Pagoma vs Syric (Winner) [Bounty Battle] Ref: Shell

Pagoma waited briefly outside until the dust began to settle, leaving behind empty streets free of any pedestrians. Deciding he had given Syric enough time and he still wasn't outside, Pagoma decided to back into the bar.

"Maybe he's scared," Pagoma reflected to himself as he pulled the door open and charged in, making a mess of the tavern in a matter of seconds. Pagoma noticed that Syric's appearance had changed and a faint blue and golden shimmer seemed to be present around him. Pagoma had never fought a Celestial before and was ignorant if they were able to transform, but Pagoma was certain that Syric's power was significantly more than when he had stepped out of the bar. 

"This is going to be fun," Pagoma said as his enemy dodged his first attack, making a comment about his Dragon Tail Axe. He could sense that their power level's were quite close to one another and expected it to be a good fight. A good fight, that he planned on winning.

After Pagoma's sword hit its mark, just as the Changeling had hoped, a trail of blood leaked out of Syric's chest and down his chest plate. Pagoma had hoped the Apollyon sword was as strong and mighty as he had been told, but it seemed like it was just a very sharp sword without anything too remarkable about it. The Changeling was also blissfully unaware of just how powerful his Dragon Tail Axe was compared to most weapons, which caught even Syric's attention. Perhaps this was why he felt surprised by the Apollyon not ending the fight with just a couple of blows.

Pagoma had noticed Syric's two blades he bore, two knives with different shades to each of them. Changing to offense, Syric came after Pagoma with them slashing away at the Changeling with one in each hand. Pagoma's arms were subjected to the sharp blades of each of the daggers, the blue one slashing his left shoulder while the purple one slashed the outside his right bicep. The pain of the blades cut deep, but to a certain extent Pagoma enjoyed the pains that came with battle. It reminded him of all the enemies he had killed or horribly maimed. But when Pagoma looked down at his left shoulder, he noticed that the blue blade had frozen part of his shoulder so stiff that he could hardly move it. When Syric struck a second time, Pagoma only just had time to move the blades of his Dragon Tail Axe in front of him, pushing away each of Syric's blades by combating them with his own.

Syric came slashing for Pagoma's arms again, perhaps his strategy being to disable Pagoma's arm movements so that he couldn't fight. But Pagoma pushed off the ground hard while he flung his body backwards, only just avoiding the reach of Syric's daggers as he floated in the air. Syric jumped up after Pagoma though, and turned the blades of his daggers towards the Changeling's face next. Pagoma held out a palm towards the Celestial and let loose of an icy blast of energy, intended to freeze his target as well as stopping his attack.

Looking out at his opponent who was hopefully struggling to break loose from his Ice Blast, Pagoma landed on the ground near Syric and let loose of two blasts of Energy at a close range. They weren't the kind of blasts intended to kill an opponent but would none the less serve their purpose if they met Syric while he was trapped in ice. Whether Pagoma hit his target or not, the bar that Syric and he were inside was subject to the destructive power of his attack.

"...I don't even know your name!" Syric blurted out towards Pagoma. "That isn't cool dude!"

"Don't worry about my name..." Pagoma replied with a smirk. "...You won't be alive long enough to use it."

Turning back to the Apollyon, Pagoma charged towards Syric and slashed downwards with a swift and mighty strike, this time trying to make contact with his shoulder and cut down into the Celestial's chest at a slight angle. Using the momentum to his advantage, Pagoma spun around one full rotation and held his sword outward, trying to slice towards Syric's belly, to disembowel him. Pagoma then kicked off the ground once more, hovering for just a short moment while he looked down at his opponent. Pagoma held his sword away with his left hand while curling his right hand into a fist. Using a sort of superman pose, Pagoma flung himself in a downward flurry that made him appear so fast he was little more than a black and silver blur, leading the charge with his right fist. If the Changeling made contact with his target, Syric would be subjected to an incredibly powerful punch right in the center of his chest, where Pagoma had already made one nice hole with his blade. If Syric managed to avoid Pagoma's attack, one of the exterior walls of the bar they were fighting in would have a nice Changeling-sized hole in it as Pagoma would find himself outside of it.

