Dazzling, resplendent light washed over everything.
It filled everyone's vision.
As the light faded, a colossal giant of light—sleek lines, pure presence—came crashing down from the sky.
BOOOOM—!!
The earth heaved; dirt and stone geysered—earning a perfect, full-marks landing from Gaia.
Though this pocket-realm plainly had no soil a moment ago, the instant the giant of light touched down, there was soil.
The giant's bent legs slowly straightened; he stood, silent, planted upon the ground.
His body radiated an inexplicable divinity. Blue and maroon bands crossed a silver frame; the "wings" flanking the color timer were, peculiarly, black.
Inside Ultraman Tiga, Yevenko was suffused in warm radiance. He looked around and noticed Tom at his left, Jerry at his right.
Meaning he stood at dead center.
His mouth curled, just a little.
Good—so even if Tom and Jerry got dragged into the fusion, he was the primary pilot. No big problem.
Alright then—move out and beat Phantylia senseless, farm those exploration points hard.
Yevenko moved—Tiga did not…
Yevenko: "?"
Don't tell me… he wasn't piloting Tiga's body—what was he piloting, the head?
Controlling just the head wasn't exactly the dream, but the head did have a bunch of moves. He could live with that.
He tried to fire an eye beam.
Nothing. Tiga stood stock-still.
A thought struck him. He focused, tested—and finally, fully confirmed it.
Then Yevenko swore:
"Holy crap!!"
"I—I turned into the color timer?!!"
How was that even reasonable?
He'd used the Spark Lens. By rights he should be able to control all of Tiga. Instead he'd become the Spark Lens—immobile. How was he supposed to fight like this?
What, was he going to AFK and weep his way to 80% shared loot?
Still, even if all he could command was the color timer… in Ultras, the timer is the critical weak point.
Maybe he could use the timer to drive Tiga—worth a try.
He had to hurry. Tom and Jerry were currently frolicking in the sea of light; give them a moment to figure things out and Tiga would start acting in earnest.
Across the field, Tiga—roughly on par with Phantylia's size—faced her down.
The crisis Jing Yuan and Dan Heng couldn't resolve—the inability to deal fatal harm—vanished in an instant.
March 7th couldn't help shouting:
"Tom's here—we're safe! Tom's here—we're gonna win!"
Stelle threw up both thumbs and yelled along:
"Big Bro Tom is tall and tough!"
Phantylia casually peeled the fighter jet (that had cratered into her face) off and slapped it to the ground. A flicker of wariness crossed her features as she regarded Tiga.
She had seen clearly: this Tiga had fused with the cat and the mouse—Tingyun's body, the very two who cleaved the Ambrosial Arbor.
Those bizarre abilities—she couldn't comprehend them even now.
And this giant of light was composed of that cat and mouse together.
But that didn't mean she would lose!
With Destruction and Abundance fully merged, this was absolutely her strongest state. That raging, surging might—that was her confidence.
As a Lord Ravager, her will to destroy had never wavered. Whatever stood in her way—she would annihilate.
A vicious glint flashed in Phantylia's eyes; the swelling Destruction scoured away her unease. Planting both hands to the ground, she rose—her hues shifting from emerald to a royal violet.
Power flared, wild and fierce, as she spoke:
"All things—indeed the cosmos itself—must end in Destruction's silence."
"You will be no exception."
"I, Lord Ravager Phantylia, pronounce your doom!"
She thrust her right hand to the sky.
A heartbeat later, dozens of meteorites plummeted toward Tiga—each as large as Tiga's head—venting apocalyptic might.
At the same time, Tom and Jerry registered their current situation. After a brief think, each reached behind their back and pulled out a control stick. Tom passed Yevenko one as well, which hovered neatly in front of him.
They started piloting.
Tiga sprang to life.
He looked up at the incoming meteorites, raised both hands—and a rainbow-sheened Ultra barrier blossomed wide.
Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!
Explosions hammered the barrier in a relentless chain.
Tiga studied the barrier in his hands—then rolled it up like a canvas. In moments it had become… a baseball bat.
His legs blur-spun like twin cyclones; he streaked in a silver afterimage to Phantylia's side and swung for her head with the Ultra bat.
BOOOOM—!!!!
The thunderclap impact left Phantylia no time to react. Her eyes went unfocused; her whole body locked up. For all her weight, her feet left the ground and she hung there for a beat.
From the crown of her head, a long, angry red welt swelled up—and when it reached a certain height, it sprouted yellow twigs, budding and branching… like a Christmas tree.
Tom poked his head out through Tiga's eye, produced a watering can, and sprinkled the "tree." Then he trotted along the length of the raised bat to Phantylia's head, hung bells and ribbons to decorate it… and, satisfied, scampered back inside.
An instant later, Tiga hefted the bat again and smacked the tree—smacked Phantylia's head—right back in.
The force drove her into an epic face-plant; her skull dropped like a stone and spiked into the ground.
"Ground," technically—but this pocket realm's floor was more like a translucent barrier. You could see what lay beneath.
With her head buried, Phantylia's skull wobbled and wobbled. Above it circled five or six purple-black planets, spinning round and round.
At last she shook herself hard and came to.
Realizing her predicament, she hastily dropped to her knees, hips pitched high, bracing with both hands to yank her head back out.
Tiga raised a hand to his eye. Tom's paw slipped out through the eye-sill and passed him a red-tubed bomb, which Tiga pinched delicately—exactly like Tom gripping one of Tuffy's old bombs.
