~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Experimental

The Bonds Break: Part Three

Ne Me Mori Facias

*********************

~~ Under the castle.

Pure black. Not just the pupil and iris, every part visible.

Neko hisses in surprise. Oni blinks at her. "Nani?"

"Look in a mirror." Takeo steps slowly forward, disbelieving, with these word. ::Neko said she knew he did it, but... but... ::

Oni nods. "A physical side-effect, ne?" His voice, distant, detached. The barest hint of curiosity creeps into his voice. "Tell me, where's Anzu?"

Both Neko and Takeo stare. Oni looks at them, and then his obsidian eyes widen.

"Oh." A tinge of regret slips into his voice. "She was always nice to me, even when afraid of me." He sighs. "Well, let's get this over with." He hoists himself to his feet and turns to one side, pushing a door open and slipping through it. Takeo glances nervously at Neko, who glances back.

"Well? What are we waiting for?" She walks silently forward. "Let's go get him."

Takeo looks nervously at the door, unconsciously brightening the lightning even more. He sighs, and follows Neko. As they pass through the doorframe, Neko gasps.

Before them is a normal, dank stone passage. But at the end of it is a tall, graceful, beautiful double door. A dark wood of some kind, edged with ivory swirls and slashes of deep blue, and ever-so-slightly ajar. Oni stands before it, a statue gazing at the tiny gap in between the two doors.

"Well, here we are." He stands still, his voice emotionless. "The battle between siblings." He turns his head just enough to glance at them from the corner of his eye. "I'm not really ready. But then, I wasn't really ready for anything, despite plans." He turns completely to face them, but lowers his face, his hair veiling his jet black eyes. A sigh drifts down the passage to Neko and Takeo. "Well, here we are."

Neko silently slides the blade fan out of its sheath, twitches her wrist, and presses the catch as it slides open. Oni looks up at her and draws his own weapon of choice, a short, slim dagger. Takeo sighs as well and draws his dagger.

"Well, here we go." And with a shaky hand, Takeo throws the lightning at Oni.

Oni brushes it away like it's a lightning bug. "Not working." He points the tip of his dagger at the two, and a ball of darkness wells up around them, crushing them to their knees.

Grinding her teeth, Neko yells and breaks out of the Gravity, diving at Oni. He steps to the side, but she twists as she passes him and scrapes his chest open. As Oni glances down in surprise, Takeo shoots another bolt at him.

Oni winces as it hits him full in the face, and sweeps his dagger down, blocking a slice from Neko towards his chin. A dark blue energy gathers around the short blade, and Oni's wings burst out. A filmy dark haze spreads from them, and the shadowy forms sweep around him and Neko, forming into a impossible coal-black wall of swirling energy.

Takeo falls back, rubbing his overused hand, and watches the energy screen for any way he can break in to help Neko.

***

Neko glares at Oni, amethyst eyes hard as their color. "I hate you."

Oni looks back, his obsidian eyes emotionless, but what else could they be? "I know."

Neko snarls savagely, breaking from the knife lock, and drives her foot and her magic into Oni's stomach. He stumbles back against the energy, then lunges forward, dripping blood from his chest, slashing with a vengeance quicker than Takeo's magic.

Neko winces as he slashes her arm across the older scab, opening a x of freely flowing scarlet. Oni stabs at her, and Neko dances back against the black, bringing her blades up to defense.

She hastily forms a bandage of ice around her arm, sending a few shards at Oni. He dodges and they splinter on what might as well be basalt. Neko dives forward while he's still moving to the side, opening a huge slash in his leg. He drives his knife into her own leg with the help of a small Gravity.

They fall back, panting. Oni's barrier grows translucent, power beginning to drain. Neko wrenches the knife out of her leg, throwing it over the top edge of the barrier. Oni watches it fall and clatter on the ground.

He turns to Neko.

"Well, you've disarmed me. But I don't really need that." And saying so, he casts Demi.

Neko pants as she pushes against it, trying to break free, to stand up to it. She glares out of the ball of dark energy. After long moments, it dissolves into nothing.

Two of the blades on Neko's fan crack apart.

Panting, not realizing that her weapon's broken, or maybe not careing, she flies back into the fight, each blow, scratch, slash, followed by a blast of icy splinters. Oni pants unevenly, only rarely hitting his raging sister.

Suddenly stopping, she closes her eyes, concentrateing. Oni falls back, gasping in pain, blood smeared over all of him.

Holding out a hand, a globe of cold surrounds Neko. Her hair flares around her, and specks of ice dance in the wind that blows out from her palm. Oni stumbles a step back from the force of that gale.

Under his feet, ice crystals form, and grow up, trapping his legs in a freezing lock. He looks about wildly, searching for a way out.

Neko looks out from the fading globe, hesitates, and pauses.

Oni's eyes fade out of pure black to a pure crystal blue, a shade he rarely lets out.

His eyes belie his calm, accepting voice. "You're going to do it."

Neko views him, her own eyes dead except for the tears she's kept hidden and suppressed. "Hai." That one word, for some reason, is incredibly hard to force out.

Oni looks down and murmurs something under his breath.

She snaps her fingers.

Oni smiles shakily at her. "Gomen..." And the ice bursts into glittering shards, throwing him back, enveloping his body. The barrier disappears with Neko's view of her older brother, and she falls back into Takeo's arms.

"Is he gone?"

Takeo squints through the gale in front of the door at her shaky inquiry. "H... Hai."

"Good." Straightening up, Neko brushes off the ice remaining around her arm, her eyes unreadable. "Let's get out of here."

Takeo nods in full agreement, and they turn to leave.

* Wait. *

They both swivel at the misty voice, eyes searching behind them.

* It hasn't been sealed yet. *

Where the gale was swirling just moments before, a slight wispy thread of dark fog swirls and vanishes. The doors still stand, pristine in ebony wood and pale ivory, and slightly open.

* Call out, Neko. *

She freezes. "Nani? Call out to what?"

* Call out. *

Neko tilts her head. Then, feeling what she has to do, she closes her eyes.

Before her left hand, a pale energy starts to form. Takeo stares at it, eyes wide, and he fails to notice the darker glow by her right hand in the dim light.

A keyblade of the lightest cream forms in her left hand, a ruby heart at the base of the hilt sprouting wing the color of flame, arching over Neko's hand, and feathers the same hue fall delicately into brilliant prongs. Anzu's feather disappears from Neko's hair and swings on a fine copper chain from the handle.

In her right hand, a dark grey keyblade appears suddenly, the sharp prongs pure black touched with ragged red. Two prongs burst from a dark blue diamond and slash on either side of the paler grey swirled handle, and a single downward sweeping spike adorns the edge opposite the prongs. A quarter of the way up is a brilliant red x-shaped slash.

The keychain is a black heart, a blood-red flower on one side with cracks running out from it and meeting on the other.

* Well. * The voice, tinged with something hard to define, brushes past them. * Seal it. *

Neko, eyes still closed, points the dark keyblade at the double doors. They creak closed, and with a soft click, they lock.

A violin plays slowly, softly, a heat-breaking tune, trailing off into nothing.

The keys vanish from Neko's hands, and she falls into Takeo's arms, crying. "Th... They're gone..."

:: I killed them both... ::

Takeo shakes his head, stroking his sister's hair. Her arm and leg bleed unnoticed.

"I killed them both..."

"No, you didn't." Neko looks blindly up at him, eyes bloodshot. "He killed both her... And himself."

TBC

********************

End part three. Review, please.