Twenty-One\\ Ghosts -同化- At the End of Days
Ghosts at the End of Days
Satsuki's boots had spent the better part of an hour wearing down the grass at the foot of the bridge before she seated herself on a rock, trying not to fidget in the fading twilight. Her foot tapped impatiently.
There was no reason Ryuuko should have taken the entire day, surely? Satsuki had had farther to travel. But this was the meeting place. She could only cause confusion by abandoning it prematurely.
When the last of the daylight was fading, and Satsuki was preparing to march on Honnouji – that was when Ryuuko appeared. As if she'd been putting it off right up to the deadline.
That was probably the case.
Still, Satsuki couldn't be irate with her, as she'd halfway hoped to be.
The girl's morose visage lifted to her sister; she stopped walking only when the long-haired woman, running up to her, wrapped her tightly in a wordless hug, hunching enough to rest her chin on Ryuuko's shoulder.
After several moments, Ryuuko folded her arms around her in return.
They knew without any discussion, then, that neither trip had gone well.
"You're freezing," Satsuki scolded softly, pulling away.
"…Yeah," Ryuuko agreed numbly, looking down at her hand.
Soon enough Satsuki had started a campfire. She didn't have the heart to call Ryuuko out on her lack of effort to assist her. The girl didn't look prepared to channel effort into much of anything.
Beaten, Satsuki thought, peering at the younger woman's idle gaze across the fire. That's how you look right now, Matoi Ryuuko.
You look the way I feel.
And… how do you truly feel, I wonder?
"Ryuuko…"
"I'm home, huh?"
Satsuki blinked at the sudden remark, but nodded in agreement, smiling sadly. "Yes… welcome back." Thank you, for coming back to me.
Ryuuko lowered her head again. "…I thought if I could find the enemy and beat it, I'd be fine. I thought I could stop the pain… but there are still scars, huh?"
"That's inevitable," Satsuki said. "I… I've come to accept that there's no shame in it." You helped teach me that; you opened your arms to me as I learned to cry. So, surely you can…
"But if it got to me, it won, right?" Ryuuko said, wincing. "If I say it affected me, and that I'm still messed up after it's gone, does that mean I let it w-win?"
Satsuki shook her head, standing as the girl's voice grew tight. "I don't care who won or who lost, Ryuuko. I just want you to talk to me. I can't help you with the pain if you won't talk to me!"
"You're shaken up, too, aren't you? Probably no one else would even be able to tell. Cause all the hurt just rolls off, for you, don't it? Bounces off that shiny castle in your mind or somethin'? But apparently all I got in my head is a heap of kindling," Ryuuko sneered, bitter, and averted her gaze. "…It ain't fair."
"Not fair?" Satsuki's teeth ground. Her voice was low, but curbed just short of becoming sharp. "I can think through the pain; you already know that doesn't make me impervious to it. And I know what it's like, to feel weak. Do you think it was easy to build up this castle? Would you suppose I did so for the fun of it?"
Ryuuko declined to respond.
Satsuki took a steadying breath. She would have to take Ryuuko up on her promise in the morning, whether or not she herself had the energy to.
But it was true that the castle of her mind wouldn't fail her; the greater her need for it, the stronger it stood. She could at least stay steadfast for Ryuuko, for now.
Morning arrived quietly.
Not planning to remain there long, they hadn't gotten particularly settled the previous night; when they rose a fair while after waking, they sat on the bedroll and munched hardtack and canned fruit.
"So," Satsuki said, physically tensing in distaste at the blow she dealt to the silence. There was virtually no cleaner way to start the discussion. One word, quiet as it was, felt like it held all the force, and grace, of a truck veering into a rollover, for the depth of the silence it crashed through.
"So," Ryuuko echoed, toneless, around a dry mouthful she'd been working on for a half-minute already. A car plowed into the truck. At least the silence was lifting.
Head low, Satsuki frowned, glancing at her hunched sister from the corner of her eye. There was little question Ryuuko's trip had held greater risk, after all. "…Did it… did it hurt you?" She wished she had a clue what sort of 'it' she spoke of.
"Do I look hurt to you?"
"I don't know," Satsuki said quietly, a sting nipping uncomfortably at her throat. "I don't know anymore, Ryuuko."
