Something He lacks. (Nashi)

Nashi had not made the connection that the Senbyō’s Tower looked like a cat scratching tree-tower-thing. Indeed, it did look like one, with the long and, for Nashi anyway, easy-to-climb height, and that bulbous house-thingo at the top. But there were two things that would make it far more like a cat scratching tree: one, scratchable surfaces. Two, having the Lookout immediately on top of it. It’s a hemisphere with a top and a hollow, decorated inside, you can’t honestly say a miniature version wouldn’t be perfect for a cat.

But, all the same, Nashi had not made this connection. He had no reason to, and certainly didn’t think that anything out of the ordinary was happening. He had no scouter, nor had he bothered to learn how to sense ki, so he had no means by which to detect Yanwang’s presence. He did have a potent, feline nose, but neither the smell of catnip nor the stench of ogre could reach the literal dozens of kilometres-high tower-top.

But he did have ears.
Grrrrrrrrruuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmbbbbbblllee.
And that meant he needed something to eat.

He effectively threw himself off the Tower, only bothering to decrease in velocity within a few hundred metres of the ground.

And then?
Then, he smelt it: the stench of ogre very lightly, the smell of catnip. Looking to its source, he saw: Yanwang! He looked a bit different from how Nashi last saw him, but he couldn’t place how. Nashi certainly looked different: he was taller, had cooler whisker markings and seemed to trade in his halo for a second tail! ”Hey, Yanwang!” He’d lower himself, slowly, down to the ground. ”No see time long!” Wait, was that how the expression went?.. Probably. ”Wassup? How’d you get here?” He meant that in both a ‘how are you in the mortal realm?’ and a ‘how’d you figure out where I live?’ capacity.

Food could wait. There was a friend here! And, maybe, just maybe, he could climb the Tower!

PL: 210,000

it wasn’t as if nashi could appear out of nowhere yet™

”Pretty neat, huh? I got it when I mastered a gate-thing-o.” Balanced a chakra. The throat chakra, in particular, which just so happened to be the blue one. Did this mean that, by balancing more chakras to the necessary degree, he’d grow more tails? It was a possibility, possibly. Perhaps he’d have one more tail than mastered gates, but ending up with 8 gates (that is, if he ever got that far) sounded not quite right. Frankly, it’d be better off ending at a cooler number. Like, perhaps, nine… just a thought.

”I’ve been good! Stronger than I’ve ever been before, and all that jazz.” While his PL was once merely just a number, now it was another number that happened to be considerably larger! That, generally, was how it worked. ”Of course. The Werewolf Ghost Elf Butthole. How could I forget?”

Hmm. This was interesting… it seemed Yanwang was having his own Evil Grandfather™ problems, with the slight difference of there being no grandfather. He apparently tried to enter his own magic dimensionally-whatevered bag, and got some weird form from it? The ‘can’t remember’ anything from it’ didn’t make any sense to Nashi. If you couldn’t remember it, then how’d you know it happened at all? If it turned out Yanwang’s new form was just him sleeping, Nashi would be very annoyed indeed. 

”Sooooo… what’d you need me to do? Beat you up in your new form until you can remember it after? 'Cos that'd be easy.”

”Wait, I’m the smart one?” He was two years old. And, although he’d admit to being a genius (because of course he would), he wasn’t especially learned. ”I thought the smart one was Yogu. You know, the straight man in our comedy duo— er, trio! Granted, he isn’t around right now— no idea where he got off to— but still.” Also, Nashi was definitely the funnier one. Especially his narrator, who was also very handsome and humble.

Pssch. ”Oh, please. If you’re undefeatable, I’m undefeatabler!” ‘Felis invictus’, or something like that. ”Come on, bring it out! I can handle it!” This might not have been the greatest of ideas. Even assuming that he could win it out in the end and defeat Yanwang’s weird new form (which was far from a foregone conclusion), it still mightn’t have been a good idea. How would beating it up make it more controllable? I mean, sure, that works on horses, but…

Well, we’ll just have to find out the long way, won’t we?

”Here, I’ll help anger you: you’re not very good at gardening, and red is a bad colour.” Perhaps that wasn't the wisest of actions.

The last time Nashi saw Yanwang, he had developed the ability to call on the contents of his bag by grabbing from his body, as if the bag’s unique dimensional properties had been selectively and controllably moved onto Yanwang himself. Now, Nashi didn’t know if that was this a thing that happened, but if Yanwang like that were to move in his own bag, he imagined that was basically the same as putting a bag in itself. He didn’t quite know what the implications were, but they were no doubt confusing.

This sorta reminded Nashi of a thing he didn’t remember happening. Strange, that.

‘Yanwang’ got up and spat. Very un-Yanwang-like behaviour, Nashi noted. The Senbyō stayed still, simply seeing the stranger wearing his friend. Except, was it a stranger wearing Yanwang, or was this just, somehow, an evil aspect of Yanwang? Whatever it was, it was aware of the conversation that saw it being brought out, and the use of ‘me’ seemed to imply that it thought of itself as Yanwang.

