1,406Chapter 96 - Heart of the Wolf
Written by Demod20 and LastationLover5000
Suffocating. Chilling. Laced in intentions of pure evil. Yamcha's brain worked to find the words to describe the ki of the figure he saw before him. He felt this ki before, decades ago now, back in the wastelands, similar to the ones he used to call his home. It was the ki of the man Freeza had called his father, the King of his army, Cold. Only now, it was dozens of times more terrible. Yamcha, much like Kuririn, had a more astute ki sense than a battle-tuned Saiyan, and he could feel it to the point that it was visible.
This man's ki was as mangled and twisted as Cell's own. It felt like a single signature — primarily that of Cold — until one peered further. Yamcha could almost see it, the multiple spiritual energies forcibly entwined with each other, twisting and turning, ever changing like a kaleidoscope. Cell's own ki had this effect, but magnified due to being the progenitor.
Yet it didn't stop the horrible feeling of alienness emanating from Cold himself.
Yamcha tightened the crimson headband around his wild-maned crown, adjusting his posture to be ready for a sudden attack from an uncomplimentary angle. His black eyes narrowed, keeping close attention on the alien creature who was already readying ki spheres. Cold had yet to attack, and Yamcha was wondering why; to an untrained observer, he was practically leaving himself open, though this was untrue. Anyone would take it as an opening.
Why won't you move? thought the New Turtle School master.
Cold just hung in place, frozen other than the occasional scoffing exhale from his nostrils. One could be remiss to forget their lack of needing to breathe altogether, allowing them to survive in the harshest of atmospheres; even in the vacuum of space.
But the clone of Freeza's father just stared forward, rolling balls of light primed under his down-turned palms. It seemed he had made no intention of being the first to move.
"Well, if you're not going to attack..." Yamcha spoke, pulling back a fist as if he was to strike in melee.
Then, he launched it forward, unleashing a powerful gale of air pressure in the shape of a wolf's head with bared fangs.
"...THEN I WILL!" He howled, watching the blast of ferocious wind force his opponent to raise his front two legs up to crash into the powerful blow of pure air pressure. The blast propelled Clone backward, throwing him across the capital city that he had set aflame in ruins, while his cape whipped wildly behind him from the high velocity his person was traveling.
Tearing apart the coursing wall of cyan-colored wind with a flex of his lower limbs, righting himself with an instinctive kiai. With the kikōha still in hand, the clone of Cold curled its tale around to dust off his shoulders, smirking at him from the distance.
Raising his left hand, Yamcha saw the orb was unleashed in a singing cry as it flew forward like a bullet towards him.
"He's likely going to feint me with this one so he can try to get the drop on me with the second one," Yamcha proffered under his breath, raising his hands up in a forward leaning clawed stance.
But, if I catch it in time, I can probably turn it against him...!
The sphere suddenly sped up.
It was no longer a bullet, but a comet of light.
It streaked across and split the sound barrier dozens of times over as it raced towards the stunned Turtle Schooler.
Gritting his teeth, Yamcha bent his knees in the middle of the air and solidified his stance as if he was squatting on solid ground. Using the power of the heavens he spun his clawed hands around in a circle and took a step forward, lunging forth with the image of a wolf's mouth slamming shut on the edge of the light streak. Rays of luminescence sprayed out from between fingers before it was snuffed out, the blaze of ki fully enclosed in the entwined fingers and fully captured within the two flush palms.
That was close. It was almost like that guy heard what I was thinking...
His thoughts trailed off as he saw Cold's Clone launch the other kikōha, this one moving at the same speed the other had suddenly increased to.
"That move won't work on me a second time!" Yamcha yelled back, pulling himself back as if winding up for a pitch from his past-time as a professional baseball player.
Then, he threw the compact captured kikōha, releasing it like an arcing orangish blaze of fire that pierced the heart of the enemy ball.
No, not pierced. But passed through. The ball had separated itself into a dozen separated lancing kikōha of scarlet color, leaving Yamcha's counterattack to fly past over Cold's shoulder as his attention was brought back to the immediate threat poised towards him.
The luminous arrows sought to pierce him, curved with a sudden rush of air as Yamcha realigned his stance and swung his hands flat palms, the piercing rays slipping between his fingers like needles and halted their movement entirely. All twelve were caught, crackling within his grip and shrinking as he clenched his palms into fists, turning his fists into crimson shells of translucent energy.
