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Sparks flew as Lovely Assistaff clashed against Jabber’s toxic, clawed hands.
Jabber laughed maniacally, his eyes wide with sadistic glee as he bent backward at an impossible angle to evade a lethal strike. Zanka gritted his teeth, trying to maintain his usual disciplined focus, but Jabber’s unpredictable movements were becoming entirely distracting.
Zanka simply couldn't keep his eyes off him.
Every flash of sharp teeth, every erratic leap, and the chaotic rhythm of Jabber's breathless taunts didn't just frustrate Zanka anymore— they made his heart hammer in a completely different way. The wrong way, if you will.
Suddenly, Jabber lunged forward, pinning Zanka hard against a crumbling brick wall, their faces mere inches apart. Zanka could smell the metallic tang of blood and Jabber's sharp, chemical scent. Instead of immediately pushing the maniac away like anyone with a will to live would, Zanka froze.
He stared into Jabber’s wild, unhinged eyes and felt a sudden, terrifying jolt of absolute clarity. It wasn't just battle adrenaline making his chest tighten. He didn't just want to defeat this damn psycho nut job, he wanted to hold onto him. As Jabber bared his fangs for another strike, Zanka realized— with mounting horror— that he had a massive thing for the worst possible guy on the Ground. He was totally fucking screwed.
Jabber’s grin widened, noticing the sudden shift in Zanka’s demeanor. The rigid, uptight cleaner had gone completely stiff, staring at him with a wide-eyed shock that had absolutely nothing to do with fear. It was an opening too good to pass up. With a sharp laugh, Jabber hooked a foot behind Zanka’s ankle and swept his legs out from under him, slamming him flat onto the dusty ground.
"Wha's the matter, little cleaner?" Jabber purred, dropping his weight down to straddle Zanka’s waist. Zanka flushed a dark red. Jabber pressed a wicked, venomous fingernail right against the hollow of Zanka’s throat. "Cat gotcha tongue? You're usually much louder than this, Zan-Zan."
Zanka’s brain was in absolute shambles. The sheer weight of Jabber sitting on him, combined with the terrifyingly close proximity of that chaotic face, sent his internal monologue into a panicked tailspin.
Get him off, get him off, use the staff, bite him, do something! his rational mind screamed. But his body refused to cooperate. He prayed to the Sphere that he avoided popping a boner in that very moment.
Up close, Jabber’s chaotic energy wasn't just dangerous; it was intoxicating. The way his messy hair fell across his face and the genuine, unhinged joy in his eyes made Zanka’s stomach do a violent flip.
"Get... offa me," Zanka managed to choke out, though it lacked any of his usual venom. His face felt like it was on fire, a furious blush creeping up his neck that he desperately hoped Jabber would mistake for exertion.
Jabber tilted his head, his freakish smile faltering for a fraction of a second into genuine confusion. He sniffed the air, leaning down even closer until his nose almost brushed Zanka’s cheek. Zanka stiffened.
"You're acting weird, Zan-Zan. Your heart is going crazy! Are ya scared? No, that's not fear…" Jabber’s eyes lit up with a new, twisted curiosity. "What is that look?"
Realizing he was about to expose himself completely, Zanka’s survival instincts finally kicked in. Overriding the freakishly hormonal short-circuit in his brain, he gripped his Assistaff with both hands, jammed the center of it against Jabber’s chest, and channeled a burst of raw energy to blast the Raider backward.
Jabber flipped through the air, landing gracefully on his feet several yards away, his boots skidding through the dirt. He chuckled, wiping a dirt and dust from his chin, clearly thrilled by the sudden retaliation. "There he is! Thought I broke ya for a sec."
Zanka scrambled to his feet, coughing to clear the debris from his throat and desperately trying to stabilize his breathing. He held his staff out in a defensive guard, but his hands were trembling slightly. He couldn't look Jabber in the eye anymore without seeing him in an entirely different, incredibly inconvenient light. Every instinct told him to run away and hide in a dark room until this feeling died, but the battle wasn't over.
"I'm going ta take ya down, scuzzball." Zanka lied through his teeth, his voice cracking slightly on the final word. He tightened his grip on his vital instrument, praying to whatever gods existed in the Sphere that Jabber would never, ever find out the ugly horrible truth.