Quip mode, activate! ”The only thing you’re breaking is my patience.” Yeah, that’s good enough. ‘Yanwang’ neared Nashi, until their personal spaces enveloped each other. And, then? And then he had the nerve to poke Nashi’s chest! ”You do not judge heroes by how they fall, but by how they rise. I’ve learnt things, villain, that you will never learn. I’ve grown beyond my killers, beyond you and beyond my past self.” And then, just as he finished—

The air swirled out of the way as, with a mighty punch, Nashi was sent straight for the trees! He corrected his course only a few metres away, dropped to the ground (as flying was lame) and brought out the Power Pole. Wow, this guy’s strong. He’s probably around as strong as I am! I'll have to be careful in taking him down. ”You, though? You’re Yanwang’s pale reflection. You might be stronger, but he is greater.”

Nashi would run back, Power Pole in arm. He’d jump and, on his downward descent, try to whack the ogre with it!

”And I’ll take you down!”

Nashi was definitely stronger than his killers when they killed him, but he was missing something vitally important, and that little detail had charged him full force. I’ve gotten far stronger since then, but who’s to say they didn’t get stronger too?! What a terrifying prospect. He hadn’t heard anything about Virus— as far as the news would tell him, he simply stopped existing after the Satan City debacle™, which only worried Nashi as to what he was planning. Mumbo, too, had been in the news a bit, and did generally seem quite a bit stronger. Where they, even now, beyond his power?
No. No, he refused to believe it.

There was yet more, and Nashi refused to take it as fact. Whoever this was— whatever this was— was a fragment of the future. Or, a potential future. Potentially. This newfound power Yanwang had, was that the power of this dark, future self? And, the way he spoke… do I die, in the future? Of course he was going to die at some point. Given the infinitude of time, even the deathless died eventually. But, the way it was worded? It seemed he was going to die terribly, perhaps at the hands of a villain. Nashi could not let that happen again.

This was far more serious than Nashi had thought. It was far greater than he could ever know. 

This? This was Yanwang. But it wasn’t Nashi’s Yanwang. It wasn’t the one who tried to help him with gardening. This wasn’t the Yanwang who sparred with him and Yogu, and certainly not the Yanwang who Nashi had ice-cream with. This was a stranger.

The anger fueled his blow, which sent the ogre flying into a tree which was split in twain by the force. ”I’m not as imminently manageable as you seem to think I am.” Given that he was learning late high-school material at the same time as kindergartener material, it only made sense that in his speech he mixed big-boy language with language of a, let’s say, lower maturity.

... No, I was wrong about something. This power was not the power of Yanwang after a few years, but the inner power of the Fujin Bag. ”You got your power from the bag, but my Yanwang got his power from his friends. From me, from Yogu, from Kanrin. His friends will always be with him… but your bag? It’s just a bag.” The point he was trying to make was, friends are greater than some mere power in some mere bag. How does one put power in a bag, anyway? It wasn’t usually possible to put something like that in a container as if it were physical, but it was a magical bag, so… ”And the real Yanwang is better than just a bag.”

Nashi now knew what he was dealing with. There would be no more underestimations, no more surprises. Now it was serious. White energy formed into some manner of disk; no, not a disk, a portal! Nashi didn’t know what was about to come flying out of that portal, but he had to do something quick!


Fire came out of the portal like a train out of a tunnel. It shot out, full force, and seemed to envelop Nashi! The great mass of fire seemed to swallow him whole and continued on, making an inferno of the forest behind it! Hopefully there weren’t any Karinga over there. The flames continued, bringing out the full force of a burning hell over reality itself! And, finally, when it ended, Nashi was completely unharmed! He’d been swinging around the Power Pole at great speed, like a fan, making sure no flame actually made contact with him! He’d give the false Yanwang a dead serious glare, his Power Pole reaching stillness as the flames passed. ”30% isn’t enough. 100% won’t be enough.” Nashi rested it by his side, ready for use.

This wasn’t the time for such weapons. No, he needed to prove that friendship outdid mere magical toys. He ‘holstered’ the Power Pole and prepared to use Leopard Kung Fu, as his mother taught him to. He rushed forwards with amazing speed and aimed to strike the foe’s ribs, throat, temple and inner arms with the leopard-style signature striking blow! ”You won’t win. Because if you, win, I’ll lose. And for Yanwang, I can’t lose!”

”You just don’t get it, do you?”

Each strike was a success. Each Leopard Blow seemed to bring Nashi all that much closer to victory; but, was it all a ploy? As well as all of his hits were landing, it was almost as if Yanwang was letting them hit. Either he was quite a stupid opponent indeed, the true Yanwang was stunning the body from the insides to help, or this false Yanwang had something up his sleeve. But the hits he was getting in were good, and tried not to think on the matter.

