Growing Pains

I blinked as I looked around at my surroundings.

One second I was in a hidden safe room with three random thieves, Batman, and Birdbrain…then I get hit in the face with some magic beam out of an old mirror and now I’m somewhere else entirely.

Which meant I was either teleported somewhere by a magic mirror or I was now very dead.

…not a whole lot of afterlives that looked like a random forest (I think) so I was going to guess teleported until proven otherwise.

Now it was a question of where.

I flew straight up to get a better look around, and all I could say was I was definitely in a forest. No real landmarks – or ones that meant anything to me – no signs of roads or highways, and no mountains as far as I could see. Nothing I could sense either, just some normal wildlife doing normal animal things, like the flock of crows coming right for me…

I narrowed my eyes at that.

Crows didn’t have a reason to come bother me in the middle of the sky, they also weren’t the size of small dogs, and they usually didn’t have glowing red eyes and jagged beaks…I don’t think those things were crows.

One of them shot forward faster than its friends and tried to swipe me with its claws. I replied by blasting it in the face with a Ki beam.

I think its friends didn’t like that, because instead of turning and flying away I found myself getting swarmed by the things.

“Cut it out!” I yelped as one of the birds pulled at my hair while another tried to peck me in the eye. “Seriously you flying idiots, stop!” A third bird tried to hit me in the stomach, I punched it in the face.

The dumb thing exploded into a cloud of black feathers but I felt a sharp pain on my hand right after.

Huh, I was bleeding. Note to self: don’t punch them in the beak, it’s really sharp.

The good news was that as long as I didn’t help them out, the crows were only strong enough to give me some shallow scratches. The bad news was those scratches still HURT! And no matter what I did – blasting them to ash, hitting them hard enough to practically explode, or grabbing them and physically tearing them in half – the crows weren’t getting the message to just go away!

And now there seemed to be more of them somehow!

“One more chance to leave, stupid birds, or I’m going to–” I had to jerk my head to the side to avoid one of the faster crows, but I still felt three new scratches open up right underneath my left eye.

…

Yeah, I had had enough of these winged pests.

“You asked for it!”

I pooled a bunch of my Ki in the center of my chest and let it explode out in a single big bang. It didn’t matter if there were a bunch of them flying around making it hard to hit one if I just hit all of them!

Even better; it worked!

The sphere of yellow Ki winked out and not even a single one of those crow things was left behind. My Ki sense even confirmed it, no more freaky crow things in the sky. In fact there wasn’t anything else besides the one signature rapidly getting closer to me – ah, crap.

Something strong, fast, and saiyanoid tackled me out of the air and used me as a plow for a few hundred feet on the ground below. I was rattled enough that when a hand grabbed me by the front of my shirt and pulled me out of the dirt, I just stared blankly at my attacker.

Shockingly enough it was an Amazon.

I spent enough time on Themyscira to recognize the different clothing they wore. And the girl on top of me was definitely wearing one of their training outfits.

Even more shocking, she looked like a younger Wonder Woman. And angry. She also looked very angry.

“DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA OF HOW LONG I WAITED FOR YOU?! I WAITED YEARS, DIANA! AND YOU LEFT ME HERE ALONE!” She bellowed in my face before realizing the person she was grabbing wasn’t the one she expected. “Wait…you’re not Diana…who are you?”

“Really pissed off.” I growled in response and did the only rational thing to do in a situation like this. I punched her really hard in the face.

The Amazon went flying backwards and through several trees while I pulled myself out of the trench I was in. A quick aura flare knocked most of the dirt off of me and then I was flying after my attacker.

I had to admit, she could take a hit. Even after going through a dozen trees she was ready for my follow up and deflected my follow up punch like a pro. She deflected the next one too and threw a punch of her own. I ducked under it and kicked at her head. This time she blocked it, but made the mistake of using the ground to brace herself.

The ground cratered underneath her and she grunted at the effort of fully stopping me from hitting her in the face. She threw another punch but I surprised her by going even lower, a Ki ball glowing in my hands. It wasn’t a Kamehameha, but the bright yellow beam sent the Angry Amazon flying through the air again.

