World Shakers (Solo)

Dread wrote:“This is far enough.” She suddenly said; she braked above a pine forest that stretched for miles in any direction. The only similarity between her newly chosen battlefield and the old one was that it was raining heavily in both locations. “No one should bother us here.”

John stopped some yards ahead of her then completed a full rotation to face her. They were both fully ascended humans; an extreme rarity in the universe. He wondered if his teacher, “Coach” was one such human. He nearly shuddered at the thought because if it was true then he had not yet witnessed his teacher’s full power. What he had seen of that man, if "Coach" could be labeled such, had served as inspiration for many of his nightmares that he continued remembering with undesired clarity.

“Is there something wrong?” His opponent asked him. “Don’t tell me you’re worried about the woodland critters’ safety.”

Prior to her transformation, she had been an almond-skinned teenage girl with a beautiful figure and flowing red hair. Her empowerment had bleached her skin white, turned her lips black, and petrified her hair into spikes arranged in such a way as to resemble evenly spaced markings on a compass. She had also powered up during her change; her aura resembled a great fire with her at its center. It even issued immense heat.

John could have been easily mistaken for her polar opposite in terms of both his change and aura. His hair had arranged itself in vertical black spikes that greatly resembled a macabre crown. Colorless crystals of solidified ki floated above each point; the crystal above the center-front spike was slightly larger than the others. His beard jutted from his chin as one solid spike wider than those that adorned his head. A black chain half hung from each of his wrists; they had served as the first step in John’s ascension that he had only recently learned how to complete. His aura cloaked his body and attire entirely in black and chilled the air around him. The only light that issued forth from John was the bright envy-green glow of his eyes.

John had not talked during their entire flight; he had said everything he wanted her to hear from him. His response to her most recent question came in the form of an environmentally unfriendly attack. He exercised his will onto the forest below and uprooted eight trees. Chipmunks vacated them as soon as they felt their homes trembling violently; birds abandoned their nests just as quickly. John directed the trees, trunks and roots first, toward his opponent. He showed he cared little what happened to the forest and its inhabitants; he would not appear weak in front of a hated enemy.

His opponent delivered a punch to the tree that approached her first; it cracked thunderously then exploded into countless splinters and needles that fell harmlessly to the forest along with the rain. She punched and kicked at the other missiles, but John had not been foolish enough to send them her way only one at a time. She destroyed two more in the same fashion as the first, but the remaining five surrounded and overwhelmed her at John’s direction.

She realized she could not eliminate them all. She dropped down toward the ground and headed for a thick cluster of trees for cover. John continued having the original five trees chase after her, but he also began tearing more of their like from the ground along her chosen path in an attempt to intercept and harm her.

She intelligently reacted to John’s plan to swarm her with projectiles. She stopped near the center of the forest then issued an impressive ki wave that spread out in all directions from her. John immediately abandoned his attack; his makeshift weapons fell uselessly to the ground with a cacophony of heavy thuds before they were all consumed by the attack. John crossed his arms over his chest and brought his knees up to his elbows. A tremendous explosion spread until it covered the entirety of the forest, incinerating plants and animals alike in its path. Clever girl. John thought; she had negated his plan to use the environment against her by unleashing an attack that could also reach and damage him.

The wave reached John well beyond sonic speeds and swallowed him up, casting him into the depths of an inferno. He flew backward in an attempt to escape further damage, but the wave continued with him. He clamped his mouth shut in an absolute refusal to allow his opponent to hear him scream. He doubted she would have heard him over the roar of her own explosion, but he had already resolved to show no weakness in her presence.

The wave eventually reached its maximum size, but it had herded John to the outer limits of what had once been a forest. A scorching mushroom cloud rumbled toward the heavens; it was all that was left of the blast. The attack had reduced the area into a wasteland that the ever-present storm endeavored to turn into a massive mud puddle. Even the river that meandered through the land had been broken and diverted by the devastation.

John uncrossed his steaming, burned, and bleeding arms. He lowered his equally damaged legs as he noticed a road below him. He immediately and fervently hoped no one would use it until the conclusion of his fight. He considered obliterating it to force wayward travelers to turn back, but he could not afford to waste any of his energy. He could only attempt to contain the fight within the wasted forest. His enemy had already catered to his desire not to involve other people in their battle, but he doubted she would postpone the battle a second time for the same reason. In any event, he could not let her believe he would hold back for any reason, which meant showing no fear, worry, or weakness. I just hope no one suffers as so many animals have already. He thought to himself as he flew toward where he sensed his adversary.

Dread wrote:During his flight toward his opponent, John directed healing energy toward his arms, legs, and wherever else he needed it. It frustrated him to no end that his opponent had injured him with one attack after he had gone to great lengths to harm her without any amount of success of his own. He worried that she was, in some way, more powerful than he was, but he had kept constant track of her energy signature. His senses informed him that they were almost equal in power. What, if anything, was he doing wrong?

