The tournament was split into four days. One round per day. Qualifiers, quarter-finals, semi-finals, and then on the fourth day. The finals would commence as a best-of-two. Isamu's match was up next. If we both won ours, we would face each other on the second day. After the first group's break. Group B took center stage. Isamu calmly walked onto the field. He was always different when it came to a match. While he seemed like the overconfident type in battle. That was not the case. He was respectable in every way possible, never resorting to underhanded tactics.
"Our first fight of group B has two new fighters when it comes to the world stage! Please welcome Isamu Bakuhatsu! His Blast attribute will be sure to wake up the ones in the back. The person he must overcome is Russia's rising star, Irina Solovyova! Joined by her attribute: heat!"
A young-looking girl with long silver hair and a fur coat strutted down the corridor like it was a runway. By her side, we're two muscular men wearing all-black tuxes and sunglasses. They looked like her bodyguards. She had this air of importance around her. "I heard she's the daughter of a famous billionaire," one fighter from England said
"He has a lot of corporate power. He probably rigged the tournament in her favour," another from Canada said.
Whatever the truth was, she didn't seem to give off the energy that she was cheating. She seemed to be invigorated by the chance to fight Isamu. "I do hope you'll put up at least a bit of a fight. You can't possibly hope to beat me, so you'll only serve as entertainment," she spoke with a condescending tone, her voice dripping with confidence.
Perhaps her father had rigged the match after all. But then Isamu spoke up. "I will acknowledge your strength. I have heard about you; everyone has. But… it doesn't matter what you think of me," Isamu's voice dropped a couple of octaves before concluding his statement. "I am entertainment for no one."
This made Irina very angry. Apparently, she thought Isamu was insulting her. "You will bow before me once this is over! Mark my words!" She gave her coat to her bodyguards and stepped onto the platform, brandishing twin daggers to use in the fight.
Isamu raised his bo-staff, ready to begin. The ref lowered his hand once more, and that was all it took. One movement from Isamu's staff hitting the ground, and the field was enveloped in a massive explosion. Keep in mind that the arena was 50 feet long and as it was wide. As the blast faded, we see Irena shielding herself by controlling the heat of the blast to bend around her. Seeing explosions didn't work on her, so Isamu changed tactics.
He began to press forward, striking every open spot in her defence, but she countered and tried to cut his wooden staff with her daggers. It was then she realized she had miscalculated.
Isamu's staff is made of an indestructible wood from the Great Western Tree. So her daggers couldn't even scratch it. When that didn't work, she tried to heat her daggers with her Attribute so she could burn through the wood, but no such luck. The staff held strong. Isamu found an opening and struck her in the side, activating an explosion at the end of his staff where it hit her, sending her flying. Irena managed to hang on to the edge of the platform, doing everything in her power not to fall off. She enhanced the muscles in her legs and shot forward, catching Isamu off guard as she aimed at an unprotected spot on his shoulder, cooling the heat of her daggers down so much that a thin layer of frost was applied onto them. While the Nano-shields protected the combatants from being pierced, they let the effects of attributes through. Meaning Isamu's shoulder had just succumbed to frostbite.
"How does it feel, the cold numbness of your shoulder? Don't try moving it, you'll just end up breaking your bones," Irena said cruelly.
It was clear she was enjoying his misfortune. Isamu groaned in discomfort and pain at the spreading numbness in his right shoulder. Now forced to use his left, he swung his staff again, but this time, due to the pain and blindness of the attack, Irena caught the staff that previously gave her trouble, wrenched it out of Isamu's grip, tossed it aside, and shoved her boot into his ribcage, sending him sprawling to the other end of the platform. As Isamu struggles to stand, Irena walks, slowly, toward him.
"How helpless you must seem, to your friends, your family," she laughs, every insult hitting Isamu like a gunshot. "I'm sure you won't be able to look at yourself in the mirror after this." She points one of her daggers at Isamu, his face held low. "Raise your head, boy, admit your loss, and I'll spare you a humiliating defeat."
