So it seems like I'm making a habit of updating every other Friday. I know myself well enough to make no promises that will continue. But I'll try my best!

Marcarita tapped the brakes at the last second, preventing a crater and merely kicking up an impressive dust cloud. Hit could instantly tell nothing within that cloud emitted typical energy. He took that as a bad sign.

Moments after the landing, long before the dust settled, a hulking figure emerged. There was no mistaking the leader of the Pride Troopers and the universe's budding God of Destruction. Hit wondered if any mortal had ever held such an impressive resume. He then wondered if Top was even considered a mere mortal anymore.

"Ah, so you're the scoundrel Cocotte warned of!"

Scoundrel? Hit bristled at the term. It made him sound like a petty thief or the town pervert.

Top took note of Dyspo and K'nsi, positioned behind Hit. As though the deadliest assassin in existence wasn't glaring at him, Top ignored Hit and addressed the two Pride Troopers.

"You've done well to contain him. I'll handle it from here."

"Wait, Top-" Dyspo began, only to be cut off.

"It's not that I doubt your abilities, I only want to ensure the safety of all my universe's citizens. You should never have come here, killer!"

"Good grief," Hit muttered to himself. If he'd known Top wanted to speechify, he would have just foregone fairness and punched him in his stupid mustache.

"The Sixth Universe may permit it, but when you bring your wickedness to my Eleventh, I bring you to justice!"

Had Hit actually done anything illegal since his arrival? Maybe threatening K'nsi counted, but he wasn't even physically harmed. Hit assumed Top's grandiose reaction was purely to whatever message Cocotte had managed to relay. A simple "help, we're about to be murdered" would do the trick, no lies or embellishment required.

"Try it," Hit said. Without another word, he forewent playing defense and threw himself at Top.

A frontal assault was playing into Top's massive hands and both of them knew it. Which meant—or so Hit hoped—that Top would expect something more clever and convoluted, something like a time skip followed up by a surprise attack from the back or side. The bulky Pride Trooper would be more prepared to guard his flanks or his rear, leaving Hit's preferred target exposed.

Hit feigned a break to the right. As he'd hoped, Top fell for the ruse. The Pride Trooper's attempted grab slid through empty air. Hit ducked under Top's arm and found himself squarely in position.

One strike, one kill. Hit drew back his fist and aimed for the center of Top's chest.

Hit threw the punch, putting everything he had into it. He poured a month of eating rats in self-imposed exile, three months of existential dread, all his impotent rage, bitter disappointment, fear, and internalized hatred into the blow.

Which made it all the worse when Top caught his arm with hardly a centimeter separating Hit's knuckles from the Pride Trooper's body. The burly bastard's hand was large enough to capture nearly everything from Hit's elbow down to his wrist.

"An admiral attempt," Top said.

The next thing Hit knew, his face was pressed into the dirt and his right arm… Did he still have a right arm? What a strange thing to have to consider. Everything from the shoulder down was either numb or...no longer present.

Hit experimentally flexed the arm he wasn't sure was there. Nothing. At least nothing he could feel.

Arm or no arm, he had to get up. This was a fight to the death and Hit wasn't dead yet. The assassin dug his boots into the earth and pushed himself clumsily to his knees with his functional arm.

Kneeling wasn't much more dignified than eating dirt but at least Hit could take stock of his injuries. His thinking seemed a little slow and clouded, so Top had probably given him a concussion. What Hit really needed to know, though, was the state of his right arm.

It was still attached. That was a relief. Unfortunately the shoulder joint was visibly dislocated. Fixing it would hurt like hell but Hit figured his chances, low as they were, would be even worse if he was down a limb.

Hit reached for his useless arm. He needed to be quick, both before the limb suffered nerve damage and before-

A shadow fell over him.

And just like that, Hit was back in the Tournament of Power. This was the same helpless, useless feeling he'd experienced when Jiren had shrugged off his best attacks like they were less than mild inconveniences. It was failing and falling and knowing his universe was done.

Hit deployed his time skip. He needed distance and a chance to get his shoulder back into its socket. He scrambled to his feet and jumped away from Top. It would have to be far enough, his time was almost up.

