Water Polo

It might have been the middle of a fight, but Hiroshi couldn’t help a bit of satisfaction from pulling one over Takako. There was no time to gloat as Hitomi finally managed to make it back up the stairs. She may have been blind now, but it wasn’t hard to get back when there was only one path.

While he watched Hitomi return, Hiroshi shifted out his position in the water to keep his location unknown. ‘Thankfully, neither of them seem to know what the game is that I’m running. Considering I picked it up from a foreigner a while ago, this is going to be a lot harder for them to figure out.’

“What are you doing, Hitomi? He’s—“ Her voice stopped again before she could give Hitomi any advice. Takako kept trying to do anything to warn her, but nothing worked. “What did you do to me, you bastard?!”

Already arming himself with something stronger than last time, Hiroshi aimed to finish the fight before it dragged out any longer. ‘I’m not going to let Takako keep getting things the way she wants. The others would consider this cheating, but this is life and death. There’s no cheating.’

He glanced over hearing the frustrations of Takako as he moved closer to Hitomi. Not silently stewing in her annoyance, there was something deeper bothering her that Hiroshi didn’t pick up on. None of it mattered to him though, he just planned on killing Hitomi.

Lifting the jagged piece of metal he found from part of the trash pile in the room, Hiroshi prepared to end another life. ‘I’m sorry. This is just how it has to be.’

Breaking through thick silence, Takako yelled across the room at Hitomi. “Why aren’t you listening to me?!”

“Huh?”

Distracted just enough, the aim of Hiroshi missed the vitals and the metal bounced off the sternum. The hardness of her bones saved her, but still knocked her through the thin walls and out into the hallway. “Tch! Failed again. Girl’s got luck.” He began to walk to the doorway to finish things off while Hitomi was down.

Takako however had different things in mind. “Hitomi! Do you remember what he’s going to do to you?”

Hiroshi glared over at Takako in an instant knowing what she was planning. Unfortunately, he had no time to actually stop the tears. The girl immediately went into a horror-fueled outpouring of tears. “Dammit!” He was washed back into the classroom as a tidal wave of water slammed against him. The water rose once more despite having started to empty out a fair bit in their lull. It easily returned the surface level over a meter from the floor and then some.

Once freed from the pressure enough to settle into the water, Hiroshi returned to wading through to make it through to Hitomi. ‘I didn’t think they’d give me this much trouble.’

“Get up! You just going to let him do whatever he wants to you?!”

‘She seems oddly bothered by all of this. Is she feeling threatened?’

“What the hell did you do to me? Answer me!” Takako fumed with just barely controlled anger that stirred to the edge. She seethed on her throne being made a fool by Hiroshi. “How did you stop my power? That’s not something you can do!”

He looked over at Takako while he trudged through the water. “Did you forget already? I make the rules here. You’re in my game.”

“But your opponent is over there!”

“Yes, which is why she’s playing by the rules. However, I couldn’t have you get in my way. So I made you the referee.” Hiroshi smirked a little, as Takako seemed to start to understand what it meant. “You’re a neutral third party. So you can’t do anything to help her win the game.”

Chapter 348 – Water Polo

“Referee?!” Takako stood up in surprise to hear such a thing from him. She had disbelief in her eyes. All that quickly changed though as a new thought came to her. “So you say I can’t interfere in your fight?! Is that what you think? Don’t think so little of me!”

Hiroshi paused to fully watch Takako. She still presented a significant danger to remain cautious. He didn’t know what she could possibly do in her situation, but Hiroshi wasn’t about to assume she couldn’t find a loophole.

“I have an army,” she laughed, having come to her own conclusion. She tossed out her hand at Hiroshi to call to him directly. “I’ll just bring someone else that isn’t bound by your game rules!”

‘Oh is that it? I guess I got worried for nothing.’ He smirked a little with relief that he overestimated her resourcefulness.

Takako immediately caught sight of his dismissal of her plan. “What are you smirking about?”

“You don’t play many games do you? The referee is neutral. Because you’re the referee you’ve lost connection to everyone outside of my space. You’re only supposed to watch for the safety and fair play of those players. So sit back while I kill your supposed guard.”

Grinding her teeth together, she had the look of annoyed acceptance. She was stuck in the scenario that he created for them. “You can’t kill her if I’m supposed to be keeping things safe.”

“Your job is to make sure that we don’t drown. Not that we don’t kill each other.” Hiroshi tightened his grip on the chunk of metal in his hand. “Now, if you’re done trying to find loopholes I’ve got someone’s life to take.”

The furrowed brow carved into Takako features smoothed out. She glanced over at the hole that Hitomi went through. “Have you had long enough?”

