[Inno]

Diablo
I thought it was interesting that you shaped your verse into a tree. I tried something similar myself once. The story of a seed growing to be the most impressive tree around, surpassing those he had once admired, was fairly simple because this story is essentially a fable. It can also be read as a commentary on how you view yourself, having climbed the ranks in both topical and battling leagues as other veterans have either left, fallen off or failed to adapt. The verse was pretty good, and the technical aspects of the writing are solid as always, but the content didn't really grip me. It wasn't bad, it just didn't particularly engage me. Still, a solid piece, well done.

Symetrik
I found the story here fascinating. A disease has ravaged earth and that disease is spread by mice. The protagonist is a cat who spends his whole life hunting the mice, but feels like he is making little impact, as loved ones die, and he gradually becomes more twisted and bitter. In the end he passes the torch to a new hunter and dies from the disease that the mice carry. I thought the world was well-built with a mood well established.
Unfortunately, I thought the technical aspects of the verse were not as impressive. Some of the wording seemed off, like the stanza with "would lead to Rodentian nose". It is unclear whether he is following a trail of cheese left by the mice, or he laid the trail as a trap, but either way, saying it would lead to Rodentian nose is very awkwardly worded at best. I'm not going to go through line by line, but there are a fair few examples of wording like that, which I assume was done for rhyme. I also found the rhyme and flow to be a little inconsistent, particularly in the first two stanzas. Some parts were dope on that front though. Your second last stanza, that starts with "There's small mice..", the first two lines of that worked beautifully.
Anyway, I liked this, nice job.

I found this to be a tough battle to vote on. I thought Symetrik had the more interesting content, but Diablo's content was still solid enough. Diablo's technical writing here was stronger than Symetrik's. In all, I thought Symetrik had higher highs, but also lower lows, as Diablo was consistent in all areas. I'm never quite sure where to vote in instances like that. I guess I'll go with Symetrik, because I was more engaged in his verse, despite the technique not being quite at the same level as Diablo, but I wouldn't be surprised if I'm in the minority because Diablo didn't really have any weaknesses in his verse.

Vote - Symetrik