Cullen stepped back—creating distance, managing the locked right arm, assessing what he had available.
Left hand functional, ice-coated, full encasement potential. Right arm locked from shoulder down—twenty seconds at most before the window closed. He needed to work with one arm.
He fed more ice through the left hand—thickening the coating, extending it up the forearm as well as across the fist, creating a larger surface area of encasement potential on the one arm that was still working.
Kaizen updated his plan accordingly. The left arm was now the priority. Left shoulder first. Then elbow if the shoulder paralysis didn't fully transmit. He moved.
Cullen moved too—laterally, the step changing the angle, making the shoulder pressure point harder to access by presenting the arm at a different rotation. Kaizen adjusted his approach angle. Cullen adjusted again.
They circled.
