The moment the first chair tipped over, the dining hall exploded into motion.
Candidates scrambled back from the tables, dishes clattered to the floor, silverware skidded across polished wood, and staff all but vanished behind kitchen doors. What had been a warm, civilized buffet just moments ago was now a battlefield lined with overturned trays and scattered food.
At the center of it all stood two monsters.
Hisoka smiled first.
It was not a friendly smile. Not even a sane one. It was the smile of a man who had just found a gift wrapped in silk and sharpened steel.
"Come now," he said, voice low and almost delighted. "Show me more. ♠"
Yuzuki didn't answer.
He moved first.
His body blurred forward in a sharp zigzag that used the dining tables like cover. He kicked one of the heavy buffet carts sideways as he dashed, sending it crashing toward Hisoka.
Hisoka flicked his wrist.
A card flashed silver.
The cart split in two.
Yuzuki was already behind the debris.
He came in low, one hand touching the ground, body twisting as he drove a heel toward Hisoka's ribs. Hisoka pivoted neatly, but the kick still grazed his side, forcing him back a step.
Hisoka's eyes widened just a little.
"Mm. Fast. ♦"
Yuzuki didn't let up. He pressed in immediately, striking with a brutal mixture of speed and precision. A palm to the throat. A knife-hand at the ribs. A low sweep. A feint. Then a sharp elbow aimed at the temple.
Hisoka danced backward through the flurry, cards flashing in his fingers as he parried and deflected with eerie grace.
Every movement was smooth.
Every dodge was lazy.
And yet—
A plate smashed against the wall behind him from the force of Yuzuki's missed strike.
The floorboards cracked where Yuzuki's heel came down.
Hanzo, watching from the edge of the room with folded arms, let out a low whistle.
"That kid's not playing around."
Tonpa, meanwhile, had fully abandoned dignity and crouched behind a pillar with both hands over his head.
"I knew it," he whimpered. "I knew this exam was cursed."
Back in the center of the hall, Hisoka's grin widened.
A chair spun through the air. Hisoka's gaze flicked toward it for half a second, just enough time for Yuzuki to vanish beneath his line of sight and slide under the table to Hisoka's left. The white-haired boy came out of the slide with a metal serving tray in hand and smashed it upward toward Hisoka's jaw.
Hisoka leaned back.
The tray missed his chin by a hair, but not the overhead chandelier.
Glass rained down.
Hisoka twisted in mid-step as the chandelier crashed where he had been standing.
And Yuzuki was already on him again.
A punch.
Hisoka met it with his own.
Their fists collided with a crack like a gunshot.
Yuzuki's arm trembled.
Hisoka's didn't.
The difference in aura was immediate.
Hisoka's smile sharpened. "There it is… ♣"
Yuzuki clicked his tongue and disengaged before Hisoka could capitalize, kicking a table up between them. Hisoka sliced it apart with two cards and stepped through the falling wood like it was confetti.
"Your ability…" Hisoka murmured, studying him now with much more than amusement. "It creates impossible space. It halts contact. Yet it isn't simple emission, and it certainly isn't conjuration. ♥"
Yuzuki's expression stayed flat.
Hisoka's eyes gleamed.
"Specialist. You're a Specialist. ♠"
For a heartbeat, the room itself seemed to tense around that word.
Yuzuki smiled coldly. "You talk too much."
Then he clapped his hands together.
A pulse of Blue snapped into existence behind Hisoka, small, compressed, but viciously dense. The warped force yanked loose plates, cutlery, chairs, and chunks of broken flooring toward one point.
Hisoka's body twisted as the pull caught him.
For the first time, his balance actually broke.
Hisoka's shoes screeched across the floor.
Yuzuki launched himself in at that exact moment.
His fist drove straight for Hisoka's face.
Hisoka's eyes lit up—
and his aura surged.
Hisoka's hand shot out and caught Yuzuki by the wrist the instant Infinity flickered.
The shell broke.
Yuzuki's eyes widened slightly.
Hisoka yanked him forward and drove a knee toward his stomach. Yuzuki barely twisted in time. The impact clipped his side and sent him flying through a buffet table, exploding it into splinters and trays of food.
Roast meat, soup, and broken china blasted through the air.
Yuzuki skidded on his back, coughed once, then sprang up before the debris had fully settled.
Hisoka watched him rise.
And something in Hisoka's breathing changed.
A tremor.
A shiver.
He brought one hand to his face, fingers pressing lightly over his mouth as if restraining something ugly and ecstatic from spilling out.
"Ohh… ♠"
His pupils trembled.
There it was.
Growth.
Yuzuki's aura was sharpening in real time under pressure, his instincts learning, compressing, blooming under lethal threat.
Hisoka's shoulders shook once.
He had the overwhelming urge to kill him right there.
