Shinryu vs. Sid

[Fainis the Sadistic Pansexual]

Shinryu

vs.

Sid

Ex-god against former human!

Ref: giratina93

[Tenshi the Sunkern]

BRING ME YOUR INTROS! I DESIRE THEM FOR CONSUMPTION!

[Perfect Chaos Zero]

In the wake of the bedlam that now roiled over the entities called the "Horsemen" and their malicious demonstrations of power, with the main telepads now sealed, Shinryu had expected to be denied a chance for battle...that was to say, sanctioned battle. Yet, business seemed to carry on as normal even with the looming threat of a full-fledged revolt against the UCA...intriguing.

As the unseen teleporter finished working its magic - its manner was similar, Shinryu noted, to the teleportation magic wielded by a number of the warriors the dragon had once summoned from distant realms - it emerged in what looked to be a replication of a modern human cityscape from worlds such as Earth. It differed, though, in the greater length and width of roads, the relative size of buildings...and most notably the lack of any other life in the area save for the combatants.

With a quick look around to gain its bearings, Shinryu briefly hovered into the air and vigorously shook its serpentine body to rid itself of the water that had earlier erupted from the floor of its dwelling, then settled to await the arrival of its opponent.

[Fainis the Sadistic Pansexual]

The metallic serpent would not have to wait long. No more than a few second after he settled his crystalline coils in a comfortable loop, Shinryu's golden eyes were drawn to a second bright shimmer in the air. From a wave of warped sky dropped a small, furred form, like a mammalian meteor. The diminutive arrival plunged down nearly a hundred meters, feet first, and then its spurred heels cratered the broad street it landed upon with a earth-shaking rumble. Rising to his full, not-so-impressive height and turning his twinkling eyes up, Sid curled his muzzle into a smile.

Sid didn't exactly jump at the chance to fight with another intelligent being, but he knew he had to get out of the Hub. When water had burst into the quarters of Zeus- where he had only just recovered from a heavy session of drinking with the godly ape- he suspected Ketos immediately. He always knew the sea monster would never accept his imprisonment here. The only thing that surprised him was that it had taken this long for rebellion to rise in the dragon. But when the tiny brawler had left the living space of the divine sasquatch, he saw that it was not just Ketos raging against the UCA- it was infamous baddies like Thresher and Asmodeus too! Having no wish to be sucked into the violent free-for-all, the little monster had taken his chance to flee the chaos and accepted a match request from one of the UCA's newest fighters.

Not that Sid had much experience either though. Despite the fact that he had been here for a few long weeks, this would be his first fight, and he hoped his foe would be an agreeable one. Sid didn't need another Ketos chasing after him.

Titling his muzzle quizzically and throwing down a swift clak-clak-clak of claws onto his electronic voice box, Sid asked in a dead voice, "READY TO DO THIS, BOY-O?"

[Tenshi the Sunkern]

A voice rumbled through the city, the voice as if one from God himself. "MONSTERS... FIGHT!" It announced.

[Perfect Chaos Zero]

This was it. Battle was about to be joined.

Even with ample time spent in meditation to prepare itself for this very moment, the sensation was almost overwhelming to Shinryu...its newly mortal blood pumped faster and faster, the buildings and other scenery seemed to blur out of focus as its vision narrowed in on its opponent; even its hearing seemed to have dulled, the echo of Sid's words now quite faint and indistinct.

Nevertheless, the dragon lifted itself from its relative seated position. Its claws closed into tight, knuckle-popping fists as it drew and released a deep breath, tempering its focus on the opponent. Its body coiled tense and tight as though to launch itself directly toward Sid, and the creature appropriately braced itself...

...But it could not defend against this: Shinryu instead drew back its hand, beginning to flicker and arc with electrical power, and threw forth a powerful and precise thunderbolt. Sid snarled and roared as the deadly energy diffused through its body, collapsing as its muscles spasmed beyond its control...and hence able to do nothing to defend or evade the next attack: the particles of the air around it erupting and exploding in a concentrated fission reaction through the power of the Flare magic. Debris scattered in all directions from the powerful blast, buildings as far as a thousand meters distant trembled from the shockwave, and Shinryu itself had to brace against the explosion's force.

