Levi Ackerman vs Deathstroke

The Arena

Deathstroke was hired to retrieve something from a forest of trees a hundred metres tall, and he did not expect a short, cold-eyed soldier hanging from a cable between two trunks, blades in his hands, telling him in a flat voice to leave.

Slade Wilson took in the strange gear, the blades, the speed of the man, and adjusted his plan in a single heartbeat. Levi took in the armor, the sword, the gun, and decided the stranger was dirty. He hates dirty.

Round One

Levi moved first, a blur of steel cables and spinning blades. He came at Deathstroke from above, from the side, from behind, the way he cuts titans apart in seconds. Slade blocked the first pass, the second nicked his armor, the third opened a cut along his arm.

Deathstroke is not a titan. He is a tactician with enhanced reflexes, and after three passes he had Levi’s patterns. On the fourth, he fired his pistol not at Levi but at the cable anchor in the tree, and Levi dropped ten metres before his gear caught him.

They clashed in mid-air between two trunks, Levi swinging in on his cables, Slade leaping from a branch. Sparks flew where their blades met. Levi landed on a branch behind him, already turning; Slade landed on another, already reloading. Neither man had expected the other to be this good, and both hid their surprise behind a blank expression.

The Turn

Levi was faster than Slade in short bursts, and furious now. He spun through the trees and came down like a buzzsaw, landing a deep cut across Slade’s ribs that would have killed most men. Slade’s healing factor began to close it at once.

But Slade had noticed something else. Every manoeuvre cost Levi a burst of gas. Deathstroke stopped trying to match his speed and simply survived, blocking and slipping, forcing Levi to burn through his reserves. When the gear hissed and coughed, Slade was waiting.

The Finish

Without his gear, Levi was still terrifyingly fast and strong for a human, and he fought Deathstroke on the forest floor with two broken blades, matching him strike for strike. He opened another wound across Slade’s mask.

But on the ground, in a straight sword fight, Deathstroke’s enhanced reflexes and decades of combat experience began to tell. A feint, a disarm, a pommel strike to the temple, and Levi dropped to one knee among the roots, his vision blurring.

Slade stood over him, sword lowered. “You’re the best I’ve fought in a while,” he said. “Better gear, and you’d have had me.” Levi spat blood into the moss. “Better gear,” he said, “and I’d have killed you.” Slade believed him.

Deathstroke left him there, alive, and took what he had come for. Levi watched him go, already planning how he would refill the gas, sharpen new blades, and track a man in orange armor through a forest that was, after all, his home ground.