With Niggly Pain running away in tears back into the Fog, Pethant stood alone in the empty circle. If the first fight against Kelvin was a basic probing of his combat ability, then the one against Hungry Pig tested his physical prowess while the one against Niggly Pain tested his mental fortitude.
Now, all that's left for Pethant to do would be to knock the teeth of Wolfy to the back of his throat. Though he had no clue what will happen after that. Perhaps.....Jon would have called for back up somewhere...right? RIGHT?!
Swallowing his doubt and ridding it from his mind, He looked on as the gigantic wolfman finally made his move from the commentator's seat towards the edge of the fog-vacant fighting ring.
'Pethant.' He said, nodding his head lightly as a sign of respect.
'Wolfy.' Pethant responded with the same, and both of them both realized their old habits of being professional fighters. An old-time courtesy before any big fights are signs of respect shown between the combatants, of course, in the age with heightened generations running rampant everywhere, things are no longer the same as before.
'I sort of knew it.' Wolfy said with a few villainous chuckles, 'you were a high tier pro, weren't you?'
'Why are you here?' Pethant asked, 'there are plenty of opportunities after the career.'
'Oh really. Is there?' Wolfy said, cutting his claw through the ground and making unpleasant screeching sounds, 'we were modern arena fighters. People pay to see us bleed, be it normal people or the superhumans. What career is out there after this?'
'There is that of being a cameraman, coaching, commentating...'
'AND look at you now. Such a successful career.' Wolfy growled as saliva dribbled down his fangs as he talked, 'there is no future for us monsters here. Superpowers that make you still look human are just rather convenient, don't you think?'
'Are those kids out there not being naive to think that they will remain to look human when being superhuman?' Wolfy said, pointing his fingers towards the cameras recording this fight, 'those in the underworld understands this, and they understand this sickened system, and they gave us a home!'
'That's nonsense.' Pethant shook his head, 'the system may have failed you, and there are no excuses for them. But neither are their excuses for all of you here. This is a maximum-security prison, the Purgatory, not a youth reform center. All of you here have hurt, killed and destroyed others' livelihoods.'
'And you will come to see why that is the case, Pethant.' Wolfy said, 'prepare yourself. ESCALATION 2...ACTIVATE.'
'ESCALATION 2, ACTIVATE.'
Both fighters immediately powered up into their second superpowered state where the characteristics of the default Escalation 1 state or the basic superhuman state are amplified and enhanced to an insane degree.
Around Pethant's body, the light appeared to have been slowed down, twisted and turned as a density gradient form around his body with his every heartbeat shaking the air around him. His entire body appears to have been glowing with life energy, and every step he takes is both wind creating and earth-shaking.
'So you are a tier 3?' Wolfy said with an exciting smile. His body also underwent a drastic change as the furs throughout his body grew out and became thickened into darkened spikes. His black fur now carried white tips all around, 'that's too bad for you for I lost only to one of the Ten Fingers.'
'Tch...' Pethant ignored Wolfy's taunts and entered into his combat stance.
'COME!' The wolfman said, digging his paws into the ground and lowering his body into the ground, 'show me what you can do, meat.'
'On the left-hand side of this battle, we have Pethant, a strong guy who likes Spicy Pork Bowls and is a professional cameraman.' Generator said, going solo on the commentating job, 'on the right-hand side, we have our very own Wolfy the Wolfman. There isn't much that needed to be said other than the fact that he lost to one of the Ten Fingers.'
Ordinarily, choosing a defeat as being one's crowning achievements makes little sense, though upon closer inspection, losing to one of the Ten Fingers is no mean feat. Those ten individual superhumans are far above the rest in their power, and normal unpowered human beings will even struggle to survive being in the same room with them. Wolfy being able to survive the ordeal and live to tell the tale is a great feat of power in itself.
Then, both Pethant and Wolfy dashed forward with the afterimage being all that remained in the arena. With their speed amplified to the utmost limit, they clashed multiple times in the air all throughout various points in the fighting ring. Wolfy fought not only with ferocity but also with a certain degree of grace and control that Pethant wasn't expecting. Hiding behind layers of quick slashes, cuts and hits are very carefully planned out sequences of movements and combinations.
It has been a while that Pethant has been fighting against anyone with remotely the same power level and skill as him, and he was caught off guard a few times as the claws and nails found its way around his defenses. However, his durability meant no severe injuries were sustained in the process.
In the other times, Pethant met Wolfy blow for blow and kick for kick. As Wolfy lands a shot across his shoulder, Pethant also rode the momentum in the air, spun around, and delivered a spinning backhand smack across his furry face, smashing through the rock hard spikes and sending Wolfy flying off.