Jabber tilted his head, and for the first time since the fight began, he stopped smiling just long enough to truly observe instead of provoke. The tremor in Zanka's hands wasn't the tremor of exhaustion. The crack in his voice hadn't come from pain. His pupils kept widening whenever their eyes met before frantically darting away in almost panicked embarrassment.
Jabber took one slow step forward, then another, not attacking, simply watching the pattern unfold like a puzzle assembling itself.
“You're lying, Z." he said casually. "About taking me down? Nah... that ain’t the interesting lie."
Zanka's stomach dropped. "Shut up."
"Nah, nah, wait." Jabber's grin returned, smaller this time, thoughtful instead of manic. "Your pulse spikes whenever I get close. It doesn't when I throw punches. It doesn't when I threaten to break your legs. It only happens when..."
His sentence trailed off as realization crept over his face, and for one astonishing second the self-proclaimed menace looked genuinely confused. "There's no way."
Zanka's ears burned so fiercely he thought they might actually catch fire. "Don't."
Jabber blinked twice, then barked out a single incredulous laugh.
"You're kidding me." Another laugh escaped him, louder this time, until he doubled over with one hand on his knee. "Nah! Nah, that's impossible! Ain’t NO damn way!"
Zanka lunged with his staff more out of desperation than strategy, but Jabber sidestepped without even looking, still laughing so hard tears gathered in the corners of his eyes.
"You're serious!" he gasped. "You actually—"
"I said don't!" Zanka shouted, his face scarlet as another blast of energy erupted from the staff.
Jabber flipped over it effortlessly, landed behind him, and stared with open fascination rather than mockery.
"You have a crush on me."
The words landed harder than any physical blow. Silence swallowed the battlefield. Even the wind seemed to hesitate. Zanka froze completely, every muscle locking as though denying movement could somehow deny reality itself. His mouth opened, closed, then opened again without producing a sound. Jabber circled around until he could see his face, and the expression waiting there confirmed everything. There was no anger, only catastrophic humiliation.
"Oh," Jabber whispered, all traces of laughter fading into bewildered astonishment. "I was right."
Zanka squeezed his eyes shut. "Please..." It was barely audible. "Don't say it again."
Jabber had expected rage, denial, maybe another attack, but not that tiny, broken plea. His grin disappeared altogether.
"Since when?" he asked, surprisingly gentle.
"I don't know," Zanka muttered through clenched teeth. "I don't want this. I hate this. I hate you."
"Those seem... slightly contradictory, Zan-Zan."
"I noticed!" Zanka snapped, finally looking at him with equal parts misery and frustration. "Ya think I enjoy my brain forgettin’ how ta function every time ya get close ta me? Yer the worst person I've ever met. Yer arrogant, obnoxious, completely unhinged, and somehow my stupid heart decided yer the menace it wants to embarrass me over."
Jabber stared at him for several long seconds before a slow, crooked smile returned— not the cruel smile of a villain who had discovered a weakness, but the bewildered smile of someone who had just stumbled across the last thing he had ever expected to find.
"Well," he said quietly, rubbing the back of his neck, "that... certainly explains a lot."
Neither of them moved for several long seconds, the tension that had once been sharpened by combat now tangled in mutual bewilderment. Zanka wished the ground would simply open beneath him and spare him from existing for the next several centuries, while Jabber, who normally had an answer for everything, looked as though someone had handed him a riddle that refused to make sense. Then, inevitably, Jabber recovered first.
"So," he said, clearing his throat with exaggerated importance, "this has to be probably top ten strangest battlefield confession I've ever received."
Zanka groaned, dragging a hand down his face without lowering his staff. "It wasn't no confession."
"Oh it absolutely was." Jabber giggled.
"It absolutely wasn't."
"You literally described your heart sabotaging your decision-making ‘cause of lil ol’ me."
"Against my will!"
"Still counts."
Despite the banter, neither sounded particularly eager to continue fighting, and that strange hesitation became its own kind of contest. Jabber took a cautious step forward, not in attack but in curiosity, only for Zanka to instinctively stumble backward, nearly tripping over a broken stone.
"See?" Jabber said. "You keep retreating."
"Because looking at ya ‘s makin’ this worse!" Zanka blurted. "Congratulations. Ya somehow managed to become psychologically dangerous."
Jabber laughed, but this time it was softer, lacking its usual edge. "Yannow, I thought I was intimidating."
