I was a bit surprised when, as the blast cleared, Tater appeared mostly unharmed, with nothing but a few bruises to show from that massive explosion, but it wasn't outside the bounds of my expectations.
I hadn't created the Titan Bomb technique for battle. It was big and easy to charge up, but it wasn't particularly powerful or efficient. What it gained in ease of use and flash, it lost in speed and power. Not that it was the slowest thing in the world, but it wasn't a high-end technique like Regalia, or the Kamehameha.
I'd honestly just created it to help Lynn with her training. A lazy, single-second-of-charging Titan Bomb was enough to majorly disorient and even fairly wound the weaker Saiyan woman. Forcing her to dodge several dozen of them at once was just enough pressure to make her try her best, knowing that she'd be done for a day or two if she failed.
Still, for Tater to weather the blast with nothing but a handful of bruises?
I knew that the guy had more raw power than Lynn, but it wasn't a particularly big gap, and her ki control being in an entire other league from his should've done quite a bit to close it. That blast should've done deeper damage to the guy than just a few bruises, even if he had managed to put up a decent defense before it hit.
No, something was wrong there.
But it wouldn't make Tater stronger than me.
Tater didn't give me the time to ask what trick he'd used to weather my Titan Bomb. Instead, he thrust his hands out in front of himself and sent a quick, but impressively powerful, formless blast of energy in my direction. "Catapult Shot!"
"Horizon Discus." Stealing one of Lynn's original moves, two of my fingers sliced through the air. Immediately, a small, flat and circular energy blast appeared at the tip of my fingers, slicing through the air towards Tater's much larger Catapult Shot.
When Lynn had originally created this move, essentially to be a more controllable version of her Horizon Heel Cutter technique, I'd immediately thought of Krillin's future Destructo-disc move, but it was different. Easier to make, smaller, and had far less cutting power. In fact, the edges of these blasts were more-or-less blunt, but the shot itself moved quick enough that it didn't particularly matter, and they could be made almost as quickly and easily as a normal energy blast, if you got the technique down well enough.
When the two energy attacks met, my Horizon Discus cut right through Tater's Catapult Shot and kept going.
In response, Tater blew it away with a massive barrage of energy blasts, all aimed more-or-less at me.
I went into a flurry of motion, sending Horizon Disks and normal energy blasts at Tater without hesitation, holding back far less than I'd been holding back before. From the ground, it probably looked like a grand display of fireworks, but for Tater and I, it was a struggle for superiority via quantity and quality.
But, unfortunately for the larger Saiyan, I was superior in both aspects.
Due to the fact that I needed a long, precise swiping movement to make my Horizon Discuses, our numbers were more-or-less even, but each and every one of my energy blasts were stronger than his. My Horizon Discuses could blow straight through two or three of Tater's shots before exploding.
Before long, Tater's rhythm was broken by one of my energy blasts slamming into his forearm.
But a moment before it happened, I saw his eyes go wide.
Then, his form exploded into smoke.
What happened after that honestly felt like it was happening in frames, in my mind.
One moment, Tater's entire figure was obscured by smoke, but, paying close attention to him, I could sense something strange going on with his power level.
The next 'frame', Tater's energy had somehow both spiked and dropped simultaneously.
What that meant, in practice, was that his power level had massively spiked. In fact, it'd jumped up to something actually comparable to mine. Maybe a bit higher, even. But his physical body had suddenly vanished from where it was, having dropped under the field of exploding energy blasts. In an instant, he was halfway across the battlefield and about a football field or so closer to the ground.
I barely had time to cross my arms and put up a defense before a gigantic fist filled with an incredible amount of ki slammed right into the center of my body, catapulting me higher and higher into the sky.
When my momentum finally stopped, I was in an entirely different part of the Earth's atmosphere. Oxygen was more than thin, it was essentially nonexistent, save for the bits still stuck inside of my aura, keeping my breathing steady as I hung in the sky for a second, the lessened gravity taking longer than normal to reestablish its grip on me.
I didn't help it. I could sense Tater's power level below, fluctuating like bad lighting as it slowly stabilized back to its original level. He wasn't going to follow me, because he knew that I couldn't stay up here forever. Only for around twenty minutes or so, before my oxygen runs dry.
But the sight was beautiful. I could see the earth's atmosphere gradually dissipating into nothing as the height forces it to loosen its hold. I was so close to the moon that it felt like I could literally reach out and touch it, my Oozaru form raging as I found myself being forced to tamp it down manually. Currently, I was absorbing more Blutz energy than I'd get from a true full moon.
But, like Tater, I was capable of controlling it. It hummed beneath my skin like an F1 sports car.
I shook my arm, examining it for a moment. The bone wasn't broken, but I'd have some pretty serious bruises in the morning. Tater'd broken straight through my full defenses like a karate practitioner with a wooden board. I hadn't held back my ki when I'd tried to protect myself, but I'd still been hurt.
Still, I wasn't concerned. Even though he'd learned to use Blutz Energy to empower himself without the ape, Ikari Mode was highly unstable, something that even Pepper had only just barely begun to brush her fingers against. Unless it was tamped down, refined into SSJP, it wouldn't be nearly enough to put Tater on equal footing with me.
But it might be enough to make this an interesting fight.
My lips broke out into a feral grin as my head dipped down towards the ground below, gravity finally beginning to reestablish its hold on me.