Tyke used Tyra walked out of the Solmara tunnel and the Solmara sections gave her everything—not the reserved focused response they had been giving all tournament but something warmer, more invested, the specific sound of a support base that had watched a fighter develop across multiple fights and had arrived at genuine belief rather than just allegiance.

Tyke walked out of the Aurelius tunnel and the Aurelius sections gave him the home warmth they had been producing all day—real and immediate, the sound of a crowd that had watched him navigate four-times gravity on broken footing and walk out the other side.

The announcer described both abilities.

The matchup landed in the stands with the particular weight of two abilities that hadn’t been designed to interact with each other but would produce an interaction regardless—the chain that wrapped and bound and pulled, the snapback that reset position and state.

In the stands Atlas said: "Can he snap out of the chain?"

"That’s the question," Jelo said.

It was the only question. If Tyke could tag a position before the chain wrapped him and snap back to that position when the chain caught him—the chain couldn’t hold him. If the chain was fast enough to wrap him before he could tag—the snapback became irrelevant.

Mira said: "The chain moves at her will. Tyke’s tag requires a moment of stillness or intentional gesture. If she can catch him mid-tag the snap never fires."

The referee dropped his hand.

Tyke moved—immediately lateral, the wide arc opening movement he had used against Maldrick, covering ground without committing to a direction, refusing to give the chain a stationary target. His right hand touched his hip as he moved—the tag gesture, subtle, the crowd recognizing it from his first-round fight.

Tyra extended both chains.

Not toward him—ahead of him, the thirty-foot extensions moving to cover the arc he was running rather than the position he was in. Predicting rather than tracking.

The chain reached the arc.

Tyke snapped back.

He reappeared at the tagged position—outside the chain’s predicted coverage, the snap carrying him from inside the arc’s coverage radius back to the starting tag. The physical effort of the snap visible in the brief cost expression before it settled.

The crowd recognized the exchange immediately—the chain trying to cover a predicted position, the snapback undoing the prediction. The same principle as every fight where prediction and unpredictability competed.

Tyke tagged again—immediately, new position, the hip gesture barely visible in the motion of resetting from the snap.

Tyra retracted the chains—the thirty-foot extensions collapsing back toward her wrists, the blue-white glow pulling inward. She held them retracted for three seconds—watching Tyke move, reading the movement pattern, building the model she needed before she deployed again.

Tyke used the retraction to close distance—the chain being retracted meant the coverage radius shrank, the arena temporarily safer to cross. He moved from the Aurelius tunnel side to the center of the floor before Tyra redeployed.

She extended both chains.

From the center the coverage was different—the thirty-foot extensions reaching all four quadrants of the arena from Tyra’s central position, the geometry of coverage more complete than it had been from her starting position at the Solmara side.

Tyke felt the difference.

He tagged where he was—hip gesture, center floor, this position.

The chain swept toward him.

He snapped back.

But the snap carried him back to the previous tag—the Aurelius-side position, the far end of the arena, outside the chain’s current coverage.

He was safe.

But far.

Tyra moved toward the center—maintaining the central position that gave her coverage advantage, the chains moving with her in the loose forearm-coiled configuration she used when she wanted precision at close range rather than coverage at long range.

Tyke tagged at far range.

The chain swept—predicting his arc, covering his likely movement path.

Tyke snapped back to the far-side tag.

Safe again. Far again.

The crowd was watching the geometry of it—two fighters managing distance and coverage and reset points across the arena floor, the chain trying to close the circle and the snapback reopening it each time it closed.

"She has to catch him mid-tag," Atlas said. "Before the snap fires."

"Or she has to cover enough of the arena that there’s nowhere to snap back to that’s outside the chain," Jelo said.

Mira nodded once.

Tyra had heard the same logic somewhere in her preparation—or arrived at it herself during the fight’s opening phase. She stopped trying to cover Tyke’s position and started covering the tagged positions. She had been watching the hip gesture across two minutes of the fight. She knew roughly where his tags were landing.

She extended both chains toward the positions she had mapped.

Not toward Tyke—toward where he would snap back to.

The chain arrived at his most recent tag position and wrapped around it—not around Tyke, around the space he would snap into.

Tyke snapped back.

The chain was there.

It wrapped around his torso in the instant he reappeared—the chain having been positioned at the snap destination rather than at his current location, the arrival itself delivering him into the wrap rather than the chain having to catch him mid-movement.

The crowd made noise.

"She covered the tag position," the announcer said. "Not where Tyke is—where he’s going to be. The snap delivered him directly into the chain."

Tyke felt the wrap—the indestructible spectral links closing around his torso, the chain’s pulling force oriented back toward Tyra’s wrists, holding him in the position the snap had delivered him to.

He snapped back.

The new tag—the one he had set in the fraction of a second before the snap fired, the current position before the wrap arrived—carrying him out of the wrapped position back to where he had been.

The chain unwrapped as he disappeared—the wrap having been around a position rather than a person, the person no longer there.

He reappeared at the pre-snap position.

Free.

The Solmara sections went quiet momentarily—the chain having found him and lost him in the same instant.

Then the Aurelius sections erupted.

Tyra looked at where Tyke had been.

At the unwrapped chain.

She retracted and thought. the Aurelius eruption to move—crossing ground while Tyra’s chains were retracted, tagging as he moved, the hip gestures visible to the crowd now in a way they hadn’t been visible in the first round. Everyone was watching for them. Everyone was tracking the tags.

Which meant Tyra was tracking them too.

She redeployed both chains—this time not toward a single predicted tag but spread across multiple positions simultaneously, both chains covering different sections of the arena floor, the thirty-foot extensions creating a web of coverage rather than a directed pursuit.

Tyke tagged.

Looked at the web.

His tagged position was inside one chain’s coverage radius.

He tagged somewhere else—moving to a new position outside the web, resetting the tag before he snapped.

The chain swept toward the new tag position.

He tagged again—somewhere else, somewhere the chain wasn’t covering, the sequence of tagging and retagging moving faster than Tyra could track and redirect simultaneously.

The cooldown wasn’t ready.

He had snapped twice in close succession during the wrap exchange—the cooldown accumulating, the window where the snap wasn’t available sitting between him and the next reset. He felt it—the specific absence of the ability, the gap in the availability that had defined his fight against Maldrick as much as the ability itself.

Tyra read his stillness.

When the snap wasn’t available Tyke was just a fighter without a reset. He could still move, still dodge, still fight physically—but the mechanism that had been his answer to everything the chain tried wasn’t there.

She deployed both chains at full extension toward his position.

No prediction—direct, at his body, both chains moving simultaneously from different angles.

Tyke moved—physically, without the snap, the movement of someone who had trained their body independent of the ability and was using the training now. He read the left chain’s angle and moved right. Read the right chain’s angle and moved left. The two movements combined into a diagonal that took him between both chains in the gap between their convergence.

He cleared both.

But the clearing had taken him toward Tyra rather than away—the diagonal movement between the chains carrying him closer to the fighter whose chain’s coverage increased with proximity rather than decreasing.