Reyna’s face went through several interesting colors.

Shock.

Denial.

Rage.

"Fine. No lightning."

She dismissed all her marionettes with a snap, the constructs dissolving into wisps of electricity. Then she charged at me. Actual physical combat, no Aspect between us. Just fists and speed and the brutal simplicity of a girl who’d been training since she could walk.

She was fast.

Inhumanly fast.

Her first punch came at my face, and I barely got my guard up in time. The impact rattled my bones. Her second punch slipped through my defense, catching my ribs exactly where they were still healing.

White-hot pain exploded through my chest.

I staggered.

She followed up with a spinning kick that would’ve decapitated me if I hadn’t ducked. Felt the displaced air whistle over my head. Came up swinging my bat in a wide arc.

She flipped backward, avoiding the strike by inches, landing in a perfect three-point stance.

"Better."

"Thanks. I’ve been practicing."

"Not enough."

She came at me again, this time with combinations. Jab, cross, hook, uppercut, spinning elbow, knee strike. Each technique was textbook perfect, drilled into muscle memory through thousands of hours with professional coaches.

I blocked what I could. Took what I couldn’t. Let Kinetic Absorption feast on every hit while my stats climbed higher.

We traded blows for what felt like hours but was probably only minutes. She was technically superior in every way. Her form was flawless. Her timing was impeccable. Every strike landed exactly where she intended.

But I was stronger now.

My hidden stats versus her legitimate A-Rank training.

And I was closing the gap.

"You’re tougher than you look," she admitted, breathing hard now. Sweat plastered her crimson hair to her forehead, and her pristine combat suit bore dust and scorch marks from where we’d collided.

"You talk too much."

I activated Shade Cloak.

My body dissolved into shadow. One second of intangibility. Just enough to slip through her guard and reappear behind her, my bat already swinging toward her kidney.

She sensed it somehow. Twisted mid-air, bringing up a palm that crackled with electricity. The lightning hit my chest point-blank.

Lightning Rod drank it down like water.

Absorbed the entire discharge without even a tingle.

Then I released it.

All the electricity I’d been storing since the fight started. Every marionette. Every bolt she’d thrown. Every spark she’d summoned. I channeled it back through my palm in a concentrated beam that lit up the entire arena.

The lightning struck Reyna full in the chest, lifting her off her feet and throwing her backward across the sand.

She hit the ground hard. Rolled. Came up on one knee with smoke rising from her combat suit.

The crowd noise peaked. Deafening.

But she was smiling.

Actually smiling, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth.

"Now we’re getting somewhere."

She stood, electricity arcing across her body in visible currents. Her emerald eyes blazed with genuine excitement.

"Show me what you’re really hiding, Stray Dog."

Something changed in the air.

The temperature spiked. The sand beneath our feet began vibrating. And I realized with crystal clarity that Reyna had been holding back too.

This whole time.

She’d been playing with me, testing my limits, seeing what I could do.

Now the real fight was about to start.

Incoming, Nel whispered urgently. She’s about to—

Reyna’s Aspect exploded outward in a storm of crimson lightning that turned the entire arena into a warzone. Not marionettes anymore. Not simple bolts. A full manifestation of her power, electricity pouring from her body like she’d become a living Tesla coil.

The Volt Marionettes she summoned now weren’t puppets.

They were weapons.

Humanoid shapes made of pure destruction, each one crackling with enough voltage to power a city block. They moved with her, extensions of her will, and when they attacked it was with the coordination of a single organism rather than separate constructs.

I dodged the first wave. Barely. Protection from Arrows guided my movements, pulling me left when logic said right, dropping me into a crouch when instinct said jump.

But there were too many.

A fist of lightning caught my shoulder. Pain exploded. Kinetic Absorption converted the force but the electricity itself still burned, searing through my combat suit and leaving a smoking crater in the fabric.

Another hit. My thigh. Another burn.

Another. My back. I went down to one knee.

The crowd noise rose to a fever pitch.

She’s winning.

The Comet’s going to kill him.

Someone stop this!

I heard Natalia scream my name from somewhere in the stands. Felt her terror through Sovereign’s Mandate, a cold spike of fear that traveled across our bond.

Reyna walked toward me through the storm of her own creation, electricity dancing across her skin, her eyes glowing with power.

"You put up a good fight. Better than I expected." She stood over me, looking down with something that might’ve been respect. "But this is where it ends."

"Not yet."

I stood.

My legs shook. My arms trembled. Blood ran from my nose where one of her constructs had clipped me. But I stood anyway, because staying down wasn’t an option.

Reyna’s expression shifted to frustration. "Why won’t you just quit?"

"Because I’m too stupid to know when I’m beaten."

I raised my bat. Channeled every ounce of stored electricity through Lightning Rod’s Return to Sender function. The power I’d been absorbing since the fight started—every marionette, every bolt, every spark—condensed into a single point.

Then I released it all at once.

The explosion of lightning that erupted from my position was biblical. A pillar of pure electrical fury that shot straight up into the darkening sky, illuminating the entire island in stark white light.

Reyna’s storm evaporated.

Her marionettes dissolved.

The electromagnetic pulse from my counterattack swept across the arena like a shockwave, shorting out every piece of electronic equipment within two hundred meters. Cameras died. The scoreboard went dark. Even the emergency lights flickered and failed.

And in the sudden darkness, illuminated only by lingering electrical afterglow, I charged.

Reyna barely had time to raise her guard before I was on her. My bat connected with her hastily summoned ice-shield construct—wait, ice? When did she—

The shield shattered.

My follow-up strike caught her shoulder, spinning her around. She tried to create distance but I was already there, matching her step for step, my accumulated buffs making me fast enough to keep pace with someone who’d been trained by S-Ranks.

We traded blows in the darkness. Fist to fist. No Aspects. No tricks. Just two fighters who’d pushed past their limits and were operating on pure spite.

She caught me with an uppercut that rattled my teeth. I returned with a body shot that made her cough blood.

She swept my legs. I pulled her down with me.

We hit the sand together, grappling now, her nails scratching at my face while I tried to get leverage for a throw.

"You’re insane!"

"Probably!"

The emergency generators kicked in, flooding the arena with harsh white light.

We separated, rolling to our feet simultaneously, both of us bleeding and breathing hard and grinning like absolute maniacs.

The referee looked between us, clearly uncertain whether to stop the fight or let us kill each other.

Reyna wiped blood from her split lip. "Again."

"Yeah."

We crashed together one more time, and the Crucible Arena shook with the force of our impact.