The Juggernaut tried, he really did.

He advanced as much as he could, setting his strength directly against Champion, and doing his best to make sure he wasn’t thrown around. He used the tactic of power-advancing anytime he grappled and Champion turned it on him. Despite himself, Champion was still completely unable to stop him, forcing the Elder to let go of Juggy, reposition himself quickly, or get trampled. If he kept holding on, he was just dragged along like a child, regardless of the leverage he had.

From behind it was really hard to do anything to Juggy, after all.

It was the best display we’d seen from Cain, showing he’d definitely been learning something from all the superhuman combat.

Champion seemed to have no problem dealing with Juggy’s force field. I watched blue hands strike like knives cutting onions, shattering the bolts holding down Juggy’s helm, and it was torn off with such speed and smoothness Juggy didn’t even realize it was gone for a few seconds.

Then the real pummeling began, and that awesome handspeed put Juggy’s own to the test and overwhelmed it, slamming his hands out of the way and crashing into his unprotected head with thunderous impacts.

Juggy grabbed the incoming hands with remarkable luck, which turned into a trap as he was suplexed straight (forward) onto his head so fast it was hard to believe, then spun around and slammed to the ground. Totally disoriented by the bigger man, a dozen blows came down and pounded a small crater into the proto-adamantium flooring with his head, rendering Juggy unconscious, force field and all.

Three and a half minutes. Probably indicating some approval for his improvements over the past few days, at the very least.

I sighed. It was my turn.

--------

He radiated confidence as he looked down at me, taking in and analyzing everything with whatever millennia or eons of experience. Nothing I had displayed was a secret to him, of course.

“I would not mind your magnetic tricks were this not a public bout,” he informed me loftily after I bowed politely to the Elder, acknowledging my courtesy. “Unfortunately, it would lead to troubles for my Students.”

“It was simply a method to employ some of my excess energy, Elder,” I replied calmly, accepting his decision. “I am aware of the implications, but I am neither an electrokinetic nor a magnetokinetic. I merely generate a lot of power it is difficult to employ fully here.”

Bioelectricity flared up around me, gathered in arclight coils of the Bands around my biceps, +10 Strength buttressing everything. Underneath my gauntlets, the Philosopher’s Might hissed to life. He could probably tell it was there, if not what exactly it was. I was also sure he could tell there was magic on my hands.

He was naturally resistant to Divination magic, but I was only looking at the surface stuff, a Valence I Assay backed by an IX Slot.

---------

Tryco Slatterus, The Champion of the Universe

Wooxian/6 (Exemplar), Native Outsider/20 (Elder of the Universe)

Fighter/25, Vizard/13, Monk/13

Strength: 66 (71)

Dexterity: 35 (50 Reactions)

Constitution: 52

Intelligence: 25

Wisdom: 25

Charisma: 35

Notable Talents/Traits: Natural Pugilist; Last of the Wooxians; Elder of the Universe (Immortal)

...

---------

A fucking Exemplar. Mitharinnabucket.

My Astral Ward would foil his Insight bonuses, but not his Luck bonuses. Melee/25, and 20 Levels of Native Outsider.

DAMN. There was absolutely no way to dodge him. I could only take the punishment coming my way.

As a Spider Totem, I could take a TREMENDOUS amount of blunt trauma. I knew it, because I’d sparred with Mr. Hill and Mr. Grimm a lot, and I had learned how to take those hits in doing so, knowing I’d have to sooner or later.

I had healing magic. Getting clobbered was something I actually practiced!

Asgardian resilience on top was only going to help... but I was still going to get hit, and he’d just keep increasing the pressure and wear me down.

I was not going to win, that was certain. It was pretty much a mathematical impossibility unless he gave it away.

But then, that’s not what I was aiming for. I was aiming for time!

However, he seemed more interested in my words than in getting ready. “Really? And how much energy are you not employing?” he asked me curiously.

Huh... “Do you really want to know, Elder?” I asked, lifting an eyebrow.

That I would even say such a thing seemed to make him more interested. “You are now making me curious,” he admitted in a condescendingly generous manner. “I can see that hand-to-hand combat is not your specialty.”

I shook my head in agreement. “No, sir. I am an Alchemist by trade.”

He blinked at me. “An... Alchemist,” he repeated, as if it was the most novel thing in the world. “Well, I can still be surprised by something,” he mused, almost to himself. “Please, demonstrate your capabilities,” he waved his hand, definitely a command now.

“If the Elder will center his defense.” I lifted my right hand in a punching pose. Amused, he clenched his fists, spread his arms, and took a breath to take the hit.

