The twenty first of November came more quickly than Konatsu could have imagined.
Waiting in the dojo proper, he saw another individual enter. There was a small crowd already in attendance; people who had heard that a duel was about to take place, and who had decided to drop by to check it out. A few of these were Dojo regulars he had seen before, and some of the others were mentors of the 'kids' in the two new squads. The only conspicuous absences were those of India Squad, who had been sent off over a day ago on a mission and had yet to return.
"Not expecting this much attendance, eh?"
The question came from Konatsu's own mentor, Sergeant Mario Feretti, and the only person he had actually asked to come (besides Ukyou of course). Over the last month, Konatsu had developed an appreciation for the man's wisdom and council. Secretly, he thought of the Italian as sort of like a laid back older brother. Mario didn't seem the least bit put off by Konatsu's peculiarities, and he had always kept an open ear when the young ninja felt overwhelmed and under prepared for his new profession.
The other man wasn't very interested in martial arts, but he was concerned about how Konatsu's feelings towards Ukyou could interfere with his job. Mario had suggested talking to the girl about things, and this was one bit of advice Konatsu hadn't been able to take. He knew Ukyou wouldn't want to talk about that sort of thing, (the awkwardness of it aside) and that if he tried to engage her in that sort of conversation as they were now it would only end in a pitiable rejection.
She had to see the real him.
Then, only then, could he have a chance of standing up to Ranma by comparison.
"No," Konatsu replied sadly. "This is Shampoo's doing…"
"You sure you want to go through with this?" Sergeant Feretti asked, his hands in his pants pockets as he glanced casually around the room. "You know there's talk about how Juliet Squad is still struggling to find common ground."
"We have our common ground," Konatsu said in return. "The problem is when we get back home. Saotome-taichou has tried to rein things in, but he doesn't like being… hard on people. But I think things have gotten better, not worse."
"After all this, you can say that?" Keretti sighed and shook his head, walking a few feet to stand next to the younger soldier. "You're a surprising guy, Konatsu. I think I'd be pretty bitter if I were in your shoes."
The shinobi chuckled good-naturedly. "You'd never fit in my size 8s, I'm afraid."
"Egh! I wouldn't want to!"
For a few seconds they smiled and laughed, before a chime interrupted them, signaling the time.
"Noon..." Konatsu closed his eyes and mentally went over his gear. Then he felt a familiar presence enter the room, and he opened his eyes. It was Ukyou. She walked in, and he went over what he saw in preparation for the fight to come. He already knew about her new battle spatula, but not about its full range of abilities. Ukyou had always wielded her traditional battlespat with bare hands, but now she wore fairly heavy gloves. She also wore scout type light personal armor, rather than full kit (he wore much the same under his carmine colored kunoichi uniform), and a fully stocked bandoleer over that. With her hair tied together behind her neck into a ponytail, rather than just behind her ears letting it fall freely; she looked to be all business.
With all that on, it was impossible to identify any sort of injuries.
That was just as well. His natural instinct as a ninja was to seek out and exploit any injury or weakness in a target, even in an 'honest' duel. He'd seen Ukyou before, coming from her training with India Squad, wrapped in bandages and limping. He wondered if she had trained just as hard by herself over the last thirty hours since India Squad had left, or if she'd taken a break to build up her stamina and heal the last of her lingering wounds.
"Miss Ukyou," he approached her, and bowed his head politely. "Thank you very much for coming."
She bowed back, though not quite as deeply. "Let's both do our best."
"Yes!" he agreed, though inside he ran her tone of voice over and over for any sign of sarcasm. No: no he didn't think there had been any. She didn't sound angry, either. Without further formality, the two entered the separate half of the dojo designated for serious duels. It was the same one India and Juliet Squad used for serious training.
Despite knowing the dimensions of the room by memory already, he instinctively looked for anything in the environment that could be used to his advantage. There was nothing, of course. The room was square, with nothing sticking out on the walls or ceiling. There was nothing to hide behind, use as cover, no lights to take out (sheltered as they were behind a transparent version of that alien metal), and nothing beside the tatami mats to use as makeshift shields or weapons. That put him at something of a disadvantage, but he wasn't too worried. It was just a bit of an inconvenience.
