This one’s different, he mused. Not a contest of power or speed. It's a battle of processing power... or at least, that's what the little one thinks.

Beside him, Reika watched Kenji’s hunched, nervous form, her own arms folded tensely. She let out a sigh so quiet it was lost in the arena's hum.

She already knew how this would end.

Mikado’s voice cut through the air like steel.

"Begin!"

The floor beneath them flickered to life, a grid of faint, shimmering lines glowing like the traces on a circuit board.

Kenji’s breath hitched.

Okay. Don't freeze. Just stay on your feet. Last as long as you can. Points are awarded for performance, right? Just… perform.

He raised his fists, a clumsy, textbook guard. His hands were too low. They trembled.

Renji didn’t charge. He just walked forward, hands still tucked casually in his pockets, head tilted like a scientist studying a faulty specimen. He stopped five feet away, his gaze flat and analytical.

"Is that your stance?" Renji asked, his voice devoid of mockery. It was a simple, honest question, which made it ten times worse.

Kenji flinched. "W-what?"

Renji’s eyes narrowed slightly. "Your posture. It’s an open invitation. A fatal error in your code."

And then he moved.

It wasn’t a step; it was a deletion of space. One moment he was there, the next he was inside Kenji’s guard, a faint after-image the only proof he’d crossed the gap.

A simple jab—no wind-up, no warning—struck like a server spike.

THWACK!

The sound echoed with sickening clarity. Kenji’s head snapped back, his glasses flying from his face and skittering across the glowing grid. He staggered, feet tangling, a strangled gasp caught in his throat. The crowd sucked in a collective breath.

“Whoa! It’s already started?” a Class D student blurted.

“He didn’t even see it coming. What was that?” a Class C student replied, awe in their voice.

Pain bloomed across Kenji’s cheek. His mind raced, trying to process the attack.

No pattern—no wind-up. He’s not reading my moves, he’s reading my latency…

Another strike. A low, sweeping kick aimed at his calf.

Kenji saw it this time, but his brain was a frame behind his body. He jumped late. The kick grazed his ankle, just enough to unbalance him.

He dropped to one knee.

Frame delay: 0.8 seconds, Renji noted internally, his expression unchanging. Reaction time: subpar. Risk of counter-attack: 0.003%. Proceeding.

Instinct screamed. Kenji’s hand shot out, scrambling on the floor for his glasses.

A flicker in Renji’s eyes.

Error.

His foot snapped forward in a perfectly timed front kick. It wasn’t aimed to injure, but to exploit the opening. The sole of his shoe connected squarely with Kenji’s chest.

OOF—

Kenji flew backward, the air exploding from his lungs. He slammed into the arena floor with a choked grunt, the impact jarring his teeth.

“He’s just picking him apart!” shouted someone from Class D.

“That’s some insane footwork,” another Class D student said. 

A high-pitched ringing filled his ears. His vision split, doubling the harsh lights of the arena above.

The present blurred, but it wasn't just from the impact. It was something deeper—a splinter of memory trying to surface.

Flashing images, not from the fight, but from a place buried long ago, flickered at the edge of his consciousness.

A dark room.

----

He was eight, maybe nine. The memory, sharp and cold, pierced through the haze of pain.

Kenji stepped through the front door of his house, a tremor of excitement making his small hands clutch a crooked cardboard-and-wire contraption. It was his first school project: a mechanical hand. It didn’t work well, clumsy and fragile, but it moved when you pulled the strings, a wondrous feat in his young eyes. His eyes lit up with innocent anticipation.

“Mom’s gonna love this…”

But inside…

The house was a battlefield. Chairs overturned. Glass shattered across the floor, glinting menacingly. Ashtrays spilled their stale contents, a bitter dust motley. A stale, acrid stench—sweat, cheap smoke, and stale, spilled beer—filled the air, choking him.

Was there a robbery?

Then—

A sound. A soft, broken whimper, barely audible.

Kenji turned toward the hallway. The door to the master bedroom was cracked open, a sliver of darkness within. He stepped forward, his small feet crunching over broken glass, each tiny shard a spike of fear.

Inside—

His mother lay on the floor, barely conscious, a crumpled heap of despair. Her arms were bruised, raw and angry purple marks blooming across her skin. Her lip was split, a trickle of blood already dry on her chin. She looked… drained, utterly defeated—like the fight had been long, protracted, and she was losing. She stared up at him with weak, swollen eyes that still somehow glowed with an impossible, fierce love.

“My child... you’re home,” she said, her voice cracked and breathless, yet still impossibly sweet.

Kenji dropped the fragile project, its cardboard limbs splaying uselessly on the floor, and ran to her side, his small hands reaching for hers.

“Mom… What happened?!”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she managed a faint, pained smile, her gaze drifting to the broken project.

“What was in your hands?”

Kenji wiped her tears with the back of his hand, his voice thick with confusion and fear.

“I made it… in school. From scrap. It’s a robot arm.”

Her hand reached for it, trembling, her fingers brushing the crude wires. Even in agony, a flicker of awe touched her eyes.

“You really are… blessed, Kenji…”

Then—

BAM.

The bedroom door swung open with a violent crash, slamming into the wall, shaking the very foundations of the house.

He was there.

Kenji’s father.

He reeked of alcohol, a sickening, cloying scent. Shirtless, his torso was a map of old scars and fresh rage. A heavy leather belt was wrapped around his knuckles, the metal buckle glinting menacingly. His eyes were bloodshot, pupils dilated with rage and the desperate tremors of withdrawal.

