As Saiyan Laws Decree [CH]

It didn't take terribly long for Amara to arrive, thankfully. She responded awfully formally over the same comms line Taori had used, offering some slight, further elaboration on the special set of circumstances this challenge would be taking place under. Once that was done with, though, she returned to her usual, far more casual demeanor as she arrived to walk past Taori and sit on the throne. "It's very... Blue," he commented, a bit taken aback by how much flashier the look was over Amara's usual dress. Even her hair was blue, somehow. She hadn't dyed it, right?

"I think it looks lovely!" Alpinia chimed in. "Though it does remind me a bit of that Tuffle armor Cheri was wearing - only hers was pink instead of blue." It was nice to see Amara embracing her Tuffle roots, Alpinia supposed, although she had to wonder if that'd be a bit of an unpopular choice of attire among the more closed minded of the Saiyans. Regardless, she felt Amara pulled it off well.

"I'm sure I'll still be counting on your help from time to time too," Taori replied to Amara as she stated Plant would still be her home and still be under her defense. They may not have been Super Saiyans, but they could still put up a fight if their planet came under fire, either from an outside force or one emerging from within as Lottus had.

Before too long, guards and civilians alike began to filter into the Palace to watch the coming battle, and luckily, none seemed particularly inclined to interfere with this one. When Taori had initially challenged Rosemary, he had hired Ward and Blizzard to guard the battle and ensure it would remain a one on one duel between him and the former Queen, but it seemed no guards would be necessary this time, thankfully. 

"You'd best get safely out of the way, Alps," Taori warned Alpinia, and she nodded in reply. Alpinia then stood up, turned around to give Amara a wink and a smile, then jogged up to Taori to give him a small smooch on the cheek before joining the crowd of onlookers on the side, several of whom made way for her to have a front row view of the action.

Taori's cheeks flushed slightly red as he rubbed the spot on his cheek he'd been pecked, though he quickly regained his composure as he stepped back and aside a few meters, giving Amara a clear spot to take her own battle stance opposite him in the throne room. "Alright then, Queen Amara!" Taori called out to her as he ducked down into his battle stance, his posture and foot position shifting into a position that would leave him primed to either attack first or respond to something thrown his way. "Give me your best."

"Fair enough," Taori replied with a smirk as Amara asked what happened to challengers taking the initiative in their battles. Still, she was quick to attack, waving her beam blade at Taori and sending a wave of energy along with it. It seemed she had also erected some sort of protective barrier around their battlefield as well, likely to keep any of their stray blasts from frying some unfortunate onlooker who might have been standing in the wrong spot. Though Taori had to imagine the barriers wouldn't hold up much against repeated, direct attacks against them, they'd likely serve their purpose of catching stray blasts just fine.

As for the energy wave that had been tossed Taori's way, he was ready to react in time, and deftly ducked beneath it while sliding himself forward. Amara had quite a few fancy, ranged gadgets that took advantage of her power, and Taori had always been more of a brawler, so getting in close would favor him, he had to imagine.

So the Saiyan swooped in on Amara quite quickly. She may have been his cousin-in-law, but she was also his opponent, and she had told him not to hold back on their battle. Short of killing her, of course. Taori gathered ki energy into his palms, and while he flung one small orb of ki towards Amara as he closed in, it exploded shortly before impacting her, acting more as a flash grenade of sorts as Taori shot the other one behind himself. The force of the explosion sent him spiraling towards her, and with his foot outstretched, he leaned into the spiral and attempted to kick Amara straight across her face!

Amara was quick to respond to Taori's attack, though he supposed he should've expected much. While most Saiyans lacked the ability to properly sense energy and instead tended to rely on their scouters to gauge battle power - like Taori - Amara was among those who had figured out how to naturally detect it, and so smokescreens wouldn't exactly lend much of an edge to her opponents. Still, it was better than charging in blindly and swinging straight at her, wasn't it?

Taori's kick whiffed through the air, striking nothing but the smoke his ki bomb had created, although he'd sort of been expecting as much based on how speedy he recalled Amara being in their previous bout. She was quick to respond as well, and while Taori briefly thought about blocking, he felt his energy was best spent on offense to keep Amara moving. He did try to duck out of the way a bit, though Amara's foot struck him on his head and sent him flying back down the steps.

