty sure you'd have the be the Supreme Pink Puff to pull it off anywhere else, or at least possessing the mana of a god."
She sighed in slight annoyance.
"It's a paradox strike for a reason"
Mato snorted. "Bah. I'm not talking about execution, I'm talking about the school you're using. Or the effect, depending on what terminology you were educated with. It's a time-based spell. Just because it's something so insanely hard that only a god can reliably do it in the real world doesn't mean that you're not using time magic." He gave her a disbelieving look. "Are you seriously holding yourself up to the boss as your standard for performance?"
"It's not a hack job because only she can pull it off, but because it's crude, inelegant and uses up too much power. Technically it's less time magic and more cut magic, since I'm cutting through time to hit my target. It just means a slightly more elegant/inelegant choice of target then most. Real magic should be quick, effortless and completely impossible to determine how it works from outside."
He smiled, amused. "I advise you to keep practicing with me, then. I have certain advantages in recognizing what a spell is doing. Ultimately, the best test of your magic is still the boss, but if you don't want to bother her with incomplete magic, getting things past me would be a good goal."
He pulsed that strange presence trick of his again to demonstrate, again shot through with the faintest tinge of magic.
"Okay, I know you're neither sage nor sorcerer, so why do I have the strangest urge to strap you down and check you for foul experimentation?"
It was putting her teeth on edge, and her thumbs definitely began to faintly prickle when she paid attention to them. It was the type of thing that if she even thought what she was expecting was true, would likely ensure their fight would restart immediately, this time for real. It would be rude, but it would also be safer for everyone involved if it was nipped at the budd. Little explosions now could prevent extreme carnage later.
He cocks his head. "I had cause to want more information about the status of my soul a while ago. I recruited a mage who specialized in soul magics to help me. He managed to forge channels from my body to my soul. In general they don't do much, but I'm usually a lot more present to mages like you given that my soul is more immediately there. People also feel more present to me as a result. Being able to enforce my identity in my personal space is one of a few side effects from that. I've had them for a few years now."
"That seems very unwise. Soul magic is not something that should be casually entered into, especially when you're getting someone else to help you do the connections. Never cast a spell or let someone else cast a spell that you can't safely undo." Considering she was briefly considering her own bit of soul messing around, she was once again being something of a hypocrite.
"Anyway, up for another fight for the road? I still haven't got a decent answer yet, so perhaps we should no 'gimmicks' with both at 15."
Perhaps surprisingly, Mato's reaction is not scorn or open disbelief for her odds of success, but actual, easy approval. "Excellent. I'm completely on board."
Flash
Again, his power level surges and then dies back into controlled silence, the aura flaring as he powers up and then dying under the ease of it. He assumes a defensive stance. "What exactly are you hoping to achieve?"
"I… need to know."
For a second, her eyes were somewhere else. Someone else, both younger and filled with something completely alien on her face. Not quite identifiable as the one that was usually speaking. But then she mastered herself and it vanished once more. Instead, she moved back into the archaic sword stance, forming a weapon out of Ki itself. Only to launch a simple but elegant attack pattern, one clearly honed through practise.
Mato nodded, hopping backwards and keeping just out of reach. "Well practiced. You've clearly worked on this a lot." Once Bonny managed to close the distance, he dodged the first strike. "Almost a showman's form. Yet singularly effective, for all of that. No...an artist's form." He gave her a completely genuine smile. "There is a reason I refer to what I do as the martial arts, after all. Before what they're used for, these are a means of self-expression. I've wondered, sometimes, how you could miss that. You're a saiyan, after all. This is in your blood. But I presume it's personal."
Ducking under a blow, he came up with a vip further away. "Now, regarding my soul channels -- they're secure, don't worry. On their own they're merely pointless vulnerabilities, but with my ki added on they are inviolate. My identity is absolute within that, just as much as my soul itself. No hostile magic or ki can make its way through. Not in one piece, anyway Even what I do with my little trick doesn't change that -- I'm drawing on my identity by way of my soul, but it doesn't leave its container. The soul, after all, is not meant to be in the body. I imagine the consequences would be severe." He left unmentioned his direct personal knowledge of exactly how severe.
As they engaged up close again, he nodded. He paid his entire focus to the fight; Bonny was clearly very highly learned in this form. But, being Mato, he found the time to talk regardless. "Too direct. Elegant and lethal, naturally, but your strikes are opposing me on lines that favor my own movement. You need to find a way to hit me from which my own body will prevent me from escaping. At the heart of it, that's what my style is about. Find the lines along which your opponent physically cannot resist your assault. You are skilled, of course, but you're still fighting like a young woman. Not a poor philosophy, but you won't be young forever. Some day, those elegant patterns you weave will exhaust you. The time you take to put somebody down, they will use to give you an injury that never goes completely away. Find the way to win the fight, and do it -- in a single strike."
Bonny frowned. "This is no artist's form. This is one of the seven secret styles of Earth, passed down from master to student for thousands of years." At least according to her teacher anyway, though admittedly he might not have passed down everything he knew, but just those techniques that were safe for her to use. He was always like that, carefully parcelling out knowledge when she was ready for it, rather then just when she wanted it. It ensured she grew at an effective but steady pace, never so fast that she lost control over herself. That Mato brought up her blood brought up a bit of an eyeroll, nowhere near enough of one to get her to stop attacking though.
"My Saiyan blood tells me a lot of things. It tells me I should annihilate everyone that bothers me even slightly, it has me waking at random hours with strange cravings, and it encourages the type of primal madness that got our entire race annihilated long before I was forged. See how well listening to our blood got them."
Mato's face got a sad cast to it. "Perhaps that's what it seems like to you, who never had her parents to help. I'll even admit that for many of us, that's what they choose to focus on. But no. That's not it."
vip
He stared her down for a moment from a safe distance. "Your blood tells you to live, Bonny. Life isn't kind. It's not neat. It's sloppy and often cruel. But worth it, for all of that. What consumed our people in your timeline wasn't listening to their blood, it was refusing to moderate it. So many see the saiyans as monsters for the urges we feel. Many of us are. But we are simply...alive. Very purely alive. And there's nothing wrong with that. The fault lies with those who let their urges rule them. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't listen."
vip
He appeared behind her, already swinging. "Hear the song of blood in your ears as you push yourself to the limit! Feel the pounding of your heart down to your very soul and know that in this moment, you are alive! Feel your anger, your hunger, and yes, listen to them, but never let them rule you."
Mato's eyes were bright and alive in a way Bonny had never seen from him. "This is what it means to be saiyan; not to destroy, but to find the beauty in these moments on the knife's edge! But if you lock them away…"
vivivivivivivivivivivivivi
Mato flickered around, his voice reverberating around the space. "Everything is cold. Colorless. Of course you feel, but there's always just that little edge missing." His voice was as she had always heard it again, and only once she heard the difference did she realize that there was something missing there. "They don't have to be problems. Angry? Express that. Shout. Fly off and blow up a patch of deserted desert. And then come back and approach it with a thinking mind. Waking up hungry? For heaven's sake, eat something and go back to sleep. Did you think humans don't feel the exact same things we do? They do, if less. Why are anger and hunger aspects of yourself to master if you lack a tail and insurmountable demons if you don't?"
vip
He finally reappeared, panting. "Your bladework is an artist's form. I can see the hands of the first master wrapping around the hilt in precise contemplation of the task at hand laid over yours, even thousands of years later. It is precise and deadly and elegant, and it is beautiful. And it deserves so much more than you give it. You deserve so much more. Because you will never be everything you can be unless you accept yourself for who you are."
"Who am I? Or What am I?"
Bonnys laughter was bitter, sardonic and more than a little self mocking. Dodging his sole attack and not even bothering to launch one back she allowed her sword to fade back into ki as she settled into a different combat stance, one that Mato had never seen her use before. At the same time, she was rather clearly letting mana flow through her, affecting the world around them even if she clearly wasn't using it to attack or defend. The white void of the room changed and shifted, a burned out wreck of a city littered with the corpses of anthropomorphic cats and assorted heavily armed and armoured alien species.
"Alive? Pushed to my limit?"
Laughing to herself as she began to move, her current style somehow made her appear heavier and a lot more inevitable. Almost like a juggernaut that was beginning to build up speed for an attack run. Gathering a bright pink ki into her hands, she smiled as it built up, before unleashing a series of smaller yet still dangerous energy blasts. They weren't the most accurate thing considering her lack of experience, but they were still fully formed kil blasts being aimed in his general position.
"I've only come close to my limits once before, long before I joined the time patrol. Not even containing Cynthia's stupidity or trying to kill Trunks has taken me back there."
Watching a brief flash of movement across the ruined landscape her magic and replaced the typical 'theme' with, she allowed it to distract her, even as screams briefly echoed around the battlefield. Although it was too quick to see properly, she sighed to herself, even as she almost seemed a little more at home here. It was both familiar and distressing, in the same way as an almost treasured memory that you weren't quite sure if you were meant to be proud of.
"I know what exactly what I am, and nobody wants me to accept that."
Mato raised his eyebrows and then put his fingers to his forehead.
vip
Wham
"What you are, is a saiyan," he said, putting a name to the issue they'd been dancing around. "And you never had anybody to teach you what that means. Let me see if I can summarize -- pushed to your limits, you let yourself go...and did something you regret. Do you imagine that this makes you special?"
His tone was merely polite interrogation. Granted, it was all the more infuriating for that.
"A saiyan?"
Bonny was laughing again, despite her injuries.
'This isn't much to do with my blood, not really. I got over most of that stuff after walking through the ashes of planet truffle, and meeting the primitive saiyans in our first mission."