As the fury of the blast subsided, Shinryu now advanced toward its fallen foe. Bringing the tip of its tail before its face, the dragon invoked the power known as the Stone Glare - encasing the appendage in a mass of magical rock - and then lurched into a somersault, swinging its tail in a wide arc to bring the stone-encumbered end smashing into Sid's head at an angle. Fresh cracks spiderwebbed through the ground beneath it, bits of spittle flying from its mouth; the stone itself fractured from the force of the blow but did not completely crumble. Now hovering over the prone beast's back, Shinryu searched for an ideal place to take grip of the opponent without harming itself on the multitudinous spines, or perhaps simply to inflict a vicious gashing with its own claws--

WHAM!! Sid's tail came sweeping into view too quickly for Shinryu to react, delivering a sudden and brutal blow square to the dragon's face that sent it sprawling into what remained of a nearby building, the weakened structure predictably collapsing in a cloud of dust and debris.

Dazed, choking on dust and smoke, Shinryu could not concentrate enough to levitate itself free, resorting to rolling away and muscling itself upright. By this point Sid had regained its feet as well, turning to locate its adversary. Blood dribbled from an ugly cut to the side of its head, and wisps of smoke still drifted from its singed hide, but the beast uttered a hearty growl and took a firm stance, plenty of fight left in it.

Good. Shinryu would not be content with a quick and effortless victory...to grow stronger, to grasp the true depth of its power, it must be tested--challenged.

Coughing a burst of dust from its mouth, the self-deposed deity focused and dispelled the encumbrance of stone from its tail--only to recast it again as a mass now enshackling Sid's feet. The creature grunted in alarm at its sudden lack of mobility as Shinryu took again to the air, now swooping in low and readying its right claw to tear a bloody swath through its foe's stomach...

[Fainis the Sadistic Pansexual]

Although he was immobile and about to be slashed open like a burlap sack, Sid shot his eyes up at Shinryu with a smirk. "NICE TRICK THERE, BUD," he tapped out, a brilliant charge of yellow and orange dancing up his spines as he 'spoke' "HERE'S ONE OF MY OWN."

The little giant hunched down and cracked open his reptilian jaws. The light running up his plated back climaxed as a burning blast from his lungs, like a molten spew of vomit, light as air, but hot as hell itself. The wash of fiery power scorched the stone that encased his feet, incinerating its surface and cracking it beyond its crust. The flattened tail of the hybrid flailed a bit in panic as the heat scalded his toes, raw energy trickling down through the fractures like water. As the rock was weakened and Shinryu closed in, his claws swinging out like a pawful of scythes, Sid crimped his knees, then launched himself up like a spring, the stone shattering from around his feet! As the small monster leapt up like a child's toy, feet angling up high, Shinryu smashed snoutfirst into them! The dragon-like entity was compressed, his neck and body smashing up against his skull in coils. The sudden collision caused the swiping talons of the retired deity to swing wide, missing Sid by a wide margin.

"THAT'S ONE I LEARNED FROM POUH-WUNG," told Sid in an unemotional computer's voice as he felt the other beast crush into itself behind his outstretched legs, the impact jarring, yet satisfying to the small giant. A small, yet fierce, smile graced his uneven muzzle.

The groaning god fell from the air, his crowned head dipping sharply and slamming hard into the street below, the rest of his serpentine body following in a thrashing mess of dust and rubble. The ex-human was not unaffected however. Rammed by a much heavier force, Sid was launched back like a soccer ball only seconds after his taunt! Flying horizontally, the trained fighter did not panic, but acted. His paddle-shaped tail dropped down and crashed into the street, its curved spines cutting through the paved ground like inverted shark's fins. The dragging tail slowed the arc of the airborne monster, but steepened his plummet greatly, angling him back as if he were performing a trust fall with no partner. A partner did step up though, because the mammal-reptile fusion smashed into a building before he struck the ground, the towering structure swallowing him up like a hungry giant.

Shaking off the dust and sheets of asphalt that fell across his head, Shinryu raised his horned cranium with flashing golden eyes. In a clean line between the collapsed dragon and the teetering structure that had consumed Sid, the air detonated. A path of fission burned through the city and met the broken building with a blinding burst, smoke and fire knocking at heaven's gates as they curled high into the air. The skyscraper was blown apart in all directions, spread across the whole city in the vigorous energy of its eruption. Shinryu was happy to hear a mangled scream echo from the destroyed structure. The metallic serpent nodded. Good. He had not missed his target.

But he had not triumphed yet either. Like a demon of the eternal hell flame, a scorched, smouldering, but still living Sid flew from the concrete corpse with fists held high! The G.A.K.F. brawler sprinted the distance to the dragon in an instant, smoke and soot trailing behind him the whole way. Like a viking berserker, he slammed fearlessly into the serpent! Shinryu lashed out with his claws, but they were slapped away by a flat tail, and Sid used the momentum to whirl around and deliver the back of his first into the side of the ex-god's skull! The thorny head of Shinryu was thrown to the ground, the hard flesh of his cheek dirtied and beads of red glittering in the air. Kicking out, Sid threw himself back-first upon the newcomer, his thin spines biting into the neck of the dragon like teeth! The serpentine creature thrashed, launching his coils into pained loops and waves that pounded the paved earth. As he was heaved into the air by the struggles of the dragon, Sid allowed his plates to come unsheathed with tall spurts of red and swung his body down as in by a fulcrum, his broad foot rocketing towards the skull of his foe like a hammer...

