Leorio lost the first exchange immediately.
Not the match.
Just the first exchange.
The prisoner moved the moment the signal sounded—fast for a man built like a wall, his grin widening as he lunged forward with the swagger of someone who had won enough ugly fights to stop respecting formal beginnings. Leorio barely got his guard up in time. The blow slammed into his forearm and shoulder hard enough to drive him half a step sideways.
A hiss escaped him.
The prisoner laughed.
"Oh, this'll be fun."
Leorio clicked his tongue and reset his stance. "For one of us."
Tonpa watched from the edge of the arena, arms folded loosely, face blank.
Inside, he was less calm.
Not because Leorio was losing. Not yet.
Because this was the kind of fight that punished sincerity first and pride second. The prisoner's movements were rough, but not random. He was testing reactions, measuring how easily Leorio could be dragged into a brawl instead of a strategy.
And Leorio, for all his good qualities, had always looked like a man who could be baited into violence on moral principle alone.
The second exchange came harsher.
A feint high.
A step in.
A body blow.
Leorio took it badly and answered with a right hook that nearly would have done something impressive if the prisoner had been kind enough to stand still and admire it.
He wasn't.
The punch missed.
The prisoner's elbow clipped Leorio's jaw on the counter.
Leorio staggered back.
Killua clicked his tongue softly. "He's too emotional."
Gon, standing a little forward from the rest, frowned. "But he's still fighting right."
Kurapika's eyes stayed fixed on the ring. "That depends on what kind of right you mean."
Tonpa said nothing.
Because they were all correct in irritatingly different ways.
Below, Leorio reset his footing. He had stopped trying to overpower the man now. Good. The anger was still there, visible in his shoulders and jaw, but it had lost some of its reckless edge. Pain had done what reason couldn't.
The prisoner circled once.
"You people always come in thinking this is a test of courage."
Leorio spat blood lightly onto the stone beside him.
"And what is it?"
The prisoner's grin sharpened.
"Judgment."
Then he lunged again.
This time Leorio was ready.
Not elegantly.
Not beautifully.
But enough.
He gave ground instead of planting, let the prisoner overcommit by half a step, and drove his own shoulder forward in a collision ugly enough to count as honest. Both men staggered from it. Leorio recovered first by virtue of wanting the universe to suffer with him.
His fist connected.
Solidly.
The prisoner's head snapped sideways. The crowd above the arena stirred.
Leorio went after him with all the restraint of a falling bookshelf.
Tonpa watched the next few exchanges in tight silence. Blow, guard, stumble, recover. It wasn't clean. It wasn't refined. But Leorio was doing what he always did best under pressure: refusing to leave quietly.
Eventually, that became enough.
Not enough to dominate.
Enough to turn the fight.
The prisoner, who had started smiling too early, began breathing harder. Leorio's punches still lacked discipline, but now they landed. Once to the ribs. Once to the shoulder. Once across the mouth with a crack that drew a visible wince.
Then the prisoner made his mistake.
He looked at Tonpa.
Only for a second.
Just long enough to throw one mocking half-grin toward the edge of the arena, as if to remind the others that there were easier targets waiting after this.
Leorio saw it.
And, perhaps because exhaustion had burned the polite edges off his judgment, he took it personally on Tonpa's behalf without asking permission.
His next punch landed flush.
The prisoner went down hard.
The speaker overhead crackled.
"Winner: Leorio Paradinight."
Leorio stood over the man for one heaving second, then looked up toward the others with the tired, offended expression of someone who had been inconvenienced by victory itself.
Killua smirked faintly.
Gon grinned openly.
Kurapika allowed himself the smallest visible easing of tension.
Tonpa exhaled.
Not relief exactly.
Closer to the strange, unfamiliar satisfaction of watching a room refuse an old hierarchy.
Leorio climbed back up from the arena slower than he would have liked to admit. The moment he reached the platform, he wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist and pointed vaguely toward Tonpa.
"That one," he said, still breathing hard, "was partly for you."
Tonpa stared at him. "That's concerning."
