Land of the Big Cats [Amaranta, Sola]

He halted at her counterattack for a moment and her taunt. He was a simple guy and it was super effective for giving him a momentary stagger. What did his instincts say? There was a tiny part in the back of his mind - a single neuron - shouting at him to jump on her and toss their fight aside. That was physical though it wasn't spiritual, it wasn't like the craving in his soul that called out in the emptiness to fight and keep fighting for the thrill of competition rather than have something handed to him.

So if she took too long of flashing him, he'd respond with all his empty soul out in the open by a shout and kicking her side so that he could maybe try and roll her back over.

"Not now."

He insisted while trying to grab at her hair as something to tangle around his hands so that he could pull on to try and wrangle her into the water in what could only be called a writhing mess.

"Good..."

His priorities lied in the battle at hand. A satisfying reaction, to be certain, since Amaranta wanted to see how much he could readily overpower her when given the opportunity. Even the kick to her side elicited a noise that danced between pleasure and thrill as he engaged her on the ground, but that momentary stagger was enough to allow her to use her free hand to latch onto his leg with her arm as it crashed against her steel frame.

"Even you can't resist a good pair of breasts, huh, Sola?"

Flashing him was amusing and all, but that glory-seeking lioness wanted to topple this crafty monkey and show him who was the superior warrior between them. If she was able to latch onto him properly, she would use the forward momentum against him to roll both of them over near the water.

Writhing mass was indeed an apt term to describe them right now, but these terms suited her just fine. From the ground, she felt she could achieve a lot. It was all a matter of getting him to fall. Depending on positions, she would assault his neurons even further by pushing her bare chest against him, grinning from ear to ear as she attempted to turn the tide and use her arms and legs to squeeze the life out of him, if all things went according to plan, of course.

"Come on, claim your prize, monkey boy. Or are you just nothing but a bag of tricks and good looks?"

He was falling but that wasn't on his mind. She tried to do the same trick again but the conflict of interest had already been resolved. His brain might say one thing but his (missing) heart said another. She could be stark naked at this stage and it wouldn't matter until the competition was over. Winner or loser, it did not matter to him but it had to be resolved. That was the cause for his anguish at losing Rafaela after all.

Hands locked in hair. Yanking and twisting to try and cause her pain. No, this wasn't good enough. One hand surrendered its handful of hair to grab and claw at her cat ear like it might be sensitive to pain, especially after it had been abused by his blast earlier.

Somehow he had to break this squeeze and use the water. That was his best path to victory, he felt it.

"Kuhgh...! Persistent bastard, aren't ya!?"

There was little reaction to having her hair pulled. If anything, that only fueled the adrenaline pulsing through her veins, though the same couldn't be said for her ears. Tch. He was assaulting her ears again. Of course, he was. Show a weakness in battle, and an opponent like him will exploit it until he wins the game. No, she wouldn't let it end like this even if he ripped her ear off.

Momentarily, she fought through the pain enough to open her mouth in an attempt to telegraph a cero, aiming to blast him straight in the face or any part of the body that was currently presenting itself. He used all those techniques to earlier and improvised on the fly - she could do the same thing, too! A bala might of been a sound choice since those were quicker by nature, but he was too resilient for his own good sometimes. She had to hit him with something good and humble him so she could land a finishing blow and squeeze the life out of him.

Any part of his body would work. Of course, with it being telegraphed, that meant there was a momentary window that Sola could exploit if he noticed it, but that was a risk she was undoubtedly willing to take to attain victory. A lion would not lose to the inferior animal of the jungle again if she could help it.

Bright light was bad, especially orange, so he reactively blasted her ear again with a burst of spiritual pressure into her ear that he'd been abusing up until this point. The twisting and writhing of her on him was agitating the broken ribs so he wanted her off him or at the very least under him so that he wasn't against the damp dirt. There was already mud stirring from their scuffle that was going to make this a lot messier.

"Nope."

If he could use the momentum of her whiff, then he'd go for the punish on rolling them over to bury her in the muddy ground and let them sink closer towards the waterside.

"Agh! Dammit! This again!?"

