William W Wonka had been terrorizing the good and fair people of Candy Land for some time now. His factory loomed over the land puffing clouds of noxious pink cotton candy into the blue sky, poured rivers of high-fructose corn syrup into their water supply, and poisoned the once fertile earth. Their children were forced to labor until their skin turned orange in hostile conditions like hostages in order to keep the population docile and their ruler, the once fair Princess Frosting, imprisoned inside of her own castle while the people cried out for justice.

And today justice had come…

Descending Dragon Splits the Heavens

The sky roared as thick pink clouds split overhead into four equal quadrants and allowed the sunlight to pour through for the first time in what felt like months. William felt his office shake from the force of it and was found hiding beneath his desk seconds later by the little orange security guard who trundled in to make sure he was okay, eyes wide with terror, staring through the stained-glass window he watched the oddly human-shaped dragon descend upon the courtyard where the guards were still busy picking themselves off the ground. Six-foot-five he stood with a longsword made of lacquered red wood in one hand a black coat hanging from his shoulders as he thumped into place. Tanned forearms covered in the little scars of a hard life peeked out from beneath rolled back sleeves and the first few buttons of his shirt hung open beneath his throat, brown hair tied behind his neck with the first streaks of silver finally beginning to show after so many thousands of years and still he loomed over the little orange men with their wide-mouthed blunderbusses. Prying his feet from the cracked concrete with the greatest of ease and stepping out of the dimple he’d created in the courtyard with a single mighty step, no pity spared for the first guard whose head exploded, nor a glance for the second or the third before itchy fingers slipped from their triggers and rifles began clattering to the floor whilst the red sword sprouted tendrils.

“William Wonka, come out and meet me or send your champion,” The dragon’s voice rumbled. “Either way you’re not leaving here alive today.”

“Sir, Sir!” A group of orange, tiny men ran into the security room - their little legs hustling hurriedly toward him. “There’s a situation upstairs, there’s a…I don’t even know what to call it. A dragon? A man? It’s attacking us!”

“Yeah, I see it.” The man sitting at the monitors noted, his hand slashing the air to change images. The security feed shifted to different angles. Then the voice boomed through them, a sound of challenge - a sound of familiarity, in some ways. Something deep in him resonated with the voice, recognized it from some distant, long-forgotten memory. “Tell the men to stand down, they can’t handle this fight.”

Long, thin fingers wrapped around the hilt of a large, oversized sword and swung it over his back - locking it in place with a string of souls. His gray eyes turned upward, toward the courtyard looming stories above the deep bunker. Technically it was part of the factory, those here lacked the intelligence to understand the doorway through realms.

He turned once again to the consoles, to the vaguely familiar man. “I know you, I swear I do. From where?” He stepped through the door forlorn, not knowing how he knew the man or why he felt so familiar to him - to a part of him buried deep. Vanishing through the shadows, he shifted his consciousness through them - flowed along the dark pathways of the Jigoku.

Materializing once more, he stood in the open courtyard where the other assaulted - looking at him head on. “I am the champion you crave, Sir Dragon. I’m not fully understanding why you decided to attack here, but if that’s what you want - then I suppose the only thing I can do is fight you in his place.”

He reached up to wrap his hand around Gekimetsu, pulling the Lord of Shadows free of the souls binding it - feeling the power flood in to him, through him. The darkness of his veins reflecting the darkness in his heart. The shadows pulsated rapidly as the sword pulled from his back. His gray eyes darkened. “If you wish to die, then who am I to dissuade you?” The sword touched the ground, and the concrete shattered under the sheer weight of it - though he moved it effortlessly.

Unaru had just about decided he’d had enough of waiting when a familiar scent hit the air.

He’d not taken more than a step from the impact crater since arriving nor had the orange men moved. Each one too scared to even breath at this point lest their heads explode like first one’s had and still someone new had arrived all the same. A doorway formed of things between darkness appeared. Through it a gaunt man with a black sword stepped out and before a word could be spoken he said.

“So it’s you, Lysander? I should have guessed…”

He never had met a bad situation he wasn’t willing to make worse.

