Clear to cloudy
Target 16: Intuition vs brute strength
Kotsu catches the fork Reborn tossed at him and after he's done looking at it he looks up seeing the red light coming towards his forehead. Geraldino strikes down at him and a cloud of smoke appears right as both Geraldino's sword and Reborn's bullet hits Kotsu. There's a pause where even Geraldino has no idea if he hit Kotsu.
After a couple of seconds, everyone gets a strange sensation. Suddenly a very large purple flame shoots up from right in front of Geraldino. This causes him to jump back. The flame gets smaller as the smoke clears revealing Kotsu standing with a much calmer look in his eyes than before, the purple unstable flame on his forehead. His eyes have turned the same shade of purple as the flame on his forehead. Legs split lightly and his side turned slightly and he's holding the fork in his hand, the arm hanging down lifelessly in front of him. On the same hand, he has the purple ring. However, the fork has changed from the normal-looking fork into a fork with four tips that curves slightly inwards at the handle and has ornate carvings all the way down it. The carvings look a little like vines wrapping themselves around the fork handle. At the very end is a strange three-leafed clover carving with a purple gem in the middle of each leaf.
"What in the world!?" Geraldino asks looking at Kotsu.
Kotsu looks at the fork in his hand. "This isn't what it looked like before… that means it's different somehow," he says to himself and points the tips of the fork at Geraldino. "I already said that I would defeat you, but I did not have the means to a second ago,"
Geraldino tsks and holds out his sword in the same way as Kotsu holds his fork.
"And you DO now!? That fork!? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard!" He yells and jumps forward. He slashes at Kotsu with his sword, and Kotsu moves slightly to the side and attempts to stab Geraldino with the fork, but the older boy spins on his foot and kicks at Kotsu, who instead of attacking puts up his arms to block and slides backwards. He stops himself and looks across the room.
"I know Reborn… and no matter how strict he is… he'd never give me something useless. That's the kind of teacher he is," He notes Geraldino's hand seeing the ring he's wearing with the blue gem. He looks at his own purple ring noting that they look a lot similar. Kotsu thinks, but in the split second of inattentiveness Geraldino attacks him again and he holds out the fork to block and it isn't cut straight in two and Kotsu manages to block the strike, but the ice quickly spreads to the fork and covers both Kotsu's fork and his hands and Geraldino kicks him back once again and breaks the ice that connects his sword to Kotsu's fork. Kotsu looks at his ice-covered hands that are now stuck to his hands.
Kotsu hums slightly and closes his eyes. 'A ring that sets on fire. His has a blue gem and mine is purple,' His eyes shoot open and slams his forehead into his ice-covered hand. While the ice doesn't seem to melt something else does seem to be happening.
Geraldino grits his teeth and jumps at Kotsu. "I don't know what you're doing! But it won't be enough to beat me!" He yells and slices at Kotsu. Kotsu holds up his ice-covered hands. "FROST BITE!" Geraldino yells and his sword changes to the ice spiked shape and he swings it at Kotsu and right before the attack connects the ice on Kotsu's fork shatters as the fork seems to grow immensely and it stabs Geraldino right across the shoulder in four different places. The older boy grits his teeth and Kotsu pulls out his fork. His entire hand where his ring is is covered in the purple flame and it suddenly extinguishes and Kotsu takes a low stance with one hand on the ground for support and his now giant fork swung over his shoulder with the spikes pointing behind him.
"I see… expansion… this purple flame has a special property. Much like your flame seems to be able to create ice," Kotsu comments upon his new discovery. Reborn looks genuinely impressed that he figured out his own flame's trait without any instructions at all. Geraldino grits his teeth and holds the ring out in front of his wounds. They start slowly getting incased in ice, which stops the bleeding.
"What the hell is with that fork!? No normal fork should be that easy to increase in size!" Geraldino yells and Kotsu leaps forward swinging the giant fork at Geraldino who's forced to block with his sword and as soon as the ice begins spreading to the fork it appears to get unstable and visibly breaks apart.
"This fork is the means I was talking about. As far as I can see it was created by Leon. That makes it different from normal metal," He says calmly and he moves his ring into the flame on his forehead once more and it flames up like before and the flame flows from his hand into the fork and collects at the middle two tips of the fork and those two extend further and grazes Geraldino's cheek, but he just manages to move his head to avoid getting stabbed straight through the head with the fork spikes. He grits his teeth and jumps back again.