”Without friends, you are alone. Truly, truly alone.” Nashi managed a powerful jab to the ribs, but the skin garnered only black. ”Don’t you get it, even now? We aren’t going to defeat evil with edgy artefacts of ultimate edge™, we’re going to defeat evil as a team. As friends.” Not with this Yanwang, of course. He already demonstrated he was too edgy for sense.

Yanwang was now entirely blacked over, the darkness covering up the familiar red. Then, he tried for a punch, but Nashi flipped backwards to avoid it. And, then?


A great explosion emanated from the ogre, the sheer power of its blast pushing down trees all around with a terrifying force! Left standing was ‘Yanwang’, the base of the Tower (it won’t be so easy to fell it) and, surprise surprise, Nashi! The explosion pushed him back a metre, imprint marks of where he was pushed forming in the ground. He had his mildly-burnt hands in an X-shaped brace position and looked up from it utterly annoyed. ”And your toy bag? It means nothing to me.” Besides, I have a better one! Magical artefact, that was, not toy bag.

Nashi brought upon himself a sense of seriousness he had not felt, had not used in a very long time indeed. ”Yanwang.” He pointed the Power Pole to the ogre. ”The real Yanwang. My Yanwang. If you’re in there somewhere, if you can hear me, listen up, I might have an idea. And it might just work.”

Yanwang is the bag, as he remembered. And, so, if Nashi’s Yanwang existed in there in some capacity, couldn’t he manipulate the summoning process? Couldn’t he, for example… ”I have no idea if you can hear me, and I have no idea if it’ll work even if you can, but I want you to try to summon quick-setting concrete out of your body's skin, to keep him still for a bit!”

And then, regardless of if the inner Yanwang managed to summon the concrete (Nashi didn’t even know if it was possible!), he’d come in for an attack! Hopefully there was the concrete, but Nashi was confident in his offensive capabilities even without. He’d run forwards to within close range of the ogre, retracting the Power Pole to a very small size indeed. Then, when closest, he’d extend the Power Pole massively, hopefully knocking the ogre into the distance!

Nashi uses the Power Pole special ability for a free A1! 69,300PL incoming!

[3/3KP]

”You know, I think we’re closer in strength than you seem to believe. Or, are ready to admit. I might even be stronger than you are!” He definitely wasn’t. ”But, regardless, I’m gonna win!”

The ogre spat into the dirt again. That was the second time he did that; was he trying to cause a flood as slowly as he possibly could? He won’t get that far, because I’ll beat him!

Something odd was happening. It was almost as if… yes, it’s working! Not only did this confirm that the real Yanwang could hear him from somewhere deep in the ogre’s mind, but it confirmed that the real Yanwang still had the ability to summon stuff, even though he wasn’t actually in control of the body! That, he thought, is very interesting indeed. What else could he do, knowing what he now knew?

That was, if he got that far. A strange, black energy covered the ogre, shielding him from the power of Nashi’s attack. The catboy was shocked that his attack could be blocked so easily; perhaps the ogre was correct, and Nashi truly was out of his depth. ”No problem with that…” No, that can’t be right. A hero can surmount any odds, if only they stick to it! ”I’ll just have to punch with a power beyond what the bag can handle! The real Yanwang: be creative, I’ll need you to summon something ag—”

Perhaps that could come later. More in the moment, the ogre punched Nashi in the gut, sending him reeling back for air. ”Ghaah, a good hit! It won’t happen again!” Then he’d try to use the ogre’s velocity against him, hopefully by dashing just to the side of the opponent’s charge and then aiming to punch the ogre in the side of the head. Hopefully, at that stage, Yanwang had summoned something to slow down the ogre, to help the hit land!

But that wasn’t its only use.
No, he had another idea. He didn’t know if he had the power in him to use it, but…
The last time he used this, he didn’t remember it after. The last time he used it that he could remember, the technique was utterly and irrevocably changed by his very subconscious. Now? Now, he didn’t know what it’d do. In a sense, he was scared. But, on the other hand? I’m doing this for Yanwang. If I lose... He could not allow such a thing to pass! He had to win! For Yanwang!

Energy blazed around him, more energy than Yanwang had ever seen before; even more power than in the mind of Yogu! And all of that power, moving to a point, and then that point extending, until there was a spear! A spear of blue especially pure, a spear sharper than the sharpest of blades, a spear brighter than the most well-polished of shields!

”Sorry, Yanwang, but you might wanna go to a hospital when you’re in charge of your own body again."

"BLUE!"

"BRO!"

"BEHEMOTH!!”

Nashi came forwards with amazing speed, aiming to stab the luminous ki spear through the ogre’s stomach!

[SIG] Blue Bro Behemoth used for 348,600PL, headed towards the False Yanwang!

[0/3KP]