Six times now they’d nearly taken each other’s lives, sometimes it was for a cause, other times it was because they had over the course of hundreds of years grown to dislike the look of eachother’s face. Unaru liked to hold it over his head that he’d won that first fight of theirs on some distant world surrounded by burning grasslands but since then it had been one fuzzy finish after another…

So why was he staring at Unaru with unfamiliar confusion his eyes?

“Have you forgotten? Or has that bastard Athanasius stripped you of your memory and dignity.”

He’d heard rumors, but that’s all they were, to hear them confirmed riled a great fury inside of him. Anger that spilled out into the world in slithering waves of emerald pressure and spread the crater cracks furthermore, size wise, Lysander had always been tall and lean while he was large and brolic. Lysander carried a sword made of uncertain evil things honed to a metal edge while Unaru no Hebi carried a sword made out of wood, polished and red like a glass of wine, impossibly heavy even as it swept through the air at his side and writhing with a life all of its own…

It wanted Lysander’s sword for the collection and it always had.

And Unaru promptly silenced its voice by slamming it to the stone. Burying it a foot deep. Weapons were never his preferred method of combat anyways, only something he adopted of convenience, the Bloodwood Sword just a safe place to house to the Forbidden Sword Index where he kept all the world ending weapons he’d pried out from the hands of fallen foes. He’d use it again if necessary. But with the way fingers cacked in his palms that wasn’t how he’d prefer to do things.

“Very well, out of respect I will let you choose, shall we use all our arsenal or settle this like men?”

A stab at his pride, the old Lysander never let those go, but what of this cruelly confused creature? The courtyard was quiet, the sky still cloudy pink save for a few slivers of light, and all of Candy Land waited with bated breath to hear how the darkling would answer.

“I recall a little. The familiarity of your face creates a dissonance in my mind. An echo. Like the ripples on waves from a stone thrown among them.” His hands shifted slightly as the emerald cracks formed in the crater surrounding them. His eyes watched the lines sinuously grow, while shadows pulsated around the courtyard - wavering and shifting like snakes writhing in a darkened cave bed. They longed to become one with him, and who was he to deny them their rights? They broke free from their captors, slithering along the ground with such quickness. In moments, most of them were hovering in the air behind him - a solid, physical mass levitating behind him. Flicking his arm upward, the sword lifted from the ground and spun rapidly - before it too found itself buried nearly a foot in the concrete.

“My dignity remains, my memory may not be what it used to be - though. How could one expect it to be, Unaru, when one has lived since nearly the dawn of time itself.” He spoke like a friend, the words of someone who had known the other for many centuries. They’d fought many battles, across many worlds. Sometimes on opposite sides, sometimes on the same side. But they were always competing against one another. “You wish to face me once more, I assume, else why would you have come here? Surely not to simply destroy this decadent land.” He cracked his own knuckles, though his hands were small, and his body lithe, in comparison to the others. They both knew their physical makeup didn’t speak to their strength and abilities.

“I suppose we should just see where it goes from here, yeah?” He smiled a devilish grin, and as he stepped forward the shadows followed - wrapping themselves around his body, engulfing him in the darkness of their design. They encased him like a bondage suit, flowing around him rapidly and with a pace ever quickening. In that single moment, his body launched itself - a speed so robust that the shockwave knocked the little orange men from their feet, and his body seemed to simply blink.

His momentum shifted him forward, he knew the other could track him as perfectly as he could track himself. Even knowing, though, he launched himself through the air with the fury of a man seeking blood. His arm pulled back, cocked and ready - and as he landed within striking distance his fist shot forward - the power bolstered by the shadows flowing through and around his arm enough to knock the other off his feet - and likely into a wall or two.

“Tch, your memories may have been stolen, but your ego is as big as it ever was.”

Unaru listened to Lysander bloviate about his glorified servitude and was once again reminded why he disliked the bloodfiend bastard. But just because Lysander was arrogant did not mean that he was not dangerous and immediately after those dismissive words left his mouth the shadows all around them began to waver, it was a cloudy day, there were not many of their ilk to be found save those that were created by the split in the sky he’d created. Unaru suspected this was more lucky coincidence than clever ploy on his part but he’d never known Lysander to stumble upon a success that he was not willing to attribute to his genius, alas it happened too quickly for him to do anything about his shadow fleeing from him leaving the growling serpent to snarl at the betrayal.