Leorio dropped down against the wall with a groan. "Be grateful in private."
Gon laughed.
Killua's smirk deepened a fraction.
The speaker overhead activated again.
"Vote for the second fighter."
The watches lit.
The next prisoner stepped out before the voting even finished.
Tall.
Lithe.
Sharp-faced in the way of people who had survived by making others uncertain first and dead second.
Tonpa recognized the type instantly.
Not from memory of the anime.
From life.
Men who smiled as if agreement itself were a trap.
The prisoner raised one hand lightly.
"I'd prefer not to waste energy fighting the child or the doctor."
Leorio snapped, "I'm not a doctor yet."
"No?" The man smiled wider. "Pity."
His eyes slid over Kurapika, then Tonpa.
Then back again.
Tonpa already knew what was coming.
The vote happened quickly.
Kurapika.
Of course.
The man in the arena smiled like someone who believed he had just arranged the room to his taste.
Kurapika stepped forward with the kind of calm that always looked effortless until one realized how much discipline it cost.
Tonpa watched that match too.
Not because he doubted the outcome.
Because he needed to see where everyone stood.
Kurapika's fight was the opposite of Leorio's.
Measured.
Controlled.
Precise enough to feel almost cold.
The prisoner tried words before blows—needling, implying, fishing for arrogance or anger—but Kurapika gave him nothing useful. When the fight turned physical, it ended quickly. Not because Kurapika was overwhelming in raw force, but because he was cleaner. Faster in choosing. Unwilling to fight the wrong battle just because someone else offered it.
By the time the speaker announced him winner, Tonpa had learned two things.
First: this group was absurd.
Second: he was still the weakest one in it by a distance large enough to humiliate mathematics.
Killua won the third match in a way that turned the room colder.
It happened so fast that even expecting competence did not soften it. One moment the prisoner across from him was speaking with smug caution. The next, Killua had crossed the space between them with surgical violence and laid him out before the man's confidence finished arriving at his own mouth.
The silence after that carried its own weight.
Gon looked impressed.
Leorio looked vaguely nauseous.
Kurapika looked unsurprised in a way that implied earlier observations had already told him enough.
Tonpa stood still and thought, Right. Assassin.
Sometimes the story did not need embellishment.
Sometimes the child really was just a knife wearing boredom.
That left Gon.
His match unfolded differently again—strangely, stubbornly, with that impossible Gon quality where sincerity stopped feeling simple and started becoming dangerous. By the time he won, the room had fully accepted that the group as a whole was moving through the tower less like five candidates and more like a badly balanced machine that kept functioning through raw improbability.
Four wins.
One fight left.
And now the watches lit again.
"Vote for the fifth fighter."
The remaining unopened gate across the arena slid upward.
The last prisoner stepped into view.
He was not the largest.
Not the fastest-looking.
That made him worse.
A man in his thirties, maybe, lean in the dry way of someone worn down to rope and bone rather than weakness. His face was narrow, his eyes hooded, his smile absent. No bravado. No performance. Just a quiet sort of readiness that made the arena feel smaller around him.
His gaze moved across the group once.
Paused on Gon.
Dismissed him.
Paused on Killua.
Interesting.
Paused on Kurapika.
Careful.
Then Leorio.
Tired.
Finally, Tonpa.
And stayed.
There it is, Tonpa thought.
Of course.
The speaker overhead crackled.
"Vote confirmed. Final fighter: Tonpa."
Leorio swore immediately.
Gon blinked.
Killua looked almost entertained.
Kurapika's expression changed by very little, but Tonpa caught it: concern sharpened by analysis.
Tonpa stared at the glowing watch face in his hand.
He hadn't voted for himself.
That was the ugly joke of majority rule. Four people deciding, one person stepping forward.
Leorio pushed off the wall. "No."
The speaker, being a speaker, did not care.
"Final match will begin in thirty seconds."
The prisoner stepped into the center of the ring and rolled one shoulder once.
"No hard feelings," he said.
Tonpa looked at him.
