Showdown - Friendship Endures
Theme - Overdrive
(This was playing in Sasha's mind the whole battle. She may or not be under the effect of some chemical)
Sasha jumped into the ring as Kaka walked away. Orochi felt her body fuming, steaming hot in a literal sense. Rui was tough, Kaka was unexpected, and Umi would be a bloodbath, but the last person she wanted to fight was Sasha.
There was a reason she always left Rui to fight against her all those years ago. Sasha was the natural enemy of people like her, those who relied on raw endurance. Three hits, and she would mess you up. Orochi gritted her teeth.
“Glad you opened your eyes, ‘Chi. Now is the time to put your spirit to the test,” Sasha clenched her fists. Orochi braced herself for impact. Like a comet with a dark tail, Sasha covered the distance between them in a few moments.
‘You three. Do exactly as I say! Go behind your back and don’t dare to take your snouts out! Do you understand me?!’ The Hydra girl screamed in her mind, her lips trembling with fear as the considerably smaller girl got closer.
Her heads did as she said, but all three had different things in mind. ‘If you three stay here, it will give Sasha more surface area to attack.’ She was tall, which already gave her friend the advantage to attack as she pleased, more marks to hit and exploit her small size
On her chest, Orochi saw a faint red glimmer. The fight started now, even if they still had to throw a punch at each other. She cannot avoid fate forever, so Orochi runs towards Sasha. This time, the one on a timer was herself.
Instead of advancing further, Sasha stepped back and kicked the ground at her. A few pebbles landed on Orochi’s chest, and warmth grew there. Then another spot appeared on her shoulder; a stray pebble fell there, and this time it tingled a little.
Orochi’s eyes widened, and Sasha went to recover time lost, pouncing on her like a flash of fury. “Time to put you to the test, chief.” Orochi stepped back. She contorted herself backward to get out of range of Sasha’s fists and kicks.
However, she tried to land a punch at the girl, taking advantage of her longer limbs to try and hit Sasha. Sasha, however, didn’t bother to try and avoid the hit. Instead, she moved to the side and took hold of Orochi’s arm.
Both of her hands firmly grasped Atsushi’s wrist. She jumped, using Orochi’s wrist as leverage to keep her afloat, and aligned her legs with Orochi’s chest. Sasha kicked Orochi’s chest with both of her legs.
A loud impact echoed through Atsushi’s flesh, her purple eyes widening like plates. However, Orochi didn’t let it stop her from attacking. Her other hand moved to punch Sasha at the knee joints.
Orochi pulled back her arm which Sasha was holding onto close to herself, to ensure her punch reached her small friend. “Good call, chief, but I have grown.” In a split second, Sasha let go of her arm, she fell straight to her feet.
She spun on her heels and delivered another kick to Orochi’s chest. In a second, Orochi was standing normally; in the other, her body was hit from everywhere. Sasha waited until the last second to attack.
Multiple shockwaves attacked her from the inside out, her muscles rippling like waves in the ocean from the impact, her body assaulted by an overwhelming force. Orochi’s heart raced. Sasha smirked as she got closer, almost touching Orochi.
As for Orochi, she tried to process what happened. ‘This wasn’t something she could do.’ All Sasha had were three hits and three marks. Then how did she hit her so hard? How could all the other marks on her body be it as well?
“You are not the only one who grew and trained, ‘Chi. I worked my ass off to get stronger. I went Overdrive.” Sasha landed a punch on Orochi’s chest. Another explosion, a shockwave, rocked her body; blood rushed to her mouth, and everything felt sore all of a sudden.
Golden chain-like tattoos linked every mark on her body. “See, Orochi!” With an exclamation, Sasha continued to attack relentlessly. Surprisingly, both Orochi and the hydra heads felt the heavy hits, way worse than the edge of a blade or the end of a sledgehammer’s head.
Her tall size, and weight, proved to be her killers. With attacks that should send a normal person flying, Orochi stood still, enduring those hits. So fast and powerful she couldn’t react. Each attack was an explosion inside her flesh. Sasha didn’t need to think about missing the mark or her timer.
However, Orochi’s body tried to understand this new type of damage unlike shrapnel or fire, it was like a sound wave rippling inside her, and the damage spread through every fiber of her. Her insides felt weak and like jello; her knees trembled and her eyes shook, her pupils shrinking to their absolute minimum.
Orochi expected her regeneration to kick in, as it did before. To raise her arms and land a good punch on Sasha, yet… it was oddly silent; a fact she and her tails noticed at the same time.
“WHAT!” With a punch directly delivered to her chin, Orochi felt her skull vibrate and echo with surprising hollowness. For the first time since Feral’s fight, she felt like passing out because of an attack. Her brain waved to the powerful attack.