“I came here to free these people from Wonka’s tyranny, kicking your ass is just a bonus.”

It was a bold statement, after all, though Unaru had only defeated Lysander during their first meeting and every battle since that had been nothing short of a stalemate that usually had devastating consequences for the world they fought on. Let this be the final match then. Knuckles cracked as Lysander donned his battle suit and wind whipped as Lysander launched himself into the air, darkness trailing behind him, no doubt bolstering the already otherworldly power. Not one to be outdone Unaru hunched his shoulders. Lowered his weight against the incoming winds so that he would not be sent flying like the orange men and chambered his fist as a brewing storm of emeraldine energy whirled to life around his forearm and then as Lysander entered striking distance…



Unaru thrust his right hand out to meet with Lysander’s but before their knuckles ever met in the middle the pressure generated in the middle would become so intense that neither strike could move past it, frozen in their spot with darkness and lightning snapping between them. Snarling snakes of energy carving trenches through the ground on either side as the cracks continued to increase in intensity around them. For but a moment Unaru grinned. That surly disposition that had calcified over his personality over the ages crumbling to expose the young drake who still loved to fight even after all this time, the world trembling between them, the pressure waves flinging the little orange men through the air with high-pitched little orange screams.

SOARING FISH CLIMBS WATERFALL

But just when it seemed like the stalemate would never end, Unaru shifted his weight upon his right foot. To an outsider observer it did not seem like much. But Lysander who had fought him so many times before would no doubt be immediately alerted to something sly was afoot underfoot. Beneath the surface, a pipe exploded and from it a rising wave of chocolate shot up, angled to hit Lysander with the force of a raging semitruck and to fling him into the air. Riven through with snarls of emerald electricity that would deliver a stunning shock to the fiend’s body. Perhaps not for long, aged as he was, but even a picosecond or time was enough to provide an opening for the Thousand-Winged Dragon.

LONE BOULDER SPLITS RIVER

In the case that this worked, Unaru was on the move, launching into the air beside Lysander. Not quite entering the water funnel but snapping his fist towards it and allowing the pressure wave to pummel through it, should it hit, the force would be enough to send Lysander spiraling into the front of the factor dead-center with the massive golden W that loomed over the front doors and just a few stories below Wonka’s office. The impression in the stone? Shaped eerily like a man’s fist but several times too large, dozens of times too large, enough that it seemed as though a giant had reached down from the sky to personally take a swing!

_{A hit so devastating that Unaru’s shadow could be seen running back to him like a scalded dog.}

Lysander’s fingertips clenched tighter as his hand stopped inches from touching the other’s outstretched hand. His jaw clenched. He’d known the punch wouldn’t land, but still something always irked him at how easily his friend seemed able to meet him blow for blow. Not many could withstand the force of pure energy radiating from his shadow-clad body. Adjusting almost instinctively, even as Unaru did the same, his battle-hardened mind reacted on its own. The shadows lurched from behind him, the well lashing out like a thousand tendrils of malice – a flattened surface which met the wave of chocolate bursting from the ground mid-strike, curling around it to redirect it harmlessly back toward the ground – even as the fisted pressure wave struck him, flinging him backwards as quickly as he’d flown forward.

“You know – somehow I knew this was going to happen.”

He said while laughing, his voice was booming louder than should be possible. The echo of it rebounding and growing, louder and louder until it was almost mind-numbing. Not even sure how that happened. The dust settled around him, his back pressed into the wall leaving the impression of his arms flung out to his side. Taking the opportunity, he shifted his arms and legs back and forth, making a nice little stone angel in the middle of the fist-print.

“These aren’t even people, my friend. They’re subhuman, animals at best, monkeys with some minor level of intelligence. Besides, they get paid – it’s not like they’re slaves.”

Pushing himself away from the wall, crumbling stone falling around him as a large section of the building began to settle from the impact. He rolled his head, cracking his neck before moving on to his knuckles.

”That was some punch you got there, Dragon. Let me show you mine.”

Without moving, he refocused his mind and the shadows welled around him before launching from his chest – a huge chunk of darkness blasting across the space between them almost imperceptibly fast – the force of power surrounding it enough to level the section of building behind Unaru. Should it land, much like his own, it would fling him back against the wall – forcing a massive impression of an M on the wall behind him before slamming him dead-center into the stone.

