(Enzo's POV)
Enzo walked out to the ring, looking extremely nervous, as he fumbled with the edge of his robes and walked in short, uncertain steps—his boots dragging awkwardly across the sand and creating an uneven rhythm that made the Geneva supporters burst into laughter.
Some pointed and hollered. Others whistled mockingly. A few even mimicked his walk with exaggerated limp-steps of their own.
It didn't help that Enzo looked like he was walking to his own execution—which, in a way, he was.
"Look at him, Derek—" Lee said with a tone halfway between pity and amusement. "That's not a man coming out to win a fight. That's a man who drew the shortest straw in the Rodova locker room."
"He's been sent out for one reason and one reason only," Derek replied, eyes narrowing as the camera cut to Leo sitting on the bench with a towel over his shoulders. "To buy time for Skyshard. The question is—how much time can he really give?"
"I'd say… thirty seconds at best," Lee said without hesitation. "That's being generous. Even the strongest Master-level fighter stands no chance against a Grandmaster. And Ramos isn't just any Grandmaster—he's Geneva's captain. This matchup is suicide."
Back on the field, Ramos stood with his arms crossed, shoulders relaxed, wearing a smirk that screamed boredom.
His dual blades were sheathed at his hips, but the casual tilt of his head and the half-step he took forward made one thing very clear—he was going to enjoy this fight very much.
Then, as Enzo finally arrived at his starting spot, the referee raised a hand, before looking at both fighters as he said–
"Fighters—ready?"
Ramos unsheathed his blades with a smooth, slow motion, the steel hissing against leather as the sun caught the edge of their polish.
He twirled one once, then held both out to his sides with precise balance, as his eyes locked onto Enzo like a hawk watching a rat cross an empty field, before switching to the referee as he gave him a nod.
Meanwhile Enzo—who had been avoiding eye contact with Ramos until that very moment—finally looked up, only to see death personified staring right at him.
And he trembled.
Visibly.
Then, as he reached toward his own belt with shaky fingers, they brushed against nothing but air, as his expression shifted from fear to confusion… and then to panic.
"Ref!" Enzo shouted, raising his hand like a schoolboy asking to use the bathroom. "I think I forgot my blade in the locker room… I'm not ready… please let me go grab it—"
A full beat of silence followed.
Then—
"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?" The referee exploded, veins bulging in his forehead as the entire stadium erupted in mixture of laughter and boo's at once. "How the hell do you forget your weapon before a finals match?!"
"I-it was a genuine mistake, I swear!" Enzo added with a sheepish grin, scratching the back of his head. "Please just give me like... two minutes—"
"This is outrageous!" Ramos barked, stepping forward. "He's stalling! You expect me to believe he just forgot his weapon?!"
"Oh this is embarrassing for sure," the referee growled, pointing at Enzo with barely-contained rage, "but I can't legally start the match if one fighter is unarmed. So hurry the hell up and GET IT!"
As the Rodova fans chuckled and the Geneva supporters booed with a mix of fury and mockery, Enzo gave a clumsy bow and jogged back toward the tunnel—tripping once on his way and drawing even louder jeers from the crowd.
Lee sighed into his mic. "This is pathetic. Ramos is right—this has to be deliberate."
"He's wasting time," Derek agreed, though his tone had an edge of curiosity beneath the criticism. "But if that's his plan… well, then maybe it's not so pathetic after all."
Because in reality—
Every wobbling step, every fumbled motion, every second Enzo had stood on that arena floor had been done with one purpose in mind:
Stalling.
Between the painfully slow walkout and the "forgotten" blade fiasco, he had already burned nearly two full minutes off the clock.
Two out of the five Leo had requested.
And while it may have made him look like a complete idiot to the entire universe—Enzo didn't care.
Because if playing the fool meant giving his team a chance to win, then he was ready to play the fool to perfection.
—----------
(Meanwhile Yu Shen)
Yu Shen watched the match unfold from a compact monitor inside the infirmary's recovery bay, his torso still wrapped in tight bandages and his breath shallow from the ribs Ramos had cracked in their earlier fight.
And yet—
Despite the pain that flared every time he shifted, he couldn't stop the small smile tugging at the edge of his lips as he watched Enzo trip over his own bootlaces for the second time on the walk back to the tunnel.
'There he goes again…' Yu Shen thought fondly, as the memory of a very different Enzo resurfaced with vivid clarity.
It was the fourth day of the hellish summer camp—what the instructors liked to call "Temper Week." A relentless gauntlet of physical drills, mental warfare, and 72-hour no-sleep rotations meant to break spirits and identify leaders.
They were on a night ambush simulation. Pitch-black forest terrain, minimal gear, thirty students split into six teams. The objective? Infiltrate a guarded supply base.
Yu Shen had been assigned team leader of a misfit squad with no standout talents. They were tired. Uncoordinated. And one of them—Enzo—had somehow gotten his foot stuck in a rabbit hole thirty seconds into the exercise and managed to alert two scouting instructors with a yelp that sounded like a dying squirrel.
The entire team was caught, tied to trees with their capture times noted in big red ink on the scoreboard.
They were humiliated.
The next morning, while everyone sulked and blamed each other, Enzo stood up—still bleary-eyed, still limping—and raised his hand.
"If you're gonna blame someone, make it me. It was my screw-up. But if you're gonna laugh at someone, laugh properly," he said, and then—without warning—he slapped a leaf on his head, stuffed grass in his mouth, and began mimicking the instructor's patrol calls like a lunatic, flapping around like a forest pigeon.
He did that to ensure that the team laughed and moved on from the previous day's humiliation and focused properly on the coming days' tasks, and thanks to him, that's exactly what happened.
The squad burst out laughing seeing him flap around, and even the instructors had to turn away in embarrassment.
But it was in that moment— as Yu Shen watched a kid who had very few skills, no standout power, and no exceptional finesse, defuse the tension of an entire failed mission with nothing but shameless humor and a stubborn refusal to quit—that Yu Shen made up his mind that he needed him as a teammate.
"He's not strong or fast, if we go on talent alone, you can probably get much better individuals to join the team" Yu Shen had said later that week to the coaches, "but he's the one guy who'll never panic when it matters. And if you give him a role he understands, he'll play it to the end—no matter what it costs him."
Now, watching Enzo stall a Grandmaster in the world's biggest tournament final—not with strength, but with stupidity so committed it had become brilliance—Yu Shen chuckled softly and muttered:
"…And that's why you're here."
He leaned back against the cot, closed his eyes for just a moment, and whispered:
"Keep buying Leo time, Enzo. We're all counting on it."