Kakarot danced backward, avoiding each and every one of Tao's strikes with the fluidity of someone who'd seen the attack coming several minutes ago and was still having some minor difficulties.
His strength sealed by Blue's psychic power, on the physical side, Kakarot and Tao were pretty much evenly matched.
Fortunately for Kakarot, fighting wasn't all about raw power.
The Saiyan had been trained by Roshi. There was a good reason that people called that man the 'God of Martial Arts'. It was a well-earned title.
Almost immediately, Kakarot had seen through Tao's entire fighting style. This wasn't just a matter of the difference in perception between someone who was used to being strong and someone who believed that they were strong.
Tao was fast, precise, and measured. Every single movement he made was specifically designed for one purpose: To kill.
Every time that failed, he got quicker, but slightly sloppier. More predictable. Made the same movements multiple times. Led with his eyes a moment before he struck.
Kakarot didn't have any problems keeping him at bay. The problem was stopping himself from ending the fight right then and there. Currently, the only thing keeping Cynder alive was the fact that Blue was waiting for Tao to finish up with Kakarot so that he could safely focus all of his effort on Tater while Tao did the clean-up.
Kakarot knew that, if he defeated Tao, Blue would instantly kill the little boy, and he was pretty sure that he himself would follow suit before Tater could make his own move.
On Tao's third snakelike jabbing attack, Kakarot's subconscious reacted before his active mind could tell it to stop. Without missing a beat, he slipped right through that annoying overextension on the fourth jab and slammed a quick jab, hard enough to pulverize concrete, directly into Tao's unprotected side.
Spitting out a mouthful of air and saliva as his lung barely managed to keep itself from bursting, Tao flew backward, slamming into a tree.
Staring at his fist eyes wide, realizing what he'd just done, Kakarot's gaze instantly went across the yard to where Blue was holding Cynder.
He could sense Tater's aura still quietly sharpening itself, waiting for the moment that Blue's attention was split… but that wasn't this moment.
His eyes not even leaving Tater, Blue tightened his telekinetic grip on Cynder, causing the boy to let out a shout of pain. Then, Blue simply jerked his chin a bit in the general direction of Kakarot and Tao.
"DODON RAY!" Kakarot only caught the flash out of the corner of his eye, but that was all he needed for his instincts to kick in. Without hesitation, the young Saiyan's feet left the ground in a textbook perfect flying crescent kick. His foot slammed squarely into the side of the mass of energy that directed the blast, perfectly wreathed in his own aura.
Instantly, the Dodon Ray changed trajectory, heading straight for Blue. This wasn't an active decision on Kakarot's part, but simply where his attention had already been, where his reflexes naturally aimed at.
For a moment, as everyone realized what had just happened, the beam seemed to slow. Tater and Kakarot's simultaneous gasps echoed through the courtyard. Blue could see that attack incoming. If the Dodon Ray hit him, he'd probably snap Cynder's neck on impulse.
"AAGH!" Cynder screamed as Blue casually moved him into the path of the beam. A mid-sized black burn mark appeared on the young boy's chest as the Dodon Ray slammed right into his body.
Tater's shoulders relaxed imperceptibly. While this was the first time Cynder had his skin burnt and blood drawn, a pinprick like that was nothing compared to the trauma of having one's neck snapped. Cynder could take it.
Kakarot's eye narrowed. That wasn't enough, but it'd proved something. A pattern had shown itself… a way to save everyone.
Instantly, he sprang into action. This time, he wasn't on the defensive.
Kakarot bounded through the seven or eight feet that separated him and Tao in the span of an instant, his available ki sharpened like a blade as he threw himself into a furious offensive that Tao could only barely perceive, much less react to. For every blow Tao blocked, three more slipped through, slamming into him with the force of sledgehammers.
One even managed to graze his cheek, the force of Kakarot's ki making a shallow scratch that drew a few drops of blood, setting Tao's self-preservation instinct off full-blast. The adrenaline helped him, but Kakarot was still just better. And Tao could feel it. Without Blue suppressing the wild-haired twelve-year-old, there wouldn't have even been a battle.
It stung Tao's pride in a way that nothing had in nearly a century.
Then, something snapped.
Kakarot's knifehand flashed through the air toward Tao's neck. Tao managed to move out of the way, but the boy's hand still met resistance.
On instinct, the fighter and the assassin broke apart, both jumping backward around five feet or so.
Tao's black, selfish little heart broke as he watched his hair flutter to the ground between them.
Kakarot's hand had sliced clean through the hair braid that he took such pride in. The rest of his hair slowly came free, flowing loosely down the back of his head in soft, black curls that barely reached the neck.
"Die." The words were muttered, but still, they found a way to echo through the yard like a sentence passed from a seasoned executioner to the fighter who'd earned his ire.
Then, Tao's fighting style completely changed.
Dropping a smoke bomb out of his belt, which obscured everything, rendering Kakarot's sense of sight completely useless, Tao began running through the mist like a ghost. Even his ki was quieter, hard for Kakarot to perfectly pinpoint.
Three attacks, a fist, two feet, cut through the mist at Kakarot, but the boy wasn't fazed in the slightest. Using his training and his ki sense in conjunction, even Tao's energy masking was no problem for the young Turtle-Style martial arts master. He blocked every one of them, turning 60 degrees to his left, then 180 to his right, then 90 to the right once more to block the final attack, proving definitively that a simple smoke bomb wouldn't turn the tide of this particular battle.
But Tao already knew that.
Clicking his tongue silently, he made the decision to use his trump card.
"HAAH!" The assassin used his shout to cover the noise of his pulling the pin on his grenade.
Then, he tossed it.
And with a smirk, Kakarot caught the grenade in his hand, unfazed. Then, he tossed it.
Tao jumped backward, out of the fog completely, the moment that he threw the grenade, just in case this happened, but his heart still hammered in his throat when he saw the small black object fly out of the smoke cloud in his general direction.
Only to sail right over his shoulder, headed directly toward Blue.
What happened after that happened all at once, in a single instant.
Unperturbed by a simple grenade, Blue used telekinetic power to divert it, when-
"HAAH!" Several dozen energy blasts appeared out of the cloud, all whistling past Tao's body, aimed directly at Blue.
The grenade slammed into one of them, both detonating in a flash of fire and light. The others flew past.
The yard was engulfed in light and explosive force. Even Kakarot's ki sense went blank for a moment, Cynder's blood-curdling scream the only thing echoing in his ears as the force from the blast pushed the remainder of the smoke from Tao's smoke bomb away.
When it all cleared, only two people were left standing.
Tao'd been caught in the combination explosion from the grenade and Kakarot's energy blast. He groaned on the ground, his eye and arm completely gone and the rest of him in critical condition. Blackened and burnt, he barely looked human. He was on the edge of death.
Clearly, Blue had placed Cynder between him and Kakarot's blasts. Cynder was breathing shallowly, unconscious on the ground, his body covered in bruises and burns, mostly superficial.
And as for Blue?
BOOM.
Tater stared down at the man's beheaded figure for a moment before delivering an energy blast, decisively obliterating the creepy bastard's head in an unnecessarily brutal act of finality.
The man who'd originally taught Tater the truth of his own mortality, the creep that haunted the Saiyan man's nightmares, was inarguably dead.