gib bol [DB CHALLENGE DE]

Cress let out a loud yell and his power began increasing again. "I'm going to push myself even further!" His muscles rapidly grew in size as his body emitted a yellow glow, the tower beneath him shaking violently. Bio-electricity crackled around his body when he reached his maximum strength. But he still felt like he could go even further... but it'd cost him far more than this transformation , the Ultra Super Saiyan, did.

Vocado and Nashi were already fighting, but he had a chance to attack, and attack he did. Extending his arm in Nashi's direction, he forced ki from his palm and fired a golden ki blast at Nashi. "If you were competent, you'd leave the ball behind and run! As if he'd let him get away to challenge him another day. This battle would surely be Nashi's last.

Whaaaaat? I didn’t do heavenly Karate class. Mum taught me…. OH! He’s trying to quip at me! Well I’ll show him! ”Didn’t they teach you basic object permanence at the zoo, ya spleen-addled phlegm-booger?” … No, that was too far. Now I just feel bad.

Hrmm… Victory was looking increasingly like an impossibility. Unless he pulled a miracle or someone came to help him— maybe another Super Saiyan, that’d be funny— winning was simply something that couldn’t be done. But that didn’t mean that defeat was inevitable. Or, if it was, Nashi could at least draw it out a bit to increase the chance these guys would get old, get muscle dystrophy and have heart attacks before they get to wish on Shenron. They were old farts anyway, in the region of a hundred thousand hours old, so it was a distinct possibility.

Cress glowed a bit more— no doubt due to the radiation from the potassium-40 in his hair— and his muscles grew, transforming him into an incompetent balloon artist’s first try at making a gorilla in a fatsuit. ”No, you’re confusing ‘competent’ for ‘cowardly’! An easy mistake for a Saiyan to make, as you’ve demonstrated without a doubt, but you’re missing one itty bitty, massively crucial detail:”

oh hek that’s an attack

Nashi stepped back and took a moment— only a very quick moment, he didn’t have long— to consider his situation. On one hand, it was just about the most heroic thing that was able to be done. On the other, it was almost certainly going to get him killed. Oh well… I wonder how Karon’s going. Nashi stepped back again but his motion was stopped by an object he didn’t expect. Looking back, he saw his television! The cheap old tele-box had served him well over his three years of life: it was his portal to the grand world of heroism! All those weekend and early morning cartoons killed Nashi’s life with adventure, hope and enough hopelessly-specific ideals to drown out an ocean! He remembered those lessons as if he had always known them and as if he learnt them first-hand every day… and what were they telling him? They were telling to never stop smiling! To never not get back up! To never give up! If these malformed tails-for-brain ignoramuses destroyed it, dangy would he be peeved.

… Hey, wasn’t I doing something important?
…
Oh, right, the attacks!
A picosecond passed.
OH NO THE ATTACKS

Nashi moved to get the Power Pole in the way of the Searing Ray, but by only a single centimetre did he miss. The blast struck Nashi’s chest, its energy absorbed by the Senbyō’s armour and neato abs. That wasn’t the worst of it, though: Nashi was knocked straight into Vocado’s barrage of blows. Every blow Vocado tried, he connected. And every blow Vocado connected made a mark, drawing blood (which was terrible, because Nashi was already more red than he was comfortable being). Then was one last blow: to the centre of the chest with Vocado’s toaster arm. It didn’t quite go straight through his chest but it certainly started. His mouth wide and dripping blood, his eyes empty and dull, a black void over his chest, Nashi did nothing as he fell off the Senbyō’s Tower like an awkwardly thrown banana. Like the projectile in a high schooler’s physics assignment, Nashi plummeted, the only sensation across his body the constant whipping pinches of the wind and the only question in his mind how any of this came to be. Or maybe it was what any of it meant. I don’t know, I’m not a mind-reader.

Chime. Blue returned to Nashi’s eyes like a blue bath bomb in a baby bucket. Daruma. Myu! These were the people who counted on him! These were the people he’d fail, if he were to lose now! PYRUS! AND CADENZA, IF SHE’S STILL AROUND! She very much so was not. MUM! DAD! I can’t lose! Not for them! And so it came to pass that Nashi was not done quite yet.

Nashi got the senzu bean from his sash and chucked it in his gob as if it was a senzu bean and he was a falling, beaten-up hero in need of a heal to save the day— a very specific thing for it to be like, but who’s counting? Nashi flew up faster than he’s every flown and got there in approximately oh no never mind he’s already there.