“Oh, you’re home, huh?! You two having a moment?” he snarled, his voice a low, venomous growl.

His mother gasped, a raw, choked sound.

Kenji, small and terrified, jumped in front of her, his arms spread wide in a futile, desperate shield.

“Stop! Don’t hurt her!”

But the man didn’t stop. He charged, a hulking, terrifying mass of muscle and fury. And Kenji — small, fragile, helpless — was flung aside like paper, his desperate cry ending in a strangled gasp. He hit the dresser hard, the sharp edge slamming into his ribs. Winded. Dizzy.

The father loomed over the mother, muttering guttural curses, calling her names that tore at Kenji’s soul. She begged through her bloody lips, a broken litany:

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

Then the father spotted the robot arm, lying abandoned on the floor. His bloodshot eyes narrowed with contempt. He snatched it up.

“This stupid piece of junk?”

With one brutal motion—CRACK—he smashed it on the floor, grinding the flimsy cardboard and wires beneath his heel, utterly destroying the product of Kenji’s innocent joy. He looked at Kenji with a sneer, a twisted mockery in his eyes.

“This what that big brain of yours is for? Scrap toys? Science fair trash?”

He raised the belt, its buckle glinting. Kenji squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the inevitable, the sharp sting of the leather.

But then—

The landline rang.

A sudden, jarring trill that pierced the oppressive silence.

He stopped. Snarled, a guttural sound of frustration. He stomped into the living room, disappearing from view, but his voice carried clearly.

“Hello?! Who the hell—”

A brief pause, then a startling shift. The voice that returned was unnervingly smooth, dripping with false pleasantries.

“Ah… teacher, forgive my sudden rudeness just now... Ooh, a Science Fair convention next week? Wait, there's a prize, One Million in cash…?”

Another pause. Silence, thick and heavy, filled the air, as both Kenji and his mom trembled in fear, knowing the terror that awaited them.

Then...

A slow, wicked laugh began to echo through the halls, reaching them, chilling Kenji to his very core. The phone was already hung up. He turned back toward the hallway, his gaze fixed on the master bedroom.

“Kenji…” he said, his voice already filled with a calculating, terrifying greed.

His father smiled. That twisted, terrifying smile, promising a new kind of torment.

“Time to put that useful brain of yours to work.”

----

The Code Unlocked

Back in the arena, Kenji’s eyes shot open, snapping back from the suffocating grip of the past. The pain in his ribs was real, agonizing, but a new kind of fire ignited within him.

He wasn’t nine anymore.

He wasn’t weak.

He wasn’t afraid.

He was tired of always submitting to the strong.

Renji didn’t give Kenji enough time to collect his thoughts. He started approaching him rapidly, his steps precise and unwavering.

Kenji looked up—and there he was. Renji stood towering above him, cold and impassive, like a statue of indifferent justice.

“You’re done.” Renji said as he looked Kenji directly in the eyes, like a hawk scanning its prey, ready for the killing blow. He raised his leg, preparing to stomp on Kenji’s head, a move designed to end the fight decisively.

Wait. Kenji thought, a single word reverberating in his mind.

His fingers twitched, not in pain, but with a strange, nascent energy.

Kenji’s eyes widened.

The arena didn't just transform; his perception fractured. The world wasn't what it seemed. The smooth, dark mat rippled, lines of force and velocity flickering into existence around Renji. It wasn't a physical change, but a sudden, overwhelming clarity in Kenji's mind, as if he'd just downloaded an entire combat analysis program directly into his optic nerve.

He saw the flow: not blood or sweat, but vectors of force, angles of attack, the rhythmic pulse of Renji’s impending assault. The arena became a map of calculated movement, each step a predictable variable.

“Wait…” Kenji whispered, eyes flickering left to right, processing information at an accelerated rate. His breathing steadied—just a little—a calm settling over him amidst the chaos.

Suddenly, Renji’s shadow, stretching across the mat, shimmered with tiny, almost imperceptible stress points—not on the floor, but in the air itself, marking the exact trajectories of his next moves. It wasn't a glitch; it was the world revealing its underlying pattern, its hidden code.

2.3 feet apart. Three panels to the right. Renji’s gait: consistent... Predictable.

And then it clicked.

The world slowed.

Sound dropped out.

The crowd vanished, their roars replaced by the silent hum of pure, cold data.

In its place, glowing fragments spun in the air like data pieces suspended in zero gravity, a holographic display of Renji’s movements.

Every step Renji took… aligned. Perfectly. Pattern locked.

A neon-blue line traced Renji’s path toward him—clean, efficient, deadly.

But now—

Kenji saw the gap.

A sliver of space. A thread in the chaos. He didn't just react; he read the algorithm of movement.

He saw the code.

A puzzle began assembling in his vision—like clear-glass shards snapping into place in rapid, exhilarating motion.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Kenji’s cracked lenses glinted with reflected light, but his eyes behind them blazed with newfound clarity.

And then—

He rolled.

Not a flinch, not a clumsy scramble. A smooth, almost impossibly fluid motion, a perfect arc. His body, bruised and battered, obeyed a higher command. Timed. Frame-perfect. A move born not of instinct, but of pure, calculated prediction, a counter-algorithm executed with chilling precision.

Renji’s foot slammed into the empty mat where Kenji’s head had been a millisecond before. The shockwave of the missed kick ripped through the air, but Kenji was already past it, a ghost in the machine.