The Fight

"Hong and Konpaku gonna fight!" Youmu? They were words, and he recognized them, but together they made no sense, but the crowd was streaming past, towards... something. He couldn't have heard that. He had to know, so he left their stall and followed. The energy was... unsettling...

The crowd was swarming around a clearing not far from the main market. The mass had an almost carnival atmosphere. But in the circle were two figures, women. One tall, her long red hair catching the wind. He had seen her stance, but didn't know it by name. One of the various martial arts, but not one he knew. The other... Live steel. You've drawn live steel and our neighbors cheer.

In a way it was like watching a marionette play. They had had a few of those in the village. Puppets dancing on string, except it was him, and instead of dancing, it could only stare at the inconceivable. There was a pattern to it. He had taught kendo for years outside. Evaluated students, judged tournaments. That part of his mind still worked, processing, analyzing. The next movements would be almost trivial. First touch would be almost as soon as they closed distance. Except it would not be touch. He wanted to look away. It would be wrong to look away. What came was, in a way, worse.

The red haired woman moved first. That was the signal. Then Youmu moved, almost to fast to follow. They never had done free sparring, had they? Of course not, that would be pointless, wouldn't it? Next, tiny beads of light lashed the ring like rain, if rain were made of fire and death.

The crowd roared.

Her back had been the worst they had let him see. Modesty. No, it was all the worst, but that was the one that was easiest to recall. Hundreds of plasters to remove, clean, check stitches on, reapply salve and replace. Eirin's salves were nothing short of miraculous, but healing still took time, still left scars.

Most he had understood, cut and lacerations from splinters, bones broken from impact. Odd that ribs were still the slowest, ficklest, to properly heal. But others, that angry tear that had crossed her back, those odd burns, the line across her cheek he could still spot in the right light, those he did not, or had not understood. "Has she told you anything true of herself?" the Yama had asked.

She wears her swords like she was born into it. He watched as she wove her way into the maze of light, blades shining in the sun. Strange how he had never noticed just how long Roukanken really was. More odauchi than katana, yet wielded in one hand.

She closed on her opponent, and her brilliant blade licked out, its own flash of light, and her opponent went down, but without the scarlet arc he had anticipated. The crowd howled in triumph, and her opponent stood back up, and the pattern started again. So, not to death then.

This new pattern was like the first, yet different. Denser, more complex, but still she closed in on her opponent through the fire. Again her blade licked out, and her opponent when down to thunderous cheers. And again, her opponent arose anew.

For a third time, the patterns began, variations on a theme, more chaotic this time, yet still, she threaded the pattern in triumph. The crowd cheered wildly. Match set. The opponents rose and bowed to each other. Youmu held Roukanken high, sweeping the crowd in triumph. He could tell when she spotted him. She hid it well, but they'd spent enough time together that he'd seen that little hesitation before. She finished her sweep, shot Roukanken home, then turned towards him and bowed, very formal. He returned it, as formal.

The spectators parted like water as she marched towards him, and attached herself to his arm. He raised an eyebrow, but she only quietly replied, "Maybe I like being a girl." Seeing his brow starting to furrow, she gave a little head shake. "Later," she whispered. By now he knew she was nothing if not private. Very well. We'll talk about this later.

As they marched together (and it was almost a parade) back to their stand, villagers and onlookers clapped him on the back, congratulated them, wanted to shake his hand. He wanted to punch every smiling face, but did not.

No one touched her.

He waited until they were back at her shrine to ask again. "Ok, what happened? Why didn't you tell me?"

They were still unloading the aftermath of the market trip from the cart, when she stopped, still holding a large wicker hamper. "A danmaku duel."

"That's... not much of an answer." He leaned back against the cart, arms crossed.

Youmu set the basket down on the steps, and responded, "There aren't outside words for it. I'm sorry. It's like..." she started to make a plucking motion as though she were trying to pull the words from some imaginary tree. "It's sort of like competition fights, but it's also sort of like free sparring, but with rules you can't break." She quirked her mouth that way she always seemed to do whenever she ran into something that didn't quite fit right.

"Wait, there's an emphasis there I didn't understand," he replied, leaning forward. "Rules you must not break, or rules that are not possible to break?"

Youmu chewed her lip for a moment, "... I'm... not sure. I haven't tried breaking them, but there are some people who bend them pretty far. I don't think you can break them outright," her head gave a tilt, "but maybe?"

