"Standing victorious at a record of 9-6, I introduce…. SCARS!"

Takuma ran into the arena and locked onto his opponent. A woman that went by the fighter alias Purplewind with a winning record of 36-35 — an almost equal split. And from the looks of it, she was about to complete her initial contract; one more win would mean she would complete her contract with a winning record.

And that win wouldn't be against him, Takuma declared to himself.

"So, you're the new rookie, eh," Purplewind, wearing a grey sports bra and shorts, looked him up and down before scoffing, "you don't look like much."

Takuma didn't respond to the pre-fight chatter and moved in for the attack.

Purplewind had experience and immediately switched modes. She struck faster than the wind and blocked Takuma's first and second strike in less time than it took to blink. Takuma squared his legs and reset the tension in his foot with a quick hop before lifting off the ground as he twisted his body to put all the momentum behind his elbow that rammed into the block guarding Purplewind's head.

The crowd roared as the fight's momentum turned to eleven right off the bat.

Purplewind's footwork all but teleported her a step back as she created enough space before swinging her leg like a scythe toward Takuma's torso. Takuma didn't have a millisecond of rest as the moment his feet touched the ground, he bent his body back into a bridge, barely avoiding the vicious leg strike as it whiffed a few inches above him.

His senses and mind worked together to birth a flash of battle instinct. Even with Purplewind not in sight, he tensed his muscles and shot up a leg like an arrow on a tense bow. Baam! His leg countered Purplewind's jackhammer fist.

He called upon his abs and backflipped himself off his hands back upright. His guard barely went solid before Purplewind's both feet sent him flying across the arena. Takuma gained balance mid-air and held himself steady as his feet skidded across the floor on re-contact, all the while he kept his eye zoned in on his opponent.

Purplewind didn't wait for Takuma to hit the ground and was already charging toward him to maintain the pressure. Takuma shot forward the moment the sliding momentum allowed him.

The two fighters met in the middle. Takuma buried a punch into Purplewind's gut while her uppercut nailed Takuma square in the jaw. She was flung back and barreled as her feet failed to grip the ground. He staggered on the spot and felt his body go through a hard reboot with a momentary blackout.

Takuma shook his head as his eyes refused to stabilize the world. When he could barely make sense of his vision, he immediately searched for Purplewind and found her jumping through the air toward him. His first instinct was to nail her with a Raiton: Shokku (Lightning Release: Shock), but reason took over him the next moment, and he got ready.

Purplewind landed on the floor and immediately sliced her leg in an arc. Takuma effortlessly pulled his torso back to let the strike pass him and then bashed his head into her. It didn't do the damage he was expecting as Purplewind crashed him to the ground.

No grace was spared on the floor as they battered each other with the fervor of a zealot. He pulled on her tight hair bun to jerk her back to the ground. She kneed him in the crotch as he tried to scamper away. Both tried to get up but were more focused on ensuring that the other didn't regain footing before them.

Purplewind got a bit of space and instantly maneuvered into barring Takuma's arm into an arm lock.

Takuma's danger sense screamed hard. Wrestling locks weren't popular with shinobis because they meant a commitment to contact for a period of time, and that opened the aggressor to vulnerability to getting stabbed. Striking was the bread and butter when fighters held superhuman strength and could lift several times their body weight.

But there were no weapons in the current fight, and the Ring wasn't a combat sport.

Takuma knew that if he didn't act soon, Purplewind wouldn't stop at bending his arm until he tapped out— she was going to snap his arm. A broken limb was practically a guaranteed loss, and the damage would then reflect on his life outside the Ring.

He roared as he lifted himself up and Purplewind's body with him and slammed her head into the arena floor with as much brute force as he could muster. He could feel the opposing pressure on his stiffened arm loosen a fraction; he didn't let it pass him and pulled his arm free.

Wanting to re-group, Takuma pulled back away from Purplewind. She got up and also didn't rush into things, and maintained distance. The two fighters circled around the arena, observing each other with their nerves ready to burst into action at a moment's notice. The crowd mimicked the image inside the arena and fell into a murmuring hush, making the underground cave seem emptier than it was.

