Twenty-Five \\ Collision - 衝突 - At the End of Days
Warning: violence.
Disclaimer: I don't own Kill la Kill.
Collision at the End of Days
Satsuki did not fear her enemy.
Certainly, she was as wary as was reasonable, and fully conscious of the fact that she fought at a disadvantage. But this awareness sharpened her; it could hardly bring her to cower before her foe, as their blades clashed wildly in a distantly familiar greeting.
If it had, Ryuuko might have been furious.
"You're the best," Ryuuko snarled, before shedding a blocked slash and moving into her own; Satsuki sidestepped the scissor's path and lunged, eyes sharp as Ryuuko parried quick strikes. "Y'know that, Satsuki? You're the greatest, hands down!"
"What a way you have of expressing your appreciation," Satsuki scoffed as they broke apart, mirroring each other as their heels slid a short way back. Gathering themselves, they sprang forward again, blades colliding with a ringing of steel. They circled in their dance, each trying to keep an advantageous position on the slanted ground. No openings, yet.
Ryuuko leveled one heavy scissor forward as they separated. "Don't give me that. This is what we are, right? Kiryuuin are a force in this world. Words don't always cut it for us; so what better a way for two forces to relate to each other? Slam together, and see who wins!"
Satsuki held the Kouryuu even with Ryuuko's larger blade, testing. "By way of collision, then?"
"Yeah… I think I'm just fine appreciating you at arm's length, for now."
"This is a bit further than an arm," Satsuki noted.
Ryuuko chortled, eyes glinting combatively with amusement. "I guess so."
The twitch of one foot, and four blades flew together again, blaring out an angry cacophony of singing, screeching steel.
What's this? Ryuuko thought, leaning out in evasion as a cut split itself across her cheek. But Satsuki had overcommitted – a move Ryuuko rewarded with a retaliatory knee strike to the gut. Satsuki braced for the blow, and when Ryuuko followed with a leg sweep, the taller woman twisted into a roll on impact, recovering in a crouch and slashing for the ankle of Ryuuko's planted foot.
Ryuuko hissed as the Bakuzan Gako nicked her. Her fighting style's changed, hasn't it? She swung a scissor in an arc, an overhead strike that dropped with a heavy clang upon the crouched woman's upraised, crossed blades.
Satsuki lunged in – the scissor dropped, tip catching on the floor behind her – and Ryuuko grunted at the dent her sister's skull put in her gut.
Ryuuko shut her eyes with a scowl as she was driven back. Opening them, she deflected the Gako that blurred for her throat – and took a graze from the longer Kouryuu across her front. When a forceful, harshly deflected slash from the Gako left Satsuki's back open, Ryuuko was prepared to claim an easy strike when the diverted shortsword's hilt returned as a bludgeon to her shoulder, rattling the air with a crunch.
"AAGH!"
Ryuuko's eyes were wide as her dislocated shoulder strained, as the scissor's weight pulled the weapon from her grasp – and as Satsuki, furiously cold, lunged for her with the Kouryuu.
The younger woman leaned away, foot snapping hard across Satsuki's wrist. The ebony blade jumped from her hand as Ryuuko spun forward from the move, driving a curved scissor handle dead into her cheek.
Satsuki hit the wall several meters back, pushed from it, and charged forward without pause. Ryuuko slashed out horizontally in time to meet her advance – and gawked as her scissor passed beneath leaping feet, coiled legs, as Satsuki's airborne form spun toward her.
The kick landed like a sack of lead across her skull, snapping her head aside and bowling her off her feet.
She came out of a bounce to land upright, hopping back to expend her remaining momentum. "I get it!" she cried, eyes alight with excitement as she pressed a hand to her cheek. "Yeah, your swordsmanship's always been sharper than mine, but you know I can read you by now if you stick to that prim, flawless form of yours! So Kiryuuin Satsuki wants to whittle down the gap by fighting recklessly?"
"A habit of yours that has made you seem even stronger than you are," Satsuki said, reclaiming the fallen Bakuzan Kouryuu. "In terms of damage output…"
"Huh?" Ryuuko crooned, gripping her slumped shoulder. She set it roughly; the dull crunch it produced would have made any other listener cringe. Her hanging hand clenched momentarily. "But you can't hope to soak up damage like I can. And you ain't got near as much practice with recklessness as I do. You better not be countin' on this being enough to beat me!"