Jerry popped out with a little pop onto Tiga's palm, took a huge breath until his belly ballooned, and blew hard on the bomb.
It swelled instantly—up to Tiga-size.
Jerry and Tom dove back inside. Tiga set the bomb right where Phantylia's upturned… "target" was.
A pin-thin beam from Tiga's eye lit the fuse.
Inside Tiga, Yevenko, Tom, and Jerry clapped hands over their ears; Tiga himself back-stepped several paces, palms clamped to the sides of his head.
One second.
BOOOOM—!!!!
The shockwave rolled outward in furious rings.
A mushroom cloud blossomed above Phantylia's butt and rose, majestic.
The reaction force slammed into her, ripples shuddering through her flesh, driving her head even deeper into the floor—up to the chest cavity, shoved in and out of sight.
A beat later, Tiga seized her with both hands and wrenched her from the ground.
He spun once, twice—again and again—and then hurled her brutally away.
As she arced through the pocket-realm's sky, Phantylia's wits returned.
Humiliated to this degree, her fury boiled over.
"Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!"
She gathered both hands, heedless of cost, and began releasing everything. Destruction's surge and Abundance's flood roared together, crossing, fusing.
"I'll annihilate you here and now!!"
A vast purple-black torrent of light blasted forth, a flood screaming toward Tiga.
Tiga crossed his forearms forward, drew them back. A purple beam formed between his hands; then he snapped into the classic L-shaped stance—
—[Zeperion Beam]!
Blinding white clashed head-on with purple-black.
BOOOOM—!!!!
The twin beams collided mid-air with ear-splitting force.
The pocket-realm groaned as if it would fail—crrk, crrk—fracturing in spiderweb panes like glass.
Yevenko realized they couldn't keep the beam-struggle going.
He was fully confident he could win—Tiga was standing on the right side, after all.
But even if they won, the pocket-realm would collapse entirely; the damage would carry to the Luofu itself. Keep this up and it wouldn't just be their DIY fighter crashing—the Luofu, that "ship," might…
They needed to change tactics.
At that thought, Tiga suddenly grabbed his own beam—light twisted into a glowing rope. With a flick, the Ultra Lariat was complete.
The light-rope coiled around the purple-black beam, suppressing it; the looped end snaked out before Phantylia. She sensed it and tried to retreat—but too late.
The noose snapped tight around her wrists and cinched shut. Yevenko yanked the rope down hard.
Phantylia, who'd been airborne, plummeted.
THUD—!!
She hit with a sky-shaking crash.
As Tiga studied her, the ground at his feet burst with thick, massive vines, constricting around his legs.
Phantylia rose wreathed in golden flame—Destruction and Abundance now wholly fused into a new, complete form.
Her purple-black flesh had turned dark-gold; dead-calm gold pupils fixed on Tiga.
Between her hands, a titanic dark-golden sphere coalesced, radiating terrifying power. She hurled it at Tiga with murderous force.
Plainly, she'd entangled Tiga with vines to pin him in place, to keep him from dodging.
After all, this was her all-out strike—Destruction and Abundance perfectly combined.
But from start to finish, Tiga had no thought of dodging.
From within, Yevenko shouted:
"You're not the only one who can change forms!"
The rhombus crystal on Tiga's brow flashed; light flared over his frame—and he shifted into the maroon Power Type.
Savage, overwhelming strength roared through him; his silhouette bulked up visibly.
Heat poured off him in waves, unconsciously burning the vines at his feet to ash.
He crossed his arms, opened them, then drew them in; a blazing fireball formed between his hands.
He fired it as a beam—
—but after a short span, he caught the beam in his hands. Flames condensed into a red-hot baseball bat.
As the dark-gold sphere screamed in, Yevenko drove Tiga to swing the bat in a full, vicious arc, shouting:
"Rules are made to be broken!"
Stelle's eyes went wide.
"Hey—that's my line!!"
March 7th sighed softly.
"Looks like the title of 'Galactic Slugger' is changing hands. From now on, you're the Galactic Little Slugger."
The fight raged on.
The red-hot bat connected with the dark-gold sphere.
BAM—!
Power scraped and howled; the sphere shrank and shrank—then Yevenko sent it flying back the way it came.
After a brief return flight, its fuel burned out. The dark-gold sphere's energy guttered and vanished.
Phantylia stared—every tactic failing against Tiga—and those freakishly whimsical methods, all now at the cat and mouse's disposal.
Before, in her observation, the cat and mouse couldn't muster such massive, area-denying counters.
But once they became this giant of light, that limitation simply ceased to exist.
Besides those innate, absurd cartoon traits, in raw might Phantylia felt the giant exceeded even her Abundance-wrought body laced with Destruction.
If only… she controlled this body.
But that was nearly impossible, and as things stood, she had no path to victory.
The thought of retreat took root.
If she preserved this Ambrosial Arbor body and still razed the Luofu, she wouldn't profit—but she wouldn't lose either.
Why die trading blows with a giant of light?
Quietly, Phantylia coaxed vines to gnaw out a small breach in the pocket-realm's shell.
As Imbibitor Lunae, Dan Heng sensed it at once and called out:
"Yevenko! Phantylia's trying to run—stop her!!"
But in the next heartbeat Phantylia's figure blurred, streaking for the breach. In the blink of an eye she was there, on the verge of slipping out—
Tiga snapped his wrists; the flaming bat whipped—fwip—into a crimson matador's cape.
Phantylia, just about to exit, swerved against her will.
A pair of horns sprouted from her crown.
From deep in her throat came an involuntary sound:
"Mooo~"