Now for the really fun part. Fixing his shoulder. The numbness was off-putting but not unpleasant beyond that. When that joint popped back into place…

The more he thought about it, the worse it was going to be. Ideally he'd have something solid like a table he could use to apply controlled pressure to his arm. Hell, while he was making wishes, some less-than-legal painkillers wouldn't be bad either. Lacking both a table and black market drugs, Hit used his own leg. He assumed what was almost a rifleman's kneeling stance and rested his elbow against his knee.

The time skip expired just as Hit bore down. There was a moment of resistance and then there was fire racing from his fingertips to his chest. At least they were fingertips he could now move and control, albeit with discomfort.

"There you are, villain! You can't escape my relentless pursuit of justice!" Top proclaimed.

Hit rolled his eyes. If he died at the hands of this hammy son of a bitch, he'd never forgive himself.

"Can't I? Let's see if I can at least shut you up," Hit replied.

Up-close-and-personal hadn't worked—and had nearly gotten Hit separated from his favorite arm—but now he had a bit of space. Until recently, Hit had had little use for long-range attacks. After all, for a thousand years sneaking or time-skipping his way up to an unsuspecting target and smashing their heart had been his golden standard. His exposure to Universe 7's warriors, particularly its Saiyans, had forced him to grow his techniques. It was time to see how Top liked them.

Hit threw a barrage of seemingly useless punches into the air. Top regarded him like he'd lost his mind. That changed when the first impact struck the Pride Trooper's abdomen and knocked the breath out of him.

"I'm not finished yet!" Hit phased more energy into the ground. He knew none of those would be killing blows, but if he could injure one of Top's legs, it might equate to the same thing.

It seemed Top was about as adaptable in a fight as a Saiyan. After the invisible gut-punch, he took Hit's attacks much more seriously. For a fighter of his build, Top was absurdly quick on his feet. He dodged the remainder of the energy Hit had sent through the air and with steps that almost looked like a dance evaded the attacks from the ground as well.

"Any more tricks?" Top challenged.

Hit said nothing. Everything he'd thrown at Top thus far had been either an abject failure or, at best, a glancing blow. Maybe during the Tournament Hit would have been more of an equal, but in the months since, while Hit had been catching swamp rats, Top had been training with Destroyers and Angels.

"No? Then it is I who have shut you up," Top said.

That one stung because it was true. Hit could probably think of some awful comeback, but there was little point in cocky posturing when both parties knew it was empty words. The assassin kept silent and raised his fists in front of him.

"If you have nothing to say for yourself, let's continue. Justice Flash!"

Hit had not expected the sentence to be punctuated with an attack. He hardly had time to react before the barrage of energy exploded around him. With no other way out, Hit activated his time skip. He flew up and out of the blast radius. Once he was clear, he tried to plan his next move.

The time skip faded without Hit having concocted anything better than "avoid dying for as long as possible." As vague of a plan as it was, it seemed Top still had a problem with it. The Pride Trooper was on top of Hit so fast the assassin knew his foe had not been remotely fooled by the time skip.

"It's a shame such a rare and powerful ability was wasted on the likes of you," Top said.

Hit snarled and opened his mouth to retort. What came out was a breathless wheeze as the Pride Trooper's fist slammed into his stomach. Payback for Hit's earlier attack, returned tenfold.

"How many lives have you stolen with your talents?" Top asked.

Even if Hit had wanted to reply, he lacked the capacity. It felt like half his torso had been caved in by a boulder. He couldn't speak, couldn't breathe, couldn't even think. His eyelids fluttered and Hit was more than happy to sever ties with consciousness just then.

Top withdrew his hand and Hit dropped like a dying bird. The air rushing against his face offered the same effect as being doused in ice-water. The assassin groaned and opened his eyes. It took him a moment to realize where he was and why everything hurt like hell.

The ground was getting too close for comfort. Hit focused and slowed his descent. He managed to right his body so his feet instead of his head would take the brunt of the impact.

It was a clumsy landing that nearly buckled Hit's knees and forced him to stagger. The rough movements set his already protesting injuries on fire. Grimacing, Hit wrapped his arms around his chest in a stabilizing hug.

"Damn it," he muttered.

He muttered it again, a little more desperately, a moment later when Top touched down about ten meters away. Hit tried to stand straight, to ignore the pain, but it was like trying to ignore being eaten alive from the inside out.