Because he was becoming delicious.
But no.
Not yet.
Hisoka forced the urge down, though every line of his body screamed against the restraint.
"Don't rip him apart yet," he whispered to himself. "Not yet. ♣"
Yuzuki, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth, narrowed his eyes.
"Talking to yourself now?"
Hisoka laughed. Breathless and strange. "You have no idea how difficult you're making this. ♥"
Yuzuki didn't like the sound of that at all.
He kicked over another table, but this time not at Hisoka, but at the floor. Plates shattered, sauces and oils spreading in slick streaks across the polished wood.
Then he grabbed a steel serving trolley with both hands and hurled it.
Hisoka slashed it in half.
Exactly as Yuzuki expected.
The trolley split, but the sprays of hot grease, soup, and broken glass burst outward in a filthy storm. Hisoka pivoted and guarded his face, but Yuzuki was already gone from where he'd thrown it.
He came from above.
Using one of the decorative support beams, he launched himself down with both feet aimed for Hisoka's collarbone.
Hisoka looked up, grinning despite himself.
Yuzuki's aura surged.
Hisoka's answer came instantly.
Bungee Gum snapped from his fingers, attaching to a pillar behind him and jerking him backward just enough that Yuzuki's double kick crashed into the floor instead.
The wood split open.
Yuzuki twisted on landing, grabbed a fallen carving knife from the buffet, and flung it.
Hisoka tilted his head.
The knife missed by an inch and the hidden force of Blue that had been riding it detonated sideways, ripping a chunk of wall inward.
Hisoka stared at the crater.
Then at Yuzuki.
Then laughed.
"Clever. Very clever. ♦"
Yuzuki didn't smile.
Inside, his lungs burned.
The clown's aura was denser, heavier, more invasive. If Yuzuki mismanaged his output for even a second, Hisoka's attacks would punch through.
He knew it.
And Hisoka knew he knew it.
Hisoka rolled his neck slowly.
"You use the environment well. You think well. You adapt quickly." He licked his lip once, eyes glittering. "You're blooming beautifully. ♠"
Yuzuki's face twisted with disgust. "You sound like a freak."
"I am a freak. ♥"
Then Hisoka vanished.
He crossed the space in a blur of murderous speed and appeared at Yuzuki's side with a card already slicing for the throat.
Yuzuki amplified his output at the last possible moment.
Infinity caught the card.
For half a second, it hovered in the invisible divide—
Then Hisoka's second hand drove in from below, aura-packed knuckles aiming for the liver. Yuzuki dropped his shell, pivoted, and took the blow on his forearm instead.
Pain shot up to his shoulder.
He countered with a jab to the sternum.
Hisoka let it land.
The impact drove him back a step.
And he smiled wider.
Hanzo's brows rose. "He let that hit him?"
No.
He hadn't let it hit him.
He'd wanted to feel it.
Hisoka's breathing came a little rougher now, his excitement bleeding into something almost unbearable.
This was exactly the kind of fight he craved, a rare, precious thing on the cusp of becoming extraordinary.
But it was still on the cusp.
Still not there.
If he kept going all-out, he might actually kill him.
That would ruin everything.
Hisoka exhaled slowly through his nose and let the bloodlust settle back under his skin.
Yuzuki saw the shift instantly.
"Don't you dare hold back," Yuzuki said.
Hisoka smiled.
"I'm trying very hard not to ruin my toy too early. ♣"
That did it.
Yuzuki's aura flared sharply.
He stepped in and Hisoka raised one hand.
"Enough."
Yuzuki stopped.
Hisoka lowered his hand slowly and rolled his shoulders, expression loose, satisfied, but eyes still burning.
"I've seen what I needed to see."
He turned away.
As if ending a fight with a half-bloomed killer in the middle of a dining hall was the most natural thing in the world.
Yuzuki took one step after him.
Hanzo's voice cut in from the side. "Don't."
Yuzuki glanced over.
Hanzo's expression was serious now.
"Whatever that was," Hanzo said, "if it kept going, one of you was going to die."
Hisoka paused a few steps away and looked back over his shoulder.
"That would have been unfortunate… ♠" he said lightly.
Then he smiled at Yuzuki one last time.
"Grow stronger."
And with that, the clown walked away.
The hall remained silent long after he was gone.
Broken tables.
Ruined food.
Cracked floorboards.
A dining room turned war zone.
Yuzuki stood in the center of it, breathing hard, fists clenched, blood at the corner of his mouth, sunglasses still somehow in place.
He hated everything about that man.
Yuzuki clicked his tongue and looked away.
Hanzo exhaled slowly. "Well," he muttered, "that was a hell of a welcome buffet."
From behind his pillar, Tonpa slowly peeked out, pale as death.
"I'm never eating in here again."
---
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