For a moment, Orochi hallucinated voices inside her skull.
“WAIT, I’M NOT HEALING?”
“THIS HURTS?”
“BITCH!”
“It feels weird to not heal, right?” Sasha called Orochi from her stupor. The Atsushi’s vision blurred and fogged because of the hit directly delivered to her skull. Sasha's attacks were fast, and the punches that should’ve been weaker were far stronger than she expected. There was little time for Sasha to breathe and pull her punches.
Yet they tore across Orochi, harder than Kaylee’s hits. She knew Sasha could pull nasty attacks, but this was beyond her wildest expectations. “Even for a regenerator, they cannot heal what they never felt before.”
Sasha punched her face again. Another wave of dizziness and pain washed over Orochi—her ears started to ring like an ancient phone receiving a call. “You can regenerate damage, but I’m not damaging your flesh directly, like how a slap spreads across tender flesh.”
Orochi felt her dizziness become worse, she was panting and the fight barely started. Sasha didn’t need a mean punch to do damage anymore; she could spread vibrations too fast to damage it— “I have time until your fearsome regeneration gets to me!”
Sasha attacked relentlessly, without pause for breathing; even the numbing steaming cloud coming out of Orochi wasn’t enough to stop her—so many attacks that Orochi felt her flesh unraveling from the inside under the pressure of the onslaught.
Every time she raised her arms for an attack, Sasha aimed at her shoulders; if she tried a sweep kick, she answered with a low kick of her own. She kept Orochi at bay. Orchi clung to her balance. The only support that kept her from falling was her overwhelming stubbornness and resilience—
That could amount to nothing given how Sasha attacked her, bypassing her resilience. Blood flowed out of her mouth, affected by the vibrations across her body.
How to deal with shockwaves? How to endure the onslaught long enough for her regeneration to deal with the damage and wounds dealt to her?
The Atsushi felt her legs bucking, her vision dimming by the second. “You better find a way to take me, ‘Chi. If you can’t turn dust to gold, what are you going to do?” As Orochi struggled, Sasha was having the time of her life.
She needed to control her breathing and her actions with expertise to not lose the one-second gap between her marks. Two seconds were a small gap where one minor mistake could make it disappear, more so when she wanted to use everything of them.
Fatal Ratio Death Mark: Afflicts the body of an enemy with marks. If those marks are hit, the enemy will suffer more damage from them. The mark has five stages where the time the mark lasts gradually diminishes the further it is in the cycle. It can do more damage and weaken the enemy the further it is in its stages. If a mark is hit by the time it lasts, all other marks disappear and the enemy becomes immune to the quirk for a whole minute.
Orochi had the determination to face her fears, but did she possess the resilience and strength to push through a losing battle? Sasha was no battle maniac, but even she wanted to see the answer. The answer Orochi would reach to defeat her.
She had the utmost faith in Orochi; that's why she went all out on her. She could take the brunt, rise above the gutter and abyss. Sasha's lips stretched in a wide smile, her attention solely devoted to Orochi, to hit her friend as many times as necessary for her to find her answer to this problem.
“Come, Orochi! Show us your spirit! How you have grown! Show everyone, my friend! Who you truly are! Your spunk!” Sasha wasn’t sure if her friend was still hearing her after so many hits.
Orochi stood tall, only enduring the hits, her eyes hazed. Like before, Orochi refused to back down. Her body was numbed because of the damage. Her body quivered like jello with each hit landed by Sasha.
She was a punching bag without the means to counterattack, but she knew something in her heart: there had to be an answer to this problem. Because of the relentless attacks, Orochi felt the delay in Sasha's attacks; she never attacked at the time the mark appeared.
She waited a full second before landing a hit. Blood sprouted out of her mouth, her regeneration confused about what it should do in this situation. Her body didn’t know what to do with the vibrations, the waves tearing her from inside.
It was painful, her whole body was hurting and wounded, but Orochi refused to fall. Her heels dug into the ground for dear life, eyes on the distant prize, on the question she had to ponder. She endured a stab to the chest, she can endure this too.
Sasha hit her shoulder, and Orochi stopped feeling her arm. ‘That is it. I just have to hit her head with a mark.’ Orochi smiled tiredly; her body felt limp and weak. She had one chance to make it right. In a few more hits, even she would be done for—
Sasha hit her chest, and Orochi felt a pang, and then a wave of numbness. ‘It is now or never.’ Before Sasha could attack again on the one-second mark, Orochi hit her shoulder against her head.
Right in the middle of Sasha’s face, an explosion happened, knocking her friend out of range. Two seconds passed, the marks disappeared, and Sasha was out of range. Her face was bloodied and her nose broken, but her smile was unwavering as if she got more excited after the hit.