Ryuuko drew back, and hurled her scissor straight. Satsuki lunged aside, clear of its path, cloak fluttering in her wake – and noticed too late the disarmed scissor on the ground in the direction she'd dodged, and the blurring figure that grasped it.
SHING!
The Bakuzan Gako narrowly caught Ryuuko's strike; Satsuki was off-balance as the blades locked. With a shove of force, Ryuuko drove her arm back, nearly getting the scissor's edge into her adversary's shoulder before the Bakuzan Kouryuu joined its companion in Satsuki's defense.
"That's too bad," Ryuuko said, barely flinching as she held off a shove from Satsuki's two blades against her one. "I'm physically suppressing my Fibers as much as possible, you know. But I'm still stronger than you–,"
She stepped and thrust her arm out, blowing Satsuki back.
"Still faster than you!"
Sweat flecked from Satsuki's wide-eyed face as she diverted a lunge, twisting away from a scissor that snipped shallowly through the outer side of her arm. She lunged to stab, and Ryuuko slipped inside the move, capturing Satsuki's forearm under her arm and squeezing to pin it tightly to her side.
"And I can take a hell of a lot more damage than you."
Satsuki's other blade lashed in – her arm was caught in the same manner, as Ryuuko thrashed her way inside her guard. A moment's struggle – and two right knees smashed into the side of their adversary's ribcage.
Satsuki yelled, as pain sprayed across her torso and jolting arm, burned like hot and cold pinpricks through her skull. And she registered before her a Ryuuko whose wincing eyes held her with a grin.
Satsuki tensed a moment before a hand clenched on her skull, her hair – and drove Satsuki's face down into a rising knee.
The world was blasted bright and dark; she gave a pained cry, crimson scattering from her lips as she was launched into the air.
She struck down on her upper back, as two blades clattered noisily to the nearby ground.
"Hm…" A sound of distaste lilted down toward her sprawled form. "Say, Satsuki – you're seriously tryin' to kill me, huh? And that's awesome!" Ryuuko exclaimed, clapping as the woman rose shakily on her side, propping up with one elbow and getting to her knees. "You're the strongest human, after all. But if this is the brightest that spirit a' yours can burn–,"
Ryuuko ducked almost casually inside a sloppily thrown swing – grabbed a belt and a sleeve, and wrenched the taller woman over herself to slam cleanly to the crackling floor. She wheezed.
"It's disappointing, you know!" Ryuuko whined, rising again and propping a hand on her hip. She leaned over her prone foe, feet near Satsuki's head. "We're a force in this world, yeah? But it's lookin' more and more like we're a force for the natural order after all. Unless you can muster up the strength to prove me otherwise…"
"R-Ryuuko…" Satsuki coughed. Her eyes cracked open. "What are you fighting for, in the first place…?"
She smirked crookedly. "A name like Ryuuko ain't for me anymore – not with the master watchin' over me. This was the way it had to be. My place is here, standing above humans and Life Fibers alike. I am the hand of evolution and fruition, second only to the master! The LAW of this world!"
"The 'law'?" Satsuki scoffed, an arm folded across her bruised ribs. "You? Mind the drivel you spout on Academy grounds, Ryuuko!"
The younger combatant's lip twitched in annoyance. "Who is it, then? You? Ain't you one to talk, in the position you're in." Her eyes darkened. "Errant Kiryuuin…"
Her hand drifted down, toward a pained face.
"This world…"
Satsuki's hand clenched on her trenchcoat sleeve.
"…doesn't NEED you anymore–!"
Satsuki's feet kicked up – her ankles hooked behind Ryuuko's neck.
She tore a button from her sleeve – releasing a narrow, springloaded pin that snapped around, driving a tooth at its end into her arm. She was pulling a shocked Ryuuko forward over her, off her feet, as the button bounced lightly away, as a blot of red blossomed on her sleeve – and vanished.
A shockwave hit the air, and a crimson haze emanated from a sleeve that grew tight against the arm within it. A hand snapped strongly into a fist.
