Before the final second of Infinity's cooldown expired, Hisoka's left hand closed.
The three microscopic strands already drawn taut between them contracted violently. They were anchored to detached blood adhered to separate folds of Yuzuki's torn shirt, not directly to his body.
Infinity was still unavailable.
Yuzuki felt the sudden, crushing load transfer across his chest and shoulders.
His instinct screamed at him to anchor his feet and fight the pull. But the Six Eyes mapped the immediate physical calculus in a fraction of a millisecond: his right-hip muscles were torn, his lower back was a jagged knot of bleeding tissue, and his left lung was held together by a thin, static lattice of braced aura. If he locked his frame against that tension, the load would tear through his ruined back and reopen the lung before Hisoka even touched him.
He didn't resist. He accepted the pull.
Yuzuki forced a violent portion of his remaining aura into Blue, preserving only what he needed to brace his lung and keep Infinity available. He accelerated into the pull, collapsing the twenty-foot gap in a fraction of a second. A sudden spike of speed that caught even Hisoka's hyper-attuned combat reflexes off guard.
Hisoka was already mid-swing. His Gum-supported right fist drove forward under Ko, concentrating nearly all his available aura at the knuckles and leaving the rest of his body exposed. The golden aura blazed around his knuckles, a singular point of lethal force meant to cave in the boy's chest while his defence was down.
Because Yuzuki had voluntarily doubled his forward velocity, Hisoka's timing was dragged forward. The magician couldn't abort the swing; he could only commit to the impact.
At the final instant before impact, Yuzuki shifted what little Ryu he could spare over the crown of his skull and tilted his torso. He didn't try to raise his numb arms to block. He tucked his chin and drove the reinforced crown of his skull directly into Hisoka's face.
Hisoka's fist struck obliquely across Yuzuki's lower left ribs instead of landing squarely on his sternum. Two of his already cracked ribs broke fully, the impact rupturing the fragile aura brace around his punctured lung and forcing blood into his mouth.
At the same instant, Yuzuki's reinforced crown smashed into Hisoka's face. His nose broke, his left orbital rim fractured, and the impact left him badly concussed.
The collision hurled them in opposite directions. The blood-stiffened folds ripped free from Yuzuki's shirt, ending the three tethers as both fighters crashed across the ruined platform. They tumbled across jagged, iron-laced concrete like discarded rags before coming to a rest twenty feet apart in the dust.
In the VIP spectator box, Bisky remained rigid beside the door, one hand braced against the frame. Netero stayed seated, his head tilted as he listened for breath below.
For three long seconds, neither fighter moved.
Then, a finger's width of dust shifted beneath Yuzuki's left hand.
A ragged gasp tore from the boy's throat. A wet, bubbling sound as he forced air through a throat coated in blood. His body trembled violently. Every nerve ending was screaming in unadulterated agony. His left lung was leaking air into his thoracic cavity with every shuddering attempt to inhale.
Yuzuki forced a thinner aura brace back around the lodged card and punctured tissue. It could not stop the leak. It could only slow it.
Get up.
He didn't want to get up. His body was telling him that he was done, that his spine was strained to its limit, that his muscles were shredded, that he had reached the boundary of what a thirteen-year-old frame could sustain.
Shizuku's quiet promise to take the blindfold back surfaced first. Then Kastro, Bisky, and Wing. People who expected him to return, not prove himself by dying.
Get up. They're waiting.
With an agonisingly slow push, Yuzuki dragged his right knee beneath his hips. Blood ran from his nose and mouth, streaking his chin and torn shirt. He forced his arms to straighten, his elbows popping under the strain, until he was kneeling. Then, using an exposed iron rebar for leverage, he dragged himself up onto two trembling, blood-soaked feet.
Twenty feet away, a low, distorted chuckle vibrated through the rubble.
Hisoka rolled onto his back, his face a mask of scarlet red. His left eye had already swollen nearly shut. His right remained open, bloodshot and blazing with predatory excitement. Blood poured freely from his crushed lips.
He didn't stand because someone was waiting for him. He stood because this pain. This sensation of hovering on the absolute edge between life and oblivion was the singular reason he existed.
"Ah... splendid..." Hisoka rasped, his voice thick with blood and broken bone. He wiped his chin with his left forearm, smearing crimson across his face like war paint.
He looked at Yuzuki, taking in the boy's trembling frame, the blood streaking his mouth and chin, the shallow, frantic rise and fall of his damaged chest.