[Perfect Chaos Zero]

Having just managed to throw its adversary off, Shinryu failed to anticipate that it would recover so quickly as to immediately whirl into another attack--and became painfully aware of this lapse in judgment when its face was suddenly and harshly crushed into the pavement. Its serpentine body jerked in reaction to the blow and then fell limp...and the painful pressure remained upon its head; the opponent was evidently wise to the tactic of playing dead and unwilling to give the ground it had taken.

Unfortunately for it, in this case backing away might have been the better option. The dragon's claws clenched, and Sid braced for whatever was to come next, but once again it had no defense against this: the pavement on which it stood suddenly cracked in a roughly circular pattern, and both it and Shinryu began to fall--into what revealed itself as a portal to the interdimensional rift! The creature barely had time to scream in alarm as it was swallowed into the lightless abyss, and for several seconds the arena fell deathly silent...

...Until another gateway from the rift opened, this one above the street at an angle, and from it the combatants suddenly reemerged--this time with Shinryu astride Sid, grasping its arms behind its back and binding tail with tail. The still-bellowing biped was smashed at terrific speed into the asphalt, and the attack didn't stop there; with all the power it could muster into its flight, the dragon brutally bulldozed its adversary through the unforgiving ground for a distance approaching 250 meters before finally releasing its hold and hovering away. Coming to rest on the ground near a building about as tall as its opponent, Shinryu dispelled the existing openings to and from the rift and now forged another one at ground level encompassing the structure. It promptly fell into the void between worlds, and as Sid was beginning to pick itself back up, the serpent quickly turned and forged a second portal over a hundred meters above the hapless creature's head. It spotted the interdimensional gateway, saw its foe standing with an arm gesturing high, quickly looked upward to see--

--too late. The biped was flattened and buried in a crumbling cascade of brick, glass and metal fragments, and the dragon had to hover back to keep from being itself engulfed in the billowing dust and dirt...as well as the malevolent wind that began to sweep it all up. A deadly and fearsome magic in many of the lands from which Shinryu had once summoned warriors to fight, the Maelstrom was obviously not of such catastrophic effect on behemoths such as Sid or other UCA fighters. But in the right conditions - such as with ample debris to accelerate to lethal speeds and dust to aggravate existing wounds - it could still do considerable damage.

And now Shinryu prepared to add to those conditions "atomic hellfire", focusing and unleashing another directed Flare blast--this one aimed not directly for Sid but for the furious tornado it was yet caught in, to billow and engulf the creature in a twister of fission flames...

(OOC: To clarify, Maelstrom and Flare aren't being used as a combo attack here. Maelstrom is my third attack, and my fourth is attempting to compound the damage of that with Flare.)

[Fainis the Sadistic Pansexual]

The line of hellfire speared the vicious whirlwind, and the entire tube of swirling air combusted all at once, becoming a tower of fire that streaked and danced across the sky like a laughing devil. Sid- who had been digging his curved claws into the ground, attempting to anchor himself against the furious winds- was jerked back suddenly, his blunt talons ripped loose with tall sprays of dust and rubble. A vacuum had been formed by the sudden swell of fire and smoke. The flames ate up the air like gluttonous demons, and more gaseous sustenance flooded in to take its place. Sid was washed away by the uncontrollable flow of air, his limbs flailing and his jaws wide open with a scream of protest. The little giant's tail slapped the earth, trying to gouge the cement with its spines and slow him, but it was useless. Like a bug on a harsh breeze, Sid was sucked into the twister, his fur igniting upon contact with the nuclear firespout.

Shinryu circled the whirling mass of flames like a great silver shark, his gold underbelly wrapped with an eerie glow by the firelight. The ex-deity was indecisive on whether he should stay close and be ready to thwart any move to exit the twister by his trapped foe or to drift further from the fiery tornado and be wary of a counterattack by the little monster, so he settled by slithering a lopsided ellipse through the air, swinging out far from the terrible winds sometimes, and hugging them at others. An infernal light split the winds suddenly, and Shinryu was slammed by a curved blast of raw power! The serpentine creature grunted as he was shove through the air, his metallic hide scorched, but his groan became a gasp as another lash of the beam struck! And then another! And another! The winding god was being pushed towards the ground by an unending series of energetic whips, his hide split further by each blow and his blood splattering like red raindrops. The former divinity was unsure of what was assaulting him until he saw that the laser lashes were all twirling from his own twister, his mind piecing it together in a brief moment.

