They faced each other with unyielding gazes and their auras of power increasing in intensity. One was on top of a metallic pillar and the other was on top of a flesh and bone pillar. Both of them rose far above the canopies of the forest, the sun beating down on the landscape. The birds flew away into the sky as Ion screamed at the top of his lungs. Bumaro shook his head. This wouldn't do. This fight wasn't going to be nearly hot-blooded enough.
"Come on now, you can do better than that. Surpass your limits, or you will never defeat me," said Bumaro.
"Get fucked, Boltbrain! I'm doing fine!"
"Fine? You have been powering up for five minutes and nothing changed!"
"That's because I am preparing my new ultimate form!" He narrowed his gaze and pointed at Bumaro and smiled confidently, striking a dramatic and rather flamboyant pose.
Bumaro sighed at his opponent's bravado. "You always improvise and try to pull tricks on me instead of committing to your training schedules and establishing strategies."
"It works half the time, doesn't it?" said Ion, his shark-smile growing ever more cheeky.
"That's exactly the problem. We are caught in an eternal stalemate which you cannot settle because you are too beholden to fleshly passions. I, on the other hand, take this seriously. And I intend to put an end to it."
"Listen to yourself! It's nothing but business with you! Can't you ever show a little bit of excitement? Or is that big screw up your ass making it too hard for you?"
Bumaro frowned. "The only thing that is hard for me is hearing these weak jokes over and over again. You used to have a sharper wit, you know. I think becoming a father dulled it somewhat."
"What the hell did you say to me? Everyone loves my jokes!"
"These people work for you, don't forget. And your daughter is still young, she can't help but idolize you."
"At least I still know what it's like to connect with someone and start a family with them! All you care about is work, and you know what? It's leaving you rusty!"
Bumaro sighed at the pun, and assumed his perfectly calculated fighting stance. "You will find that my performance is not impeded by my age."
Ion laughed at his exasperation, and assumed a primal fighting stance. "BRING IT ON, YOU SORRY EXCUSE OF AN ABACUS!"
The Master of Machines reconfigured himself into an angelic clockwork knight several stories tall, his golden wings and halo giving him an aura of beauty and awe. He conjured his sword and ran like lightning straight for Ion's throat.
The Lord of Flesh turned himself inside-out through his unhinged jaws. His entire countenance was like that of a deformed ogre, his skin missing in random patches, black muscles tensed like steel cables and biological armaments sprouting everywhere.
The mutated behemoth struck the clockwork angel with his horrific claws, only for the enemy to disappear in a burst of blinding light. Ion grabbed at his face and screamed at his burning eyes, striking in all directions in attempt to hit his enemy. But Bumaro had analyzed all of Ion's opening gambits from previous battles, and figured out that the Lord of Flesh would not anticipate a dirty trick of his own.
"Come out here, you COWARD!" shouted Ion.
"If you insist." Bumaro deactivated his cloaking field, appearing right behind Ion and running him through with his sword, then kicking the behemoth forward several dozen meters into a boulder which exploded from the force of the impact.
Ion rose, regenerating the wound from the sword and growing new eyes. He hurled a sphere of flesh and bone towards Bumaro's face, who attempted to slice it in half. The sphere dodged his blade and enveloped his entire head with crab-like legs. Bumaro tried to rip it off with his free hand to no avail, and Ion took the opportunity to bite down on the clockwork angel's sword arm, thrashing around like a crocodile.
Bumaro fired laser beams from his eyes that destroyed the crab grabbing onto his head and severely damaged Ion. Despite this, the behemoth still managed to bite off the sword arm. Stunned by the pain, Bumaro could not fight back. Ion ripped off a leg with his powerful jaws. He raised the limbs above his hideous head like a trophy and laughed loudly. "It looks like it will cost an arm and a leg to fix this!"
Bumaro floated off the ground through the use of an anti-gravity core, and pressed a button on his chest with his remaining hand. The spare limbs which Ion had ripped off detonated in a giant explosion, reducing the behemoth's flesh to a molten slurry dripping from a skeleton. He could not even scream as his vocal chords and nerve endings were gone. Bumaro sprouted his substitute limbs and chuckled.
"Ah, no jokes, Ion? That's a shame. You seemed like such hot stuff for a second there."
Ion grew multiple arms to give Bumaro several middle fingers. Bumaro didn't let the banter slow him down, and fired a barrage of missiles at the weakened enemy. Ion used tentacles to grab the missiles and redirected them at Bumaro. There were too many projectiles, and the clockwork angel could not dodge them all. He was caught in an explosion that reduced several trees to ashes. He used his scanners to try and detect the enemy through the cloud of smoke but it didn't work.
A swarm of locusts burst into view, biting through his armor and crawling into the exposed neural interfaces. Bumaro was totally overwhelmed by stinging pain throughout his whole body. He tried to activate an emergency countermeasure, but was interrupted by a large boulder being dropped right on top of him. The sheer damage from the missiles and the boulder prevented him from freeing himself, try as he might. Ion sauntered up to him with another huge smile, his fists shaped into hammers.
"Aren't you going to finish me?" asked Bumaro incredulously.
