Twenty-Six \\ Born to Be - いるように生まれついていた - At the End of Days
A/N: If I had to pick one thing that's most offputting about ffnet, it's the refusal to support more than one explamation point. I mean it's not as bad as that stint a while back when it took out exclamation points after question marks (like you couldn't have someone exclaim a question), but it's still annoying. Is it normally necessary to have more than one exclamation point? No. But this is an anime fanfiction and I want the occasional two and rarely up to three excamation points, dang it (imagine an annoyed emoticon here, since ffnet automatically removes most emoticon-like inputs as well). Well, that's just one of a string of restrictive things about ffnet that I find grating, but what can you do. Things like this are ostensibly in place to inhibit trolls and spam, but they're still offputting.
Anyways, as you may recall this story is also up on AO3 (Archive of Our Own), which I've rapidly come to like quite a bit more than ffnet, freedom of formatting being one of the reasons... On AO3, it also has relevant illustrations inserted in appropriate places, which is fun (though not necessary to continuity, of course). Anyways, if you're reading here, you might want to check my dA (hinata0321, and the gallery folder for this story) to see some chapter art after you've finished this chapter. As always, for future readers passing through - beware of potential spoilers for later chapters if you're not caught up!
Disclaimer: I don't own Kill la Kill.
Born to Be at the End of Days
Ryuuko's slouched figure shook with laughter as threads retracted into her back; her tattered cloak, liquefying, was absorbed with them. "You messed up, Kiryuuin Satsuki!" she roared. "You gave these things enough time to wake up!"
She thrust out an arm; a black-red spear lanced forward from about her elbow. Satsuki dived aside, rolling as it snapped through the floor where she'd been. It withdrew as Satsuki tried to rise – but she cringed, pressing a hand to her torso as blood dripped to the floor. With the moment's pause, Ryuuko was before the Kiryuuin from a leap, fist drawn back.
Satsuki slipped outside the punch in a low stance, grasping for her attacker's hand and pulling it close to her waist; her trailing foot dropped back, and she turned her hips, forcing Ryuuko off-balance. But as she turned in reverse, twisting the captured hand, Ryuuko recognized it for a move meant to throw her onto her back.
Anyone else's pain reflex would have helped Satsuki throw them down.
Ryuuko's wrist broke with a heavy snap, even as she sent her other fist into Satsuki's shocked face.
The wall she hit buckled. Bouncing from it, staggering in disorientation, she registered the figure closing in, and tore a button from her boot.
Ryuuko blurred, dodging before Satsuki kicked. Red eyes glinted with amusement as a ripple of force skittered across her cheek, from the foot that passed just beside it. Ducking, she caught her shoulder under Satsuki's knee, and drove her again to the wall at her back. Satsuki grunted, face pale as her wounds were compressed, as Ryuuko pushed on her leg.
"You hafta' pick those buttons carefully, yeah?" Ryuuko sneered. "Because not only do they wear on you too much to waste – each power boost is limited to fueling one type of motion, one attack. They're pre-set. But I can sense Life Fibers and bioenergy pretty damn well, remember? You caught me by surprise before, but if I just read what group of muscles that blatant burst of energy's raring up in, I can tell where your enhanced hit's goin' before you throw it!"
Satsuki growled and threw a punch; Ryuuko's crooked wrist straightened out, and she caught the fist with a clap, squeezing until Satsuki's teeth gritted at the straining tendons. So easily, Ryuuko might have broken her bones.
Instead she released her, hopped back, and planted a foot on the Kiryuuin's breastbone with enough force to send her through the wall.
Satsuki landed amid sailing rubble in the adjacent room, rolled painfully to a halt – and twisted aside, evading a foot that stomped down for her head. But Ryuuko grabbed her shirtneck, and slammed a fist down into her face, with a resounding crash, sending blood spattering from Satsuki's lips to the floor at her side.
