Becoming
The moment Hellick’s hand dropped, the pit exploded.
Splitjaw didn’t wait.
He lunged with a spinning elbow, his scarred frame blurring as he closed the gap in a blink. Rizaru barely managed to twitch her body to the side, the hit grazing her shoulder and then, CRACK.
A phantom echo of the same elbow struck her in the exact same spot three seconds later.
She dropped to one knee, coughing. Spit and blood hit the dirt.
Before she could breathe, Glova’s whip lashed forward.
SSZZKT—
A flash of blue static carved a line across her chest. The electric tether wrapped around her ankle and yanked her flat onto her back. Rizaru cried out as voltage spasmed up her leg and into her hip.
“Too slow,” Glova muttered, tugging the whip with an almost bored motion.
She drew her arm back again, and the electro-chain danced, writhing like a serpent that smelled blood. Splitjaw advanced with that sickly grin again.
“How ‘bout we send her back in pieces?”
“Not if I flay her nerves first,” Glova replied.
The chain snapped forward again.
Rizaru barely rolled aside, the whip grazing her ribs. Her breath caught, but she pushed through and jumped to her feet and threw a wild punch at Glova’s face.
She tilted her head. The blow missed cleanly. Rizaru's momentum exposed her ribs—so Glova jabbed the butt of the whip’s handle right into Rizaru's side.
THMP.
Rizaru’s body folded with a choked wheeze. She collapsed again.
Everyone was watching. Waiting. Was the outcome already set in stone?
Dozai feet started tapping against the floor a bit faster.
The sand trembled below and Rizaru got up again.
Still no stance. Still no form.
She ducked too early this time, and Glova’s whip cracked against her back, forcing her forward, straight into Splitjaw’s knee.
The impact knocked the wind from her lungs. She curled forward, but this time, threw a punch on instinct. Splitjaw blocked it. But he blinked.
Dozai saw it. The punch wasn’t clumsy.
Just early.
Like a puzzle piece jammed into the wrong space.
“Getting ideas, huh?” Splitjaw sneered. “It’s useless.”
He grabbed her by the wrist and twisted. But this time, Rizaru didn’t scream.
She twisted too, throwing her weight into a shoulder shove that knocked him half a step off balance.
It threw his rhythm off and Rizaru’s eyes… widened. Like something just clicked.
“Oh? When they're off balance, the next attack is stronger..." She mumbled barely enough for people in the front to hear.
Dozai watched in awe. That was the look.
A child figuring out how a door works. A wolf pup biting harder each time.
Glova didn’t let her breathe.
She launched a combo, the whip spun mid-air, its voltage lashing like tendrils around her limbs. Rizaru ducked one strike, took another to the thigh, and tried to charge her, but the moment she got close, Glova flared her Maho through the chain.
BZZZZZ-ZRAP—!
It burst like a lightning net between them. Rizaru screamed and fell back, smoke curling from her arms.
Rei looked like she was about to cry. “She needs to... she’s not gonna...” She couldn’t finish the sentence.
Nobu placed a hand on Rei’s, also his hands slightly trembling. "His Maho looks like he does the same hit, twice. Annoying."
Rizaru staggered to her feet. Dirt in her eyes. Blood in her mouth. She looked like a cornered cat.
Every twitch was survival, just raw reaction. She darted backward from a knee. Slid under a jab. Flinched before she even knew why, and narrowly avoided a strike to the throat.
But none of it felt like fighting. It felt like drowning.
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Whispers rippled from the crowd.
It was clear to Dozai that the only thing keeping her alive was the chaos of it all, the unpredictability, the awkward angles, the bursts punches she threw that were close to contact.
But he still believed she could win. Up on the scaffold, he saw Hellick narrow her eyes. Not at the fight, but as she turned to a guard, whispering about replacements and supplies. A cold dread gripped Dozai.
Was she even watching?
If she wasn't entertained, he’d put Rizaru’s life in danger for nothing.
Hellick clicked her tongue. She raised one finger, like she was ready to signal the end of the match.
But something changed.
Splitjaw charged again, same rhythm as before. Same taunting hook to draw her guard high, followed by a knee, then, the echo elbow.
Same one that had dropped her at the start. But this time…
Rizaru ducked.
Hard.
So hard she scraped her face against the dirt, but the phantom strike whiffed just inches over her skull.
Then,
Her fist rocketed upward from the crouch, landing square in Splitjaw’s gut. It wasn’t just a clean hit, more panic than precision, but it made him stumble back, gasping.
“What the hell?!”
Glova blinked. So did Rizaru.
She stared at her own hand like it belonged to someone else.
Her knuckles trembled. Her chest heaved. Dirt streaked across her cheeks and yet, in that moment, she looked…Awestruck.
Like a child touching flame and learning it doesn’t just burn.
The crowd had no words. Just murmurs.
Dozai, however, finally exhaled, slow and measured in realization.
That wasn’t luck. It wasn’t that she’d adapted either. It was like she’d remembered.
Somewhere deep, deeper than trauma, deeper than fear, her body already knew how to fight. Her soul responded not like a genius discovering talent, but like a monster recognizing its own claws.