"Huh…?" Ryuuko breathed, as Satsuki's knuckles neared her midriff.
WHAM!
Ryuuko felt her abdominals give way, her flesh compact, nerves stretching, vertebrae shifting – an instant before her back smashed through the ceiling.
That ceiling should have been at least twenty meters above her, she recalled vaguely.
…Shit.
Satsuki rolled neatly backwards and onto her feet, hopping away as a bloody figure cracked into the ground, and several tons of broken stone rained down in her wake.
Brilliantly made, Houka, Satsuki thought, teeth clenched as she clutched at her shivering arm. Her eyes flickered toward the ground nearby. The Kouryuu…
She had no sooner reached for the blade's hilt than an explosion shook the room; she snatched up the weapon, ducking behind it in a crouch and using it to deflect sailing debris amid rapidly scattering dust.
She raised her head, cold eyes meeting dancing blue. Ryuuko stood straight but relaxed, head low and arms out, feet planted shoulder-width apart. Her smile was lopsided, but calm, as the blood that ran in streaks from her matted hairline dripped from her chin. Steaming breath sifted from her lips as she quirked an angled brow. "Not bad."
Satsuki's eyes narrowed. I felt her spinal column crack, she thought, watching Ryuuko pop her neck. If she can stand, and move without pain… she can't suppress her regenerative factor any more fully than she can suppress her physical strength. Satsuki's teeth ground. I must end this quickly…
"That's Kiryuuin Satsuki for ya'," Ryuuko drawled, leaning down to push aside some rubble. Her voice softened. "Of course you had a plan. Thank goodness…" But when she rose, scissor blades in hand, her eyes were sharp. "You'll entertain me for a bit longer, then? And what is it that you've got rigged up in that snazzy coat of yours?"
"Life Fiber skin patches," Satsuki conceded. "Isolated until pierced and wet with blood. You can thank Inumuta for them."
"A localized power boost?" Ryuuko sneered. "But it looks like it only lasts an instant. And your arm ain't lookin' too good…"
Satsuki frowned, looking down; her hand, visible beneath the coat's cuff at her wrist, remained patterned with reddened veins, fingers twitching frequently.
"You're letting Life Fibers inhabit you internally. In small areas, they won't kill an adult human, but even as you are now, you'll burn your nervous system out if you keep that up… But you realize that, don't you?"
Satsuki stifled a grunt, clenching her fist as the fibers that had spread into her arm settled. Her lip curled at a subtle smell of singed skin. "Underestimate me at your own peril, Matoi Ryuuko."
"Heh…" Ryuuko hefted a scissor, spinning it by its handle about her arm. She caught it in a sure grip, and slashed powerfully through the quailing air before her.
Satsuki began instinctively to raise her blade in the heartbeat before her neck prickled, and she leaned sharply back. The energy seemed to singe her brow before the wall behind her, briefly denting in line with the strike, burst in an explosion of smoke and flame.
"Really," Satsuki growled, rushing forward. "Is this how humans fight?"
"Don't you start!" Ryuuko retorted, sending a vertical slash rippling out at great speed.
Still advancing down the slanted ground, Satsuki spun aside the plane of the slice, and slid smoothly under a lateral energy slash that followed; as it passed she rose, lunging into Ryuuko as the waves she'd dodged exploded at her back. The two traded blows at blinding speeds, Satsuki's one blade flitting fearlessly left and right about the barrage of her dual-wielding foe. Ryuuko spun to duck beneath a slash, and Satsuki hopped clear of the low slash of retaliation. Ryuuko rose, her other scissor swinging around onto Satsuki's quickly blocking blade.
"What manner of fool are you, Ryuuko? What do you stand to accomplish by betraying humanity?!" Satsuki cried, as their blades sparked.
"It's no betrayal! It's fixing my mistake! The Life Fibers can still make something of this miserable, dying world!"
"Do you truly derive fulfilment from such a cause?! Do you believe the things you're saying?!" Satsuki yelled, scowling intensely at the shorter woman as they shoved apart, and locked again. "The Life Fibers were molding you into a controllable asset, the same way I once sought to manipulate you – the same way Ragyou tried to shape me! I know how wrong I was, to treat you as a mere tool instead of a comrade! But after the time we spent together, are you now truly content with simply being used?! Such a Matoi Ryuuko… I cannot tolerate!"
