Sword X: Mac versus Vejiita
by J. T. MacLeod
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Go on.  Try to prove that I claim any of these characters but Mac as my own.  Just try it.
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The red circle wasn't nearly as impressive as one would have imagined.  There was no grand 
entrance, it had just appeared out of nowhere.  Somehow, our trees had alerted us to this fact 
despite the distractions of Hogo hitting on Gomisaki, and the latter's hemming and hawing out of 
sheer ignorance.  Now we were here, and I wasn't impressed.  

Not that much would impress me, or any of us.  We'd all traveled the vortex a great deal, and 
seen things beyond imagination.  A large red ring in the sand wasn't going to make any big 
impressions.  It seemed appropriate, though, and, in a way, menacing.  

Not that I was nervous, either.  I had learned a long time ago not to be intimidated, and I also 
knew that Mewtwo probably wasn't planning to take us out in the fight.  If he was planning to use 
this tournament against us in any way, he was probably studying us.  

I doubted that he expected most anyone but himself to be able to defeat any of us, but he could 
certainly make us pull our trump cards.  We all had plenty of cards up our sleeves, and I had 
shown fewer than any of the others, but aces are few and far between.  If he could, he would see 
almost everything we would be fighting him with.  A feeling told me he wouldn't be disappointed. 
 Darn that force, giving you all that information that could have waited for all you cared.  

The sand crunched lightly beneath my feet as I made my way to the ring.  The ground was certainly 
better than concrete, but it wasn't pillows, either.  Not that it had mattered for several 
years--I had long ago been beyond worrying about that.  Catching bullets had become a happy 
pasttime, but something told me that what I would be facing would be beyond that.  

As I made my way torward the ring, my friends, including the trees and the Renegade Force made 
their way to my path.  Shane stood there, Frag nodded, and Ray nodded, if grudgingly.  Hogan came 
up and gave me a bear-pat on the shoulder.

"You kick some a** out there, son."

"Yes sir." (hey, who am I to disagree with a childhood hero?)

"Do it for the captain!" called out Jace from the back of the crowd.

Terra, the woman who had seemed averted to my very presence despite the fact that I was the only 
one who would actually look her in the eye as opposed to anywhere else, came up and gave me a hug 
of all things.  

"We believe in you," she said, doing a 180 in character.  

I continued on in a confused daze, broken only by Ash at the end of the line.  He handed me a 
small bracelet, a simple brown leather strap with a brass clasp.  

"For luck.  Thank you, Mac."  

"No, Ash, thank you."

I gave Ash's cap a friendly twist, and I continued on.  

Nothing happened when I stepped into the ring.  I gave my opponent only half the time he would 
take for his dramatic entrance before I called for him.  

"Come on, Vejiita, before I have to go looking for you."

Vejiita shot down from the sky and landed gently, doing nothing more than stirring up some dust 
as he hit the ground.  

"So, you knew it was me.  I'm almost impressed."  

"I certainly wouldn't be.  I didn't even have to sense you here to know that your inherent 
weakness of never being able to be humiliated would make you my opponent."  

Vejiita wasted no time with me.  We met in the middle of the ring, moving faster than most of our 
audience could keep up with.  We traded only physical blows.  I had the advantage of having faced 
other versions of Vejiita from beta dimensions, but they weren't as powerful as this version.  

We became deadlocked in a grip in the centre of the ring, energy swirling in a sphere around us. 
 The ring beneath us cracked and compressed into a concave surface.  This was a walk in the park 
for me, but I noticed he was straining.  It didn't mean much, though, as I knew that he had 
tremendous reserves that he was about to call on.  

Vejiita predictably backed off.  He let his guard down, knowing that I wouldn't attack if he 
refused to defend.  

"Now you will see what makes the Saiyans such a grand race!"

I was a bit surprised by Vejiita's lack of speech, but I braced myself as he raised his power.  
Hair turning gold and body tensing, Vejiita hit the state commonly known as "Super Saiyan".  

There the challenge began.   Vejiita immediately launched a huge ki attack.  This time I had to 
strain to block it.  I was getting tired, having done nothing but this sort of fighting as of 
late, but I wasn't going to complain.  

Now blows were making contact.  We caught ourselves in midair to return the hits, but we appeared 
to be evenly matched.  Vejiita landed one good uppercut.  I was dazed, but managed to turn my 
fall into an attack which sent my fist through Vejiita's armour and deep into his abdomen, though 
I never actually broke his skin.  A sucker punch of the titans.  

