Life Lessons Learnt the Hard Way [Giygas/Cont'd from V4]

The sweeping beam of concentrated arcane energies slammed into Giygas and in an instant shunted him back against the wall. It was barely a moment before the laser had passed over him, shearing against the wall, brick and dust crackling under the fearsome heat as the force of the beam slammed into it. After shearing a sizzling line into the structure, with the bionic lupine slammed against it, clearly winded and wounded from the strike, the energies in the air began to fade, and the beam quickly vanished, the light fading from Barrigan's mouth, leaving the Devidramon simply standing and "smiling" in his best imitation of triumph and pride.

"You... I felt that. I felt it the most." The Devidramon bared his teeth in some imitation of further arrogance. A crooked, toothy smile. A slow, hoarse chuckle escaped from a mouth which moments earlier had given birth to a searing red-hot high-velocity pressurised laser blast fit for a science fiction movie villain. It seemed he had a knack for this; fighting had always been fun when he was on his own turf as the little weasel, but now he had sprouted into this... beast... he felt far more at home on the battlefield, spar or otherwise. "But now it's time for me to give you a gift of my own." The red aura shrouding the Devidramon flickered but did not falter. The demon-dragon tilted its head and snorted out high-pressure jets of moist steam fading in moments to nothing upon the cold digital air. "Punishing Blow!"

Barrigan was unprepared for what would ensue. The Mechafangmon launched himself upon him at speeds that he would have presumed Giygas, in his weakened state, unable to generate. His hubris had turned to arrogance, and his arrogance had become a burden; the iridescent crimson cloak would do little to help him as the fellow Champion-level darted towards him, blade raised, almost in a blur of superhuman and incomprehensible speed. From up on high, Daichi could only watch with widened grey eyes as the blur of red fur and sleek metal abruptly halted in its sprint, reforming as a solid shape to the naked eye - with its three-pronged bladed claw, coated with flames, jammed upwards in a condemning image into Barrigan's midsection. "YOU FUCK!" Roared the boxer - but there was nothing he could do from where he stood.

Below, Barrigan had felt the blades make contact; he had seen the laser slam Giygas back into the wall, watch as the concentrated arcane and digital energies had made his body buckle under the overwhelming force of this enhanced mode. And for all the red aura had done to enhance the strength of his attacks, physical or otherwise - he felt it, like some conglomerate of digital adrenaline - this was where it fell short, for it did nothing to bolster his defence. The searing heat of the flames and the cold metal of a trifecta of impossibly sharp tapered blades had jammed into him with not an instant's notice. He was not ready. And with one final, forwards shunt, the black flame wreathed and writhing around each of the three prongs shot forwards and took to his innards, like an infernal parasite for one sole purpose: to seek and destroy.

The physical nature of the attack alone had frozen him in place, quivering almost subtly in a manner that could very easily be overlooked, frozen, staring upwards and jarring ever-so-gently from side to side; it was not til the flames entered his system, corrupting and consuming the excess data that made him up as it progressed, that Barrigan felt true pain. Perhaps as this demon he had felt true power; but true power was something that their commander-to-be knew; something he knew by nature, by placement, by the sheer fact of his existence - power was in his blood, in his burning soul, in his data, and in his collective digital consciousness. It was a part of him, it was integral to the concept of his being. Power was the matrix, the mold, the production line's power source from whence Giygas had came. Power was his origin. Power was his genesis. How did Barrigan know this?

Because, there, stuck on those blades, as the dark flame began to surge into his body like a match to a forest doused in kerosene, he realised that the same was true for him. He knew that this was an attack that was a last resort, an attack that had felt many fall prey to, be it blade or flame, an attack that had deleted and consumed left or right. With every passing microsecond he felt the inferno within starting to burn through to his Digicore, and all he could do was open his mouth, unhinge his jaw, and as Daichi watched, frozen in place, from above, the two remaining standing there in a unison of complete agony, he heard Barrigan unleash the most agonised and bloodcurdling demonic and abominable howl-screech he could have possibly conceived of. But beneath it all, the fire surging through the very essence of his being, as the pain tested his mind and his spirit, when he had finally reached the point of no return, the event horizon of agony, the threshold he held for enduring pain, a switch flicked in Barrigan's programming.