"What you can or can't tolerate is none of my concern! Kiryuuin Satsuki!" Ryuuko cried, launching a foot into the taller woman's gut.
Satsuki was thrown in an arc, her wind lost in a harsh breath. Striking down on her backside, lower on the slanted floor, she bounced and rolled back, stretched an arm out at her side – fingers finding purchase on a stone pillar, swinging herself neatly behind it on her feet.
Ryuuko fired off a slash that burned wickedly red. The pillar was rent in two and destroyed with the promptly ensuing explosion, bringing a crumbling area of the unsteady ceiling down on top of it. Ryuuko peered intently into the clearing grey dust, an eyebrow raised.
She turned her head, consciousness given one moment to skirt across the formidable figure that sailed toward her back from a leap – eyes madly severe, a charged and crackling fist drawn back, and a stray button tumbling end over end through the air.
The downward punch swatted her through the floor, through concrete. Her body shot at an angle into the denting ground and bounced, rolling rapidly until she managed to get her feet beneath her, slide, and lose balance again, backpedalling to a stumbling halt in a corridor of the dark basement lab. She shuddered, blinking and choking as her rattled head swam, and her eyes focused again on a shadow that plunged into the dust cloud of her landing.
"Fuck–!" She leaned back as she found Satsuki blurring in before her, her coat trailing dust, the arcing gleam of the Kouryuu shearing a few strands of hair before her widening eyes. Ryuuko swung around the scissor she'd held onto, and Satsuki spun to kick the flat of the blade upward with a passing boot – before the long-haired woman's sword, clasped in two hands, crossed Ryuuko's midsection cleanly as the girl brought a fist to Satsuki's temple.
A reeling Ryuuko blanched in bewilderment as blood splattered thickly to the ground at her feet, tracing out the smooth arc of Satsuki's slash. And in the wake of the dark crimson froth, certain vital components of her being began to spill outward.
Staggering from the glancing blow, Satsuki watched the girl's mouth stretching smoothly open, watched her neck tense, watched her brow pinch inward above wide, dulling eyes. Then crimson light sprang from Ryuuko's slit stomach, racing to pattern the torn innards being thrown from it. Halted, they snapped back with a squelch, yanked into place before glistening threads darted to sew the wound shut.
Her recovery factor is strengthening! Satsuki thought, scowling. If she fully awakens now…!
In the absurdly brief duration Ryuuko required to bounce back from evisceration, and her eyes to sharpen again, Satsuki remained off-balance, shocked, silken hair trailing clumsily in her wake. Ryuuko lunged toward her, as Satsuki toppled into a wall.
SPLIKT! The squelch of splitting flesh.
Ryuuko's eyes grew as blood sailed into the air. Satsuki's eyes were fierce.
The Kouryuu was lodged to the hilt in Ryuuko's gut, protruding from her back.
A scissor blade was lodged in Satsuki's side, staining torn clothes with a dropping curtain of deep red.
"Wh…" Ryuuko's hands shook; she hacked out a mouthful of blood, grimacing in shock. She shook her head, fluid rumbling on her breath. "Why wouldn't you block…?!"
Satsuki's eyes remained clear, in a face just slightly taut with pain. She panted a moment, and slowly raised her head. "This world is not for Life Fibers… It is not for KIRYUUIN, either!"
With the bellow she rose into Ryuuko, twisting the blade in her sister's spurting gut, and lifted her with it from her feet. Ryuuko yowled aloud as she was hefted up over Satsuki's head, and cast strongly away.
She crashed into a wall, slumping, a stark hand pressing its palm in shock to the hot wetness of her gut as it soaked into her clothes. "Y-you… you FOOL!" she screamed, blood spraying past stained teeth. "Only one of us needs to die here!"
No! Don't kill her – absorb her, you filthy ape! Use her! Her energy–!
Shut UP for a second–!
The Kouryuu sparked, briefly illuminating the bloodstained wall as Ryuuko lunged clear. "What's your game, Ryuuko?!"
