Who's the Clown now? || Hisoka x Reader ||

Chapter 27

Chapter 27

The audience welcomed us with thunderous exultation. I couldn't quite tell wether it was driven by their excitement to see another fight between opponents, both insidious enough to offer a show that would provide them with the gratification they seeked, or wether it was solely because they were eager to see one of the loathsome Zoldycks to die in front of their eyes. I stepped on the mat indicating our boundaries, and lifted my head to the point where I was forced to stare into his eyes. I started manipulating my aura the way I learned it from my fathers Sensei. Blood lust. Hate. Amusement, and unavoidably, a bit of fear. I was well aware that making out these emotions wasn't even close to a challenge for Illumi, but I intended to be an open book for him to read. As my aura reached the audience, they quickly quieted down, with nervous chatter along the sides. We both persevered where we were, waiting for the familiar start signal to fill the arena. 

He stood straight, not moving a muscle as I threw my knife at him, but the folded his upper body and created a slit between his face and the incoming tool. The audience followed the knife's trail, their heads being tilted towards the explosion at the point of impact behind him. I ran towards him, jumped and got momentum by twisting, before extending my front leg towards his pelvis. With a quick hand movement, he managed to fling my leg away from him and made it touch the floor slightly, before I regained balance. He stepped back and avoided my right hand which was equipped with a poisoned knife. It slammed into the ground, creating a small crater. I charged up, he duck, jumped up again and charged down, aiming at my right shoulder. I skipped to the left, equipped with new knives. I aimed at his knees, and released eight of them. The speed they flew in almost made them invisible, and far too quick for the untrained eye to spot. Yet, with swift movements, he managed to avoid the most. One scraped his thigh, as he ducked and grabbed my left foot which was standing steady on the ground. He leaped me from my feet, and I was dangerously close to falling onto my back, before I launched another set of knives aiming at his chest. Trying too avoid them, he let go of my foot and I leaped back onto my hands and into the air, back to facing him. My face barely managed to avoid one if his needles he threw at me when he charged towards my torso, and stuck a yellow- green pin into my thigh. I pulled it out within a second, yet felt the rush of his aura flow through my body. Ten other knives were released, and I manipulated a regular one by changing its weight. I threw into the air where it descended down at him, yet the toggled weight rigged the way he estimated its point of impact. It crashed down, shooting right through his left arm, as he tried moving away. His pain cries were silent, yet both our blood stained the mattress. I didn't consciously note down that my left arm started bleeding as its impact wasn't worth taking note of. A quick glance at the timer beside us told me we were merely 36 seconds in. I looked back into his direction, startled by his eyes centimeters in front of mine. They were filled with so much joy I felt a sickening pain in my chest. I ran back to the end of the mattress. I needed distance, yet didn't even manage to fully breath out before he was behind me and took his right hand to stab a needle into my neck. I felt his aura dominating my conscious mind more and more, as I returned the unwanted favor by riddling three poisoned knives through his chest. None hit his vital organs.

We part, but only for a few fractions of seconds, before he comes rushing back at me, blood now tarnishing his shirt brown.  The game we have been playing continued on. I checked the timer once again. 4 minutes 56 seconds. Yet neither of us was close to giving up. I knew he was still not giving it his all. By the time the timer reached 6 minutes and 50 seconds, I had two more needles strike my body, and managed to land three more knives on him, although one just barely scraped his left eyebrow. The aura of his filled my head with a curtain of fog. One more needle and it would shut completely, not letting any more conscious light enter my thoughts. The existing aura spread through my veins like poison. It hindered my thought process and decreased by speed substantially.  He seemed anything less than fine, but I couldn't get rid of the foreboding that he wasn't even close to an end. Rather than attacking, I had to shift my focus on defending his countless strikes and tries to knock me off my feet.

As the point system was eliminated by the fact that we both agreed on making this one ending in death, there weren't any mandatory pauses in our small dance. We were forced to continue the combat fight we've been having, at our highest potential, because a breather would mean certain death for either of us. I was painfully aware of that. By the eleventh minute I started throwing blade at him solely to distract from hidden attacks from beneath, not wasting time on making sure they would meet his body. The underground attacks hit several times, with one going right through his right thigh. However, also that tactic lead to a dead end as Illumi suddenly increased his attempts to slam his needles into my body. One per second, two per second. Three.

I did my best at avoiding them, knowing that one more would lead to my death. His voice inside me ensured that with another needle, he would eliminate me completely. As I was busy dodging his attacks with blades and my bare hands, he managed to find my blind spot. A millisecond later, he slammed the needle into my upper arm.

And missed. He missed, and I managed to strike another poisoned knife at him. It disabled his left arm completely by burying itself deep into the flesh of his shoulder. He let out a wimp, but counteracted by pulling it out of his flesh and into my eye. The fuel that rushed through my body was more adrenaline than I thought a human could handle. I locked the pain away for a mere second, and managed to avoid another attack before filling the arena with screams. The pain ate me up, starting from my head down to my stomach, which made me sink to my knees. I kneeled below him.