A Faker's Wings

"Is that all you got, Mina-chan?" Karasuba asked, grinning with perverse pleasure at the state I was in. "And here I thought you'd give me a decent fight!"

I would have to agree with her on that point. From what I'd seen in my earlier fights with Sekirei, I'd really hoped that my skills would a match for hers. But it seemed that the Black Sekirei wasn't the leader of the Disciplinary Squad for nothing, as our brief struggle had proven.

Even with the surprise that I was much more than an ordinary human, even with fantastic swords of mythical power and superhuman strength and speed to guide them, I had been unable to defeat her. She'd been in hundreds of battle so far, whereas I had only a single war (albeit a gruesome one of epic proportions) and a few ventures out to hunt Apostles or other mythical creatures. I still had a ways to go before I could match someone like Karasuba with skill alone.

Luckily, however, I had one last trump to play.

"Master." Akitsu murmured in concern at my side.

The two of us had fought against the Black Sekirei. It had been a harsh battle, a losing battle, but we weren't gone yet.

But there was something she could do for me, something that would

"Akitsu." I answer, grimly determined. "I'm going to need your help for this."

"Ah." The ice-woman responded, a small blush appearing on her face. "Right now, master?"

"Yes, now." I affirm, and turn to face her fully. "There's no other way."

"Ah?" Karasuba leered sadistically at us, flourishing her sword absently as she watched our exchange. "Have you been holding out on me, Mina-chan? Do you have one last trick up your sleeve?"

I turn to give her frank look.

"Of course, assuming you give me the chance to try it out."

"Try?" She asked, and now her predatory gaze turned curious. "Something new? I think I would like to see that. Take your time, ashikabi-kun. I'll wait for you."

"Right." I face Akitsu once more, and she nods almost imperceptibly at me.

She draws close and kisses me fully on the lips.

For a moment I feel the slight drain on my od, the normal exchange between ashikabi and sekirei. But then that flow reversed, and I was receiving a massive amount of prana.

That was one of the most impressive abilities of the sekirei, I had found. Their almost effortless exchange of prana put many of the most sophisticated techniques to shame, and it was only a matter of finding out how it worked in order to find some way to reverse the ability. Akitsu had only been too willing to offer her services in developing the ability, and though I was sure the rest of my flock would have loved to join her I felt it was best to stick with someone who at least had an inkling of what to expect. I could only imagine what kind of kink Matsu would develop from my repeatedly sniffing her, and to be honest I was still uncomfortable with anyone knowing what it was I did in my makeshift laboratory.

And so it was the Akitsu and I had found a method to fully share power, trading prana as needed. It had taken a long time, but the results had been amazing.

And now I would need every ounce of power she could spare.

Her body went slack as I drew heavily on her, shivering quietly with the experience. I wasn't quite sure what it was like for her, but she had never complained when we had practised before.

My magical circuits surged with power, almost painfully so.

But it was enough power for me to unleash my ultimate weapon. My ultimate reality. I close my eyes, and concentrate.

"I am the bone of my sword." I begin, and I tap deep into the cavernous void inside of me that was my Reality Marble. My circuits warm as I tap into them for what was to come, the manifestation of my internal world.

And then something inside of me twisted.

It felt like my insides and suddenly been pierced by a thousand hooks and then pulled away, ripping me apart from the inside out. It was the worst pain I had ever experienced. Worse than Lacer's impalement, worse than Berserker's evisceration, worse than being pierced over and over again by Gilgamesh. My magical circuits blazed with sudden power, and I knew that something had gone horribly wrong with the only spell that I knew.

"Guh!" I grunt in pain, sagging down to my knees. I clutched at my belly with one hand, and supported myself over the groun with the other, breathing heavily. I'm not sure how I could keep doing so: I was sure my lungs had been torn to shreds.

"Master...?" Akitsu asked, full of concern. She rushed to my side, trying to support me with her body as whatever I had done to myself continued.

My body spasmed, another internal writhing turning everything inside of me to mush. I screamed in agony, and was mildly alarmed to hear a metallic quality to my voice.

No, not a metallic quality. My voice was like the tortured wail of steel bent too far, a blade being broken. The sound of a soul being twisted inwards on itself.

Perhaps it was my mind desperately trying to find some way to distract itself from the torture it was enduring, but a sudden revelation seared into me in the midst of that haze of pain. An explanation of sorts for the sekirei's impossible power.

Their natural prana was so much more potent than a human's. That much was obvious to see from way they twisted the natural world around them with their powers. But it was also incredibly volatile when combined with a foreign source. A human source. With just a little of my od, a sekirei would have enough power to unlock their norito and for a time gain unparalleled strength.

And I, fool that I was, had almost completely drained Akitsu of all of her prana. Then I'd combined both of our prana, and reached deep into my soul for my internal world.

And now that foreign prana was coursing through my body like a thousand blades, an alien force trying to impose itself on a system that could not support it. It was trying to warp my very soul into a familiar shape, one that could cope with the power it offered. And it was finding that I, unlike other humans, was not limited by my physical shape. I could change.

"My body is made of blades...!" I gasp out in horror, realizing what was happening.

Another surge of power wracked my body, and as if sensing what was to come I pushed Akitsu away from me.

I was becoming fragile.

I was breaking.

I was about to become dangerous.

Fire blazed out from my body, my Reality Marble manifesting itself inside of me. My back suddenly straightened as if someone had just shoved steel through my spine.

