Forging Strength

Cato didn't have to wait long before Lottus arrived -- at least, not as long as she had expected she would be waiting. Her scouter alerted her to the approach well before she was able to visually confirm that the oncoming power was indeed Lottus. He had gained in strength since their last meeting, but it was just as well -- so had she.

As he touched down, she couldn't help a small smirk from forming. She crossed her arms as she looked up at her soon-to-be-opponent, letting the scouter run reading after reading. When she was satisfied, she clicked the device off, and her smirk turned into a more genuine smile.

"You're more powerful than I thought," she said, casting a cursory glance out at the ruinous crags she had chosen. "At least for now. I hear this stuff has a way of sapping one's energy the more they breathe in. I suppose that's why the Tuffles decided to lower themselves to using it."

She turned her attention back to Lottus, and fell into a loose fighting stance. It mirrored the one she had adopted in their last fight outside of the bar, but it was a little more relaxed -- a little more natural. While the gap in power between then may have shifted somewhat, Cato was decidedly sober this time. 

"Our last fight ended prematurely, given neither of us were in particularly good order. But I told you we would fight again, and so this is it. The battlefield is, ah--" she swung her arm around in a sweeping gesture. "Ideal, if only because it isn't ideal. The training yard would have hardly tested either of us."

"So," she said, with a note of finality. "My challenge is this: we fight until one of us can't fight any longer. By the time the sun sets over this miserable little strip of land, we'll know which one of us is the stronger."

"Now, let's begin!"

---

Cato fell into a defensive stance as Lottus mounted his sudden attack. She could detect his attacks, but the movements themselves were just a little too fast for her. For every blow she managed to knock aside, another caught her flush, and she was left with no other option but to cease her guarded posture and attempt to cut down on the number of elbows, knees, and kicks raining towards her by launching attacks of her own. Just as a fist caught her clear in the throat, causing her to emit a choked gasp of air, she hurled her own elbow upwards, trying to strike Lottus just above the eye.

Whether or not she landed the blow, she leapt backwards trying to gain space. She thrust both hands forward and began shooting a volley of chaotic, yellow spheres of ki. She knew that they would do little to halt Lottus' advance, but this time, she wasn't actually trying to deal damage with them. She just wanted to bombard him enough to recover from his flurry, and perhaps catch her breath after that strike to her throat.

"M-Mortar Shell!" she choked out, a more chaotic sphere of yellowish energy forming in her palm. It took only a moment for it to burst to full power, and she swung forward to launch it straight at him. "Just try to take that..!"

She let herself drop from the air moments after the blast left her hand, rubbing at her neck. She knew it wouldn't deal much damage, even if it did land clean, but it was a start. She would have to pick her spots if she had any hope of winning.

"You hit harder than before... That much is obvious."

---

Cato hadn't been expecting much out of her blast, at least against an opponent like Lottus. It was most useful in putting pressure on a weaker opponent, and he was far from that. But while she had expected the attack to be little more than an inconvenience for the warrior, she certainly hadn't expected him to catch it with such ease -- let alone crush it in his hand like nothing.

She let out a sharp huff, a flash of anger appearing behind her eyes. It was a surprise, sure. But more than anything, it was a dent in her pride to be brushed aside so easily. As the empowered fist was thrust towards her stomach, Cato stopped dead in her tracks. She crossed her arms in a guard, stubbornly meeting the blow head on.

It struck her hard, but that momentarily flicker of anger, that hurt pride -- that was enough to sustain her. It was if Lottus had suddenly tried to sink his fist into a brick wall, unmoving and unfazed. As soon as the danger was gone, she broke her guard and curled her fist back, before launching into her own flurry of blows.

"Hit you hard, huh!?" she cried, over the exertion of her own rampage of punches, elbows, knees, and kicks. "Don't you worry! You'll get just what's coming to you in just -- a -- second..!"

She punctuated her statement by bringing her hands above her head, locking them like a hammer, and trying to bring down a heavy blow right atop Lottus' head. She knew the strike alone wouldn't deal lasting damage, but that wasn't her true aim. No, she was trying to knock him hard enough to force him right back down to the ground...

...where she knew a crater of destron was just waiting for him.

---

Cato's plan worked perfectly. Or, that's what she thought.

As Lottus sailed towards the ground, she propelled herself higher into the air, stretching her arms out to either side. She began to gather her energy into either palm, two spheres of yellow energy forming. But before she could bring her technique to fruition, something happened. Her scouter, which had been in sleep mode, blared to life with a warning. As smoke shot up from the crater she knew Lottus was hiding in, the scouter began screaming off warnings -- his power was rising, and it was changing, but the scouter didn't have the data to say how or why.