As Vejiita had a laughable look of shock o his face I took the opportunity to plant a roundhouse 
to his neck, sending him to the ground.  He landed on his feet, but in a crater 6 feet deep just 
outside the ring.  

"Hey," I yelled, "Don't I get a ring out?"

He took only a split-second to return.  Within another blur of punches, he landed one squarely in 
my chest.  I barely caught myself before hitting the ground.  We were both hurting, but there was 
more to come.  Vejiita came down to my altitude just above the ground and smiled.  

"Why don't you show me your greater power?"  

I became tight lipped.  

"Fine, then I will!"  He held a breath as his power raised again.  The second level of his 
advanced form brought more muscle and more hair.  It brought more speed, as well.  His fist met 
my face in almost an instant.  Before I knew it, I was victim to almost every blow he threw, and 
I could get none in myself.  He let me fall to the ground when he felt that he had done enough 
for the moment.  

I heard him touch down away from me.  I also heard him wheezing.  Apparantly I had done much more 
damage than I thought.  As I opened my eyes, I could see that he had a small pouch...  senzu 
beans.  He wasn't as arrogant as I had experienced.  But with this opportunity, I figured it was 
time to go ahead and blow the cover off of one of my secrets.  

Vejiita took a state of shock as the bag disappeared from his hands.  It took him only a moment 
for him to look at me, but by then I was already feeling the restorative effects of the beans, 
and the bag was in Ray's hands at the sidelines.  

"It doesn't matter," he said.  "Saiyans grow stronger after recovering from that sort of 
punishment."

"It's a technique that is instinct in Saiyans," I spat.  "That doesn't mean that other species 
can't learn it."  

As expected, this angered him, and he flew torward me, but I was prepared with another one of the 
tricks I had been attempting to hide from him.  He stopped just short of a patch of open vortex 
energy and gave me a suspicious glare.  

He continued attempting to rush me, but couldn't make it around the vortex energy pockets I was 
opening.  On the other hand, the only attack I could use was what I was defending with, and I 
couldn't make use of it fast enough.  The ring crushed in further from our power, but there was 
no way I could sense or plot his movements with that much speed and accuracy.  Ray could have 
done it, but I couldn't.  I decided to use the same technique that had netted me the senzu bean. 
 
As Vejiita tried one last time, his neck was met by a descending elbow, then his stomache with my 
fist again.  A flicker of fear showed in his eyes as I landed a few more blows by tesseracting, 
but he caught me again and landed a punch straight down into my shoulder.  

I traveled halfway to the ground and looked straight up.  He was powering a major attack, and I 
readied myself.  

"GARLIC GUN!!!"  His attack rushed down torward me like conical lightning, but I was prepared.  

"HIKARISENPO!!"  My attack rolled through his like a white wave, making its way closer to him.  
As it came within a few feet of him, though, his garlic gun eclipsed it, and I was blown into the 
ground again, leaving a crater, and worse off than ever.  Ray tossed the bag to me, but Vejiita 
blew it into thin air.  

Vejiita landed again and just laughed as I struggled to my feet.  From the sidelines, my 
companions yelled.  

"You moron!" screamed Shane.

"Go ahead and use it!" yelled Frag.

"There's no point, Mac, just go ahead!" yelled Ray.  

They were right.  I went ahead and braced myself.   Ki flames raced up and down my body as I 
attempted to heal myself enough to do what I had to.  I screamed, and emitted a light that faded 
to reveal the super form.  I steeled myself.  

Vejiita was confused, shocked, in disbelief, but mostly incensed.  He reared back and with a yell 
 reached the third super saiyan form.  

He charged.  I had one chance.  It seemed as though the world moved in slow motion and 
accelerated motion at the same time.  As he reached within centimeters of me, I hit him with a 
massive backhand.  He flew back, just out of the ring.  

I walked slowly to him.  He barely opened his eye to look at me, but his head dropped as he lost 
consciousness.  

"I respect you too much to let you die," I said.  I opened a portal for his unconsious body, but 
I was stopped by an approaching power.  

A blast of energy annihilated everything within a one meter radius in front of me, including the 
helpless Vejiita.  I snapped my head to see Mewtwo.  

"You have won." he said, and vanished.  

Shaking from emotion, my breath labored, I returned to my normal form and headed torward the 
silent crowd, my blood boiling.  Seething.  

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Thus endeth this fic.  The rest shouldn't take so long.  Here's to great, fun storytelling!  
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