The dust from the earlier clash still hung in the air like a hazy curtain, but the one-on-one between Ryū and Ken had carved out its own pocket of chaos in the ruined plaza… No one else interfered.
The surrounding fighters had pulled back, eyes wide, as the two circled each other under the fractured sky. Broken concrete jutted like teeth from the ground. Twisted rebar glinted in the fading light.
A half-collapsed building loomed nearby, its exposed girders groaning with every tremor.
Ken moved first,
He blurred—not a streak of pure speed, but a ripple, like heat haze over asphalt.
Light bent around his form, folding the air so his silhouette flickered in and out, one heartbeat he was ten paces away.
The next, his fist drove toward Ryū's ribs in a lance of concentrated photons.
Ryū's arms snapped up, the impact landed with a sharp crack, force rippling through his bones.
He skidded backward, heels carving grooves in the debris, but he stayed upright.
Ken didn't let up. A follow-up kick whipped in low, light flaring along his shin like a blade's edge.
Ryū twisted, blocking with his thigh, the blow burned—raw heat searing through fabric and skin—but he felt no tear of flesh, no snap of bone, just pressure and sting.
Not light speed, Ryū thought, eyes narrowing as he tracked the boy's next shift, close enough to fool the eye, but there's lag.
A fraction of a second where the light has to catch up to his body. He hasn't mastered the merge yet.
Ken pressed the advantage, grin flashing white against his soot-streaked face, "You're just standing there taking it, old man!"
He clapped his hands together once—sharp, deliberate. The sound didn't echo normally, It exploded.
An invisible wall of compressed air and vibration slammed forward, roaring like a freight train in a tunnel. Ryū crossed his arms in front of his chest, the shockwave hit him square, lifting him clean off his feet and hurling him twenty meters back.
His body slammed into the side of a shattered pillar. Concrete powder exploded outward.
Pain flared across his back, but again, no real damage sank in—just the blunt force rattling his teeth.
Ryū landed on his feet, coughing once, smoke curling from his clothes where Ken's earlier light strikes had scorched the surface…Burns? Yes, Blisters forming on his forearms.
But the deeper layers held, he rolled his shoulders, feeling the familiar hum of his elemental control reinforcing every cell.
Ken was already on him again, light coiling around his palms like living whips.
He flicked his wrists. Twin beams lanced out, bending mid-flight in impossible arcs—one high, one low.
Ryū dodged the first by leaning sharply.
The second grazed his shoulder, slicing a clean line through cloth and leaving a smoking trench of reddened skin.
Heat bloomed, intense enough to make his vision swim for half a second.
But he didn't fall.
Instead, Ryū exhaled slowly, watching.
Ken's style was elegant violence: light for precision and heat, sound for raw knockout power.
The boy wove them together seamlessly—bend light to close distance or blind, then clap or shout to finish with concussive force….Impressive composition.
Ken lunged again, this time riding a streak of refracted sunlight that made him appear to teleport forward in stuttering jumps.
His elbow drove toward Ryū's jaw. Ryū parried, forearm meeting forearm with a meaty thud.
Sparks of light scattered like fireflies. Ken spun into a backfist.
Ryū slipped inside the arc, driving a short, brutal punch into the boy's midsection.
Ken grunted, air exploding from his lungs, but he recovered instantly.
He slapped his palms together right in Ryū's face.
BOOM.
The sound wave detonated at point-blank range. Ryū's world turned to ringing chaos.
His body catapulted backward again, tumbling end over end across the broken ground.
Shards of concrete bit into his shoulders and hips. The invisible force pressed on his chest like a giant's boot, squeezing the breath from him.
When he finally slid to a stop, his ears rang with a high, piercing whine.
Smoke rose from his torso in lazy spirals where light-infused strikes had landed repeatedly.
Ken stood twenty paces away, breathing hard but steady, light dancing across his knuckles like liquid gold. "Still standing? You're tougher than you look."
Ryū pushed himself up, wiping blood from a split lip that had already stopped bleeding.
His clothes hung in tatters, blackened and torn. Superficial burns marked his arms and chest in angry red patches, but beneath them, his reinforced body remained whole.
No broken bones. No pierced organs. The first light strike that had punched a smoking hole clean through his palm earlier had taught him the danger.
Now he channeled his elemental affinity differently—not trying to seize control of Ken's light, but hardening his own flesh and aura against it. Like wrapping steel around his bones.
He was impressed.
"Nice technique," Ryū said aloud, voice low and steady despite the ringing in his ears. "Light to set up, sound to deliver.
You bend photons like they're clay. Focus them into lasers that cut and burn.
Then you weaponize the air itself with vibration. Clean. Efficient."
Ken's eyes narrowed, suspicious. "Flattery won't save you."
He attacked again.
This time he didn't close the distance directly.
Ken raised one hand, fingers splayed. Light from the broken sky gathered, refracting through dust motes until a dozen needle-thin beams formed, each one curving and twisting like living serpents.
They shot forward in a spiraling barrage, bending at sharp angles to strike from multiple vectors at once.
Ryū moved.
Not fast like light, but with practiced economy. He twisted his torso, letting two beams scorch past his ribs. A third he met with an open palm, channeling his own energy to blunt the heat.
Pain flared hot and bright across his hand, but the beam dispersed into harmless sparks instead of drilling through.
Ken followed up instantly, dashing in while the light show distracted.
His fist, wreathed in a shimmering gauntlet of condensed photons, hammered toward Ryū's sternum.
Ryū blocked.
The impact jolted up his arm like a hammer strike. Ken chained into a knee to the thigh, then an elbow to the temple.
Each hit carried that extra bite of light—searing on contact, trying to cook flesh from the inside.
Ryū absorbed three more blows, each one shoving him back a step.
Smoke trailed from his forearms where the light burned hottest.
His skin blistered and peeled, but the damage stopped at the surface.
He could feel his elemental reinforcement working, turning what should have been devastating cuts into bad sunburns and bruises.
Ken's frustration showed in his next move.
He leaped back, clapped both hands together with vicious force, and pushed.
The shockwave roared outward in a visible ripple this time—air compressing into a translucent wall of pure kinetic fury.
It uprooted loose chunks of concrete, sent them flying like shrapnel, and barreled straight at Ryū.