Motioning back to the area she had been watching, she crafted a window into memory, to let him see what she had been observing. Namely a heavily armored purple alien impaled on two rather dainty looking hands. Hands that almost casually tore the two halves apart, almost out of curiosity/playfulness. For a second, an unknown almost indeterminate face was visible, at least until the hair turned purple and it became a crude saiyan replica of the one it killed.
"Didn't really have a face at the time. Was almost inconsiderate of them really, barely giving me the time to take my first breaths, to decide what I wanted to be before asking me to kill a bunch of people."
A few more flashes of scenes, other kills equally messy in their own way. Always there was the same air, of absentminded mayhem and destruction. With each kill, an element was borrowed, from skin, eye and hair color, and even a few elements of a combat stance. Blond, brown, gold, green and purple but never red.
Mato ceased his assault, floating over to the window and crossing his arms. "Hm. So, becoming a saiyan was your own decision? You certainly don't look like one, not at first. Or are you simply a shapeshifter?"
"I always was a saiyan, but then I'm weird."
It was self evident and something that plenty would agree with, but it still had to be said.
"They wanted the perfect defender, something that could completely annihilate the invasion so they wouldn't have to dirty their cowardly hypocritical little paws."
The window scanned over a number of anthropomorphic cats, most of them hiding from the armored attackers. For a second Bonny that was not Bonny stood before them, before going off to do more horrific, nasty and otherwise playful things to the invaders.
"So they searched through their histories, and the records they had of the greater galaxy before they chose to hide away, and chose the biggest nastiest thing they found, wishing for one that would protect rather than destroy them, something that would fight so they wouldn't have to. A supposedly perfect Saiyan, that the invasion would have no chance against. They just had no clue what we actually looked like, so I had to fill in the details."
Mato stroked his chin. "Hm. Looks like a saiyan child playing, honestly. The context is -- obviously -- wrong, but the body language is spot-on. You thought you were playing, didn't you?"
"No, I know that much. I knew that I had to protect the Neko, and that the ones in the fancy armor weren't meant to be there. I also knew how to get rid of them, but not how it actually worked. In hindsight I can't even remember how many of them there were, only that there was always another way available, and a variety of things I hadn't tried yet."
A montage of death and destruction followed, one where the invaders started out confident and aggressive, but slowly but surely broke until she was chasing them down through the wreckage and rubble that was once their vessels. Soon merely rushing them or stabbing them clearly got boring, so she turned their own weapons against them, burrowed the faces of her victims to get close to future ones, and mixing moves she learned from observing them.
"A bit like being given a menu for a new restaurant, and a potion that would let you eat as much as you want. Magic has always been part of my nature, and likely will always be so. But it was never closer to me then it was there."
Briefly the image lingered on someone whose face appeared like the one she usually wore, but she pushed that one out of the window. There was no time for that one just yet.
Mato nodded, hearing something familiar. "It was all new. New and interesting. And so of course you pushed it as far as you could, and never thought about what it meant. But once you looked back on it…"
"I almost could have handled that. There's an expression I picked up on earth, about winning the war but losing the peace. Not a single invader managed to leave that place alive."
A flash again, of that face, of red hair.
"No one would reveal the Neko still lived, that they hadn't been destroyed…" She was lost in thought, contemplating.
Mato gave her a glance, side-on.
When the face showed up again he reached out, opened the soul channels, and murmured, "Calcification."
The playback stuttered to a halt on the face. "Looks a lot like you," he said, pulling his ki out before she could overwhelm the trick. He couldn't really stop her from doing that, and it stung from his end. "Who is she, Bonny?"
"Yeah she always was rather attractive. I might have taken her face even if she wasn't their greatest mistake, if I didn't need the reminder."
Admittedly her version was filtered through her Saiyan heritage, but the effect was still the same.
"She was the enemy commander, the only person that has ever come close to killing me. The Neko did their job too well when they made me you see. It's rather hard to hurt someone that can heal through most injuries or transform their body out of the way of an enemy attack. But then, it's always the powerful ones you remember, those with drive, never the ones that just want to do the job, get paid and go home."
She opened up a second window, one that had the two of them talking on a balcony even as the final invader ship began to take off.
"She met with me to discuss the terms of surrender, the terms that would have allowed them to leave safely."
It was a pleasant chat, one that seemed amiable despite the rather destructive circumstances. They sipped, they chatted and then there was a bit of mutual respect there. Or at least there was, until Bonny reached up and carelessly blasted the ship out of the sky with a Ki blast. Then there was only bloodshed.
Mato stiffened. Then he frowned, and looked closer.
No change in body language visible. No indication that this was meant to be unusual. Just...reach, boom. And quite relatable outrage on the leader's part. Honestly, though, Bonny didn't seem at all bothered by it. Which did not mesh with the young woman Mato knows. Unregulated saiyan instincts don't do that; not in his experience.
He considered making another guess; it wasn't that he was trying to figure it out in a grand, sweeping proclamation every time. They were prompts, his way of saying, "this is the thrust of what you've communicated to me thus far." But this time, he doubted Bonny would appreciate him getting it wrong.
So instead, he turned away from the screen as the ships exploded, and looked at the Bonny next to him. He looked at her while she was unguarded and watching the playback, and he tried to see what her reaction was.
"They never considered what would happen if the invaders surrender, what would could have been done in that situation. In hindsight six years later, I can think of a dozen things I could have done. A dozen things that would have made the situation better, that would have prevented such a senseless waste of life. They taught me most of them."
The venom in her voice was almost enough to shatter both windows. Metaphysically speaking anyway.
"But of course, they didn't have the foresight to consider what would have been something so bloody simple. So I saw them escaping, didn't understand what we were discussing, and blasted them from the sky as if it was as simple as scratching my back. Couldn't have their precious secrets being revealed, after all."
Mato nodded. "Lack of foresight. Not to mention siccing an infant in the body of a grown woman on an invasion. Your creators didn't know themselves how to fight, and didn't trust their creation with the kind of programming that would let it adapt to circumstances. Or perhaps simply didn't realize that it needed that. Kais on high, maybe they didn't even know they were denying it." He gives her a narrow look. "And you say they taught you most of what you needed to know? For peaceful solutions? I can just imagine their righteous indignation at your actions." His voice was filled with scorn. If Bonny was aiming to give him a negative opinion of her creators, she succeeded.
"They tried. They did their best to help me control the maelstrom of mana that was within me, tried to help me harness my Ki or at least ensured it wouldn't hurt anyone. They even did their best to 'forgive my violent nature' despite the fact they created me to ensure they wouldn't need to give in to theirs."
She spat in disgust.
"Frigging hypocrites, not prepared to take responsibility for their own options and safety. Almost makes me wonder if they ever had to do it again."
Mato spat right along with her. "Spit on them. Spit on the sands of a desert world, for all they're worth. Cowards." He looked at her. "And they stuck you with the aftermath, and all of the blame."
"Eh" Bonny was kind of sheepish as she scratched the back of her head. "I was the one that might have been cutting some of the more annoying ones open so I could practise healing, so I do need to be kind of fair to them in that particular case, even if I was trying to ensure future fights would have much less waste. Though I was using a knife, and not the spell they accused me of."
Mato frowned. "Not that I would fault you taking out your frustrations on them, but why do it that way? You're clearly not happy with having done that."
"Easiest way to practise treating a wound is to cause the wound in question. I was simply ensuring less of them would die next invasion, or as others would say its better to bleed in peace to avoid dying in war. Made sense to me at the time, especially without access to the Time patrols record of major disaster zones."
Mato raised an eyebrow. "I can't fault the logic, even if I'm skeptical that that's your only reason. But I can't help but feel as though we've wandered a bit afield of our point. Why choose the leader's face for your own? Admiration? Attraction? Something else?"
"As a reminder, at least on missions. That there is always another way, another solution, another way to ensure things turn out without waste. The true me would have cheerfully annihilated that Majin village, would have quite happily annihilated them all in a variety of no doubt hilarious at the time methods, before likely dying in a rather embarrassing fashion to Cynthia or that elder."
"I've got no problem with killing if I have to, but it's because I want not. Not because I'm forced to for lack of options or shitty programmed mission briefings. I need to know that I'm doing things because I want to, not because the old urges are resurfacing."
Mato frowned in confusion, and started to ask something.
And then his eyes widened in shock. "You...you don't feel responsible for what happened the day you were born, do you?"
"Why wouldn't I? They merely wanted the attackers dead, it was my choice to do most of the things I did to them."
Mato whirled on her. "You were an infant! In the body of a woman or not, you were a newborn child! You can't be held responsible for what you did! You didn't have any idea what it all meant. You weren't responsible for your actions. Not then."
"By that measure one isn't responsible for anything they do while drunk or transformed, which is completely ridiculous. Ignorance of the laws is no excuse for breaking them, especially when one was born with the knowledge I was. I might not have been emotionally capable of understanding but I was mentally.
At its heart, magic is understanding."
"No!" Mato scowled, rounding on her. "It's not the same as being drunk or transformed. You choose those, aware of the consequences. The only exception is first transformations, which is why people aren't held responsible for those! And the only reason ignorance of the law is not a valid excuse is because resources exist for people to learn the law -- an opportunity you didn't have! YOU WERE A CHILD! AND WE DON'T HOLD CHILDREN RESPONSIBLE FOR DOING THINGS THEY HAVEN'T YET LEARNED ARE WRONG!"
At some point, he transformed and began screaming at her. It's very likely he wasn't aware of it.
