Because every time I hurt him, he adjusted. Every time I found an opening, he closed it. Every combination I threw got read faster the second time I tried it, and by the third attempt he was already moving before I’d finished deciding what to do.

He tagged me with a hook that made my vision blur. Got his hip under mine and threw me three feet sideways before I managed to break his grip. Caught my incoming jab on his forearm and converted it into an armbar attempt that I barely escaped by wrenching my shoulder in a direction shoulders weren’t designed to go.

We separated again. Both breathing hard now. Both starting to accumulate the small damages that added up over time.

"You’re not bad," Hiro said.

"High praise from the guy whose entire personality is backhanded compliments."

"I mean it." He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. His hair had lost its perfect styling, falling across his face in damp strands that he didn’t bother to fix. "Your speed is genuine. Your instincts aren’t terrible. But you fight like someone who learned by not dying instead of learning to win."

For a beat, my own hands felt heavier.

"And you fight like someone who’s never lost anything that mattered," I shot back. "Perfect technique, perfect form, perfect everything. No improvisation. No creativity. Just the same combinations your coaches drilled into you repeated at different angles."

Hiro’s jaw tightened. Good. I’d found something that bothered him.

"Improvisation gets people killed."

"Predictability gets people killed faster. The first opponent who doesn’t play by your rules is going to take you apart because you’ve never had to adapt to something your training didn’t prepare you for."

We came together again. No circling this time, no feeling out. Just collision.

His jab met my cross in a simultaneous exchange that left both of us staggered. I recovered first, pushed forward, threw a knee at his solar plexus that he blocked with both forearms. He shoved me back and launched a spinning elbow that I ducked under his spinning elbow. There was no thought behind the motion. My body simply moved, a hair’s breadth from disaster.

I came up inside his guard and got both hands on his collar. Tried to pull him down into a clinch where my longer reach might give me an advantage. He posted on my hip, broke my grip with a technique so clean it felt effortless, and converted my momentum into a throw that sent me rolling across the grass.

I was up before I finished moving. The Demigod trait refused to let me stay down, refused to accept that the impact had hurt, refused to acknowledge that a prettier version of myself had just thrown me like a training dummy.

Hiro hadn’t pursued. He stood where I’d left him, weight balanced, hands loose at his sides.

"You should have followed that," I said.

"You were already recovering. Following would have given you the counter."

Damn it. He was right.

We went again. And again. The sun dropped lower behind the tree line, painting the field in oranges and reds that neither of us had attention to appreciate. Sweat soaked through my compression shirt. Hiro’s expensive training gear looked considerably less expensive after being rolled across damp grass three times.

I landed more hits than he did. The speed advantage kept stacking as I learned to trust the Demigod trait more and stop second-guessing what my body wanted to do. I started predicting where he’d be instead of reacting to where he was, started using my acceleration to create angles he couldn’t defend without repositioning.

But none of it put him down.

Every time I thought I had him, every time I loaded up a shot that should have ended the exchange, he found a way to absorb the damage or redirect the force or simply not be in the space I was attacking. His defensive footwork was art. His ability to make my attacks miss by fractions of inches turned my speed into frustration.

And he kept tagging me with things I didn’t see coming. A leg kick that dead-legged my lead thigh. An uppercut that caught me leaning and made my teeth click together hard enough to chip enamel. A body lock that compressed my ribs until I felt something in there creak before I managed to break free.

The accumulation started telling. My responses slowed by microseconds as my body demanded attention be paid to the damage. Hiro’s combinations got cleaner as he dialed in his timing to my patterns.

I threw a straight right with everything I had. The kind of punch that the Demigod trait wanted me to throw, loaded from the hip with my entire mass behind it. If it landed clean, it would have ended the fight. It would have ended most fights.

Hiro ducked it.

Not slipped. Not parried. Ducked, completely, so that my fist passed over his head while he was already rotating into position for the counter. His right hand came up from somewhere below my field of vision and caught me on the chin with enough force to lift me off my feet.

I saw stars. Actual stars, the kind that suggested neurological events were occurring that would hurt more later. The ground rushed up and my back hit grass and for a moment I just lay there, staring at the orange sky, waiting for my vision to stop doing interesting things.

Hiro appeared above me. Standing. Not pressing the advantage. Just watching with an expression I couldn’t quite read through the concussion sparkles still dancing at the edges of my sight.

"Yield?"

I thought about it. Really thought about it, for maybe half a second, which was longer than the System probably wanted me to spend considering the tactical implications of admitting that a guy I’d just spent twenty minutes insulting had beaten me fair in a fight I’d specifically requested.

Then I kicked his legs out from under him.