Kakarot raised his hand to block the chop headed for his neck with an easy movement. To him, the seemingly instantaneous movements of the world-class assassin, Mercenary Tao, felt like watching a fly trapped in a block of honey, the force capable of shattering steel like a gentle breeze to the Saiyan.
He hadn't lowered his guard an inch, but he genuinely didn't have any reason to take Tao seriously, so the effort he put into his block was rather minimal.
Still overkill against someone in Tao's league… but when the blow landed, it was Kakarot's knees that buckled for a moment.
Both Tao and Kakarot's eyes widened simultaneously as the elite assassin's reflexes lived up to their name, taking advantage of the boy's moment of weakness to sweep his leg and push the young Saiyan backwards with a clean, practiced palm strike that'd killed more individuals than Tao ever bothered to count.
With Kakarot, the whole maneuver wasn't even strong enough to fully knock him off balance. The boy's feet left the ground for a single instant, his body traveling around five feet backwards through the air before he landed lightly, his brain still confusedly putting everything together.
On the Saiyans' side, though, he was the last one to figure out exactly what was happening.
Because, hovering around a foot off the ground, three feet in front of Blue, was Cynder. Struggling helplessly in Blue's telekinetic grip.
"One move… and I snap this bastard child's neck, my love. You may be fast, but not even you are fast enough to save him under these conditions, dear Tater." Blue called out lovingly, spitting the words bastard child out with enough venom to let everyone know exactly what the crazy stalker's opinion of Tater's son was.
Tater and Kakarot clenched their teeth in unison. Even though his conscious brain hadn't fully worked everything out, Kakarot's subconscious battle senses had already realized what was going on with his body.
Blue had the entire battleground on lockdown, under his overwhelming, broken mental power. The product of a mind broken countless times over by a single all-encompassing obsession for one man.
Tater.
Kakarot took it in stride. His mind didn't like complexity. It liked feeling. Feeling, he understood. And what he could feel right now was that his power was being heavily suppressed. Numerically, down to around a tenth of its real value, but qualitatively, his strength was less than 1% of what it normally was… like he was wearing a full set of the world's heaviest weights. His ki barely responded, and his body itself was sluggish. The only thing working normally was his perception… but he could still beat the guy in front of him, he could tell, with effort.
But… Cynder was an entirely different problem. With the kid as a hostage, he knew that, even if he beat the killer in front of him, Blue would simply snap Cynder's neck before he could move a muscle. Even at his strongest, Kakarot wasn't certain that he could move as quickly as Cynder had, and he'd still been caught like it was nothing.
With his attention divided, Kakarot found himself struggling against the assassin, who didn't dare hesitate against someone who'd managed to take two of his attacks so far and still have no visible injuries.
Tater's problems were worse. He was completely stuck.
Not literally. As he'd learned over time, mental powers followed specific rules, and had specific limits.
Fortuneteller Baba's ace fighter, whatever his name was, with the attack that worked by using Tater's greed against him, for example, could turn one's aura against itself, but a good (or even neutral) nature and/or a high degree of ki control was enough to fight the effects.
The curse Baba later put on Tater for blowing up her house could have take him straight to hell, but only because he'd destroyed her home, and it could only do so if he failed to pay her back.
Blue's psychic powers were directly fueled by his obsession with Tater. Their power was directly proportional to the strength of that obsession, but if he tried to use his powers on something that had absolutely nothing to do, even in his own twisted mind, with Tater, they'd fail. The strain for Blue would be exponentially worse.
As such, Tater had already worked out the limits of Blue's strength for himself. By his assessment, Blue was more-or-less even with his own power, when the target was himself.
In other words, if Tater was the sole target, he'd basically be a statue. Maybe able to scratch an itch or something if he really pushed, but that was about it.
But instead, Blue was spreading his focus between multiple targets. Cynder was directly connected to Tater, so he was a bit easier to manipulate, but the bastard also had to suppress Kakarot's strength, or Kakarot would deal with both assailants just as easily as Tater theoretically could.
That was a lot harder.
As a result, Tater could move, but his movements were incredibly slow. Slower than a normal human's. He could try to gather energy, but he knew from experience that Blue could sense that, too, and suppressed as he was, there wasn't a chance that Tater would get a blast fired off before Blue snapped Cynder's neck like a twig.
Tater was properly checkmated. His rage built every moment, but he couldn't do a thing about it. It was the most helpless Tater had ever felt… and he'd been through quite a few situations that'd rendered him helpless in the past.
All he could do was watch and silently wait for an opening that Blue was determined not to give him. A tense two-way standoff with a terrified hostage in the center. Neither man moved. Neither man blinked.
Just as Blue had waited years to satisfy his obsession, Tater would not allow this bastard to harm his only, idiot son. In the back of his mind, the Saiyan man used his ki-sense to track Kakarot's battle with all of the precision that he could muster. Knowing that the boy had Tarble's approval, Tater truly found himself believing that Kakarot could somehow distract Blue without making the bastard kill Cynder.
Or perhaps it was just blind hope… but it was all Tater could cling onto right now. All he needed was a single instant. One tiny little opening, and all of this would end.