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Smaller? Yes. Stronger? Physically maybe by numbers alone but no one was going to argue that Ryugi wasn't pleased that he'd struck first blood, or first metal vs metal anyway. As the large man recoiled and literally flew through the air from the power of the strike, Ryugi was already recovering from the collision of the big man's arm and his weapon. His red eyes followed the movement of the man as he flew threw the air, landed, and then proceeded to charge into the fray again after taking the hit. This brought a grin to Ryugi's face. It meant that John was serious about continuing the battle, and that made him all the more determined.

The one thing that bothered Ryugi was that John moved to close the distance before apparently moving to attack. Ryugi had done both. The man's fighting style thus far allowed Ryugi to beleive that the big man was still testing him, waiting for him to showcase something where he could take advantage, an opening or otherwise. It was a wise choice indeed, but where was the fun in battle if you didn't take a risk now and again? When one fought as much as Ryugi had in his lifetime, it came to a point where simply dodging an ability because too easy or too simple. A real fighter could avoid strikes, sure, but could he take them and still come back strong as ever?

Ryugi's thoughts aside, he still had a couple hundred pounds of flesh and metal stomping towards him. Ryugi decided that if his opponent wasn't going to move to strike, he would. After all, taking advantage of your opponent's attack with your next attack was the core mechanic in all combat, even if that meant taking a cracked rib or two. So, Ryugi changed his strike a bit.

Ryugi moved his sword onto his right shoulder and charged in, and once he was within range, he brought the sword down in a diagonal dropping slash from right to left, starting somewhere above John's left shoulder and ending somewhere around his right thigh. Simply ducking backwards wouldn't work for a strike like that, and neither would punching as the man was already running. John would have to take the hit, dodge, of find another way to deal with it, and Ryugi's mind was already racing to find out exactly what the man had up his sleeves.

The slash failed and John went sailing past Ryugi. However, Ryugi kept moving forward a step or two after his slash, not being able to fully halt his forward momentum. Speaking of his momentum, Ryugi's forward momentum, and the direction of the swing necessary for the arm to strike Ryugi in the back would ultimately mean that the actual impact of the arm would be severely dampened. Ryugi still felt the metal striking his back, but to a lesser degree, as his body would have been moving away from the impact in the same direction the arm was moving, similar to how a car traveling forty miles an hour would only feel the impact of a car traveling sixty miles per hour as if it was only going twenty.

The strike only caused Ryugi to take an additional step forward and pivot on his heels to face John as the big man stopped to reattach his arm. That was a neat trick. Something of a dull ache was the biggest thing Ryugi's back felt at the moment. Nothing he couldn't fight through and ignore for the greater cause of defeating his opponent. Two clashes, one strike apiece, though Ryugi's was arguably the more painful. But the cut didn't seem to slow the big man down at all, which only served to solidify the argument that John wouldn't be slowed down by Ryugi's own strike either. Trading blows was great and all, but it was slowly beginning to wear thin on Ryugi. This was the mighty Johnathan Tomorrow he was fighting. Surely the man had more than just a penchant for hitting people with his fists or waiting for his opponent to move first.



Ryugi cracked his neck and placed Ragnarok in front of him, both legs bent and spread, left foot leading. Ryugi had rolled into a prepared battle stance. It was John's turn to throw the first blow.

Ryugi was alert as the hands came together, the blast of power thundering forward and tearing a crater into the ground as it shot towards Ryugi. However, Ryugi was prepared. His face twisted to a smirk and Ragnarok pulsed as the wave of force washed over him...



The burst slammed into Ryugi as he jumped into the air, a pulse of brilliant blue energy shielding him from the strike as he used the very attack to give him the momentum necessary to move away unharmed. It would give him more distance than if he had simply stood around and taken the blow, or been knocked skyward by it, as well as make it all the more difficult for John to follow up the blow with anything substantial. Ryugi had been saving his stamina, allowing his buffer to build to incredible levels, the Blast Shield draining little energy overall. If John wanted to strike Ryugi through the shield, he would have to hit harder than that...

Ryugi flew through the air, landing with his legs bent as he roared out a battlecry. Reacting to his vocal outburst, his energy spiked, blasting the grass away from his form as he slammed Ragnarok into the ground with ferocious force. The sword pulsed with searing light and heat as energy shot into the ground, shattering it from the force of impact as a raging torrent of radiant fire erupted towards John in a V shaped burst that carried with it chunks of earth, burned and blackened grass, and heat intense enough to singe most clothing and exposed skin.