"You settled down yet?" Ryuuko asked, as Satsuki gasped and choked beneath her. Quirking a brow, Ryuuko sensed the patches of Life Fibers sewn to Satsuki's skin; two in her front and back, pierced by a skewer that had probably grazed a kidney, were active, sinking Fibers like plant roots into her flesh and agitating nerves across her middle. Ryuuko shook her head.
"To mitigate vital damage?" Ryuuko guessed, prodding two fingers through a hole in Satsuki's vest to brush over spasming abdominals. "Hmm? It's patching up, after all… but it's a struggle just to keep these Fibers from spreading further, isn't it? So desperate to live…"
"It is n-not… my life that concerns me…!"
"Oh? That's right – your brilliant plan was to kill us both, and leave the world to ordinary humans and Life Fibers!"
"And what is your plan? To destroy everyone?"
"I ain't destroying anyone, Satsuki. I'm saving them," she said slowly. "This life is painful; this world is wretched. The fools miserable enough to choose suffering over submission… I will bring them salvation. The master freed me from my pain, and I can free the rest! What is it you gotta' prove, that you just can't accept that?!"
"This isn't about me, Ryuuko! It isn't about either of us, but much more! Humans, and this world, are beautiful! They are not deluded – they, too, know pain! If they seek to live regardless, no one has the right to callously dismiss their will!"
"Oh? You want them to live freely, but you yourself are bound! You seek to bear the weight of the Kiryuuin's sins on your back – you, alone, were willing to endure it all. So you thought you'd save the world. You thought you'd be the one to take on all the Kiryuuin's karma, and protect other humans, other families, from suffering like you'd suffered. And what are you doing now? What sort of purpose can you serve?"
"No purpose that you could comprehend any longer, I'm sure," Satsuki snarled.
Ryuuko's lip twitched. She reached up overhead; a fine thread glinted in the air, and a scissor handle promptly clapped into her grasp. She leveled the blade at Satsuki's neck. "You think I'm the crazy one here? All I decided was that I'm not enough of a masochist to toil against the natural order. And I've been rewarded! I don't have to feel pain now – I don't suffer! And I'm stronger than I ever was as a god-forsaken human!"
"You no longer know what strength is!" Satsuki cried. "Do you so readily betray your own words? Humanity is no weakness! It can't be – it is what makes this life worth living! Worth PROTECTING, with everything we have! It is the only reason we were able to FIGHT as long as we did!"
"Able to torture ourselves, ya' mean?" Ryuuko scoffed. Eyes darkening, she repositioned the scissor. "Alright. If your humanity gives you the strength to fight, then by all means… fight."
The blade plunged into Satsuki's thigh.
The woman stiffened visibly, but held her tongue.
"Oh? That's Kiryuuin Satsuki, alright," Ryuuko said, pushing down through the quadriceps until the scissor caught bone. Satsuki's lips parted; her chest quaked, silent, as liquid pooled about the similarly colored scissor and ran from her leg to the floor. "You never show your pain, no matter how much you suffer. But it's the strangest thing…"
She pushed down firmly, watching Satsuki's head turn her wide eyes away.
"Once upon a time… You tended my wounds when I was injured. I nursed you to health when you were sick… I rubbed your back, when it ached. We ate soup from the same can. And we offered each other warmth, when our bodies were cold… love, when our hearts felt alone."
"R-Ryuuko…!" Satsuki's neck strained, in pain.
"You're human, right? Beneath these eyes, you can't even pretend you're not. So go ahead… you can tell me if it hurts."
The blade strained against the femur, beginning to pierce – to crack. Satsuki's eyes stretched wide, and she screamed.
Ryuuko shut her eyes, elevating her chin as the terrible screech died out. "…Sorry," she said, opening eyes dispassionate above her pushing hand. "It looks like the sound of human distress doesn't affect me anymore, after all."
Satsuki snarled; she spoke rapidly, livid. "No one is asking for mercy from the likes of–AAAAGH–!"