It was not a series of whips, but a single blast from Sid twisted into a gigantic spiral by the tornado!

As the ex-god was rammed into the broken street like a slave under the cruelty of his master, Sid howled happily. He was tumbling wildly through the twister, his fur scorched and his blood flung in all directions by flashing slivers of glass and metal, but his mouth corners were curled in glee. His spine were alight, a fiery blast trailing from his jaws and encircling him like the rings of Saturn, rings that sliced the tall tube of fire and air like a knife. His continuous spew of power was not only forcing his foe down outside the funnel, it was also tearing apart the tornado itself, breaking up its powerful winds and ruining its momentum. His erratic swirl in the twister's heart was lagging, as if the firespout were tiring, and Sid knew he could free himself now. Snapping his smoking jaws shut and curling into a ball, the once human fighter condensed his mass and increased the spin of his body greatly. As the energy of his tumbling shape climaxed, it overcame the weakened tornado. Sid broke free of the twister and launched out like a cannonball!

A cannonball hurling directly towards Shinryu!

The serpent-god tried to twist out of the way of the scorched projectile, but a shotgun blast of glass and asphalt slabs paused him, colliding with his body like a shower of razorblades. While most of the airborne fragments had simply plunged down as the twister collapsed behind Sid, some of the debris had escaped in his wake and retained their dangerous speed. Smaller and lighter than the accidental hybrid, the razor shards struck first, painting Shinryu with thin red lines and pausing him. The numerous slices made the serpent hiss, but his throat soon erupted into a screech as a far larger force hit him. The balled form of Sid had crashed into his side, the little giant spinning like a top and his spines working like saw teeth! The metallic skin of the draconic monster-god was flayed open, and his hot blood sprayed up in thick, black geysers that drenched the former-human in a grisly rain. The screaming titan gave a single great buck of his body, and Sid was launched back like a chewed wad of paper in a rubber band. Shinryu moaned as his blood spilled into the street, a vicious gash carved just behind his left arm, the wound wide and jagged as a kaiju-sized shark bite. Red fell from the wound in heavy lines.

As he staggered to his feet, head still twirling, Sid gave a sympathetic coo at the sight of the ragged patch of gore. "SORRY BOUT THAT. A LITTLE MORE EXCESSIVE THAT I LIKE TO GET, BUT HEY." The hybrid offered a weak, apologetic smirk. "THAT WAS A GOOD TRICK WITH THE TORNADO."

[Perfect Chaos Zero]

(OOC: Sorry if this seems unpolished...been havin' a bit more work than usual lately.)

Struggling to lever itself upright on its - relatively - undamaged right arm, Shinryu snarled as waves of crippling pain radiated up and down its left. Feeling blood pouring in ample amounts from the gruesome wound, the serpent drew a deep breath, craned its neck to focus its line of sight upon the limb and invoked the Stone Glare again--binding its arm with an airtight cast to prevent dangerous blood loss...if only for the time it would take Sid to crack it open again.

"PSST. HEY."

Before Shinryu could even finish jerking its head back in response to the artificial voice, Sid was moving with remarkable speed and dexterity for a beast of its size; it snatched the deity's stone-bound arm, lifted and deftly twirled beneath it while twisting it around and planting a firm foot to its opponent's tail. The dragon tried to squirm its way free, but the biped had a surprising amount of strength to spare and kept its foe firmly in place.

"FIRST AID LATER. FISTICUFFS NOW!" the communicator remarked--and with that, Shinryu's wounded arm was suddenly and strongly wrenched up behind its back in what equated to a hammerlock, the stone encumbrance that stemmed its bleeding now being utilized to inflict all the more excruciating strain on its shoulder. The dragon could not bite back a scream of pain as its muscles twisted and stretched beyond their intended limits, bones threatening at any second to splinter apart under its adversary's unshakable grasp...its right claw clenched, arm shaking, tail beating furiously but fruitlessly against the ground and the horrendous pain...

The serpent finally managed to half twist its body to the side, lash out with its right arm and sink its claws into Sid's thigh--channeling its Lightning magic as it did. It was now the biped's turn to scream as the power coursed through it, struggling - and ultimately failing - to maintain its hammerlock. Once Shinryu felt its opponent's grip release, it pulled its own claw free and fell to the ground in turn, gracelessly rolling a few paces away. Its maligned arm now throbbed from shoulder to fingers...perhaps next time, it would heed Sid's advice.

