Growing Pains

Trekking through an underground maze filled with monsters trying to kill me was incredibly boring when the monsters died from a random ki attack.

I mean, it was really cool to see a bunch of different monsters. But it was kinda like expecting to go to the zoo and just walking to different rooms and seeing a model instead. Completely underwhelming and disappointing.

“Hey, what would happen if I blasted through the floor? Would that speed this up?” I asked Donna after another room was easily cleared.

The Amazon paused on her way to the other side of the room and scratched at her cheek in thought. “I don’t actually know?” She said eventually. “We never considered not just going through the maze.”

Time to find out then…

“You might want to stand back a bit.” I warned Donna before cupping my hands and focusing. “KAAAAMEEEE…HAAAMEEE…HAAAAAAA!!!”

Light pooled and burst forward, slamming into the smooth sandstone and drilling straight through. It didn’t stay that way though. The further my Ki beam drilled, the slower it did so, the walls getting tougher and tougher until my attack couldn’t push through anymore. Ki pooled at the end, building up until it lost cohesion and exploding violently enough I could hear it from where I was.

I broke out into a self satisfied smile at the newly created shortcut even as I cut power to my attack. I didn’t cut through the entire labyrinth, but at least we could get to the fun stuff instead of wasting our time on these weaklings now.

“That worked pretty well,” I chirped and started pulling a dazed Donna along by the wrist. “Come on, let’s go see what’s waiting for us. I think I heard something roaring down below.”

“...I…you…ugh! What if the roof collapsed on us?! There’s a limit to being reckless you damn monkey!”

Oh hey, Donna’s using the same insult as Birdbrain now. I bet they’d get along pretty well when I introduced them after we got out of here. Honestly Robin would need the help, his skill at bantering was pretty weak…

-o-

“...Great Hera…that’s a manticore!”

“Oh cool, are those tough?”

“They’re nearly legends! Only the greatest heroes and demigods lived after encountering one!”

So they were supposedly really tough! Finally, we might get something interesting to fight.

“So do you want to go first or should I? Cause I have been hogging all the fights, even if they kinda sucked until now.” I admitted.

Donna looked at me like I was crazy. “Go first…? Califa, this is a manticore, we’ll need to work together to even have a shot at winning. Between the claws and poisonous barbs a single mistake could be disastrous and we’ll probably still have more monsters ahead of us as well!”

I scowled but she was right. It just wasn’t any fun, but then most Amazons trained and worked in teams. Saiyans just preferred to take turns. Stupid poison, making things less fun.

Oh well, I’d just demand a spar later to make up for it.

“Fine. You go left, I’ll go ri-” I was cut off when the manticore decided to remind me talking wasn’t a free action and slammed me to the ground. I instinctually caught a clawed limb from tearing open my face and was surprised when I had to put more effort in so it didn’t casually overpower me.

Strong. Dangerous too.

Finally, something exciting!

Donna shoulder-checked the manticore into a wall hard enough to crack the stone before either of us could really put any effort into our struggle and knocked the creature back into the room it was supposed to be guarding.

“You okay?”

I smiled. “Never better.”

“Good because it’s coming back for more. Watch out for the tail, it can shoot venomous barbs.”

Also good to know.

Now that it was clear I wasn’t just going to blow through this one in a single attack, I took a second to actually look at the monster we were fighting.

Big fangs and claws were kind of a given for a monster, and the feline body, draconic wings, and weird scorpion tail covered in a bunch of spines were all good touches, but it was the eyes that got me excited.

There was something hungry behind those eyes. This was an opponent that wanted to fight us.

Well, we were going to give it one.

Donna was the first to fly forward. The manticore roared at her and took a swipe. She ducked under the first paw and caught the second before landing a bone-rattling uppercut on the beast’s jaw. Despite that, the monster didn’t go flying. It was just forced onto its hind legs for a bit until Donna punched it in the face again.

…and again, and again, and again.

Despite the assault, the manticore didn’t seem all that injured after it managed to swat the Amazon out of the way with a forepaw. It did seem mad though, and looked ready to lunge after her.

So I did the reasonable thing and blasted it in the face with a Ki beam.

What? Donna said we needed to work together.

It didn’t even do all that much. The manticore slammed into the walls and stayed pinned there for a few moments while the beam sputtered out. Besides a small burn mark I noticed when it picked itself up and roared, there wasn’t even a scratch.

Okay, time to take this up a notch.

The manticore spun around and a dozen or so spines shot at me. Remembering Donna’s warning about poison I flew up over them rather than risk even a tiny cut screwing me over. But the manticore apparently was counting on that, because I looked up to see it hovering above me on leathery wings already clawing towards my head.

On instinct I reached out and managed to grab its furry wrist, using that as a lever to pull myself over the swipe and kick the manticore in the head.

It was an awesome move and I’d totally claim I did it on purpose if someone asked…unfortunately, it didn’t do much either. The manticore’s head snapped to the side and that was it. So I punched it again. This time I pushed it back just in time for Donna to come screaming in for a big hit of her own.

We kinda devolved into a big threeway aerial fur ball at that point, each of us punching, kicking, and clawing at our opponent without the space or time to really put our full strength into any one blow.

I ducked around a clawed kick and got a solid hit into the creature’s ribs just as Donna punched it across the face. The manticore grunted from both hits but swung its body around to keep momentum. More spikes shot out of its tail and went for my amazonian partner. I almost panicked and blasted both her and them out of the air, but she kept her head and quickly deflected all of them with her gauntlets. Seeing she was safe I flared my Ki higher and slammed into the manticore. This time the manticore was knocked across the room but once again it seemed fine.

“This isn't working," I said, during a brief pause in the fight. "We keep hitting it but I don’t think we’re doing any damage.”

