REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!Chapter 27: A Real Man Does Pole Vault on Top of Skyscrapers!
"High-rise pole vault? Just reading those words together already smells dangerous..."
After watching one bout of extremely violent combat hurdles, Kuwabara was already trying to work out what kind of violence could possibly be stuffed into something called high-rise pole vault.
"It is dangerous, but the danger comes from the event itself," Ross said, back with the group now in the waiting area. "It's actually non-confrontational. No fighting between participants."
"You know what this one is too?" Yusuke immediately moved closer.
He had come to the exam under false pretenses, but having come this far, Yusuke was not leaving with nothing — that stubbornness was the engine behind everything he did. Once he committed to something, nine horses couldn't drag him back. He was taking this exam seriously, and anything Ross knew about the upcoming bouts was information he wanted.
"Nobody knows high-rise pole vault better than I do."
Ross led with the same opener. This time nobody raised an eyebrow.
"In that case, you wouldn't mind telling the rest of us as well~?"
Hisoka interjected smoothly, with the easy naturalness of someone inserting themselves into a conversation they were always going to be part of. The surprises Ross kept producing were adding up.
"Of course. But to keep the other side from overhearing, let's go over there."
Ross gestured toward the entry corridor they had come from. Illumi turned his head mechanically in the same direction and followed without a word.
For the duration of this Competition Roulette event, Ross's familiarity with the rules had made him the group's natural center, however temporary.
High-rise pole vault: exactly what it sounded like. A series of buildings at heights that would kill a person on impact, all at the same level. Players needed to vault consecutively across eighteen buildings and land on each rooftop in sequence. The goal was to reach the finish line on the roof of building nineteen.
In a two-player format, the winner was whoever completed more building vaults with fewer falls.
Simple on its face. Without knowing the specific details, though, there were ways to get very badly caught out.
"Eighteen buildings. The gap between each building varies — no two jumps are the same distance. Some buildings have thick ropes strung between them.
You start with one pole. In principle it disappears as soon as you've used it once or let go of it. But certain rooftops have supply items waiting — sometimes a new pole, sometimes a unicycle, sometimes both at once. You can only hold one at a time, so it's worth looking at the terrain ahead before choosing. The unicycle has its uses.
Between buildings are special items called trampolines. If you fall, the trampolines bounce you back up and you keep going — but you only get three bounces. The fourth fall goes all the way down. Best case, you're seriously injured. Worst case, you're not getting up.
Once you start you can't go backward. There is an item in the shop for this event that allows retreating, though. Whoever's competing, come find me before you go in — I'll see if I can transfer the specialty currency to cover it.
That's the important stuff. No fighting, just technique and nerve. Who's going?"
Ross finished. His teammates were silent.
How to put it. Detailed. Far too detailed. The level of detail was the kind that only existed if the person describing it had put in the time — well past what anyone would be able to derive from simply observing someone else's Nen ability. At least a full tier beyond what an ordinary Nen user would be expected to know.
Then again, Nen abilities came in every conceivable shape. Beyond a user's natural affinity and the types they could extend toward, ability specifics often reflected the particular qualities of the person behind them. And the stranger and more specific the ability, the more it tended to say something real about who had built it.
Maybe Ross was someone who specialized in finding and exploiting the exact rules of whatever system he happened to be inside.
The group looked around at each other.
"If it were running and fighting again I'd have at least some confidence — I wouldn't end up as badly off as that bald guy, at least. But this kind of event... I genuinely haven't done anything like it."
Yusuke didn't try to sound tougher than he was. This was just the truth. Pole vault wasn't something ordinary schools offered, and for good reason.
"You don't even go to gym class. You probably can't run a straight line by this point."
Kuwabara, on schedule, went for the floor.
For all that both of them wore the delinquent label proudly, Kuwabara outside of a fight was actually quite principled — a sharp contrast to his appearance. Yusuke, on the other hand, skipped any class he felt like skipping, spent free periods sleeping on the rooftop, and had not attended a single gym class from the first day to the present.
"What did you just say?!"
Yusuke grabbed Kuwabara by the collar and started shaking him. Whether that counted as wounded pride or genuine anger was unclear.
Hisoka and Illumi, for their part, had both been quietly building an accurate picture of the event from Ross's description. The conclusion on their end was similar: mild interest, but not much urgency.
The event had real difficulty for most people. For the two of them, though, the picture Ross had painted made it manageable. By their reading, their physical capability alone — without using a pole at all — would probably clear the gaps between buildings. The rules didn't prohibit using Nen, after all.
This was accurate. If the five events were ranked by how brutal the experience tended to be, the 400-meter combat hurdles actually only placed third. High-rise pole vault was lower — fourth. Any Nen user who had trained properly without their fundamentals going sideways would get through it without too much difficulty.
"You know~ since our friend Ross here knows the rules so thoroughly, why don't we just let him decide who from our side should compete~?"
The suggestion came from Hisoka, delivered into the gap while the two delinquents were still going at each other.
Yusuke and Kuwabara both paused at the same time. Then, almost simultaneously, both of them had the same reaction: "...that actually makes sense?"
Illumi turned his head mechanically toward Hisoka, producing his mechanical noise, which communicated neither agreement nor objection.
"All right then."
Ross didn't decline. He thought it over, turned his head, and looked at Kuwabara, who was in the middle of straightening his collar.
"Me?"
Kuwabara pointed at his own face with genuine surprise.
"Yeah. I think there's nobody better suited for this event than you."
Ross nodded without a trace of irony.
That straightforward confidence had an immediate effect. Kuwabara's spine went straight.
"A man says what he means! If you're putting it like that, this second bout is mine!"
He punched the circle on his wristband as he said it. Five circles came through in sequence, unanimous.
The examiner side made their selection too — the one who had protested earlier, now quiet since the double reduction offer had come through.
Both stepped onto the central platform. Light covered everything again.
This time, unlike the convict-examiner, Kuwabara had something specific in mind. Remembering what Ross had told him, he was already moving toward the item shop with a silver ring in his hand the moment the preparation area materialized.
He couldn't read the descriptions, but he could tell gold from silver from bronze without any difficulty.
Three items available for purchase. Prices: 2 copper medals, 4 gold medals, and 10 gold medals.
No deliberation needed. Kuwabara took item one at its two-copper-medal price outright, and the moment the transaction went through, he felt something settle onto him — subtle, but there.
He collected his change from the shopkeeper and stepped back out of the store, only to find the examiner — who moved like a skeleton that had learned to run — had already gone through the double doors ahead of him.
Kuwabara sprinted the last few steps and went through after him.
Black, then white. The transition took a few seconds.
Wind hit him — far stronger than anything at ground level — and when his vision cleared, Kuwabara was standing on a rooftop. A few hundred meters to his right, on a building that was a perfect mirror of the one he was on, the convict-examiner stood at the same height.
In both their hands, a green specialized pole had appeared.