Ion scratched his chin with an extra arm in consideration. "Welllll, I could, but it seems to me like you hit rock bottom!"
"Please just finish me," requested Bumaro in the most perfect deadpan tone.
"Alright, fine. You really are stone cold." He swung at the boulder with his hammer-fist, shattering it into a thousand pieces and freeing Bumaro.
"What…why did you…" he stammered in shock at the display of mercy.
"Come on, don't start gravelling at my feet now! Keep fighting!"
"Anything to shut you up."
"Says the tin man who told a pun of his own at my expense!"
Bumaro could not argue against it, so he just got up and conjured his sword again. He needed new tactics. And he was certain that Ion would not spare him another time if the fight got boring.
The clockwork angel came to the conclusion that the situation was serious enough to demand some big improvisation. He spread his wings and flew high into the air, beyond the clouds and reaching for the void of space. Covering himself in a new, highly resistant armor, he descended like a meteor in his enemy's direction.
Ion braced for the collision, a dozen moves racing through his mind. His eyes widened as Bumaro reached out with his hand and opened a portal between them. Ion's opponent had vanished just before hitting him.
"Two can play at this game!" Ion shouted. Thaumaturgical runes glowed crimson across his flesh and he sliced open his own portal in reality, calculating the approximate location of his opponent based on the energy signature of his portal. He grew wings and stepped through, emerging in the middle of the sky with his enemy nowhere to be seen.
"I guess the tin man doesn't have the heart to fight me head on!" He shouted. Bumaro deactivated his cloaking field one more time and rammed him with the force of a freight train, pinning him against a floating and invisible object. The behemoth ripped his enemy's head clean off, only to notice that it was a decoy holding firmly onto him still. And with his sharp senses, Ion could perceive a subtle humming of machinery and an increase in temperature right next to him.
The real Bumaro appeared, his golden armor reflecting the rays of sunlight in a dazzling display. He raised his hand, sending out a signal to the invisible object Ion was pinned to. There was the booming sound of a huge cloaking field being deactivated as an airship armed with a fusion cannon came into view. Wasting no time, Ion split in half and let the decoy pin down his fake half. Flying away from point blank range of the rapidly heating cannon, Ion's thaumaturgical runes glowed ever brighter as he prepared his own beam.
They fired.
A flash of light exploded into existence that could be seen for dozens of miles.
The air rumbled like the world was coming to an end.
But not louder than their hot-blooded screaming.
The beams pushed against each other, the spot where they connected crackling with pure destructive energy arcs. Bumaro and Ion began falling apart into gears and blood as the fight neared its climax, but both absolutely refused to give up. In the end, what decided the victor was a simple move.
"HEY, ION!"
"WHAT, YOU WANNA GIVE UP?"
"I BET YOU CAN'T THINK OF A PUN ABOUT LASERS!"
Ion went into a state of shock as he realized he really couldn't, his eyes going totally white. In that fraction of a second, his beam was overwhelmed and his defeat was sealed.
He fell into the ocean below, his mind fading to black. But when he regained consciousness, he wasn't chained down for interrogation or anything of the sort. He was in his human form and lying on a bedroom inside the airship. He was guided to the roof by robotic servants, where he met Bumaro in his human form as well, sitting on a beautiful dining table covered in tea, biscuits and sandwiches.
"Sit down. I figured you must be hungry. Do excuse my servants if the food and drink is not so good. I don't exactly need such things."
Ion looked around in suspicion. "Where are the cameras? Are you trying to poison me or something? You know that doesn't work on me, right?"
"For countless years we have been rivals. We know each other better than most people ever will. And now you won't even let me be your host! You insult me." Said Bumaro in a humorous tone.
"Hold up. Are you telling me…that I…really grind your gears?"
"Tell your daughter that one if you haven't already, I'm sure she'll love it."
"Sure will. But…there is something I don't quite understand. Why did you spare me? You could have gotten rid of the leader of your Church's biggest enemy faction. That sounds rather irrational, especially coming from you. So what gives, Boltbrain?"
"Simple. You spared me when you had the chance to do the same to me. Think of it is as a gentleman's principle."
Ion burst into uproarious cackling. "Oh…oh man! That's fucking precious! Why don't you quit your bullshit and admit that you were just having too much fun!"
"Maybe I was, maybe I wasn't. Now be a good cult leader and eat."
"You don't have to tell me twice. Say, my daughter is gonna be participating in this school play, and I would be honored if you showed up."
"Certainly. But only if you promise to help with some issues that are dividing my Church."
"Hush hush on both ends?"
"Hush hush."
"Deal!"
The Lord of Flesh and the Master of Machines shook hands, finished their meal and prepared to go their separate ways for now. However, they were interrupted by a massive aura of power suddenly manifesting nearby them. From a pillar of light emerged a humanoid figure dressed in a black cloak and a white bird-like mask, a scalpel in his hand. His cloak billowed in the wind, his eyes gleamed with purifying intent and he spoke in a vaguely Eastern European accent.
"This sickness…will not persist."
Bumaro and Ion looked at each other, nodded and assumed a back-to-back badasses pose to fight the new challenger.