While the previous winner was looking to my sister, confused, when I spat at his face at the same time I reached to the gun he was pushing to me: he surprisingly avoided the spit even without be looking to it, but thanks to this, I could shot at the hand that was holding me and; even though he also avoided this bullet, it was again instinctive and, because his eyes were still following the saliva, his fingers were pulled close to his chest, letting me go.

What just happened?!

“His body is programmed to detect and avoid danger thru his senses automatically!”, shouted Gear.

She says “automatically”, and, by the position of his head just now, he was still looking at the spit. This means…!

Before the former champion started to laugh, I kicked a bunch of dirty at him from his left side, just before shot my pistol to his right side: he avoided the dirt and the bullet, but the last one passed just a few centimeters from his body, taking sparks from his armor.

“Yes, like this! Like this, this is the kind of event this Tournament is!”, commemorated my last opponent, shooting a laser from one of his palms, while the other hand reached for a rifle at his back; I rolled away from the laser, and at his direction, putting myself parallel to the laser-shooting glove and firing: not at him, because he would avoid it, but precisely at the armor he was wearing, the bullet passing a single hair string away from his body and without triggering his instinctive protection, destroying the attack device installed in the glove. “Entertain me!”, the enemy shouted, bringing down his riffle’s butt directly to my head.

It was already touching my hair when I spun myself to the right, dodging it while pressing my gun’s barrel at his belly and pulling the trigger; the enemy also avoiding the bullet by bending his upper half to a full 270 degrees.

I, though, had no super-advanced risk avoidance system, I had to do it manually: my eyes aren’t fast enough to follow him, I noticed when failing to follow the riffle he was using as a bat, avoiding the strike only because, when I felt the metal touching my skin, I moved my head to the same side the weapon was going to. Closing my eyes, I continued: this guy smells nice and his gun rusty, but my broken and full of blood nose isn’t working properly; the opponent still pressing his rifle butt against my face, changed its direction, and I immediately followed it, guiding my head alongside the weapon at the same time I retreated step by step, giving my best to just don’t have my neck broken by his sequences of butts. Then, I focused on the sound: I can hear the wind and the drops of water being pushed, but there’s just too much interference from the public: I must filter it! Concentrate on what is important, ignore everything else! The voices coming from the stadium doesn’t matter, your own heartbeat doesn’t matter, nor the wildfire, and the fire extinguishers neither!

I gave another step, and doing like I had to, distanced a single centimeter from the pressing riffle’s butt, then another, and another, and at the fourth step, I was finally away from the enemies butts, my face covered by a huge bruise taking the form of the attacks I was barely avoiding. I could counter once again, and so I did: I shoot almost at point-blank against the laughing enemy’s face, yet he avoided it, and I was forced to dodge a bullet from his rifle.

I sent, with my “good” foot, a kick against the opponent’s neck, but he stopped it with one hand, grabbing my limb while lifting his gun barrel to my face, when I took my other leg from the ground, kicked the riffles to the side and against its users own arm, its bullet craving at the dirt when the enemy left my captured leg go; I took this opportunity to shot him at his face once again (his body is fully covered by the armor, that was really the only point that I could aim), but moving the limb in a so extreme way that his chin stayed parallel with the shoulders, the opponent avoided it, firing at me again: the cycle of attack and defend was repeating itself endlessly; we were dancing around each other, shooting, kicking and punching separated centimeters only from our targets, bullets flying all around, losing its heat and power at the same instant they touched the energy barrier, then falling to the ground, frozen.

I know that his body will avoid the danger of this willing it or not, but I’m just not fast enough to make him fall to my traps! I thought, aiming at my opponent while he was dodging the shrapnel from the fire extinguishes I just destroyed, but listening he avoid the bullet the same way like when I tried to fool him with dirt. He is laughing and it looks like he isn’t even using all his strength, just playing with me!

“He cannot see the future, Heavy!”, screamed Gear, the only voice that I was still attentive to. “Show him, everyone, show me how cool you are, fuck!”

...I can’t lose, no matter what, and I have to win in a cool way? You’re asking too much…!

