Tanaka grinned as he hit the ground on all fours and popped up like some circus act. The crowd roared again, half because they thought the spectacle was part of the act, half because nobody in their right mind had expected him to survive that knee. Lise's silver sheen hummed faintly where the knee had struck; her armour had taken the impact and spat the shock outward in a ring of dust.
Tanaka straightened, took an exaggerated bow, and took the three cards. Pale pink, verdant green, and dark red unfurled from nowhere, spinning lazily around his fist like roulette chips. Each left a trail of confetti when it moved. The Colosseum leaned in.
Roy's mouth twitched. "Of all the things I've seen, that man is still the least predictable."
Kieran's grin was split ear to ear. "This is the match you pay to watch."
Brock, still recovering, was suddenly very alert. "Okay, actual fight time."
Tanaka clicked his tongue and the pink card winked. "Curtain Call," he announced theatrically. In an instant, Tanaka flicked the card at a tie-down rope that had been left near the edge of the stage; the card latched on and vanished from his hand. Tanaka blinked; a shimmering sparkle tore open behind Lise for a heartbeat, then he popped into existence in that space, boots skimming the arena floor right behind her.
Lise spun, blade arcing, and met nothing but air. The Pink Card's trick was textbook misdirection; it changed his position with impossible speed, leaving her momentarily off-balance.
She recovered, eyes narrowing. Silver Aegis shimmered, converting the stray kinetic energy into a thin rippling shock that ricocheted off the ground, but Tanaka had already moved again, a dizzying blur of poses and postures that looked more like stage choreography than a fight.
"Showman," Roy muttered, impressed despite himself. "He's actually using the cards properly."
Tanaka grinned, letting the green card float forward lazily on his fingertip. "Link up," he murmured. The green card skipped off Lise's pauldrons and attached itself like a tack to the hem of a banner. Tanaka snapped his fingers and the arena answered; a taut, shimmering beam arced from the banner to Lise, then to a second anchor at the opposite end he'd marked with a quick pink flick.
Lise locked eyes with him. She understood the setup in an instant: pull two points together and make them collide.
She charged.
Tanaka, mid-spin, tossed the red card into the air like the clincher of a professional trick. The red wheel glowed; the crowd murmured. The Final Act warmed like a fuse.
Lise slammed into the tether; the link snatched her forward with brutal force. For a heartbeat, she could feel every ounce of her momentum reversed and focused; Silver Aegis flared in response, coating her in a brighter, harder light as she tried to lock her feet and distribute the stress. Kinetic energy built along her armour like a held breath.
Tanaka moved away from the tether point, extended an arm, and pressed his palm toward the red card floating above him. He didn't look angry; he looked delighted. The whole Colosseum leaned forward as if bracing for a fireworks finale.
"To finally end this…" he remarked. The announcer's voice stuttered into a high, excited tremor. "He's going to detonate it! If this goes off, it'll…"
Lise's eyes flicked to the tether, to the way the green beam pulled at her hip, to the red haze beginning to roil above Tanaka's hand. For the first time since the match started, something like fear, not for her life exactly, but for what would happen if her armour shattered, softened the knight-stern line of her jaw.
Energy hummed; the ground itself seemed to lean into the pressure. The crowd let out a collective, breathless sound that started somewhere like a held exhale and turned into a roar of anticipation.
Tanaka raised his hand higher. The red card swelled, pain-tinged light coalescing at its centre. He could have detonated it, ripped through Lise's Aegis, blown open her silver shells and thrown her across the arena, and the match would have been his. In the stands, dozens of hands had frozen mid-cheer.
Kieran gripped the edge of his seat so hard his knuckles whitened. "He's going to…"
Tanaka blinked, then closed his eyes.
The world seemed to pause; even the confetti hung motionless for a heartbeat.
He lowered his hand.
The Red Card dimmed.
A silence fell so complete the announcer's throat made a small, embarrassed clicking sound on the microphone. Someone in the crowd shouted, "WHAT?! "
Tanaka placed both hands into his pockets with the deliberate slowness of a man who had decided something monumental in the span of a heartbeat and wanted everyone to see how casual it was.
"Yeah," he said, voice low enough for only those close but loud enough to carry, "I can't be asked anymore. And… I don't want my beloved goddess to lose to anyone but me anyway."
The words struck like a dropped microphone. For a beat no one knew whether to laugh, boo, faint, or cry.
Lise's blade lowered by an inch, then a half. Colour surged through her face in a living flame, first hot embarrassment, then an odd, burning mix of confusion and something else she couldn't name. The pink in her cheeks deepened until it seemed to colour the silver armour itself.
The announcer's mouth gaped open. "H-he just… yielded? He… Why…"
The first reaction was a ripple of stunned laughter, which immediately collided with confused shouts and a warbling crescendo from the girls in the stands. Half the crowd thought it was a dramatic skit. Half the crowd thought Tanaka had lost his mind in public. Voices rose into a thousand contradictory calls: "MARRY ME!" "WE NEED A REMATCH NOW!" "WHAT A LOSER!" "HE'S A KING!"
