Hisoka should fear an opponent like him. He should fear the hurt lashed by the turn of the blade, the skill that could cleave flesh from bone and leave him raw (just like Muraki, just like before), but he cannot. Even as Hisoka bleeds and hurts and loses, little by little, those eyes remain the same, and the bloodied shadows smeared in the dust are all his own. Muraki is not here, not anymore.
Neither is Tsuzuki.
Tsuzuki's fate hangs on the knife edge of Muraki's madness, and Hisoka cannot allow that. Tsuzuki has fallen far enough already. Hisoka knows. He feels it.
Everything rests on Hisoka now.
He can accept that. Hisoka has always been good at games, and this fight is just another round in a game that he has been playing for a long, long time. But this time his adversary is not Muraki, who plays by no rules but the whims of his fractured mind. This time his enemy has honour and integrity and the kind of darkness that Hisoka can understand.
So Hisoka fights because he must, because Tsuzuki's life is worth any sacrifice and because he always has. And maybe, just maybe he fights because this meeting of blade and blood makes him feel more like the man he was meant to be, rather than this weak, tainted boy who will never grow into his rage.
Oriya cuts him again and Hisoka almost collapses from the pain, his vision blurring grey. But that is all right. He will just get up again, and Oriya will wait for him because it is the honourable thing to do.
Hisoka meets Oriya's implacable gaze, sight almost blinded by the sharp glitter of his katana under moonlight, and thinks how strange it will be to have an enemy he can respect.