On the plus side, he didn't have to worry about collateral damage here.
"Miss Ukyou," he took the opportunity to say one last thing. "Please defend yourself effectively."
"You, too, sugar," she said with a smile. "Shall we?"
Konatsu was on the verge of speaking, having just opened his mouth, when he saw it: Ukyou's Kizashi. This was similar to what Sakkijutsu was for ki, except relating to physical movements and intentions. Kizashi was the natural intention, thoughts and movements that occur before one acts and a high level martial artist could read it quite clearly in a lower level one. Even the alien enemy (probably) could be read in this fashion, provided one survived enough encounters to become sensitive to it.
His eyes moved instantly from Ukyou's face to her feet. She was moving, and fast, too. Her right foot was already skimming just over the surface of the floor as she began an Akichi movement – though the 'vacant land' technique was known by many names, like flying step, and severing step, they were variations on the same speed technique. He hadn't thought that Ukyou knew it, however. It involved using one's ki to drastically reduce the friction in one (or both feet) during a charge, while at the same time creating massive momentum with a different limb, usually the other leg.
"Not enough!" he thought, and pivoted to the side as the flat of her battle spatula filled the space he had occupied a heartbeat ago. At almost the same instant, Ukyou shifted her grip, and the flat of the spatula turned into the edge headed right in his direction in a horizontal slash.
Hirazuki…!
But with a something much larger than a sword! Combining the Hirazuki and the Akichi must have been quite energy intensive, since the former put strain on the legs muscles, and the latter on the upper arms and thighs. It was a good move, though. Right off the bat, she'd impressed him. Flexing his wrist just right, he activated the hidden springs concealed behind the cloth around his forearms as he raised his arms.
Twin tonfa sprung into position, blocking Ukyou's blade with a clang.
To her credit, Ukyou didn't show any surprise by the move. Her left foot skidded across the ground as she shifted position and took the opportunity to strike with the blunt end of the battle spatula. That end was weighted, he knew, and rather than trying to block it he used his upper body speed to lean away and avoid it. He felt rather than saw Ukyou's right foot scoot forward under cover of the move, and he lifted his own foot before she could trip him.
Tricky!
It also stole any chance he had for a powerful counterattack, and he had to settle for adjusting his balance, and striking with a snap kick. Ukyou let her momentum carry her into a lower stance, and the kick passed well over her shoulder. Not letting him see, even for an instant, her back, she pushed off with her left foot and into a reverse thrust. With beguiling ease, he planted his foot on the blunt end of the spatula as it shot towards him, and commandeering some of her own strength, he took to the air and flipped over her head.
Turning in midair, he raised his tonfa again to block as Ukyou spun her weapon in her hands as both a defensive shield and an offensive strike. She was collected, cool, and the moment his feet got within an inch of the ground, she was ready to resume her offensive. She used her battle spatula like a staff, now, or maybe a naginata, as she brought both ends into play. A high strike was avoided, but he had to ducked low and leveled his arm to block a strike to the midsection. Pushing the weapon aside to force an opening, he lunged low towards her pelvis.
Pivoting slightly, Ukyou avoided a potentially fight ending blow to her upper left hip. Falling back, Konatsu back flipped out of her counter-counter strike and kicked out with his right leg nicking her in the stomach. Maneuvering with his hands a hundred and eighty degrees, still upside down, he kicked again, this time forward with his other leg. Ukyou blocked it with the shaft of her Hera-sama, and then ducked and spun, reversing the grip on her weapon to hit him in his vulnerable left elbow.
It was a bad position he'd gotten himself into.
Pushing off with his upper body strength, he shifted the part of him that was struck from the elbow to the forearm, guarded as it was by the tonfa. It wasn't a clean block, though, and the force of it sent him tumbling. Rolling from the fall, he was on his feet in a second, around the same time Ukyou got back into a standing fighting posture.
Rolling his shoulders, he heard a few pops of protest from his bones.
"It would seem you are quite proficient in the close and medium range, Miss Ukyou," Konatsu said, and he rotated his wrists, retracting the tonfa. "I'm afraid I'll have to soften you up a bit."