The younger woman finally looked at her, softening slightly, though her frown – one that seemed to warn perpetually of a grimace – remained unchanged. "Sis…" She looked away, bitter, as if there was a foul taste to be found in their flavorless fare. "No… no. I didn't let it hurt me." Though I had to hit it with one'a those hand grenades I'm stuck lighting candles with…
A breath of muted relief. Ryuuko looked up as she felt a hand give a gentle squeeze above her knee. "I'm glad."
Satsuki didn't dare let the silence stretch beyond a minute, this time.
"It's time to talk to me, Ryuuko."
"This couldn't wait 'til after breakfast?" was the dull complaint.
Satsuki grasped her forearm as Ryuuko scooped a large spoonful of diced pear. Ryuuko glared defensively at her, cowering. Her teeth clenched, eyes wincing as if in the mere dim sunlight that beat down through the clouds, as syrup dripped from the spoon and onto her thigh.
"After breakfast?" Satsuki answered, stern. "I gave you the night. It was supposed to be 'after Honnouji.'" Her lip wrinkled, but she held firm. "Do you plan to lock me out again? I thought you understood that you can trust me! If not now, when? After breakfast? After we reach the hideout? After we pack up again? Or after we travel all the way back to the stronghold?"
Ryuuko's hand shook. She quickly escaped Satsuki's gaze. "I…"
She swallowed dryly.
"I… can't go back there."
Satsuki's eyes grew briefly. "And why is that?"
Ryuuko stood, drawing away from the gentle hand on her knee. She shook her head, frown finally stretching into a scowl, and strode away.
"Ryuuko!" Satsuki snapped. She stood, following her onto the bridge. "Ryuuko! If not there, where are we going?"
"We, we, we," Ryuuko muttered. "Always 'we,' ain't it?" she asked, glowering back Satsuki's way.
The long-haired woman froze. Something had impacted the castle wall with unusual force. "What're you…?"
Ryuuko cringed at her look. "I can't deal with this…"
Satsuki grasped her shoulder. "You will talk to me about this, Ryuuko! Now!"
Ryuuko held her glare combatively for several heartbeats, before looking away, stubbornly mute.
She started in shock as Satsuki grasped the neck of her shirt, yanking her in and lifting her roughly to her toes. Forehead an inch from Ryuuko's – eyes narrowed, seething silently, as the younger woman bristled.
Ryuuko quirked a brow, dangerous. "Easy there, princess…"
Her hand clenched slowly into a fist, knuckles popping deliberately with the move.
Satsuki's shove made her reel; when Ryuuko caught her footing, and put up her fists, the Kiryuuin squared her own stance.
"This coulda' waited 'til after breakfast," Ryuuko snarled, beckoning.
Satsuki sprang.
Ryuuko tensed, began to shift in reaction – and paused.
THWACK!
The short-haired woman hit the ground unceremoniously, sliding to a stop. Satsuki glared down at her, questioning.
"Are you…" Ryuuko touched the back of her hand to the swelling patch of blue on her cheek. She looked up. "A-are you fucking crazy?!" she screamed. "I can't fight you anymore!"
"Ryuuko…"
Ryuuko's breath caught sharply.
Her head swiveled to the side. "Wh–?"
Such was the moment before the bridge exploded beneath them.
Thrown by lurching stone, Satsuki flipped backwards in the air and landed lightly on her feet – blades drawn, deflecting a heavy, sailing chunk of concrete she couldn't quite sidestep. She staggered back, straightening as a writhing mass of black-red threads surged up before her, stretching tendrils of itself onto the broken edges of the bridge. And it kept rising, until the amorphous mess stretched twenty meters into the air. Swirling, collapsing on itself, and reforming again, it gave a murderous scream.
Satsuki's gaze snapped forward. "H–how did you not sense this?!"
"I don't know!" Ryuuko cried in bafflement, rising from where she'd fallen on her backside. "I mean – there's obviously something wrong with this one!"
Satsuki gritted her teeth. A considerable gap, and this monstrosity, separated her from her sister.
Ryuuko's scissors stood wedged in the dirt, back by their obliviously crackling campfire, a ways off from Satsuki's side of the bridge.
This thing… couldn't have separated us intentionally? Satsuki wondered, watching it glow with power. It cracked open the crumbling semblance of a dripping, fibrous, half-substantial maw, and bellowed a furious, earth-shaking roar. With this it twisted itself upward, contracting as it did, shuddering as several dozen small spots on its surface glowed – and fine lances of Life Fibers shot out in all directions, each strong enough to shatter stone where it struck.
