Cain entered the arena without an ounce of anxiety in his blood.
The floor of the arena had been repaired immediately following Tyger’s bout with Johnny Powerpunch through the use of the maintenance crew and their Repair Installs. It was a much bigger clean-up job than they had been expecting, delaying the start of Cain’s own match by a few minutes.
But when the match was finally set to begin, it was as though the previous fight had not occurred at all. The ground was in nearly-immaculate condition (there was a piece of gum stuck to the floor that no amount of maintenance could ever hope to remove), providing each boot step with a satisfying clack.
Cain’s confidence was further evident in his decision not to get better-dressed for the occasion — he still wore his usual suit jacket, apparently not fearful of dirtying or damaging it in the fight. He hadn’t even bothered to put on gloves or change into pants that provided better flexibility for a martial artist.
The decision to not change from this outfit seemed popular with a few of the ladies in attendance, at least, so they at least provided some sort of benefit. Cain paid the women calling out to him no attention. He’d certainly noticed them and his ego appreciated their compliments, but he kept his mind focused solely on the battle ahead, not wanting to make any stupid rookie mistakes like being distracted by girls.
His opponent stepped into the arena a few moments later. His appearance wasn’t worthy of note; he was a male of average height and brown hair he didn’t especially style or take care of. What was worthy of attention, however, was the sword strapped to his waist.
Cain’s red eyes scanned over the weapon and its sheathe as the tournament MC provided the audience with introductions of each fighter. His opponent’s weapon appeared to be a tachi, and, upon recognizing this fact, Cain’s brain began to sort through all of the information he had stored on it.
Most of that information came from combat textbooks more than anything. It wasn’t a particularly common sword, and Cain himself had never fought against anyone who wielded it. The edge of his lip twitched up at an angle, and a light danced across his eyes.
Up in the stands, Reina quickly shuffled back to the bleachers, dropping down onto her seat. She had just returned from the concessions stand, with her arms full of cheap (well, they were supposed to be cheap, but their prices had of course been inflated by the usual venue tax) candy boxes.
Tearing the first one open, her eyes and mouth all curved upward in perfect harmony. “Go, Cain! Beat him up!” She pushed her head forward to once again speak to the other audience members in front of her. “He’s my friend, too! He’s definitely gonna win!”
One of them gave her a skeptical look. “Nah, no way! That guy’s got a sword, and your buddy’s unarmed. He’s going down fast.”
“Nuh uh!”
Just before the announcer called for the beginning of the match, Cain’s opponent moved his hands to the right side of his own body — one on the sword handle, and the other on the scabbard.
While Cain had never fought against a tachi user specifically, he was more than familiar with quickdraws, and adjusted his game plan around the predictable opening move.
It went exactly as he thought it would. His opponent unsheathed his blade in a blindingly-fast cut that sliced and distorted the air, creating a shockwave of force that would have opened a nasty gash in Cain’s torso, had he not preemptively stepped to the side.
“What blinding speed from both fighters! Don’t blink folks, or you’ll miss the match entirely!”
“Indeed,” Cain said to himself as he brought his hands up towards his face. Once they made it directly in front of his forehead, he pressed the first two fingers and thumbs together, forming a triangle.
An explosive roar cried out:
SUPERCHARGE!
A faint, purple flash of light washed over his head, and for half a second, his eyes, nose, ears, and mouth glowed especially brightly. Once the light faded away, he smiled to himself.
His opponent resheathed his blade and turned to face Cain, brows furrowed in concentration. The swordsman stepped forward and drew his tachi once more, again at too quick a speed for the average person to even see properly.
But Cain was not the average person, especially not after setting the Supercharge Install into his Mind Slot, which greatly enhanced his mental capabilities, as well as his major senses.
While the evasion of the opening sword slash had been based on prediction, this second dodge was on reaction. Because his opponent was fighting with a style he wasn’t personally familiar with, the chances of him unleashing newfound techniques was high, and relying on prediction with a lack of proper data was a surefire way to get himself cut apart by something he couldn’t possibly have seen coming. The initial quickdraw was easy to guess; it was the most sensible opening move for any swordsman in his opponent’s position to do, but after that, anything could happen.