"That would seem the prudent thing to do," she agreed, holding a wide grip on her Hera-sama.
"Then…" Konatsu's hands crossed in a blur. "Kunoichi Ninpou! Füjin Seikyü Senpu!"
By the look on her face, he knew this was her first time seeing the move, as a hundred slips of paper exploded outwards in a storm before converging on her position. The Heartless Bill Whirlwind was not in and of itself very dangerous, but that fact was not immediately apparent to those on the receiving end of it. Ukyou spun her battle spatula in furious figure eights moving to the left and right. The second her eyes left him, Konatsu made his move.
"An opening!" he yelled, stepping into his own Akichi. The weakness of Akichi, or any similar speed enhancing move, was that it only worked in one direction. Once you started moving on that vector, forward, backward or to the sides in any degree, you had to stop yourself completely to change direction. Sliding extremely low and close to the ground, almost skating off it like it were ice, he pushed off with his hands and kicked upwards. It was the weakest angle of Ukyou's defense – from below.
Reacting quickly, she let her body go limp a moment before his heel introduced itself to her chin. Twisting in the air from the blow, Konatsu was about to move in for a second strike when a flurry of mini-spatulas, which Ukyou used like throwing knives, threatened to intercept his motion. Raising both hands, he moved like a blur. By the time Ukyou landed on her feet, he stood with three of her mini-spatulas in each hand, caught deftly between his fingers.
Snapping his fingers out, he threw them to the side.
"That was pretty good, Konatsu-kun," Ukyou said, wiping a bit of blood from the corner of her mouth. "Now, let me show you something…"
She then detached some sort of container from the strap on her shoulder, and fitted it into place on the inside of her forearm, just below the wrist. Then, she popped the cap on it, letting it hang from a short plastic cord. Holding out her battle spatula, Ukyou concentrated, and swiped her free hand past her other wrist while pulling back on her weapon. Her free hand thus passed down to the wide flat face of the mega spatula, leaving a trail of smoke in its wake.
Konatsu's eyes widened, realizing what she had done.
Ukyou pulled back her hand, and turned it palm up, revealing a fully cooked plain okonomiyaki(or 'japanese pizza' as some called it) with no extra toppings. Having worked for her in her restaurant for long enough, he understood this new twist on her traditional fighting style. Ukyou's family used a grill to cook materials subsequently used in special techniques, as well as to earn a living. Without said grill, they could not fight to their full effectiveness.
Ukyou's new spatula, however, solved that problem. The reason she wore heavy gloves was because the spatula was also a grill itself, and could heat up enough to flash cook okonomiyaki in a single pass. The container she'd attached to the inside of her right hand wrist was some sort of batter mixture. The product of this probably didn't taste very good, but it could be used for Kuonji style special techniques.
"Well? What do you think, Konatsu-kun?" she asked, narrowing her eyes.
"Interesting…" He grinned, and a half dozen shuriken appeared between his fingers. "Miss Ukyou! Very interesting!"
With a savage cry, okonomiyaki met shuriken, exploding in midair.
Osaka
Kuonji's was a small okonomiyaki and yakitori restaurant in the famous shopping districts of southern Osaka. In comparison to many nearby establishments, only the nearby Oda Tonkatsu could claim to attract more of the carnivorously inclined. Kuonji's was known among the business crowd for fair prices and generous portions, and come lunch hour it was frequently packed tight with businessmen, hungry shoppers, sports enthusiasts, and even the occasional tourist.
An open kitchen and large grill invited all to witness the preparation of culinary art in the form of piping hot okonomiyaki, cooked in a family style purported to be over two hundred years old, or in an assortment of other treats. Skewered grilled chicken wings marinated in a savory concoction of soy sauce, sugar, sake and mirin sated the hunger of a group of men taking a break from work. Elsewhere, a pretty twenty-something college girl enjoyed chicken meatballs and Yaki-onigiri – rice balls roasted to crunchy golden perfection.
Overseeing it all, the gruff looking but friendly grill master looked up to greet every new customer.