---

Pagoma's refusal to give his name seemed to at the very least annoy Syric. This was Pagoma's intention. Anything he could do to take his opponent's focus off of the battle. The Celestial started guessing (badly) at Pagoma's name. Pagoma's attacks with his swords were evaded by Syric rather impressively. He used one dagger to block Pagoma's attacks while attacking Pagoma with the other. Pagoma felt blood dripping down his leg and chest as Syric's blades hit their intended marks. Pagoma flew through the exterior of the bar as his Dragon Dive hit nothing but air and wood, which flew all over outside the bar. Pagoma quickly stood up and as Syric flew after him with his daggers slashing towards his face, Pagoma quickly dodged out of the way with a quick show of speed.

"That was close" Pagoma said. "Can't have you messing up this pretty face now, can I?" Pagoma pointed towards himself as he said it.

"Icy?" Syric guessed at Pagoma's name again, practically ignoring him.

Syric charged forward with two more slashes at Pagoma, this time making contact once more with Pagoma's chest and side. The daggers lightly pierced his heavy armor, letting a trickle of Pagoma's purple blood shoot out from it briefly as though it were a high pressure pipe that just got a pinhole pierced in it.

"Maybe Snow?" Syric was playing with Pagoma now and the Changeling didn't like it.

"Enough!" Pagoma shouted, tired of the dumb games the Celestial was playing. He was toying with Pagoma and not taking the fight seriously. At least it seemed that way to Pagoma.

Pagoma charged a beam of energy between his hands for a moment before launching it forward towards Syric. This was no ordinary energy blast, but a display of Pagoma's rage and fury mixed together. Pagoma would shoot the beam just past Syric, hopefully giving him a false sense of security that Pagoma's attack had missed. Then, Pagoma would cause the beam to do a complete 180 turnaround in an attempt to strike Syric from the back. If that missed, Pagoma would guide the beam to chase Syric around until hopefully Pagoma made contact.

Pagoma held out a hand towards the Celestial and clasped his fingers tightly into a palm. As he did, the air around Syric began to get heavier as a sudden intense wave of pressure collapsed in on Pagoma's enemy from all angles, hopefully crushing Syric with the force of Pagoma's attack. 

Pagoma was on a roll and didn't wish to stop there. His arm still outstretched from his last attack, he formed a finger and pointed straight for Syric's chest, the mark given to the Celestial by the Apollyon, acting as Pagoma's target. The Changeling shot a quick, thin blast of energy from the tip of his finger.

"It's not all about ice, you know," Pagoma said with a smirk. 

Pagoma ran towards Syric and squatted down in a half kneeling position, looking up at him. Having already inhaled as he was moving, he let out a large breath very quickly that infused itself with fire the moment it left Pagoma's mouth. The Changeling hoped that Syric would still be within arm's reach and feel the brunt of Pagoma's burning attack.

---

Pagoma's opponent made another wise crack trying to guess at his name but the Changeling wasn't going to give in. 

"Focus," Pagoma would say to himself under his breath.

Syric flung his arm forward with a blast of icy energy, but Pagoma having focused his attention, flung his arm himself to deflect the attack into the air behind him. A few moments later he heard it crashing to the ground somewhere in the distance, gravity returning it to the surface of Juno. But Syric was already a step ahead of Pagoma with his next attack, digging his right hand's dagger into Pagoma's side. Pagoma bit his lip to keep a yelp from escaping. Syric kept mocking Pagoma as he brought the dagger in his left hand towards Pagoma's stomach. The blade pierced Pagoma's chest armor with its tip, causing it to be punctured. Purple blood dripped outside of Pagoma's armor and ran down to his waist. 

