JUTRAND - THE ROYAL ACADEMY - ARENA
Eira Dyn
Kal-El kept walking. He had a guess as to how this would turn out, what his actions would accomplish. It did not make the pain any less intense as the initial lightning strike slammed full force into his back and disseminated throughout his body. For a few moments, his body's muscles tensed and relaxed rapidly as the sudden information overload of his nervous system. A migraine began to grow on the edges of his periphery as he blinked the stars and blackness away. Every nerve felt nothing but fire. Stumbling a few steps forward before falling one step back, Kal-El remained rooted on his two feet.
Determined not to fall. Not yet. He simply kept walking forward.
Several more bouts of lightning followed, each bringing their own measure of rage and pain behind each strike. Kal-El groaned as his body struggled to listen to his commands to simply keep standing. It wanted to fall. Gritting fanged teeth, Kal-El's vision saw nothing but stars and darkness as his legs finally stumbled during the melody of strikes. Falling to one knee and resting his hand upon another, Kal-El simply
endured all the pain and injury brought upon him by his opponent.
Despite every tissue and nerve screaming for him to do something, Kal-El only resisted the urge. Eira wanted him to fight and prove his strength or to be afraid and run away. He would do neither and be put in no such boxes. His strength was his, to do with as he pleases. Not to be coaxed into a violent or cowardly action he neither wanted nor needed because of an upset girl.
But he could sense she would not stop anytime soon, and he had no intention of dying or suffering further by her hands. Forcing himself to stand up, Kal-El shifted his stance to face her with his body partially sideways to her while his head and shoulders turned fully to her. His arms rose up, not into fists, but instead raising his first few fingertips off his hands at her. Those same hands shook, his entire body shook with muscle soreness and pain, like he would fall over with these simple movements and stances. Every muscle and nerve screamed at him to simply give up. The migraine in his head grew, and his vision compromised. Yet his focus needed to remain.
A few moments passed and his hands began to steady. The pain subsiding. Every continued bolt of pain and misery struck him, but did not seep into him and destroy him. No, Eira's power flowed through him as each wave of electricity passed through his body. He did not release it immediately in return like he should have nor did he fire any electrical discharge in her direction.
No, he kept collecting more and more of her own power, and Kal-El wondered when the girl would realize she was not hurting him any more but instead making him all the stronger. If and when she realized (or perhaps in spite of the fact she had not realized), Kal-El simply smirked.
Lightning Queen meet the Lightning Rod.
"Now who's acting childish. Striking when your opponent's back is turned? Tsk tsk," Kal-El waved a finger at her in reprimand.
A simple step forward, more of a stomp followed and Kal-El released a portion of the power he collected along the ground. Eira would find her own lightning exploding near her feet, intending to uproot her from the ground and send her a few feet into the air before falling on her ass. A relatively simple and non-harmful move, other than the sore behind she would find herself suffering.
No, the real coup de grâce followed. As stone and dust continued to settle after his initial strike, Kal-El gave the girl no time to breathe as he focused the rest of this foreign power inside himself in the girl's direction. All of that power born from rage, all of it collected, simply shot back out not as a cacophony of multiple bolts but a singular overwhelming force that could kill anyone and anything.
Eira's eyes would watch as a final strike meant for her would instead purposely veer off course and miss her by inches, enough to smell and feel the sizzle of ozone and perhaps a little of her own hair, before the giant bold struck with thunderous applause at one of the arena walls. Spider-web cracks in the structure resembling nothing but the very power both had wielded moments prior formed almost immediately, deep in the skin of the stone.
And, after a few moments, that very portion of wall began to fall apart into debris on the ground. That could have been Eira, if he had not aimed a little to her left or she had not moved out of the way in time.
"We are done here," Kal-El spoke. It took everything to keep his voice from seizing up as his mouth tasted not like copper, but an entire factory's worth of the metal.
A part of him wanted to double over in pain and nurse his wounds. But he could not. Smoke from his burnt clothes and burning ozone poured off of him, Kal-El remained standing, not shaking or faltering an inch. No weakness shown, not now. Perhaps, Kal-El had maybe one more redirect within him, but it would nowhere as powerful nor contained as before. That had been a risk he undertaken in order to, in layman's terms, show off. If Eira struck him again, the only option was to immediately redirect the lightning rather than hold on and accumulate more power while injuring himself further in the process.
A stupid move, perhaps, in hindsight. Those earlier strikes had taken a toll on him and even he had his limits. One more redirect, maybe, and nothing more.
"Next time, I won't miss," Kal-El laid down not a threat, but a simple promise that he would see through,
"I forfeit the match. You win, just like you always wanted."
He turned his back on her once more. A part of him hoped she would not try the same strategy or another rage-induced attack, but his hopes were not exactly high at the moment. At least bruises healed much faster than sizzled muscle and nerve tissue. Right now, however, all he had intended to do was scare her a little into letting him at least walk out of this arena without being further harmed.
There, out of sight and out of mind of everyone else, he might collapse under the full weight of his wounds. Alone.
