[center][@Double], [@Bright_Ops], [@Spectral], [@Stylobilly]
((I've decided to play this out for one more pass))[/center]

A moment... a second... a fraction of a second... 

The time in which a Struggle could sway momentum was fleeting, every instant thereof precious if a contestant sought victory. 

Zack had banked, somewhat, on a hope that Seifer, as others before him, would sell him short, and as a result be less on his guard than normal; perhaps, Zack wondered, if he hadn't secured a spot going into the final rounds, that would have been more the case. But Seifer was in as good of form as ever, and his ego remained, obnoxiously oversized as it was, far less of a detriment to his sensibility. 

As Zack had kept in his awareness, Seifer had gone for the feigned thrust, swiftly diverting his course. He caught the quick shift his opponent's grip. Difficult as it may have been foresee a swing with a back-handed grip, once one was started, there was a brief window in which the defender could adjust for it. Zack took as much advantage of that window of time, in which Seifer's baton needed to make up the slight spatial difference. He abandoned his idea of swinging for Seifer's shoulder; the change in his {Seifer's} stance and relative position rendered that impractical. Zack, despite his best efforts to avoid it, put himself on the defensive. 

He swung his baton down, angling it so that his blade avoided the attempted hooking tactic, and instead met his adversary's blade. The distinctive thud of the hard foam blades striking each other resonated between the two for a short span. Not missing a step, Zack made another, minor adjustment. He shifted just enough to put himself in position to keep his opponent in front of him. While doing this, he used his baton to push Seifer's into a twist, rotating counter clockwise from Zack's perspective, or clockwise from Seifer's. The move would serve to disadvantage Seifer's backhand grip by way of pushing his wrist into a less flexible position. 

Zack's follow through would be a thrust of his own, pushing the end of his blade towards Seifer's abdominals, while then ducking down a short distance to avoid taking a baton to the face himself.