"My turn!" Yamcha snarled.
Taking a hissing step in the air, propelling himself in a streak of momentum across the sky. Reaching Cold in an instant, he'd throw a storm of punches that rained across the clone's raised arms, parrying with his padded muscular appendages. Lightning sprouted from the connecting blows, each mark leaving hissing burns across the exposed flesh, the massive being's heels scraping across the sky as it struggled to gain purchase.
A sudden whipping blur caused Yamcha's offense to be broken, leaping back and deftly weaving around a series of lashes from Cold's massive tail seeking to batter him. Amidst the tail strikes, the clone clapped its palms, widening it slowly as an invisible pocket of force began to revolve between his fingers.
A pang of alarm exploded from the Turtle Schooler's skull, and he immediately threw his palm out with a loud howl while raising an arm to deflect the whipping tail. The kiai struck the mounting force, causing a massive blast that blew himself backwards while exploding the chest cavity and two hands of the clone as it was thrown backwards in an arching decline till it slammed into a half-destroyed building.
"Damn, that was close," The ex-bandit chuckled, shaking off the disorientation as the ringing in his ears settled down. "I didn't know what his plan was, but if he trapped me in that, then it'd be all over. Guess it is over for him though, haha-"
He didn't laugh for long.
The collapsed building rose upward, as if gravity had inverted. Blocks of concrete, plaster and metal rose upwards while the silhouette of the clone raised up despite the bloodied mess he appeared to be in. Once he had returned to a similar altitude to his opponent, Cold's clone lurched back with effort, and then ejected a host of blood and vile fluids, regenerating his arms and his mission parts of his torso.
"That's...Piccolo's regeneration!" Yamcha instantly recognized aloud with wide eyes, even from this distance. Balling his fists, he gritted his teeth as he was reminded this was just an effigy that Cell created, and was more reminiscent to the Juniors in that they carried his stolen genes. "Great, there goes my chance for an easy victory. Should've really laid it into him while he was down...!"
With his nemesis clenching and unclenching the replacement limbs experimentally, he'd see a glint of ruby from the pair of eyes as a rueful smile was marked across its face. Raising a hand up, turned it around and pointed an index finger towards him, signaling the storm of rubble surrounding himself to launch towards Yamcha's person.
"Bring it on!" The scar-faced man howled, crouching down before flying toward the hail of flotsam, his fists crushing one piece of psychically launched projectile after the other. In his haste, he overlooked a few of the pieces of wall and concrete layered by a shell of light. Dismissively striking them, his eyes widened as they suddenly detonated, exploding with violent enough force that bounced him from one velocity flung jetsam to the next.
Emerging from the cascade of blasts that ping-ponged him, he breathed angrily with gritted teeth. His headband tattered at the end, shortened from the blasts but his white tangzhuang had a few scorch marks but he was otherwise unscathed, just knocked around from the blunt force of the shockwaves.
He hid explosive barrier covered projectiles amidst a storm of debris? Something about this feels too precise and planned. No Junior had this level of intelligence when Cell unleashed them on us all those years ago...
The clone of Cold grinned, raising hands up and began to slowly clap, the sound weighing the air with an uneasy sense of tension that Yamcha couldn't place what it was.
"Marvelously done," He said, his voice a deep and eloquent tone - like refined wine of centuries of age - compared to the sarcastic pleasantry Freeza was known to sounding like. "You did well to avoid the most damage possible, even when caught off guard. You truly are a high caliber fighter, of that I can see."
Okay...Juniors didn't talk much, if at all. What the Hell is going on?!
"I'll tell you what's going on," He answered, confirming Yamcha's worst suspicions from before. With a smile across his pinkish wrinkled cheeks, dark burgundy lips revealing sinister teeth. "Yamcha, is it? I've been analyzing your fighting style since you've arrived. And I've been waiting for you since you had that little conversation with the others; I overheard everything."
Yamcha felt his blood become chilled at hearing this. He didn't seem to be lying, and was incredibly straightforward. If anything he almost seemed perfectly relaxed and confident, despite his earlier injury he received. Clenching his hands at his sides, his brows knitted and his mouth bore an angry sneer towards him.