No matter how many had fallen to this attack, he would survive. And with quivering lips, pain rippling through every inch and fibre of his very non-being, black skin, sinew and flesh drawn back over a gaping maw of wickedly curved white fangs, he lowered his head, let those four, unblinking red eyes lock with the confidence of those in the exhausted bionic wolf, and felt five words spill forth of their own accord: "Is... that..." Every movement, every motion was a series of progressively more agonising events, isolated from one another yet simultaneously moving in tandem like an orchestrated symphony of pain. "...all... y-you've..." The crimson aura at his back glistened and twinkled in the dim fusty light of the bar, all but destroyed. "...got?"

And it was then that something miraculous happened. Within the Devidramon's innards, something, some barrier, something that had for the last few split-seconds been holding the agony and the progress at bay, something which had tried its absolute best to halt the progress of the flames from devouring anything but catalytic digital energy and excess data that had temporarily formed this Champion body, stopped being a static obstacle in the progress of the relentless, parasitic inferno, and it began... pushing back. Inch by inch, byte by byte, digitised cell by digitised cell, the fire began reversing its course completely and identically. Like the assault of a virus on a system with superior security, it was binary; and though it had gotten this far and eaten what they could, losses had been cut and ties had been severed for the greater good. The wildfire was being pushed back; and in a matter of seconds, all that remained was a small concentration of the flames at the epicentre of their beginning - the point of contact Giygas still held with his torso.

With an outward burst, the last of the flames pushed back, throwing back the bladed arm of the wolf, cauterising the open wound, and shunting Giygas backwards. At the Devidramon's back, the clouds of glowing scarlet data glistened, and with a tensing and flexing of muscles and sinews, ugly and contorted beneath black skin, Barrigan lowered his head and sighed, shaking the last of the agony from his body. That was that; he was exhausted, he was pained, and he knew he had only moments left in this body before the constructs that made up this form would rush out of him and force him back to Gazimon, but he had time enough - just - to drive his point home before they were done. "See, Giygas," The demon snarled, panting, every movement, even the opening of his jaws and the flapping of his tongue a laboured and exhaustive response. "You forgot something when dealing with me, something that's important," Something that, if not present, could have meant that he hadn't come away from this fighting back that viral flame, something that could have meant he would become nothing more than specks of data assimilated within the wolf's further programming.

"I'm a beast of pain, a beast of evil, and a beast of darkness," That, however, was far from the most important thing. "Above all else, though, in this form, I'm a beast of fire." And still a beast of burden. "That move might have been enough to slay the more weak-willed of beings of flame," From above, Daichi still watched, frozen in awe. This was... he was still hungover, but so far, this day had gone from strange to outright bizarre to fucking great. "But not me." Barrigan snarled. "Not here, not in this form, not in this place, and not today." He drew back his teeth and tensed his body. The last of the agony had all but faded to a terrifying shadow contained in his muscle memory. "I'm the bigger forest fire here." The demon tilted its head. "But nice effort."

With no warning, the iridescence at his back still glowing, a horror and a motivation, a deposit of energy which allowed him to do this even though the last of his Champion-collected data was dwindling and flickering away, Barrigan launched himself upon Giygas in a charge, one hand outstretched. Over the torso of red-white fur and metal, the gargantuan crimson talons carefully opened and locked, clutching him in a grip as the Devidramon brought the pair of them upon the wall, still warm with the residual heat of his earlier Arcana Ray, one hand locked over the wolf's torso and pinning him up against the flame-scarred brickwork. "So, what's the verdict, 'fuzzball'?" A little sly mimicry of the way Giygas had earlier addressed him. And though the Devidramon knew there was probably something much stronger lying deep within: this was a test. And he just wanted to know that with all his resilience, zeal, and sheer arrogant sense of erstwhile triumph, he had made a lasting impression. "Do me and the meathead pass?"

From up on high, Daichi looked down once more, this time standing up. The battle was coming to an end; he could tell, with some unnatural sense of empathy he seemed not to possess for... well, anyone til now, just some telling sense, that the pair of them were both starting to succumb to overriding exhaustion. He just wondered what was going to happen if Barrigan pushed the boat a little too far; this guy was a fucker, but it seemed like he knew what they should be doing, all in all, and reckoned he could probably top it - this was a test, after all. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to call and then raise over every bluff. But either way: "I HEARD THAT!" He bellowed, taking no real notice of the facts he had just concluded, though. "STOP CALLING ME MEATHEAD OR I'LL COME DOWN THERE AND BEAT YOU SENSELESS, YOU BIG DRAGON FUCK!"