Birdcage Brawl [AT-Split]

Silence was something Nero knew about just as much as sound, both in a physical way and in a metaphorical way. Pankaa, a little fella who had just as much of an appreciation for sound as Nero and this being the current state of his mind? It said something. Still, Nero connected to him, and whatever wanted to block Nero from Pankaa would probably want to be sure that the Avali was unable to make even a peep; most of its effort would theoretically be dedicated to that, and if that was the case, that was something Nero could exploit.

If there was one thing about silence that many overlooked... It was that it too can be loud— especially at its quietest. For Nero, this seemed more like a lead, so he would keep it in mind as he continued on. As the physical fight began; there was a moment of Pankaa reaching out, Nero felt and heard it clearly— it was coming from Pankaa, the real one, exactly who he had held onto. This meant he was going in the right direction, so he would continue on.

On the outside, Nero smirked; his fighter’s instinct noting something pretty important; of course this impostor piloting his brother’s body had no idea what to do with the strength that it had nor did it seem to have much of a clue on how to handle Nero’s style of fighting. Backflipping into the air and back onto the ground, Nero hooted and hollered back while drumming his chest as energy collected in his hands before he fired a barrage of basic ki blasts in response to the approaching beast as he once again returned the favour by charging back in himself, meeting the beast in the middle trying to stop it’s progress by matching punches and kicks where he could.

In Pankaa’s mindscape, Nero scoffed. Finally, it was aware of his presence, obviously not wanting him there. It wasn’t afraid of him either, as far as he knew; but it didn’t need to be. Not yet. Nero kept going, he represented all that the sad and pathetic corruption couldn’t hope to understand, showing his conviction in all of it’s pure intent to save his brother.

When the possessed Pankaa started to hiss and growl, Nero began whooping and stomping as if to continue upping the ante. It was, in a way, a primal show of determination, but was there more to it? Nero was cunning and he knew sound was a big thing in his family— particularly between himself and Pankaa. Now, he would expect certain things from Pankaa, sure, they trained together often enough to learn from each other, but he was no fool either. What he was facing only had Pankaa’s body and relative knowledge of his skills; but it was ultimately not Pankaa, so it made no sense to expect it would play fair.

Randomly conjuring childhood items en masse for instance; unclear if it was intentional or unable to stop doing this. It was something to take note of, the marbles especially... Those could be useful. For now, Nero focused on the empowered beast, trying to grab the top and bottom of it’s jaws with both hands after it started snapping at him! If successful, he would begin to swing the beast around with a spin move and slam it onto the ground.

The battle in the mindscape continued in parallel further. So that’s what the invader felt, that this was it’s space. Within this mindscape, Nero ‘powered up’ as he mentally unleashed his aura. A white hot blaze of pure hearted determination that fought back against the darkness. Those two Shinjin had crossed the wrong guy today.

It wasn’t happy that he was here? Too bad. It was gonna try and make him leave? Fat chance. Nero clearly conveyed his own feelings and they were unwavering. There would absolutely be consequences though... Consequences for whoever and whatever even thought they could mess with him, his planet, or his family and get away with it. 

Nero stood firm, the noise not deterring him in the least. With a widening mischievous grin he took a deep breath and responded with a powerful roar of his own, a rumbling roar that mixed together the battle cry of a determined Oozaru and the howl of a somewhat ghost-like wolf. Even though Nero was noticeably smaller, his lung capacity spoke for itself as his own roar went on slightly longer with energy crackling around him.

The toys exploding and unleashing random loud noises was interesting, Nero’s auditory senses were highly advanced to the point where being deafened was a non-issue and he could filter out the sounds if he focused enough, but it seemed like he wouldn’t need to, the sounds backfired on the creature before him when he went to grab it’s jaws. The beast recoiled in pain, though Nero knew the pain was not only the beast’s but Pankaa’s as well, for he was too young to access the enhanced skills of Avali hearing just yet, or otherwise practice magic that got the same effects.

While it was an unfortunate moment, it gave the warrior a moment of... Peace, weirdly enough. He would need to capitalize on it now if he was ever going to. This showdown to defend Namek took far longer than Nero would have wanted, so there was a certain someone that he wanted to contact quickly. He reached out to ‘Gladiator’ ’Hey, sorry I’ve not shown up to our meeting spot, we’ve got a situation.’ He quickly messaged, sending information on the events up until this moment to her. Showing her images of Phakk and Ward in particular since they were the attackers, Nero’s tone became deathly serious. ’If you see those two Shinjin, they are not to be trusted. Tell Kabe for me, not even he deserves their bullshit.’