Panting, hissing against the pain, the dragon managed to push itself up with its right arm enough to "sit" upon its coiled tail, and from there mustered the focus to levitate back toward its adversary, who was slowly but surely regaining its own feet. Tensing its body, Shinryu thrust in a speed-building spiral with the tip of its tail and then punched it upward into the roof of Sid's mouth, the creature gagging and snarling as its sensitive palate was pierced; following this, Shinryu lurched into another whirl and brought the end of its tail whipping around to slam powerfully into the side of Sid's face, sending spittle and blood arcing through the air as it staggered over 90 degrees to the side--and then deflected the biped's own lashing tail with a right claw slash, successfully tearing a bloody furrow out of the singed and weakened hide. To finish the combination attack, the serpent shifted the spiral of its body and whirled itself backwards, lowering toward the ground, and delivered a reverse headbutt with the crown of spines upon its head to the back of Sid's left leg, bringing it to a knee.

Pulling away and slithering upright, Shinryu first focused its power into opening another portal to the rift directly before its kneeling opponent, then tensed and tightened the coil of its body and leapt to the air, now focusing its power into flight to boost its downward momentum as it spread its arms, hooked Sid's with its own - snarling as its left was aggravated yet more - and dragged them both into the void. Again, several seconds passed...and again another gateway from the rift opened above the ground from which the combatants emerged, this time Shinryu releasing its foe before impact, somersaulting and twisting to spread its contact with the ground over the majority of its body while Sid was left to piledrive headfirst.

Coughing against the dust and dirt billowing every which way from both of their collisions with the ground, as the biped's body collapsed front-side up, the dragon now rolled around toward its back and, once it got within range, wriggled its tail beneath its foe's neck. Shinryu then twisted to its own back and hovered upward, bringing Sid to a rough sitting position, looped its tail tight about Sid's throat--and made ready to whirl in a tight spiral so as to dig through the opponent's flesh with the crag-like scales of its skin...

[Fainis the Sadistic Pansexual]

Although his head pounded and spun, his eyes pulsating with pain as if they were a pair of worn drums abused under pumping bear-like hand, Sid was conscious enough to realize that his day was about to get a lot worse. He could fell the sharp, craggy scales of his serpentine foe press into his throat, feel the clench of the monster-god's dense muscles, and he knew what all this meant- trouble. The little monster set his jaws into a determined downward curve.

Luckily, trouble was his specialty.

A broad wave of fire raced up Sid's hunched back- the hybrid's spines lighting up with crackling energies. Shinryu howled as his body was scalded by the heated gasses and energy, black scorch marks thrown across his coils like rogue skid marks from a swerving car. The ex-deity reared back, hands thrown wide, and Sid slammed his feet into the asphalt, shattering it and pushing his body free of Shinryu's elastic grip. Stumbling for a moment as the full extent of the damage to his head caught up with him, Sid clumsily wheeled around and unleashed his signature attack-

The mighty Nova Beam!

A yellow-orange wash of molten powers raked Shinryu with a snaking trail of smoke and flames. The fluid blast curved from Sid's jaws like water from a hose as the fusion of mammalian and reptile DNA teetered and swayed, his head still not clear, but his eyes bright. Shinryu screeched under the immense heat and force of the Nova Beam, his jagged coils gouging furrows into the street and his flesh turning into ash wherever the brilliant funnel touched. If the warmth from the creature's charging spines had left burnt tire tracks on his pristine hide, the blast itself has the flaming fireball of the entire, out-of-control vehicle! Thrashing and screaming like a slashed snake, Shinryu vanished behind a wall of smoke and soot that rose from his cratered flesh.

Sid snapped his jaws shut, the flashing of his spines fading. Smoke and sparks trailed from the little brawler's nostrils as his hazel eyes scanned the grey cliff face before him, the brown orbs trying to pierce the slate haze and find his unseen opponent. The former-human's claws twitched. He was uneasy, not knowing where a foe was like this.

A stone-encased tail broke through the particulate fog!

Sid was slammed hard by the rocky tail tip, his short snout thrown to the side with a spiral of blood circling it. Shinryu burst from the smoke as Sid toppled! But the small giant was more stable than the serpent-god have him credit for, and a quick smack of the palm to the ground sent the stout hybrid snapping back to his feet, claws thrown up like broad catcher's mitts! The swinging tail of the ex-god was snatched from the air like a blade caught in a hard gauntlet, Shinryu's assault quickly turned against him. Using the metallic dragon's momentum to ruin his coiled balance, Sid spun of his heels, foe dangling out behind him like an armored banner. He swung the dragon's heavier form high in the air, showcasing his unproportional strength and building speed. Painting a few great red rings in the air with the serpent's gored ribs, the half-human fighter let the god fly loose! Shinryu catapulted away from Sid, screaming the whole way, until his head impacted with a towering building. The thorny skull of the one-time deity carved through the base of the structure, concrete pillars and steel girder breaking across his clenched brow and spiky crown. Bloody skids splattered and teeth and scales bounced through the air as the serpent struck the cemented earth, skull grinding across the ground as his coils beat the building in anger.