Once the blackness faded from the other’s vision, from the sheer size of it if nothing else, Lysander was no longer standing on the air where he’d been last seen. In fact, he wasn’t anywhere to be seen at all – but he was sure Unaru could sense his presence in the space between shadows. Except, there’d be many more than just one sensation of his power. Lysander was definitely up to something.

“I can smell you…” the words of his adversary permeated the air, and Lysander couldn’t help but laugh. Of course, the chocolate was a dead giveaway. He should have thought of that, honestly. This was no ordinary foe, but one who knew his opponent very well. Of course, Lysander knew Unaru rather well himself. He could feel the shadows being shorn by the ether blade surrounding the golden M, which was actually just one of the W’s turned upside down honestly. Like Mario and Wario, similar beings of opposite dispositions. Poetic as that may be, the deadly precision with which the sign cut through the air was the opposite. The shadows coalesced around him once again, his own energy flowing through them as he listened to the whistling of the blade in the air.

As it drew near, and he could begin to see the gleam of gold in the dim light cast by the flames around him, his body reacted on its own accord. Bending slightly at the knees, then ducking backward at the waist – it all seemed to happen in slow motion, like some weird bullet time in a movie where his upper body bent back just in time for the W/M to fly over him horizontally and slam into the wall behind him, embedding itself through the brick and mortar to be nearly buried within.

Standing back up straight, the shadows edged down him like a knife – laying perfectly against his flesh and pulling the fresh coating of chocolate off his body before it had a chance to fully harden. Even as this happened, the shadow wall pulled back to reveal him – tunneling between the two like a road. As Unaru’s vision of Lysander returned, he’d find the man leaning against the wall, carefully not touching the ether-shrouded letter, munching on a Wonka’s Wondrous Willy Bar. “You know, that could have seriously killed me. Not really sure how I feel about that one, to be honest.” He said pushing himself off the wall – even as the tunnel of shadows collapsed down into a massive drill bit shaped monstrosity. His own ether shrouded around it, and disappeared against it, black on black as it were. The rotating mass of shadow pushed forward quickly – tip aimed for the man’s midsection.

“Fine, have it your way then.”

The drills touched, their rotational forces spinning rapidly against one another – trying to find purchase and some form of weakness where none could be found. Thank God they were magic, or the sound of them would be deafening. Even still, there was the hint of a shrill sound of metal-on-metal ringing through the madness of the fight. The factory, now fully alerted, shut down operations and many machines ground to a halt as the little orange men filed out and ran to emergency exits. Many died in the rush of them trying to escape, many more died from the explosion of power happening in the courtyard. He felt a change, a shift – and he knew the other was coming for him, even as his own feet were carrying him forward.

The drills disintegrated, and as the final black shape disappeared under the force of pressure from the other side. The storm broke apart, and his eyes caught sight of an overhand right. He tried to avoid it but only succeeded in lessening the blow as the massive-feeling fist slammed into the side of his head, roughly around his cheek. The force the punch nearly took him off his feet, rocking him slightly to the side – his right hand flung out, shadows pushing against the ground to keep his footing. Quick as lightning, his right hand moved from that position – destined to land an uppercut with enough force to send the man flying back to where he came from.

“You want the real fight, you’re about to get it.”

As Unaru flew backward from the force of his blow, Lysander thought himself having done something. Immediately he felt something off – something wrong happening around him. The electricity reached out beyond him and then snapped back – lashing around his extremities like chains around a slave. His mouth curled into a snarl as anger raged through him, boiled his blood. The sudden trapping of his body, being pulled into the prison designed for him – it made the already growing anger crescendo. Then, he saw it – the blur of motion that was Unaru careening directly for him.

“The only help I need…” he began but stopped immediately as the ether-laced fingertips began slamming into his body, hitting the point of internal power those who channeled chi would understand – but the only thing he felt from it was pain. The pain rocketed through him, stinging like bees casually tearing into his flesh, what was only a hundred strikes felt like a thousand – the pain wrecked him for a moment, even his intense healing factor could barely keep up with the damage being done to him. Then the final strike came, palms slamming into his core – drilling him directly through the golden letter and the mortar, the brick gave way, and he flew through into the inner depths of the factory.