"Why live steel?"

Her eyes narrowed at the tone. "It is a focus. It can be just about anything, bokken, scabbard, fist, umbrella, or even a sprig of bamboo, but for the duel, what you fight with is best. You do not test yourself with what you will not use when it counts; that would be pointless. Besides, the point of the danmaku duel is the danmaku, not directly striking each other."

"So you shoot energy bullets at each other until someone wins?"

"There is more strategy to it than that, but, yes," she nodded in reply. "The rules limit the intensity of the bullets. They'll hurt, but won't kill you."

"Meaning there are ones that will."

He saw her fingers tracing the faint line on her cheek. "Yeah. Some will."

"Alright. How do you make these bullets then?"

"You?" she said, quietly, "You don't."

"But you do."

"Yes," she continued in that same quiet tone, "I do. Youkai do. Youkai Hunters do. Gods do. Outsiders do not. You do not. You can not."

"Show me."

"Why?" She would not even look at him.

"Don't you think I have a right to know?"

"Why? What are you going to do but die?! You can't fight danmaku without danmaku!"

"I need to know."

She scowled, but simply replied, "Fine." She marched into a nearby bamboo hedge and came back with two stems fresh clipped to a swords length, and tossed him one.

"Not even an shinai?" he asked.

"Begin."

He saw the beads of light forming, and began looking for the pattern, but found he was down before it even formed.

"Satisfied?" Youmu said.

"Again."

She screwed up her nose, but started the pattern again. Again he found himself face down in the dirt.

"You can not do this." she said.

"Again." If I can just figure out the pattern. He found himself flat on his back.

He pulled himself up, once more at the ready, "Again."

"No."

He curled an eyebrow at her.

"If you are going to cling to this insane idea, then fine, I will teach what you can learn, but you will take my instruction. We are done for today."

"... I've never heard you use that mode before."

"Not with you. Do you think I like always being like this? Always being the one to take charge? Always being the one who has to step in front?"

"I guess not. So what's next then?"

"We keep doing this until you get past the first wave. There's no secret to it."

"And then?"

"There won't be a 'then'. This isn't even a basic spell card. You can't do it. Don't you understand yet? You can't fight my battles. You got lucky. Stupidly unbelievably lucky, but if you push it, you are going to end up dead!"

He leaned back, considering what she'd said. "So what happened in the forest?"

"With you? Alice is weird. She abandoned being human a while ago, but she's still a friend of humanity. I don't think I've seen her kill unless she absolutely needed to. She doesn't even win unless she absolutely needs to, she just tries to barely lose to them. You know, weird. You didn't even manage that. You just kept getting back up until she ran out of dolls. I don't know why Rumia let you go. She doesn't do that, and she's strong enough she could have pulled you apart with her bare hands. Luckily, she's pretty gullible, so the villagers can pretty easily talk her into letting them go, but she doesn't just let people go."

"She didn't seem that..."

Youmu gave him a look. "Ev, one of the village boys convinced her he was a potato."

"A what? Wait, how would that even..."

"Yeah. See?"

"And Reisen?"

"If it's any consolation, she really was trying to kill you."

He laughed. "I guess it is? I guess even if I'd gotten back in time I wouldn't have been very much help, would I?"

"You would be dead. I should be dead. No one can stop Flandre. I saw where we fought; there's nothing left." She squeezed herself tightly, "I don't know how I'm still alive."

He saw her sink to her knees, and went to her. She found herself leaning against him, his arms wrapped around her. He held her close as she shivered.

"Guess we've got some living to do yet, don't we?" he'd said once she had finally stopped shaking.

"I guess we do," she'd replied.

They had added danmaku to their predawn routines. He'd never be great at them, but after a few weeks he'd finally gotten past the first wave, so, possibly, he wouldn't always be hopeless at them either. It will bear watching she'd found herself thinking.

More curiously, he'd started asking a lot of questions about the rules and limits of danmaku. It had been, perplexing, what he had wanted with all that information. It wasn't like he could make them, but then he had presented her with a stack of proposals for her own danmaku. It was, of course, unheard of, and probably inappropriate in at least six different ways, but, they were interesting, and it had been too long since she'd last worked on her own spell cards.

This might work out after all...