The Greatest Trap

From the impact of the shot to her face, Mirai flew backward, gliding on the concrete pavement like a stone skipping through a lake. The perpetrator of the ambush, Zain, didn’t let the rare chance go past him. Jumping in the air to approach the incoming ball, the young man raised his leg for a direct shot mid-air.

“Another one!” Zain shouted as the ball flew towards Mirai like a speeding bullet.

However, the girl wasn’t fated to take another damage.

As the ball was about to hit Mirai, a sudden silhouette dashed in between the two, directly taking the brunt of the shot in the process. Taking the rebound once more, Zain’s face turned even more tense as he realized the opponent he was facing.

“You…” the young man mumbled. Saying that the crimson-haired girl that showed up before him was unexpected was one thing, but what worried Zain even more was the fact that Hanabi just took his shot with her bare hands, and yet, none of her hearts were depleted.

As if knowing what her opponent was thinking, the girl then showed off a clear die with a single red dot in her hand – the signal of a die that had already been used.

“Level 1 Boost, Block,” Hanabi calmly explained. “As its name suggested, it’s able to block one instance of damage. Of course, since it’s only level 1, the effect is weak, and it can’t block damage from a higher-level Weapon.”

As the words left her mouth, Hanabi’s figure disappeared from the scene. It didn’t mean she was gone, however, since her partner was still here. And Zain knew that he would only get into more trouble if both of them were still around.

The young man immediately turned back and started dribbling away as fast as he could. Though his speed was reduced thanks to the ball in his legs, keeping it around meant that Zain could use his senses more accurately against attacks and strike them back in counters.

True to his predictions, the girls wasted no time to follow him where he stood. While Mirai kept on taking long, powerful jumps to quickly shorten the distance between them, Hanabi followed with quick footwork, always preying for a moment of weakness for a strike – essentially replacing Yusei’s role in their formation in the real world. However, since they lacked the ridiculous speed that their leader possessed, it wasn’t hard for Zain to avoid their assault, especially with his now-enhanced perception.

Using his instep, Zain lobbed the ball up in the air while leaning his body to the left, changing his center of gravity just in time for a strike from Hanabi coming from above. Just as he dodged, Zain once again leaned his body in the opposite direction, utilizing the airborne ball to trap and turn to the right in time to avoid Mirai’s jump from afar.

“You’re attacking with your bare hands?” The young man uttered in surprise as he jumped back to gain more distance from his opponents. Of course, the question wasn’t aimed at the girl with the steel gauntlets, but at her partner, who was indeed going into battle without any weapon to call her own.

Hanabi, hearing the question, rushed in to attack once more, again with only her hands and nothing else. There was a chance that she could be bluffing to scare him away, but as he had already lost a heart, Zain couldn’t take the chance to find out.

He kicked the ball upward, just in line with Hanabi’s vision to block her eyes for a second. Meanwhile, his body leaned forward, rushing past her with a quick burst of speed. As the ball lost its momentum and fell, Zain raised his leg once more to trap it in mid-air. Then, stomping down the raised leg, the young man delivered a close-range volley right at Hanabi’s face, sending both the ball and her flying. While the girl suffered the same fate as her teammate – gliding on the concrete pavement – the ball bounced back to Zain’s spot yet again, right on cue as Mirai’s punch got close enough to him.

Another attempt of kicking the ball up was made. However, the girl had already seen the trick once, and so, she was determined not to let it happen again:

“Get lost!”

Before the girl could grab the ball with her gauntlet, however, a smile formed on Zain’s face. The young man jumped with all his might, doing a flip right as he got as high as his opponent. With his feet raised opposite Mirai’s face, the girl, by pure reflex, backed off to avoid being hit. But by doing so, she had forgotten that she couldn’t take damage from that attack, and so, it was pointless for her to attempt it.

And indeed, Zain’s attempt wasn’t to attack Mirai but to break her off her momentum for just a little. Now that the girl was gone from the ideal position, Zain could take back control of the ball with ease, clamping it down with his ankle. Immediately getting back into position behind his opponent, Zain relaxed his foot and quickly made a shot upward with all his might.

Being in the air had limited Mirai’s movement too much. And so, it was only natural that the snipe shot from behind rendered her unable to dodge in time, as her back took the full brunt of the hit.

It didn’t hurt as much as when she took it to the head, but it was already enough to make one of her hearts glitch out from pink to black once more – Mirai was already down to her last heart.

However, the act would only make her angrier than ever.

“You’ll pay for that!”

Gone was her reasoning (though one could make the claim that she had no reasoning to begin with), Mirai once again went all-in at Zain with the intent to kill. But against an opponent that had lost their cool, it was a simple matter.

