The fight began not with a signal, but with the inevitable conclusion of their locked gazes. There was no posturing, no warning. Hakai's index finger flicked out.
Shiiink!
A high-speed En slash, invisible and silent, shot through the air, aimed to bisect the floating psychic. Tatsumaki didn't flinch. A sphere of shimmering, sickly-green energy materialized around her a hair's breadth before impact. The slash struck it with a sharp, sizzling hiss, the barrier flaring brightly for an instant before stabilizing, having absorbed the force.
Simultaneously, her eyes narrowed. A dozen massive, spear-like chunks of rubble—girders, concrete pillars, sections of pavement—ripped from the devastated landscape of City A, their surfaces instantly sheathed in that same corrosive green aura. With a contemptuous twitch of her finger, she launched them at him in a converging volley meant to pin and pulverize.
Hakai didn't move from his spot. He simply waved his hand in a gentle, almost lazy arc. A crisscrossing barrage of En slashes wove a net of destruction in front of him. The incoming spears of rubble were silently and instantly diced into a cloud of harmless gravel and dust that pattered to the ground around him.
"Oh?" he said, his voice laced with genuine intrigue. He sent another, slightly more potent slash.
Hiss. Again, her shield flared and held. Annoyance flashed across her face. "Just die!" she snarled, and this time, a visible wave of telekinetic force seized Hakai himself. It was like being caught in the grip of a god. He was yanked off his feet and flung like a discarded doll through the skeletal remains of a half-collapsed skyscraper.
As he was sent flying, his mind was a cool, analytical engine. He flicked his fingers three times in rapid succession. Shink. Shink. Shink. Three more En slashes, launched from his unstable trajectory, shot toward her.
Hiss. Hiss. Hiss. They all impacted the unwavering green sphere.
'That's unusual,' he thought, his grin sharpening even as glass and steel shattered around him. 'En is supposed to cut inanimate matter—energy constructs included. It's not that it didn't work...' His sharp eyes caught the subtle flicker, the way her aura pulsed infinitesimally faster to patch the microscopic "wounds" his slashes inflicted on the barrier's integrity. 'She's constantly regenerating the shield. Reinforcing it with more psychic power the instant it's damaged. My slash has a fixed power at release, but her shield is in a constant, dynamic state of flux. Heh... that must be incredibly draining.'
His analytical trance was broken by the approaching wall. Instead of bracing, he acted. A final, precise En slash shot forward, not at Tatsumaki, but at the building he was about to hit. It cleanly severed a huge, multi-ton chunk of the structure's facade. Hakai's body, moving with the fluidity of water, twisted in mid-air. He grabbed the newly-severed chunk of concrete and, using the momentum of Tatsumaki's own throw, spun like a discus thrower and hurled the massive slab back at her. He then launched himself right behind it, using his own projectile as cover.
Tatsumaki's lip curled in contempt. She didn't even use a dedicated barrier, simply blasting the concrete to dust with a focused psychic burst. The dust cloud exploded outward—and from within it, Hakai emerged, already upon her, his fist cocked back, every muscle fiber and ounce of energy perfectly aligned for a physical strike.
A flicker of surprise. She reinforced her shield, but the reinforcement was a split-second too late, her stance unprepared for a direct, powerful melee impact.
BOOM!
Hakai's punch, amplified by his flawless 100% energy control, did not break the barrier. But the sheer, concussive kinetic force, un-dissipated by her hasty defense, translated through it entirely. The green sphere held, but Tatsumaki inside it was sent flying backward like a cannonball, her small form carving a trench through the rubble behind her.
"What's wrong, 'Tornado'?" Hakai taunted, his voice a singsong mockery as he reappeared above her, 'dancing' through the air with effortless grace. "Is that all? You're burning through your energy awfully fast just to block me! C'mon, show me your resolve!"
He began his true assault, becoming a blur of black and blue. He circled her, a relentless predator, attacking from all angles. He'd feint a physical charge, only to unleash a horizontal barrage of En slashes. He'd use the debris she telekinetically ripped up at him as springboards, leaping from one and slashing it apart in mid-air, using the fragments as a screen for his next move. For every building she flung, he had a counter, a slash, a repositioning. He was a maestro of violence, and she was his unwilling orchestra, being forced deeper and deeper onto the defensive. Her psychic output was visibly straining, the green aura around her flaring brighter and more erratically to block the endless, precise cuts coming from a dozen directions at once.
Tatsumaki was seething, her face a mask of pure, unadulterated fury. She, who crushed Dragon-level threats with a thought, was being systematically and publicly toyed with. Her attacks were being neutralized, her defense was being tested, and her pride was being shredded.
Finally, Hakai landed lightly on a precariously balanced ruined pillar, looking genuinely, calmly satisfied. The air around him was still. "Okay," he called out, his voice deceptively calm but brimming with that familiar, coiled energy. "You gave me a good fight. You've earned this. I'll show you a proper technique."
He brought his hands together, his fingers weaving into a complex, esoteric configuration—the Enmaten hand sign. The air grew heavy, thick with a pressure that had nothing to do with telekinesis. It was the pressure of absolute severance. Tatsumaki's eyes widened, her psychic senses screaming a warning she had never heard before.
Hakai began to chant, his voice resonating with a terrifying, foundational power.
"The world shall be cut—Dimensional Sla—"
Every fiber of Tatsumaki's being went cold. She didn't know the mechanics, the name, or the origin. But on a primal, instinctual level, she knew. Her shield, her power, her very existence—none of it would matter. This was an end. For the first time since her childhood, she felt the genuine, icy brush of death.
He stopped.
The chant cut off. The suffocating pressure vanished as if it had never been. His head tilted, his sharp eyes looking past her, toward the silent, dormant husk of Boros's ship. The cataclysmic energy signatures that had been raging within it were gone. Not faded. Vanished. The victor had been decided. The "main course" was over, and he had missed it.
A look of mild, profound disappointment crossed his face, instantly replacing the focused killer's intent. He lowered his hands.
"Ah, well. Guess I have somewhere else to be," he said, giving the stunned and breathless Tatsumaki a dismissive, almost friendly wave. "Maybe next time, eh?"
And just like that, he was gone. A black-and-blue blur vanishing over the shattered horizon, leaving no trace but the devastation of their fight.
Tatsumaki hovered in the air, her chest heaving, her green aura sputtering irregularly. She was alone, surrounded by the evidence of a battle where her absolute superiority had been not just challenged, but completely and casually dismissed. The frustration was a fire in her gut. The anger was a familiar comfort. But beneath it all, cold and unsettling, was the memory of that aborted chant and the very real, very dangerous feeling of fear. He was gone, but he had left her with something far more troublesome than a destroyed city: a shaken crown, and a very dangerous, very mixed set of feelings.