Orochi placed her hands on her knees, her breath ragged and tired, sweat pouring from her face and body, as blood fell from her mouth. Sasha managed to strain her body and regenerate to the limit. “You… are a beast.” Orochi cleaned the blood out of her mouth. Her right arm felt limp and numb; she only had her left arm now.
Her Hydra heads quickly noticed the change in the wind; they came out from behind Orochi, equally as beaten as their leader. Orochi smiled tiredly. She felt a little vindicative after the punching bag treatment she received.
“Guys, don’t bite her, just headbutt. I want this to be a clean win.” Her weakness shook and trembled, barely able to keep her up. One of her arms was out of commission, and her Hydra heads were beaten as well, but her heart throbbed with emotion.
Excitement, the battle lust to see this fight thoroughly. It felt therapeutic to land a hit on Sasha after the rough bullying she endured.
It would be hard to snatch a clean win out of defeat’s mouth in her condition, but what in this life of hers was easy? “What will you do now, Sasha? You cannot hurt me with your punches anymore.” Her regeneration was still dormant.
But Orochi knew it was a question of time until her body managed to study this new ailment and regenerate the damage done to it. Yet, Orochi smiled tiredly. Her whole body felt numb, beaten up, and thrashed.
In a way, she hadn’t felt this way since she was a child, like when she brawled and fought against Akane and Seiryu. Her body had nasty purple marks and bruises, like the old good times. “This, I punched your jaw a few times. I just need a nice punch, and you are down, no matter your endurance.”
Orochi’s head throbbed in pain. Sasha did a nice number on her chin. Good thing she wasn’t normal, even by mutant’s standards.
Likewise, Sasha wasn’t better than her. She cleaned the blood out of her nose. They both knew if Sasha waited for a minute, her victory would be assured even if Orochi started to heal, and Orochi knew if she bought time, victory would be hers because of the regeneration.
Yet… ‘I’m no coward. I will defeat you without my quirk.’ They were too stubborn to back down. It wasn’t a match about skills and quirks anymore, but who could bring the other down first. A test of strength.
They rushed at each other, fists raised ready to duke it out. Orochi had the size advantage, but Sasha could do better tricks than Orochi in a fight. They would’ve been evenly matched if it weren’t for Orochi’s hydra heads.
Her body was still hot because of the sword wounds; the Orochi of a few months ago would lie on the ground in defeat, but her current self couldn’t accept defeat. Her three hydra heads attacked simultaneously; they flanked Sasha to not allow her a chance to dodge.
Yet, they were still too young and green to catch Orochi’s ex-sparring partner. Sasha slid past one, moved to the left to avoid one, and headbutted the last on its jaw, effectively neutering the little fellows’ assault.
Sasha quickly spun on one leg and jumped, a spinning flying to Orochi’s chin. Orochi knew better than most that while the head had weak spots like the chin or nose, it had some of the hardest surfaces on it as well.
There was no one more stubborn and obstinate than her (No one with a sturdier forehead). Orochi met the kick head-on, lowering her head for a headbutt. Feet and forehead clashed; their momentum nullified.
Orochi felt the worst dizziness of her life, on the verge of falling. Her eyes lost focus, but not her head. Her left one headbutted Sasha on the back, the middle one on her tummy. The right head, however, headbutted her in the head, tossing Sasha to the other side of the ring.
Sasha laughed, a giddy laughter. “Alrightmylosschief. Goodluckyouwillneedit.” Instead of falling and admitting defeat in a normal way, Sasha acted as if she had been hit with a soft reset button and jumped out of the arena.
Orochi smiled; her body heating up. Her numbness started to vanish as her blood boiled over. ‘With you out of the way, it means this was my warm-up for her.’ Sasha was extravagant despite her lazy or rushed ways.
It was shown in how she quickly withdrew from battle when outmatched. She knew she was defeated and made way for the next fighter with style and dignity. In a way, it felt like training, to prepare her for this fight.
Orochi’s body heats up, her muscles expanding to recover from the damage done by the vibrations and shockwaves inside of her, sturdier and stronger, her numbness vanishing to give place to euphoria. From the other side of the arena, a star of red lightning falls on the arena.
Supercharging and saturating the air with lightning and energy, her friend and last fighter, Umi. Red eyes shone with unmatched bloodlust, ready to cut through the air.
Like a storm before her eyes, thunder roared and exploded, leveling what the arena wasn’t cleaned by KaKa. ‘You almost look like my mother.’ Orochi raised her fists, the control of her right arm once again on her domain.
Orochi widens her smile, borderline a bestial grin, to meet Umi’s bloodlust on equal standing.