Ryuuko had withdrawn the blade, and as swiftly dropped her foot against the wound. "Such defiance," she crooned, but even the intimation of pity was weak, as she ground her foot down. "You were always so above it all… so impervious to pain, I resented you. The sorts of things that tormented me, that could have driven me mad, wouldn't have made you bat an eye. And that scared me. It freaked me the fuck out! You know that?!" she cried, stomping. "Why are you so fucking strong?! Me, on the other hand – you know what's keepin' me in line? If I resist, the master will give my emotions back! I'll have to face what I've done, what I did four years ago! If I feel empathy again, for one more minute, it'll break me! And it's taunting me over what I'm doin' right now, puttin' emotions right at the corner of my eyes, and it's terrifying! But you knew my crime, and wanted to bear all my karma yourself! Karma I could never atone for! You're so righteous it makes me sick!"
"Stop it!" Satsuki screamed at last, grasping at her pants leg, fingers clawing near Ryuuko's foot. "Stop!"
Continue.
Yes.
So Ryuuko pressed harder, as sympathy teased uncomfortably at the edges of perception, obedient lest she'd be faced with standing alone before a floodgate only the master's hand could bar. She watched in naught but morbid fascination as Satsuki's form went instinctively still, the will to struggle wiped clean. Clean, as clean as Ryuuko was now… She cringed.
"See?!" she cried, suddenly distraught, "Humans hate pain! But you… you chose this pain. The purpose driving you, all along, has been to suffer in this world. You should like to have survived until all other humans perished, in repentance for the sins of our lineage – suffering in the broken world our blood created."
"Th-that's…"
"You were never aiming to enjoy the life we had, were you? I wanted to dull my pain, but you… For all the guilt, pleasure can only bring you pain, right? To the point that you prefer anguish over pleasure? Is this why you resist your nature to give in to Life Fibers?!"
"Matoi Ryuuko… If nothing else, I'll resist because I am the only one strong enough to stop you…"
"You? Strong enough to stop me?" Stepping clear, Ryuuko lifted Satsuki by her shirtneck, until the woman's feet hung over the ground, kicking clumsily against each other. "I'm not sure how I feel about hearin' that from a fool who doesn't even have a weapon to raise against me. You cling for dear life to the power of Life Fibers and your Kiryuuin blood – the things you seek to destroy, you're powerless without. Someone who would choose endless suffering over the eternal bliss of Life Fibers is even more unsightly, more detestable, than Ragyou–!"
Satsuki's right boot fell to the floor, and her foot flashed up, around. A false toenail snipped through Ryuuko's throat.
The grip on Satsuki's shirt opened, and Satsuki was on her feet, heedless of the pain that seared through her thigh as she shoved forward to lever an uppercut into Ryuuko's jaw.
Ryuuko hit the ground and sputtered. Trying to sit up, she found Satsuki's hand meeting her forehead as the taller woman crashed against her; with a roar, the Kiryuuin slammed her head to the earth, straddled her middle.
"My resistance is vileness, is it?!" Satsuki screamed, to the wide eye visible beneath the hand pinning Ryuuko down. "That's what you believe?! IS IT?!"
Ryuuko grabbed her wrist, tore the frighteningly strong hand from her face; as she did, Satsuki's other fist blazed into her cheek, snapping her head to the side.
"You know what our dear mother said to me, every time she claimed my body? She called it purification! She said it simply, like it was normal, natural!"
Ryuuko was stunned by the fire in the usually stoic woman's eye, the bare, raw and deafening fury in her voice. She fought to budge her, as another fist lit across her face. Fibers sprang in retaliation from Ryuuko's shoulders, arcing for Satsuki with terrific speed – and were blown back, disintegrated by a wave of furious ki.
"We were right about something, Ryuuko!" Satsuki yelled, laughter cutting in her booming voice. "The Life Fibers needed desperately to control our blood–!"
She lifted an arm and bit a button sharply from her sleeve, spitting it aside as her empowered hand snapped straight for Ryuuko's still-mending throat – and clenched, crushing, causing the Life Fibers that had moved for her again to stiffen and falter away, as Ryuuko forced out a fluid-laden, drowning scream.