The momentary reprieve was actually long enough that Nero could reach out to some others; so he chose to reach out to the other members of his family, as well as Tabor, Tambo and Ollo. ’It’s Nero, I don’t have much time, so I’ll get to the point, there is a new threat on Namek.’ Once again, he transmitted information on events up until this point. Like with Gladiator, Nero also showed the others images of Phakk and Ward, once again deathly serious. ’These two are the threat. They are not to be trusted. Warn others of them.’

With that done, Nero could do what he needed to do with far less hanging over him, now the only way was forward. He raised his hands up above his head, collecting energy into a quickly growing ball before shooting it forward, aiming to blast the beast over with an energy beam.

In Pankaa’s mindscape, Nero took note of the chaos ringing throughout, but to him the more important part was Pankaa was actually still fighting back somewhat. It wasn’t direct, it was for his own comfort mostly, but it absolutely counted. Nero’s projected self expanded his mental aura to provide the true Pankaa more light, and began to reach out with accompanying good and positive memories to try and help Pankaa clearly find one.

If this invading parasite was going to underestimate the brothers, then so be it. Pankaa calling for help would always be heard by Nero and he would come running, always and forever. He wouldn’t let anything get in his way.

Grateful that he had a moment of reprieve long enough to send out the telepathic messages that he needed to, Nero was now going to forge a path forward to the best of his ability. If a fight was necessary, he wasn’t about to shy away from it. To not tackle this situation with all that he had would be massively disrespectful towards Pankaa for one, backing down would be going against what he had the most pride in; his family. Nero’s eyes flashed and the white glow from them became even hotter than before. He knew that Pankaa had a technique in his arsenal that could reflect things, so this wasn’t much of a surprise, just pretty gross.

In under a second, little sparkles of moonlight gathered around Nero as he reared a hand back, the glittering energy swirled towards his hand and emitted a soft chiming noise. As the globule of grimy ki flew towards him, Nero bent his knees causing the ground to crack slightly under the pressure of his energy before he charged forward in a straight line, throwing his empowered fist forward, erasing the ki ball that had been fired at him from existence! However, he did not stop there! No he kept going until he suddenly appeared right in front of the beast, wreathed in flickering sparkles of ki where he attempted to uppercut the creature!

In the depths of Pankaa’s mind, Nero finally found what he was looking for. Pankaa had managed to secure himself in a safe sphere powered by positive memories and feelings; good! Those feelings were incredibly potent and would keep him safe where he was. Nero was going to keep hold of that, when he got a better chance he would make a note to try and bolster this safety net for Pankaa by offering his own positive memories to him, but something else had to be taken care of first.

The second thing Nero found was the invader in a sense, a representation of what had taken hold more or less. “Pfft, nah, I’ll stay a while, thanks.” Nero smirked, this was rich. If Pankaa actually didn’t want Nero here, he wouldn’t have gotten this far. This slimy knock off really had no idea who or what they were dealing with. “I’ve heard enough bullshit from Phakk and Ward already, you’re wasting your time.” Nero’s aura fired up even more, as he progressively loaded himself with more and more positive mental energy. “And your time is severely limited.” Of course, Nero’s goal here was to get close enough to the sphere that contained Pankaa to enact his real plan here, but if he baited this imposter into trying to fight him here, well, Nero was one hell of a trickster.

While he didn’t quite see what was going on, Nero felt a sort of impact when his strike connected. He felt something had changed for Pankaa somewhat. So his physical persistence could make something happen as well, that was a good sign, something that Nero could use in this fight and afterward to get Pankaa cured of this invasive sludge.

Speaking of, said sludge was quite the talker it seemed. “Yeah, so? He wants to be trained like I have been, and he’s no wimp either.” Obviously it had little to no clue what it was going on about, and its attempts at demoralizing banter were ineffective. As for who was ‘here first’, Nero rolled his eyes. Nero knew the truth of the matter, if anyone was first it was himself since he existed in Pankaa’s memory, not that this imposter would get it. “Hilarious.”

The fact that he was essentially working with a petulant child had some humour to it though; Nero had interacted with his fair share of ill mannered youngsters, so if this was how this imposter wanted to play their cards, they really should have observed the deck they got them from first. “You heard me.” Nero spoke firmly despite the push back starting to work, he meant what he had said. This corruption would be dealt with by him personally one way or another. Maybe not in the battle to come, but soon enough. Nero would see to it personally. “Your time here is limited.”

