The other side of the coin...
Miyuki kneeled in the snow, fighting unconsiousness. Sayuri's thrust had cut deeply into her chest, barely missing her heart, but nicking her lung. Sayuri yanked the katana out, sending Miyuki facefirst into the snow; the injured warrior struggled back to her knees.
Sayuri laughed hoarsely; her side bled some as she did so. "You should at least know this before you die. Regulus brought you back to serve HIM; you failed and now he's found someone better--me. Now... he has charged me with making you pay for your insolence." She lifted up her katana, intending to open up Miyuki's throat.
"Before you kill me... consider Regulus..." Miyuki coughed. "He's using you...like he intended to use me...He will kill you in the most... dishonorable way possible ... when--not if, WHEN-- he tires of you..." She was interrupted by a spate of more coughing and her voice sank to a whipser. "Do what you want...here and now... just think about it..." She never heard Sayuri's reply; her body gave out and she pitched forward into the snow.
Sayuri stared down at the figure. "At least you won't be around to see IF I am wrong." she said quietly.
A slow clapping turned the woman around. Regulus de Faustin approached in a stroll, as if he was out walking in a park in the city on a lazy afternoon instead of in a snowy, rapidly darkening forest in western Italy. "Stunningly well done, my student..."
Sayuri bowed her head. "I am honored, my sensei." Miyuki's words began to circle in her head...
"Maybe this time, she will stay dead." Regulus strode past Sayuri to Miyuki's body. He used his foot to roll the unconscious woman onto her back; a tiny trickle of blood ran out of her mouth as he did so. He kicked her in the side, then bent and retrieved her katana. "Now finish her."
Without hesitation, Sayuri lifted her own katana and pointed it down over Miyuki's throat. She brought the katana up, then drove it down--stopping just barely before Miyuki's throat.
Regulus watched her, unamused and silent.
"Tell me, teacher, how do you know her?"
The warlord chuckled. "She is no one, just a failure. Now get on with it."
"Was she telling the truth...?" Sayuri looked at Regulus out of the corner of her eye.
He raised an elegant eyebrow. "About...?"
"You... and bringing her back..." (He will lie to you...make your choice...) The probing voice returned, but only barely.
"My dear... truth is in the eye of the--what do you think you are doing?" Regulus eyed Sayuri; the woman had, in a barely visible flash, brought her katana from Miyuki's throat to Regulus'. She did not see that, in an unnaturally faster move, Regulus had taken Miyuki's katana and stabbed outward into Sayuri's stomach, where there was no armor. The katana at his throat waivered momentarily as he pulled it out, but Sayuri remained standing, barely. Taking advantage of the woman's condition, he wheeled away from the katana and brought his own to Sayuri's throat. "That was a very grave mistake, child..."
Sayuri pretended to collapse, but brought up her katana up in a slash that would have opened the warlord from left hip to right shoulder had he not moved. "You forget, Ms. Mishima, I taught you what you know...I can read you like a book." Regulus parried the followup strike and thrust the katana he took from Miyuki towards Sayuri's throat. When Sayuri sidestepped it, Regulus lashed out with a foot, catching Sayuri in her left knee and bringing her down hard. As soon as the woman fell, Regulus brought the katana down into her left shoulder joint, just under the armor, and ripped it out.
"Ahh-?!" Sayuri gasped in pain.
"You are pathetic..." Regulus knelt down and, with unnatural strength, lifted Sayuri smoothly by the throat and slammed her against the nearest tree. Despite being stabbed through the shoulder and slammed into the tree, Sayuri still had a grip on her katana. She flipped it around and stabbed Regulus through the stomach, causing him to drop her.
Regulus staggered back and looked down. The wound was deep and bled enormously, but Regulus had survived worse. "Do you think this is supposed to stop me? You truly are pathetic."
Sayuri staggered to her feet. "If I go down, you're going--" The statement was concluded by a serious of hoarse coughs. Regulus charged forward to slash with Miyuki's katana; Sayuri blocked it and parried the followup.
The snow began to grow fiercer so now Sayuri was competing with, not only her injuries, but the weather as well. The sun had gone down, limiting visibility. She knew she was fighting a losing battle.
A break in her defences allowed Regulus to slash across the woman's unprotected stomach; she dropped like a stone to the ground without making a sound. Regulus rolled her over with his foot, and, upon seeing her still alive, placed his katana against her throat, prompting a harsh gasp from the gravely injured woman. "It is such a shame this could not have gone the way I wanted to... you would have learned a valuable lesson--?!" Regulus looked past Sayuri to the empty spot where Miyuki's body had been.
"Perhaps you'll learn one too!"
The warlord turned too late, allowing the katana to draw a line of blood from Sayuri's throat. He saw a tiny woman and a flashing blade, then felt a line of fire cut deeply into his mid chest. He slumped to his knees, only now taking in that his killer was Matsudaira Miyuki. "...nngh..." He had meant to curse her with one last breath, but it escaped him and he toppled forward without another sound.
Sayuri, now semi-conscious, felt another blade on her neck, roughly where Regulus' blade had been. "You bitch..." There was no mistaking the ice in Matsudaira's voice; the ice on the ground was warmer.
In response, Sayuri tilted her head back, allowing Miyuki a better angle to open her throat with a flick of her wrist. "...do it... finish it then..."
"You don't deserve death." Miyuki said coldly.
"...time thinks otherwise" Sayuri gave a wan smile, followed by coughs that brought blood to her mouth and out in a trickle to puddle beneath her head. "...before I go... my pouch...left side..." She motioned weakly with her right arm as her left was useless.
Miyuki knelt down, causing the blade to move against Sayuri's throat; the fallen woman did not move or make a sound. She grabbed the aforementioned pouch and opened it--
--and nearly dropped her katana. "This--this is--where--?!?" Inside the pouch, a silver piece of metal glowed with a wholesome blue light.
"...does it matter...?" Sayuri's voice was weaker. "...help him...not much time..." As if to accentuate the last comment, Sayuri dissolved into fits of weak coughs that wracked her entire body.
Miyuki was speechless. In her hand, or rather, in the pouch in her hand, she held a piece of Soul Calibur, the sister sword to Soul Edge, whose shard she had worn for years before losing it to Charade. The shard that still was buried in her breast... A sharp, stabbing pain evolved from that spot and Miyuki flinched. She looked back at Sayuri.
The woman was silent, still and pale; nothing more would come from her.
Miyuki looked over towards Mitsurugi's shroud covered body and was dismayed to see Nicholas face down on the ground. She limped towards the boy. "Nicholas--?!"
He stirred, slightly. "Miyuki...? How...?"
"You said it yourself, boy; the future is not up to humankind." She smiled warmly, a smile that greatly differed from the glacial one she had given Sayuri.
"...you're hurt..." Nicholas gasped from Miyuki's arms, his mind taken off his own injury for a few seconds.
"So are you... seems like we have more company..." Miyuki set Nicholas down gently; the boy rolled over and tried to get to his feet. "Stay here..." Despite being gravely injured herself, Miyuki picked up her katana and staggered a few steps from where Nicholas and Mitsurugi's body were. "Who's there...?" she had enough time to call out before sinking to her knees and falling face down into the snow.
Nicholas' last sight was seeing several figures, one a horse and cart, running towards them...