The man's tone wasn't mocking.
That was somehow worse.
It carried the easy certainty of someone who had already calculated the difference in threat and found no reason to hate what he would break.
Killua tilted his head slightly. "You can refuse."
Tonpa glanced at him.
Killua's expression stayed unreadable.
"You'd lose the time," he said. "A lot of it."
Of course.
The tower never offered choices unless both versions hurt.
Leorio rounded on him. "That's not advice."
Killua shrugged. "It's true."
Kurapika stepped closer to Tonpa, voice lower now.
"Can you fight?"
A fair question.
An insulting one.
A necessary one.
Tonpa looked down into the arena.
Then at his own hands.
Then at the prisoner waiting below.
The old Tonpa would have avoided it.
If not through open refusal, then through panic. Through delay. Through some desperate angle that bought survival without proving anything.
That instinct still lived in him.
He could feel it clearly.
Not as memory.
As muscle.
Find the gap. Look weaker than you are. Force someone else to intervene. Lose smart if winning looks impossible.
Useful instincts.
Rotten ones.
He flexed one hand slowly.
The raw ache in his knuckles from the climb, the boars, the climb again—everything remained. But underneath that, something else moved.
That lighter feeling.
That cleaner response in the body.
Not dramatic.
Not enough.
Still there.
His breathing settled faster than it should have.
His balance, even tired, held itself more naturally now. The old drag in his limbs had changed shape. He was still far from strong, but the body no longer felt like a permanent betrayal. It felt like something rebuilding itself in secret.
Leorio was still talking.
"Tonpa, I'm serious, if this is too much then—"
Tonpa stepped forward.
Leorio stopped.
The arena stairs felt strangely short under his feet. Each step down rang with old echoes—every previous version of a room like this, every glance that had decided him before he spoke, every part of Tonpa's history that had trained him to survive humiliation by accepting it early.
The prisoner waited in the center.
Tonpa reached the floor and straightened.
The air in the arena was cooler than above. Dry. Still. The kind of stillness that made footwork matter.
The speaker crackled once.
"Begin."
The prisoner moved first.
Not recklessly.
Fast enough to test, slow enough to observe.
Tonpa slipped back.
The first strike missed his face by inches.
A flicker of surprise crossed the man's expression.
Tonpa felt it too.
His own body had moved cleaner than expected.
Not clean, exactly.
But clean enough.
The prisoner corrected at once and came in lower, one hand darting toward Tonpa's midsection. Tonpa twisted sideways and took the glancing impact across the ribs instead of the stomach. Pain flared sharp, but he stayed upright.
Better.
Still terrible.
Better.
Above, someone inhaled sharply. Leorio, probably.
The prisoner reset and came again, now fully interested.
Tonpa watched his feet.
Not the fists.
The feet.
Weight told the truth before hands did.
Left lead. Controlled step. Prefers inside angle. Not a brawler, then. Something leaner. A man who used patience as a weapon because he trusted himself to win more exchanges than he lost.
Fine.
Tonpa had no interest in winning more exchanges.
He only needed one shape the man hadn't prepared for.
The prisoner feinted high.
Tonpa didn't bite.
The next strike came low.
He caught it late and ugly, forearm taking the shock. Pain ran up to the elbow. He gave ground two steps and let it look worse than it was.
That, at least, came naturally.
The prisoner advanced.
There.
Tonpa saw the change.
That slight confidence tilt. The moment a stronger fighter decided this would be easy if he stayed disciplined.
Good.
Let him.
Tonpa kept retreating.
Not randomly.
Toward the uneven section of stone near the arena's left edge where years of use had worn one line smoother than the rest. He'd seen it while the previous matches played out. A small thing. Easy to miss. Just enough difference in traction to matter if someone committed too hard through it.
The prisoner pressed forward, testing him with jabs now, small impacts, rhythm-setting strikes meant to force panic.
Tonpa gave him some.
Not all.
Enough.
A late guard. A clumsy angle. A stagger that was not entirely fake and therefore sold itself beautifully.