In his hybrid state, Ryugi's energy and stamina were such that his battlecry was enough to forge the ambient force in his weapon's blows into superheated blasts of pure kinetic force and air. In this case, Ryugi had pushed more of his own buffer into the attack, charging it with energy to make the force even more powerful, and condense it into a true attack. The Human Dynamo could charge ahead all he liked, but he'd be charging straight into the wall of radiant heat and light unleashed from Ryugi's weapon.

Ryugi's flight backwards had given quite enough time to be amazed at John's endurance as he tore through the flames, heat, and force of impact. After all, Ragnarok's strike had been more than a glorified flamethrower, it had carried quite a bit of physical force to it as well. That force would serve to slow the Dynamo down as he raged through the inferno, and give Ryugi even more time. Distance was time, opposing forces were time, and Ryugi was going to use it. John was big, powerful, a brawler. And brawlers, all of them, no matter how big and powerful they were, relied heavily on close range combat and brute strength. Ryugi knew from personal experience, after all.

If the mighty warrior thought that Ryugi was simply going to stand around and let him hold hands, he was quite wrong. While Ryugi might have been holding his sword still, his hands were still behind roughly four feet of solid dragonsteel. Ryugi hadn't stabbed the sword into the ground, he had brought it down horizontally, diagonally, much like an overhead slash. It was time to show a little more oomph. Golden energy surged around Ryugi's body as his bent legs pulsed away from the ground below him before John could get into grabbing range, and Ryugi's form blurred from the intense speed he'd unleashed, as, in an instant, John would find Ryugi roughly fifteen feet away from him as Ragnarok thundered with power along it's entire length...



However, the dash was just the smallest part of Ryugi's strike. As he tore away from his previous position, John would watch as the energy surging around the weapon pulsed to life and formed up, giving the weapon the appearance of growing to nearly three times its previous length and size as Ryugi's body spun away, his feet skidding along the ground as the ENORMOUS weapon surged around, the glowing monstrosity leaving a roiling, blurring trail of energy as it headed straight for the body of John several feet away. If John thought the blade would suffer any ill effects from being wreathed in energy, or suffer any loss in cutting power, he was sorely mistaken.



A simple duck backwards this time wouldn't save him from the thunderous power of the swinging weapon, and with its increased size, and barely increased weight (due to the blade's energy construction) the cutting force at the blade's tip would be several dozen times more powerful than Ragnarok alone. It was quite possible the blade could rend a solid engine block in twain if wielded with enough pure force. John's arm might have successfully sucked up the blow from the first strike with little damage, but if it were to try and intercept this strike, it was very possible John would lose his arm a second time. After all, the horizontal slash was being brought around with thunderous force towards John's left side, using the last three feet of the now twelve-foot long cutting weapon.

Ryugi's swing missed, but he was ready for such an outcome. He halted the motion of the blade and brought it back towards the man as he crouched and chucked his prosthetic limb at him. It wasn't such a stretch to see the limb being used as a weapon of sorts. It had proven itself quite durable, and with the man using it as a club before Ryugi could only assume that the arm was often used as a weapon when opponents refused to allow John to manhandle them.

With a simple step to the side, Ryugi avoided the arm as he brought his second swing across the distance towards John's semi-prone form, his senses still alert and waiting for the man to show something more from his deceptively simple attacks.

Ryugi's right eye had been keeping a close watch on John's energy levels throughout the fight. When he saw the telltale flare that signaled an energy attack, he grinned imperceptibly behind the glowing Titan Blade. John was finally pulling out the stops. Lightning, or electrical attacks in general, were notoriously difficult to avoid, much like a bullet, even more difficult to avoid than a bullet, because unlike a bullet, the electrical current could be directed after being unleashed. It took more than beating the gun to beat the electrical pulse in most cases.

The two fighters would trade blow for blow. As the tip of Ragnarok's Titanic state slashed a gash into John's back, the bolt of energy struck Ryugi, forcing his muscles to contract and his insides to burn with pain before it was depleted. Ryugi was used to controlling energy through his body, and used to the searing heat of his flames, allowing him some sense of resistance to the effects of the attack, though not overly so. It still stung, however. Ryugi shook his mind and body free of the "shocking" effects of John's strike as he stared back at the big man.