The pain he had been suffering, since his enemy wiped out the forest, left him. He felt his arms and found some relief in the fact that his burns had vanished and his skin had reformed perfectly. He was no longer bleeding and the ongoing rain helped rinse him of whatever blood remained on his person and threatened to stain his clothes.

The girl floated directly above the center of ground zero of her attack; a disastrous crater marked the land beneath her. The earthen scar had diverted the nearby river off its natural course. “Ready for r-” She began, but John cut her off and made it evident he had not changed moods and remained intolerant for conversation.

He shot two energy bullets at her, one after the other. The attacks bored tremendous holes into the lifeless ground. She had managed to evade both attempts on her life in spite of the incredible speed behind John’s attacks. She had moved toward him in a serpentine motion and threw a punch toward his gut with her right fist.

Her knuckles smacked loudly against John’s intervening left palm. He aimed another energy bullet at her forehead at pointblank range, but she struck the offending hand away with her free wrist. She then attempted to knee John in the groin with her left leg, but John hooked his foot around her ankle and pushed down, impeding the movement.

A sinister black ball formed above John’s head and the young woman immediately recognized it as one of his attacks. She head butted him with enough force to shatter a normal man’s head, but it only stung John and the pain angered him. She tore away from him to avoid whatever nasty surprise the ebony sphere had in store for her as soon as she witnessed it crack.

The black ball shattered and its awful contents gave chase, proving their superior speed over their quarry as the rush of darkness closed in on her while tinkling their haunting melody. She circled back toward John and even though she could not see beneath the darkness that shrouded him, he smirked knowingly. He had full control over every component that made up Piercing Dread. It could not harm him no matter how close his target came toward him because he would not allow it, but neither could a target hope to share with him such a safety measure against it.

She swung a kick at him; he easily deflected it. She spun and aimed another kick at him that he subsequently blocked. She repeated the process, forcing John back and distracting him from proceeding with his attack against her. His forearms burned from the repeated contact with her shins, but he maintained his defenses and felt certain she would quickly tire if she continued her useless assault.

She eventually let up and flew straight upward; John tried commanding Piercing Dread to pursue her. In all the excitement, however, the attack had expended all its energy. Her efforts to render his assaults against her useless had succeeded again. How was it that she knew exactly how to counter his moves? She knew so much about him already; had she observed and studied his fights? Or was she, like him, a natural tactician. I need to strategize better. John admitted to himself, but doing so would have to wait because his enemy decided to unleash another one of her long-ranged attacks against him.

She had formed a wide circle of angry orange ki energy directly ahead of her. She then held one arm high above her head then swung it down so that her hand pointed at John. It must have been the trigger to her attack because her creation descended toward John with incredible speed. To his initial astonishment, the ring passed over him without harming him. He felt foolish for having crossed his arms over his head to shield his body from the anticipated explosion. He was also afraid, to some extent; he knew that was not the end to the attack. He was fully aware of the fact that she would not have discharged such a substantial amount of energy for nothing.

The ring crashed into the ground an instant after it had passed over John. There, it finally detonated and released a pulse of concentrated energy upward toward its target. He could not turn around in time to block it and even if he had enough seconds to do just that, he doubted he could hope to deflect what he sensed.

At the last possible moment, it slammed into an invisible force John had only managed to construct in time around his body. His barrier served as a last-resort defense because, unlike his other abilities, it could not be used consecutively. The beam persisted against his barrier; it spat its superheated glowing exhaust off to the sides of the contact point. John knew his shield could not last much longer against the assault.

He twisted around to face the threat and held his hands out in front of him just as his barrier faded. His desperation defense had taken the brunt of the force, but he still had to contend with the leftovers, which still proved dangerous even for him. The beam burned his hands as he strained to hold it off and prevent it from consuming him. He gritted his teeth and focused past the pain. I’ve felt worse. He reminded himself; the thought bolstered his courage.

Courage alone would not help him against the girl, especially as she took advantage of his compromised position. She delivered a fierce drop kick down onto John’s right shoulder, breaking a bone. He then screamed in agony as his limb fell uselessly to his side. The beam finally overtook him, but his defenses had not been in vain. It showered him with extreme heat; it did nothing for his most recent injuries, but it had not baked any of his vitals, which he surmised had been its purpose. His opponent retreated to a safe distance so as not to receive any harm from her own attack.

“You’re pretty tough,” She remarked. “No one has ever survived that combo before.”

She talks too much. John thought, but her compulsion to say whatever seemed to pop into her head had bought John the time he needed to unleash his most dangerous attack. I really wish my enemies would stop forcing me to use it, but nothing else has worked.

Dread wrote:A black mass formed some feet ahead of John until it adopted its intended shape of a rippling ball. After its peculiar formation, it made a beeline for his enemy. It presented visual evidence to its volatility with its continued distortions, especially as it started imploding during its journey. The young woman flew off to the side, avoiding direct contact with it; she then headed directly for John.