"Is there a button that shuts you up?" Pagoma asked Syric, over his antics. With Syric still at close range from the use of his blades, Pagoma swung around his tail with his Dragon Tail Axe attached, trying to at the very least put some space between them if not give Syric a nice gash to go with it. Pagoma then arched his arm backward and wrapped a thin strand of energy around two of his fingers. Quickly moving from Syric's field of vision to be right behind him instead, Pagoma then flung his elbow horizontally, hoping to cut Syric at the waist, splitting him into two. Whether Pagoma's attack was successful or not, the surrounding buildings including the bar received a nice horizontal gash in them, for quite some distance.

Pagoma didn't hesitate before following up his last attack with another, once more pointing his finger towards Syric before letting loose of a thin, moderately powered blast of energy. 

Pagoma was temporarily distracted in the battle by something he hadn't been expecting. Somehow, his pet Pengling had gotten out of his bath in Pagoma's starship. He ran towards Pagoma, looking for a pat on the head or some cuddles.

"Not now..." Pagoma said through gritted teeth, as the Pengling approached. But that was when Pagoma remembered how fierce the Pengwings were back on Planet Frieza. He picked up his pet Pengling as it approached and chunked it towards his opponent, watching as the ferocious pet slashed away at Syric's face.

---

As Pagoma swung his Dragon Tail Axe around, he felt himself becoming encased in ice. The same attack that Pagoma had used on Syric a couple of minutes prior had now been used against him. Pagoma wondered if the Celestial always knew the attack or if he had one of those special abilities to mimic the attacks of others. Either way, Pagoma was stuck and had to break out of the ice. Meanwhile, Pagoma's Death Wave had been absorbed by Syric and converted into a fiery shield that wrapped around him. Yet another trick that Pagoma was also trained how to use. 

After Pagoma's pet Pengling did his worst against Syric and scuttered away, Syric generated a form of electric energy resembling a net and began to throw it towards Pagoma. Reacting instinctively, Pagoma held up his right hand where a shiny ring glowed brightly. Syric's attack was captured inside the power of Pagoma's ring and then rebounded back in the direction of the Celestial. 

Syric seemed prepared for some form of defense and was already in the midst of launching his next attack, a flurry of energy blasts fired at Pagoma. The Changeling did what he could to minimize the damage but was in no place to defend the brunt of the attack. 

"So Frostburn, do you like to burn?" Syric asked Pagoma. The Changeling had apparently been redubbed Frostburn by the Celestial, a name that Pagoma wasn't too fond of but ignored. 

"It might help thaw me out," Pagoma joked with Syric, still feeling the effects of the Icy Blast that he had only just escaped from. Syric breathed fire that surrounded Pagoma, and the Changeling felt its burning sting all over his body. 

Pagoma ran towards Syric with a palm outward in his direction. He let loose a quick blast of energy and nearly point blank range, targeting Syric's face. Pagoma then held out his fingers towards his opponent and closed his hand into a fist. Once again, the air all around Syric seemed to close in on him in a dramatic display of intense gravity, designed to crush Pagoma's opponents by force.

Knowing he only had a second to spare and was burning through energy quicker than he had intended, Pagoma reached into a pocket inside of his chestplate and grabbed a small vial of a purple liquid. He flipped off the cork keeping it closed with his thumb and swiftly did a "bottoms up". Almost at once, Pagoma felt a slight replenishment to his energy, feeling ready to go against whatever Syric would throw at him next.

---

As Pagoma's attacks approached, Syric used another Barrier to guard himself.

"For someone so arrogant, you sure do like to hide behind your Barriers," Pagoma poked at the Celestial. "And against some of my weakest attacks, too... Just wait until I really going."

"Ok Frostburn, I used this attack to win my last fight. You better be scared!” Syric warned Pagoma, but the Pagoma had not yet been shown a reason to fear his enemy. 

