No Job Unfinished

[Gehn]

Of all the choices he could make, Axar chose to rush down through the volley of energy blasts and fight Gehn directly.

If the Saiyan man, changed as he was, wasn't already grinning, he would have. That grin only grew and grew until it turned into raucous laughter, the first of its kind he could ever remember experiencing in combat. Even when they finally reached each other, even when Axar's fist crashed into his face and twisted his head around, blood flying from his split lip, it didn't go away.

Gehn returned with a punch of his own, only for Axar to block it with his forearm. The Changeling answered with another, which Gehn weaved, and another. Together, the two of them started their violent dance above the city. Each blow that they blocked or dodge put a hole in the wispy, nighttime clouds around them. Gehn heard the buildings below rattle, windows shattering from the weight of their impact. Wind buffeted against the city, whipping at the canopy of alien trees that lined certain roads and districts.

As if a storm had descended.

Another blow struck, a knee against Gehn's knee that snapped his head back. He righted with a wild cackle and rushed in for more. Energy began to burn in his hands as he mixed energy blasts anew into his counter attacks. Around him, his aura, as red as Axar's, burned and flared with crazed abandon as their skyward battle continued on and on.

Wind tore against Gehn's now-bare chest when Failure suddenly appeared and, with a swing of her arm, batted away one of the energy beams Gehn avoided earlier. It sailed off in another direction just a short distance before it exploded in a cloud of black smoke and bright fire. A moment later and his left eye warned him of two more following -- more attacks from Pyri that, clearly, Failure was somehow faster than.

Pyri must not have been much stronger than him, if at all, he realized.

With the red glow still bright around his body, he suddenly vanished from place and appeared again high above Axar.

"Today it's you who loses everything!" Gehn screamed through blood-stained teeth.

With the bright gas giant to his back, he pointed both of his hands down at Axar's twin-horned head and unleashed another wave of energy set to drag him down to the city below before it exploded.

---

Take a total of 24 Damage from both of Axar's Physical Strikes
Pyri's attacks miss
Rapid Movement for 5 Defense and 15 Ki
Power Up for an Extra Action to restore 50 Ki
Energy Blasts twice, only 4d6 this time, +2 to hit, for 20 Ki

HP: 51/100
Ki: 60/150
Current Power Level: 3,517

 

[Axar]

"Perhaps you're more a Saiyan than anyone realized, Gehn!" Axar finally as he traded fists with Gehn, both of their blows landing and missing in equal measure.

Gehn even, effortlessly, weaved in more blasts of energy, summoning them with ease, never seeming to exhaust himself. Axar's gut burned from previous strikes, skin had been vaporized away on his shoulder and left muscle exposed, and violet blood now ran like a fountain from Axar's nostrils.

His eyes left Gehn for only a moment, when someone else appeared in the air with them.

Her again?! Axar hardly believed his eyes when, in the midst of his city-quaking exchange with Gehn, Failure appeared just in time to deflect one of Pyri's beams.

Only for her to, immediately, tear off through the sky and back to where she came from.

Can Pyri not...? Axar struggled to accept what it meant.

That distraction was all that Gehn needed to crash an energy blast into the side of Axar's head. He floated listless for a moment, eyes white and devoid of consciousness, before his red gaze flickered back into them.

When they did, Gehn was nowhere to be seen, and Axar took the opportunity.

"Pyri! Escape!" He shouted in the direction Failure had flown. In his current state, he couldn't pursue her. "Live! That's an order!"

Only after that did he hear Gehn above him, a red wave of energy coming down. Axar lifted both hands and, this time, met Gehn's wave with his own.

The two crashed together over top of the city. The competing blasts cast violent shadows across the burning wreckage of a town below them. Tendrils of energy lanced out and dragged their way through the buildings and streets alike. Everything from dislodged walls to dust started to rise, floating from the sheer intensity of the power on display.

But it didn't matter. His head rang. His chest burned, and not just from his wounds. His arms trembled under the weight of his own blast, nevermind Gehn's.

The Saiyan burned right through his own wave, caught against him, and dragged him to the ground.

Axar never even heard the explosion that enveloped his body. Instead, his chest swell and his natural body armor groaned when consciousness rushed back to him. He looked up within a cloud of choking, black smoke and dust. He could see enough to tell that he laid in a crater, the city flattened for hundreds of meters all around him at the very least. Only some skyscrapers remained, and only their top portions, resting tilted on the flattened and scorched earth. Fires burned all around, and gas pipes spewed torrents of hell into the air, where they hadn't been destroyed entirely.

Slowly, he saw Gehn descend through the conflagration. He knew even his silhouette now, after this.

With a weak groan, Axar pulled himself into a sitting position. Then, onto his feet, with his left arm limp at his side. He could move it, he felt, but it hurt too much to try. His labored breathing was already too much, as if his armor might crack from how much his chest expanded each time.

"It seems..." Axar struggled to speak as he pointed at Gehn, energy flowing out of his body while he spoke. "It seems everyone misjudged you, Gehn. I was told you despised the Saiyan way of life. That only half your weakness was being a disappointment, the other half was your unwillingness to push yourself, to fight."