Satsuki screamed over her. "They also needed to keep us from banding together, lest we might ally against them! So to prevent generations of Kiryuuin from establishing bonds of love and trust–!"
Her free hand's knuckles sent a tooth sailing from Ryuuko's bloody mouth.
"–to foster depravity, cruelty, and lust for power–!"
WHAM!
"–and as a ritual demonstration of allegiance to the fucking Life Fibers before BLOOD–!"
WHAM!
"–the Kiryuuin submission gene's activation was left in KIRYUUIN hands!"
WHAM!
"To be activated–!"
WHAM–!
"–via 'PURIFICATION' ceremony–!"
WHAM!
"–in which the Kiryuuin head uses her own energy–!"
WHAM!
"–to manipulate the SUCCESSOR'S!"
FWAM! The floor cracked beneath Ryuuko's head; her eyes were round in horror, mouth agape in a blood-streaked face, as Satsuki smiled viciously down at her, eyes alight with mad humor and malice.
"We are 'born imperfect,' Ryuuko! Do you see?! We're born dangerous – free! And we are to be found wretched as long as the gene lies dormant!" She pinned her forehead to Ryuuko's, as the wheezing girl tried to shake her, to push away. "So, to show her devotion, Ragyou purified me…! Zealously… Repeatedly… even if I begged her to stop! And she did unto me as her mother had done to her! This is how your master held us in check, and secured the passing down of teachings! It was Life Fibers that ordained that a Kiryuuin head must regularly purge the successor of vileness! And with their own hands, from parent to child, our ancestors upheld this sick destiny of submission!"
A blade sprang from Ryuuko's elbow as she swung sharply upward; Satsuki grabbed the arm and threw her weight down, snapping the Fiber sword decisively between Ryuuko's tough arm bones and the floor.
"And your submission gene was triggered only once, but still you became their slave!"
"Yeah?!" Ryuuko croaked, forcing her arm free to latch her hand on Satsuki's neck. The Kiryuuin choked on a gasp as the grip tightened below her jaw, and Ryuuko thrashed to reverse their positions, pinning Satsuki below her. "If bein' so much better than everyone bothers you that much, how about you do what you were MADE to already, and GIVE IN?!"
Ryuuko's hand reddened, and shifted to the texture of thread. She felt Satsuki's wealth of power, felt at once the intent widening of her own eyes and the shocked widening of Satsuki's as she tapped into it, and wrenched.
The air coiled around them, throbbed.
Then it was still.
Ryuuko's ensuing moment of shock was enough for Satsuki's left hand to slip into her cloak at her hip, and her right hand to dart to Ryuuko's waist. In the next moment, Ryuuko's own undone belt had looped twice around her neck and tugged, pulling her head down onto a cold metal shaft that slipped between her parted lips. Her eyebrows jumped upward and in, a muffled cry of protest sounding for a half-beat from her throat, toward Satsuki's cold eyes beneath hers, until–
BANG!
The pistol shot sent a cone of red into the air behind her.
Satsuki shoved her slumping weight away, scrambling to her feet to take aim with a few meters' safety. A heartbeat of hesitation – and as she pulled the trigger again, Ryuuko's whitened eyes focused, and with an almost insectoid speed she twitched her head clear of a bullet hole that cracked loudly into the floor. She sprang to her feet, twirling once and staggering hastily away. Panting gingerly through a dripping mouth, skin creased about her eyes in displeasure, she choked, and then spat up a fair deal of blood. Her palm folded against the back of her skull, shoulders hunched as she eyed Satsuki warily. But for the moment, the master's control had been shaken. "H…" She paused in the hoarse croak, as clicking noises rattled through the painfully sealing hole in her throat. "H-how the fuck…?"
"How?" Satsuki returned her glower in kind, mouth ticking up at one corner. "This instruction, etched into my genes… It appears you can't trigger it any longer!"