"Okay, say I believe you. Why are you acting this way? I thought you're just an artificial creation of Cell," He asked, his body settling into a fighting stance as he prepared to think of a way to counter him while not letting him focus on his surface thoughts, seeing that he was actively scanning his mind. "What makes you so special?"
"Curious are you? I too was perplexed how I've come to retain my intelligence within a swirl of bloodlust and focused commands my progenitor gave me. However, I've come to see what truly separates me from the others," He explained, his eyes glimmering as his body became engrossed in a thick mantle of power, his ki releasing a bluish flame that released a howling gale wind that lapsed at the now defending Yamcha's forearms. "I am not driven by a warrior's heart, or for revenge. I exist only for me! My sense of self - what you martial artists call the shōki - held my mind, even in its current state. I am the one who carved out an entire empire for the sake of crafting an everlasting legacy; one that was torn asunder by you Earthlings and those damned Saiyans!"
Yamcha could feel something changing, the creature before him becoming clad in a thick light that eradicated the armor that was but a replication of his former status. Twisting around and contorting, a monstrous silhouette was seen as it changed its shape that he barely recognized. Then, it changed again as the power rose higher and higher, slimming down and becoming something more akin to the appearance all knew Freeza by as his true form.
Within a pyre of steam and light emerged King Cold, the clone emitting something of a passive blue light that thrummed like a heartbeat. Standing at the same 7ft of his first restricted form, he retained a predominantly white appearance with chitinous amethyst padding around his elbows, knees and head, lacking the same pinkish tissue partitions his previous appearance possessed. His smooth alabaster tail maneuvered behind himself, a rueful smile adorned as he stared ahead with hands on his hips, his muscular being towering over to the awe'd Yamcha.
"Thanks to this Cell, my power has increased far beyond my old life's limits. I have control where my son didn't even possess, and precision of many fighters. And with my intellect, it'll be used with the utmost efficiency and accuracy," He boasted, unfolding his hands from his sides as he took a single 'step' across the air.
"Observe," He whispered, disappearing from place.
Reappearing to Yamcha's back, Cold threw a punch down at his raven locked crown, watching the man reflexively evade with a forward dash. That is, until he felt an explosion of pain slam into his front, thrusting him through the outline of the downward striking outline of the clone, fizzling out like static to indicate it was all a distraction.
Holding onto his stomach, the scarred ex-bandit halted his backward momentum with an outward kiai. Gritting his teeth, he bent his knees down and powered himself across the sky in an arc of light. Swinging a clawed hand towards Cold, he'd watch his foe fire off a pair of eye beams from his red irises forcing him to retract. Feeling a sudden whip of Cold's tail lancing around, he felt it coil around his sore midsection and haul him towards a rising knee that he barely had time to palm-heel into before it made contact with his jaw.
A pair of eye beams cracked against the back of his hand, causing him to yell out in pain, allowing the next knee to crash into his jaw that shut his mouth forcefully and lurched him upward. A hail of giant fists crashed against his body, repeatedly bludgeoning against him, occasionally deflected or parried only to have eye beams blast him each time while the tail held him tight enough to keep himself from escaping.
"It's a funny thing!" Cold began to say, landing another punch against a scalded wrist that barely had time to deflect it. "I know it might be tampering by Cell's part, but I've never felt this alive before!"
Slinging him across the air, Cold grasped hold of Yamcha's face, blasting through the sound barrier with an elliptical parting of the atmosphere as he'd thrust his captive opponent into the partially ruined streets. Dragging him through it, parting the asphalt and concrete like tissue paper as his Earthling body was being ravaged assuredly through it, he'd lace a Capture Light Shell around his body before tossing his person upwards-
-and firing a kikōha that sent his exploding person upward in a scarlet upward arch into the high heavens.
"Did I burn you to a crisp after all?" The King inquired with a taunting grin, his eyes peering up at the blaze of flames that his detonated technique caused. "I guess I still have part of my son in me, getting carried away like this. I'll have to rein it in when I kill the next Earthling champion they have. Perhaps I'll go kill the three-eyed one next-"
His words didn't carry on as he felt this alien ping in his head. Though he possessed the abilities through the spliced replication of genes in his body, he still didn't have a full understanding of it. So when he put his mind to work, he realized that what he was sensing was ki. Yet, it was also something else.
Something otherworldly.