Axar chuckled weakly.

"I don't understand it, personally. We Scorch Clan are mocked for loving battle nearly as much as you Saiyans do. Yet," he waved that same finger at Gehn as he went on. "I doubt anyone who knew you ever saw you like this before. It seems you were just waiting for a moment to awake to it."

That weak chuckle turned into full, yet still weak, laughter.

"What irony that you had to lose your tail, to find it!"

Axar's breathing steadied with those words.

"Revel in this overdue moment of unity between your mind and your nature, Gehn, as it is the last you'll have among the living!"

With a snap of his wrist, Axar's hand turned over and he gestured upwards. With it, the ground beneath Gehn erupted like a volcano with all the energy that Axar had been flowing into the soil. All around him, more towers of energy burst from the ground, each an attempt to swallow the Saiyan alive and pluck this victory from his primate hands.

---

Hit by both Energy Blasts for 37 Damage
5 Damage from Heart Virus
Use Charge Attack for +1 die and -10 Ki
5d6 Energy Blasts twice at Gehn, -20 Ki

HP: 11/120
Ki: 5/100
Current Power Level: 23,520

 

[Pyri]

By the time her beams got close to Gehn, he and Axar had floated out of sight as they fought it out. Pyri just laid there, slowly beginning to feel strength in her battered body again. She traced Axar's presence, his Power Level still spiking and falling without control. She moaned and whined as she struggled to get up, to move.

She had never fought someone, in all her time with the Changelings, who had hit quite like Failure. Axar had been right, and Pyri felt it, too: This Failure was one of the most powerful people they had ever met. One of the most powerful people they knew of in the entire universe, in fact, with select few exceptions.

Just as Pyri began to sit up, and push the rubble off her body, she saw her again. She stood in the gaping hole in the roof of the building, hand on an exposed pipe, and all but seethed as she spoke.

Pyri barely had time to curl into a ball, to reinforce her body with what energy she cuold, before Failure dropped a knee onto her. She felt something inside of her pop and blood spewed from her mouth, onto the woman's robes, burned and stained with her own blood more than anyone else's. Finally, a real scream of agony jumped from Pyri's throat as all the pain, dulled ever since she crashed into her, wracked her body all at once.

"That's an order!" she heard Axar shout over her own screaming, his words following a plea for her to escape, to survive.

If he hadn't said that, in that moment, Pyri knew she wouldn't have moved. She would have used what strength she had left to lash out at Failure, to do something to fight back, to not feel so helpless. For over a year, she served Axar dutifully. She felt useful. She lived a life that excited. Now these two wanted to take it away.

She wanted to kill them, but she was told to escape. Run away. Survive.

Another scream tore from her throat as her energy suddenly threw her from the building. She smashed through a wall and took to the air, an arm over her crushed gut, blood falling away from her in a thin shower as she soared away, over the city. Mixed with the droplets of crimson, clear tears, lost in the slipstream.

***

Use Guard for 10 Ki to get 5 Temp HP
Take 23 damage from Failure, minus my Temp HP
other attack misses thank god!!
Attempt to gtfo with my Extra Action!!

HP: 4/110
Ki: 5/100
Current Power Level: 3,920

 

[Gehn]

After Gehn's final blast wave created an explosion big enough to swallow much of the city he and Failure once stayed in, he slowly lowered through the dust and smoke created by the ball of fire it birthed. His boots crunched against the burnt, exposed soil as he slowly walked closer to Axar, who struggled to get on his feet. Even Gehn's chest heaved from the exertion, though he had noticed how much better his body fared in fighting, how easily energy came to him.

He should have been exhausted, not just winded.

Gehn stopped as Axar, even through the dust, managed a last few words. Word games were the thing he was best at, clearly, and Gehn humored him this. The advantage in the battle was clearly his own, and Axar's last ramblings merely gave Gehn more time to think.

Failure came to mind. Although brief, when she was next to them, he saw the wounds across her. He had seen her own power spike wildly, in a way he had never witnessed before, with his left eye. Those wounds were from Pyri who, if he could manage to fight her evenly, was no serious threat to Failure. She had done that to herself, using something that she couldn't control.

As Axar brought up his tail, he forced that thought to the back of his mind.

That was when his eye finally alerted him to the buildup of energy below the surface. Axar's victorious words came too soon, however, as Gehn again vanished from place and appeared just a meter over, just in time to see a torrent of fiery-red energy explode from the ground where he once stood.

"You still talk too m--" Gehn never finished his words because, instead, they turned to screams.

Another pillar of energy burst from the ground and, this time, washed over him. Completely unprepared, it burned deep and hard into his flesh, tearing away parts of his pants, digging into his flesh as it threw him from where Axar landed. Gehn fell off the blast after just a moment and crashed into the ground, tumbling across his for what felt like the better part of a kilometer, before he came to a stop in the superheated dirt.

For a few seconds, he just laid there. He felt the hot soil cake against his sweat-covered cheek and limbs. Everything burnt now, everything hurt to move, yet Gehn put his arms under him all the same. Soil fell from his body, shaken loosen as he moved, and even more followed when he got his feet back under him.

