I pressed my palm against Nolan’s forehead, feeling the drain open like a valve I’d turned without thinking. The circles in my eyes pulsed bright as his Essentia flooded into me—clean, pure, and way too fucking earnest for its own good.

"Sorry," I said. My palm stayed pressed against his forehead, the circles in my eyes burning brighter with each pulse of Essentia that poured into me. "Nothing personal."

That was a lie. The kind I told myself more than him. This was personal in every sense that mattered. Personal because the guy beneath my hand had what I wanted and didn’t know what the fuck to do with it. Personal because Aurora tasted like summer rain and forgiveness, and he’d been keeping her at arm’s length like a trophy he was too scared to touch. Personal because I’d already had her gasping my name in the dark while he practiced his hero speeches in the mirror.

The drain opened wider than I meant it to. Wider than was safe. Nolan’s Essentia flooded through the channel between us in a rush that made my teeth ache. Clean energy. Pure. The kind that came from someone who’d never taken a shortcut in his life. His eyes rolled back, whites showing, and his body went slack against the concrete like someone had cut his strings.

I caught him. Barely. My hand shot out on instinct and grabbed his shoulder before his head could crack against the ground. Lowered him down slow, careful, with more consideration than he’d probably shown anyone who’d gotten in his way during this whole damn match.

Three seconds. Maybe four. Just long enough to take what I needed and get clear before—

The fist came out of nowhere.

I registered the impact before I understood what hit me. Something massive and impossible slammed into my jaw with enough force to turn my head ninety degrees and scramble every thought in my skull into white noise. The world tilted hard to the left. Gravity stopped making sense. I hit the ground and bounced, actually bounced, my body ragdolling across broken concrete like a stone skipped across water.

Blood filled my mouth. Copper and salt. I spat and it came out red, thick, splashing against rubble that I couldn’t quite focus on because my vision kept doubling. The stars in my eyes weren’t metaphorical. They were actual pinpricks of light dancing across my retinas while my brain tried to remember how to send signals to the rest of my body.

I blinked. Once. Twice. The world stopped spinning just long enough for me to process what I was looking at.

Nolan Traore stood five feet away.

But not Nolan. Not the guy I’d just knocked down three seconds ago.

His eyes glowed solid green, crackling with energy that spilled out like smoke. His skin pulsed with light beneath the costume. The kinetic energy he’d been absorbing all match—every punch I’d thrown, every impact he’d tanked, everything Aurora had accidentally hit him with while aiming for me—it was all cycling through his body at once, burning outward like he’d swallowed a nuclear reactor.

"You shouldn’t have touched her," he said. His voice came out distorted, like two people speaking at once.

I tried to push myself up. My arms shook. My head swam. Whatever he’d hit me with had rattled my brain against my skull like dice in a cup.

"Touched who?" I mumbled through blood. "Your girlfriend who won’t even hold your hand?"

His fist moved too fast to see. I raised my arm on pure instinct and the impact drove me six feet backward through the concrete. My rubber body absorbed most of it but not all. Pain exploded through my forearm, hot and sharp, and I wondered distantly if the bone had cracked.

He walked toward me. Didn’t run. Walked. Each step left cracks in the ground.

"You think you can just take what you want," he said. "Like nothing matters except what you decide."

I spat more blood. "You done with the hero monologue?" 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

"I’m done with you."

He blurred.

One second he was ten feet away. The next, his knee drove into my ribs. The air left my lungs in a rush. I flew backward, crashed through a fake building wall, and landed in a pile of rubble that tasted like dust and regret.

My chest screamed. Broken ribs maybe. Three or four. The healing ability kicked in immediately, warmth spreading through damaged tissue, but it took time. Seconds I didn’t have.

Nolan appeared above me, framed against the arena lights. His hand grabbed my throat and lifted me off the ground like I weighed nothing.

"Aurora is mine," he said quietly. "Don’t forget that."

My vision started to tunnel. Black crept in from the edges. His grip was iron and getting tighter.

So this is protagonist power, I thought distantly. The ability to get your ass kicked and come back stronger. How fucking inconvenient.

I activated Gravity Jail on pure reflex. My eyes burned purple as the weight slammed down on Nolan like an anvil dropped from orbit. Three times normal gravity. Four. Five.

He didn’t drop me. His grip didn’t loosen. His glowing green eyes just stared into mine with the kind of determination that made my guts twist.

"That won’t work on me anymore," he said.

Then he threw me.

I sailed through the air, watching the arena spin around me. Buildings blurred past. Sky and ground traded places. Somewhere far away, Usagi screamed my name.

I hit something solid. Metal screeched. Glass shattered. Pain exploded everywhere at once, my entire body one massive bruise, and I couldn’t tell which way was up.

Blood dripped from somewhere. Multiple somewheres. My head. My mouth. My arm. The healing kicked in harder, fighting to keep me conscious, stitching me back together as fast as Nolan was tearing me apart.

I pushed myself up from the wreckage. Looked down. I’d crashed through the water tower scaffolding.

"Get up."

Nolan stood below me on the ground. Still glowing. Still burning with that green light that said protagonist energy in letters ten feet tall.

"I’m not done yet," I wheezed.

"You should be."

He launched himself upward. Straight vertical. No runway. Just pure kinetic force propelling him like a rocket. He crashed through the platform beside me, grabbed my ankle, and we both fell.

The ground rushed up.

This was going to hurt.

I stretched my other leg downward, feeling Rubber Body extend the limb twenty feet toward the concrete. When my foot touched ground, I compressed everything at once, using the elastic potential like a spring. The force redirected our momentum sideways instead of down. We hit the building wall instead, crashing through brick and rebar, tumbling through somebody’s fake living room setup.

I lost track of which body part belonged to who. Everything was pain and movement and the smell of ozone from Nolan’s overcharged Essentia. We separated in the rubble. I scrambled backward, coughing, tasting copper.

He stood again. Always standing. Always getting back up.

"Why won’t you stay down?" I asked.

"Because people are counting on me."

"Nobody’s counting on me and I’m still here."

"That’s the difference between us."