"You are." Zanka tried desperately.
"Apparently not for the reasons I expected." That earned Jabber an exasperated glare, which somehow only made him grin wider.
Unfortunately for both of them, their moment of awkward conversation reminded Zanka why they were there in the first place. Jabber was still the enemy. Embarrassing feelings didn't erase the trail of destruction he'd left behind. With a determined inhale, Zanka forced himself to lock the hell in.
"Enough talking."
Zanka planted his vital instrument firmly into the earth, drawing energy through it until glowing anima spiraled along the polished wood. "I'm ending this."
Jabber's expression shifted instantly from amused to alert. "There he is."
The air cracked with power as Zanka launched forward, every strike cleaner than before, no longer fueled by denial but by sheer stubbornness. Jabber met him head-on, their clash sending bursts of light across the battlefield. Staff collided against reinforced metal, shockwaves kicked dust into swirling clouds, and each exchange grew faster than the last.
Jabber was still stronger physically, laughing whenever he managed to block a particularly clever maneuver, but Zanka had regained something more valuable than confidence: discipline. Instead of chasing emotions, he fought by instinct and training. He baited Jabber into overcommitting with a wide swing, pivoted at the last instant, hooked the end of Lovely behind Jabber's ankle, and simultaneously released a concentrated burst of force into the Raider’s center of balance.
Jabber's eyes widened. "Oh, that was sneaky—" He hit the ground hard enough to leave a shallow crater, and before he could recover, the tip of Zanka's jinki was resting against his throat, humming with restrained energy.
The silence that followed was broken only by both of them trying to catch their breath. Jabber looked up at him, then laughed once— not because he'd escaped, but because he'd genuinely been outplayed. He lifted both hands in surrender.
"Fine," he admitted with an impressed smile. "You win."
Zanka let out a long breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, the glow around his staff fading as relief replaced adrenaline.
"Good," he muttered, still refusing to meet Jabber's eyes for more than a heartbeat. Jabber remained lying in the crater, smiling up at the sky before glancing back at his victor.
"You know," he said, unable to resist one last tease, "beating me probably ain’t gonna fix the crush."
Zanka covered his reddening face with one hand and groaned so dramatically that even Jabber had the decency to wait a full five seconds before laughing again.
Zanka stood frozen with the end of his staff still resting against Jabber's throat, as though moving even an inch would cause the entire absurd situation to collapse on top of him. He had won. That was supposed to be the difficult part. The manuals had plenty to say about securing a defeated opponent, reporting back to headquarters, and accepting congratulations from fellow guardians. They had absolutely nothing to say about what to do when the Raider you had just defeated knew you had an inconvenient crush on him and was looking at you with gorgeous magenta eyes and an expression that was equal parts amused and genuinely curious.
"You gon’ keep pointing her at me forever?" Jabber asked lightly. Zanka blinked, as if remembering where he was.
"Right." He stepped back immediately, lowering the staff and putting several feet of distance between them. "Don't get the wrong idea. I only moved because the fight is over."
Jabber slowly sat up, rubbing the back of his head where he'd landed. "You keep saying things like that."
"Because they're true."
"Okay, sure."
"They are." Zanka hissed, red to the tips of his ears .
"If you insist."
Zanka frowned. "Yer impossible."
"I've been told."
Neither of them reached for a weapon again. The battlefield had become strangely quiet, filled only with the breeze stirring the dust and the distant calls of birds returning now that the explosions had stopped. Jabber rose to his feet, stretching his shoulders with a wince before giving Zanka an appraising look.
"Can I ask you something?"
Zanka immediately looked suspicious. "I'm probably going to regret saying yes."
“Probably." Jabber shrugged. "If we'd met somewhere else— without all the fighting, without me being... well, me—wouldja have actually asked me out?"
Zanka's face immediately turned crimson again. "That is a completely unfair question."
"It wasn't a no."
"It doesn't deserve an answer."
Jabber chuckled, but he didn't press. Instead, he looked around at the battered landscape they'd created together. "You know, this is usually the part where I escape dramatically."
"I was wondering about that."
"I'm thinking about trying something different."
That answer caught Zanka off guard. "Different?"
"Yeah. Real different." Jabber's usual grin softened into something quieter. "Turns out discovering your enemy secretly likes you is... surprisingly disarming."