"It ain't as stupid as yours, that's for sure!" she cried, distraught as she ducked and stepped clear of strike after speeding strike of the whistling blade. "Just stop! Stop it, Satsuki–!" She yelped as a scissor blade, grabbed from the ground and spun in deft fingers, lashed across her upraised forearm, snipping to bone.
"One of us must die, in this battle? That's what you'd resolved?! Yet you were only half-correct, Ryuuko! The Kiryuuin's accursed destiny must be eliminated, before it blights humanity any further!"
"You're outta your fucking mind!" Ryuuko yelled, staggering as the Kouryuu bit open her flesh about her ribs, savage. "Yeah, I couldn't trust you – so I went ahead and made a crazy decision on my own, too!"
–The final conscious choice, of a human heart.–
"But no way in hell it's supposed to go like this!"
The blade gashed her outer thigh. Ryuuko threw a backhand punch – so neatly evaded, as electrical eyes tracked her movements like a hawk's.
–Threats of impulse… the ones even she can't see coming.–
–Satsuki, sprawling to the ground, clipped by a blind move–
–I love her. She trusts me. But…–
–I resent her. The part of me that resents her… that bottles up everything I hate about her…
It's beautiful, isn't it? It exists to protect you.
Yes…
Let it consume you.
This… animosity… It's all I need, for the likes of her…
So when she comes for you… when you are pitted against her, you will not falter, correct?
No. I'll destroy her. Destroy her, same as Ragyou.
Good… I leave her in your hands…–
"Ack!" she cried, as a slash went splitting from shoulder to hip, as her wounds struggled against her will to restore themselves.
"You wanted to give me a fighting chance, and I'm grateful! But I promised I would never abandon you, you child!"
Ryuuko's hand darted forward, slipping to the flat of an oncoming scissor; the weapon popped to miniature form, and an unfazed Satsuki snatched it again from the air to drive deep into Ryuuko's shoulder. She bit back a scream, batting a hand at the nearing Bakuzan to send it clattering away.
Satsuki dropped her shoulder and lunged, bashing all her weight into the smaller woman's gut.
"Do you hear me?!" she shouted at her stunned foe. "I'll follow you, Ryuuko! So, please…"
Water streaked from furious eyes as Satsuki flicked two buttons from her pants at either thigh, and two more from her sleeves, leaping after Ryuuko's lurching form.
"…DIE!"
An axe kick, left heel bludgeoned down into deforming muscle at the base of the neck.
TAMONTEN
多聞天
She backflipped out of the move, feet dropping strongly to the earth an instant before right boot lashed out into a yielding, then shattering knee.
KOUMOKUTEN
広目天
Left hand drew back, clenching with a crackle of burning power as crimson veins flared across its arm's surface – thrusting the enhanced punch clear through Ryuuko's stomach, with horrific force, bursting out behind with flung crimson rain as the girl wailed in pain.
JIKOKUTEN
治国天
Left fist withdrew sharply, pulling Ryuuko in as right hand clenched. Stunned, beginning to drop, Ryuuko stared blankly into the rapidly oncoming knuckles.
–"The sharper the threat, the sharper my defense. Your attack was lukewarm, and so I was delayed in detecting it. If you had attacked with the sharp edge, and smelled of the intent to kill, my counter would have been flawless."–
CRACK–!
Satsuki felt her adversary's buckling neck snap cleanly, under the momentous slam to her face.
ZOUCHOUTEN
増長天
She sailed straight, slightly upward and back – spinning clear through an aquarium wall that briefly rippled outward, perturbed like liquid crystal, before smoothly disintegrating glass exploded outward in her wake.
SHITENNOUJIN
四天王陣
（してんのうじん）
[FOUR HEAVENLY KINGS FORMATION]
The sound, of a thrown body's crushing impact with unforgiving stone, and of a hail of scattering glass, was incredible.
In what must have been just a moment more, all had settled. Satsuki lowered her head in the silence, gasping for air as she let fall an outstretched, shaking fist. She retrieved the fallen Bakuzan Kouryuu in twitching fingers, and began to walk gingerly forward. She crossed the base of the aquarium to the other side, dark boots crunching with every step on glittering shards of powdered glass.