In response, she gathered ki. A lot more Ki then she had ever been seen by Mato or any other member of the team. In fact, if such a thing could be measured, it would have been perhaps as much ki as they had seen her used put together, then multiplied by some power. Due to her own reluctance to actually touch that power, she rarely drew upon it.. And what little she did use was typically focused into her sword or those small blasts she had used earlier.
This time however, it was a glowing orange sphere that was larger than she was, perhaps even larger than a building. Compared to the immensity of the room of space and time it was still almost nothing… but it definitely stuck out in comparison to both themselves and the ruined images her mana was still sharing in the world.
"By your timelines reckoning, I would approximately be six, around the age where a saiyan youth would be sent out to annihilate the people of a planet so that it could be sold. In another timeline, perhaps that inhabited by the others, this same attack was used to annihilate almost all of the saiyan race, save for between two and seven survivors. If I fired this at Toki Toki, completely unprepared it would kill about 98% of the Time Patrol. Would I be responsible?"
She was speaking calmly once more… the same calm dissonance that often came when she considered her 'previous' self.
Mato glanced upwards in irritation at the sphere. Unlike Bonny, he touched ki all the time, and had a nigh-peerless understanding of it. He was capable of detonating his ki while it was inside the body of the person who stole it.
With an annoyed flick of his wrist, he dissipate the sphere as though he was clearing away a cloud of smoke.
"First, we still count them as children at the age of six. Sure, they're sent on missions, but that's because there's no way they could be threatened in the process, not because we think they're adults. False equivalency, there. They're still their parents' responsibility. Second, while you are six years old you've done a lot of living in those six years in an adult's body, with an adult's capabilities. You have an adult's understanding of actions and consequences, and should be respected as such. And finally-"
He vanished, his power level spiking. An extremely light impact bounced off of the back of her skull as he gave her a dope slap. "Of course you'd be responsible. But it's six years and a lot of life after you were born. You now understand why that would be wrong. Then, by your own admission, you did not. One is not the other. And I know you're smart enough to realize that."
He phased back into view in front of her, his arms crossed.
For a second, Bonny saw stars. She also saw comets, meteors and what appeared to be a seven winged dragon that was trapped within its own coils, but they weren't quite as impressive as the balls of fire that snapped her out of her little 'previous self' impersonation. Admittedly the whack was also painful, and a rather annoying reminder that despite what she claimed, they weren't really on the same level power wise.
"But what if I could cease to have that understanding? What if I returned to what I was, only at this point over five hundred times stronger? I know it's still there, considering how quickly I picked up the knowledge to completely kill almost everyone I've met with a single strike."
That was the thing she had been trying to test, trying to understand. She had been trying to work out if she had sought out those skills for the reasons she thought she did, or because her old self was starting to wake up, was considering coming out for a little walk.
"Then I would put you down, and sleep soundly that night," said Mato, cocking his head. "As long as I am here, you needn't fear that somebody will hesitate to stop you. Even if the others faltered -- and I doubt that Vector would -- I would not. But it won't happen. It doesn't work that way. Because the person you were is not a separate being. It's just who you used to be. And the reasons for that girl being who she was don't exist anymore. She isn't some lurker hiding beneath the surface of your consciousness. If you begin to act that way, it will be your choice. And a poor one, which you know not to make. But these are just words."
He spread his arms and transformed, beckoning her towards him. "You won't believe me until you see it for yourself. Enough games. Come after me with everything you have. I am trained to fight magic users, and experienced. I will push you. If the monster you fear is there, this will scare it out."
"Everything I have?"
Bonny thought then shrugged. She had been meaning to test it anyway. Beginning to sway as if dancing to music only she could hear, her skin shimmered with a brief glow, as if she was caught dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight. Scattering the light through the area around them, she smiled. Before throwing a power ball in his face.
Yeah, Mato knew that one. He spat out a ki blast to detonate it and then vipped a thousand kilometers away in order to arrest the transformation before it could begin.
Privately, he grinned. Nicely done, Bonny, he thought.
It appeared he was out of her range currently…she expected something like that would likely occur but that didn't mean it wasn't annoying. Hovering a pair of powerballs on either side so that he wouldn't be able to properly attack her without seeing them, she began to chant, weaving a spell even as she prepared to be attacked.
She wasn't completely undefended however… She had a multiform ready to split off and defend.
Mato began to close in, but halted as he began to feel the familiar wash of Blutz Waves. He growled.
And then, he grinned.
Bonny's first sign of Mato returning was the sound of a bestial roar as a colossal energy beam careened towards her from him, as he hovered there as a Golden Oozaru in all its fury. Behind it, unnoticed and unnoticeable behind the immense blast, Mato released an Ignition in case she teleported behind him.
"Well that is just bullshit!"
The power ball was meant to force him out of Super Saiyan, not reveal yet another annoying power up. Still our heroine was brave, our heroine was tough…our heroine was very good at disappearing in a scatter of light, only to unleash a barrage of green projectiles towards the golden ape. As for the form she prepared earlier, it had scattered to continue the chant, processing the blitz waves into something…. Better.
Mato fired off a Meteor Crash to detonate the blasts, and then-
vip
-fired a Lance Strike from behind Bonny.
"You really are predictable."
Even as the Lance Strike blasted towards her, it glanced off a shimmering shield of mana and went hurtling in a completely different direction. Even as she clenched her first, a series of bright green Ki blasts went hurtling in every direction, in order to drive him back more than a little as the chanting was completed and the world was gripped by light. All around them, a faint rose tint was easily visible as her form's magic was worked into the enchantments of the room. For as long as he would stay within the zone and within the room, his body's protection against his own Super Saiyan energies would be removed.
Or so the theory behind the spell went anyway. While outside the room she wouldn't have been able to manage the difference just yet. She was tapping into the Supreme Kai's own power by using the same power source that already ran the room..
"I might not be the best fighter, but you spend too much time going for the rear shot."
Magic users are irritating.
The ki blasts did essentially nothing, but that spell hurt, a lot. So Mato simply dropped Super Saiyan and lunged forward at his full, Oozaru speed of 71 million units, punching Bonny in the face with his full Oozaru strength of 213 million units. "I am."
He expressed himself for just long enough to burn through any magic shield Bonny threw up, and then sped out.
"I'm not."
Throwing up a pair more of multi forms as the attack commenced, rather than trying to dodge or block, she merely positioned herself in a way that ensured she took a catastrophic but not lethal amount of damage. Then her clones teleported her out of there, meeting the first one made to begin rapid healing.
Mato sent an active pulse the instant she was out of view and chased it down with Instant Transmission as soon as he got a return. Before he could even visually register his new surroundings, he shouted, "IGNITION!"
WHUMP
"Ki Shield!"
While she didn't need to speak the dramatic words, it did something for the morale as three of the Bonny combined their shields long enough to heal the original up to a level where she could move, before promptly disintegrating under the attack. It was a risky move, especially in a training spar. The end result was the same however…a brief shower of light and Bonny reappeared bruised, injured, and yet unbroken.
More importantly she was surrounded by the shimmer of sage mode.
"Zenkai complete."
WHUMP
Something new what the FUCK IS THAT?!
Mato spun under the force of the blow and gritted his teeth. Right then. This calls for drastic measures.
vip
...Mato hung in the air above Bonny's position. "Clever girl," he said, still in Oozaru. His extended the first two fingers of each hand and touched them to each other in front of his sternum. "I rarely have to use this." He whipped his arms back until they were by his flanks, pointing back. Sparks trailed off of them. "HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
His aura flared gold again as he transformed. "I AM!"
The sky pulsed as raw Being ripped out into reality from the man's soul. "STORM'S WRATH!"
Mato whirled his arms up and around in twin arcs that ended by his hips, and then twisted them in and forward, pointing towards Bonny.
A bar of blindingly-bright light briefly connected the two saiyans as Mato converted his ki into electrical energy en masse, grounding in Bonny's scalp. The light was unnaturally bright.
And then a yet-greater light subsumed even that, as the terrible heat did horrifying things to the atoms in the air it passed through, and touched off a nuclear firestorm -- every bit of it singing of Mato's soul.
vip
And Mato reappeared, distant enough to avoid the blast.
"You rely on that technique far too much. One day you won't be able to teleport out of danger"
Drawing a shimmering sword from the air, Bonny smiled as she charged it with the Ki and Mana that happened to be the only thing keeping her standing. It hadn't been much of a Zenkai, considering her Ki reserves were diminished yet increased, but the increased Mana would have to do for now. Shifting her stance into one he hadn't seen her use yet (at least to the best of her ability anyway), she winced slightly.
If there was one thing she had to say for it, the overly flashy stances were definitely not designed to be comfortable to use when injured. For a second, she almost shimmered with a green aura, but it faded out of existence quicker than an arcosian's promise. Adjusting her internal energies to best meet the oncoming attack, she almost swore at how low she really was.
"Ki and mana mixture…proving unsteady at low proportions. Higher levels of sage mode not recommended…but needed."
While Bonny would have usually left a fight long before it got to this point, it was a matter of pride and a rejection of his words that kept her going. That and a brief desire to simply see him break and bend before her, despite the rather large difference in their powers. She'd taken away his speed by forcing him into oozaru, and most of his power by preventing the change…even if he was risking it for revenge.
This was the only shot she would get for a long time to try and take him down, to try and make him understand. In future fights he would be prepared for the moonlight sonata, be prepared for the sea of roses, and she'd have to come up with something new. Tapping into the enchantments of the room for power once more, this time she didn't bother trying to anchor or protect anything.