"I noticed," Ryuuko grumbled through her grimace, shaking droplets of blood from the hand she lowered from the back of her head. "Believe me…" She spat again. "God, you brought a fucking pistol?"
Satsuki lowered the handgun slightly, but remained alert as she spoke. "The ritual… meant to foster in us a sense of recognition for our masters. Only a mature, 'perfected' Kiryuuin is granted the power to stand as an 'equal' with Life Fibers, and wear them freely… because such a subject no longer poses a threat to Life Fibers, nor will they ever again. Do you recall what I told you, those months ago? Our power continually develops, and remains in flux, from adolescence to early adulthood."
"You don't mean…"
Satsuki's smirk was grim, in a pale face. "Purifications are generally carried out to realign us frequently enough that the dangers inherent in our power cannot grow – so we are curbed until our energy settles at the age of twenty-two, the Kiryuuin's traditional age of succession. If they are prematurely discontinued, the developing Kiryuuin heir poses the possibility of breaking the conditioning through regular, bodily energy shifts."
"So," Ryuuko said, the master's curiosity fizzling in her skull as she pieced it together. "You're twenty-two now, aren't you? But your last purification would've been forced on you at age eighteen."
"The capability to resist was growing within me all this time. I simply needed the right push to unlock it. And I received that push, when a Life Fiber cluster managed to corner me a few weeks ago. I had something to do before I died, after all."
Ryuuko sneered, but soon sobered. "Still a harebrained plan… But I wouldn't make light of your gettin' this far. You betrayed Ragyou, and Life Fibers, despite the conditioning. Humans have at least some power to choose between the things they call good or evil. Where every one of our predecessors gave in to depravity, Kiryuuin Satsuki chose the willpower to hold on to what she determined is right. Where Ragyou grew infatuated with Life Fibers, and became a monster, you became the one to break the family's fucked-up legacy yourself. With sheer stubbornness or whatever, that's no small feat."
Satsuki's brow furrowed. "Ryuuko… Don't be a fool. We both are forces of destruction; ultimately, I am surely no better. This accursed blood ordains it."
Ryuuko shook her head. "You think some crazy destiny drives us to harm humanity? It ain't blood, Satsuki. Sure, I'm a monster through and through; the things I done show that much. But at the end of the day I'm nothin' but the dumbass who'd resolved to protect you from any threat… But then, the biggest threat to you… was me, now wasn't it?"
"So you wanted to get me to kill you."
"I wanted to give you a shot. If I'd hung around, nothing would've come of it but me snapping again, eventually. And I knew you wouldn't give up on me under normal circumstances; it's not like you'd kill me if I just asked ya' to. So…" She shrugged. "I made things move, the way I could. If I could do that much, I was ready to let the chips fall wherever they might."
"Ryuuko… for something like that, you've brought still more innocents to harm…"
"It was never just about me and you, right? It couldn't have been, after what I did to the world four years ago. So I made a choice. In this fight, I'd kill you, and make it impossible to misuse your power; or you'd kill me, and be free of at least one threat. But that doesn't line up with your idea, does it? And that's silly. You're an amazing human – you can help people! But you really think a world we can't save is better off without either of us?"
"And what do you think now?"
"I think the master ain't easing up again. I hid my intentions behind my hatred, I got its trust an' everything, but I blew it: we're both still alive, and it knows not to loosen my leash again. Sure, it's lettin' me chat for now, but it's got a pretty nasty grip on my mind, so you'd better watch yourself before its curiosity runs out and it decides to–,"
Ryuuko's eyes became furious, and her hands flashed up to send ten skewers of thread arcing and crisscrossing toward Satsuki.
The woman raised her knee, flicking a button from her pants leg – and smashed her boot into the floor, caving it down into the room below.
She merely presumes to have made herself unusable to us. Break her until she yields, and you shall be redeemed.
Yes…
Ryuuko drew her scissors to her hands and leapt through the opening; light feet dropped into a dim hallway, passing a discarded boot as she tore off in pursuit of a figure that hurried down the corridor at a limp.
