Death Battle: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

FIGHT!

Without another word, Lance held both his palms out. Invisible to the naked eye, seismic waves pulsed out from his hand, causing the very earth to rippled like the waves of the ocean. Terra's balance was immediately lost as soon as the waves of rolling earth passed by her feet, causing her concentration on her stone projectiles to falter, the rocks falling to the ground with hefty crashes.

With his opponent's balance thrown out the window, Lance lifted his leg into the air and stomped on the ground, ripping the ground apart and directing the fissure towards Terra, intending to send her plummeting into the earth. The former Teen Titan's eyes widened as the fissure got closer, and immediately leapt to the side to avoid falling in. While in mid-air, she waved her hand, ripping a cluster of boulders from the ground and sent them flying towards Lance like cannonballs.

Now forced to move, Lance ducked out of the way by diving face first into the dirt, the boulders sailing harmlessly overhead. Before he could pick himself up though, a stone column shot out from underneath him. Lance just barely avoided getting rammed in the gut by rolling away and to his feet. Terra scowled as she saw her quarry get away. Her eyes glowing yellow, she made several sweeping motions with her hands. With each motion, another column of rock shot out from the ground and it took every bit of reflex Lance had to avoid getting hit.

Soon, dozens of rock pillars dotted the area. Getting tired of being the one on the run, Lance leapt back to avoid another column and placed both his hands on the ground, pulsing seismic waves through the earth. Like a localized earthquake, all the stone pillars lurched forward, falling towards one point.

Terra gasped as her own pillars threatened to collapse on her. Each time she took a step away, the pillars changed course, homing in on her. Sweat pouring down her face, Terra held out her hands, her fingers and eyes glowing a golden yellow. Streaks of light flashed through the pillars, sneaking into every crack and rupture. Tightening her fists just as the pillars were upon her, the stone columns shattered into a million itty-bitty pieces.

Using her geokinesis, Terra quickly caught several of the larger chunks of earth before they hit the ground. Turning her eye towards Lance, Terra sent all of them flying at Lance with a wave of her hand.

With so many rocks flying towards him, Lance had little option but to run. While he avoided several of the larger boulders, smaller pieces of rocks made their mark, denting his metal armour and leaving it covered in nicks and scratches.

"Two can play this game!" Lance roared. As he ran, Lance put a bit more weight into his steps, sending small tremors towards Terra, who continued to lift and throw rocks at Lance with her geokinesis. Unknown to her, the small tremors quickly converged together, gathering together and building up as they raced towards her, throwing her balance off slightly.

The moment he saw the cracks reach Terra, Lance pumped his arm into the air. Instantly, a massive geyser of dirt and soil blasted Terra several feet into the air. The former Titan coughed and hacked as the grit got into her eyes and mouth, flailing around in mid-air to regain her balance and sense of direction. Below her, Lance quickly skidded to a halt and stomped on the ground again. Several jagged stones jutted out from the ground below Terra, creating a makeshift spike trap. The girl luckily cleared her eyes in time to see her impending impalement. Waving her arms rather comically for a moment, Terra quickly extended her geokinesis, tearing a large slab of stone free from the earth and bringing it below her. Landing on two feet, Terra smirked before breaking off a piece of her platform and sent it flying towards Lance.

Reacting quickly, the mutant swiftly dodged out of the way, a slight trickle of sweat running down his neck. Raking his brain for ideas, a chunk of rock suddenly shot out from the ground and rammed directly into Lance's gut, blasting all the wind out of him and causing him to collapse to his knees.

Floating over her groaning opponent, Terra waved both of her hands, a boulder the size of a dump truck tearing free from the ground and floated over Lance's kneeling body. The mutant moaned and glanced up as the shadow cut off the sun. Lance was in trouble, and he knew it. Wheezing for breath, he placed both of his palms on the ground and sent a pulse of seismic energy through the earth.

With a roar, Terra swung both arms down, the boulder smashing into the ground so hard, large cracks spread out from the impact. Floating down on her platform, Terra gave the boulder a quick once-over before nodding in satisfaction. There was no way that jerk would be crawling out from that.

Behind her, the ground split open, revealing Lance, who had tunnelled through the earth to escape a crushing defeat. Noticing that he hadn't caught Terra's attention, Lance crawled out from the earth and thrust his hand towards Terra's platform. Though it wasn't attached to the ground, his mutant power was luckily able to reach it, the seismic waves seizing the rock and causing it violently shake.

Caught off guard, Terra's balance was easily thrown off. With another pulse of seismic energy, her platform crumbled to pieces with nothing to support its weight. Terra fell to the ground, several pieces of her platform falling on top of her in the process.

