It must have been a common notion to start prepping one’s inner juice during an initial snark-off because the very first instant of the duel began with a resonant Bang!

Lukas had called forth force and fire, laced with the concept of Shatterfist— enhancing their kinetic strength through amplification of momentum. The result was a reinforced sphere of azure flames the size of a basketball, meeting Tanya’s wave of pure vacuum as it hungrily tried to devour his attack. Both Banksi and Bergott— sly jackals that they were— waited just enough for him to be done and pressed a joint attack— a tectonic wave and a water whip, both smashing against the terrain where Lukas had been until a fraction of a second ago.

The entire thing took a second at best.

And then his fireball exploded.

The wave of vacuum had indeed sucked it in, but Lukas had designed it to explode laterally, causing two giant bouts of flame to erupt out of the collapsing sphere, like juice splattering out of a squeezed lemon.

Banksi and Bergott both hastily raised walls of their respective elements. The result was less of an explosion and more of several cracking sounds as a sea of scalding-hot steam arose, the azure flames meeting Bergott’s water shield head-on. The detonating steam covered the entirety of Tanya’s vision, allowing just enough window of opportunity for Lukas to launch two concussive force blasts at her.

Or at least, he thought it did.

With frightening ease, Tanya redirected the steam, funneling it into a circle around her, absorbing both of his force-blasts before launching the entire thing at him like an enormous whip. Pumping lifeforce into his legs, Lukas dodged the blow, only to find the massive steam-whip lashing at him with extreme prejudice. In one single motion, he grabbed his ax and flung it in Tanya’s direction, only to be intercepted by Banksi and entombed in a block of rock.

Why am I not surprised?

Lukas rolled his eyes and dashed towards Tanya, twin spheres of lifeforce in both palms. The steam whip was a good weapon for mid-range combat so Lukas decided to close that window of opportunity, grinning as Tanya let the whip dissipate into a steamy mist, conjuring twin blades of pure wind.

And then she blurred.

Lukas had seen Tanya move at incredible speeds earlier, speeds that would have left the fastest human green with envy. He had fought monsters with incredible reflexes and agility, like the thoggua. But nothing could have prepared him for seeing the blonde girl vanish and suddenly appear right in front of him, their faces close enough for him to feel her breath on his skin—

Thump!

Tachypsychia activated.

Lifeforce surged within him.

Thump!

The wind blades drew near.

Nearer.

Just inches away.

He could bring up his spheres, but she’d have hacked his hand off before he could even point it in her direction. His temporal perception screeched as Lukas pushed himself to process information faster and faster—

Thump! Thump! Thump!

BURST!

Raw lifeforce exploded out of his entire form, hitting Tanya with all the power of a sledgehammer the size of a brick wall. Between her agility and her relatively thin frame, it hurled her away, crashing and bruising to the ground.

Just in time for Bergott’s water whip to grab him by his ankles and whip him down to the ground like a dishrag. Lukas blearily opened an eye and found a boulder that didn’t look soft at all arcing through the air right at him.

Barely managing to roll back, Lukas jumped up and regained his balance, just in time to see Bergott rushing into him, both of his arms enclosed within the water to form tentacles. The aquamancer did not try to take him head-on, instead chose to use spiraling movements, using the momentum to smash the giant tentacles at him. Lukas barely dodged the first blow, before the second one smashed into him, trapping his head inside a sphere of water, cutting his oxygen off. Lukas couldn’t help but paw at the sphere, doing his best to keep the water from entering through his nostrils when Bergott grabbed his left leg using the second tentacle and hung Lukas upside down, before smashing him upon the terrain.

“Not so invincible now, are you?” Bergott sneered, looking down at him as Lukas coughed non-stop. The water-shaper trapped both of Lukas’s legs with one of his tentacles while the other one reformed into an enlarged fist.

“Give up!” He offered, “while you still can.”

“Why?” Lukas demanded, still coughing, “feeling out of juice already?”

And sent a thin wave of lifeforce aimed at Bergott’s right ankle.

That broke the water-shaper’s concentration, leaving just enough window for Lukas to regain his balance and come at him with a double kick, like the one Inanna preferred, Arah’s power fueling his strength. The fire-infused kicks smashed against Bergott’s hastily raised tentacular arms, the water forming steam upon contact, forcing the water-shaper into defensive mode. Lukas used his constant spiraling motion to add to his momentum and threw everything into a super-heated fireball. It slammed into Bergott’s defenses, the detonating steam spinning him wildly and sending him to the ground.

“Give up!” Lukas replied in a mockery of Bergott’s tone, “While you still can.”

That moment cost him.

A wave of pure wind crashed into him, hitting him like a speeding truck, the shock-wave of air almost solid due to the speed it traveled with. The sheer unexpectedness caught him by surprise, and before he knew it, he was pushed off the ground. Tanya suddenly appeared before him, and faster than his eyes could follow, spun around and slammed a lateral kick against his abdomen.

It was only due to his ingrained habit of instant reinforcement while training under Inanna that saved his waist from fracturing. Instead, it sent him flinging to the right, sending a flare of agony up his spine. Tanya brought her hands closer, shaping an invisible force between her fingers, and pushed it straight at his face.

For the second time in a couple of seconds of Tanya’s resurgence in the duel, Lukas got to experience what it felt to have a detonation explode right in front of one’s face.

It crashed over him like an ocean wave. Lukas felt it slamming on his frontal half, hitting him with enough force to rip a tree from the ground, roots and all. Oddly enough, there wasn't any heat to the blast. He didn't feel any flames trying to scorch through his skin or fire burning his hair and clothes. Instead, it felt as if the explosion was made up of nothing but pure force, a blast made from a violent release of kinetic energy.

Not unlike his own lifeforce burst. Only there was no lifeforce involved.

But whatever the explosion lacked in heat it more than made up with sheer brute power and, in the split second, before it reached him, Lukas watched how the ground fractured as the ripple of distorted air leading the explosion passed over it, shattering the surface of the earth like glass.

Such an explosion would have killed him, had he not been ready for it.

With his feet firmly planted on the ground the force failed to shift him back an inch even as it rammed into him head-on, and a moment later Lukas found himself effortlessly shrugging off the attack without a scratch or bruise to show for it.

For he was not human. Neither was he bremetan. He was an Anomaly, and despite what he looked like from the outside, the sheer anomalous energy running through him courtesy of the Warmonger Protocol made it entirely different from the inside.

Tanya on the other hand, for all her Windcrafting, was very much a bremetan.

Which was why she was unaware when Lukas spun around and poured a torrent of superheated flame at her.

Only for Zuken Banksi to raise another rock wall and intercept it. While converting the entirety of the floor beneath Lukas’s feet into sand. Before Lukas could even understand what happened, his feet had fallen through, the rest of him following suit, with the sand covering all the way till the tip of his chin.

But unlike how he had done it at the Anomaly, Banksi let it be filled with just sand.

Solid enough to hold him, but spacious enough to allow force blasts to pass through without breaking its formation.

“Banksi!” Lukas grunted, “You’re annoying me!”

“Nature of the beast!” Banksi gave a shark-like grin, trapping Lukas all the way till the base of his chin. “I’m an Earth-shaper. It’s what I do.”

“Well then,” Lukas replied, “this is what I do.”

He threw his head up, power gathering within him. “Arah the Firebringer. Devour this field!”