As for the oddly out of place memories, they were something Nero had encountered a few times when either training Pankaa’s control of his transformation or when he had a tantrum moment that caused it to emerge suddenly. Nero’s presence kept them from scaring Pankaa too much, but with this resistance from the other out of place invader, it would be more difficult to calm Pankaa. A more classic and direct approach may have to do for now.

That said, Pankaa had shown greater bravery as of late in general, more confidence. He was growing up and Nero noticed. “Those? I don’t fully know.” Nero reached behind his back and twirled his staff, or at least a mental representation of it. “What I do know, however, without a doubt is...” Nero reared his arm back fiercely, pouring what mental energy he had left to use into the staff, essentially condensing everything he had in this moment before he threw it as hard as he could towards the orb that Pankaa was in. All he needed was for just some of his influence to reach Pankaa directly, and for Pankaa to hear one thing clearly; “It’s that Pankaa can overcome all of this and more! Go for it Pankaa! I’ll bring you to the end of the winding path buddy, you can count on me!” Nero grinned, he could be thrown out with even the slightest extra push now that he had wasted every ounce of his telepathic energy.

On the outside in the physical world, Nero reached around to his back, bringing out his staff. He entered a fighting stance, egging the beast on by gesturing that it tried its luck again. “What’s the matter, is that all you can do? Come on.”

Good grief, this thing really was acting like a spoiled child. It really really wanted to desperately feel like it was right and to get one over on Nero. Nero thought this act was largely pointless, he wasn’t going to let it get to him, especially now. He already knew Pankaa wanted to become incredible, to be an amazing and strong individual of his own making, able to protect his family, not always be the one protected. Nero already knew all of that, he wanted the same for Pankaa as well as himself. “Okay? I already knew that. He’ll get there, I’ll make sure of it.” That was part of why they trained together after all.

Still, this interloper was acting like a little brat, and Nero wasn’t going to entertain it for very long, the novelty was wearing thin now. Pankaa normally would be able to belt out more convincing snark and one liners than this, so Nero was hardly impressed. “Pankaa does better ones, try harder next time.”

Even when the little aquatic looking imp caught the staff that Nero threw, Nero focused even harder, he cracked a smirk when his persistence was too much to handle and the staff kept going, hitting the orb that housed the true Pankaa. All Nero needed was for Pankaa to hear him, and now he would have. This made the imposter, predictably, mad enough to throw a tantrum. Nero could only give a mischievous grin, proud of what he had managed. With nothing else but a two finger salute, Nero was effortlessly ejected from Pankaa’s mind... For now, at least.

On the outside, Nero also grinned in the exact same way. Now that he knew he could make progress here, he could go all out! He succeeded in goading the monster— rather effectively apparently since they had gathered up enough energy to fire volley after volley of the same attack! Impressive, but Nero had something up his sleeve for this! He raised his hands as if to perform the ever popular Masenko, however, just as the spiny barrage was upon him he crushed the ball of energy. This was followed by an explosive clash of Ki, sending dust and energy particles all over the place.

There was silence as the dust and energy particles dissipated... Soon to reveal that Nero would be standing firmly exactly where he was, again! What the hell was he made of?! He tilted his head to the side and his left hand was raised. It had a handful of those barbs created by the onslaught launched at him. His left glove was torn up and he had a few light scratches and nicks on that hand now, though clearly the assault didn’t have the desired effect. “Really? Pfft.” Nero snorted, tossing the barbs aside. “You’ll needa do better than that.”

Nero gestured once again for the creature to come and get him, now that he wasn’t in Pankaa’s head causing ‘chaos’ in the form of natural order, it still had to handle him physically being around— now unlike the mindscape, there was only one way to get rid of him in the physical realm; and that was to fight him and beat him.

The creature seemingly was seething, annoyed and possibly unable to understand what Nero had ended up doing. Good. As far as Nero was concerned, if it didn’t understand what he did, it would be harder to get more of a foothold.

Now, since the little scamp was so bothered by being outwitted, it looked to be employing the classic spoiled child tactic of running away to break things because it didn’t get its way. Unfortunately for this beast, Nero wasn’t going to just let it run free or get away from him so he dashed towards it with impressive speed to block it off from attacking the walls any further with a few jabs and kicks to block its strikes. “Hey now, you can’t beat me by running away.” Nero smirked, rearing back a hand as he leaped forward at the creature. “You really do pale in comparison to the real deal. Pankaa might be shy sometimes but at least he’s not a coward!” Nero howled, erupting into a flurry of punches and kicks to try and push the beast back once again.