It also blew up a good swath of the forest, but that wasn’t my fault.

It also didn't really do much to my opponent much to my surprise. Like ninety percent of the Amazons back on the Island would at least be a little scuffed up after a hit like that, but she was perfectly fine.

A grin broke out on my face.

I started this fight pissed off because I got cheapshoted after dealing with those damn birds, but now it looked like I was going to be able to really cut loose against someone who could take it. My aura flared again as I stopped suppressing my Ki and got ready for a serious fight.

…though I should probably introduce mysel– wait, is that a tree?

The broken trunk of one of the many trees around us hit me in the chest like a battering ram. It didn’t really hurt thanks to the increased Ki I had running through my body, but the Angry Amazon definitely returned the favor of sending me crashing through a few trees of my own before I hit a boulder and stopped dead.

Angry Amazon was there in a flash and immediately threw another punch. I caught it in an x-guard and despite my powered up state, I could feel the bones in my arm grinding from the force of the hit.

“You done holding back?” Angry Amazon asked, less angrily than before.

“Only if you are.” I shot back. Mostly rhetorically, because that last hit was definitely going to bruise at least.

“You haven’t seen anything yet!”

A kick caught me underneath my guard and blasted me though the rock I had my back to. Angry Amazon was back on top of me in half a second, but she overextended and I managed to grapple her before slamming her face first into the ground. She responded with a savage elbow strike that caught me in the teeth and split my lip.

I wasn’t going to let her get away with that and immediately headbutted her in the face, bloodying her nose.

Our fight kept going like that.

One of us would get a good shot in and the other would make them pay for it. But those shots were getting fewer and further between as we figured out the other’s fighting style.

Soon it was just us beating on the other’s defenses hoping to slip something through the wall of blocks, deflections, counter-attacks, and dodges. Either that or one of us would grab a tree to use as a disposable bat real quick.

…we might be a little rough on the landscape. If Batman or Wonder Woman were here I was sure to have gotten a pretty long lecture about collateral damage, but they weren’t, so it was fine!

A while later – I had lost track of time after the third time I was thrown through a rock – both of us were standing apart from each other on an empty field that looked like it had been a bomb test site instead of a forest, panting and trying to not let the blood and sweat dripping into our eyes break the staring contest we had going on right now.

Neither one of us tried to trash talk the other.

We were too busy trying not to fall over for that.

And honestly? Probably the most fun fight I’ve had…ever. Even more than the one I had with Hawkie because this was against someone who wasn’t over a decade older than I was, wasn’t relying on some tool or trick, and she could keep up.

I felt it deep in my cracked and maybe broken ribs, the next hit would be the decider. Neither of us had anything left.

Unlike the dozens of other times we charged each other, the ground didn’t collapse under our feet. It didn’t crack as we planted a foot and threw one…last…punch…

I saw stars as Angry Amazon’s fist hit my face first, her longer arms giving her an advantage.

Call it pride, stubbornness, or just being too stupid to quit; I fought to keep conscious as I forced my way past her fist just to return the favor. Her head snapped violently to the side just like mine did and then we were both on the ground.

Everything started going gray, but I couldn’t pass out yet…

Had one thing I needed to do first…

Pulling myself onto my knees felt like someone dropped a mountain on my back. My arms were shaking as they did their noodly best to not let me faceplant back onto the ground and I wanted to just stay there for a second…that or just collapse. But I pushed myself up more. One foot shifted forward and I almost fell over but once again I fought until I was half standing over Angry Amazon who was also struggling to stand.

“...I…I w-wii…I-I wiiii-herk! Coegh, coegh!” I tried to say before I choked on something wet and broke out into coughs.

It cost me too, because by the time I stopped I was back on the ground looking up at Angry Amazon who had managed to get to her feet in the meantime.

“...I…wi-...-n~” She said as smugly as she could with her face being a beaten mess, and immediately passed out and fell forward…

Right on top of me…

…so…heavy…