While the swordsman’s slash was fast, to Cain’s Supercharged senses, it was more akin to a haphazard waving-off of a buzzing fly, so dodging it wasn’t difficult, and neither was the horizontal follow-up cut that came in immediately afterward.
“Wowee! Look at him move! Actually, can you even look at him move?! Might he even be teleporting?!”
The Supercharge Install wasn’t one that lasted long. Or, rather, Cain in his current state wasn’t able to keep it going for long stretches of time. The Mind Slot was much more prone to fatigue than the other Force Slots, with high amounts of exertion leading to dizziness, nausea, fainting, and even memory loss.
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Cain knew his limits, much as they annoyed him and much as he tried to downplay them to others. And so, rather than push his luck with continuous dodges, he began to move in closer, angling each slash evasion to position himself closer and closer to his opponent.
He shut the Supercharge Install off once he was in close, eyes locked onto his opponent’s. The flash of surprise in the swordsman’s eyes gave way to a smirk on Cain’s lips as the latter threw out two quick jabs followed by a sharp right cross.
“Cain lands a flurry of strikes! Just look at that precision punching, ladies and gentlemen!”
The thrill of performing an excellent maneuver began to swell inside, but Cain didn’t let himself become consumed by it. The best place to fight a swordsman, regardless of their blade type, was up close to where they couldn’t swing it cleanly at all. He pressed onward, stepping into his opponent’s guard.
Another jab came in, setting up a picture-perfect cross followed by a textbook hook. The swordsman stumbled backward, a trail of blood leaking from his nostril.
Admiring his handiwork, Cain muttered, “Now that’s how you throw a punch, Tyger.”
His opponent was not yet finished, however. A roaring, mechanical voice rang out from his tachi:
ECHO!
Cain’s eyes narrowed. “Echo….?” That was a new one.
The swordsman quickly sheathed his sword and drew it again. While he no longer had the Supercharge Install on, Cain was confident enough in his guess at the swing’s direction, and dodged accordingly. Just like before, he was correct, narrowly avoiding the tachi’s distortion slice.
What he did not avoid, however, was the tachi’s distortion slice’s echo.
A purple light in the shape of an arm and sword blinked in and out of existence immediately following the swordsman’s own quickdraw, shifted slightly to the side of the original maneuver. This purple quickdraw in turn released its own purple shockwave in the air, once again just slightly off the path of the original.
The shockwave echo nicked Cain right on his left shoulder and upper arm, tearing through the suit jacket and drawing blood.
“A sneaky attack by Ren! Has the swordsman found his way back into this match after Cain’s early dominance?!”
With a click of the tongue, Cain quietly spat, “Don’t be ridiculous. This match was decided when I entered this tournament.”
His opponent, sensing the momentum shift in the match, stepped forward and swiped outward with a diagonal cut. It was a solid move, as it closed the gap of space that Cain had to work with, and allowed his echo slash to easily strike Cain no matter which direction he stepped back to.
Unfortunately for Ren, Cain did not step back. Instead, he moved forward.
Cain moved directly into the swordsman’s guard once more, which caught the latter by surprise. Ren was able to readjust his echo slash in the nick of time, positioning it much closer to his body in order to strike Cain, but the latter was ready for it.
Cain’s hand shot out and grabbed hold of the scabbard at his opponent’s side, ripping it free from the belt. In the same motion, he brought the thing up vertically, just barely managing to get it up in time to block the wide echo slash.
“What’s this?! Cain has taken Ren’s scabbard and used it to defend himself?! What a unique maneuver! Is this how he plans to stop the blindingly-fast quickdraw attacks?!”
Up in the bleachers, Reina cried out, “That was so cool, Cain! Now whoop his butt!”