Landing from a leap of evasion, Satsuki sprinted to the side, spinning to hack apart skewers in a wild flurry of sword work as they neared; she slid to a halt as the straight spears retracted, sharply as a frog's tongue, back to the main body. Its strikes – so heavy!
It attacked once more, sending dozens of spears now arcing out on either side, whirring with speed as they homed for two targets. The long-haired woman spun sharply, blades flashing about her low stance as severed fibers scattered away; it lashed out randomly, and she leapt back as battered sections of the bridge went crashing into the water below. Across the gap, Ryuuko was swinging with crimson-clawed hands, furiously fending off strike after strike.
Satsuki chanced to focus then on the writhing main body of their foe; shimmering waves of iridescent light, electrically red, crackled across its dark form. Even if I could reach it, where the hell would I strike?!
"Ryuuko–!" She grunted, leaping aside as a great tangle of Life Fibers swatted for her, smacking another hunk of the bridge into the churning waters below. "Ryuuko! How many cores?!"
"Like – like, thirty, or – no, thirty-five-ish? Shit!" Twisting awkwardly, she narrowly deflected a strike. "Somewhere 'round there!" was her conclusion.
"Thirty-five?!"
"Damn it! I'm comin' over!" Ryuuko shouted, stretching out a hand. Unraveling claws morphed smoothly into five lines of thread, shooting forward to snap about the railing on Satsuki's side – the nearer land side – of the bridge. She leapt with the sharply pulling threads, launching herself forward.
Until a mass of fibers, branching sharply off the nearest side of the great cluster, snapped in the likeness of a colossal fist about the threads guiding her. It yanked upward with a savage cry; a hunk of railing and stone broke free on one end of the lines, while on the other, Ryuuko was swung uncontrolled through the air. She screeched as it pulled to retract the fist, with Ryuuko, toward its body.
The reddened veins on Ryuuko's free hand flared up to her elbow – and her entire hand surged into the form of a spear, which she thrust madly into the oncoming surface.
It was like a toothpick rammed into the hide of a large beast. Still, the enemy gurgled and shrieked, convulsing in rage.
The snarl on Ryuuko's face fell. Wh… what is…? She looked up as a space on the bleeding surface, above her spear-hand, squirmed, rippled, and snapped open into the form of a massive, angry red eye trained intently on her face.
"Ungh!" Her hand – the thing was latching in with its own fibers, trying to integrate hers that'd stabbed it. Feet braced as well as they could on its writhing form, she fought for one moment before a spot on the surface, just before her, glowed and lanced straight for her heart.
She twisted, screaming aloud as it ran her shoulder through, spraying blood out into the air behind her.
Another mass spilled outward and rose above her; it carried the monstrous, lolling eye with it as it twisted sloppily into the shape of a draconic, fanged mouth before diving hungrily for her.
A stone crunched harshly into the eye, causing the thing's whole form to shriek and contort.
"Over here!" Satsuki challenged, her hand still outstretched, her teeth bared and aura fierce. While its focus was disturbed, Ryuuko wrenched to tear her bleeding arm free, hacked through the skewer in her shoulder, and kicked desperately away, launching herself backwards toward the bridge and Satsuki.
Satsuki caught her about the waist, feet skidding back at the collision. Ryuuko was panting as the older sister turned, half dragging, half guiding her along, looking back at the screeching cluster as she did. "Run," Satsuki breathed, slapping the dazed girl's cheek. "Ryuuko, run!"
Brow deeply furrowed, Ryuuko had been staring back at the cluster, lips parted, face aghast. The clump of Fibers stuck through her shoulder pulsed with energy, and with emotion.
With pain, and wild, bitter rage. It filled her; it bled thickly, poisonously, into the air around her. It shook her.
It was haunting.
A slap to the cheek snapped her back to awareness. She put her feet on the ground, stumbling a clumsy few steps before running at Satsuki's side.
The roar at their backs shook their bones.
I…
She looked up, as a shadow dropped from overhead.
I can't run away, can I…?
The cluster, having sprung in pursuit, shrank dramatically as it spun through the air, and then showered the earth at their heels in waves of Fiber spears. A shockwave blew them forward, with a mass of exploding earth.
Satsuki landed and rolled to her feet; Ryuuko fell awkwardly, flopping to a halt beside her. Satsuki scowled.