The balance broke like a crack in a glass. Takuma and Purplewind moved at the same time and met in the middle. Blows were exchanged in a matter of seconds. The pain was beginning to simmer in his body, and Takuma knew he needed to finish the fight before he made a slip, and Purplewind punished him for it.

He jumped to avoid a sweeping leg and focused on his feet to remain agile to avoid Purplewind's attempts to get something that wasn't a glancing blow. He looked for an opening, anything he could use to counter and drag her down into defeat.

He found one.

Purplewind, who was hot on his tail, keeping close to build pressure, paused for a blink of a second. It created space, and Takuma knew this space would disappear soon, so he decided to go in and exploit it.

He stiffened his calves, switched out of the reverse gear, and hopped an inch to reset his feet to go in for the hit. He leaped forward with a raising knee strike and a punch below the ear to get her vulnerable.

But in the same breath, Purplewind pushed the knee strike aside, and before he knew it, he had a fist an inch away from him. It was fast. Much, much faster than anything he had seen from Purplewind. She hadn't suddenly gotten faster, as if she had been holding back the entire time; this was a matter of timing— pitch-perfect timing.

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And then the fist hit him in the throat— a staple in the Ring.

Before he could even feel the aftermath of his throat punched in, Purplewind kicked him below the ear, snapping his neck. He was mid-air, and the strike spun 180 degrees until he slammed his head on the ground.

Everything after that was a blur as he was hit more, and he couldn't defend until he blacked out.

———

.

He didn't do anything wrong,

Was Takuma's conclusion as he stared at the fight summary stuck in the loss section of his wall.

There was nothing wrong with his decision to exploit the opening he saw. Yes, it wasn't a particularly great opening, but it also wasn't bad. It wasn't his choice that had led to his defeat.

'Did she bait me?' he clicked his tongue. Even if she did, how did she predict his moves so accurately? He could've gone in a completely different direction. It was uncanny how well she had responded. Her counter to his counter was so perfect that he couldn't respond until the end. She simply picked the best move.

The fight had gone well until that point, which in some way, made it his worst loss to date. The only thing worse than that would've been if he had choked away a dominant performance.

Takuma sighed in his frustration as he flicked the paper. The fights weren't recorded, so he couldn't even go replay the fight to see if he was missing something.

He concluded that he needed to get better with his opportunity selection.

With that, he went to sleep.

———

.

"Currently running hot with a fourteen-fight win streak, an old name in the ring, the master of combat— BISHOP!"

Takuma watched a man only a few inches taller than him walk into the ring with an eased swagger. He could tell it was a grown man and not a growing child, which meant that the man was short in height. Like some of his other opponents, Bishop interacted with the audience before the fight, hyping the people up.

Takuma was told to ignore the audience, to act like a stoic, battle-hardened figure. It supposedly went better with his branding, and Takuma was satisfied to uphold that. He used the time to loosen his legs as he observed Bishop. The crowd was the biggest Takuma had seen. It was his first time fighting on a Friday night— he was supposed to fight in the morning, but when he came in, they told him that he would be fighting in the evening.

Every one of his opponents was an unknown to him because he was only given the timing of his fights and not who he was going to fight. He could find that out easily by dropping by the betting counter, which had the fights listed a couple of days in advance, but that didn't help him as he would need to go watch his opponent fight, and till now, he didn't have the time to go watch a fight.

He needed to study the opponent during the fight.

Bishop's audience work was over, and unexpectedly, he walked towards him until he was only a couple meters away from Takuma, who took a few steps back. It was unusual to start a fight at a close distance when the arena had so much space.

"I'm going to pound you, boy," Bishop said with a pop. His brown hyena mask enhanced the mocking of the words.

Takuma tilted his head, confused. Well, he was not confused— this was clearly trash-talking. However, Takuma wasn't in the mood to reciprocate because, unlike Bishop's whopping fourteen-fight win streak, Scar had a two-fight losing streak. He hadn't lost twice in a row before Purplewind; he didn't want to extend that loss streak to three.