"Too slow!" Ryuuko yelled, hurling an energy slash down the hall. Satsuki curled, tumbling forward so that the wave whizzed harmlessly above her, even as its edges carved destructively through the walls on either side. Rising from the move, Satsuki reached into her coat and flicked back a throwing knife, and rounded a corner as threads from Ryuuko's arms, zipping forward, grazed at the vanishing ends of her cloak and stabbed the floor, shattering. Neatly evading the simple knife, Ryuuko used the fibers to pull herself forward, an arm upraised against the backlash of the energy slash exploding at the end of the hall. She tumbled in a graceful arc through the air, a foot touching down to push her around the corner. As she did, she drew just short of coming eye to eye with a steel barrel that clicked surely in Satsuki's hands – and she was blown backwards, bleeding arms shielding her face as she shotgun blast peppered her front with pain.
Ryuuko crashed down on her back, in the hall across from the one Satsuki had stowed the heavier firearm in. Coughing, Ryuuko sprang backwards onto her feet from her bounce – passing through a curious, fine wire. Oily liquid dropped from above, splattering across her form; she wiped an arm across her eyes in time to spot Satsuki lobbing something toward her.
Satsuki was spitting the pin aside as her sister's lips curled on the first syllable of an obscenity, and the grenade's explosion enveloped Ryuuko in a burst of rolling flame.
Satsuki's hand darted back to her belt; as the smoke cleared to reveal a clump of charred Life Fibers, she pitched a chemical grenade across the hall. It burst in a gaseous cloud of starching agent, and the Life Fibers went stiff. Satsuki was reaching for a second starch grenade when a thick line of thread, whipping through rubble at the height of her ankles, knocked her head over heels into the air.
"Enough!" Ryuuko snarled, sending her petrified shell of Life Fibers shattering away. Her hand was lodged in the floor at her feet; a throng of Fibers burst from the floor before Satsuki, snagging her thrown form about the torso while driving her backwards. Satsuki curled, managing to tuck her arms behind her head before she was smashed through the ceiling – and another ceiling or two above it.
"Fighting, even though you're only a human…!" Ryuuko growled with the master's outrage, leaping in pursuit as her Fibers snapped back into her arm. "It's impressive, but no less foolish!"
Ryuuko's arms and back rippled portentously, as she burst out into dim yet blinding sunlight – and dozens of Life Fiber skewers sprang out behind her, angling forward and raining toward her adversary as Satsuki struck down roughly on the ruined field. Satsuki gathered herself quickly on all fours and flung aside, spinning sideways through the air as the Fiber blades crashed destructively to the earth.
"The Kiryuuin clan bowed to inevitability the moment it had matured enough to be shown the truth! It bowed to Life Fiber dominance, and it enjoyed favor! And our blood became that of glorified pets – the dogs who herd dumb beasts!"
The dodged blades compressed, weaving into the form of a colossal fist as it swung Satsuki's way. The woman flailed into a leap, and it missed her, crashing with terrible speed into the cracked Academy wall, blowing out a fair length of it and toppling more. Ryuuko shouted over the roar of falling stone, raising two scissor blades in her hands as the Life Fiber hand unraveled.
"And we forsook all humankind! Our blood, in its destiny of submission, never ONCE chose to rebel or fight! That is why we were chosen to be the most powerful – we are WEAK before Life Fibers, made powerless to oppose them!"
Relentless, Ryuuko drew back, whirled, and leapt – sending four energy slashes rushing forward in blinding succession.
"Powerless?!" Satsuki rose raggedly, one eye wide as she drew herself up and tore a button from her sleeve, opening her mouth to proclaim:
"There is power in our very name!"
And she slammed her fist down, at an angle, against solid earth – throwing herself out into the air, sailing gracelessly clear of the exploding waves of chaos.
Satsuki rolled a half-dozen times in her landing, struggling get her bearing, to rise again – to see Ryuuko racing toward her, scissors drawing back.
"So what, Kiryuuin Satsuki?!"