"I am the wings of my covenant." I sing out, the aria a twisted parody of what it once was. My voice is like the hum of steel, vibrating with impossible power. "Blades are my soul and blood is my destiny."

Behind me magical fire surges in preparation for what is to come. The aching in my back fills me with dread, as I know what is about to come. I had seen it many times before with my sekirei, after all.

My body and soul shudders as it is twisted beyond what it could bear, transfigured by the alien power of the sekirei. My circuits burn inside of me like molten steel, searing my body as they tore me apart. The blade that was my existence was growing with power with every second, manifesting more and more strongly as the alien prana fuelled it...

"My feathers are as a thousand swords."

There was no wings of light for me. No, not when I was so obviously Not Sekirei. But in a way I was also very Not Human. And the magic knew. It found a way to manifest a pair of wings in the only way I could.

Blades tore themselves from my back, cutting through my flesh like butter. Though I could not see them, I knew instinctively what others would see.

Wings of steel, stained with my own blood and bladed with an impossible keen. Where there should have been plumes and pinions there would instead be swords and daggers. My wings were made of swords. My wings were death.

But they do not fade! They are a distortion of a sekirei's wings, made real by magic whereas theirs was illusive and temporary. I am aware of each and every movement I make, as it moves the unfamiliar limbs I now find myself with.

"Unaware of loss," The pain begins to subside as my transfiguration nears completion. I allow myself to sink down slightly, beating the air with the twisted parody of a sekirei's power. "Nor aware of gain."

Bakuya and Kanshou appeared in my hands, appearing unbidden in my hands from nothingness. Thousands of other blades flit in and out of my mind, each of them just a thought away from becoming real.

"Withstood pain to become the ultimate weapon."

Another twist jolts through my existence, and I stagger backwards from it. Behind me I hear a gentle tinkling of metal as the movement causes my wings to shift.

Karasuba watches with a strange look on her face, a mix of morbid fascination and mounting concern. What was happening was far beyond anything her life had prepared her for, and it looked like she was currently trying to decide whether she should simply strike me down now or see where this was going.

It hardly mattered in any case. She was far too late to stop me. My body was already made of swords.

"I have no regrets." The metallic quality leaves my voice halfway through my incantation, and my voice returns to something like what it was before I had made this terrible mistake. "This is the only path."

Dimly, I could feel a dense nexus of magical circuits humming across my forehead, burning across my skin like a brand. I suspected I knew what I would find there later: a sekirei crest. If I had been able to think properly I might have laughed at the irony of it. At last I had a crest to call my own. If only it was natural.

I right myself, standing tall.

"My life is Unlimited Blade Works."

There is no longer a field of blades. There is no nightmare realm to great me. My soul is no longer what it was, twisted by alien magics so that I could at once become more and less than I was. Before, only a part of me had been Not Human. Now that part was the only thing left to me. Everything else had been cut away by my Reality Marble.

I was very much Not Human. But I was likewise very much Not Sekirei. I was an aberration of both, warped by a combination of both our magics.

For a moment silence reigns in the aftermath of my transfiguration.

"My, my Mina-chan," Karasuba suddenly breaks the silence as she recovers from her transfixion. Her katana swirls in her hands, and she prepared herself to go on the offensive once more. "How dramatic! I had no idea humans were capable of this."

I find myself grinning insanely at her words.

"They aren't." I state, and I raise my blades into the unique stance that was my own. Behind me I could hear the rustle of steel as my swords fanned out behind me, an impossible array of weaponry. For a moment Karasuba's eyes go wide at my proclamation, and then her leer returns.

She charges towards me, and with a detached calm I bring to mind a hundred blades. They rain down from my wings like feathers before they slash towards the Black Sekirei as if borne by a spectral wind. She dodges, she blocks, but in the end there is no defence against my storm of swords. It is only a matter of time before she it cut down, ripped apart before she can pose a threat to me.

Our battlefield is a distortion of the landscape of the previous Unlimited Blade Works. There are no hills, yet before me is a field of swords with their points dug into the ground. I have no doubt that I could, if only for a moment, change those nameless blades into legendary implements of untold power. I could rain down instant death upon all but the most powerful of enemies. I could-

I feel another jolt run through me, a sudden weakness enveloping me.

It seems I had reached the end of whatever power had been supplied me. My Reality Marble fades, and with it my deadly wings vanish. I left bereft of my fantastic power, the wounds on my back bleeding freely from my transformation. I close my eyes and try desperately to deaden myself to the pain of my body and the horrible sense of loss and impossible loneliness that suddenly courses through me.

A moment later I feel a warm body next to me, holding me closely. I am so shocked by the sudden embrace that for a moment I can do nothing, paralysed by my surprise. And then I snap open my eyes to see Akitsu looking me over with worried eyes. She is staring fixedly at something. Something that she has seen before, but had not expected to see again. Least of all on me.

She is staring at my forehead. At my crest.

I hold her closely, trying to fill that impossible void inside of me with her warmth.

"I'm broken." I whisper weakly before finally giving in to fatigue.

I am the wings of my covenant
Blades are my soul and blood is my destiny
My feathers are as a thousand swords
Unaware of loss, Nor aware of gain
Withstood pain to become the ultimate weapon
I have no regrets. This is the only path.
My life is Unlimited Blade Works