The huge building, a skyscraper for the ages, creaked and groaned, voicing its distress. The great structure had been pulled on by the whirlwind, weakened by the various blasts and explosions, and now was directly attacked, its lower portions ravaged. It would not take much more to bring it down, and this inspired Sid, the scorched hybrid's eyes narrowed on the tower's tapered top. Raising his clenched hand high, the little monster aligned his voice box with about the center of the structure. A ziiiii-IIP! rang out, a small streak of smoke jumping from the rectangular device on the wrist of the monster to one of the window on the building. A small, hard-tipped missile had entered the structure. All but the thrashing Shinryu was silent for a moment, then-

BOOM!

The midsection of the skyscraper erupted, flames blossoming from its interior like fiery petals. It's upper half dropping down like a swinging hammer and its damaged lower half simply crumbling, the whole of the building rained down, threatening to crush Shinryu...

[Perfect Chaos Zero]

Hearing the blast and feeling the shockwave from the direction of the building it had just collided with, Shinryu managed to muscle itself over onto its back to see the towering superstructure now falling directly toward it. With not enough time to muster its flight or dimension-rending magic, the dragon could only resort to reflexively bracing its stone-girded tail and left arm between itself and the collapsing skyscraper, and gritting its remaining teeth.

Suffice it to say, it didn't go well: Shinryu's scales cracked and broke almost as glass under the titanic impact, its flesh and innards quite gruelingly compressed between skyscraper and street, and even its durable magical stone castings fractured alarmingly. The serpent coughed all but a scrap of breath from its body, and had no easier a time gasping it back as the structure crumbled and collapsed under the impact of its own fall, burying it under thousands of tons of glass and stone and steel.

Lifting a hand to wave the spreading dust and smoke away from its snout, Sid stood wary of whatever was to come next...the seconds ticked by with only the odd shifting of loose rubble...this couldn't be the end, could it?

No, it couldn't. And no, it wouldn't.

Strong and howling winds began to swell - more slowly than before, but every bit as inexorably - whirling together into an all too distinct funnel form that swallowed and spun up the enormous pile of debris and destroyed earth. Sid growled and almost instinctively backed away from the rising winds, almost expecting the Maelstrom to start moving after it...its eyes turned upward, trying to keep track of the innumerable hunks of debris great and small that might at any second become a hail of deadly fast projectiles...one piece in particular looked like it was snaking its way closer--

!

Sid made ready to attack again, but Shinryu - half falling and half flying now - was upon it too quickly; the dragon forged between its hands another hole to the rift as it flew, spreading it wide and then cinching it tight as it came to an abrupt stop--directly over its foe's midsection. The portal's edge gashed through skin and muscle, spilling rills of blood over Sid's stamping legs and lashing tail.

Shinryu now lifted back to the air, dragging its captive with it...and having a notably easier time than usual given that roughly half the opponent's mass was missing from this dimension. At a sufficient height, with the Maelstrom still raging before them, the former deity hefted upwards, spread its claws wide and relinquished Sid from the portal, then immediately whipped into a speed-building arc and with all its strength smashed its stone-girded tail into its foe's bleeding midsection; the weakened casting now completely crushed apart, scattered shards imbedding themselves in Sid's flesh. Even worse for it, the powerful blow sent it hurtling through the air--directly into the roaring Maelstrom.

Shinryu hovered now to the ground, giving itself a moment to catch its breath while the tornado ran its own destructive course. After a minute's time, the furious winds began to fade, the chunks of rubble scattering in all directions as gravity and inertia retook them. Dodging a few of the errant projectiles, the serpent made its way toward where Sid now lay, ever more battered, bruised and bloodied. The biped coughed and groaned in pain, but still determinedly set about picking itself back up. Before it could raise its head to spot its adversary, Shinryu did so for it--taking it by its horned snout, forcing its jaws open with both hands and invoking once again the Stone Glare, this time to line the inside of Sid's mouth in a thinner, less resilient layer of rock. The beast coughed and grunted - it could still breathe - and the dragon now attempted to slam its immobilized jaws shut, to shatter the stone and rupture its sensitive maw top to bottom...