"Welcome to Kuonji's!" Kazuo Kuonji's deep voice boomed as the newcomer stepped through the beaded screen door. The man was alone, and a moment later an attentive female waitress guided him over to the bar. He was a tall fellow, given that he was Japanese and not foreign, with a long blue traveling coat. A curtain of short black hair hid his eyes, and he had a beard more closely cut than Kazuo's own.
His mere presence screamed Martial Artist to the grill master's refined senses.
He could smell it on the man.
"What'll it be, pal?" Kazuo asked, his hands cooking up an okonomiyaki and adding the necessary ingredients without needing his eyes for supervision. The newcomer stared for a few seconds at the menu the waitress had handed him.
"This looks good," the man said, putting the menu down. "I'll have the 'deluxe with everything and then some' and a glass of water."
"Comin' right up!" Kazuo went through making another dish for another customer while he got the batter going. While waiting for those to cook, he quickly poured a glass of water, saturated it with ice from an old fashioned ice box, and handed it to the new arrival.
"I'd like to ask…" the man began, taking hold of his drink. "Is this the same style of okonomiyaki that they used to serve in Ucchans, in Tokyo?"
"Oh? So that explains it, then," Kazuo said with a small smile. "Yes. Ukyou's my daughter, and heir to the family style."
"I see! Shame about that mess a while back. I hope she's alright."
"The restaurant was destroyed, but she wasn't there at the time," Kazuo explained, and then realized he hadn't introduced himself yet. "My name is Kazuo, by the way. Kuonji Kazuo."
"Hibiki. Hibiki Tetsuya," the tall man replied, with a bow of his own. "Pleased to meet you."
"Likewise," Kazuo said, and flipped an okonomiyaki on the grill nearby. Four others were just ready, and he tapped a small bell to summon one of his two waitresses. With a single motion each, he flipped the four servings into the air and onto a plate. "Order up! Number 24!"
One of the girls came by, apparently used to the acrobatic presentation of foodstuffs, and headed over to a table of hungry customers. Kazuo continued with his cooking, realizing that this Tetsuya person was watching him closely, though not directly. The smell of burning leaves emanating from the man became stronger. It was how Kazuo conceptualized his ki, and the ki of others. For most people, it was subdued completely so that they smelt of nothing at all. This Hibiki fellow was completely different.
A part of Kazuo wanted to ask him why he was here, what he'd thought of Ucchan's back in Nerima, or a half dozen other things. Not to pass the time, but to try and discern why this obviously powerful martial artist was here. His instinct was telling him that it wasn't just for an affordable and delicious lunch.
"Here ya go!" He handed Hibiki a plate with the house special: 'everything and then some.' It was quite a meal, stuffed high with seafood, pork, and veggies.
"Thank you!" Tetsuya said in English, without even mispronouncing the 't,' bespeaking some practice with the American language. He immediately started to dig in with a true martial artist's appetite. For a few minutes, Kazuo allowed himself to forget about the man's powerful and dangerous smelling ki, as the next order came for some yakitori and two small okonomiyakis.
Those few minutes passed all too soon.
"Wow! That was really very good! The Kuonji Style really does live up to its culinary reputation!" Tetsuya said amiably, picking the last bit off his plate and washing it down by finishing the water in his glass.
"Thank you for the compliments," Kazuo replied, bowing his head slightly. He was about to turn and start on the bill when the other man coughed politely.
"However…" Tetsuya continued, speaking more slowly and purposefully. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to make something of a scene, shortly. By the motions of your hands, and the slight hesitation in your voice, you must have suspected I was here for more than a good meal. So this shouldn't come as a great surprise."
Kazuo sighed. "I suppose so. If it isn't too much trouble, can you let the others finish their food? I wouldn't want to hurt this restaurant's reputation."
Tetsuya smiled calmly. "I understand completely. Please make whatever preparations you like."
"Hotaru-chan!" Kazuo quickly singled out one of his waitresses and brought her over to the grill. "Could you please put up the closed sign? Then make sure the customers know that, due to an emergency that is forcing us to close for an hour or so, they should take their food and enjoy it outside in the fresh air. Also…" he frowned a bit. "Also tell them that their food is free, again, due to this emergency forcing us to close up."