Roy just looked at Tanaka from above, awestruck, while Kieran twisted through every shade of betrayal and awe as if he'd just seen art or a crime. Brock was somewhere between laughter and applause, unable to decide.
On the arena floor, Lise's expression rippled. She was stunned, yes, but then, almost as though trained reflexively to control herself, she folded that shock into a heavy stoicism. Her voice, when it came, was small and measured.
"You… you gave up?" she said, bewilderment curling into something like anger. "You surrendered? In the middle of the fight?"
Tanaka shrugged, the picture of maddening nonchalance. "Can't be bothered. Anyway, I didn't want to fight my goddess anyway." He cocked his head. "Also, I want to be the one to beat you if anyone's going to take you down."
Her confusion hardened into a knightly scowl. She shoved her sword into the ground and took a breath; Lise was not a woman who tolerated nonsense lightly.
"You… this is unacceptable," she said, voice high and tightly controlled. Her hand tightened on the hilt; silver light trembled along it. "I demand a proper fight. You humiliated the arena with… with… whatever that was. We do this properly now. Rematch. One-on-one. No bullshit. No… nonsense."
Her demand came out as a roar edged with steel. The Colosseum leaned into it, a horse whinny of excitement and outrage. The announcer's voice, now regained, worked itself into a high, frantic pitch: "RE-MATCH? RE-MATCH? THE BLADE DEMANDS…"
Tanaka blinked. He looked mildly annoyed at being asked to do more work, as if someone had asked him to run an errand on his day off. He stared at Lise like a man who had been offered cake after already eating seven slices.
"It's fine," he said at last, yawning theatrically. "I'll do it later. Maybe."
Lise's face went from pissed off to furious in the space of a heartbeat. "Later? You…!"
Her tone wound up like a bowstring. She stepped closer until their armour nearly touched; the silver of her gauntlet caught the light and threw it into Tanaka's blinking eyes.
"Do you think you can toy with me?" she hissed. "Do you think this is entertainment? Fight properly or don't call yourself a man!"
The arena reacted the way an ocean reacts to a storm: a thousand voices surged, some calling her name, others cheering Tanaka's nerve, and others jeering the whole absurdity. A group of girls fainted dramatically near the upper tiers; men in the crowd started chanting "TA-NA-KA!" and variations thereof. Someone in the back yelled, "BASED!" A man near the principal actually stood and shouted, "This is an insult to the sport!" whereupon the principal, beet-red, clapped a hand over his face as if smacking away his own reputation.
For a few seconds Lise's fury boiled; the knight in her demanded satisfaction and the warrior in her demanded order. She bared her teeth and took a fighting stance, clearly ready to continue. But then something strange happened: she looked at Tanaka, really looked. The slouch in his shoulders was not cowardice; it was a confessed, exquisite laziness that came out of complete surrender to his own feelings. The tilt of his smile was not mockery but devotion, the sort of idiocy that could be infuriatingly noble.
Her eyes, already betraying her, softened again, only for a moment. The rhythm of her chest slowed.
And she murmured to herself, "He really doesn't want to fight me…"
She cleared her throat with the effort of a woman returning from a duel with her own heart.
"Fine," she snapped, forcing the steel back into her voice. "You, insufferable man, get out of my sight. But consider this: I will kill you next time."
Then she turned, walked back toward the gates with the gravity of someone who'd just been robbed of a victory by a lunatic lover, and attempted to steady herself. Her hands shook slightly as she resheathed her sword, and she refused to look back.
But the show of composure was patchy. Once she'd turned away, the armour on her shoulders trembled minutely, and when the camera cut to the judge's box, you could see the way her fingers flexed twice before she covered them with a napkin. Stoic, yes, and
flustered under the iron.
The crowd didn't know how to process the end. Some chanted Tanaka's name until the rafters rattled. Some booed. Many laughed until they cried. The announcer continued to stammer, trying to fill the void, describing the event with a vocabulary that had never prepared him for such blithe madness.
Back in the stands, the principal's face was a study in mortification, the teachers whispering furiously into their sleeves. Kieran, finally able to breathe, looked like he'd seen a miracle and a crime at once. Brock was clapping slowly, the kind of clap that indicated both respect and questioning concern. Roy simply took a slow, theatrical bow with his head, as he also kind of understood Tanaka in that moment as well and said nothing; his silence was its own verdict.
Outside, under the warm light of the Colosseum, Tanaka turned once, flashed a grin that could have been crooked if he'd bothered, and strolled out like a monarch claiming his right to be ridiculous. Girls cried; men yelled; some small child tried to mimic his kneel and promptly fell over.
Lise's last furious words followed them like a banner: "Next time, Tanaka Ewu. Next time."
Tanaka waved, half-heartedly, and vanished into the corridor with his cards whirling behind him. The red card, though never detonated, left a faint, lingering haze in the air, a reminder of what could have been.