The arena hummed with the kind of tension that gets into your chest and stays there.
Mukai stood with his back straight and his nose slightly raised, watching Najo from the corner of his eye. Behind him, a vast pool of water sat still, reflecting the packed terraces above. Across the field, Najo met his stare and held it. Behind him, two lightning poles thrummed with a low, familiar current.
Mr. Jumbo walked to the centre. Both boys stepped forward and stopped five metres apart.
"This is the quickest way to resolve conflict," Mr. Jumbo announced. "The fight ends when one of you admits defeat." He glanced between them. "I had considerable trouble arranging this, so it had better be worth watching." He raised one hand. "Ready."
Najo smashed his fists together. Sparks cracked between his knuckles. Mukai extended his right hand, and the water behind him rippled outward in slow, gathering waves.
From the terraces, Moto leaned forward on his elbows. "Water conducts lightning. This should be straightforward for Najo."
"Hajime."
Najo was already moving before the word finished. A lightning-charged fist, full speed, aimed directly at Mukai's face - this is for what you did to Sheu - and it connected with nothing. A wall of water erupted around him, seamless, and he was inside it.
"I wouldn't be so sure," Sukai said quietly, from the stands.
"Nox Pool." Mukai said it the way a craftsman names a tool - calm, practiced, almost to himself. The faint smirk came after. The pressure closed in from every direction, squeezing the air from Najo's chest, and then the cylinder fired him out like something expelled. He hit the ground, rolled, pushed into a backflip, and landed hard but upright.
He sent a volley of sharp, crackling bolts at Mukai. They hissed into a water wall and dissolved into steam.
"Why isn't he getting zapped?!" Moto shouted. "Water conducts electricity!"
"Our mother trained in both water and lightning," Sukai said, without taking his eyes off the field. "Mukai knows exactly how to handle an element like his own."
Moto stared at him. "Strongest in the nation?"
"Strongest in the nation."
Najo changed approach - ripped the loose rocks from the ground and sent them at Mukai in a hard, scattering barrage.
All raw power, Mukai observed. No technique.
"Water Diamond, Christopher." The shield materialised in front of him, a precise diamond of solid water, and deflected every piece clean.
Najo lifted a boulder twice his own height and hurled it. Mukai drew a water sword and cut upward once - the rock split down the middle, light flooding through the gap - and Najo was already through it, closing the distance before the halves had finished separating.
The punch landed with a crack that echoed off the upper terraces. Water and lightning detonated on contact and Mukai left the ground, arcing backward, and hit his own pool with a crash that sent spray ten metres in every direction.
The lightning half of the terraces came apart.
Underwater, Mukai heard it - muffled, but unmistakeable. The roar for someone else. They think this outsider is stronger than me. The water around him was cold and still and he let it be still for one breath. I've trained for years longer than him. I will not accept this.
He erupted from the surface in a burst of spray, already launching - a barrage of water bullets, dense and fast, driving Najo backward across the field.
"That one," Najo shouted over the noise, "was for Sheu! I still owe you one more!"
Mukai's jaw tightened. He pulled every bullet back at once. They converged around Najo and sealed - a dense sphere of water, lifting him off the ground, spinning with him as he thrashed. No leverage. Nowhere to push.
"This is bad," Sukai breathed, colour leaving his face. "At this rate-"
Najo's mind was working faster than his lungs. The boulders he'd thrown earlier were still on the field. He pulled one toward him, felt it enter the sphere, braced both feet against it and shoved off with everything he had. His head broke the surface, gasping.
Mukai let the water fall.
Najo landed on one of the still-tumbling rocks, lightning blazing off him in bright, jagged arcs. His eyes were narrow. He had one shot and he knew it.
Mukai felt the shift in the air and welcomed it.
"Water Spear, Owen." The pool responded like it had been waiting - the entire volume surging toward him, shaping itself into something vast and spiralling and pointed. Najo descended the falling rocks toward the ground, lightning pouring into both hands. The distance between them collapsed.
In the terraces, Moto's fists were clenched white. Sukai had gone very still beside him.
The two attacks were almost touching when the portal opened.
Black and shimmering, tearing open behind the stands with no warning. Kangetsu stepped through it, and his hand was already moving - already reaching for Sukai - and before anyone could process what was happening the grip had closed. A small, deliberate burst of blood on his fingers, raised to Sukai's face. The smell hit before anything else.
Sukai trembled.
"Don't move," Kangetsu said.