Hiroshi jerked his head over quickly not realizing that Hitomi had done nothing the entire time that they talked. Which should have been a clue to him had Takako not been distracting him from his objective. The water currents suddenly changed as Hitomi took command of them. ‘Dammit! She played me!’

Not just one fist of water broke through the wall for Hiroshi. Several went for him as though needing to be sure that they were hitting their target. It was a wide attack, which only made it more difficult for Hiroshi to dodge. The ceiling prevented him from jumping and moving out of the way. He couldn’t make it in time, but he still tried as they crashed into him.

Thrown into the wall, the windows blew out into shards raining down to the ground below. The wall had more durability, due to being an exterior wall, but it still bowed to the force. Hiroshi coughed with the air knocked fully out of him before being dropped into the water face first.

Hitomi began to wade through entering the classroom. Tears of water rolled down her face keeping the water level constant with an ominous approach.

Nearly gagging on the water, Hiroshi jumped out of the water coughing again. Unfortunately, it seemed that Hitomi got better at tracking his voice while blind. She launched another attack for him the moment she heard anything out of him. He dove out of the way, but the water level made it difficult to do so cleanly as it clipped him.

Hit in the leg, he carelessly tossed up into the broken window. The remains of the glass shards shattered, unable to break his skin. However, it was enough for Hitomi to zero in on him again. She didn’t know that he was already falling and most of her attack missed without him even trying.

Quickly recovering, Hiroshi started to move again needing to get away from where she believed him to be. ‘Damn…she’s already getting used to this. I’ve failed to kill her twice and now I don’t even know if this game will last long enough for me to get another chance. I’m going to have to switch…’

She waited him out watching with her ears for any sort of movement that he could make. The tension in the room mounted. Running water mixed through the whole room giving a constant noise to keep things from being in stillness. It mixed in with the shifting waters keeping Hiroshi hidden.

Knowing that he couldn’t get close to her anymore without being detected, Hiroshi changed his strategy. He retrieved a random piece of floating debris, large enough for his needs. Throwing it into a different part of the water, the splashing it created redirected Hitomi’s attention away from his direction.

While she attacked an empty corner of the room, Hiroshi charged in quickly to take advantage of his opening. Unfortunately, Hitomi dodged out of the way at the last moment. She quickly countered the whole area around her with fists coming out in multiple directions. One hit Hiroshi, throwing him up against Takako’s throne.

He wiped away the water from his face while planning out his next move. ‘She’s still got her speed. She’s like Saki almost. This is truly becoming a futile effort now…’ Hiroshi tried to move silently through the water while thinking, but Hitomi continued to improve, now able to find him without even him making a sound. None of it made sense to him anymore. He was losing at his own game now and she still hadn’t figured out the rules.

Suddenly, the water around him warped and jumped up around him. It trapped him before he could even make a move. The water latched onto him holding him in place. Ahead, Hiroshi saw Hitomi gathering up a large amount of water for an attack. ‘I can’t move! How did she find me so fast?’

Little mattered to the questions as Hitomi launched her most powerful attack yet at Hiroshi. There was no ability to dodge or defend. The full force of the attack slammed into his body. It broke him free of the bindings and threw him to the wall. The wall lasted only moments before it completely crumbled.

Water poured out of the hole in the wall as the fist followed down sending Hiroshi into the ground. Dirt flew into the air as the earth started to turn to mud from the water. A crater began to fill with water from Hiroshi’s impact.

Hitomi walked over to the edge of the school staring down at the aftermath. She watched to see the outcome of Hiroshi and if she needed to do more. “My sight is back…” It took her a moment to realize that Hiroshi’s power no longer had an effect on her.

“Bastard’s finally dead,” Takako commented.

“No, I think he’s still alive.”

And she was right. Out of the clearing smoke, Hiroshi’s body surfaced out of the water. He washed up to the edge of the crater from the motion of water. Even though pain covered every part of him, he found the strength to drag himself out of the water. ‘Damn…I thought I was going to die… Not sure how I lived, but everything hurts…’

Confirming that he was alive, she jumped down from the second floor. Hitomi landed on dry earth only a few meters away from Hiroshi. “It’s time that I kill you to protect myself.” She lifted her hand up beginning to summon all of the water in the crater to her side. It sloshed around barely held together with a gentle mist raining around it.

Hiroshi staggered while he pulled himself back to his feet. His fists clenched together to tighten his resolve. For a moment, his determination wavered. ‘This is the only thing I can do. I have to put everything on the line if I’m going to win!’ He straightened himself up to prepare. “I have one last game to play. The rules are simple to understand. The loser dies. I’m bad with naming things, so I just call it the Death Game.”