Receiving another blast to her ear again, the boom of energy ringing through her ears, the orange beam of energy she sought to employ against him had ended up sailing off haplessly into the air. Rolling around with gritted teeth, Amaranta spat out unrestrained curses as she reflexively forced her arms up to defend herself against him, even if the dizzying sensation had momentarily set her on the back foot. No matter what, she couldn't let him get one over on her again. Wherever he sought to attack her now, she'd thrash about and make things difficult for him until the bitter end. That was what defined her as a warrior, after all. Fighting against all odds until she won or lost.

Her disorientation was her own error. This thrashing only worked in his favour as the mud became more present and sank them both towards the water until he was close enough to shove her head into the water. It was a struggle just to remain on top of the thrashing woman though even if he used her hair as a hold, it was what he imagined riding a bull to be like that was adamant about throwing off its rider.

He hoped that she'd become more docile after a few mouthfuls of water in her lungs.

"Drink it."

Though also screw this. Why was he trying so hard when he could also smash his head as hard as he could into her face to try and make her gulp it down faster, and so he'd deliver a solid headbutt that left him feeling as dazed himself by the impact.

Momentum shifted again as their eventual voyage resulted in her face being pushed headfirst into the water. Persistent as ever, he was giving her no inch to simply win this the way she wanted to. On one hand, that excited her to no end. Full-fledged resistance in the face of peril was what she valued in almost anyone. On the other, it was annoying enough to enrage her also. At the moment, none of that was important.

She was being drowned while he crashed his head against her own, aiming to send her straight into the realm of unconsciousness she had been avoiding ever since this battle started. Desperate hands strugged viciously, flailing around to hit him and force him off. It was pretty difficult trying to find someone when that same person was drowning you in a sea full of water. Of course... that wasn't exactly unfamiliar to her. There was someone who drowned her free of charge before in a weird excerise she couldn't grasp even to this day.

In other words, there was precedence for this situation, but not quite the opportunity to display that at the moment. Right now, she had to display the struggle first as she was forced to unceremoniously swallow mouthfuls of water, receiving an all out bashing against her head. He might of had a hard head, but that strategy could backfire if he wasn't careful. She wasn't exhausted of energy this time. Even so, holy shit... how was he so damn hard-headed?!

Might've ended up with a skull fracture but he'd endured plenty of pain so far. The way that he'd been maimed and hurt all helped him power through it, so he remained conscious. Maybe he didn't have the same level of situational awareness and that single neuron had died in the clash, but he was alert. That's all that mattered to him when his goal was crystal clear. A single-minded obsession.

He felt her flailing get stray shots on his body, breaking parts of it in the struggle such as breaking bones on every hit with her wild self-preservation in full swing. One more shove, one more push, and use the same trick one last time.

The act of using his hand that was still caught up in the hair near her abused ear was agony since she'd struck his shoulder but he tried to get it there so that he could give her one more blast of spiritual energy from his palm and screw with her senses one more time to add it to the drowning.

All her flailing told her was that she was crashing against him and breaking some measure of bone in his body, that he was still proving resilient despite her resistance. None of this benefitted her at the moment. His assault wasn't subsiding nor was he falling into unconsciousness crashing his head against her own. What the hell was he made of? Titanium alloy?

Even worse, with her unable to see, she felt another blast of energy strike her defenseless ear, forcing her to struggle even more as a bubbled curse was voiced in the seabed. His penchant for ear-blasting her was growing unbearably annoying now, evident by her body wildly thrashing about even further, her hips swinging back and forth like a black bull trying to wrest a rider off of its back.

To hell with playing the long game! Sure, it was easy enough to wait until he let up and pretend she drowned herself, but he was no idiot. Sola would abuse any and everything until he drowned her and won. Hell no. She couldn't let it play out like that a second time. Thrashing hands fell into the water, her palm pointing to the center as she generated another beam of energy. No cero followed, however. No, this time it was an actual emission of her spiritual pressure.

An improvised way of using the water to her advantage by using her fiery spiritual pressure to momentarily superheat it, using the released energy once it reached its zenith to blast their bodies off of one another, hopefully tossing him aside in the process. It was a gamble, no doubt, and one that could only work if he didn't grab onto her hands. But hey, if it worked, who was she to complain? She wasn't going to settle for anything but a draw this time, and even that felt criminal to her.