It was dark, here, but she could make out a radial web of cracks deeply scarring the wall. At its center was a splotch of splattered red, trailed thickly to the ground. At its base, beneath the column of smeared darkness, lay a crumpled, pitiful figure.
Satsuki's eyes grew, glinting coldly with moisture.
You can't quite die… Shaking shoulders slumped, shrinking as she removed her gaze briefly from the softly wheezing, twisted form in the shadows. Then she tightened her grip on the Kouryuu, and stepped forward, reaching with an ensanguined hand for the scissor somehow still lodged in Ryuuko's shoulder.
Two blades would make it swift.
The screech pierced her skull, sent a jolt through her spine. And Satsuki stared, momentarily baffled, as a fiend with blankly searing crimson eyes sprang like a blind animal for her throat.
Satsuki reacted. The Kouryuu, thrust for a reaching hand, embedded itself instead in a forearm, and was wrenched with shocking strength from her grasp. But the half-broken fiend still sailed forward from her lunge, fangs flashing behind her lips. Satsuki ducked narrowly aside, slipped behind her, with an arm folded across her throat and another locking against her own wrist to secure the hold. Mindless as Ryuuko screamed in fury, she yelled and wrenched back, lifting Ryuuko off her feet by a straining, newly-mended neck.
Ryuuko kicked and thrashed wildly, unsteadying her taller captor enough to get her feet on the ground; she threw them savagely into the ruined wall, in a backwards shove. Satsuki felt the wind knocked from her lungs in one clean burst; she didn't feel the blood that trickled from her hairline until crimson clouded one of her burning eyes. Her world shook as Ryuuko pressed Satsuki with all her strength between Ryuuko's back and the wall, but Satsuki kept the squeeze on her neck, desperate, compressing the arteries meant to oxygenate the brain.
Screeching madly, breathlessly, Ryuuko hacked a punishing elbow into Satsuki's wounded side, her ribs – once, twice, thrice, each one rattling. Faltering, slumping briefly, she bucked and shoved with her legs to slam the taller woman back against the quailing wall again. She slammed her there repeatedly, until finally she pressed steadily again – beating with determined elbows that grew slow, but still firm – with a steadiness that weakened, as her mouth worked, her starving chest seized and spasmed in confusion, her foot slid out. She clawed at Satsuki's arm, head thrashing and jerking what little it could with a suffocated howl of defiance. Outrage. But her struggles couldn't budge her – she fell heavily to her knees, and then flat. Straddling her back, mouth and face running with smeared blood, Satsuki wrenched upward, straining Ryuuko's neck with all her remaining bodily strength, as resistance continued to dissipate, and her only coherent thought was that it wasn't quick, she'd wanted to make it quick, and this wasn't quick at all.
A hand smacked the ground, flailed up with drunken desperation – planted blindly on Satsuki's face, dragging over skin, squeezing painfully on her cheeks, her jaw. It couldn't find her eye to gouge. Satsuki kept up her hold, intent.
A fanged snarl loosened. The jaw went slack, leaving her mouth dropped agape.
The hand on Satsuki's face tensed… and was strengthless. It fell limply away, on the end of a dropping arm; unblinking, Satsuki watched it go. And to her pounding skull, it struck down on the floor with a resounding thud.
Satsuki couldn't breathe, though she found her lungs ached, empty, within a battered ribcage. She fought to relinquish her hold, but her arms had seized up with great, hollow strength. The silence was deafening. Her pulse still raced.
Ryuuko's did not.
Satsuki's throat burned.
–"I can hold you up for longer than you think, Ryuuko. I'm your sister."–
She dropped her head beside an upturned, blue-tinged face, drew in a shuddering breath, and wept.
She might or might not have glimpsed the finger twitch that preceded a number of straight, red-black skewers lancing from Ryuuko's back and through hers.
Satsuki sputtered as she was lifted into the air by the fine, lengthening threads. Then they curved, slinging her around in an arc to slam her solidly to the ground.
A raucous laugh assailed the chamber walls as Ryuuko rose, irises dyed a deep and bloodthirsty red, and power grew vibrant in the air around her.
世界の果てに
-Collision-
End
衝突 – collision, conflict