Instead she tore them apart, gathering the streamers of magical energy and forcing them into her conjured sword. Her left hand did everything it could to keep both it and her steady, even as the right hand hung loosely by her side. There was a gathering maelstrom of energy gathering above them, one she normally wouldn't have been able to face down. But here and now, with this opponent and empowered by what was left of the power balls Blutz Waves...
She was not throwing away her shot.
Even as the attack rushed towards her she swung, a mana infused slash to cleave the heavens asunder. Magic met anti-magic, the light of the soul and the stolen stubbornness of a saiyan's pride. Lightning met flesh, firestorm met steel and for a minute time seemingly… stopped as everything that anchored the room into position and shielded it from the energies went haywire. A chasm that was no chasm, a hole formed into the unworld that sucked out the vast majority of the firestorm, preventing it from being instantly lethal.
Instead there was a charcoaled and crisp Bonny statue, seemingly golden roasted yet still standing in completion of the strike, the left hand seemingly raised in post swing victory…and the top finger of the right hand pointed directly at Mato, a final 'screw you' with all the energy she could spare before passing out.
Around her, the room began to splutter and die, the enchantments keeping it in check fading away from lack of energy.
Mato snorted as he saw the results of Bonny's reckless -- but brilliant -- block, shaking his head...and then swore in sudden panic as the Room flickered around them.
vip
"Damn it damn it damn it WHAT DID YOU DO?!" He scooped the younger saiyan up and-
vip
-appeared at the door and dove through, the Room unraveling even as he did. It slammed shut with a note of terrifying finality as the reality beyond simply ended in a maelstrom of magic, anti-magic, and ki. Mato let out a sigh of profound relief and produced a Senzu Bean, cramming it down Bonny's throat.
"Mato."
The saiyan blinked and glanced up. His face paled. "Oh crap- I mean hi, boss!"
"WHAT DID YOU TWO JUST DO?!"
If there was one thing Bonny had began to get used to since joining the Time Patrol, it was the color white. The training rooms were filled with it, supposedly a side effect of the Room of Space and Time. She'd never been able to find that in the enchantments though, so it was possibly just Chronoa's idea of a joke. It was useful to have a place to vent some stress without risking cross fire or casualties though.
While mindless destruction did do wonderful things for her Saiyan heritage, it wasn't the most pleasant thing to consider when in a crowded potentially threat heavy environment. Admittedly, she was nowhere near as potentially destructive as her would-be opponent for this spar. But then, he actually wanted the power he possessed, to the point where his had dramatically increased the most out of the team.
And speaking of Mato…
Bonny's fellow saiyan dropped out of the sky and gave her a brief nod. "Bonny. You wanted a spar?" Mato had been surprised to hear from Bonny, especially with a challenge to a training spar, but he wasn't going to turn the opportunity down. He'd come as quickly as he could.
"Yes."
Her reasons for doing so were many, but pretty much boiled down to wanting someone she could theoretically fight at close to an even level. Or at least someone who it would be less patronising to ask to come down to such a level, considering at one stage she'd been higher. She didn't want more power, but that didn't mean it wasn't at least a little upsetting to be surpassed seemingly so easily, thanks to something that appeared so easily unlocked and played around with.
"I need someone to spar against, and I figure you'd be the most likely to see the value of it, without requiring me to use Sage Mode".
Mato nodded. "Excellent choice. What brought this on?" With a flash, he powered up to fifteen million in silent deference to her own power level. "I was under the impression that you much preferred to use your own magic in combat."
He disapproved of that stance, of course, but it was her opinion. He didn't need a feud with another teammate -- not that Cynthia seemed to be aware of theirs. Yet.
Smiling to herself, Bonny's tail formed an arrow that was pointing up, a silent hint that he should raise it a little. Well ok, technically it was a hint that he should raise it more than a little but in this particular case she wasn't trying to be annoying or rely on one particular thing. Even if it was something of an unspoken understanding that she was much stronger magically then with Ki.
"I suggest 16.5 or so. I never said I wouldn't be using magic after all, just that I won't be directly augmenting my Ki with it. I'm trying to understand something, so I need to keep them… separate for now"
Mato cocked his head, considering leaving it where it was. She was not the first magic user he'd ever fought, after all, and he had techniques to cancel out her own stuff. But then he decided to raise it. No need to piss her off, and magic could get unpredictable. His aura pulsed as his power level rose some more, and then he brought it back under control, the aura flickering and dying away entirely under the sheer ease with which he could hold at this level.
"Sixteen point five," he said. "What are we trying to accomplish with this one?"
Bonny replied, "Like I said, I'm trying to understand something about myself. While you won't be as fun to punch in the face as Cynthia would be, it should still prove to be fun at least, especially since any time I can cut loose on a mission is when we are in massive trouble."
She still had a rather massive grudge against a certain power house due to certain actions. Sure, she'd decided to teach the pain Ki Healing, but even that had strings on it. Not least of all because Bonny wouldn't let her go near an actual patient until she was sure the girl wouldn't kill them by accident. But then, that wasn't the teammate she was currently dealing with.
Mato snorted. "Well, there's something we can agree on. Any ground rules? Beyond, 'keep it clean and try not to kill each other,' that is."
"Have fun."
Drawing into the air, Bonny retrieved a good old fashioned club, imbedded with the smallest spike of pure kachin. While she could have forged something more, she wouldn't have been able to lift it just yet. Making a good old fashioned 'bring it' gesture, she left it to Mato to make the first move out of politeness. After all, it wasn't a sneak attack contest, they weren't trying to ambush Vector.
Mato slowly drifted forward until he was a second's dash away from her and then started lazily circling, content to wait on her.
There was a vaguely amused smirk on his face as he did so. "Are you waiting for something? This is supposed to be for your benefit."
"Now now, I know you old timers need your sleep!"
Spinning around with a surge of energy, Bonny's stance and attack was seemingly unsuited for the weapon she was wielding, seemingly meant for something both smaller and lighter than the massive club, one that wouldn't make contact. Which is why it began to twist and distort as she attacked, forming into a spiked chain with much longer reach.
Mato's eyebrows shot up, and he ducked under the first swing, turning into a spin that, as he came out of it, launched him directly at Bonny with a surprising amount of momentum. Using the energy from the spin to accelerate quicker, he launched at her before throwing his ki out behind himself, reaching top speed in an instant and phasing even more quickly than his power level should allow. He swung at her stomach as he approached, waiting to see if she blocked.
"Restructure."
Speaking a single word as the attack approached, Bonny calculated quickly even as the chain splintered and disappeared into metal fragments. Fragments that began to combine back in front of her to form something of a shield/barrier, but not quite quickly enough to do more dampen the attack if Mato continued to thrust forward.
The small katchin fragment on the other hand, floated behind her in preparation for a counter attack.
Mato powered through, keeping vigilant as he burst through the cloud of fragments. The instant he impacted, he used Instant Transmission to pop away several thousand feet.
Taking the solid blow to the gut, Bonny swore briefly but kept on her feet. It appeared first blood had gone to him, even if she didn't really want to admit it. But then, the fight would end up going to hers, even if he did manage to vanish. Disappearing herself in a shower of light, she kept careful ears out even as she began to form a number of smaller hand axes and one massive battle axe.
"Lance Strike."
The whisper couldn't possibly make it all the way over to Bonny from where Mato stands, but she'd sense the attack before it hit. The question was if she'd be able to evade it in time with the warning she had. Mato honestly hoped so; he was looking forward to seeing what exactly it was she was trying to achieve, and it would be boring if the spar ended with her leg being blown off seconds in.
Some people would have bothered to evade. Bonny cleaved the oncoming attack in half with a thrown axe, a brief shimmer visible as the only warning to how it was possible. Either way, her version of a 'ki blast' was making its way towards him, an axe thrown with her greater than expected strength. It however was only a distraction, as her katchin spike tried to nail him in the foot.
vip
"I can't help but feel like that's cheating," mused Mato as he came out of the transmission punching Bonny in the face. "Just a little bit."
Before the fist could connect, Bonny herself vanished in a sparkling shower of light, albeit one that wasn't quite as fast as the vipping. Hers was much more stylish however, so that got her extra cool points. Rather than resolving into one Bonny however, she reformed into three each of which picked up a hand axe.
"Shouldn't get too reliant on it though… you are not the only one that can do something similar."
He grinned, settling back into a defensive stance. "Indeed! Now you're getting the hang of it. But now...show me what you've learned lately."
"How interesting.. You rarely seem to go on the attack. Don't worry, I can handle that." Launching a trio of homing axe attacks, the three Bonnies began to move as one. Each forging a pair of near identical spiked shields, they began to move forward into a series of attacks, two attempting to impale him through the impact.
Mato proceeded to demonstrate precisely why he preferred the defensive. With minimal movements and no wasted energy, he shifted out of the way of the first charge and kicked the first Bonny in the direction she was going in in order to launch her far away -- after all, she seemed so eager to be getting there, as fast as she was going. He used the momentum of the kick to launch himself clear of the second, and then moved into his typical evasive routine.
Even as the clone was hit it shimmered briefly and disappeared. Not that Bonny particularly cared all that much, considering there was two more moving quickly after him, shields drawn and shouting war cries. It wasn't the most efficient attack and it definitely wasn't the most likely to succeed. It was however amongst the most fun, which was the main thing she was trying to have. It also helped her analyse his style though, to find the weakness.
Plus if he stopped for a second, she'd club him over the head with spikey edges.
Mato bared his teeth in an eager grin and-
What?
Bonny watched, stunned, as Mato kicked off of one of the shields by managing to fit his foot in between the spikes. And once he had distance-
"Meteor Crash!"
"Restructure."