The cluster landed fifteen meters before them, crashing down upon their small campsite.
"It's intelligent," Satsuki murmured, as it rose on an array of spindly legs. The Rending Scissors had been swallowed up.
It shrank again, shining with power as it did; the convulsing heaps of Fibers comprising it twisted and sucked inward, until the steaming cluster was the size of a large car. It paused, as if to adjust, but gave off a steady, many-toned growl as it assessed them.
"Ryuuko," Satsuki said, offering her hand to the woman still on the ground. "Do it."
Ryuuko looked to her with a start, wide eyes desolate. "I…?"
"What are you waiting for? You promised me you wouldn't let us die, didn't you–?!"
"I can't–!"
They leapt apart as a beam of light – pure energy – lanced forward from the cluster's dropping mouth. Satsuki felt, from a meter clear as it passed, that it singed the air. A hundred meters beyond, at the end of a trail of freshly ruptured earth, an explosion rang out to briefly paint the landscape in stark contrast.
Ryuuko was gawking at the sight when her body shook and folded, under a force that smashed against her gut. A distinct body, branched off from the one that glowered her way with one throbbing eye, had slammed into her midair for her inattention, throwing her backwards with a bark of pain.
That look… she thought, cold. This feeling… it's– And she crashed to the ground and slid.
A third body had gone for Satsuki; the mass of compacted Life Fibers danced and arced madly, lashing out at parrying blades, leaping to jab out with skewers that were neatly dodged. It formed blades of its own, the number of them indiscernible for how swiftly, fluidly they morphed in and out of form, split, struck, withdrew, lashed out again. Satsuki backpedalled, fighting without blinking.
Her foe drew back, spun violently – swung around an 'arm' that expanded with previously compacted mass. As it swung, the limb flattened into the shape of a scythe to jump in speed, and slam into crossed, black blades.
The earth depressed, cracked at Satsuki's feet, as her knees strained and her arms were forced back by the blocking blades she held. She began to bend – and then shot backwards, tumbling uncontrolled for dozens of meters against hard, unforgiving earth.
A glimpse – she pushed blindly, sprawling upward. A fluid blade arced around, passed beneath her. Well behind her back, trees split in two before exploding outward, annihilating from the plane of the slash.
And she crashed down heavily again, on her side, and rolled to a halt. Gasping in pain, she looked up at the red-black cluster thirty meters away. Her skull throbbed as she tried to stand. My… body…
"Stop!" Ryuuko was wailing, hunched on the ground. "Stop this!"
Satsuki's teeth ground as the cluster consolidated itself again. It stretched out two great arms, from either side of a body that dragged along behind it as it made for her in wild, bounding strides, fanged mouth bellowing in contempt.
Satsuki squared her stance, eyes wide and fierce. Bakuzan… Don't fail me!
The fiend leapt forward – and was caught short midair, Fiber-veined eye jumping wide in surprise, as ten glinting red threads circled and snapped taut about it.
Another figure was leaping for its back.
"HISSATSU!"
必殺
（ひっさつ）
[CERTAIN KILL]
Two vibrantly crimson blades protracted from two elbows, jutting sturdily along the forearms, toward the wrists, as the arms were drawn to cross before her.
Sparkling liquid arced down her cheek.
"KIKEN – DANZETSU!"
危険断絶
（きけんだんぜつ）
[HAZARD BREAKER]
CRACK–!
Ryuuko's mouth fell open as shattered fragments of her Life Fiber blades glinted in the air before her sweeping arms, scattered like glass on concrete against the creature's back.
Plates of sleek, red-black armor had encircled its form.
It reached back with a colossal arm, plucked her from the carapace, and slammed her to the ground.
Then it lifted its arm, and with a long, unearthly roar, slammed it solidly down where she'd fallen, lurching as it did.
A shockwave sent Satsuki's feet sliding rapidly back, dust and debris assailing the air. She stared from behind an upraised arm, stunned and wordless, as it drew its other arm back, and smashed the earth again. Jutting cracks spread and widened, leaping farther along the ground.
That sound… Satsuki wondered in shock, and the beginnings of comprehension, at its howl. A sound of outrage… and lament.
It raised its other arm again.
Ryuuko… you were crying just now, weren't you?
FWHAM!
Displaced hunks of earth curved upward, torn nonsensically into the air at the tremendous blow.