It was time to cut his losses. As expected, John had showcased elemental manipulation from a distance common with most electrical elementals, just like Ryugi's pupil Damrius. While a massive sword was fantastic for delivering powerful strikes from a distance, it also served to make the weapon too large to wield in much more than overhead slashes and side swipes. As John recovered from the cut to his back, the Titan Blade would pulse, the energy shrinking back down along the length of the blade, returning to Ryugi's stores.

Ryugi didn't wait to strike after returning Ragnarok to its natural shape. He charged in, the shimmering metal blade glinting in the light. So John could use his arm as a lightning rod? It was a clever trick, but Ryugi had tricks of his own. With powerful force, Ryugi swung the blade over his head before dropping it in a slash, a blade of crackling light energy surging forth from the sword to strike at John's form, the tip of the sword immediately snapping up to face John, continuing to keep a distance between the two of them. The lightning was fast, but it would still have to get through Ragnarok before it could strike Ryugi, and the same went for John himself...

John moved to smack the sword away from Ryugi's grip, attacking the tip, but Ryugi still had two hands on the handle of the blade, which quickly changed to one as Ryugi acted quickly. As John smacked the blade, Ryugi's right arm pulled the handle to the side, causing the huge weapon to pivot so that the sword effectively lay flat against Ryugi's body as the big man came in for his brutal rush, Ryugi's right eye seeing the buildup of energy. It was only logical to put two and two together. Brute force plus electricity would force an opponent into submission more quickly than virtually any other set of elements. Combined with John's stocky nature, it made a perfect complimentary force. However, the ease of the combination meant it was very simple to put two and two together.

With Ragnarok's size acting as a razor sharp shield between John and Ryugi, the shoulder check would slam into Ryugi, and the energy from the release would head directly into Ragnarok...



Electricity was also the purest form of energy available in the elemental world, and the energy would rush into the weapon, charging it like a battery, draining it away from John, as well as protecting Ryugi from its shocking properties. The force, however, was a different story, but Ryugi had a plan for that as well, and it might have been different than John would have thought.

With the sword acting like a sponge to draw away any energy that the big man tried to throw at Ryugi during their clash, Ryugi's legs would brace against the impact, meeting the force of the man with his own 300 pound bulk, rather than using John's imparted force to gain more distance. With his legs braced against John's ramming attack, Ryugi would unleash every ounce of his draconic strength, and with a thunderous battle cry, push back against Johnathan Tomorrow and aim to bring the sword between them after throwing him stumbling backwards, aiming for a very dangerous and wounding slice across the stomach.

Ryugi had eyes that could see many things. He also had a pretty significant sense of smell that he had used more than once to his advantage in combat. But rather than that, he also had exceptional hearing. A large object moving through the air had more resistance from the air molecules, and therefore created more sound vibrations. The bigger the object, the louder it was. The faster it moved, the louder it was as well. In short, Ryugi heard the arm coming.



Ryugi suddenly relented against the opposing force of John and spun away with a short hop, his legs bending, the limb quickly making its way back to its master. Meanwhile, it was totally possible that John would stumble forward a step or two after the force blocking him had been removed. This also meant that Ryugi would avoid the punch to his side.

But while John regained his composure and had the arm quickly snap back into place, Ryugi would already be attacking. In the same flurry of motion, he would cast Ragnarok into the air, the weapon spinning violently above the battlefield as energy surged along Ryugi's fist as his feet dug in, and with a mighty show of pure power, Ryugi shot forward with so much strength that the ground under his feet cracked from the force. The only thing that limited his speed here was his pure strength, and with John stumbling from Ryugi's relent, he would be vastly unprepared for the thunderous blow aimed directly into his midsection with enough power to punch a very large chunk into a brick wall.

Not only that, but if the blow connected, the energy surging along Ryugi's arm would erupt forward into a thunderously powerful explosive punch, sending a concussive blast through John's midsection with enough of a shock to shatter human bone. Indeed, the power from the attack would be such that if it connected, not only would it send John's form several dozen feet downrange with seriously injured insides and lacerations across his side, but the bones in Ryugi's right hand would also be cracked from the power of the blow, showcasing just how strong the draconic warrior was in his own right without his weapon, even as it continued to spin above the battlefield...