Slamming together the shields to unleash a barrage of tangling Chains, the Bonnies bared their own teeth straight back him, taking advantage of the distraction to scatter away in a burst of light and smoke. Unlike before, only a single one reappeared, forging a seemingly simple wooden bokken. Seemingly from nowhere, dramatic sounding chanting began to echo around the arena, admittedly in her own voice.
"Oh, brilliant!" Mato howled with laughter, appreciating the dramatics immensely. "Here's my reply: Flicker."
And instantly his ki washed out of his body, not spiking but projecting out so far and vast that it swelled to fit available space and ran up against the fact that in here there was no end to the space. It swelled and swelled and swelled, turning the world blue and covering Bonny in a glorious song that sang of identity, and somewhere in the middle of that great swell she realized that she had no idea where he was supposed to be in all of that.
"We find things by contrasting them against the world," said everything. "So make the world like you."
And then something struck her from the side.
Even as she was struck, Bonny was already in motion. While it was clear that she still wasn't taking it completely seriously, she was at least moving and breathing like the combat veteran she on very rare occasions claimed to be. Even slightly wounded, and completely unable to see her opponent despite him being everywhere, she wasn't out of the fight. Plus the place they were in gave her an advantage, not that the opponent realized it.
"Paradox Strike."
To say it was an attack would be to claim that it could miss, that there was any doubt it wouldn't connect. Wherever there was 'Mato' there was seemingly sword, a strike that somehow hit at every point of him and not him at once.
"Aaaaaaaaaagh!"
Mato recoiled in agony, snarling. Pulling himself back down to a point, he put his fists together and crossed his legs, entering a meditative stance and closing his eyes. "I am."
And ki. Something bizarre, but recognizably ki. It rushed out and swirled, purging anything that wasn't him from his immediate space and making him glow like a sun.
And there was the faintest tinge of magic about it, as well.
Seemingly unconcerned from where she was, Bonny 'attacked' her sword swinging at air. Then with something of a surprised look, she watched it crumble and fall apart. 'Pulling' another one into existence, she gave it a Katchin core, almost too heavy for her to actually swing it. The smell of magic was concerning however, considering she was fairly sure he didn't possess such a power.
"Paradox Strike."
Mato vanished, the light of his passage turning into a cloud as he flashed about the space. The second strike bounced off of the sheer core of being.
But his patterns of behavior had shifted. In a heartbeat he was in Bonny's face, throwing a knee at her midsection. He went on the attack as aggressively as she had ever seen him do, bringing the entirety of his lethal skill to bear on her in a flurry of blows.
"Now that's more like it."
Even as he attacked, she once again swung at air, the sword hanging there for a few seconds even as all but the core was stripped away.by his aura. Moving into something of an archaic combat stance in response (about one not really known outside of earth) she met his blows with her own, taking the knee to the mid section but deflecting each of his other blows with the core of the sword.
Mato realized that it was cheating, but the sword didn't have an edge. Mid-kick, his leg hooked and clamped down around the core, dragging it down and away and pulling himself around into a snapping kick to Bonny's face.
And then he vipped away, his presence subsiding in a great rush. "Gonna need to call a break there!" he panted, sinking down to a knee.
Tanking the blow with her face, for a second an almost feral grin split her face… at least until another Bonny tapped her on the shoulder and healed the damage. Spitting out a quickly replaced loose tooth, she sighed almost in disappointment. Sending the multiform over to heal him as well, she fixed up the damage she took to her ribs and other assorted injuries.
"I thought you were about endurance?"
He waved off the clone. "I'm not injured. And generally, yes, but this is a fun spar. I would've just pulsed if this were a real fight, instead of keeping it up. I only need to be burning away identity-targeting magic while it's being directed at me, after all. But this is about fun and testing."
He pressed in on his forearm, and Bonny heard a faint click -- a reminder, if she'd forgotten, that he was partly mechanical. "The implants will have me up and ready to go in a little bit. In the meantime, have a seat."
"That wasn't identity targeting magic. I can't actually use Paradox Strike outside this room."
Ignoring his attempts to wave her off, the clone poked him between the eyes and sent a jolt of energy through his body, a lot like drinking half a dozen coffees but without the crash. It was an old time patrol medic trick, that she had picked up when she originally thought she'd be on medevac duties.
"I've spent quite a bit of time studying this room's enchantments. So I simply looked back in time and hit you in every point I saw at once. Only works in here because time is distorted, would be too expensive normally for me at the moment."
He perked up in interest. "Really? Time magic? I hadn't thought that would work with that kind of stuff. Might have more utility than I'd imagined." He climbs back to his feet, testing the boost. "Hm. Well, what do you know? Learning already. Anything else you wanted to test out today? Something you wanted to see?"
"It's only time magic if you squint at it cross eyed while at least partially drunk. It's a half ass hack job that I pulled together from rubbish, scraps and several shots of something I probably shouldn't have conjured. Pretty sure you'd have the be the Supreme Pink Puff to pull it off anywhere else, or at least possessing the mana of a god."
She sighed in slight annoyance.
"It's a paradox strike for a reason"
Mato snorted. "Bah. I'm not talking about execution, I'm talking about the school you're using. Or the effect, depending on what terminology you were educated with. It's a time-based spell. Just because it's something so insanely hard that only a god can reliably do it in the real world doesn't mean that you're not using time magic." He gave her a disbelieving look. "Are you seriously holding yourself up to the boss as your standard for performance?"
"It's not a hack job because only she can pull it off, but because it's crude, inelegant and uses up too much power. Technically it's less time magic and more cut magic, since I'm cutting through time to hit my target. It just means a slightly more elegant/inelegant choice of target then most. Real magic should be quick, effortless and completely impossible to determine how it works from outside."
He smiled, amused. "I advise you to keep practicing with me, then. I have certain advantages in recognizing what a spell is doing. Ultimately, the best test of your magic is still the boss, but if you don't want to bother her with incomplete magic, getting things past me would be a good goal."
He pulsed that strange presence trick of his again to demonstrate, again shot through with the faintest tinge of magic.
"Okay, I know you're neither sage nor sorcerer, so why do I have the strangest urge to strap you down and check you for foul experimentation?"
It was putting her teeth on edge, and her thumbs definitely began to faintly prickle when she paid attention to them. It was the type of thing that if she even thought what she was expecting was true, would likely ensure their fight would restart immediately, this time for real. It would be rude, but it would also be safer for everyone involved if it was nipped at the budd. Little explosions now could prevent extreme carnage later.
He cocks his head. "I had cause to want more information about the status of my soul a while ago. I recruited a mage who specialized in soul magics to help me. He managed to forge channels from my body to my soul. In general they don't do much, but I'm usually a lot more present to mages like you given that my soul is more immediately there. People also feel more present to me as a result. Being able to enforce my identity in my personal space is one of a few side effects from that. I've had them for a few years now."
"That seems very unwise. Soul magic is not something that should be casually entered into, especially when you're getting someone else to help you do the connections. Never cast a spell or let someone else cast a spell that you can't safely undo." Considering she was briefly considering her own bit of soul messing around, she was once again being something of a hypocrite.
"Anyway, up for another fight for the road? I still haven't got a decent answer yet, so perhaps we should no 'gimmicks' with both at 15."
Perhaps surprisingly, Mato's reaction is not scorn or open disbelief for her odds of success, but actual, easy approval. "Excellent. I'm completely on board."
Flash
Again, his power level surges and then dies back into controlled silence, the aura flaring as he powers up and then dying under the ease of it. He assumes a defensive stance. "What exactly are you hoping to achieve?"
"I… need to know."
For a second, her eyes were somewhere else. Someone else, both younger and filled with something completely alien on her face. Not quite identifiable as the one that was usually speaking. But then she mastered herself and it vanished once more. Instead, she moved back into the archaic sword stance, forming a weapon out of Ki itself. Only to launch a simple but elegant attack pattern, one clearly honed through practise.
Mato nodded, hopping backwards and keeping just out of reach. "Well practiced. You've clearly worked on this a lot." Once Bonny managed to close the distance, he dodged the first strike. "Almost a showman's form. Yet singularly effective, for all of that. No...an artist's form." He gave her a completely genuine smile. "There is a reason I refer to what I do as the martial arts, after all. Before what they're used for, these are a means of self-expression. I've wondered, sometimes, how you could miss that. You're a saiyan, after all. This is in your blood. But I presume it's personal."
Ducking under a blow, he came up with a vip further away. "Now, regarding my soul channels -- they're secure, don't worry. On their own they're merely pointless vulnerabilities, but with my ki added on they are inviolate. My identity is absolute within that, just as much as my soul itself. No hostile magic or ki can make its way through. Not in one piece, anyway Even what I do with my little trick doesn't change that -- I'm drawing on my identity by way of my soul, but it doesn't leave its container. The soul, after all, is not meant to be in the body. I imagine the consequences would be severe." He left unmentioned his direct personal knowledge of exactly how severe.
As they engaged up close again, he nodded. He paid his entire focus to the fight; Bonny was clearly very highly learned in this form. But, being Mato, he found the time to talk regardless. "Too direct. Elegant and lethal, naturally, but your strikes are opposing me on lines that favor my own movement. You need to find a way to hit me from which my own body will prevent me from escaping. At the heart of it, that's what my style is about. Find the lines along which your opponent physically cannot resist your assault. You are skilled, of course, but you're still fighting like a young woman. Not a poor philosophy, but you won't be young forever. Some day, those elegant patterns you weave will exhaust you. The time you take to put somebody down, they will use to give you an injury that never goes completely away. Find the way to win the fight, and do it -- in a single strike."