Ren took a cautious step backward, eyes flickering down to the stolen scabbard in Cain’s hand. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of the situation, and decided to hang back and see.
“I suppose I should thank you,” Cain said, just as a smug grin began to awaken on his face. “I’ve yet to battle any tachi users, but now I have some valuable data on how they’re used.”
The swordsman continued to stare at Cain with confusion and apprehension.
Cain brought his hands up to his forehead once more. “But now that I’ve acquired that data, this fight has nothing left to offer me, so I’m going to end it.”
SWORD!
To many, the act of setting a physical object-based Install into the Mind Slot was a strange play. After all, it made much more sense to set it into the Body Slot, so that one could manifest the weapon in their hand and battle with it. However, being that Cain did not have access to his Body Slot, that plan was impossible for him. Besides, with the stolen scabbard in his hand, there was no need to create a sword to battle his opponent with.
But there was a school of combat that made use of physical object Installs in the Mind Slot. It was a difficult art to learn and use effectively, but for Cain, who likened himself to something of a fighting prodigy, that only made it even more enticing.
The Mind Slot was statistically the least-used of the three Force Slots in combat. Its functionality just didn’t seem to be as well-suited to fighting as the other two, and was typically only used by those who had no choice. But if you were to bring this fact up to someone such as Cain, he’d laugh in your face and disregard your opinions on fighting entirely, because that opinion would mark you as a simpleton — a neanderthal who views fighting in such a meatheaded way that you didn’t even deserve to call yourself a fighter in the first place. You were nothing more than an animal.
As the Sword Install was set into Cain’s Mind Slot, a gray light washed over Cain’s face, lighting up his eyes momentarily. Unlike the Supercharge light, however, this one continued throughout his body before bathing his hands in an especially-bright glow for a brief instant.
Cain stared across the battlefield to his opponent, holding his arms out wide. “Come at me with your best. It won’t be good enough.”
Gritting his teeth, Ren answered Cain’s challenge, racing inward. His blade cut through the air at a multitude of angles, each one producing an echo slash in a myriad of directions. It was a flurry of cuts too plentiful to dodge, from angles too unpredictable to pre-emptively sidestep.
Cain did not even attempt to dodge.
Instead, he brought the scabbard up at lightning-quick speeds, parrying each and every single sword slash his opponent threw out, including the echoes. Even when Ren dashed around in a wide half-circle to strike from behind, Cain was able to adjust his stance, deflecting each incoming attack from the tachi.
“Incredible! Cain reveals his own sword fighting skills! Sparks are flying as these two sword masters dance their dance of death!”
In truth, Cain was far from a “sword master”. Hell, he’d never even taken lessons on the weapon before. And yet, it was impossible to blame the announcer for mistakenly assuming he was, as his movements were indeed that of a trained swordsman. His stance, his steps, his strokes, his stslashes — they were clean, precise, and well-honed.
Cain had trained his Sword-Mind combination to archive sword fighting abilities, and provide them to himself. He’d stored a variety of sword attacks, defenses, and maneuvers for a wide variety of swords, from rapiers to longswords and scimitars. While he’d never faced off against a tachi before, this duel against Ren had provided enough information for him to upload into the Sword Install and perfectly counter him.
In essence, Cain had downloaded his opponent’s fighting abilities.
In the short window of time that the Sword Install was active, Ren could do absolutely nothing to Cain. None of the slashes he was capable of would break through, as Cain’s mind knew what each twitch of muscle in Ren’s body signified, and it also knew exactly how to shut it down.
And thus, Cain intercepted Ren’s final sword swing, angling the scabbard in his hand to completely disarm Ren, sending the tachi flying far away, skittering along the ground.
Cain brought the scabbard to his side, mimicking his opponent’s quickdraw technique. He swung the scabbard out as though it were a tachi, opening a ripple of energy in the air directly into Ren’s chest, bloodying him in the exact same way Cain would have been, had he not predicted the initial quickdraw.
“What an absolute shutdown! Ladies and gentlemen, your winner: Cain!”