Zain could take her out right then and there, but the young man had a different idea. With a roulette spin to avoid Mirai’s charge, he changed his target to the girl still lying down from the force of the shot.

Zain planned to trade the numbers disadvantage for a health advantage. If he attacked Hanabi instead of Mirai, both of his opponents would be on their last legs, and with the latter having been reduced to a mere wild animal with no sense of strategy, his victory was all but assured. However, at this point, the young man had made a slight miscalculation.

The girl he was aiming for was much stronger than he anticipated.

Unlike Mirai, who lay down for a good while before getting up, Hanabi immediately bounced off the ground and backed off before Zain could even approach her. All while Mirai was again aiming at his back, Hanabi rushed in front of him.

It was not what he had anticipated, but as luck would have it, Zain was still on the right track.

With a smile on his face, the young man lightly kicked the ball in between Hanabi’s leg, attempting a nutmeg on her. As the ball slowly rolled over, Zain’s footwork kicked it up a notch, and the young man quickly slipped through the opening that his enemies couldn’t block.

However, that was not everything that he had laid out. Without the target that was himself, the girl behind him couldn’t control her momentum. As an inevitable result, Mirai’s fist now collided with Hanabi where Zain once stood. Although the former had noticed just at the last second and lowered her force as much as she could, the punch was still hard enough to ever so slightly pushed back her partner.

One of Hanabi’s two hearts flickered once more, turning from bright pink to pure black. In a case of rarely seen friendly fire, both girls were down to their last life.

At that moment, Zain turned his back on them and ran away.

“After him!” It took a second for the girls to process the information, and Mirai was the first to respond, stomping on the ground to propel herself forward once more.

“Wait! Let’s… Never mind…” Hanabi tried to stop her partner from over-chasing the target, especially as they were at a clear disadvantage. Though she did not know why Zain would leave at the chance of a double K.O., she was about to breathe a sigh of relief as the two got to live another day. However, Mirai had ruined that plan of hers.

In reality, Zain had anticipated the situation to happen. If he had just up and left them like so, then the short-tempered black-haired girl would have surely blown her fuse, and it was indeed the case. So, by re-establishing the chase, Zain had put his opponents in a spot where they were more easily prone to making a mistake, which would lead to his counter being in an even more favorable situation.

As he was running, a sudden scene caught Zain’s eyes.

In the middle of an open road, a single die lay. No hiding spots; no moving mechanics; it was just a single green die lying about on the road. Of course, even the most unaware would realize that it was a trap. Zain would be a fool to fall for it. But in this situation, he didn’t have to continue onward to his doom.

Letting out a smile of confidence, Zain dashed forward.

Both of his pursuers had also seen the small item in front of him. While Hanabi instantly realized the danger that was present and slowed down in the nick of time, Mirai instead went even faster than before. In her mind, there was nothing else but Zain at the moment, and she knew that if he got his hands on another die, she wouldn’t have a chance against him.

And so, she rushed forward with all her might. But it was exactly what Zain had hoped for.

With a quick sidestep, the young man got out of the way, and the girl, overshooting her distance, went past him in a heartbeat.

It was at this moment that an unspeakable event happened.

Once Mirai’s foot stepped near enough to the die, a giant explosion occurred. Everyone was engulfed in its blinding light, while a massive heat blew them all away. The blast spread further and further ahead, covering the entire city field in a blink of an eye.

After the dust had settled, both Mirai and Hanabi had had all their lives depleted, and, while unconscious from the explosion, dissolved into a cloud of data bits. Zain, also knocked away from the blast, had one of his hearts changed to black as well – like the girls a moment ago, he was also on his last leg. However, he still survived, and his trophy from the blast was something worth letting out a smile for.

The green die had six black dots on it. Level 6 Boost – the highest-grade item, with only one copy in the entire game.

His smile, unfortunately, didn’t last for long, as the sound of approaching footsteps immediately sent the young man to a state of alert, readying his stance to defend.

“Level 6 Trap, One-Shot Mine,” a voice appeared from within a dark alleyway nearby. “Deals 2 damage to the one who triggers it, and 1 damage to everyone else on the field, even its original owner. I knew you’d realize that it was a trap and would take advantage of my teammates to activate it.”

“But you didn’t account for the fact that I had reduced their hearts to one before, isn’t that right… Yusei?”

Emerging from the shadows was none other than Aoba’s Student Council President himself, and beneath his feet was the exact same as Zain – a single pink heart left out of three.

“A shame indeed, but nothing I can’t handle,” Yusei let out a smirk, in his hand was the knife that took down both Mike and Lewis from before. “Now, seeing that we’re both down to our last life… let’s settle this, mano-on-mano.”