Tetsuya watched at the girl did as she'd been told, and in a few minutes, the last customer left, and the chairs and tables had been put away. The eminent grill master then politely told his two waitresses to take a break of a few hours. Then, with a certain amount of resignation, he went back behind the grill and retrieved something: a spatula as tall as he was, with a blade wider than his chest. White tape circled the gripping areas, partly covering an engraving of a dragon with bells on its body that coiled around the shaft of the weaponized utensil.
"May I ask…" Kazuo tied a white chef's headband in place, and slipped on a bandoleer of smaller spatulas. "Why you want to fight me? Do you have a grudge with our family?"
"Not at all," Tetsuya answered, crossing his arms behind his back. "I found your food to be exceptionally good, your service polite and fast. I have never actually been to Ucchans, but I've heard it is of quite the same level of service."
"Then why do you challenge me?" Kazou asked, shouldering his battle spatula.
"I've been told to evaluate your usefulness and the power of your martial arts style," Tetsuya spoke as casually as if he were drawing mention to the pleasant weather outside. "If you survive, then I'll take you to see some of my associates."
"And Ukyou?"
"No." The tall man shrugged. "We don't have her. But… you should be stronger than her anyway. So: let's see if I'm told to let you live."
Kazuo inhaled, and smelt burning leaves all around him. Rather than wait for an attack to come, however, he walked around the grill, and charged. He was deceptively strong, even for the barrel-chested middle aged man he seemed to be. One swipe of the family's strongest battle spatula, Suzu-hime, recast from a melted down Buddhist bell, could slice anything!
Hibiki Tetsuya simply held up his hand.
Hera-sama's killing edge cut clean through the Kawarimi, neatly bisecting the makeshift straw dummy that had, just a moment ago, taken the place of the real Konatsu. Spinning her weapon overhead, Ukyou stomped down with her right foot to cut short her lateral motion. Twice, the sound of metal deflecting metal filled the air as Konatsu descended from above, pushing off from the ceiling to build power.
The nimble shinobi used her deflection to pinwheel, not towards the ground, but off to another wall. The moment his feet found purchase on it, he stepped into a speed technique, disappearing in a blur of motion. There was no time to focus on grand strategy or the nuances of offense, as her arms worked to deflect a blow coming in from her left that came as little more than a mirage or blur, even to her enhanced combat attuned senses.
Konatsu's speed was frightening as he shot across the room in a single step, spring boarding off the walls. A parallel blow was met by Hera-sama, and as he rolled past her and tried to hit her in the small of the back, she pivoted and brought the flat of her battle spatula around just barely in time to block. She saw him for a moment, police baton shaped tonfa whirling through the air, and then he jumped into another speed step.
Swiping her free hand down her battle spatula, she whipped up another okonomiyaki special order to go.
"Okonomiyakidan! Ichi!" she cried, left hand swiping back and forth. "Ni! San!"
This special okonomiyaki had, as one of its new ingredients, a proximity fuse.
"Shi! Go!"
She barely saw him try to cover himself in mid step as the first of the bomb went off in a cloud of batter and shrapnel.
"Roku! Shichi!"
Even after she lost sight of him in the cloud of debris, she kept at it, saturating the area. Konatsu had already proven surprisingly resilient, not to mention difficult to hit in the first place, and she knew she had to keep him pinned down. She was in the middle of her eighth okonomiyaki bomb when she caught movement, and the color red, reflected in the surface of Hera-sama.
"Whaaaat!" She spun, and brought her weapon up to block just in time. Konatsu was in the air, sword drawn and bearing down on her. Their weapons met at the same time one, and then two, versions of the ninja erupted out of the smoke.
RokubuIchitai !
No doubt, he'd performed it under the cover of smoke. In fact, that third bomb had produced much more smoke than it should have. He must've waited for it to go off, and then timed his own smoke bomb to explode at the same time. Then, while she'd been distracted, he'd gotten behind her, or under some sort of cover, and executed the six bodies as one technique.
"Prepare yourself…!" The clone to her left cried, twirling a sickle with chain, called a kusarigama.