"Your pathetic ball of fire didn't even thaw me out," Pagoma said, showing Syric his arm that was still partially frozen around the elbow. "Why would I be scared?"

Syric held a sword generated from energy and Pagoma immediately thought of Ur'Alcyonis. The Demon had shown Pagoma the attack a time or two and did it much more proficiently. As the Celestial approached, Pagoma held up a hand to his face, fake yawning as Syric made his first slash towards the Changeling's face. Pagoma held up his Apollyon. He had placed a small device on the hilt that he had picked up on Mortoseth. As Syric's energized blade came towards Pagoma, the device quickly expanded into the cap of a large mushroom, causing Syric's sword to bounce off. This gave Pagoma a chance to get a better feel for Syric's Ki Sword. Pagoma generated a thin, invisible barrier around himself that generated an energy exactly 180 degrees out of phase with the Ki Sword. This made it so that when Syric tried to swipe his blade across Pagoma a couple more times, his blade turned into thin air just before it would have otherwise crashed into the Changeling. 

”When are we going to take this seriously?" Syric asked Pagoma. "If this is all you got, then you are going to have 1 long recovery ahead of you.”

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours," Pagoma said. He had been operating somewhere around 60% of his full power and keeping up with Syric well. But any seasoned fighter would know that the Celestial was holding back. Pagoma wasn't going to show his full power until he has certain that Syric was doing the same.

---

Syric made another wise crack about "putting out," a thought that made Pagoma practically gag. But something did seem a bit different about Syric. Pagoma could feel his power ramping up as if he was about to prepare a Ki-heavy technique. Pagoma whispered to himself to "Stay on your toes" as he watched Syric to see what he would do next. 

Syric charged forward with the early stages of an energy attack, glowing in one hand. Pagoma could feel the immense amount of power inside of Syric's energy technique and took to the sky. He quickly flew around a few different directions at random, hoping to throw off Syric's aim. When Pagoma saw that the orb of energy was released, he focused his mind on moving as quickly as possible, and with a sudden surge in speed as he flew, Pagoma dove out of the way of Syric's blast. As Syric struck a pose on the ground, the ball of energy exploded in the air, with Pagoma just outside of its blast radius. The Changeling continued to quickly fly away from its epicenter, before he landed on the ground a short distance away from an onlooking Syric.

"Nice one," Pagoma said somewhat genuinely. "Almost got me..."

Syric didn't seem to even be paying attention to whether or not Pagoma was hit by the attack, and for a moment Pagoma regretted that he hadn't noticed sooner and used the Celestial's lack of focus against him. 

Syric began to multiply and Pagoma immediately recognized the attack at work... A form of the Deca or Tri Form technique. Granted, Pagoma had never seen an opponent split so many times before. When Pagoma had seen the attack used in the past, his opponent usually split into two or three versions of themselves. Syric had split into what looked like more than one hundred copies of himself, and the quantity was growing exponentially. 

"Well," Pagoma said with what sounded almost like disappointment in his voice. "...Too bad each time a form splits it grows weaker. I bet these copies are pretty puny..."

Pagoma started to raise one hand to begin blasting a few of the closer copies of Syric, but as he did, dozens of vine-like appendages sprung up out of the ground and grabbed Pagoma, keeping him in place. 

"What the...?" Pagoma started, looking as the black restraints gripped him from enough angles that he was utterly frozen in place. "Is Syric some kind of shaman or something?"

As Pagoma was stuck in place, Syric seemed to be enjoying the moment rather than attacking right away, continuing to multiply his quantity like a virus in a host. He would begin to sing a distracting and annoying song that was oddly reminiscent of a children's nursery rhyme. Hearing it in Syric's voice more than a thousand times over made Pagoma's skin crawl. Looking up, Pagoma's vantage was like being inside of a tornado. Only, instead of deadly winds and dust circling around him, Pagoma saw what must have been practically a million copies of Syric swirling around.

"How?" Pagoma said to himself.