When the dust had scattered, Ryuuko was there, broken and bloody, half-buried in compacted earth – arms brightly veined, and crimson hands braced against the wall that was the creature's fist. Bloodstained eyes were cringing, with a look that seemed heedless of her own physical pain.
"What'd I do?" she whimpered, as the monster above her struggled in a blind rage, howled and fought to crush her.
"What'd I do?!" she demanded again, screaming over it. "What'd I do to turn you into this?!"
"Ryuuko!" Satsuki shouted in warning, as its other fist rose again.
The girl's watering eyes were horrified, her voice strained as her mouth stretched wide.
"How did I make you this angry?! Senketsu!"
Satsuki's heart shook.
Then she slashed out at the air, sending her power slicing destructively into the cluster's descending arm. She hadn't broken any cores, she knew; those would in all likelihood be locked tightly away in its armored body. Still it yowled and reeled, a mad yellow eye casting about furiously as the gouged appendage sprayed with human blood. Spotting Satsuki, it gave a screech and lifted its good arm from Ryuuko, drawing back to swing the older sister's way.
An upward kick – a clumsy move, and from the ground Ryuuko sent the fist recoiling upward and back as it was passing. In its wake, her leg was bending, as if freely, to an unnatural angle above her.
After a brief delay, pressure punched the air; the punished earth at Ryuuko's back exploded outward again as she was flattened to it, and her twisted leg, from the knee down, burst into jutting shards of bone and spraying blood.
She coughed softly, strengthless, and choked on the taste of liquid copper. A dull but high-pitched shrill rang steadily around her ears. Vaguely she registered Satsuki running past her, going on the attack in retaliation, cutting by the fiend with a vicious slash. She felt the Senketsu-cluster's scream as it chased and attacked. She felt Satsuki evading, running, slipping from the range of its strikes. Struggling to deal damage.
A ragged breath. Ryuuko clutched at her heart, felt her lungs straining painfully around ribs that had grown a bit too acquainted with them.
Is this…
…What you'd call 'repentance'…?
She chuckled bitterly, water running with blood back into her sweaty hair, tickling coldly in her ringing ears.
I… I fucked up, didn't I?
Satsuki, leaping to dodge a sudden shower of skewers – into the path of a momentous fist, closing rapidly as she caught sight of it.
I'm sorry.
Ryuuko's shoulder was there first – bumping Satsuki aside.
A hard wall of force, a fist wider than Ryuuko was tall, crushed into her front. She buckled against it; eyes stretched wide, blood raining from a breathless nose and mouth, as more inside of her burst and cracked.
All this time… maybe it wasn't death I was chasing, was it?
It was repentance.
It was the same thing Satsuki starts to feel, when I hurt her. When she's thinking of the Kiryuuin's karma.
Senketsu had leapt in pursuit of her flung form, glancing her with a vicious uppercut. Ryuuko watched the cloudy sky, then the razed battleground, pan crazily across her swimming vision. It was like she was flying, weightless, until she hit ground with a splintering crunch.
Even now… I just move, don't I?
The impact, somehow, had made her alert. She tried to sit up, flailing onto her side – and was bombarded by a dozen missiles fired from beneath deformed, flaring lapels on Senketsu's form.
Satsuki saw Ryuuko scramble brokenly and be buried in the explosions of a rain of Life Fiber bombs. In the clearing smoke a bloody figure rose halfway, mindlessly, and propelled itself forward in a short shove of one leg – to crash down face-first, motionless.
The long-haired woman rushed in the hope of attacking the enemy's blind side, only to be confronted with a fresh wave of explosives. She ducked, narrowly cutting her dash to slide under the path of the projectiles; as they exploded behind her a great, bladed arm lashed out. She jumped aside, rolling, and continued to run.
A huge fist winding back, swinging into her path. Pivot.
A twinge, a sliding foot scraping through coarse dirt, and her knee was on the ground.
Shit…!
"HA!" she shouted, raising her head, and a wave of force smacked sharply into the oncoming foe. But it was massive, with the dense weight of its Fibers and energy of thirty-odd cores; rather than go flying, as a mortal creature might, it was merely buffeted. Drawing back with a howl, it swung its titanic fist down, toward Satsuki – and onto Ryuuko's upraised hands, with a boom.
Satsuki didn't blink at the wild-eyed girl suddenly crouched above her and shaking with strength. The Bakuzan Kouryuu flashed around as Satsuki gathered herself and sprang – severing the beast's arm near the fist Ryuuko was holding off.