I pointed my gun against the enemy’s face while pressing the trigger. Before I fired, though, I threw the pistol at the opponent and reach for the radio bone that was coming out off my shoulder, pulling it fully and letting the blood that came from the wound fly to the opponent’s direction. I thrust my bone-sword at him.

Opening my eyes just a little, I saw the enemy had already avoided the pistol and then was dodging the point of the broken bone, facing me, his thoughts and movements as fast as expected, even the red wall of my own blood between us useless.

You’re really on another level, hu? Even this wasn’t fast or surprisingly enough... I thought, in a so open position; and vulnerable because of all the pain, that had been taken to extremes, I let all the other programs beside thought acceleration off; that it wouldn’t be possible for me to avoid the attack that was so close, the closed fist of the enemy almost touching already my chest right above my heart. I think I really can’t surpass this power...

…Then, how about I bring you to my level? I fired.

I had no weapon with me beside the pathetic bone I was wielding as a sword, yet, a bullet was shot, and it came from behind my opponent, from the gun I had just uselessly as a distraction threw at him just now, the one I was pressing the trigger with the pathetic broken sword-bone, the one whose fire that wasn’t really a threat, so his auto-pilot body didn’t avoid, letting the bullet crave itself on the back of the armor and the head regulator system of it, breaking the entire thing; the piece of protection immediately bursting into flames and, the metal too soft to explode under the opponent’s power, welding again as soon as he did, and too hard and heavy to let him move freely, slowing him like a bath of tar, I avoided his hundreds of times weaker strike easily.

When the opponent, struggling with the bright red metal that he just couldn’t take out of his body looked straight at my face, I replied, brandishing the bone at my side, taking the blood out of it’s “blade” in a single movement, seeing it fall to the ground in a semi-circle that, soon, was washed by the rain simulation caused by the fire extinguishers:

“...You should have gone with your 100% from the start”.

The opponent sent another punch, but, once again, I avoided it with easy, throwing at him a blow with the bone-blade. The vibrating public went silent, the opponent stopped and the time itself seemed to freeze when a thin line of blood came out of the enemy's forehead, a little cut opened at his head: his super-human skills weren’t enough to avoid the attack then.

The energy field started to contract again, this time faster.

Stopping to laugh and involving himself in a gray liquid, the adversary charged again, but I jumped, rolled and spun and craved another cut at his face, this time at his cheek; and after avoiding a slow kick, another cut, and after retreat from a punch, one more, and after dodge under the blade made out of the gray material, even more. The enemy wasn’t laughing anymore, his mask all torn apart, revealing wounded skin all under it.

“I… I…! I WILL DESTROY EVERYTHING YOU EVER LOVED!” Screamed my opponent, taking off his own mask and bearing his teeth to me, showing his so strange appearance: he wasn’t as beautiful as Mercury. Actually, wasn’t even at the level of a simple Worker, and, now that I looked close, he was pretty small, his teeth were too yellow, that gray thing was visibly protecting him from the heat, and the color of his eyes… brow? “STARTING FROM THAT BITCH!”

This isn’t time to admire his strange-looking!

“You promised!”, I replied, outraged.

“I LIED! WELCOME TO THE BUSINESS WORLD, BOY!”, the enemy answered, joining both hands above his head and bringing it down in my direction.

I threw my ripped radio bone at his side and his arms moved instinctively to destroy it once that his slowed body wouldn’t dodge fast enough, and took that opportunity to step ahead, close tightly my hand into a fist and, facing the adversary, throw a direct punch at his nose.

“FO- FOOL! DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?!’”

Pulling my hand back, having felt the surprising resistance of his skull, I replied, throwing another punch, this time to definitely break his nose:

“I DON’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT WHO YOU ARE!”, I couldn’t break his bones, but his skin opened under my fist, and blood as red as of anyone else spilled out off it in a geyser.

The enemy, even with all his mind power, his thoughts occurring hundreds, maybe thousands of times faster than mine’s, was astonished, threw out off balance, looking into nothingness. Tears were forming in his eyes when I pulled, yet, my hand a third time, this time with my middle finger up and prepared to make its way thru that eye sock.

When I lost sight of everything, had all my senses confused and felt as if floating in the middle of the dark, empty space.

The adversary counter-attacks restarted, but this time there was nothing I could do to stop them.