Zanka let out a disbelieving laugh before he could stop himself. "Ya can't actually be serious."
"I'm at least serious enough to admit I don't feel much like fighting anymore." For a long moment they simply looked at one another. The embarrassment was still there, but it was no longer crushing. It had become something awkward, uncertain, and unexpectedly honest. Jabber took one careful step closer. This time Zanka didn't retreat.
"I'm going to ask before I do anything stupid," Jabber said, his voice quieter than Zanka had ever heard it. "Would it be all right if I kissed you?"
The question seemed to stop time. For a moment, Zanka forgot how to breathe.
His heart, which had spent the last several minutes betraying him in increasingly humiliating ways, somehow found another gear. He stared at Jabber, searching his face for the punchline, for the smirk that usually followed every outrageous thing he said.
It wasn't there.
Jabber actually looked... nervous.
"You don't have to," Jabber added after the silence stretched on. "I was just—"
"...Okay."
The word escaped before Zanka could reconsider it.
Jabber blinked. "Okay?"
Zanka's face immediately flushed scarlet. "I said okay."
"You know," Jabber said with a crooked smile, "for someone who keeps insisting you don't like me—"
"I never said that."
"...You literally confessed ten minutes ago."
"I said I hated that I liked ya."
"Mm. Important distinction to you, I’m sure."
"It is."
Jabber laughed softly, the sound warm instead of teasing. Then his smile faded into something gentler.
"I'm coming closer."
Zanka nodded once.
One careful step.
Then another.
Neither of them reached for a weapon.
When Jabber finally stood in front of him, close enough that Zanka could feel the warmth radiating from him, every instinct screamed for him to bolt in the opposite direction. Instead, he stayed rooted where he was, fingers tightening around his vital instrument until he realized he was still holding it.
"...Right."
Embarrassed, he leaned Lovely against a nearby rock.
"There," he muttered. "Less awkward."
"I dunno," Jabber replied. "I think we've passed 'awkward' a while ago."
Despite himself, Zanka laughed.
The tension eased just enough.
Jabber slowly lifted one hand.
He paused before touching him, giving Zanka every opportunity to pull away. When Zanka didn't move, Jabber gently brushed a loose strand of hair back from his face.
The touch was impossibly light.
It sent a ridiculous shiver down Zanka's spine. He expected Jabber to be rough, like when fighting. The tenderness almost made Zanka squirm— in more ways than one.
"You're shaking," Jabber murmured.
"I know." Zanka mumbled back.
"Want me to stop?"
"...No."
Jabber smiled.
"So brave."
"Don't ruin the moment."
"I wasn't planning to."
His hand lingered against Zanka's cheek for another heartbeat before he leaned in.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Close enough that their foreheads almost touched.
Zanka could feel Jabber's breath, warm against his face.
Their eyes met one last time.
Neither of them looked away.
When their lips finally met, the kiss was feather-light, almost questioning. It lasted only a second before Jabber drew back the smallest distance, silently asking if that had been all right.
Instead of answering with words, Zanka closed the gap himself.
The second kiss was steadier.
His nervousness hadn't disappeared, but it was no longer overwhelming. He relaxed just enough to stop overthinking every tiny movement, letting the moment simply exist. Jabber responded just as gently, never rushing him, never trying to turn it into anything more than it was.
The world around them seemed strangely distant: the ruined battlefield, the broken stone, the dust still hanging in the air. None of it mattered for those few quiet moments.
Eventually, they separated naturally, lingering close enough that they could still feel each other's presence.
Neither of them spoke.
Jabber was the first to smile.
"...Well."
"...Well," Zanka echoed.
"I've imagined a lot of ways today's fight could end."
"I'm guessin’ that wasn't one of ‘em..."
"Not even close." Jabber laughed
Zanka let out an incredulous laugh, covering his face with one hand.
"I cannot believe my first kiss happened immediately after defeating my greatest enemy." Kyouka would be so disappointed in him if she knew. Enjin is going to be so disappointed in him because he’s going to find out eventually. The team leader can read Zanka like a book.
Jabber folded his arms with a grin.
"To be fair..."
"What?"
"You did win first."
Despite every logical reason not to, Zanka found himself smiling back. It was small, shy, and completely involuntary—and somehow, that made Jabber smile even wider.