When the two landed back on the ground, Pethant is in visibly worse shape than Wolfy, though the latter didn't come out unscathed either. During the fight when the two were at their fastest, Generator was not able to capture the action with his eyes, but he managed to lay out a thin and invisible network of fog all across the battlefield and gain an understanding of what is actually going on through the two fighters moving and passing through the network of fog.
Wolfy lets out a few excited laughter before resuming his attack, dashing forward and leaving the ground underneath him shattered with the sheer impact from his foot strikes.
'What tier did you get to in the end?' Pethant asked, parrying the few initial attacks before countering with a strike carried with enough force to nearly create an air cannon with the attack, which Wolfy narrowly dodges out, 'you are not that outrageously strong to be handily in tier 2. And I KNOW that tier 2's don't get to face off against the Ten.'
'Speak for yourself...' Wolfy said, slamming a hand down onto Pethant's overhead guard before immediately delivering a forward kick into his torso, sending him sliding backward but still remaining standing, 'you never made it to tier 2, have you?'
'No, I know the limits of my strength.' Pethant said, now ever more confident with his determination, 'unless you have access to ESCALATION 3, there is no way that you will even hold a candle to the Ten.'
'YOU...' Wolfy cursed out in anger, as he continued his barrage of attacks while his mind traveled back in time to the day when he was defeated by one of the Ten Fingers.
He was training alone in the mountains when suddenly, the earth shook and quaked before the interior of the mountain is suddenly revealed towards the side of him. The sound of a broken mountain took another whole second to be registered, and it is only then that Wolfy realized what has happened.
As the rocks fell down the suddenly newly formed cliff and spring water rained down from the heavens, he realized that the mountain that he was training on was split into half. That wasn't it, as the weight of the mountain were collapsed inwards, and the gap that was formed was immediately filled by the earth again.
Wolfy took another step forward in order to check out the gap, and the residual blasts of air from this unknown attack caught him right in the face when he was knocked out for three days.
It was only after the fact that he realized one of the Ten Fingers was doing a commercial in the area, and that's why there was nobody else at the training site. Everything is evacuated, though he missed the sign hanging outside the training zone.
Being already a tier 2 fighter, getting one-shot by the residual of an attack that wasn't even aimed at him was an unfathomable shame, and something Wolfy can never truly comprehend. With his twisted mind going back and forth over this event, an image and history were constructed in his mind, and the tales that were left behind were...alternate history to say the best, or fake news to say the worst.
Still, a tier 2 is still one of the bigger fishes in the prison, and the sharks of the prisons locked away at the tightest corners of Purgatory are never let out anyway.
With that, the legend of the Infamous Wolfy is born here.
And that legend appeared to need some editing soon too, as Pethant parried yet another barrage of attacks with flawless precision before delivering a barrage of blows directly into Wolfy's body before sending him flying backward with Kick of the Tornado again.
'It is true that I never made it to tier 2,' Pethant said, 'but I never stopped training either.'
Then, he pursued Wolfy and continued the beat down onto him. Before, Pethant's sluggishness was actually rather uncharacteristic, but he simply chopped it up to him not being fully warmed up in the previous three fights.
'Curse you!' Wolfy screamed before pointing his claw at Pethant as he approached, 'DIE WITH YOUR NIGGLY PAIN?'
Huh? Pethant raised his eyebrow at the remark, isn't niggly pain one of the fighters that he sent after him before? Then, before he had time to think another thought, a similar sensation of headache exploded out in his mind, as he instantly lost control of his stride, tripping on the ground and falling forward.
Wolfy took half a step forward and swung his fist upwards, digging his nails deep inside Pethant's torso before sending him flying up in the air. That was the voice command for the latent activation of Niggly Pain, one of her most potent and powerful attacks. However, the actual initialization and activation take some time, which is why Wolfy planned everything out this way. She isn't only capable of creating pain off negative thoughts, but once that pain has occurred, she is also able to make it come back with certain voice commands.
That's the niggly part.
'You thought you have overcome me? You thought you have any right to judge me?' Wolfy said, preparing to deliver the killing blow, 'You THOUGHT just because you kept on going while I gave up and lied, that you are better?'
'Bye.' With that, Wolfy prepared to cut Pethant's head clean off as he landed when suddenly a light beeping sound came from his neck, and everybody in the courtyard is knocked cleanout.
Then, Pethant's body crashed into Wolfy's body, crushing the lungs of the Wolfman as he sat in place and fought the nasty headache that's finally beginning to subside.
The fog that surrounded the courtyard is also slowly dissipating, and it is revealed that all of the other inmates that's been watching the fight have also been knocked out.
'What...what is happening?'