Eli stretched out his legs, like he had all the time in the world. A confident grin never left his face as he said, “Time to pick up the pace.”

  Before I could roll my eyes, he was enveloped in white light and relocated to the arena floor.

  Only—his clone wasn’t there. Not where the rest of ours had been, standing and waiting, almost ceremonious. The arena looked empty except for Eli. For a moment, I thought the system had glitched. Then I heard it—faint words, too garbled to make out, echoing around the stadium. Whispers sliding over the stone like ghosts. My eyes darted everywhere, but there was no one in sight.

  Then came the sound. Not footsteps, but streaks of air splitting apart. Wind patterns etched themselves across the sand, carving faint lines like claws raking the ground. My skin prickled as the air pressure shifted. I realized it wasn’t ghosts. It wasn’t whispers. The clone was moving so fast it couldn’t be seen.

  If that was what the clone could do, then... could Eli really move like that too?

  Eli didn’t look nervous. He slouched forward, his hair falling into his eyes as he muttered, “Instant Speed.”

  And he was gone.

  The next instant, he appeared high above the arena, his heel colliding with the side of his clone’s head. Somehow he had tracked it, caught it mid-movement, and pinned it in place. For a frozen moment, both of them hung in the air, momentum crashing against momentum. Then Eli twisted, and said, “Instant Strength.”

  The air cracked with the force of his kicks. He delivered a storm of blows to the clone’s skull, his legs moving like a piston engine.

  He flipped midair, finishing the barrage with a downward axe kick that slammed the clone toward the sand. The clone twisted, swept its leg across the arena floor in a wide arc, trying to trip or ward off pursuit. The sand nearly created a mist under the force of the motion.

  Eli didn’t bite. He landed softly, arms crossed, his posture infuriatingly casual. Then both of them vanished again.

  The sound that followed was unlike anything I’d ever heard. Blurs, streaks, lines—two shadows slashing across the arena, their collisions marked only by sudden bursts of wind that made my clothes whip and my hair sting against my face. I couldn’t follow the fight. None of us could. Bar Sosuke. To my eyes, it looked like scribbles drawn by a mad god, a storm of intersecting trajectories beyond human comprehension.

  The speed eventually ebbed. Instant Speed had a time limit. Their movements dulled to something slightly more visible, still blinding, but no longer untouchable. I finally saw the exchange clearly—Eli standing with his arms folded, countering with nothing but his legs, while his clone pressed forward with punches.

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  The clone threw a right straight with enough force to shatter bone. Eli intercepted it with a sudden side kick, his foot colliding with the knuckles mid-flight. The sound was a crack like stone being split. Eli pushed off, flipping back with a gymnast’s grace. The clone snarled and chased him, a blur in pursuit.

  But Eli caught its fist mid-lunge. Not with his hands—with his thighs. He trapped the arm between his legs, twisted his hips, and hurled the clone like a sack of grain into the ground.

  “Airwalk.” Eli murmured.

  His foot pressed against nothing, then against nothing again, as though invisible steps hung suspended in the sky. He leapt higher with each kick of air, then dove, stamping his heel into the clone’s chest.

  The clone snarled, its fists bleeding from the exchanges. It wasn’t mimicking Eli. That was strange. Our clones hadn’t perfectly mirrored us, but this one seemed especially divergent—where Eli preferred kicks, his double seemed to have committed wholly to boxing, trying to beat him down with raw fists. Maybe it thought it could outspeed Eli, close the gap before his legs could chamber. Boxing was faster than Taekwondo.

  It wasn’t working.

  Eli spun into a roundhouse, the shin slamming into the clone’s chest. The impact sent wind throughout the entire arena, and the clone staggered toward the wall. Eli pushed forward, ready to capitalize.

  The clone barked, “Instant Strength!”

  A red aura surged, exactly like mine. The power behind its muscles multiplied, and it caught Eli’s leg mid-kick. Its elbow snapped into Eli’s ankle, a brutal counter. I winced. That angle wasn’t natural. At the very least, it was fractured.

  The clone sneered. “Write about that, you prick!”

  Eli gritted his teeth, hopping back on one leg, his relaxed demeanor cracking for the first time. His clone mirrored his stance, then spat out. “Instant Speed.”

  Eli tried to say it too, but he was a fraction too slow. His double blurred, vanishing behind him. The clone’s kick slammed into Eli’s spine.

  Shing!

  It passed right through him.

  “What?!” the clone barked.

  Eli was behind it now, a faint shimmer still clinging to his form. His voice was calm, steady, but carried a thread of sharpness. “Acceleration is quite slow with one,” he said, “but it does its job eventually.”

  The clone’s eyes widened. It tried to move, but it was already trapped. Eli had set it up, one step ahead all along. I guess he was pretty smart.

  He chambered his kick deliberately, slower this time, letting the clone see what was coming. Then he drove his heel upward, right into its groin.

  The sound that followed was worse than any explosion or crack of bone. A guttural howl tore through the arena as the clone was launched skyward, its body folding in on itself from the sheer impact. We all looked up, following its shrinking silhouette until it was a dot against the clouds.

  We waited.

  Gravity claimed it. The clone plummeted back to earth, slamming into the arena with a sound as loud as thunder. Sand and stone erupted in every direction. When the dust cleared, the clone lay in the center of a crater, writhing, clutching its ruined groin.

  Eli stood above it, unfazed. He reached casually into a shimmering gap in the air, Dimensional Storage, and pulled out a red vial. A stamina potion. He popped the cork, took a slow swig, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Doppelg?ngers.” he muttered, shaking his head. “So cliché.”