She drew the pistol; Ryuuko cut through the rounds Satsuki fired as she shakily rose. But Satsuki's legs stiffened; her shoulders shook, lungs heaving laboriously for more air. Her knee began to give.
"That's called a LIMIT! Even you have one! You think just by wantin' it bad enough, your hands will bring the wheels of karma screeching to a halt?!"
Satsuki's hand snapped up, as she leaned aside – her wrist knocked back into Ryuuko's, throwing a lunging strike wide as Satsuki shoved forward on a straining knee, bringing her and her sister eye-to-eye, a centimeter apart.
Ryuuko's pupils contracted on their last clear sight, of brilliantly harsh, electrically radiant blues focusing on hers. Then the world skewed, contorted – a prickling cropped up behind her eyes – and it went white, and promptly black, with a grotesque and crushing squelch.
She howled, a mad cry of pain and bewilderment that was cut short with the blunt force that smashed into her nose.
Satsuki's face was streaked in blood – fresh, from what had so sharply sprayed from Ryuuko just then – as she let her hand fall from the heel palm strike, and felt her knee drop her. Ryuuko staggered, stumbled onto her backside, thrashing and swearing as she pressed a forearm incredulously across tightly shut eyes.
"Power in our very name," Satsuki panted in a moment, as Ryuuko began to calm. "I was once so disheartened, when Ragyou boasted such a thing. But you know, Ryuuko… I find myself quite proud of my power, even wrought as it is of the filthiest blood. It is mine. I am ashamed of the sins of our lineage, yet I will no less proudly use the power of this blood as I see fit, with the will I've forged, to FIGHT for humanity!"
She raised the pistol again, aiming from where she knelt; Ryuuko jumped narrowly aside as a shot was fired, and leaned as a blur from the path of another, though she swayed, disoriented, after.
"How ya' think Fiber clusters 'see' anything, huh?" she ground out, arms hanging from tense shoulders, eyes still screwed shut above trails of red. "I can sense what you're doin'…"
"Imperfectly."
"'Course," Ryuuko admitted with a sneer, "but you can barely move anymore. Not much for me to keep track of."
Satsuki cringed… and then, smirked. "That's true… but I'm not ready to give up on this fight yet."
"What's wantin' gonna do?" Ryuuko spat, disarmed by the Kiryuuin's confidence.
"I wonder…" Satsuki sealed her eyes for a brief moment. "Ryuuko… When I read of the truth of Kiryuuin, in the book that lays out the Life Fibers' commands, I was distraught, and I didn't immediately understand why. My entire life, I had envisioned Ragyou as the face of the enemy. Easier her than some impersonal race of alien parasites that, of course, posed the ultimate threat."
Ryuuko's brow knitted. "So, suddenly Life Fibers weren't so impersonal after all… They were responsible for the suffering you went through, and Ragyou…"
"For a moment, I sympathized with her. That was truly appalling. I will never forgive her… but I was, if you will, deprived of my enemy."
"The hag died four years ago. You hadn't kept fightin' your fight without letting her go…?"
"Perhaps I had. But… say, Ryuuko. You've always followed your own path, haven't you? And now you've decided, at least in part freely, to become a menace to this world and to humanity… the things I swore so long ago, on my nameless baby sister, to protect."
The space around Satsuki had begun to energize as she spoke – first gradually, then violently so. Her hair swayed, lilting about as the warped air seemed to grow curiously thin.
"So if nothing else, here in the end, I have this to thank you for: you provided the enemy a new, and worthy, face. You've allowed me to fight harder than I remembered I could fight, and you've offered me a tangible adversary to sharpen myself against."
Her radiance grew to amazing intensity, the likes of which would have frozen most humans in awe. The air seemed to buzz, to rattle, electrified by luminosity.
"What the…?" Ryuuko murmured in shock. It was true that she didn't require optical vision to sense the change that transpired, as expansive rays of yellow and orange light broadened, merged and whitened. The light itself began to bend, and was drawn into Satsuki's form, leaving the immediate vicinity depleted and dark, desaturated to a dull spectrum of grays.
