Nathan grinned despite the blood dripping from his chin.

"Alright." He rolled his neck once. "I get it now."

Tron’s expression remained stoic. He watched him raise both arms, watched the vents along the beast arm open wider.

PSSSSHHH—

Hot air burst outward in a rush. The temperature climbed instantly, shimmering the space between them.

Nathan dropped into a lower stance.

"Let’s see if your body can redirect this too."

The concrete beneath him erupted as he launched.

SWOOOSH!

He didn’t come from the front this time. He cut right, vanishing from his opponent’s line of sight and reappearing at his flank mid-step, a punch already driving toward the ribs.

Tron rotated his weapon down to intercept —

Nathan was gone.

He reappeared behind the hammer user and drove both fists into his back at the same time.

BOOOOOM.

Heat and force detonated together on contact. For the first time since the fight began, Tron lurched forward from the hit, his footing breaking just slightly before he stabilized himself.

Nathan was already moving.

Left punch. Right elbow. Knee strike.

He cycled through them in rapid succession, each one releasing another explosive burst on contact, turning the immediate area into a chain of attacks.

BOOM — BOOM — BOOM —

Tron finally swung back.

Nathan crossed his arms.

BOOOOOM.

The hammer caught him clean and launched him through a wall. Masonry collapsed over him in a heap.

Silence.

Then — CRACK.

A hand punched through the rubble.

Nathan dragged himself free slowly, breathing harder. Blood ran from the side of his head, tracing a thin line down his jaw. But the grin hadn’t left his face.

"Damn." His laugh was hoarse. "Now this feels like a real fight."

Tron clicked his tongue — the first sign of anything resembling irritation. He adjusted his grip on the hammer shaft.

The air around him seemed to sink for a moment, like the pressure itself was showing itself.

Nathan wiped the blood from his face with the back of his hand. Steam was pouring off his arms in thicker waves now, heavier than before.

"You’re starting to take this seriously," he said.

Tron said nothing.

So, Nathan moved first.

He feinted left, then cut upward — but Tron was already swinging.

The hammer came straight down in a vertical crush, aimed to end him where he stood.

Nathan dropped out of the path.

The hammer hit the ground and sent a deep crack racing across the ground, splitting concrete slabs apart like plates of glass.

Nathan appeared in the air above Tron, angled slightly upward, and drove a kick down into his shoulder.

BOOOOM.

The impact rattled the agent’s footing. For a brief second, both feet lifted off the ground.

Nathan didn’t land.

He pushed off the burst of heat venting from his arm like a jet thruster and launched himself again — not falling back to earth but propelling forward in a straight line.

WHOOOM.

The distance collapsed in an instant.

It wasn’t just speed anymore. Each explosion of heat under his arms and legs had become an ignition point, a series of short controlled blasts that let him skip through space rather than cross it.

He was using the pressure not as a side effect but as movement itself.

BOOM — BOOM — BOOM —

Left flank. Upper angle. Blind spot. He struck from a different direction each time, not giving his enemy a clean angle to swing before the next hit was already landing.

But Tron adapted.

He planted the hammer’s head into the ground.

A low shockwave pulsed outward in a circle — not an attack, just a disruption.

Nathan’s next burst was clipped mid-flight. He twisted hard to compensate, came down in a skid, boots scraping across broken ground.

Tron was already there.The hammer swung sideways.

Nathan crossed both arms and took it.

BOOOOOM.

He slid back, smoke pouring off his forearms in dense clouds, but his feet caught the ground earlier than before. He didn’t lose the position. Just absorbed it, dug in, and stopped.

His breathing was harder.

His eyes were brighter.

He laughed quietly, almost to himself.

’That’s it.’

The heat building inside him wasn’t draining him — it was accumulating.

Every exchange that pushed him harder had raised the temperature rather than spent it.

The vents along his arms widened further on their own, releasing short powerful bursts in rapid rhythm.

PSSHT — PSSHT — PSSHT —

Each pulse nudged him forward even while standing still, like a pressure cooker venting just enough to hold.