Suddenly, his right arm, the one she rendered immobile, shoots out, grabbing her blade, and blood drips down his hand. He looks up and breaks into one of the biggest grins I've seen from him.
"Yeahhh. About that." his right arm looks completely healed, aside from some burn marks. Wait, burn marks? I thought she froze his shoulder, not burned it.
"I apologize, but this is going to hurt."
Irena doesn't even get a chance to reply with a smart-ass comment. Isamu gets up faster than the human eye can see and sends her flying with an explosion-boosted punch right to her gut. She tumbles back before sliding to a stop, looking up with a mix of shock and confusion.
"How?! I froze your shoulder joint to -40 degrees Celsius. You shouldn't be able to move it at all, let alone hit me with that much force!"
She had a point. How had Isamu dispelled Irena's attack so effortlessly and quickly, as though we didn't notice it? My mind came back to the burn marks on his shoulder. I looked a little closer and saw that it wasn't one massive burn scar, like how it would have been if Irena had chosen to burn him rather than freeze. It was a small cluster of them, and they looked normal until you looked at the way they were colored.
"Blast, it changes your chemical structure for things in your body that you secrete, like my breath, smell, or sweat, for example. Once it comes into contact with the oxygen in the air, it ignites explosions. But I can also change the output of this and invert the chemical structure. This means I can activate it inside my body by changing my red blood cells' chemical structure to oppose my white blood cells. When they came in contact, it ignited very small but hot explosions that warmed up my shoulder and made it possible to move it again," Isamu explained calmly. I swear I could see his devious little smirk as he explained the whole thing.
Irena immediately went into a barrage of comments, her voice breaking down as her trump card was rendered useless.
"That should have killed you! It doesn't matter how much you tone the blast down; the heat from those explosions will still overheat your body and give you the worst fever of your life! How?!"
Isamu simply held up his hand. "Please hold all questions till after the fight. Now, sorry if this sounds rude, considering you are older, but… are you finished?" he asked
"Uhhhhh… yes?" she responded, a bit confused.
"Great!" Isamu responded with an enthusiastic smile.
He then ignited a blast under his feet, propelling him forward.
One moment, he was standing where he was when giving his explanation; the next, he was nowhere to be found. But I saw him for a brief second; he was right behind Irena. He grabbed her wrist and pulled it behind her back, putting his knee on her back so she would fold like a lawn chair. He then kept that same knee pressed to her back so she wouldn't be able to get up.
"You stay down here for more than 30 seconds, and you lose by default, or you surrender and spare yourself more humiliation. The choice is yours."
"I… I yield. You have bested me."
I didn't expect that from her; I would have thought she would fight to the bitter end. But she ended up preserving her dignity instead. A smart move if I do say so.
Isamu had already gotten off of her and stood upright while Irena stayed on the floor. Tears spilled from her eyes in tiny drops.
"I'm a failure. I trained and trained, and where did it get me? Nowhere. I show up here with high hopes for my first match. But you utterly humiliated me. I am nowhere near your level. He'll never acknowledge me now," she continued to cry softly for everyone in the stands to see.
Isamu stood in front of her as she looked up at him. Then he held out his hand for her to take
"You're not any of those things. You fought admirably, using your attribute to its full power, and you gave it everything you had. You pushed me to the edge more times than I could count and forced me into a corner with that shoulder freeze. Brilliant work."
Irena slowly stopped crying and tentatively reached out her hand to take Isamu's. As soon as their hands came into contact, he gently and gracefully hoisted Irena to her feet and used his body for Irena to steady herself. Isamu: The gentlemen of the battlefield. Isamu took Irena off the stage and to the infirmary.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we have a victor after that exciting battle!" the announcer cried.
I couldn't help but crack a small smile, not just because I was proud of Isamu but because I was next to fight.