"…Miss Ukyou!" The one to her right finished, wielding the tonfa.
"Don't… underestimate me!" Ukyou pushed forward with her Hera-sama while sliding it down, until the flat of the battle spatula got within a few inches of the first Konatsu's right shoulder. "Kuonji Big Bang Odoroki!"
A tiny slit in Hera-sama opened up, spraying a volatile mixture onto the face of the now heated weapon. The sword armed Konatsu didn't have time to register much after this fact, as the mixture ignited in a magnificent explosion of cherry red and burning orange. Taking the Big Bang Surprise to the face sent that Konatsu flying, but Ukyou kept her weapon heading in an arc towards the floor while the adjusted her grip.
Pole vaulting into the air, she saw the two Konatsu clones cross below her, passing through the space she had just stood in. Her feet touched down with a ballerina's grace, and then another Konatsu was in front of her with a pair of three pronged sai held in the reverse grip. Ducking her head, the first cut through a few strands of her hair, and as it came back in the other direction, it met Hera-sama's shaft. The other twin in the sai pair nicked her shoulder as it jabbed, but then Ukyou brought her battle spatula up, perpendicular with her torso, locking that Konatsu's arms together and sending him corkscrewing through the air.
Falling back, stopping her fall only with her hand, she avoided a thrown sickle, and then falling awkwardly to her left she saw a trio of kogai, or ornamental hairpins, embed themselves in the ground. Flipping up with her feet and bringing down her weapon to intercept a roundhouse kick, she ran her hand hastily down her weapon – too fast too cook the batter into a bomb or other special okonomiyaki. The sticky dough itself would have to suffice as it flew into Konatsu's face, forcing him (or that clone of him) to stumble backwards.
"Happö Bijin Shuriken!" came from behind.
"Hyappatsu Hyakuchü Shuriken!" came from her right.
Ukyou cursed, and her body reacted instantly to find the right angle to shield herself. Konatsu wasn't able to put as much raw edged steel in the air as Mousse in terms of mass, but with his clones, he could hit from multiple angles. This was where all that painful training with India Squad had paid off. They had already threatened and hurt her as much as Konatsu was ever likely to, and she knew – she believed – that she could block everything he threw at her. Finding shelter behind the broad flat face of Hera-sama, Ukyou heard the rainfall of projectiles bounce harmlessly off its nigh invulnerable surface leaving her unscathed.
Standing and backpedaling, Ukyou prepared for the next attack as she caught her breath and surveyed the room and the state of her opponent. The smoke was clear now, and she could see all six Konatsu clones. One still had batter on his face that he was trying to wipe off (good luck – she'd made it extra sticky), another had a dislocated arm, another was on the ground, unconscious, and another looked mostly unharmed but a bit dusty. Near the back of the room that she had carpet bombed, one Konatsu had used the other as a shield.
That was the 'real' one then.
That Konatsu dropped his unconscious fellow and stepped forward. "I'd never imagined you'd get this much stronger in only a week, Miss Ukyou. It would seem that my kunoichi ninja arts are not enough to end this battle through anything but attrition."
"Huh!" Ukyou said in response. "You sound like I had a lot of options. Training like I have, I had to either get stronger or give up my title as a martial artist. This last week, I remembered… Konatsu-kun! I remembered that my cooking and my martial arts are the core of who I am. One cannot be separated from the other!"
"Have you been training just for that?" he asked, as the other Konatsu clones took steps back and fanned out.
"At first, it was to prove something to Shampoo, to you, to Ranma…" She gulped in another deep breath of air, let it out, and licked her dry lips. "But then, at some point, I realized what I was thinking about when I was on the ground, bleeding and hurt… and wondering why I should get back up."
Ukyou's blue eyes hardened to the shade of ice.
"The person I have something to prove to is myself! Win or lose, come tomorrow morning I'm going to look the mirror and I'm going to smile and be proud of who I see!"
Konatsu's expression looked pained for a moment before being replaced by one of determination. Setting his feet and widening his stance he clasped his hands together. Ukyou could feel the pull of his ki, building up in his abdomen and spreading out through his body. Her own power rose to meet it, and push against the opposing emotional and spiritual energy.