[Fainis the Sadistic Pansexual]

Through the forcing of Shinryu's jagged coils, the petrified maw of Sid slammed shut with a crunch! The human hybrid whimpered in pain as red lines fell from his closed mouth, jagged shards of stone skewered deep into the pink tissue of his mouth. But even as the furry, scaly thing moaned and leaked blood from his muzzle, his eyes lit up, curved spines following in suit. Golden eyes leaping wide in recognition, the dragon god unwound his craggy coils and sprung away, trying to escape what he knew was to come. The Nova Beam was not a weapon that required excessive charge time though, and it burst out of Sid's mouth and caught the serpent before he fled into the sky! The metallic hide of the ex-deity burned as the hot gasses and flames washed over it, like the world's broadest blowtorch. Streaks of blood split the cloud of smoke that formed from Shinryu's smoldering flesh, and the newly mortal creature howled with a pain that came not from fire in his voice.

The stone fragments that pierced Sid's maw were being launched out!

Screaming and thrashing his lengthy body through the heavens, Shinryu stirred the sky like a great Asian lung in a fit, the air and clouds flowing behind his outraged form. Harsh red slices painted themselves across the divine skin of the beast in droves, the lines falling like a tally of Shinryu's injuries. Sid chased the airborne serpent into the sky, his stout, compact form launching itself up the side of a building. Although the structure teetered and groaned, slashing its tapered tip at the sky, it was a UCA construct and Sid was an unusually small monster. It would support his weight long enough.

Scrambling up the tower, dexterous fingers and toes shattering and hooking through glass windows, Sid scaled the building and pounced from its top!

Outstretching one arm and placing all his mass behind a clenched fist, Sid soared up, his 19,000 tons floating as if he were born with wings, and his balled hand smashed into Shinryu's midsection like a flat-faced hammer! The flying dragon doubled over, his coils batting into each other. Red spiraled down to the earth, blood forced from the serpent's wounds by the powerful blow. Sid wasn't sure if the former-god's biology was anything like an Earth creature's but-by the way that the silvery snake wheezed and pushed his tongue from his mouth, the once human being would chance a guess that he'd managed to strike the diaphragm, winding the beast instantly.

Fist falling away from the dragon's battered scales, Sid plunged back down towards the city streets, his feet stretching wide to break his fall and his tail swinging down to slap the ground. But as the bloodied fist dropped to the chimera's side, his other forearm rose! The voice box strapped to the hero's wrist shot two strands of metal light suddenly, and Shinryu felt twin pricks in his underbelly. With a smirk, Sid watched the wires come to life and a million vots surge into the dragon! The crowned head of the serpent flew up, neck muscles pulled taunt. The ex-deity's jaws snapped shut on his own tongue as he was fried by the kaiju-sized taser, dark blood welling from between the pink tissue and thick fangs. His limbs clutched up and his sinuous length contorted into stiff loops. The dragon's eyes went wide as he realized he would fly no more, and the pained creature began falling from the sky.

Heels breaking the city cement, Sid let out a huge whoop and threw up his fist again, the clenched claws rocketing to meet the falling, writhing form of the divine-blooded beast...

[Perfect Chaos Zero]

Still winded from Sid's last vicious blow to the belly - and having no easier time regaining its breath as its muscles contracted beyond its will from the subsequent electrical shock, to say nothing of the immense pain that seemed to be felt even in the remains of its singed and splintered scales - Shinryu was now at the mercy of both gravity and its adversary...and mercy it would receive not from either one. A sudden and powerful blast of pain radiated again from its abdomen, even above the lingering effect of the electrical attack it had just suffered, compounded by the whiplash of its tail and torso as the ends of its body flopped and bounced harshly. The once-divine dragon coughed and gasped weakly, still twitching as it slumped from Sid's upraised fist to the pavement below.

Blood and spittle dribbled from its open-hanging mouth, and the fractured stone binding of its left arm was now oozing dark red as well...but after several seconds, as the biped huffed and started to tap its communicator to remind its foe that the fight wasn't over, the serpent hocked and spit a trail of crimson across the ground, managing to prop itself up on its right arm and slowly turning its head to face its adversary. Its hand raised, talons beginning once again to spark and flicker with its own electrical energy...Sid reactively lowered into a half crouch, preparing to dodge at the slightest hint of motion that might telegraph the dragon's attempt to cast its deadly bolt--

--and remembered too late that Shinryu could also conduct the Lightning magic through mere touch, as happened once again when the serpent's tail lashed itself about Sid's leg. And while the roaring former human was incapacitated by the surge of energy, the former deity again tightened and ground the coil of its tail into the spasming leg, carving into the flesh with the remains of its jagged scales.