And a slouched frame straightened slowly, arms drawn in. The air shook, throbbed, with something restrained. The words that manifested upon her lips were cast forth, soundless yet somehow crackling and distinct, a declaration resounding boldly in the ethereal haze.
我は自分の運命の主
I AM THE MASTER OF MY FATE–
自分の魂の船長
THE CAPTAIN OF MY SOUL.
Satsuki raised her head, eyes whitening as a concerted aura blazed around her; it boiled upward in a plume, an inverted cascade, to roll off in fluid ringlets, lighter than air. The world trembled, shattering so abruptly as if to shrink deferentially back from her feet. And in that moment, to sightless eyes, she may as well have stood ten thousand feet tall.
「インビクタス」
[INVICTUS]
"The HELL?!" Ryuuko screamed, heels sliding several meters through earth that refused to support them. She shielded her face with her arms, bracing against whipping air, dust, and debris. "Bullshit! You can't even! You can't make a power out of pure fucking stubbornness! That doesn't even make any fucking sense–!"
A blur of perception.
Ryuuko leaned aside, as a fist drifted past her skull.
The air twisted, shattered with a wallop – and Ryuuko was thrown backwards, swatted by a wave of percussive force. She bounced hard somewhere on the field – crashed through the yielding Academy wall – and was caught by a tremendous, barefoot kick to the sternum. The air popped, burned, burst around her and pierced her ears as a sonic boom cracked in her wake – and she smashed a crater into the earth, bones straining to hold together as a wall of repelled water erupted in a hollow cone around her.
Water– the bay.
This is… Toukyou Bay?! she thought, mind reeling as she registered a distant energy signature one instant before it zigzagged blindingly down through Honnouji, and across the water.
So as Ryuuko bounced upward, rotating slowly into the air, Satsuki was boring through a wall of scattered mist to materialize before her sprawling form, coat flared back.
"Nonsense is how we roll, you stupid fuck!" Satsuki roared, brandishing two scissor blades in an outward sweep of her arms.
Ryuuko twisted, thrusting a Fiber skewer down from a hand; it hit the earth fifteen meters below and jolted her upward, so the skewer was cleanly shattered just below her position. An 'X' pattern sank into readily parting water and the rapidly bared muck and earth beneath it, carving smoothly out for a full second before the crevices left behind glowed white, and exploded with a vibrant outflux of sheer, compressed power.
The younger woman's trembling lips drew back, contorting her face in a grin of excitement as she sailed through the air.
I'm afraid.
A fang pinched, dug into her lip until it bled.
I'm afraid… for myself…?
"Do you feel as ALIVE as I do right now?! KIRYUUIN SATSUKI?!" Ryuuko howled ecstatically, as her clothes unraveled, melded into her mutating flesh. Her skin was wildly splayed in patterns of branching black and red, with pronouncing veins, as she crashed, staggered to the earth; and when she strongly rose, hands thrown outward, the water rushing to fill the space she'd created was kicked away from her again, vaporizing in a vortex of steam. "Look at us! You and I were born human!"
Amid dancing hair, two crimson horns jutted out and back from either side of her skull; two blades sprang into place along her forearms, while spikes riddled her legs and back. And amorphous tendrils of spindly, deformed Fibers sprang like black flames from armor-like plates across her form, poised to do her bidding as she screeched madly in glee.
Satsuki's eyes were bleached a searing silver-white, amid ivory skin and raven hair that danced unbound. A stern jaw clenched, and then spread as her mouth opened to unleash a howl of war.
Burning water scattered outward as the two raced to meet.
世界の果てに
-Born to Be -
End
A/N: Sketches of Ryuuko and Satsuki as of this chapter's end can be found on my dA (deviations titled 'The Unconquered' and 'The Tyrant').
The words Satsuki says while awakening the 'Invictus' state are the final lines of William Ernest Henley's 1888 poem Invictus (the title of which is Latin for 'Unconquered').