Dozai’s hand tightened on the rail.
The air was electric. Not just from Glova’s chain.
But from something deeper, tension, coiled and hissing like it was waiting to strike.
Splitjaw’s grin was gone.
He circled wide, sweat trickling down his temple as Rizaru crouched low, half-bleeding, half-smiling. Her nose was split, hair scorched, blood running down her arms in slow, oily streaks. But her eyes…
They were still wide. But focused.
Rizaru dashed forward, barely dodging Glova’s whip for the first time with perfect timing. She slipped under it like it was wind.
Splitjaw rushed her from the side, jab-hook-phantom elbow combo. She pivoted away from the jab, raised her shoulder for the hook, and for the elbow?
She ducked, spun on her heel, and drove a backfist into Splitjaw's jaw.
CRACK.
He spun out of balance.
Glova stepped in with the chain, flicking it toward her neck. Rizaru twisted under the arc and caught it mid-strike.
The voltage surged through her arm again, but this time she didn’t let go. She clenched it, using the force to whip herself toward Glova, turning the attack into momentum.
She landed a kick on Glova's liver and used the recoil to tumble away.
Sand kicked up. She landed low. Eyes burning.
Glova growled and backed up, panting.
Splitjaw stood beside her, body tense.
“Glova. This isn’t a joke anymore.”
Glova didn’t answer, eyes wide with facing the unknown.
Spiltjaw snapped at her.
“Hey! Do you hear me Glova?! That thing’s not a worker. It’s not even a person.” He pointed, wide-eyed. “She’s giving me the same damn feeling I get when we fight monsters!”
Dozai saw Glova’s hand trembled around the hilt of her whip before tightening until her knuckles whitened.
Up above, the workers and guards had stopped talking. Even the rowdiest ones had gone silent.
Glova and Splitjaw attacked together now. The chain came from the right, crackling, Splitjaw from the left, fainting low, then high.
It was a perfect pincer.
But Rizaru twisted under Glova’s strike, let it skim her shoulder, then grabbed Splitjaw’s wrist mid-swing.
He swung with his phantom hook this time, But Rizaru was already inside his guard. She slammed her forehead into his nose.
A loud crunch echoed the arena.
Both fell to the ground, but Rizaru recovered faster.
She kneed Splitjaw in the chin, the force shaking his brain in his skull.
He dropped back down, arms flailing, blood pouring.
He didn’t get up.
For the first time…
Rizaru smiled.
Tiny. Honest. Real.
Glova froze again. She hadn’t meant to.
But the chain in her hand sagged.
“What the hell is going on… How—"
Rizaru turned.
Glova took a step back—then froze, as if she hadn’t even realized she’d moved.
Rizaru’s smile shifted. What had been small and honest widened into something sharper, eager.
A predator recognizing that winning wasn’t just possible—
It was inevitable.
Glova screamed and lashed out, snapping her whip harder this time. The coils cracked low in a feint, then whipped upward in a brutal arc toward Rizaru’s face.
“SO WHAT?!” Glova shouted, voice breaking. “I'VE KILLED DOZENS OF MONSTERS!”
It wasn’t an attack anymore.
It was a trick.
A desperate kill strike.
Rizaru flinched at the high strike—the feint—then at the last instant her hand shot down, seizing the real, low arc of the chain. Instead of pulling back, she yanked herself into the strike.
Bodies collided, but Rizaru moved first.
Perfect. Precise.
Dozai’s eyes widened. He’d seen this before, just once, when a Hunter drilled the move outside the barracks. A throw so quick it left the ground trembling.
Rizaru slid inside Glova’s guard, arm locking under her armpit, across her shoulder and drove her spine-first into the dirt.
THWAM!
The crater floor shook.
Glova’s scream cut off in a strangled breath. Her whip slipped from her fingers. Before she could even gasp, Rizaru was already on top of her.
THWACK!
Her forehead cracked against Glova’s face once.
CRACK!
Silence after the second blow.
Glova’s body sagged, eyes rolling back.
Dozai let go of the rail. The air around him stilled.
“Get ready,” he said, voice low to Nobu and Rei. “It’s going to be my turn to sell the rest.”
His eyes burned with the cold, solid certainty of a calculated risk paying off.
And just like that...
It was over.
Rizaru pushed herself upright, chest heaving, blood and sand streaked across her skin. For a long moment, no one moved.
The only sound was Rizaru's ragged breathing and the drip of blood on sand.
A previously sneering guard; dropped her piece of food and muttered "No way..."
On the scaffolding, Kenny exhaled, the faintest grin on his weathered face.
Roi, eyes wide, whispered under her breath, “A worker… beat two hunters…?”
Rei shot to her feet, arms flung high. It wasn’t just celebration, it was release, pure and shaking.
Beside her, Nobu’s eyes stayed wide, locked on the sight before them. Slowly, almost against his will, the corner of his mouth tugged upward into a crooked smirk, half disbelief, half awe.
And up above, Master Hellick rubbed the old scar across her lip. The corner of her mouth twitched.
“…Finally.” she spoke. ”Someone useful.”