Coughing, Terra crawled out from underneath her own rock pile when Lance seized her by the front of her suit and lifted her into the air. 

"Y'know, I always wonderer what would happen if I used my power on a human." Lance snickered as he raised his hand to place on Terra's face. "Guess it's time I find out!"

Before he could unleash his seismic waves point blank though, Terra suddenly jerked with her leg, driving her knee into Lance's abdomen. Gasping, Lance's grip loosened, allowing Terra to jab Lance in the mouth and force him to drop her.

"Sorry big guy, but looks like you'll have to wait a little while longer!" Grinning, Terra clenched her hands into fists and raised them to protect her cheek as she rushed towards Lance. Realizing that this little girl wanted to play a little round of fisticuffs, Lance smirked and cracked his knuckles, ready to oblige.

What happened next could only be described as a hilariously one-sided beat down.

For Lance that is.

From the moment the first punch was thrown, it was clear Terra held a massive edge in a standard brawl. Every motion was precise, honed to perfection while Lance only relied on punches, forgetting to feint and only occasionally block. For every mistake he made, Terra not only capitalized, she outright dominated.

"If it gets out that I got my butt kicked by a pre-teen girl..." Lance thought between Terra's fist repeatedly hitting his face. "The guys back home will never let me live it down!"

"C'mon big guy! Is that all you got?" Terra taunted as she pinned Lance face-first to the ground, her knee digging in-between his shoulder blades. "Big tough guy like you getting beaten up by a little girl like me? How sad is that?"

Gritting his teeth as his bruised face was rubbed into the dirt, Lance scowled and slapped his free hand onto the ground. "Trust me, I've lost to way smaller girls then you before, but not this time!"

The earth instantly started to move, rocking back and forth like the ocean as Lance channeled seismic energy into the ground. The ground shifted and seized up, causing Terra to lose her grip and her balance, allowing Lance to roll over and kick her away.

Rolling across the ground, Terra quickly dug her fingers into the dirt to stop her momentum. With a quick motion of her hand, the earth she was on tore free from the ground, just narrowly avoiding a large trench that split the earth beneath her open.

Taking to the sky once again, Terra summoned a rather long, thin column of rock from the ground and sent it spiralling at Lance. Moving his bruised body, Lance leapt to the side, only for the rock to curve around and come back at him like a snake. Startled, Lance tried jumping over it, but the rock column changed direction at a sharp angle to strike him in the shoulder, sending him tumbling to the ground.

Wincing as his shoulder throbbed painfully, Lance quickly stood up, just as the rock coiled around him, poised to strike like a viper. Tucking both elbows in, Lance thrusts his hands out, unleashing a powerful pulse of seismic waves that instantly reduced the rock column to dust. More then a little ticked off now, Lance turns his attention to Terra's floating platform and shot out a wave of seismic energy, only for it to fall short as Terra moved higher into the air.

Watching as her opponent tried to shatter her platform, something clicked in Terra's mind. During this entire battle, her opponent hadn't even thrown a rock towards her. Everything he did was rooted to the ground, which meant that his power had to be limited!

Smiling wickedly with this new information in mind, Terra rose higher into the air, out of Lance's reach. Her hands glowing, loose pieces of rock, leftover from their previous scuffles, floated into the air. Twisting her wrists, the stones came together to form an army's worth of stone spikes, fists, hammers and clubs. 

Using her geokinesis to keep them in the air, Terra caught sight of Lance's jaw-dropped expression and smirked. "I'd run if I were you!"

Flicking her wrist, the earthen projectiles shot through the air, aiming directly at Lance. Panicking, the mutant swiftly bolted, the stone projectiles blasting craters wherever they hit. 

Laughing as she watched her prey desperately run, Terra twisted her wrist again, creating more stone weapons as she followed Lance on her platform. "What's wrong? Just try and attack me! Oh wait, that's right! YOU CAN'T!"

Upon hearing those words, Lance raised an eyebrow. How did she know that his power was mostly limited to fighting on the ground? 

Jumping to the side as a stone fist nearly took his head off, Lance yelled back. "Wow! You actually managed to figure that out without anyone holding your hand? I'm impressed!"

"Sh-SHUT UP!"

The girl's scream caught Lance's attention. Ducking to the left to avoid a hammer squashing him into paste, the gears in Lance's mind began to turn, his old bully instinct kicking into high gear.

Jumping over a cropping of rocks, Lance yelled back. "What's the matter? You still need mommy and daddy to help you?"