It definitely hurt to stand.

His head snapped to the side, back in the direction of Axar.

This needed to end before it got any farther.

With a kick against the ground, and one last roar, Gehn rushed across the surface and reached Axar in just a single moment. Fist reeled back, he swung, and began what would hopefully be his final exchange with the bounty hunter -- there in the clouded aftermath of their battle so far.

In that moment, as he felt the hairs stand up across his body from the sheer thrill of it all, he realized:

Axar was right.

He loved it.

---

Rapid Movement for 5 Defense and 15 Ki
Axar's first Physical Strikes misses
33 Damage from Axar's Crit
Rush for an Extra Action and 10 Ki
Physical Strikes twice, +4 to hit

HP: 18/100
Ki: 35/150
Current Power Level: 3,517

 

[Axar]

For the first time that day, Axar returned Gehn's grin when he watched the Saiyan man, despite what just happened to him, charge right back in.

Axar had, in that time, climbed out of the crater. He stood on the level ground of the destroyed city, the air still filled with brown dust, the silhouettes of collapsed buildings all around them. The ground hissed beneath his three-toed feet with each step he took, until he stopped, lifted his good arm into a fighting stance, and then stepped forward.

His forearm clashed with Gehn's and shook everything around them yet again.

"What a way to settle it!" Axar laughed like a madman, blood spewing from his mouth even more as he weaved past more strikes from Gehn.

The Saiyan avoided a series of jabs in return, but it didn't matter anymore. All that mattered was this, right here, this moment.

"In a different life, Gehn! A different time!" Axar shouted even more as he deflected more blows from the Saiyan and answered with a leaping kick to Gehn's head.

That missed, too.

"As you are now, I might have called you a friend!" Axar finished with a straight to Gehn's face.

His grin remained even as the Saiyan caught his fist in his hand, squeezed it tight, and then stomped onto Axar's knee. He shrieked as his leg broke in two, his body finally succumbing to the battle, and he collapsed. Gehn let him fall, clutching at his broken joint, but followed him down. He grabbed Axar by the neck, held him in place, and rammed his fist into Axar's face.

Like a beast possessed, or just a real Saiyan, Gehn beat into his face again and again and again. Axar's head bounced against the dirt each time. One of his horn caught against the dirt and snapped off under the force of Gehn's blows. He felt something in his chest tear from the strain.

Finally, one more blow from Gehn, and the red-tinted polycarbonate of his skull cracked like glass.

Axar just laid there after that. He still breathed. Blood stained his eyes, but he could see a blurred silhouette of Gehn above him. Each breath had him choking, gagging as if drowning. His arms laid at his sides, stretched out, and he couldn't move them. He couldn't even feel his broken leg now. He couldn't see the violet blood that stained his own flesh and natural body armor, either.

He just looked up, at Gehn, and waited for the end to take him.

---

Physical Strikes 1 misses
Hit by Physical Strikes 2 for 10 Damage
5 Damage from Heart Virus

Axar is defeated!

 

[Gehn]

Blood dripped from Gehn's knuckles, falling onto Axar or the dirt around him. Gehn kneeled above him, a hand on his throat and threatening to crush it closed completely. His fist trembled above Axar and Gehn took big, gasping breaths for air.

All of a sudden, it didn't feel real. Like this moment might turn to steam and slip between his fingers. As if he were coming down from a rush, a high, that he could never have imagined before. Axar didn't move. His left eye didn't report any more tricks of energy. In fact, his Power Level continued to fall -- he was, clearly, dying. Yet, Gehn stayed just like that, looking down at him.

Gradually, his fist steadied, as did his breathing. He left go of Axar's throat and stood back up. His wide, crazed eyes calmed as well. A deep, slow breath swelled Gehn's bare and bleeding chest as he took a couple steps back away from Axar.

"You're no different than the worst of my people, Axar," Gehn spat blood into the dust around his own feet. "In all the cosmos, nothing would make us friends."

Gehn lifted both of his hands and, before them, an orb of red appeared.

Yet, he told his ally to escape, Gehn remembered.

"But it seems you do understand honor, after all," Gehn nodded, just once. He would give this man, who had tormented him across the stars, nothing more.

"Teach it to my sister when you see her next."

Before Gehn, the orb of energy whirred, grew, and the sound became a loud, shrill whine as more and more power poured into it.

In an instant, as if a light had been turned on, a wave swallowed Axar's body whole and cast shadows across Gehn and everything behind him. It turned it to dust, and carved its way forward through the already-decimated city until it curved upwards into the night sky. The roar of the blast followed next, as the thunder followed the lightning, and the final cacophony of the battle echoed across the Interstellar Market.

 

[Axar]

Axar saw, and heard, the energy that Gehn gathered to put an end to him once and for all even through his blurred eyes. Yet, despite it, he couldn't help the final bout of heavy laughter that followed. He felt brittle bones break and blood splatter from his lips, but he still couldn't stop it. Of all the things for Gehn to say in those final moments, it had to remind Axar of that.

The one folly he held all this time.

"Not Ollis," Axar laughed as the red light grew and grew.

"Your brother."

Everything turned pure white.