Tron’s eyes narrowed a fraction. He noticed the changed.

Nathan lowered his stance for the third time.

"My body gets faster the longer this fight goes on," He wasn’t explaining it to Tron — he was confirming it to himself. Saying it out loud, hearing it land. "Every hit, every second — it’s just fuel for me."

He let that sit for a moment.

Then he grinned.

"So keep up."

BOOM.

He launched — but this time the air didn’t simply trail behind him.

It exploded from friction. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

Each footfall became its own explosion. He wasn’t running toward Tron so much as firing himself at him in a sequence of controlled blasts, the distance between them eaten up in fractions of a second.

Tron raised the hammer.

Nathan was already inside its arc.

BOOM!

The punch landed square in the center of the chest. A deep crack split across the armor, spreading from the point of impact.

Tron’s feet dragged backward, carving a long trench through the concrete — five meters, six, before he ceased the movement.

Nathan followed immediately.

BOOM. BOOM.

Each hit drove him back another step. The trench lengthened. The cracks in the armor spread.

For all of Tron’s ability to redirect and absorb force, Nathan was outputting faster than the ground beneath him could disperse it.

The fight was finally tipping in Nathan’s favor.

Tron dropped to one knee.

He tried to rise. Nathan grabbed the hammer shaft and wrenched it down, pinning the weapon, then drove his knee hard into Tron’s torso.

BOOM.

For the first time, Tron’s grip loosened.

The hammer slipped in his hand. The most significant thing that had happened in the entire fight.

Nathan’s eyes narrowed.

"Let’s finish this."

He pulled his right arm back. Heat gathered around his fist immediately, faster and denser than before.

He poured everything into it.

This wasn’t another exchange. This was the last one.

Then —

A pressure spike erupted from Tron’s body causing, Nathan’s arm to paused mid air.

CRACK —

Black lines split across the agent’s skin like fractures through glass. They spread from his chest outward, branching up his neck, down both arms.

And then, slowly, light began bleeding through the cracks — pale and cold and steady, with no obvious source.

Tron’s head lowered.

When it rose again, something in his expression had changed.

Not anger. Not pain.

Something that had simply been held back until now.

The darkness kept spreading.

He rose from his knee slowly, and the sound it made wasn’t the grind of effort. It was the sound of something settling into place — joints locking, material compressing, like a structure bracing under enormous load.

Nathan didn’t move. He stood with his arm still cocked back, heat shimmering around his fist, and watched it happen.

’Crystallization’ he mused to himself.

Tron straightened to full height. The hammer was back in his grip.

Cracks across his chest were gone. Armor looked smoother, darker —the damage had been rewritten with denser material from his transformation.

He rolled one shoulder. Then the other.

No wincing. No adjustment. Like the first half of the fight had been nothing more than a warm-up. Maybe it really was, judging by his stoic face.

’Alright. Think.’ Nathan exhaled slowly through his nose.

He spent the last several minutes learning his opponent’s style— the way force passed through him, the slight delay before the ground cracked, the tell in his grip before a swing.

That knowledge was useful. But the body carrying those patterns just changed the rules.

Hitting harder would not work anymore. He needed to be more intelligent.

He launched.

Tron raised the hammer on instinct, the same intercept motion as before.

Nathan didn’t go for the body. He went low, driving his shoulder into his opponent’s leading knee, and execute an attack against the joint.

Tron barely rocked.

However —

Nathan felt it through his whole arm — the impact returning wrong. He disengaged fast, skidding back, shaking the numbness out of his fingers.

Tron advanced and gave chase.

Not fast — he didn’t need to be. Each step was heavy, the hammer dragging a shallow groove through the concrete at his side.

Nathan moved laterally, keeping distance, buying himself seconds to think.

He ducked under a hammer swing that would have taken his head off.

He came up inside Tron’s reach and drove an uppercut into the underside of his chin.

Tron’s head snapped back an inch. His feet didn’t move.

Again.

Nathan repeated it on the next swing. Same spot, same timing. The impact this time traveled visibly up.

’I can do this. It’ll take time, but I can —’