It reeled, staggering back with a screech. At least it responded to pain–
"No–!"
Satsuki turned just in time to see the Life Fiber fist, losing form, snap down about Ryuuko's body, latching onto her arm, torso, and neck. The girl fell to one knee, pulling and clawing vainly at the clinging, rippling threads. Her body locked up as they squeezed, forcing themselves violently on her bleeding shoulder and other wounds. Sweat rolled down her face; crimson veins were covering her form, from jaw to extremities.
"I can't… m-move…!"
The main cluster was throwing itself toward them.
Satsuki shouted, halting it, willpower alone blowing it one foot back. She stepped in front of Ryuuko, stance strong, blades upraised, steel eyes intensely resolute.
The cluster opened its mouth, firing a blast of light. Satsuki bore her ki outward with a shout, one sword angling vertically before her. The oncoming blast split in two, twin branches sundering the earth on either side of Satsuki and the girl behind her.
Satsuki's hair fluttered quietly in the wind, in the smoke of scorched earth, as she stared the beast down.
Its bloodshot eye almost seemed to focus. For one instant, it held something like acknowledgment.
Then it drew back, as Satsuki squared her stance again.
It lunged and roared; she yelled, bombarding it with an unrelenting flux of her aura. Her feet dug down; her fists tightened strongly on her blades. Head high, she held the monster immobile this way as it struggled mid-swing.
She sank into a combative stance, drawing back a moment before it finally shattered her pressure. When the monster thus swung, she swung right back, prepared to meet it with everything she had left.
A flash of black-red shot forward at her side, meeting the nearing fist with concussive force.
Satsuki looked back at the grim-faced woman who stepped stiffly up at her side. The clinging fibers she'd attacked with twitched and pulsed erratically in the air, woven at the base into Ryuuko's shoulder and back. She flexed a shaking hand.
"You and I… are still the same kind of monster after all, ain't we, Senketsu?"
The cluster before them growled furiously, seething as it had whenever it laid its eye on Ryuuko. Consumed by rage.
"I couldn't believe you'd forgotten me. But you never forgot me, either – you know exactly who I am, and at this point, that's all the more reason you wanna kick my sorry ass. But I wondered why, when I looked at you, I saw my own rage staring me back in the face."
A tear ran down her cheek. Teeth gritting, she reached forward, as if to touch.
"Even sustained within you… the source of it's unmistakable. I'm sorr… no. I said I'd never make you cry such bitter tears again, didn't I? I failed your trust… utterly and completely. And I can't ever ask you to forgive me for that.
"But…" She spread her feet, raising one fist to her side. "I'm not ready to die just yet. There's something I've gotta do."
The snarling creature before them lowered its body as it shivered in rage, diseased with it.
The girl and the kamui leapt as one.
Ryuuko flexed her hand, drew back, and swung a fist ablaze with an aura of vivid power.
The Fibers fused to her back snapped to form, fiber weaving to the form of tissue, tissues solidifying to the shape of muscle. In the shadow of her move, a gargantuan Life Fiber fist, blazing with energy, connected spectacularly with what had been Senketsu, sending stray bits of warped, shattered armor careening into the air.
An outraged screech, and it swung for Ryuuko's unguarded side. Fibers now flowed from the skin of that rising arm, and from her back – melding into another titanic hand that latched firmly onto the wrist, catching the strike. The Senketsu-cluster lunged for her with its fang-lined maw, and Ryuuko's first Life Fiber fist latched onto his 'head' and upper jaw, thumb digging in his mouth, wrestling him back as he howled in her face.
"You're crazy strong, all right," she said, deathly calm. "But so's the first human I ever consumed. The first human… I ever destroyed!"
The Fibers Ryuuko commanded wrenched, stretching what they held until it split elastically, snapped like hair – ripped off the cluster's arm. She moved forward, and threw a staggering, three-hit combo of Fiber manipulation punches, rattling the air and driving the battered enemy back; armor crumbled and sailed from its form faster than it could regenerate it.
Satsuki's eyes were wide. "Ryuuko… y-you…?"
"Yeah," she said bitterly, "it's clear now–!"
A skewer lanced out from the weakened cluster as Ryuuko was drawing back again. It had been its last shot; more than a hand's length across, it pierced her gut and drove her back.