To Hisoka, the boy no longer resembled a child or a simple opponent. The potential Hisoka had sensed during their first encounter had become real. Yuzuki was no longer merely promising. He was standing at the edge of death and still refusing to fall.
"You really are..." Hisoka whispered, his fingers twitching as his aura flared with an unstable, monstrous heat. "...completely ripe."
This was no longer a match for points or status within the rules of the Grandmaster tier. Hisoka's self-preservation, always a fragile boundary held together by calculating vanity, dissolved entirely into his obsession with combat potential. He did not care if he survived the next ten seconds. He only cared that this pressure reached its ultimate climax.
Hisoka raised his left hand into the air.
"Let us bring down the curtain..." he hissed.
Across the ruined arena, dozens of major Bungee Gum lines and hundreds of thinner branches flared into view. Hisoka had threaded them through surviving pillars, suspended slabs, and exposed girders throughout the fight.
Hisoka wasn't pulling a single target. He was triggering an elastic implosion.
SNAP-CRACK-THUNNNG.
The remaining perimeter pillars groaned in agony as the immense, contracted tension of the lines hit them simultaneously. High above, the central ceiling structure buckled inward. Below, the floor slabs tipped towards the centre pit.
The surviving arena structure began folding towards the central kill zone. A crushing chamber of stone and steel designed to pulverise everything within its radius.
Hisoka stood in the centre of the collapse, his left arm spread wide while Bungee Gum dragged his dislocated right arm outward beside him. He laughed silently as heavy concrete blocks began to rain down around him. He had placed himself inside the same kill zone as Yuzuki, accepting mutual destruction as a valid conclusion.
Yuzuki's Six Eyes redlined.
Information flooded his central nervous system, slowing the world to a crawl beneath the blue light of his perception.
Options. Find an exit.
Option One: Break the anchors.
There were dozens of major load-bearing lines. To sever them, he would need to hit each connection point with a precise strike. He lacked the time and output to direct dozens of separate long-range Blue pulls before the structure reached him. Failed.
Option Two: Disable Hisoka.
Disabling Hisoka would not reverse the collapse in time. The lines had already contracted, and the tons of moving debris would continue on their existing paths even if he lost consciousness. Failed.
Option Three: Short-range spatial skip.
Escaping the collapse required a displacement far beyond his current sub-two-metre limit. Attempting a skip that far would almost certainly cause fatal spinal and internal damage before he reached safety. Failed.
Option Four: Redirect the implosion outward.
If he used a wide-angle Red to blast a hole through the incoming debris to clear a path, the repulsive wave would continue past the perimeter and hit the lower spectator tiers directly below, crushing evacuating civilians under thousands of tons of secondary rubble. Failed.
The Six Eyes calculated every permutation, every fraction of an angle, every mechanical variable.
Hisoka stood at the convergence point of the entire collapse. Any corridor wide enough to break the implosion before it crushed the arena would have to pass through him.
The answer returned by his mind was cold and absolute.
Zero nonlethal routes remain.
Yuzuki closed his eyes beneath the blindfold for half a second.
He hadn't wanted this. He had kept Purple sealed away because it was not a technique designed for competition or duels.
Purple fused Blue's convergence and Red's divergence into a destructive imaginary mass. Once released, it erased matter and aura along a calculated corridor.
Poorly controlled, that corridor could widen through Hisoka, the arena, and the occupied tiers beyond. Narrowing it enough to break the implosion without killing spectators would require calculations Yuzuki had never attempted while this injured. Forming it through his ruined arms would also tear his aura pathways and threaten the brace around his lung.
There is no other way to save the people below. There is no other way to survive.
The collapsing ceiling hit the threshold of the central space. Massive slabs of reinforced concrete snapped toward the centre pit like the jaws of a titan, blocking out the morning sun.
Yuzuki opened his eyes.
He triggered Infinity.
The falling slabs entered the subdivided space around him and slowed violently. They continued inching closer, each fraction of the remaining distance taking longer to cross than the last.
The five-second window began.
Inside the narrowing pocket bought by Infinity, Yuzuki raised his hands.
His damaged fingers trembled as he brought his hands together in front of his chest.
Left hand: the convergence of Blue.
Right hand: the divergence of Red.
The air between his palms began to twist, turning a deep, terrifying shade of violet.
---
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