Bonny frowned. "This is no artist's form. This is one of the seven secret styles of Earth, passed down from master to student for thousands of years." At least according to her teacher anyway, though admittedly he might not have passed down everything he knew, but just those techniques that were safe for her to use. He was always like that, carefully parcelling out knowledge when she was ready for it, rather then just when she wanted it. It ensured she grew at an effective but steady pace, never so fast that she lost control over herself. That Mato brought up her blood brought up a bit of an eyeroll, nowhere near enough of one to get her to stop attacking though.
"My Saiyan blood tells me a lot of things. It tells me I should annihilate everyone that bothers me even slightly, it has me waking at random hours with strange cravings, and it encourages the type of primal madness that got our entire race annihilated long before I was forged. See how well listening to our blood got them."
Mato's face got a sad cast to it. "Perhaps that's what it seems like to you, who never had her parents to help. I'll even admit that for many of us, that's what they choose to focus on. But no. That's not it."
vip
He stared her down for a moment from a safe distance. "Your blood tells you to live, Bonny. Life isn't kind. It's not neat. It's sloppy and often cruel. But worth it, for all of that. What consumed our people in your timeline wasn't listening to their blood, it was refusing to moderate it. So many see the saiyans as monsters for the urges we feel. Many of us are. But we are simply...alive. Very purely alive. And there's nothing wrong with that. The fault lies with those who let their urges rule them. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't listen."
vip
He appeared behind her, already swinging. "Hear the song of blood in your ears as you push yourself to the limit! Feel the pounding of your heart down to your very soul and know that in this moment, you are alive! Feel your anger, your hunger, and yes, listen to them, but never let them rule you."
Mato's eyes were bright and alive in a way Bonny had never seen from him. "This is what it means to be saiyan; not to destroy, but to find the beauty in these moments on the knife's edge! But if you lock them away…"
vivivivivivivivivivivivivi
Mato flickered around, his voice reverberating around the space. "Everything is cold. Colorless. Of course you feel, but there's always just that little edge missing." His voice was as she had always heard it again, and only once she heard the difference did she realize that there was something missing there. "They don't have to be problems. Angry? Express that. Shout. Fly off and blow up a patch of deserted desert. And then come back and approach it with a thinking mind. Waking up hungry? For heaven's sake, eat something and go back to sleep. Did you think humans don't feel the exact same things we do? They do, if less. Why are anger and hunger aspects of yourself to master if you lack a tail and insurmountable demons if you don't?"
vip
He finally reappeared, panting. "Your bladework is an artist's form. I can see the hands of the first master wrapping around the hilt in precise contemplation of the task at hand laid over yours, even thousands of years later. It is precise and deadly and elegant, and it is beautiful. And it deserves so much more than you give it. You deserve so much more. Because you will never be everything you can be unless you accept yourself for who you are."
"Who am I? Or What am I?"
Bonnys laughter was bitter, sardonic and more than a little self mocking. Dodging his sole attack and not even bothering to launch one back she allowed her sword to fade back into ki as she settled into a different combat stance, one that Mato had never seen her use before. At the same time, she was rather clearly letting mana flow through her, affecting the world around them even if she clearly wasn't using it to attack or defend. The white void of the room changed and shifted, a burned out wreck of a city littered with the corpses of anthropomorphic cats and assorted heavily armed and armoured alien species.
"Alive? Pushed to my limit?"
Laughing to herself as she began to move, her current style somehow made her appear heavier and a lot more inevitable. Almost like a juggernaut that was beginning to build up speed for an attack run. Gathering a bright pink ki into her hands, she smiled as it built up, before unleashing a series of smaller yet still dangerous energy blasts. They weren't the most accurate thing considering her lack of experience, but they were still fully formed kil blasts being aimed in his general position.
"I've only come close to my limits once before, long before I joined the time patrol. Not even containing Cynthia's stupidity or trying to kill Trunks has taken me back there."
Watching a brief flash of movement across the ruined landscape her magic and replaced the typical 'theme' with, she allowed it to distract her, even as screams briefly echoed around the battlefield. Although it was too quick to see properly, she sighed to herself, even as she almost seemed a little more at home here. It was both familiar and distressing, in the same way as an almost treasured memory that you weren't quite sure if you were meant to be proud of.
"I know what exactly what I am, and nobody wants me to accept that."
Mato raised his eyebrows and then put his fingers to his forehead.
vip
Wham
"What you are, is a saiyan," he said, putting a name to the issue they'd been dancing around. "And you never had anybody to teach you what that means. Let me see if I can summarize -- pushed to your limits, you let yourself go...and did something you regret. Do you imagine that this makes you special?"
His tone was merely polite interrogation. Granted, it was all the more infuriating for that.
"A saiyan?"
Bonny was laughing again, despite her injuries.
'This isn't much to do with my blood, not really. I got over most of that stuff after walking through the ashes of planet truffle, and meeting the primitive saiyans in our first mission."
Motioning back to the area she had been watching, she crafted a window into memory, to let him see what she had been observing. Namely a heavily armored purple alien impaled on two rather dainty looking hands. Hands that almost casually tore the two halves apart, almost out of curiosity/playfulness. For a second, an unknown almost indeterminate face was visible, at least until the hair turned purple and it became a crude saiyan replica of the one it killed.
"Didn't really have a face at the time. Was almost inconsiderate of them really, barely giving me the time to take my first breaths, to decide what I wanted to be before asking me to kill a bunch of people."
A few more flashes of scenes, other kills equally messy in their own way. Always there was the same air, of absentminded mayhem and destruction. With each kill, an element was borrowed, from skin, eye and hair color, and even a few elements of a combat stance. Blond, brown, gold, green and purple but never red.
Mato ceased his assault, floating over to the window and crossing his arms. "Hm. So, becoming a saiyan was your own decision? You certainly don't look like one, not at first. Or are you simply a shapeshifter?"
"I always was a saiyan, but then I'm weird."
It was self evident and something that plenty would agree with, but it still had to be said.
"They wanted the perfect defender, something that could completely annihilate the invasion so they wouldn't have to dirty their cowardly hypocritical little paws."
The window scanned over a number of anthropomorphic cats, most of them hiding from the armored attackers. For a second Bonny that was not Bonny stood before them, before going off to do more horrific, nasty and otherwise playful things to the invaders.
"So they searched through their histories, and the records they had of the greater galaxy before they chose to hide away, and chose the biggest nastiest thing they found, wishing for one that would protect rather than destroy them, something that would fight so they wouldn't have to. A supposedly perfect Saiyan, that the invasion would have no chance against. They just had no clue what we actually looked like, so I had to fill in the details."
Mato stroked his chin. "Hm. Looks like a saiyan child playing, honestly. The context is -- obviously -- wrong, but the body language is spot-on. You thought you were playing, didn't you?"
"No, I know that much. I knew that I had to protect the Neko, and that the ones in the fancy armor weren't meant to be there. I also knew how to get rid of them, but not how it actually worked. In hindsight I can't even remember how many of them there were, only that there was always another way available, and a variety of things I hadn't tried yet."
A montage of death and destruction followed, one where the invaders started out confident and aggressive, but slowly but surely broke until she was chasing them down through the wreckage and rubble that was once their vessels. Soon merely rushing them or stabbing them clearly got boring, so she turned their own weapons against them, burrowed the faces of her victims to get close to future ones, and mixing moves she learned from observing them.
"A bit like being given a menu for a new restaurant, and a potion that would let you eat as much as you want. Magic has always been part of my nature, and likely will always be so. But it was never closer to me then it was there."
Briefly the image lingered on someone whose face appeared like the one she usually wore, but she pushed that one out of the window. There was no time for that one just yet.
Mato nodded, hearing something familiar. "It was all new. New and interesting. And so of course you pushed it as far as you could, and never thought about what it meant. But once you looked back on it…"
"I almost could have handled that. There's an expression I picked up on earth, about winning the war but losing the peace. Not a single invader managed to leave that place alive."
A flash again, of that face, of red hair.
"No one would reveal the Neko still lived, that they hadn't been destroyed…" She was lost in thought, contemplating.
Mato gave her a glance, side-on.
When the face showed up again he reached out, opened the soul channels, and murmured, "Calcification."
The playback stuttered to a halt on the face. "Looks a lot like you," he said, pulling his ki out before she could overwhelm the trick. He couldn't really stop her from doing that, and it stung from his end. "Who is she, Bonny?"
"Yeah she always was rather attractive. I might have taken her face even if she wasn't their greatest mistake, if I didn't need the reminder."
Admittedly her version was filtered through her Saiyan heritage, but the effect was still the same.
"She was the enemy commander, the only person that has ever come close to killing me. The Neko did their job too well when they made me you see. It's rather hard to hurt someone that can heal through most injuries or transform their body out of the way of an enemy attack. But then, it's always the powerful ones you remember, those with drive, never the ones that just want to do the job, get paid and go home."
She opened up a second window, one that had the two of them talking on a balcony even as the final invader ship began to take off.
"She met with me to discuss the terms of surrender, the terms that would have allowed them to leave safely."
It was a pleasant chat, one that seemed amiable despite the rather destructive circumstances. They sipped, they chatted and then there was a bit of mutual respect there. Or at least there was, until Bonny reached up and carelessly blasted the ship out of the sky with a Ki blast. Then there was only bloodshed.
Mato stiffened. Then he frowned, and looked closer.
No change in body language visible. No indication that this was meant to be unusual. Just...reach, boom. And quite relatable outrage on the leader's part. Honestly, though, Bonny didn't seem at all bothered by it. Which did not mesh with the young woman Mato knows. Unregulated saiyan instincts don't do that; not in his experience.