The announcer backed out of the arena, and Bishop kept his eyes on Takuma. The moment the metal door slammed closed, Bishop raised his guard, but unlike Takuma's expectations, Bishop didn't come at him with bellicosity. The man simply kept his guard up and stayed light on his feet.

Without a word, Takuma attacked.

In the beginning, they flowed with each other, letting their strikes dance. Then flow gave way to force and Takuma started his offense. Fighting an opponent closer to his size felt comfortable as Takuma circled, attacked, and defended only when he must, pushing Bishop, seeking to push the man past the limit of his prowess.

Bishop, however, seemed unbothered by the aggression and kept his guard up. He dodged what he could and blocked the other.

Takuma felt in complete control of the fight, and yet he didn't seem to be able to land solid hits.

'He's… slow?' Takuma observed to himself. No, 'slow' wasn't the correct term. Bishop was lightning-quick in his dodges as he weaved around Takuma's attacks. But it was like Bishop had no sense of urgency in his movements.

Why was Bishop satisfied to follow Takuma's pace and practically hand the momentum to his opponent?

Takuma led with a fury of strikes, targeting everything from the head to the legs, but Bishop continued to be on the defensive. Even when Bishop took hits, he didn't look bothered. And Takuma knew this wasn't an ability to attack— he knew better than anyone else what it felt like to be unable to attack while under offense, the entire first year of his existence as Takuma, he had struggled with that— this wasn't that.

What was Bishop planning?

Takuma suddenly checked if he was going too fast. He was familiar with the tactic of cranking up the pace of the fight slowly until the opponent couldn't maintain it— and strike at the breaking point.

But no, Takuma found that he wasn't over-pushing himself. He wasn't getting baited.

What then?

"Okay, that's enough from you, boy," Bishop said, his tone relaxed.

Takuma's instincts acted faster than his mind, and he sensed danger. He immediately shifted his stance to fall back…. He didn't see the strike coming. He only felt the front of his mask bending until the solid fist struck his nose.

It's broken, Takuma could tell even before he could gather himself up after the attack.

Bishop darted in, Takuma reached up to block, and Bishop's left cracked him in the ribs.

"Ack," Takuma wheezed, pain coursing in his side as he backed away. He hadn't been hit this hard in his life. How could he hit so—

Bishop hit him again, forcing out another cry of pain.

Whatever part of Takuma's mind was clouded with pain was focused on pain, but every time he tried to rebalance, he was hit again. He dodged one strike to his strong-side, only to get bashed in the weak-side. He wasn't even allowed to brace himself as Bishop laid heavy strikes that brutalized him one hit at a time.

Takuma's body burned, and his vision blurred white as he fell to the arena. The crowd's noise grew distant as his body contracted itself to protect him, but no other attack came.

He closed his eyes to the sight of Bishop's back with his arms spread wide.

———

.

Takuma stared up at the ceiling of the Ring's medical room with a dazed look. His nose was broken, his entire body purple and bruised. The iryo-nin had said he was lucky to have gotten out with a slightly cracked rib and nothing else. Bishop had clearly placed his hits deliberately.

He felt powerless.

For the entire fight, when he attacked, he couldn't do damage, and when he was attacked, he couldn't defend. He hadn't felt this powerless since his entry into this world.

His moves were predicted. Any opening he showed was exploited. Bishop had barely broken a sweat the entire fight and still broke him down with leisure.

He didn't know where things had gone wrong except for the fact that Bishop outclassed him in every way possible.

"Are you ready to leave?"

Takuma turned his head slowly to the side towards the iryo-nin who had treated him a couple times. She was a young brunette with freckles on her face. She seemed to be cleaning up the medical room, ready to leave or, at least, end her shift.

From what he knew, she was Enomoto's apprentice. And as expected of Shady Guy, he had rolled his apprentices into the Ring.

"Yeah, just give me a minute," he said, not looking forward to lugging himself back home.

He thought he had jinxed himself. He had not wanted to get a third continuous loss and had then handed the win to Bishop on a bruised platter.

"You know…"

Takuma glanced at the iryo-nin.

"… you have a tell."