He surmised she was repeating her performance from earlier. Such a strategy had proved effective against him once, but he would not fall prey to the same tactic. His attack detonated behind her; instead of an explosion, it generated a field of gravity from which no living thing could escape including its reluctant master if he ever ventured within its boundaries.

She had flown just beyond the field’s outer reaches when it came into being; it was a necessary failsafe John included in his attack’s creation so as not to damage the planet. He would not, however, allow her to escape so easily. By the time she had begun to flee from the danger, he had already lowered his remaining working arm to his side and pointed the adjoining hand toward the ground, made barren for miles by the continuing battle between two fully ascended humans.

The crater that presently served as their battleground had become a tremendous bowl of mud between the heavy rain and broken river. All of that mud rose at John’s command and moved at his continued direction. He fashioned an astoundingly enormous wall that nearly touched the storm above with its height and touched either end of the crater with its breadth. John increased its size by adding rain from above and dirt from below into it.

His enemy had stopped some distance before the great mud wall and tried detouring over it toward him. He tracked her progress with his sense then launched his attack against her. From an observer’s perspective, had there been one, it would have appeared as though one man was exerting his dominion over the planet and all its resources.

The gargantuan mud wall rolled forward and twisted toward its target. It threatened to swallow her up and drown her. Her best efforts to circumvent the wall toward John ended in failure in spite of her many aerial twists, turns, and loops. John forced her to retreat and herded her back toward the gravity field that remained strong since its emergence. By the time she realized the purpose behind the attack, she had already been caught inside the field and it dragged her toward its center.

John rose above the mud wall that retained its shape at his command. He decided to keep it handy for a little while longer just in case his opponent had any further tricks up her skirt. He observed her futile struggles against the invisible force that had claimed her for its own. She looked at him with a combination of hatred and fury, but John saw a hint of something else; a hint was all he needed. She was terrified. “You will survive,” John told her as he extinguished his aura; however, he remained transformed.

Her legs and arms bent out of proportion and nearly snapped; she shrieked in agony and her cries pierced John with guilt. “But you have lost,” John told her.

“This fight isn’t over!” She screamed.

“You have lost,” John persisted, “I have won this fight; there is no need for us to go on fighting.”

“You cheated!” She accused.

“I can heal you as soon as you are free,” John told her.

“What about you? What about your arm?” She hissed.

“I will worry about it later,” John told her; hiding the fact that his body would reject his kind of healing twice in the same day.

“Why don’t you just kill me and get it over with?” She spat. “Before I am free of this trap?”

“What will you do then?” John asked her. “How much longer can you keep pace with me? We have both spent a lot of energy. How much more juice is left in your tank?”

She smirked sadistically at him then said, “Enough to kill you.”

John nearly objected to her statement, but he then sensed an unnatural build up in energy from her. She uttered an elongated battle cry and her aura flared so that its glow nearly reached the edges of the gravity field. “What are you doing?” John demanded after having sensed great instability in her ki. “If you don’t stop, you’ll die!”

She only laughed hysterically at his obvious statement. John then came to a terrible realization; she had turned her body into a bomb. “Are you insane? You don’t have to do this!” John tried reasoning with her.

“Even if I wanted to stop!” She hysterically shouted. “IT IS TOO LATE!”

John could hardly remember what had happened next, but he survived it…barely. After the declaration of his opponent, the forces contained within her body had gone critical. She literally exploded and the ensuing blast swallowed everything up for hundreds of miles. There was nothing he could have done to prevent it. He could not have flown her thousands of feet into the air to reduce the damage that followed because doing so meant entering the inescapable gravity field within which she remained trapped. He had lacked the time to have done so anyway.

The heat from the explosion turned the rain in the air and moisture in John’s mud wall into steam. The explosion dried the ground below while torching it simultaneously. It rushed beyond the limits of the former forest. It leveled a truck stop, killing the truckers, the staff, and the families within. It ruined some roads that led to and from civilization. It burned the vehicles travelling those very roads and cooked many more people, including infants, into blackened husks of what had once been humans.

John witnessed none of that ruination and he was better off for it; he would have blamed himself for not having killed his enemy before she had a chance to blow. He experienced only a blinding light and the all-consuming pain it inflicted upon him. He could not have defended himself against it; it moved too quickly and with overwhelming force. It swallowed him whole. Is this what digestion feels like? He actually wondered as his screams of pain proved mute against the voice of destruction. He blacked out after that, but he believed he had died.

Some hours later…

“I found someone! He’s over here!” John heard a voice as he came close to waking; he looked up into the face of an unfamiliar man. “Help me load him up!”

“What’s his condition?” A woman asked.

The man shone a flashlight into his eyes, John flinched, but he made no reaction beyond that. The man forced his right eye open. “The subject appears semiconscious. Subject has suffered a broken arm and multiple second degree burns.”

“Wait, did you say, semiconscious? Give him an anesthetic now!” The woman ordered.

The hand left John’s eye; he felt a sharp prick against his neck soon after. Something cold rushed beneath his skin. “Done, now will you-” John had lost consciousness again before he heard the man finish.