The moment Top's name had left K'nsi's mouth, Hit had accepted he was most likely going to die. That wasn't pleasant, but it was tolerable. What was a little harder to swallow was the increasingly apparent fact Top wasn't planning to take him out quickly and cleanly. Though Hit was sure the Pride Trooper would deny it or re-frame it as deserved punishment, it seemed Top harbored some sadistic tendencies. A certain revived emperor from a few universes down would have heartily agreed with the assassin's assessment.

"Will you admit defeat?" Top demanded.

"Will it get me anything?" Hit replied.

Top's silence told Hit all he needed to know. Top's hand around his throat a moment later was confirmation Hit would have been happier without.

The grip was painfully tight but, with effort, Hit could draw in enough to air to remain conscious.

"Who hired you to assassinate my fellow Pride Troopers? Who compelled you to attack this universe?"

So that's why he was allowed to breathe. Top had questions. Too bad they weren't questions with answers he would believe.

"You idiot," Hit ground out.

The hand closed tighter and Hit lost his air privileges. The assassin lashed out against Top with a few powerful kicks, only to find his ankle subdued by the Pride Trooper's free hand. Damn it, why were his hands so freakishly large?! Was every member of his species born so well-endowed or was Top special? Hit considered asking him, just for the hell of it, if he was ever allowed another breath.

"Tell me!"

Damn Top and damn Dyspo too. And while he was at it, damn Vados and Marcarita and the Grand Zenos and Jiren and Champa. And maybe most of all, damn Top's mustache! The way it waved in the breeze, taunting him, within easy reach!

Hit was just lucid enough to comprehend that his sudden insane focus on Top's facial hair was the result of a starving, hypoxic brain on its way to shutdown. That didn't stop him from reaching out and waggling his fingers, trying to snare an errant hair. The motion was so slow and awkward Top wrote it off as the mindless result of oxygen deprivation.

Top's opinion changed the second Hit clenched his fist around several inches of mustache. The assassin hardly knew his own name right then but he remembered how to yank. Top gave an undignified squawk and freed Hit's leg so he could grapple for control of his mustache instead.

"You coward, how dare you!" Top roared. "Release me at once!"

In the kerfuffle the death-grip around Hit's throat loosened enough for him to gasp in a few desperate breaths. That was enough to restore his higher brain function and allow him a proper understanding of his absurd position. He had taken the bull by the horns and now had to hold on or be trampled. With that in mind, Hit snagged a second handful of hair.

Top forgot about strangling Hit and instead grabbed the assassin's wrists. Hit grimaced as the Pride Trooper squeezed, ratcheting up the pressure on his arms. It soon felt like his wrists and forearms were trapped in a hydraulic press operated by a psychopath.

Hit's willpower was no match for Top's crushing force. As much as he struggled to keep hold, his fingers opened involuntarily. He was left with a few strands of white hair the wind soon stole and overwhelming, bone-deep agony as Top continued his work.

"Just break them and get it over with!" Hit hoped it was only his imagination running wild, but he swore he could hear his bones creaking as they reached their limit.

"I have a better idea," Top replied.

By some dark miracle, Hit's arms withstood one more incremental jump in pressure. The strength in his legs did not. The assassin dropped to his knees, his head lolling. He was going to beg, vomit, and die and he had no idea in which order he was going to do them.

"That's enough," Top said. Without another word, he released his devastating hold.

Hit stared up at Top, his crimson eyes wide and incredulous. The Pride Trooper met the assassin's stunned gaze and held it. Even when Top began to step back, he maintained eye contact with the man kneeling before him.

"If you have any final words, speak them."

Hit managed a faint shake of his head. Top nodded curtly in reply. He extended his right arm and aimed his upright palm directly at the defeated assassin. A sphere of swirling purple and black energy began to materialize in front of Top's hand.

"Ha-"

Quicker than Hit could comprehend, the future Destroyer vanished. One moment he was standing there, about to end Hit's entire existence, the next he had been knocked halfway across the field. The partially formed ball of destructive energy dissipated harmlessly.

"What happened?" Hit asked nobody in particular.

Something moving at incomprehensible speed struck Top again, throwing him to the ground and rolling his body several times. The lightbulb clicked on. Hit had been at the receiving end of the same treatment not so long ago. Being considerably less bulky than Top, he'd gone for even more of a spin.

"It took you long enough, you rabbit bastard," Hit said. He thought about passing out, and while that option was tempting, the assassin decided to drag himself to his feet. He really needed to see this.

Author's Notes:

Are there a few references to other fandoms within this chapter? Maybe.

Thanks for reading.