Still, he caught himself before landing too hard, and instead landed on his feet, sliding backwards towards the crowd that had gathered whilst also gathering ki energy into his palms. Though slightly more rattled from that blow than he'd been expecting to be, Taori was far from too injured to keep up the pace as he clamped his hands together and formed a ball of ki between them, which was then shot out from his hands like a cannon towards his opponent. Though low in power, it ought to keep her on her toes.

Ever quick on her feet, Amara quickly responded to Taori's strike, again becoming a blur and essentially phasing out of existence for a moment as his energy ball sailed harmlessly into the throne she had just been standing in front of, blowing the chair up entirely and eliciting a gasp of surprise from the audience. "Erm, we'll have to fix that later," Taori mumbled, mildly embarrassed at having just destroyed what was essentially a piece of Saiyan history. Though, it had probably been blown up before, if he knew anything about Saiyans. 

Amara was on Taori too quickly for him to care much about a stone chair for the moment, anyway, having descended the steps and come onto him with the same motion she'd used to evade his blast. He raised a hand to block her attempted strike to his chin, although she did end up slamming the back of his hand into his own chin regardless, so he wasn't sure that had actually done much to protect himself. 

Amar then began some sort of maneuver that Taori didn't think he'd be overly fond of being on the receiving end of, so he opted to not. As his opponent brought her legs up to his head, he brought his arms up between her thighs and forced them out while stepping back, simultaneously falling backwards into a somersault and bringing his foot up to kick at Amara, canceling out her attack and slightly weakening his own, though his was still powerful enough to force through it.

Taori had finally managed to get a hit in on Amara, with his counter kick breaking through her guard and striking her, though admittedly not with a tremendous amount of force. Still, a hit was a hit, and as he broke away from her, a grind cracked across his face. As a Saiyan, he just couldn't help himself from loving a good fight, especially one with an audience like this one. He supposed it was also nice to know he wasn't the first to break apart the throne, nor was he even the only one to have done it in the last year.

"Ah, well, that's good, I suppose?" he replied. A quick glance at the throne revealed it had broken apart into relatively large chunks instead of having been shattered into millions of tiny pieces, so it probably wouldn't be too difficult to fix back up once this matter had been settled.

Amara was, again, quick to respond, this time with a swift and low-powered blast towards Taori's chest, which he swatted away into the barrier than surrounded them, although it burned his hand a bit more than he'd been expecting, forcing him to shake it off for a moment. Amara seemed to be taking the opportunity to briefly rest from higher powered attacks, and Taori supposed he would too, though he wouldn't leave the half Tuffle completely idle in the meantime.

Taori leapt up into the air above Amara, reeling his fist back before thrusting it forward with enough force that a strong gust of wind would blow down upon Amara, which was then followed up by Taori spiraling forward and down with a kick that would land atop her head if she didn't move out of the way - though if their previous clashes were anything to go by, she was likely too quick for this one to land very hard, if at all.

Taori's attack actually came much closer to properly striking Amara than he'd been expecting it to - apparently, that gust of wind he'd sent her way had caught her off guard just enough to slow her down. It was probably going to be a one trick pony sort of thing, though, as attacks that utilized the element of surprise tended to be. Her counterattack to this would prove to be an interesting one as well.

The Saiyan wasn't exactly expecting the binds around his legs to appear, and so he was caught off guard and yanked off his feet by Amara's attack, briefly exclaiming a "Whoa!" as he fell towards the ground. He was quick to recover, though, and caught himself midair with a little sprinkle of ki powered flight, just barely managing to roll himself through the air in time for Amara's own aerial dropdown kick to smash into the floor instead of into his body. 

While the binds were unexpected, they weren't particularly powerful, and Taori broke free of them quickly simply by forcing his legs apart. He then shoved his palms against the floor to push him back up onto his feet, and exhaled briefly. "You're still just as crafty a fighter as I remember you being!" he commented towards Amara, taking another brief moment to rest and recharge his ki. "I might have to ask you to whip me up a gadget or two to take advantage of at some point."