She swore as the great power of moments before tried to realign; Senketsu would assimilate her, with the skewer rapidly spreading and fusing still more fibers into her gut. The Fibers she controlled were paralyzed. Her knees shook, and summarily dropped her.
A hand clapped onto her shoulder – a shoulder half-overrun with eerily pulsating threads though it was.
"You have the resolve now, right?" Satsuki asked, looking from the corner of her eye.
Ryuuko nodded, and took her hand.
Senketsu might have had a better shot than the average cluster at assimilating Ryuuko. But the fact remained that he couldn't synchronize with Satsuki's energy with the crisp, flawless ease with which Ryuuko did.
I'm the one who can make the most of this power, after all.
When she straightened, her control was uncompromised. Her hair danced, streaked in brilliant blue undertones as power arced across her skin. What had broken in her battered body solidified, ordered itself, and was strong again. Taking a breath, she opened her eyes on the immense but cowering figure of her foe. And she found she was connected to him – his despair, his rage, his fear.
He had suffered so much, spent so long quiet and alone. She felt it all, in his bitter, beautiful soul.
We're so… so in sync right now, aren't we? she realized, lip trembling with emotion. But…
Her hand latched strongly onto the skewer in her gut.
"I'm sorry, old friend. I can't wear you anymore."
The power spiraling madly through her body coalesced in her arm, until her flesh seemed to blaze with streaming shards of multicolored light. Her hand clenched, crimson claws piercing.
HISSATSU
必殺
(ひっさつ)
[CERTAIN KILL]
The power shot like lightning into the great skewer of Life Fibers, tracing it to strike clean into Senketsu's heart. Trailing it, innumerable starbursts of light swept in a wave through the skewer, and every fiber of the cluster's being. His eye grew wide as he was blown backwards, a small, stark droplet of light sparkling intensely from deep within his blackening form – and fading.
"SAIGAI DANZETSU!"
災害断絶
（さいがいだんぜつ）
[CALAMITY BREAKER]
The cluster shuddered, compacted grotesquely into itself – and exploded in a blast of light and thunderous sound, a final, disembodied howl resounding in the air. A shockwave in one instant passed, and in the next razed the jagged earth, and cracked it again.
Satsuki had shielded her face with her arms, bracing against the blast. Lowering them as the winds petered out, she saw Ryuuko standing strong as before, crouched with one palm outstretched before her. The girl started to sway, hair settling as her appearance reverted.
Before them was… nothing. Where the cluster had been was falling dust and empty air – empty but for two scissor blades clattering down, and dozens of short, glowing red threads, aimlessly afloat.
Then the drifting threads froze in the air – for one moment suspended – and shot toward Ryuuko, snapping and burrowing into the quickly vanishing wound in her gut.
Ryuuko straightened with a grunt. She scowled as patterns of red returned to her skin, burning across her form with the new power surging through her, lighting up the mess of Life Fibers still half-fused to her. Then it all snapped inward – every fused thread swallowed into her body and cleanly integrated by the time her wounds sealed behind them.
The world blurred around her; she fell forward, knees and elbows struck by the earth before she realized she'd lost her footing. And she screamed.
She grasped at her skull, thrashing; saliva ran from her lips as she flailed, struck and cracked the earth with a hand. So much power – so many Life Fibers, burning inside her–
A grip on her shoulder. A blind move.
Satsuki crashed painfully down on her shoulder and side, gasping as she bounced to a halt. She blinked in confusion, bringing a shaking hand to her jaw. Wet – her skin had broken. Her mouth hung open in shock. Ryuuko's knuckles had clipped her. Satsuki had felt it like a sledgehammer.
She now saw her younger sister a ways before her, shoulders hunched like a wild thing, eyes furious and sightless as she snarled. On her knees, her head flung back with a horrific howl, arms back, eyes wide.
And suddenly, her rage seemed to melt; she slouched as if empty, and her body lurched. She vomited in the dirt, a meager breakfast dyed in the blood of already-mended wounds. Then she fainted.
Satsuki didn't move. She was tired, and her head throbbed.
But by the tension in Ryuuko's shuddering form, Satsuki knew she dreamed.
世界の果てに
-Ghosts-
End
.
次回
NEXT TIME
最後の対決の時すべきだったのに．．．
IN WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN A FINAL BATTLE...
『何か』曲がった。
'SOMETHING' WENT AWRY.