Pale green light wreathed Tater's figure as he hovered high above the water opposite Pepper.
"You get your fight, then you forgive me, right, Pep?" I reminded the girl of our deal, hovering a safe distance away, near Lynn and Tommy, who'd also flown out to watch the battle between Tater and Pepper.
Essentially, arranging this fight was my way of apologizing to Pepper for not letting her fight in the World Martial Arts tournament. Listening to half-finished sentence fragments that always end in 'Hmph!' was definitely starting to get on my nerves.
"Yup!" I gave a mental fist pump.
It rather surprised me to see Tater transforming to prepare for the fight. Being able to hold the form for a full minute or two without being actively moving, pushing one's limits was rather impressive this early on. After all, it'd only been two weeks since we dealt with Gero.
Was my talent with holding the form just naturally bad, or was Tater's just naturally good?
At least it couldn't be denied that I had an affinity for the transformation aspect, at least.
"Alright, we're high enough that your energy won't affect the planet. If you end up doing so, I'll deal with it, so you won't have to worry. Have at it, you two."
The two Saiyans didn't need any more encouragement. Instantly, Tater's form blurred as he shot toward Pepper like a bullet.
Knowing how dangerous Pepper was, Tater wasn't holding back. And with his power being around five times higher than hers in that form, that placed the girl at a pretty massive disadvantage from the get-go.
But Pepper's control was probably better than mine in some areas, and her combat instincts were unparalleled. She reacted just as decisively as Tater did.
BOOM!
I was probably the only one who could've avoided what Pepper did. Tater shot towards her in order to get in close, where he had the advantage, but that was exactly what Pepper couldn't allow.
So, she did three things simultaneously, all in a single instant.
She created a foothold, used the afterimage technique, and used the Hyper-Motion Technique. With how fast everything happened, her afterimage even managed to fool Tater for the moment. He flew up to where he thought she was, launched a bone-crushing kick…
And Pepper's foothold exploded in his face as he passed through the afterimage. I doubted that it actually hurt him, but it definitely disoriented the guy.
And Pepper's terrifying combat instincts would never allow an opening like that to go unpunished.
"Blitz Spear!" Like Zeus throwing a bolt of lightning, Pepper's right hand reared back, and a giant spear of energy gathered, which she flung right at Tater's back, while he was still a bit confused from the explosion. Without my trained awareness or Pepper's crazy instincts, the big lug didn't have the time to react at all, beyond a small flaring of his energy at the last second in response to the danger.
The Blitz Spear slammed straight into the small of his back, causing Tater to cough from the shock of the blow.
"I thought you were supposed to be stronger than that, now that you're some big, strong Super Saiyan now!?" Pepper taunted with a laugh as she raised her palms in front of her and began gathering her energy. "Shock Cannon!"
"Catapult Fist!"
I shared a smirk with Lynn while we watched the ensuing explosion. Tater's Catapult Fist felt like something that he'd just made up on the spot or something, but its power was undeniably scaled to Tater's own SSJP power level, four, five times Pepper's natural power level.
Without tapping into the unstable power of Ikari, none of Pepper's attacks could possibly stand up to it, in terms of raw power.
Not that Pepper didn't already know that.
When the Catapult Fist slammed into Pepper's Shock Cannon, it punched right through and kept going, stopping the larger but far less dense Shock Cannon ki in its tracks as it headed toward Pepper's location.
But that was the point. Pepper's Shock Cannon technique, while not devoid of raw power, was not made for its raw power. Basically, it was a cloud of ki. Pepper could do more damage with sheer wind pressure, if she wanted to.
The moment that the cloud of ki touched something, though, it was designed to do one thing. Explode.
And explodeitdid.
Lynn, Tater, and I each covered our eyes as the cloud of ki erupted into a dazzling display of fire that lit the sky up, displacing the air with a loud roar that nearly made even my SSJP ears pop. Even from here, I could feel the heat against my skin, a mild sensation that must've been rather annoying from Tater's up close perspective.
But the best part was, it obscured the large man's view of Pepper and his Catapult Fist. With all of the heat and ki in the air, it must've been nearly impossible for him to even tell if she'd been hit or not.
WHOOSH! BANG!
At the last moment, though, the SSJP still managed to duck backward on pure instinct, barely missing Pepper's two feet as they exploded past him with speed fast enough to leave small shockwaves of air pressure in its wake.
But having her surprise attack dodged wasn't enough to throw the vicious Pepper for a look when she was focused on battle. Spinning midair, she smashed her leg down toward the behemoth of an SSJ's body with enough force to split a tank down the middle and keep on going. Luckily for the big Saiyan, his instincts managed to kick in, and his arm shot out to block the leg just in time.
Both Saiyans paused for a moment, sensing the balance of the fight beginning to shift. Now that Pepper was within grappling distance, Tater's superior firepower finally had its chance to shine.
A bloodthirsty smirk on his face that matched Pepper's own, Tater's ki level suddenly shot up, as his right arm moved to counter Pepper's kick.
I made eye contact with Lynn as Tommy watched the fight impassively. We could both tell that the exciting portion of this fight was just coming up.
Honestly, though, as happy as I was to see Pepper trying so hard and having so much fun in a battle, I was mildly worried about the planet as a whole. I could sense that the power levels in this fight were about to shoot through the roof, and with the fact that we were above water, even though we were extremely high up, I had a mild concern of tsunami-level waves slamming into the shores of nearby islands if the fight dropped much lower. With how powerful those two were, stopping the battle from affecting nature would be a rather big challenge, even for someone like me, in an entirely different league from them, power-wise.