The fire parted with a thuum, a bright star of forming in the darkened firmament, revealing the distant but clearly responsible aura of Yamcha. Clicking his tongue, Cold evaporated from place, breaching the distance between him and his target. Appearing before his foe, he stopped short of an attack, seeing the quality of the light was indeed different.
But not only that, but it looked alive. A mantle of energy that took on the properties of a mammalian creature - from his memories, a wolf - whose snout protruded in a translucent curve in front of the partially bloodied face of Yamcha who stared stoically back at him, his hair flowing gently in the low air atmosphere. With his hands and feet having clawed paws, fur of light maneuvering almost too realistically over his person, the mantle of energy depicting a bipedal creature left Cold at a lost for words.
"You seem to be in a hurry, Cold, so I'll do you the courtesy," Yamcha calmly spoke, a smile broaching his visage as he swung his arms around in an almost hypnotic wave as he settled into his trademark stance. "I'll end you at full power, using my ultimate technique."
End it now? Impossible, his power far surpassed this level of contention. Unless...
"You have to be bluffing," Cold rationalized, grinning despite a bead of sweat crawling down his brow and cheek. "You've felt my power. The difference is too large."
"Sorry to disappoint you, but that was just my base state. Now that I've obtained Godly ki, I'm above where you are now."
He wasn't lying. Cold could read his mind and everything he said was the truth.
With a tooth-gritting gnash, the clone of Cold lashed out with a lightning swift punch; all as a ploy, making his frontal attack an Afterimage that as his real attack came from behind as he turned to kick his spine.
KRAK!
Which Yamcha's back foot instantly caught before it could meet halfway towards his back.
"What?!" Cold questioned aloud.
"You can't probe my mind quicker than my body reacts while in this state," Yamcha explained, turning to look over his shoulder, the wolf eye glaring with his own eye and gave him an intimidating visage for the King to stare at. "Face it. You've lost this fight."
"I've lost noth-NGH!"
A bolt of light struck his chest, half of a dozen times. Staggering across the air, Cold found himself vomiting blood and bile, his hands clutching at the scorch marks that resembled clawed punches. Shakily raising his head, he'd see Yamcha's hand raised up towards his face, the other one held back with a clawed gesture.
"Kami-Satsugi no Rōgafūfūken!"
And, in an instant, a lance of light reminiscent of a wolf's mouth collided into the King's clone and with a loud pow! that shook the heavens, obliterated his head off his torso. As the body began to fall, Yamcha leaped after it, the wolf becoming a blaze of light that leaped forth and with a damning howl, unleashed a horde of luminous blows that eradicated chunk after chunk of Cold's flesh.
And, taking the last chunk to the ground, Yamcha finished with an earth-quaking thuum that put out the fire of the city he was battling over with a fierce but controlled wind.
At the last moment, Yamcha couldn't help but let out a soft chuckle.
"I didn't even get to tell him the name of my new god transformation. Oh well," Yamcha sighed, standing upright and looking over to the horizon, getting his bearings. He could feel fights all around either reaching their apex or finishing in a similarly quick fashion. The only one that he could feel was just now being felt, even from this faraway distance, was Gohan's.
"Give Cell a good beating, kid," Yamcha intoned with a raised thumb, disengaging his wolf-aura as he set himself on his haunches to rest for a second. "I'm going to take a break, and catch up to the others in just a bit..."
Demod20 A/N: And here it is! Yamcha's fight against Cold. I thought to shake it up and show Cold retaining his original personality due to him having a bigger sense of self than all the others, without having bloodlust or revenge cloud his persona. Apart from that, I felt like this battle could use the ol' Gogeta treatment of 'Getting to the point' compared to the others I've written in this Arc's past. Hopefully I can make the bout with Tenshinhan vs Piccolo Clone just as interesting, if not more thrilling. Hope everyone had fun, and thanks again to LastationLover for letting me write this! ^^
LastationLover5000 A/N: Heya, everyone! So, as with before, my friend and co-author on other projects, Demod20, came to lend his talents to the Erased Chronicles. I've been having such a creative low with these fights that, in order to keep my creative juices focused entirely on Gohan and Cell, he's volunteered kindly to take over for the last two mini-fights. My contributions were limited to the intro, and Yamcha's own transformation! The name of which, btw, translates to "God Killing of Wolf Fang Wind Style Fist". But beyond that, Demod20 managed this chapter flawlessly, and I hope you all enjoy! We'll see you soon!