A stone spike blasted the rocks to smithereens, but Lance was already on the move. "I bet you're the kind of girl who's always trying to be one of the popular kids. How pathetic is that?"

"STOP IT!" Screaming, Terra sent a flurry of stone projectiles at Lance, but her focus was lost, and all she succeeded in doing was creating several craters in area.

Running next to the side of the cliff, Lance snickered and yelled back. "With somebody like you, always trying to be someone you're not, it's no wonder you don't have any friends!"


That did the trick. Her eyes seething with rage, Terra sent all her projectiles flying at Lance, who easily avoided them with some simple sidesteps, dodging the sloppy projectiles. Terra angrily screamed and flew towards Lance on her platform. 

Right into the mutant's hands.

Digging his heels into the ground, Lance braced his body and thrust both of his palms out. The powerful wave of seismic energy that pulsed off his hands struck Terra's platform dead centre, smashing it to pieces and sending the young girl flipping head over heels.

The surprise attack completely caught Terra off-guard. Her mind still reeling from the anger towards Lance's bullying words, Terra landed face first into the dirt next to the cliff. Scowling, Terra quickly got back to her feet and was about to use her geokinesis to create another platform when the entire cliff rumbled and shook. Rage turned to shock as Terra looked up to see what looked like an entire mountain falling down on her, boulder's blocking out the sun while dirt and soil covered everything.

A bit further away, the white of Lance's eyes flared red with blood vessels as the mutant strained his power to the maximum. Boulders smashed against each other, creating a sound similar to thunder as Lance tore up the cliffside with his seismic waves. Terra's anger had blinded her to her situation and there was no time for her to react. Panicking as she desperately manoeuvred her rock platform around the falling debris and attempting to use her geokinesis, a stray boulder crashed into her platform, sending her falling down to the ground with several hundred more tonnes of rock and dirt falling with her.

"Come on! Think! Think! THINK!" Terra racked her brain for a solution when she remembered what her opponent pulled off earlier. Putting both hands in front of her, Terra blasted the ground with yellow energy as she fell closer.

Outside the landslide zone, Lance forcefully shut-off his power and fell to his knees, gasping for breath. A large slope of rocks and dirt, easily the size of a ten story building lay in front of him. The cliff looked like a giant had ploughed his hand through it, depositing the entire face onto the Teen Titan, where she hopefully lay finished.

Opening bloodshot eyes, Lance nearly collapsed, the toll on his body nearly causing him to black out. A bit overkill, but there was a reason he was given the name Avalanche.

Catching his breath, Lance got up on shaky legs when a small mound of dirt suddenly rose from the ground in front of him. Surprised, Lance was suddenly blasted onto his butt as Terra shot out from the earth on a small stone platform, her clothes caked in dirt and her eyes seething with rage.

"Alright buster! Now I'm MAD!"

Raising her hands, two walls of stone, both twice as big and twice as heavy shot out from the ground on opposite side of Lance. Shocked, Lance made to move when Terra twisted her palms, causing the stone around Lance's feet to grow up to his ankles, keeping him locked in place. 

As Lance struggled to free himself, Terra clasped her hands together, causing the two stone walls to come together, with Lance in the middle. The mutant acted just in the nick of time, catching the slabs of stone with his hands. However, no matter how much he struggled, the walls slowly closed in, his arms making strange cracking noises as Terra slowly overpowered his strength.

In a last ditch attempt, Lance channeled his seismic power through the stone walls. Immediately, large cracks spread out, causing the walls to shatter, covering Lance in pebbles. Ripping his legs out of the stone wrapped around his ankles, exhaustion was rapidly taking its toll on Lance. Huffing, he threw his hand out towards Terra when she leaped forward with a high kick, slamming the sole of her foot into his chest plate, causing it to dent and send him flying backwards.

Jerking her hand back, Terra summoned a stone spike to jut out from the ground behind the mutant. Before Lance could stop himself, immense pain erupted from his back and chest as the stone spike pierced through his torso.

His ribcage ruptured and shattered, a trickle of blood began to leak from the mutant's mouth. Lance weakly held his hand out, trying to unleash one last wave of seismic energy when Terra clenched her fingers together, a few rocks floating into the air and forming a stone fist. Throwing her fist forward as if she was punching the air, the stone fist shot out and slammed into Lance's head, shattering his helmet and taking his head clean off his shoulders.

With the battle finally over, Terra's eyes returned to normal, an entire years worth of pent-up emotion gone. Kneeling over to catch her breath, Terra snapped her fingers, causing the stone spike to crumble apart and drop the mutant's body on the ground.