While Cleo and Ryu’s teamwork was far from anything one could doll out praise on, she had to admit that the squirt had played the part of a distraction to a T. That wasn’t to say that she’d be congratulating the boy any time soon, especially given how keeping her concentration on her blade was paramount to pulling her next move off and not wasting all her energy on an attack that missed.

For the past few moments the esper had stood beneath the fork-shaped football goal and placed her sword at her side in a crouched Iai stance while pouring telekinetic power into the blade. Were the weapon not indestructible it would have surely shattered a hundred times over from the sheer volume of energy she was forcing into it but that didn’t mean the task was made easier on the girl. The more mental energy she forced into the blade the less source and thus stamina she had access to, meaning the longer she charged her technique the more vulnerable she became with Cleo having a decent chance of passing out once she unleashed her technique. Not that she feared missing the lines of source going from the crowd to the monster absorbing it, they were all fairly open and noticeable targets to her eyes, but with Ryu constantly knocking the giant back and forth there was the risk of hitting Matt instead of the source lines.

‘I have to time this just right…’ The girl thought to herself, her face strained and sweat dripping from her forehead as the air around her danced with pink electricity. ‘If I hit Matt his body will just absorb the attack and he’ll heal it with more of their energy! Even better, Ryu’s five minutes are almost up. Damn squirt better move Matt outta the way fast or there’s not gonna be a school left to save!’

As if responding to Cleo’s wishes, the kaiju did just that but not exactly in the way she had expected.

Ryu dashed between Matt’s legs, using his superior speed to get behind the behemoth as the four-arm giant rained punches down on the ground where the boy had been a moment prior. While Matt turned well-kept grass into a series of craters his opponent rolled himself into a spiked ball, Ryu’s tail wrapping all around him as his hands pressed into ground and pushed off. Spinning in place at high-speed, the teen thought to himself that if just hitting the goblin with a punch or a kick wasn’t getting him anywhere then maybe hitting him with his entire body would help end things. Putting this theory to the test the boy timed a kick to the ground just as he reached maximum rotation, launching the spinning teen into Matt’s back right as the giant started standing up.

Matt questioned, “WHERE DID YOU GO YOU LITTLE WORM?!” Only to receive his answer and a dose of horrific pain directly afterward with Ryu’s body impacting the middle of the goblin’s back. The giant let out a horrendous scream as he was launched away from the civilians and out of Cleo’s way.

The girl blinked, surprised by Ryu’s unconventional form of combat but forced herself to focus up, widening her stance and stating, “Well… it’s now or never… Either this works or we’re screwed… Hope Steel pays me extra for all this hard work, heh… Here goes nothing!” She swung her sword upward at lightning speed. 

“Omega Slash!”

A wall of light pink energy flew from the blade and cut through all before it, not just the ground and the air but the very lifeforce that stood in its way. Every thread connecting Matt to his victim was severed one by one, the goblin cut off from the energy he so greedily coveted with the rebound and sensation of loss knocking out students and teachers alike. A quickly deflating Matt, who’d barely managed to stop his fall from Ryu’s attack by catching himself with his hands, had a decidedly more energetic reaction.

“NO… NO NO NO! GIVE it back! You hear me?! Give me back my power!”

The goblin had lost his new arms and was further losing hundreds of pounds of muscle and feet of height every second. He could feel it in his mind, how his control over the school had been decimated. He wouldn’t be able to just ask everyone for their power again, he’d need to start weeks of work all over. Worse yet, he was once again small enough for the timezone to contain him meaning that once the moment they snapped back to the timeless world he’d be stuck there so long as Ryu and Cleo were nearby.

Turning around to look over his lost crop, however, the goblin noticed that the latter of his foes was thoroughly spent right next to the weakened students with the girl on the floor and struggling to so much as get breath into her lungs. She was vulnerable and while he was whittling away more and more by the second, Matt still had enough power to put her out of his misery if he used it right. Where Ryu had gone and how to deal with him afterward were problems for another time. All he wanted then was retribution.

“You little cow! How dare you do this to your new god!” Cleo looked up from her stupor to the comical sight of a normal-sized, yelling Matt and his horrifically engorged right arm flying toward her. The goblin had transferred what source energy he had left into his arm, aiming to use it all on her in one last blow. At full strength she’d have ages to block it or dodge it. After the Omega Slash, however, all the girl could do was watch as the blow and its seething, frothing owner came flying toward her.

Stuck in the timezone again there was no outside help that could change the tides and Ryu was likely as spent as her. The girl looked down as Matt threw his final punch of the day, certain that her end had come.

THOOM!

The ground rippled like water, the concussive force tearing through the timezone and decimating what remained of the copied school grounds. It was the strongest punch of the day and it had used enough lifeforce to keep someone alive for hundreds of years, by far Matt’s strongest attack ever thrown.

And it had been all for naught.

When the dust settled the seething goblin’s rage turned to regret as he found his now normal arm pressed into the forehead of a pissed off Ryu who stood with his arms out and his eyes down. Cleo’s eyes, meanwhile, looked up at the boy for the first time with surprise. She thought she was dead yet the tailed teen had taken the hit head on with what was the last of his strength to save her, someone who’d done nothing but try to capture him…

Well, she’d thought it was the last of his strength in any case.

“Not bad, Matt!” Ryu congratulated as Matt stepped back cautiously, the goblin’s knees knocking together as he tried to butter up his opponent.

“Th-thank you… I had to um… get a good hit in eventually… Ya know, in this little back and forth between friends… Haha…” The goblin continued his slow and apologetic escape with his giant ears down and his smile uneven. The kaiju’s smile, however, only grew wider as blood dripped from his forehead and he pulled his arm back maliciously.

“Back and forth, huh? Well, you had your back so I guess it’s time for my forth!”

The engorged fist flew forward as Matt screamed, Ryu’s transformation coming undone as the right hook soared toward the red monster’s face that spat apologies and supplications. The loss of kaiju-like strength certainly saved Matt’s life but it didn’t save him from a world of hurt as even without his powers the boy was plenty strong, something the goblin found out first hand when the small teen’s attack hit him hard enough to not only topple him over but also bury the back of his head in the ground.

A sickening THUD rang out as Matt was forced into unconsciousness. The timezone faltered for a moment before the trio of oddities were allowed back into the regular world, The Line making clear it felt that there were no more dangers present.

Ryu stood with torn clothes and heavy breaths, struggling to find his footing as a partially recovered Cleo got to her feet and watched him from behind.

“You… saved me… Even after I-” The girl tried to thank the teen but found herself cut off by a wobbly Ryu.

“Think nothin’ of it! We couldn’t finish our fight if you went and got flattened, haha!” Kid Kaiju declared, looking down at his once again human hands. “That sure was cuttin’ it close though! I musta turned it off one second short of five minutes. Do me a favor though, will ya?” Ryu looked toward the girl as piles of confused and tired students came to, their source energy slowly returning to them as Cleo nodded apprehensively. “Gimme till the end of a quick nap before we start round two, sound good? Last thing I want is to be dragged somewhere without putting up a fight…”

The girl was given no chance to reply as her conversation partner had already passed out before she could even give his request an answer. 

The telepath sat for a moment with a goblin, a mystery and a decision before her…

She came to an answer for the latter surprisingly quickly.

Several hours later Ryu found out what that answer was, waking up tied to a chair in the center of the Paranormal Patrol’s headquarters. Awakening to this rather sour turn of events the boy knew the first thing he needed to do was take a deep breath. 

So that he could use it to yell at Cleo.

“You bitch! What the hell?! You suck so much, our round two is canceled! The next time I see you I’m gonna flatten you!”