Above, Killua said something too low to catch.
Kurapika did not answer.
The prisoner smiled for the first time.
There it is, Tonpa thought.
See what you want to see.
Another strike came.
Tonpa ducked it badly on purpose and let the follow-up glance off his shoulder. He spun with the force instead of against it, stumbled across the smoother patch—
and the prisoner followed exactly as expected.
One more step.
Weight committed.
Front foot sliding by half an inch.
Enough.
Tonpa pivoted.
Not quickly by good standards.
Quickly enough.
His body responded with a cleanliness that shocked him even in the moment. No old half-second of useless drag. No sticky heaviness in the hips. He planted, turned, and drove his weight low into the prisoner's supporting leg with all the graceless spite of a man who had wrestled giant boars and learned to respect structural collapse.
The prisoner's balance vanished.
He dropped hard to one knee.
Tonpa hit him again.
Not in the face.
The throat would have been risky. The head uncertain.
He struck the side of the jaw and ear with the heel of his palm. Ugly. Crude. Effective.
The prisoner reeled sideways.
The room above changed.
Not loudly.
Just enough.
Surprise.
Real surprise.
Tonpa didn't stop.
He stepped in before the man could recover properly and drove his forearm across the back of the neck, forcing him down a second time. The prisoner twisted fast—faster than Tonpa liked—and caught Tonpa with a rising elbow to the ribs that turned the world white for a second.
Pain tore through him.
His breath vanished.
The prisoner surged up.
Tonpa's foot slid back automatically into stance.
And there it was again.
That feeling.
Lightness.
Not speed exactly.
Absence of old drag.
He moved before fear fully arrived.
The prisoner threw high.
Tonpa slipped inside it.
His own hands came up with none of the hesitation they should have had, one catching the man's wrist, the other shoving hard at the shoulder line while his leg hooked behind the calf.
The throw was ugly.
It still worked.
The prisoner hit the stone flat on his back.
The sound cracked through the arena.
For one perfect second, nobody moved.
Then Tonpa dropped onto him with all the dignity of a collapsing building and pinned the man's striking arm across the floor while driving his knee into the ribs just enough to make resistance painful and expensive.
The prisoner bucked once.
Twice.
Then went still, more from surprise than defeat.
The speaker overhead crackled.
"Winner: Tonpa."
Silence.
Not complete silence.
The kind that followed when a room had already chosen one reality and was now being asked to wear another.
Tonpa stayed exactly where he was for one extra heartbeat, just to make sure the prisoner had no final cleverness left in him.
Then he got off and stood.
His breathing was ragged now. His ribs ached viciously. His forearms shook. His shoulder pulsed with every heartbeat.
But he was standing.
And the prisoner, who had looked at him and seen an easy answer, was still on the floor trying to recalculate the shape of the world.
Tonpa looked down at him.
Then turned.
Above, the reactions waited.
Leorio looked openly stunned.
Gon looked delighted.
Killua—worse than all of them—looked interested.
Kurapika's gaze was the hardest to read. Not disbelief. Not approval. Something tighter than both. The look of a person rearranging conclusions in real time.
Tonpa hated all of that.
He climbed back up out of the arena slowly, because if he rushed and his legs gave way now, he would die of symbolism.
Leorio was the first to reach him.
"What," Leorio said, "was that?"
Tonpa kept climbing. "An event."
"That is not an answer."
"It's all I have."
When he reached the platform, Gon grinned at him so brightly it should have counted as assault.
"You were setting him up."
Tonpa blinked once. "Unfortunately."
Gon laughed like that was the best possible answer.
Killua's eyes moved once over Tonpa from head to toe—not mockingly, not dismissively, but like someone checking for hidden compartments in an object that had just done something it shouldn't be able to do.
"You moved better near the end," Killua said.
Tonpa looked at him.
Of course he noticed that.
Of course.
Kurapika spoke next, quieter than the others.
"You changed your rhythm."
Tonpa's eyes flicked toward him.
Not a question.
A statement.