He considered making another guess; it wasn't that he was trying to figure it out in a grand, sweeping proclamation every time. They were prompts, his way of saying, "this is the thrust of what you've communicated to me thus far." But this time, he doubted Bonny would appreciate him getting it wrong.
So instead, he turned away from the screen as the ships exploded, and looked at the Bonny next to him. He looked at her while she was unguarded and watching the playback, and he tried to see what her reaction was.
"They never considered what would happen if the invaders surrender, what would could have been done in that situation. In hindsight six years later, I can think of a dozen things I could have done. A dozen things that would have made the situation better, that would have prevented such a senseless waste of life. They taught me most of them."
The venom in her voice was almost enough to shatter both windows. Metaphysically speaking anyway.
"But of course, they didn't have the foresight to consider what would have been something so bloody simple. So I saw them escaping, didn't understand what we were discussing, and blasted them from the sky as if it was as simple as scratching my back. Couldn't have their precious secrets being revealed, after all."
Mato nodded. "Lack of foresight. Not to mention siccing an infant in the body of a grown woman on an invasion. Your creators didn't know themselves how to fight, and didn't trust their creation with the kind of programming that would let it adapt to circumstances. Or perhaps simply didn't realize that it needed that. Kais on high, maybe they didn't even know they were denying it." He gives her a narrow look. "And you say they taught you most of what you needed to know? For peaceful solutions? I can just imagine their righteous indignation at your actions." His voice was filled with scorn. If Bonny was aiming to give him a negative opinion of her creators, she succeeded.
"They tried. They did their best to help me control the maelstrom of mana that was within me, tried to help me harness my Ki or at least ensured it wouldn't hurt anyone. They even did their best to 'forgive my violent nature' despite the fact they created me to ensure they wouldn't need to give in to theirs."
She spat in disgust.
"Frigging hypocrites, not prepared to take responsibility for their own options and safety. Almost makes me wonder if they ever had to do it again."
Mato spat right along with her. "Spit on them. Spit on the sands of a desert world, for all they're worth. Cowards." He looked at her. "And they stuck you with the aftermath, and all of the blame."
"Eh" Bonny was kind of sheepish as she scratched the back of her head. "I was the one that might have been cutting some of the more annoying ones open so I could practise healing, so I do need to be kind of fair to them in that particular case, even if I was trying to ensure future fights would have much less waste. Though I was using a knife, and not the spell they accused me of."
Mato frowned. "Not that I would fault you taking out your frustrations on them, but why do it that way? You're clearly not happy with having done that."
"Easiest way to practise treating a wound is to cause the wound in question. I was simply ensuring less of them would die next invasion, or as others would say its better to bleed in peace to avoid dying in war. Made sense to me at the time, especially without access to the Time patrols record of major disaster zones."
Mato raised an eyebrow. "I can't fault the logic, even if I'm skeptical that that's your only reason. But I can't help but feel as though we've wandered a bit afield of our point. Why choose the leader's face for your own? Admiration? Attraction? Something else?"
"As a reminder, at least on missions. That there is always another way, another solution, another way to ensure things turn out without waste. The true me would have cheerfully annihilated that Majin village, would have quite happily annihilated them all in a variety of no doubt hilarious at the time methods, before likely dying in a rather embarrassing fashion to Cynthia or that elder."
"I've got no problem with killing if I have to, but it's because I want not. Not because I'm forced to for lack of options or shitty programmed mission briefings. I need to know that I'm doing things because I want to, not because the old urges are resurfacing."
Mato frowned in confusion, and started to ask something.
And then his eyes widened in shock. "You...you don't feel responsible for what happened the day you were born, do you?"
"Why wouldn't I? They merely wanted the attackers dead, it was my choice to do most of the things I did to them."
Mato whirled on her. "You were an infant! In the body of a woman or not, you were a newborn child! You can't be held responsible for what you did! You didn't have any idea what it all meant. You weren't responsible for your actions. Not then."
"By that measure one isn't responsible for anything they do while drunk or transformed, which is completely ridiculous. Ignorance of the laws is no excuse for breaking them, especially when one was born with the knowledge I was. I might not have been emotionally capable of understanding but I was mentally.
At its heart, magic is understanding."
"No!" Mato scowled, rounding on her. "It's not the same as being drunk or transformed. You choose those, aware of the consequences. The only exception is first transformations, which is why people aren't held responsible for those! And the only reason ignorance of the law is not a valid excuse is because resources exist for people to learn the law -- an opportunity you didn't have! YOU WERE A CHILD! AND WE DON'T HOLD CHILDREN RESPONSIBLE FOR DOING THINGS THEY HAVEN'T YET LEARNED ARE WRONG!"
At some point, he transformed and began screaming at her. It's very likely he wasn't aware of it.
In response, she gathered ki. A lot more Ki then she had ever been seen by Mato or any other member of the team. In fact, if such a thing could be measured, it would have been perhaps as much ki as they had seen her used put together, then multiplied by some power. Due to her own reluctance to actually touch that power, she rarely drew upon it.. And what little she did use was typically focused into her sword or those small blasts she had used earlier.
This time however, it was a glowing orange sphere that was larger than she was, perhaps even larger than a building. Compared to the immensity of the room of space and time it was still almost nothing… but it definitely stuck out in comparison to both themselves and the ruined images her mana was still sharing in the world.
"By your timelines reckoning, I would approximately be six, around the age where a saiyan youth would be sent out to annihilate the people of a planet so that it could be sold. In another timeline, perhaps that inhabited by the others, this same attack was used to annihilate almost all of the saiyan race, save for between two and seven survivors. If I fired this at Toki Toki, completely unprepared it would kill about 98% of the Time Patrol. Would I be responsible?"
She was speaking calmly once more… the same calm dissonance that often came when she considered her 'previous' self.
Mato glanced upwards in irritation at the sphere. Unlike Bonny, he touched ki all the time, and had a nigh-peerless understanding of it. He was capable of detonating his ki while it was inside the body of the person who stole it.
With an annoyed flick of his wrist, he dissipate the sphere as though he was clearing away a cloud of smoke.
"First, we still count them as children at the age of six. Sure, they're sent on missions, but that's because there's no way they could be threatened in the process, not because we think they're adults. False equivalency, there. They're still their parents' responsibility. Second, while you are six years old you've done a lot of living in those six years in an adult's body, with an adult's capabilities. You have an adult's understanding of actions and consequences, and should be respected as such. And finally-"
He vanished, his power level spiking. An extremely light impact bounced off of the back of her skull as he gave her a dope slap. "Of course you'd be responsible. But it's six years and a lot of life after you were born. You now understand why that would be wrong. Then, by your own admission, you did not. One is not the other. And I know you're smart enough to realize that."
He phased back into view in front of her, his arms crossed.
For a second, Bonny saw stars. She also saw comets, meteors and what appeared to be a seven winged dragon that was trapped within its own coils, but they weren't quite as impressive as the balls of fire that snapped her out of her little 'previous self' impersonation. Admittedly the whack was also painful, and a rather annoying reminder that despite what she claimed, they weren't really on the same level power wise.
"But what if I could cease to have that understanding? What if I returned to what I was, only at this point over five hundred times stronger? I know it's still there, considering how quickly I picked up the knowledge to completely kill almost everyone I've met with a single strike."
That was the thing she had been trying to test, trying to understand. She had been trying to work out if she had sought out those skills for the reasons she thought she did, or because her old self was starting to wake up, was considering coming out for a little walk.
"Then I would put you down, and sleep soundly that night," said Mato, cocking his head. "As long as I am here, you needn't fear that somebody will hesitate to stop you. Even if the others faltered -- and I doubt that Vector would -- I would not. But it won't happen. It doesn't work that way. Because the person you were is not a separate being. It's just who you used to be. And the reasons for that girl being who she was don't exist anymore. She isn't some lurker hiding beneath the surface of your consciousness. If you begin to act that way, it will be your choice. And a poor one, which you know not to make. But these are just words."
He spread his arms and transformed, beckoning her towards him. "You won't believe me until you see it for yourself. Enough games. Come after me with everything you have. I am trained to fight magic users, and experienced. I will push you. If the monster you fear is there, this will scare it out."
"Everything I have?"
Bonny thought then shrugged. She had been meaning to test it anyway. Beginning to sway as if dancing to music only she could hear, her skin shimmered with a brief glow, as if she was caught dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight. Scattering the light through the area around them, she smiled. Before throwing a power ball in his face.
Yeah, Mato knew that one. He spat out a ki blast to detonate it and then vipped a thousand kilometers away in order to arrest the transformation before it could begin.
Privately, he grinned. Nicely done, Bonny, he thought.
It appeared he was out of her range currently…she expected something like that would likely occur but that didn't mean it wasn't annoying. Hovering a pair of powerballs on either side so that he wouldn't be able to properly attack her without seeing them, she began to chant, weaving a spell even as she prepared to be attacked.
She wasn't completely undefended however… She had a multiform ready to split off and defend.
Mato began to close in, but halted as he began to feel the familiar wash of Blutz Waves. He growled.
And then, he grinned.
Bonny's first sign of Mato returning was the sound of a bestial roar as a colossal energy beam careened towards her from him, as he hovered there as a Golden Oozaru in all its fury. Behind it, unnoticed and unnoticeable behind the immense blast, Mato released an Ignition in case she teleported behind him.
"Well that is just bullshit!"
The power ball was meant to force him out of Super Saiyan, not reveal yet another annoying power up. Still our heroine was brave, our heroine was tough…our heroine was very good at disappearing in a scatter of light, only to unleash a barrage of green projectiles towards the golden ape. As for the form she prepared earlier, it had scattered to continue the chant, processing the blitz waves into something…. Better.
