As far as the prospect of hatsu ever defeating arie hon..... LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL
ehem
Come on, this is clearly never going to happen. We saw hatsu not too long ago going up against aguero who was using a knife and the two clearly tied. And this is hatsu, having done the hell out of that "work hard" thing tower plebeians occasionally rant about against aguero, a jackass using a knife who had spent the entirety of his life until two arcs after that avoiding his talent like if it was a rabid rat made out of spiders and rachel. And even then this was a feat for hatsu, not aguero.
And it's not even hon that is the issue here, the arie have way too much going for them in general:
- Their swordsmanship isn't as much swordsmanship as it is manipulating space. Hatsu cannot even be said to be playing the same game as an arie in general.
- Arie swordsmanship cannot be avoided for the most part or blocked for the most part.
- The arie have been repeatedly said to have the strongest fighting style in the tower.
Now lets look at how fights in the tower have played out so far. First hoaquin... He was defeated by bam but... bam did so using bullshit soul powers which also granted him actual arie swordsmanship for a bit.
Now ran vs inieta... Why did ran win this fight? Ran won entirely because his physical strength is bullshit levels of astounding. He literally won by tanking his way through omnidirectional slashes with his bare body (and I assume reinforcement as well) and nailing inieta with the mother of lightning spears.
And of course, zahard, the one person that has actually defeated hon. It's a bit of speculation on my part but I daresay he also won using the ran approach to omnidirectional space bending slashes. At least it seems pretty damn likely at least.
Considering how hatsu performed against aguero it is fairly clear hatsu as we last saw him is nowhere near close to being on his way to even defeating an standard arie, let alone fucking hon.
That said, I do think hatsu will eventually defeat an arie. It would be an absolute moment of glory for hatsu. Because he will have achieved something which the entirety of the context presented by the story said was impossible. He might do it because he lords an ignition weapon over his enemy or some other tenacity bullshit but I still think it is coming. But it won't be hon. It won't ever be hon. Hatsu defeating hon at swordsmanship is less likely than bam winning at physical strength against zahard.