Nashi landed at the entrance of the abode like he’d come home from just another day at work. ”Oi, weaker spit-stain, gold really doesn’t suit you. And you, marginally less impotent oxygen-thief, need to work on your form!” They were at the precipice of quips and insults proper, but dang did these undeserved spine-havers deserve it. ”Don’t think that just because you kill me it means that I’m dead. I’ve survived death before; easy peasy, not even a pain. But that brings me to that crucial detail you oh so rudely previously interrupted:”

Sometimes Nashi forgot just how fun it was to be so close to death. Sure, he was probably gonna develop heaps-bad PTSD or whatever, but it was the very height of what it meant to be a hero! Or, it would be, were he to win. ”You want to wish upon the Dragon Balls. And you wish to kill me. But there’s your impasse, you see…” Love him or hate him, Nashi was about to spit straight facts. That is to say, an absolute lie and total bluff. ”… Because the Kami wasn’t all that great at spiritual stuff at the time, you see. More of a healing and noodles-materialising sort of guy, ya dig? I ended up making the Dragon Balls. And if I die actually, properly— if your flea-infested selves could even manage such a thing— the Dragon Balls will go inert, and you’ll be no closer to getting your wish than when you didn’t know what Dragon Balls were.” Nashi certainly had the confidence about him, and due to the activated throat chakra he didn’t exactly give the usual tells for lying. ”So, yeah, sucks to be you, don’t screw with Earth, and I’mma beat you up now.”

Nashi entered his martial stance but then, for a moment, hesitated… or, he pretended to hesitate. Nashi’s eyebrowls scowled and his mouth half-opened. His Power pole almost fell out of his hands as Nashi looked out of a window behind the two Souper Saiyans. The hand not holding the Power Pole came up to point, shaking precisely as much as what was believable. ”T-The HFIL is that?”

Nashi would then commence to kick the Saiyan in the nethers— that is to say, the crown jewels— ‘the Saiyan’ being whichever looked away to what Nashi pointed at first. Or, if neither did, he’d mutter something under his breath to the effect of ‘why do I even bother, they’re too daft to know how pointing works’ and try it on Cress anyway. Heavens knew he deserved it.

Drat, Vocado avoided Nashi’s predictable strike directly. The only thing more predictable about it was the ineffectiveness of the avoidance itself. Either that or this guy’s language, as predictable as it was crude. ”Didn’t your mum ever tell you not to say such bad words?” Nashi expressed disappointment in a wagging finger and a head shaking only very slightly from left to right— or from right to left, if that was more your speed. ”Tsk, tsk.”

Vocado was making a point. Indeed, it was true: Nashi’s fabrication was on the point of falling apart! Only, while a point, it wasn’t a very sharp one, like what you’d expect from a baby’s plastic spoon wrapped in lubricated bubblewrap. It was a point, yes, but that didn’t mean it was a good one. ”You underestimate my ability to jabber on ceaselessly!” Jabbering was useful. No, really, it was: it annoyed your opponents which, while something you’d want to do for the virtue of having done such a thing, also made them more likely to make poor decisions such as leaving themselves open or thinking that ‘Vocado’ is a cool name. ”And that doesn’t make any sense. Not everyone lives as tortured an existence as you— some lives are worth living, ya know? Not that my feelings matter in that, of course. After all, you’re the ones setting yourselves up for disappointment. At this point, you’re only still trying to kill me out of a stubborn insistence that your first conception of a situation is somehow always correct and because of your own bloodlusted incompetence getting in the way of anything your peanut brain’s trying to rationalise.” At this point, they might just be trying to kill him because of all the quips. ”Perhaps that’s why even hearing the name ‘Vocado’ ushers such potent second-hand embarrassment.” Good thing Cress said what Vocado’s name was. Otherwise, such an epictacular quip simply couldn’t have existed.

As he was using Leopard Kung Fu, Nashi responded to Vocado’s flying knee attack by striking the knee itself and then, with the other hand immediately after, striking the same knee again— all with Leopard Blows, of course. Nashi was hoping his exerted force would dislocate, but Vocado was stronger than him, so it wasn’t looking likely.

"Finally!" Cress took a deep breath and forced the super saiyan transformation out, the golden flame-like aura encasing his body once more. It felt great, as it should. The saiyan shot through the entrance to the lookout, extending a hand as he saw Nashi and Vocado throwing hands. His hand shined bright as ki surged from his palm, racing toward the back of the Senbyō.