I didn't hesitate. In a fight, you take every single opportunity that you can get, no dirty move was off the table if it meant that you get an advantage. I'd drilled that fact into the girls' heads more times than I could possibly count.
Si, I didn't go after Pepper. She'd be more disoriented, and she was way stronger than Lynn, too. Even if Lynn had learned Ikari or something, that'd still hold true.
If Pepper wasn't protecting her, Lynn was the weak link.
So I went after her with everything I could muster. Five explosive lateral motions with the Hyper Motion technique, shooting out as many ki blasts as I possibly could along the way.
It was like a cloud of energy droplets was closing in on Lynn's location. An unrelenting storm of energy, thrown at her in mere seconds, all at once.
Lynn hadn't had time to get her bearings. Her body was still rolling, slamming into the ground with little to no control. Her brain was probably jarred, disoriented from being flung through the sky, and the energy blasts were coming from way too many angles to block.
But Lynn's strong point had always been her level head. Her ability to see beyond what she was actually seeing. Even disoriented and barely in control of her movements thanks to the uncontrollable inertia from my throw, she chose the best possible reaction.
She planted her feet in the ground and jumped up, backflipping high into the air with a truly beautiful display of perfect bodily mastery.
Just like I'd anticipated.
"ACK!" My bone-crushing kick slammed perfectly into Lynn's gut, throwing her to the ground with the speed and force of a bullet, or a meteor.
"LYNN!" Pepper screamed, but it was too late.
Since she'd moved away from them, some of the ki blasts I'd shot earlier missed, but the rest created a massive mushroom cloud that swallowed the girl whole.
Not even I could sense her in the explosion.
There was no way that she came out of that without a scratch. No way. But I trusted that she hadn't been killed, either.
Lynn was out of the fight.
I could concentrate on Pepper.
"BLITZ TITANSPEAR!" I caught Pepper's gigantic Blitz Spear in my left hand as it passed me by.
We'd both known that a predictable shot like that didn't have a chance in hell of hitting me. The loss of Lynn had made Pepper get sloppy.
Exerting a bit more force, I broke the energy construct-like blast in half with my bare, chi-enhanced fist.
But… yet again, I'd miscalculated. The moment I heard it, I realized my mistake.
Pop.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
"Crap!" I cursed, realizing her intent. The energy from the Titan explosion had completely obscured my chi-sense, and the explosion itself was blocking my vision. Not for long, but a few seconds where I was totally blind, but she could sense me clear as day through the torrent of her own chi, was all that she needed.
I didn't have time to fly out of the explosion to clear my senses, and dodging something that I couldn't see or sense was like shooting fish in a barrel, inside of a giant, house-sized marshmallow that just happened to be the same size as the barrel, and had the consistency of bulletproof gelatin.
So, all I could do was quietly sharpen my perception, my body, and my ki, stretching the time into a seemingly-infinite expanse as Pepper charged the blast.
"REGALIA!"
"UNM!"
BANG!
I didn't catch, or stop the Regalia Wave that Pepper unleashed at me.
Glad that it was a wave and not a cannon like she'd actually had the time to charge, I slammed both of my open palms into the wave of pure, concentrated ki, and with a grunt, changed the trajectory. Though it wasn't a small waste of energy by any means, the Regalia Wave sailed harmlessly by, just barely missing me.
Simple and easy solution. There'd been absolutely nothing forcing me to actually catch the wave.
BOOM!
Too simple and easy. I figured it out only an instant before Pepper struck, a powerful body shot that I hadn't had the time to properly defend myself against, though I managed a makeshift defense. The force blasted my body through the air, on a diagonal path with only one end.
BAM!
I slammed into the ground with enough force to instantly create a massive crater with my body at the center.
"BLITZ SPEAR! BLITZ SPEAR! BLITZ SPEAR!" Pepper tossed Blitz Spear after Blitz Spear at me, giving me as little respite as possible. All I could do was cross my arms in front of my chest and take the blasts. They didn't do much, essentially just scratches, but, as she pinned me down, everything started piling up. Between the Blitz Titanspear, redirecting the Regalia Wave, blocking Pepper's body blow, and all of these Blitz Spears, the bruises from the beating earlier were starting to throb terribly, especially on my arms.
I needed a moment to breathe… Wait… that was the point of it.
"BLITZ SPEAR!" As the next one slammed into my defense, the dots rapidly connected in my head. Pepper wanted me occupied.
Why? To tire me out? No. She was wasting way more energy than I was… it wasn't smart, unless she had some other goal. Something worth wasting all of this energy for.
"BLITZ SPEAR!"