She glanced at me and then back to the manticore which was slowly circling us now that we had all figured out just rushing each other was pretty pointless. “You’re right, we’ve both hit it hard enough that we should have done something but I don’t see any damage. It’s like it's impervious to blunt force.”

Well that’s not good. Most of our attacks were blunt force. “Any ideas then?”

“We could backtrack and see if one of the previous challenge rooms has a weapon we could steal.” Donna proposed. “Diana and I used to do that when we were younger.”

I gave the still circling manticore a look. “You think this guy would let us wander back through the maze and not follow us?”

“...probably not. If it’s like the other monsters, it would try to keep chasing us until we left the labyrinth.” She admitted. “You have any ideas?”

Hit it harder? No, that was stupid.

Blunt force wasn’t working so more blunt force wasn’t the answer. We needed to either use a different type of attack or figure out how to target a weak spot. Burying it or strangulation might work, I vaguely remembered Hercules did that to a few of the monsters he fought, but the issue was that the walls were too tough to easily break and our monster had a tail that would wreck us in a moment if we tried to brute force it.

Have one person strangle it while the other held off the tail? No, that was too risky. One mistake and the person strangling the manticore would be skewered. Stab it with a Ki blade? Possible, but I didn’t have the best control of that technique yet. I was more likely to burn it rather than stab through its skin.

Wait…burn it.

I glanced at the manticore’s face where the mark from my Ki blast was still visible.

So I could hurt it. Now it was a question of how to exploit that enough to win.

“Okay, I have an idea…” I told her and explained my plan.

To say she was thrilled would be–

“Are you absolutely insane?!”

“It could work!”

–a complete lie.

“It could also lose me my hands or my life!”

I shrugged, she wasn’t wrong there. “Yeah, but, you have any other plans besides ‘run away and hope for the best’?”

She glared at me. “...no, but this doesn’t work I’m going to kick your butt again.”

“Again for the first time, you mean?” I scoffed. “And it’ll work. I’m like seventy percent sure it will.”

“S-seventy percent?!”

“Aaaand go!”

I flared my Ki and left a sputtering Donna behind as I shot forward. We needed to catch the manticore off guard if my plan was going to work, that meant luring it into a false sense of confidence we were just going to try beating it to death…or just giving it a concussion. Personally, I was fine with either solution.

The manticore roared and lunged to meet me, a small shockwave appearing where my forearm clashed against its wrist, and the both of us attempted to overpower the other for a bit. I thought I was winning that, but it turned out to be a trap when the manticore twisted in a way that made me shoot past it and almost get impaled by its tail. I managed to dodge at the last moment, but I actually felt the spines pass through my hair.

Too close.

A hind leg still caught me in the chest though, and I found myself bouncing off the floor and slamming into a wall not long after. A brief check reassured me that I hadn’t been disemboweled by the kick but my clothes had definitely seen better days by this point. The four new long scratches over my torso were shallow, but still bled enough that it would be a pain to get out. Which sucked because these had been a gift and were really comfy. I’d need to start wearing my armor again.

I shook my head to clear my thoughts.

I must have hit my head harder than I thought if I was thinking about clothes in the middle of a fight.

I glanced over to where Donna was now tangling with the manticore on the ground. I wasn’t exactly sure how she managed to force the monster out of the air but it would make the next part of the plan easier, so good job!

Leaving the Amazon to her fight I started preparing on my end. We’d only had one chance to surprise it so I had to make it count.

Funny enough, Donna was actually doing better now that the both of them weren’t flying. She seemed a lot more comfortable getting close and grappling than the constant maneuvering and surging flying combat needed. If the manticore wasn’t tough enough that we simply couldn’t beat it into submission, I’d have given her pretty good odds she could have beaten it by herself.

But as neat as it was to watch my Amazon buddy fight, I was focused and waiting for my opening.

I didn’t have to wait long. Eventually Donna managed to twist the manticore around enough that she was relatively safe from the poisonous tail and the monster’s claws. With no other options the manticore fell back on its one remaining weapon…it tried to bite her. And that was exactly what we were waiting for.

Donna immediately dropped everything to shove her hands into the manticore’s mouth and forced it open as wide as she could. The beast definitely didn’t like that because it tried backing off but the Amazon held it in place.

“Califa, now!”

I didn’t need her to tell me. As soon as I saw her make her move, I launched forward as fast as I could, the Ki I had been building without allowing to escape was dumped into the fastest and sloppiest Kamehameha I’d ever done. If it wasn’t for the fact I was less than two inches in front of my target, I think the Ki would have just exploded randomly before I could force it into a beam. But my target was right in front of me, so while I shouted out the name of the technique I focused on pouring as much power as I could where I needed it to go: right down the throat of the manticore.

Neither the manticore or my Ki really liked that. The manticore for obvious reasons, but my Ki because it was being constantly compressed in the stomach of the manticore with nowhere to go and I was only adding more. Something had to give, and given that I had actually burned the monster with a basic Ki blast I was betting the manticore would be first.

Its body actually swelled and warped from the amount of energy I was pouring down its throat before it warped and popped like a particularly gruesome piñata. Luckily my Ki finally managed to burn away the gross bits so most of the manticore was vaporized in a flash of blue light before they got everywhere.

“Wheeew~” I let out a big sigh as I collapsed on my butt next to Donna who did the same. “That was fun! Can’t wait to see what else we get to fight now!”

Donna gave me a look before barking out a laugh. “You’re crazy! We just beat a manticore and you already want to fight again?!” She laughed some more and then gave me a friendly tap on the shoulder. “But you know what? That was fun. I forgot how nice it was to fight with a friend by your side. Let’s rest for a bit and then continue on.”

I smiled back at her. We were friends now. She even admitted it!