With Blaine just basically walking right to him, with his hands held even below his chin, Cael landed a significantly more powerful right hand.

Walking right onto the shot, Blaine didn’t just take this attack and shake it off. Smiling at Cael, attempting to convey a sense of indifference to the blow, it was futile. He had fought hundreds of times in the vault at this point, and knew when a fighter was hurt.

Upon beginning his own assault, Cael felt astounded to find that he had the upper hand. Employing his nifty Cyberjutsu technique, he threw attacks only to fall very low and out the way of subsequent punches.

With Blaine mainly resorting to his fists, the synthetic fighting style was almost a perfect counter to him.

As the minutes went by, not one of them was feeling fatigued, but the effects of Blaine’s accumulated injury were starting to show.

His face was covered with streams of blood stemming from his hair. There were also several bruises littered across his arms and body, which were hidden by his black clothing.

“Come on, Blaine!” Keagan called out, almost emotionally affected by the fight.

Blaine couldn’t lose the throne, he couldn’t!

What made it worse would be losing it to the former weakest out of them all.

No! He couldn’t let that happen!

“Just throw back you coward!” Blaine roared, watching Cael fall into his signature crouched position.

Whenever he felt he had the chance to retaliate, he’d always retreat and remain untouchable.

It was like he was fighting a spider at times, with quick feet that moved in any direction.

Swiftly stepping to his right, he reached out and kicked at the side of his knee.

Just as he hoped for, his adversary began to descend. This gave him the perfect opportunity.

With him slipping down, he lifted up and threw over a right hand strike straight on his jaw.

POW!

The cleanly landed shot sounded like a gun from its heaviness. Blaine stumbled to his side in a quick, unstable stagger.

Even falling onto a hand, it took a long second before he was back and stably on his feet. The primality Cael could see in his eyes were akin to that of a ravenous beast. He gave not a single glance to the surroundings and was focused totally on him.

Exhaling sharply -revealing his bloodied teeth- he blasted off his feet, intent on throwing something back. He wasn’t going to let Cael get the last laugh.

With a shout, he cocked back his fist and Cael kept his eyes wide open, vigilant for what was to come.

Squeak!

Just as he did this, he lost his footing on one of his strides. This sent him into a sluggish stumble, nearly making him fall back onto the canvas.

“That’s enough.” Arlo declared, leaping onto the ring.

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“NO! I’m NOT DONE!!” Blaine shouted, rushing straight toward Arlo.

He aimed to move past him, but Arlo just stood there with a solemn face, grabbing him by the neck of his black shirt.

“NO!! LET GO!!!” Blaine roared, with blood flying out his mouth as he roared this.

He flailed around, trying to free himself from the mighty grasp of his instructor but could not. The force pulling his shirt into a ball kept him tight in place.

“That’s enough!!” Arlo shouted, with a clear, and authoritative boom to his voice.

The orotundity behind this statement almost brought him to silence right away. Blaine’s face just fell down to the canvas, devoid of emotion and almost in shock.

Cael couldn’t help but feel a similar way. He’d beat Blaine? He almost knocked out Blaine Keaton?

“I know you want to fight and be the strongest but I can’t let you get seriously hurt. It’ll affect you and your training in the long run. Now, you’re talented and know that but you need to know how to lose. How to lose and-,”

“Just!” He sharply replied, conjuring gasps from the crowd.

“Leave me alone...” Blaine dejectedly replied, walking off the canvas and toward the crowd.

“What are you looking at!” He whispered loudly, looking toward a student with a slight smile on his face.

“Sorry, Blaine.” They replied with a sombre, fearful tone.

Many of the other snickering students fell to silence, hiding their emotions as he approached.

As this happened, Arlo just watched his receding back and shook his head whilst doing so.

“I don’t want to hear any attitude from you young man!! You are in a military institution training you for the frontline. You have the skill, but the bottom line is that you need discipline, are we clear?” Arlo asks, staring into his soul as he does so.

“Yes, sir...” Blaine said, his voice almost just a rasp as his body fought to keep the words in.

“I can’t hear you!”

“Yes, sir!” Blaine replied more loudly this time, trying to silence his instructor.

“Phenomenal performance, Cael Breckenridge. Your parents would be very proud with how far you’ve come. The military would be honoured to have you on their side.” Arlo stated, nodding toward him.

Such praise sent butterflies through his stomach. He was the strongest now? It was almost like a dream.

He never felt he’d be receiving commendation for something of this sort. It was almost incomprehensible how much things had changed.

Redness flushed through his face as he struggled to deal with the emotions. Shakily nodding back to his instructor, he looked back to the crowd to return there.

“Thanks a lot sir!” He said loudly to try and hide his awkwardness, only to exacerbate it in the process.

“No problem, Cael. No problem.”

*****

Returning to the crowd, the next sparring partners took to the canvas to battle to their heart’s content.

“You did amazing out there! Who would’ve known you had so much power held up in you!” Miles Larson, the shortish green-haired fighter stated.

He used to be similar strength to him, but those days were long gone.

“Yeah, thanks a lot.” He replied, smiling back at him.

“What does your training regime look like? How did you get to this point?” A female student with auburn brown hair asked inquisitively to his left.

Melissa Villalobos, a somewhat average member of their year. He hadn’t spent much time around her, and resembled the bog-standard cadet in a C-grade institute, likely to never enter the military.

“I just train hard everyday and do a lot of different stuff. The vault helps a lot too.” Cael replied, hiding as much as he could about his system.

“Are you sure that would get you from the worst here to the best?” She asked, a little more confrontational this time.

Cael could feel the passive aggression in her words, reading through her ruse of politeness.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He replied, with a slight bit of boldness to his voice.

He could see the girl was slightly taken off guard by his change of tone, and looked more timid almost instantly.

“I was just asking, maybe there’s something else that’s making you this good.” She replied, awkwardly shaking the back of her head.

“No.” Cael awkwardly replied.

As he tried to focus more on the match, there were just several voices asking him endless questions. It was like he was surrounded by the paparazzi; it felt like brick walls were closing in on him, thinning the air around him.

The room hadn’t gotten any warmer, but it felt very much so for Cael.

It was hard for him to even keep his mind on the fights at hand.

“Students! Just because you aren’t fighting doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be watching. Everybody can learn from what is happening.”

“Finally.” Cael uttered in his mind, almost uttering such.

The intensity of the crowd that surrounded him calmed, and he could finally feel his breath coming back to him.