Mato fired off a Meteor Crash to detonate the blasts, and then-
vip
-fired a Lance Strike from behind Bonny.
"You really are predictable."
Even as the Lance Strike blasted towards her, it glanced off a shimmering shield of mana and went hurtling in a completely different direction. Even as she clenched her first, a series of bright green Ki blasts went hurtling in every direction, in order to drive him back more than a little as the chanting was completed and the world was gripped by light. All around them, a faint rose tint was easily visible as her form's magic was worked into the enchantments of the room. For as long as he would stay within the zone and within the room, his body's protection against his own Super Saiyan energies would be removed.
Or so the theory behind the spell went anyway. While outside the room she wouldn't have been able to manage the difference just yet. She was tapping into the Supreme Kai's own power by using the same power source that already ran the room..
"I might not be the best fighter, but you spend too much time going for the rear shot."
Magic users are irritating.
The ki blasts did essentially nothing, but that spell hurt, a lot. So Mato simply dropped Super Saiyan and lunged forward at his full, Oozaru speed of 71 million units, punching Bonny in the face with his full Oozaru strength of 213 million units. "I am."
He expressed himself for just long enough to burn through any magic shield Bonny threw up, and then sped out.
"I'm not."
Throwing up a pair more of multi forms as the attack commenced, rather than trying to dodge or block, she merely positioned herself in a way that ensured she took a catastrophic but not lethal amount of damage. Then her clones teleported her out of there, meeting the first one made to begin rapid healing.
Mato sent an active pulse the instant she was out of view and chased it down with Instant Transmission as soon as he got a return. Before he could even visually register his new surroundings, he shouted, "IGNITION!"
WHUMP
"Ki Shield!"
While she didn't need to speak the dramatic words, it did something for the morale as three of the Bonny combined their shields long enough to heal the original up to a level where she could move, before promptly disintegrating under the attack. It was a risky move, especially in a training spar. The end result was the same however…a brief shower of light and Bonny reappeared bruised, injured, and yet unbroken.
More importantly she was surrounded by the shimmer of sage mode.
"Zenkai complete."
WHUMP
Something new what the FUCK IS THAT?!
Mato spun under the force of the blow and gritted his teeth. Right then. This calls for drastic measures.
vip
...Mato hung in the air above Bonny's position. "Clever girl," he said, still in Oozaru. His extended the first two fingers of each hand and touched them to each other in front of his sternum. "I rarely have to use this." He whipped his arms back until they were by his flanks, pointing back. Sparks trailed off of them. "HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
His aura flared gold again as he transformed. "I AM!"
The sky pulsed as raw Being ripped out into reality from the man's soul. "STORM'S WRATH!"
Mato whirled his arms up and around in twin arcs that ended by his hips, and then twisted them in and forward, pointing towards Bonny.
A bar of blindingly-bright light briefly connected the two saiyans as Mato converted his ki into electrical energy en masse, grounding in Bonny's scalp. The light was unnaturally bright.
And then a yet-greater light subsumed even that, as the terrible heat did horrifying things to the atoms in the air it passed through, and touched off a nuclear firestorm -- every bit of it singing of Mato's soul.
vip
And Mato reappeared, distant enough to avoid the blast.
"You rely on that technique far too much. One day you won't be able to teleport out of danger"
Drawing a shimmering sword from the air, Bonny smiled as she charged it with the Ki and Mana that happened to be the only thing keeping her standing. It hadn't been much of a Zenkai, considering her Ki reserves were diminished yet increased, but the increased Mana would have to do for now. Shifting her stance into one he hadn't seen her use yet (at least to the best of her ability anyway), she winced slightly.
If there was one thing she had to say for it, the overly flashy stances were definitely not designed to be comfortable to use when injured. For a second, she almost shimmered with a green aura, but it faded out of existence quicker than an arcosian's promise. Adjusting her internal energies to best meet the oncoming attack, she almost swore at how low she really was.
"Ki and mana mixture…proving unsteady at low proportions. Higher levels of sage mode not recommended…but needed."
While Bonny would have usually left a fight long before it got to this point, it was a matter of pride and a rejection of his words that kept her going. That and a brief desire to simply see him break and bend before her, despite the rather large difference in their powers. She'd taken away his speed by forcing him into oozaru, and most of his power by preventing the change…even if he was risking it for revenge.
This was the only shot she would get for a long time to try and take him down, to try and make him understand. In future fights he would be prepared for the moonlight sonata, be prepared for the sea of roses, and she'd have to come up with something new. Tapping into the enchantments of the room for power once more, this time she didn't bother trying to anchor or protect anything.
Instead she tore them apart, gathering the streamers of magical energy and forcing them into her conjured sword. Her left hand did everything it could to keep both it and her steady, even as the right hand hung loosely by her side. There was a gathering maelstrom of energy gathering above them, one she normally wouldn't have been able to face down. But here and now, with this opponent and empowered by what was left of the power balls Blutz Waves...
She was not throwing away her shot.
Even as the attack rushed towards her she swung, a mana infused slash to cleave the heavens asunder. Magic met anti-magic, the light of the soul and the stolen stubbornness of a saiyan's pride. Lightning met flesh, firestorm met steel and for a minute time seemingly… stopped as everything that anchored the room into position and shielded it from the energies went haywire. A chasm that was no chasm, a hole formed into the unworld that sucked out the vast majority of the firestorm, preventing it from being instantly lethal.
Instead there was a charcoaled and crisp Bonny statue, seemingly golden roasted yet still standing in completion of the strike, the left hand seemingly raised in post swing victory…and the top finger of the right hand pointed directly at Mato, a final 'screw you' with all the energy she could spare before passing out.
Around her, the room began to splutter and die, the enchantments keeping it in check fading away from lack of energy.
Mato snorted as he saw the results of Bonny's reckless -- but brilliant -- block, shaking his head...and then swore in sudden panic as the Room flickered around them.
vip
"Damn it damn it damn it WHAT DID YOU DO?!" He scooped the younger saiyan up and-
vip
-appeared at the door and dove through, the Room unraveling even as he did. It slammed shut with a note of terrifying finality as the reality beyond simply ended in a maelstrom of magic, anti-magic, and ki. Mato let out a sigh of profound relief and produced a Senzu Bean, cramming it down Bonny's throat.
"Mato."
The saiyan blinked and glanced up. His face paled. "Oh crap- I mean hi, boss!"
"WHAT DID YOU TWO JUST DO?!"
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Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
...for whatever reason we lost bold and italics there. Huh.
The Fourth Monado
S U B A R A S H I I
- Location
- Away
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
Well that and Bonny still partially scares her.
And yes, Bonny hates kids.
Annoying, snivilling snot posed punks!
Shes quite glad she never was one!
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
@PoptartProdigy
I think I restored them all!
(was having the first time with text color, so I stripped out all formating without remembering the importance of Italics or Bold)
I think I restored them all!
(was having the first time with text color, so I stripped out all formating without remembering the importance of Italics or Bold)
The Fourth Monado
S U B A R A S H I I
- Location
- Away
There, I got something out.
*begins waiting for posts*
*begins waiting for posts*
- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
The entry for Freeza Style in After the End's Lore Screen has everything. Let me know what you'll take and leave, and if you need clarification!
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
Oh, @PoptartProdigy , I just realized some stuff that's missing from Cynthia's sheet. She's used stuff from Piccolo and Turtle styles before, like Light Grenade and Roshi's bulking technique. Your call if what she's shown qualifies as novice level style training for either of them, but they should be noted somewhere. Also, Agatha taught her the Kaio-Ken during the latest training, IIRC @Nathaniel Wolff said she can get up to x3 safely, I think?
The Fourth Monado
S U B A R A S H I I
- Location
- Away
- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I'd say competent for all of the above, but no styles yet. Just one technique from each isn't even enough for Incipient, not without actual study.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
Okay. And what about Kaio-Ken. That doesn't really fit into the usual schema, what with the multiplier being directly tied to skill with the technique.
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
Hmm.
I wonder, how does one go around bolstering their 'life force'/'stamina'.
I suppose learning the crane style techniques would definitely help (since they draw upon it to strengthen attacks), or maybe some version of Spirit Saiyan. Just realized that even if DBZ isn't a setting where 'stronger then normal' works, one can still have a lifeforce/stamina unconnected to their power level
I wonder, how does one go around bolstering their 'life force'/'stamina'.
I suppose learning the crane style techniques would definitely help (since they draw upon it to strengthen attacks), or maybe some version of Spirit Saiyan. Just realized that even if DBZ isn't a setting where 'stronger then normal' works, one can still have a lifeforce/stamina unconnected to their power level
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I figure that'd still be "Competent." 2x or 3x is fairly low.
Mind you, that's if you're using it in base.
I know Mato's endurance comes from his high Ki Control and the implants.
Yeah. That's why he's talking to Vector and Cynthia, but trying to find you and Bassoon.
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
Sorry, read your post wrong, since it seemed like you were reacting to Carricks words.
- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Gotcha.
KnightDisciple
Love God. Do Right. Fear No Man.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
Probably by physical training alongside energy training?
Given roughly equal power levels, I'd generally imagine Tien has the highest "life force/stamina", Krillin and Yamcha are in the middle, and Chiaotzu is a bit "low" because he focuses more on non-physical techniques and styles.
But I don't imagine that Goku and Vegeta are lacking in "life force" either. They're physically powerful, and do a lot of physical training alongside "make it blow up now please" training.
Freeza's was probably a bit low, because he didn't actively train, and he favored energy attacks as much or more than physical ones.