170,000.

That was the reading that finally spit back from the scouter, as blasts of crimson rained forth in every direction. In an instant, Cato realized what had happened. Lottus mentioned he could lose control in battle, and surely, the destron had triggered something in him that she would have been better off leaving dormant. The smart move would have been to flee, to leave him here until his power drained and then bring him back to Sadala for mending. But he could just as easily wander off and wipe out an entire settlement if she played it safe.

"I'm sorry, Lottus," she murmured, more to herself than to the mass of energy below. "This is the only way I can deal with that kind of strength."

She let the ki evaporate from her hands, and instead focused her power into something else: a shimmering white-blue orb of energy. She fired it upwards into the sky, silently cursing herself for being forced to take this path through the fight. A moment later, and the artificial moon hung low in the sky, pumping out blutz waves. Cato stared into it, and her eyes grew bloodshot, her body began to quake, and then --

-- It all happened at once. At the same moment her face snapped into place, shifting from soft and recognizable to pointed and monstrous, her limbs began to grow, fur began to sprout, and she let out a horrible howl. The last thing Cato saw was the dim glow of the false moon, as an oozaru took her place: as mighty as it was horrible and untamed. The great beast fell from the sky, slamming into the ground with earthshaking force, kicking up even more toxic destron into the air. 

The beast couldn't recognize Lottus, and didn't know to be afraid of his madness. All it knew was its own bloodthirst, and a target that had fallen into its midst.

It locked its eyes on its would-be target, and opened its jaw. A burst of energy appeared in the back of its throat, and it began to rain spheres of chaotic yellow energy down upon the landscape, lashing its head from side to side to send those blasts sprawling in every direction. It didn't care what it destroyed along the way, as long as at least one of those blasts vaporized the tiny thread shrouded in destron.

---

The oozaru let out a howl of rage as Lottus emerged from the cloud of smoke, the ineffectiveness of its own attack seeming further incense the beast. Its unsettling red eyes track Lottus as he moved through the sky, and as a vortex of ki rushed forward, it did nothing to defend itself -- only beat its chest as if in challenge, letting the ki envelope it until a thunderous explosion followed.

This time, it was the oozaru's turn to be concealed in a huge plume of smoke, but its movements gave it away. Its armour singed and broken in places, the great lumbering monster charged forward, the finer points of fighting lost on it as it knew only one instinct: to crush this insect that dared inflict real damage upon it. It didn't matter that its blood was beginning to leak out from prominent cuts, soaking its fur a darker shade. It could live with that.

The oozaru fell short of Lottus, before bending down and launching itself into the air with more agility than a creature that size had any right to display. As it hurdled through the air, it raised its giant hand back and aimed to bring it down in a heavy side-swipe, to quite literally swat Lottus out of the air as if he were a mere fly -- at least, that was the idea. Despite the great, evil power that Lottus had awakened, and despite the very real damage he had just inflicted, the oozaru couldn't help but see him as just another undersized foe.

Size, after all, meant strength.

---

Despite Lottus' small size, when his fists collided with the Oozaru's stomach, it was sent stumbling back right into the cliff behind it. It slammed hard into the rock, ripples of pain coursing through it as bits of sharp stone cut in through its expanded armour. The small blasts that followed did their number as well, pelting the beast over and over and practically pinning it in pace. But while those blasts left scorch marks across its body, clearly taking their toll, they also further enraged the creature -- it swung its elbow backwards and completely shattered the cliff behind it, making itself its own avenue for escape.

Several bounds later, it realized that the blasts had stopped. It turned its head back to look at Lottus, reddened eyes squinting to try to decipher his sudden passivity. But nothing registered. It had gone from the hunted to the hunter in a matter of moments, and its blood boiled every second it kept itself from the attack.

Suddenly, without warning, the Oozaru whirled around in place and opened up its maw, a torrent of yellow ki forming in its throat. It wasted barely more than a moment before releasing the charged energy in the form of a tidal wave of energy, meant to envelop and consume the puny Saiyan in his moment of weakness. But it had learned before that this Saiyan was hardy, and it just kept pumping out more and more energy, absolutely spraying the air with the ki beam.

While it might not be enough to put down Lottus, it would leave scorching streaks across ruined cliffs for kilometers to come -- and it showed no signs of stopping until it was forced to stop. So long as its blood burned with uncontained rage, it would lash out against everything it could.

---