That was when instead of just Syric dancing around Pagoma, he was joined by various allies and enemies from Pagoma's past and present. First, Pagoma saw his parents and his most trusted ally, Voithos. Seeing them look at Pagoma while laughing at him was a bit difficult for the Changeling to watch. 

"Oh no..." Pagoma said to himself. "I must have been poisoned and now I'm hallucinating." Pagoma figured that one of Syric's blades must have had poison on its tip. Seeing Syric swirl around like that must have set something off in his brain and his own hallucinations were causing him to see friends and family. But then, Pagoma's visions expanded to past enemies and allies as well... Lord Frost, Frieza, Broly, Monster Carrot, Aria, Ur'Alcyonis...

"Wait," Pagoma said to himself. Seeing Ur'Alcyonis smiling and laughing jolted something in his psyche. Seeing the primordial acting foolish while singing a nursery rhyme was a bit comical. It didn't seem like something that Pagoma would have ever thought up on his own. 

"This isn't real," Pagoma quietly reflected to himself. Pagoma saw the many copies of Syric at face value, thought the vines were just a Celestial technique unfamiliar to Pagoma, and assumed the visions he was seeing were the beginning symptoms of a poison running through his veins.

Pagoma felt foolish for not seeing it sooner. He had been subjected to the Nightmare technique several times before. To Syric's credit, his vision was very realistic. But Pagoma knew what he needed to do... Take control of his mind back. Pagoma focused his energy as he looked down and closed his eyes. He repeated to himself a few more times "This isn't real. This isn't real."

Pagoma felt the many copies of Syric floating around him. It was almost as if Syric were actually there and had his own energy signature. Or at least that was how it felt to Pagoma. In reality, this was his mind's way of fighting back against Syric. Even with his eyes closed, Pagoma could see the many forms of Syric flying around him. While his eyes were closed, each of them had a bright yellow tint to them, except for one that was red.

"There!" Pagoma said to himself. He kicked off of the ground as the tendrils dissolved away, dropping back into the sand. The Changeling flew up the tube that Syric had mentally generated with his copies of himself, until he sensed where he felt the real Syric to be. Once reaching just above the current height, Pagoma dove down towards what Pagoma thought was the "real" Syric in a flurry of a black aura, his whole body covered in dark energy. Pagoma didn't realize what he felt was the real Syric was really just his brain's way of showing Pagoma his escape from Syric's nightmare. It was his mind's way of saying "here is the intruder, attack here!"

Pagoma had broken free of Syric's mental trap, blocking the Celestial's nightmarish vision as best as he could once he realized what it was. It was still quite the shock to Pagoma's system though. Jumping back into the driver's seat of his own body, Pagoma found himself actually floating a bit above Syric, and charging down with dangerous speed and both of his hands in front of him. It seemed his actions in his mind had been replicated in the physical form. After finishing the attack, Pagoma stepped a few paces away from Syric and felt a sudden, great strain on his body. It felt like he had severe food poisoning and a terrible migraine. Pagoma threw up a bit on the ground, before rubbing the back of his hand over his mouth.

Pagoma probably listened to a wise crack or laugh from Syric, but Pagoma wasn't willing to let him get too much enjoyment out of him. Only a short distance away from Syric, Pagoma held up both hands and began to fire a flurry of energy blasts at Syric, one after the other. Hoping the large amount of them would overwhelm Syric, Pagoma didn't stop there. Not immediately seeing Syric through the dust, he challenged his sensing abilities to find Syric's precise location.

"There you are," Pagoma said as he made a visual loop around the silhouette of Syric's body. Pagoma formed an orb a little bit larger than Syric's size around where the Changeling last saw him standing. Hoping that Syric was inside as he had planned, Pagoma rose the Imprisonment Ball into the air before quickly dropping his finger to the ground. As a result, the floating orb crashed into the ground and caused a fiery explosion to erupt with a cloud of sand and dust.

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