After a moment of this, the dragon tightened its hold and refocused its power to hover back into the air, bringing its foe with it...it was no easy effort, and Sid's ceaseless thrashing made it ever harder, but Shinryu at last reached a sufficient height of close to 250 meters, proceeding to drop its struggling opponent from the air. The creature wasted little time upending itself to land on its feet, thinking perhaps that Shinryu had lost its grip due to exhaustion...and then perhaps wishing its grip had been kept instead as it found itself falling into another hastily opened portal to the rift.

The dragon searched quickly about and identified another skyscraper, this one about twice as tall as it was long and wide enough to contain either combatant inside if hollowed...perfect. Concentrating again, Shinryu now forged Sid's exit point from the rift--directly inside the superstructure near ground level. Glass and dust exploded out from floor after floor as the hybrid's momentum from its fall, maintained but redirected through the interdimensional space, now drove it upward through the skyscraper's interior, smashing tons of metal and masonry asunder with its bruised and bloodied body.

As this took place, Shinryu flew toward the base of the structure, whirled and slapped the length of its tail across the nigh-crippled foundation, starting it to topple. And as Sid neared both the roof of the eviscerated skyscraper and the apex of its inverted fall, the deity soared to the top of the building from the direction opposite which it was set to collapse, placed its weight against the husk of the structure and pushed, to hasten the impact of both the building and the creature caught within against the ground below...

[Fainis the Sadistic Pansexual]

Bruised and skewered by a hundreds twisted shards of shrapnel, Sid could only groan painfully as the looming shadow of the building cast black ichor across his body, like a vision of the bloody future. The injured creature looked up at the toppled structure entered the last portion of its plunge, its broken tip dropping towards his head like a slate missile. Anger flashed in the human hybrid's eyes as he saw the coils of Shinryu spilling out from around the falling structure's edges. His spiked back lit up to match his narrowed eyes, pulses of fiery energy soaring up the curved dorsal plates of the former hominid as he rose to his feet defiantly. Just before the shattered point of the building crashed into his rising head, the little giant opened his tusked jaws and unleashed a raging Nova Beam! The yellow-orange blast of power carved through concrete and glass like it was paper. Shinryu suddenly felt his flesh burn and spit smoke, his craggy body rearing with a fiery gout. Black splotches were scorched into his metallic hide as the broad ray broke through the building in scattered patches, thin strips of its wrath slashing through the sky. With a loud screech, the god-blooded dragon rose up and sailed away, smoke and fire trailing behind him.

The building collapsed as the majestic form of Shinryu lifted away, the ruined structure collapsing in on Sid like a cave in above the surface. The stout hybrid howled as he was buried under a mountain of rubble and fire. A vast, mushroom-shaped cloud of dust and smoke billowed into the air, like an enormous signal spelling out a message to Shinryu, who looped his serpentine body around and circled overhead, thorny skull carving through the tall cloud- crushed hero, right here.

Eyes flashing, the monster-god unleashed an explosive trail of fission into the carnage below!

The heaped remains of the structure burst into geysers of fire. Smoke and rubble arced high into the air. Shinryu, eye alight with cosmic fury, raked his huge column of thermal might across the pile of rubble and glass, annihilating every inch of it.

Shinryu would not rest until he had destroyed his foe and proven himself as a warrior!

As the smoke and flames cleared, the lengthy dragon spiraled down like an angel of death, his golden eyes focused on one thing- not a charred corpse, but a hole. A broad tunnel bored straight down into the earth. Shinryu's eyes narrowed. And escape route. Sweeping low over the ground, the deity-given-flesh scanned the urban landscape for his mobile enemy, his lustrous orbs swinging over the building tops and street corners alike. A sudden cracking sound- the shattering of asphalt and earth- caught the dragon's ear, and he tried to ignite his claws with electricity so that he could counter any assault by the once human creature.

Before the flying one's talons could conduct their angry lightning, Sid erupted from the ground beneath the god and clasped him with hard claws!

Shinryu wailed as he was dragged from the sky, his long body slamming into the ground and cratering its surface. The serpent-god did not stop there though. No, he was pulled lower, into the ground! The god screamed in pain and anger as Sid's curled talons sliced into the crags of his flesh, hot blood spraying from his segmented form. The metallic beast tried to stop its subterranean descent, his claws and fangs digging into the paved earth, but he wes already too out of his element. With a sharp kick to the side of the tunnel Shinryu half-hung out of, the former human collapsed the broad burrow! The divine thing twisted his spine with a long shriek as his body was crushed between two walls of unforgiving earth, trapping him. Bursting from the street besides the thrashing head of the crowned beast, Sid raised a foot high and prepared to stomp on his spiked skull, a smirk warping his short jaws...