BOOM! The ref had already retreated, so he wasn’t sent flying. Champion was braced, so he didn’t go flying either, having at least some form of heavyfoot helping to anchor him.

“Not bad,” he admitted, straightening up without much effort from the hit to his abdomen, probably the single worst place for me to hit him.

My Bands uncoiled and became pure voltage, sizzling about my hands. “This is the energy output needed to run my Strength boost there.”

Boom! The impact wasn’t nearly as loud, but he actually frowned slightly as the voltage discharged around the point of impact with loud crackles.

“That... is marginally more dangerous than your boosted punch,” he acknowledged, once again mostly unharmed. High energy resistances...

“This is that power, combined with the rest of my standard cycling discharge.”

His eyes widened as the voltage became a hissing, crackling, blinding storm of lightning around me and my fists. This time he really tensed up as I came in with the exact same move, and I hit him exactly as hard as I had the others, adjusted for Strength.

KRAKABOOM! The discharge set off a thunderbolt, and to his utter astonishment, Champion went flying backwards twenty paces, his gut smoking from the pure force of the energy I’d just sent against him.

Blooding wasn’t on the hit, so his healing was taking care of the minor injury rapidly. Still, he brushed himself off warily as he stood back up, his shirt rather savaged in front, and walked back to the middle of the arena.

“That is indeed an impressive amount of energy,” he acknowledged. “But not something that couldn’t be equaled by some forms of exotic energy generators,” he noted for me.

I held up my hand, and bands of colorful force energy played back and forth over my fingers.

Despite himself, he abruptly took a step back to get out of range fast enough to dodge as he stared at my fist.

There was a LOT of leashed force energy there...

“Does muscle have a capacitor attached to it? Can you store the energy of every punch you do not make for a few seconds, a minute, an hour, for every breath of the day?

“I can, Elder. If I want to, instead of giving you six seconds of my time with those previous hits, I could give you a minute.”

The total confidence on his face hardened somewhat. The math was pretty easy.

“I could give you ten minutes of my time. I could give you an hour. I could give you a whole day, a whole week, or a whole month.”

His face was very grim as he stared at me. I waved my Shards-Imbued fist at him, the ranged attack reduced to Touch and receiving a die-type damage upgrade to d8’s for it. “I could also do the same with this... or I could add them together.”

I drove my fist into the floor of the arena.

Proto-adamantium shrieked and shattered as the force energy ripped through it in all directions. Shattered plates blew off the floor as the force of the tap radiated outwards, and shards of really hard, really strong metal shrapnel blew away from me in all directions.

The ref’s force field was up, while Champion had smoothly jumped back to a safe distance. For thirty feet around me, plates of flooring that could bounce tank cannon shots had been ripped, rent, and torn apart like paper-mâché, exposing the struts and gears below that could be used to modify the floor for more interesting terrain, if desired.

The only intact square near me was the one I was standing on.

Champion merely gestured, and drones descended from above in humming formation, bearing new plates to put down, not incidentally removing the ones dented from his earlier fights at the same time. Magnetic sweeps picked up the shrapnel smoothly, the new plates were locked into place, and the drones swept back up into their ceiling joists and were gone.

Took less than a minute, quite impressive tech.

Champion strode back up to me, his face a wee bit more thoughtful than it had been. “I see why you call yourself an Alchemist, and not a warrior. That was a very impressive display.”

I bowed to him. “Thank you, Elder. I do try.”

“Regardless, such energies are not allowed in true melee combat,” he chided me. “The Colosseum I have created is about tempering one’s natural gifts and skills for hand-to-hand combat, not energy generation and control.”

“Indeed. But, as I said before, Elder, that amounts to a huge handicap for me.” My bioelectricity seethed and spun into arclight Bands of the Titan again. “I shall attempt to give you a good bout regardless, sir.”

“Let me see how inventive you can be!” he smiled, finally looking forward to our little clash.

“Fight!” the ref called out a moment later. His presence was mostly unnecessary, as he wasn’t going to overrule Champion for any decision, and the Elder was scrupulous about following the rules he had created here. If he didn’t respect them, why would anyone else?

Okay, he had massive reach on me, but at first glance I had footwork speed on him. I doubted it was actually true, but he still hadn’t shown any superspeed afoot, and definitely not anything with the agility of my sparkfoot technique with Repulse. So, I set to closing with him and his vastly greater reach (his arms were almost as long as I was tall... heck, his elbows almost had reach on me!), and we began our dance.