Leorio, still trying to catch up with the universe, looked between them. "Am I the only one hearing this conversation like a normal person?"
"Yes," Killua said.
"That's offensive."
"Usually accurate things are."
Tonpa would have appreciated the exchange more if his ribs were not trying to resign from service.
The arena gates began unlocking with heavy mechanical sounds. The path forward opened beyond them, deeper into the tower.
The speaker announced the end of the challenge.
Five victories.
Route cleared.
The group should have moved at once.
Instead, for one brief moment, no one did.
Tonpa could feel it.
Not because anyone was staring openly now.
Because the space around him had changed.
A fraction.
A degree.
Tiny things.
Leorio no longer looked at him like a burden he had accidentally adopted.
Gon no longer looked only curious.
Killua had upgraded him from oddity to variable.
And Kurapika—
Kurapika now looked at him the way he looked at puzzles that had stopped pretending to be simple.
Tonpa flexed his hand once, then regretted the decision because it reminded him his entire upper body currently belonged to pain.
Still.
Under the pain, beneath the fatigue, one clear fact remained.
He had felt it.
In the arena.
Not just adrenaline.
Not luck.
His body had moved differently.
Answered faster.
Cleaner.
Like some hidden resistance inside it had finally begun to burn away.
As the group moved on through the opened gate and into the next descent corridor, Tonpa drifted a little behind the others.
Just enough to think.
The stone passage ahead sloped downward through dry darkness. Red timer lights glowed at intervals above them, reminding everyone that Trick Tower never stopped turning pressure into arithmetic.
Leorio muttered about cracked ribs he did not technically have. Gon talked briefly about the footing in the arena like it had been an interesting animal. Killua listened and didn't deny being impressed, which in him counted as a social event. Kurapika stayed quiet.
Tonpa touched his own side lightly and winced.
Pain.
Real.
But different under it.
He had expected improvement to feel grander when it came.
More obvious.
More triumphant.
Instead, it felt like this:
The body that used to drag behind his will had begun, at last, to answer it.
That realization settled into him with quiet weight.
Not because it made him strong.
Because it meant the old limits were not permanent.
He looked down at his own hands as he walked.
The fingers were scraped. The knuckles reddened. The forearm still tense from the fight.
But the old softness was changing. Not gone. Not miraculously replaced by some sculpted fantasy.
Changing.
Less excess. More shape. More response.
He could feel it in the way his clothes sat differently across the shoulders. In how movement no longer required him to negotiate with dead weight every time. In how exhaustion still hurt—but no longer defined the whole body.
Leorio slowed until he was walking beside him.
For a while, he said nothing.
Then:
"You really are changing."
Tonpa looked at him.
Leorio kept his eyes ahead.
"I noticed it before," he said. "Back on the airship. But now it's obvious."
Tonpa let out a slow breath.
"Yeah," he said.
Leorio glanced once at him, then away again.
"It's weird."
"That seems to be everyone's review."
Leorio snorted. "You still look bad."
Tonpa nodded. "Thank you."
"I mean less bad."
"That's somehow worse."
Leorio thought about it, then sighed. "You know what I mean."
Yes.
He did.
And the fact that Leorio was the first one to say it plainly made the truth sit heavier.
Because Leorio did not speak like Kurapika. He did not measure words like Killua. He did not accept changes the way Gon did, with instinctive generosity.
If Leorio had noticed it enough to say it—
then it was real.
The corridor opened into another chamber ahead, and the group tightened formation again automatically, drawn back into the tower's machinery.
Tonpa straightened.
His ribs still hurt.
His shoulder still ached.
His legs were still tired.
But for the first time since waking in this world, he no longer felt trapped inside a body built only for failure.
The change was still small.
Still raw.
Still nowhere near enough.
It didn't matter.
Small was how real things started.
And as Trick Tower pulled them onward into its next test, one thought stayed with him more stubbornly than pain:
The old Tonpa had survived by becoming smaller than other people's expectations.
This Tonpa, slowly and painfully and without anyone's permission, was beginning to outgrow them.