"Then... Miss Ukyou!" Konatsu suddenly yelled. "For the sake of your pride, so that you can look at yourself in the mirror and smile, I will show you something no one has yet seen and lived to speak of! My kunoichi ninja arts do not seem up to this task, so now… now I shall unlock the forbidden male ninjutsu passed onto me by my father, and his father before him. The arts I was forced to learn in secret and hide from my step sisters. Watch, Miss Ukyou, and see why I have been called a once in a hundred years ninja genius!"
"Higouhou Ninpo!"
(Unlawful Ninja Arts!)
Curling their fingers, Konatsu and two of his doubles slammed their palms together.
"Akazuno Ninpou: Sanmi Ichitai!"
(Forbidden Ninja Art: Three People as One!)
Without warning, the two unconscious Konatsus and the one with the dislocated arm disappeared in little puffs of smoke, revealing rough straw kawarimis – body replacements. The three remaining ninjas stood perfectly still for a second, and that was when Ukyou felt it… the ki that had been radiating from the real Konatsu and his duplicates abruptly doubled.
"What the…?" Ukyou staggered, the weight of his spiritual pressure overwhelming her senses. "What the hell!"
The left and right Konatsus reached behind themselves, and both of their hands came back cradling no less than eight shuriken each between their fingers. The center Konatsu, meanwhile, drew his wakazashi short sword. With glowing eyes, he started to walk forward.
"Kansatsuken!" he announced, and his next step was an Akichi that momentarily looked like he'd completely vanished. If her eyes had wandered the slightest bit, he would have as good as disappeared – his speed covered the distance between them faster than she'd ever imagined, and he was leading with his blade, the tip and length inky black rather than reflective steel.
Still, he seemed to be off target. Her natural impulse was to dodge a strike like that, but India Squad's training and some distant sense of danger warned her not to. Instead, she brought the flat of her battle spatula up to the side of her right arm, using it like a de facto buckler or shield, using the shaft and the end to guard her entire right arm and torso.
The two passed in a spray of sparks, Konatsu's "Flying Killer Sword" biting much more deeply against her battle spatula than she had expected. It was as if the tip of the sword was somewhere else entirely rather than at the end of the blade. Had she tried to dodge, rather than use her spatula for defense, she'd have been hit.
No doubt about it.
He was behind her now, and she was all but surrounded. Moving quickly into a side step, she presented her armored side again as the first Konatsu, the real one, expertly reversed the grip on his short sword and slashed at her. Ukyou felt the cut, this time, opening up on the side of her neck. She'd seen the blade hit her spatula, she was sure of it. How did she get cut!
Still side stepping to keep her back to one of the walls, Ukyou gritted her teeth and swung Hera-sama in a short fast arc, forcing Konatsu to block with his sword. She didn't get into a press of blades with him, instead keeping her battle spatula moving and building up speed and momentum. Konatsu matched her every move, blocking or avoiding blows, and every time his wakazashi slashed, it bit into flesh, though her exotic alloy body armor prevented any potentially crippling blows to her upper torso.
Frustrated, and growing a little anxious, she swiped wide with the flat of her weapon, forcing him to take a little step back. Searching his face, she saw cold blank eyes, devoid of emotion, a deep deathly white. She knew it was his spiritual pressure overcoming her own, making her afraid, and making her see things. She couldn't panic. She had to keep her cool.
She was bleeding, and she knew it.
Not only that, but her ki was waning. A few of the hits he'd gotten over the last exchange had obviously been deeper than expected. Her vision started to blur, but she shook her head and forced her eyes to concentrate on her opponent.
"That would be the poison coursing through your veins…" Konatsu said, his voice sounding far closer than where he stood. It sounded almost like he was whispering directly into her ear.
"My wakazashi is named Habu, after the nocturnal pit vipers of the Ryukyu Islands. Like the snake, it is not usually aggressive... however, if sufficiently provoked, their bite is excruciatingly painful. Miss Ukyou, my Habu has bitten you several times. Soon, you will no longer be able to fight me."
"I'm afraid," she heard as her vision faded. "This fight is over."