“You want me to unleash myself, then I will. You want my full might, then I’ll bring it to you,” the shadows pulsed throughout the factory – darkening beyond their normal measure – they flowed along the ground and the walls, flying like snakes slithering across grass. They flowed from their homes. They swirled around him, tightening along his body – laying over him like cloth for a moment, swirling at him as they rent his flesh from his bone. The pain from it wracked his body, tearing blood and bone. Their swirling mass intensified, growing quicker by the minute.

“Sage Mode: Sage Form III; Godhand,” a voice echoed from nowhere and everywhere. The shadows broke down around him, falling away in layers to reveal him. His body became larger and spryer. Still lithe, he no longer seemed desiccated. Grey eyes seemed more intense than before, his white hair falling around his shoulders, echoing with blackened energy flashing around his body. “I hope you know what you’ve gotten yourself into, Unaru.” Lifting his arms, he pulled from the shadows once more his oversized sword.

“Here I come.” A single step carried him across the distance instantly, back through the crumbling remains of the many holes he’d been forced through by the palm strike. Hard to track, but not impossible, he brought himself before Unaru – and then quickly lashed out. His body dropped slightly, leaning back even as his right-hand touched palm-first on the ground, swinging his legs around to kick Unaru’s out from beneath him. As soon as his back hit the ground, he flung himself around into a flip – bringing his once swinging leg up, slinging it from above and directly down to crash into Unaru’s skull – the force of it enough to crater the concrete beneath him.

Unaru took a moment to ‘farm aura’ as the kids on the bus would say, hopefully a bus that crashed. Lysander had been just been hit over one-hundred times and now his draconic foe stood alone in the courtyard with his jacket billowing on his shoulders, everyone thought he was dead, only Unaru knew the truth and merely shot his own shadow a scathing glare to keep it in place as the rest began to fleet into the darkness where his vampiric opponent gathered his wits. Where the sound of bones breaking and snapping and painfully rearranging themselves echoed out until even Willy Wonka began to wonder if he had been better off surrendering rather than summoning a fiend like this…

It was too late.

“You invented a third Sage Form?” Unaru said, sounding almost surprised for a moment there. Almost surprised until the moment Lysander appeared behind him tall and lanky like some awful bloodsucking wendigo, with slate gray skin, and promptly swept the dragon’s leg out from under him. Unaru had, up to this point, been almost impossible to catch off-guard and even though everyone was shocked at the sudden appearance of the new Lysander he had in truth been watching it take shape in the darkness without so much as a blink. And he was still caught off-guard. His legs were still swept out from under him leaving him staring at the sky and more importantly staring at that long leg dropping down on him like a guillotine, it was all he could do to bring his arms up, absorbing the impact on his forearms even as the back of his skull hammered into the concrete and all at once the beleaguered courtyard finally crumbled beneath them.

Lysander would fall with him but Unaru would hit terminal velocity a lot faster as he shot straight down into the depths past bursting pipes of chocolate until he emerged in the weird underground candy garden with a chocolate river that Wonka had trapped his first victim in so many years ago. KRASH went Unaru’s broad body as he slammed into a hill of candy grass and shot up candy earth. Grunting between blenched teeth and furrowing his brow but he refused to go without a fight. Emerald arms had emerged like a shadow of his proper limbs, brawny crystalline limbs, wrapping their hands around Lysander’s calf while it was still extended and whipping him around on his own momentum until he was shot towards the opposite end of the cavern—

THE MIGHTY ELEPHANT TWISTS ITS ANKLE ON THORNY BUSHES

—Or as Lysander understood it, it was just a dragonscrew legwhip. Just a move that viciously wrenched a mans knee one-hundred-and-eighty-degrees like it was trying to pull it from its socket. Unaru didn’t expect it to do much but give him time. Some damage for his arrogant opponent to gloat over shrugging off as he climbed out of the debris now a good foot taller than he had been before. Broader and more muscular than ever. His skin having turned a shade darker than it was and the streaks of grey had peppered his hair when they first met beginning to glow with an emerald light. Unaru’s teeth seemed sharper now, his eyes had a more reptilian slant, and one those forearms the first hints of scales could be seen breaking through the tanned flesh.

“Not bad…”

As they fell, he searched for any sign of a place to take hold – to grasp onto and hold himself from the turmoil of landing roughly on the candy grass he knew was below. His sword lay, teetering on the precipice of falling from the courtyard above, out of his reach – and he had nothing but the strength and power in his hands and arms to try and mitigate his fall. As Unaru broke away from him, speeding toward the ground at a much faster rate than Lysander intended – which meant it was exactly the speed Unaru intended. He stabbed a knife-hand at the wall, letting his fingers dig into the rock and concrete and stone – slowing his descent further until finally, barely clinging at the edge of a broken pipe, feet dangling over the edge.

“Goddamn, that was close.” He said to himself, looking down just in time to see a pair of emerald hands rising from the dim light below, grabbing and twisting. The force of it pulled his grip from the metal pipe and flung him across the room – his body slammed into the wall, even as the shadows of the dimly lit wall moved to soften his blow. The dust spewed out from impact, a cloud of it covering the area around him – and he fell onto his side on the floor. Grunting, he tried to push himself back up – but pain wretched his stomach into a knot, and his vision went white for a moment.

Shaking his head, he coughed and sputtered for a second, before rolling over onto his back. “We almost done?” He asked. “I’m…not giving up, but I could really use a drink. This is starting to hurt a little bit, you know.” He said out loud to Unaru, who was somewhere off to his left. Pushing again, he forced his body up from the ground until he stood on his feet – face bunched up from the pain and the effort. “I mean, we both got some good hits in. I think we just call this one a draw, and go on about our way, yeah?” He didn’t expect the other to agree to that. Unaru wasn’t one to take a draw when he saw a sign of victory. Lysander knew it, and in some ways, he counted on it. His injured right arm twisted, shadows curling around it to provide something akin to buffering against further harm, healing – and if it came down to it, an immense burst of power. His legs bending, he brought his arms up and clasped his hands into fists before him.

“Or we can keep this going, because momma Kaie didn’t raise no bitch.”

“I did not think the great Lysander would turn into a coward in his old age…” The dragon rumbled.

Rumbled as if waking from a deep slumber with the shedding of its mortal coil, of its human disguise, exposing the arrogant and bloodthirsty thing that had been lurking beneath the surface all this time. For a thousand upon a thousand years, Unaru had been training himself to restrain that ugly serpent, he had found inner peace through practicing the martial arts and raising his children but always shadowed by the reflection of his true self in every suppressed action. Was Lysander happy to see it again?

Anshin’s transformation stopped where it was, with just a fraction of his true power peeking through. Subtly taunting his rival as if letting him know that a mere five-percent was all he needed to handle this deranged mummy wearing the flesh of his old foe. He thrust his hand to the sky. His fingers open as those emerald fists drifted into position overhead, this same technique had trounced Cee once, that arrogant android who had called herself the Queen of Violence within earshot of the True King. Lysander was stronger than a tincan, surely, so he added another to the mix and another after that. Each newly appeared fist clasping over the wrist of the previous one that had formed in front of it until a few seconds later—an eternity in the timeline of a battle such as this—a meteor of knuckles filled the hole they had just tumbled through. Blotting out the sky. Casting a glittering veil of emerald down on the candy wonderland before Unaru’s fingers clenched—his fist fell—and the cave roared.

Heaven’s Judgment Sweeps Away All Sin

It was not specifically aimed at Lysander, instead, it slammed into the green space between them. Crushing the hill beneath its knuckles like it was nothing. Sending a shockwave rippling through every corner of the factory until foundations split and smoldering unprocessed liquid candy flooded the halls. Until little orange men fell screaming in horror down into the depths of dark chocolate bedrock and Wonka himself was devoured in the exploding of some candy themed gadget and all at once it was like the apocalypse had taken place localized to this one very specific location in Candy Land. Brought on by this hand of an angry god embedded deep into the foundation of the factory itself…

Then, just a few minutes later after the rumbling was done, the emerald fists began to disappear. Turning into motes of glittering emerald light one after another before returning to the dream from whence all of Unaru’s near infinite ether seemed to come, until there was only the grinning dragon.

“Alright, we can go for that drink now, but I destroyed the factory just like I came for, so I win.”