"I hope you don't think you can beat me just because you have a weapon too now! I'm much stronger than you could ever hope to be!" He grabs a firm hold of his sword with both hands and jumps forward slicing at Kotsu who blocks the strike by getting Geraldino's sword stuck in between the two extended blades of the fork breaking the ice around it like two icepicks revealing the real sword underneath. Geraldino pushes with all his might and Kotsu is pushed back quite easily, yet he remains with his fork on Geraldino's sword. Kotsu activates his ring again and the end of the fork gets longer and stabs into the ground at an angle making it much more difficult for Geraldino to push Kotsu and he's forced to pull back and as soon as he does Kotsu jumps forward making Geraldino's sword remain between Kotsu's fork blades. Geraldino grits his teeth as his sword is pinned to the ground by Kotsu's fork. Kotsu switches hands on the fork and lights his ring on fire on his free hand now and he uses it to boost and kicks Geraldino all in a single instant making Tsugemora's jaw drop from how cool it looks. He watches Geraldino slide back before stopping himself. The ice wolf takes out another ring with a blue gem on it and puts it on another of his fingers.
"I hope you don't think you've WON!" He holds out his fist with the rings on it. "ARCTIC SHARDS!" He shoots large icicles after Kotsu who takes his fork out of the ground and swings it around like a bow staff blocking every single shot. He ends the swings by getting it into a spear-throwing position fluidly and tosses it at Geraldino, who quickly takes his hand in his pocket taking out a third ring with a blue gem and quickly puts it on another finger next to the two he already has. He then slams his hand into the ground and a giant wall of ice appears in front of him and the fork gets stuck in it. He smirks knowing there's no way Kotsu's strong enough to pull his fork out.
Kotsu runs towards the wall of ice and kicks his fork really hard on the end making it go further into the wall and it cracks as if the fork was an icepick. The ice cracks and then breaks as Kotsu grabs hold of his fork again jumping through to stab Geraldino instantly, however right as he gets through he finds that Geraldino isn't there. 'Left? Right? No… definitely…' he thinks quickly and looks behind him to see the older boy with his sword again. He picks up his giant fork again and flings it over his shoulder. Reborn looks at the large weapon and grits his teeth earning the attention of Murphy.
"What's the matter Reborn?" He asks and Reborn crosses his arms.
"It's that weapon. The cloud flames ability is propagation. He can make it bigger and more elaborate until the end of time and that ring Leon gave him seems to be the only way that can happen. But making it bigger and bigger has its own issues. He has no way of turning it back to how it was before. So every single expansion to it is permanent until he finds a way to turn it back to normal," he comments and Murphy frowns a bit.
"I see what you mean, but on the other hand… every expansion to it he makes, is to counter something Geraldino can do. So in a sense the longer this fight goes on the better his weapon will become at fighting Geraldino specifically," he adds on.
Kotsu jumps forward again swinging the fork down at Geraldino who blocks it and before he even has a chance to coat the fork in ice he's pushed back. He stops and then starts laughing.
"You really think you've got this in the bag don't you!?" He yells sinisterly and Tsugemora gets a chill down his spine. 'No… don't tell me he's perfected it!' He thinks and Geraldino laughs upon seeing Tsugemora's expression. He looks back at Kotsu.
"What else do you have? I've been able to counter every single one of your swords. If you give up right now and free Fumie I won't attack you again," Kotsu says pointing the end of the giant fork at him.
"Just look at Tsugemora! Do you still think you've won!?" He yells and Kotsu sees Tsugemora's worried expression. He smiles at him gently, which almost seems like a cocky smile in his current state.
"Don't worry Tsugemora. I'll beat him. I won't let Fumie stay here," He says and grabs the fork with both his hands holding it like a battle-axe.
Geraldino gets angry again. "You think you're so tough, don't you!? I'll show you what I've been training!" He takes out another two rings from his pocket and fills his entire hand with them. He then grabs hold of his other arm with his ringed hand. They all burst into the deep blue flames and his arm slowly gets covered in ice. But unlike normal, this ice appears to be the same blue as his flame and not light blue like normal. The gems on the rings also seem to crack as he does this.
"What's with that ice Mister Reborn?" Ren asks noting how different it appears to look now.
Reborn hums a little worryingly. "hmmm… there're a lot of things that are said in the mafia world about 'the ice wolf' Geraldino. One of them is that he's incredibly strong for his age. He's only 22, but in terms of pure physical strength, he's one of the best. The other thing is about his flame. Normally to get a flame to be incredibly pure you need to train for almost your entire life. But Geraldino's rain flame is said to be the purest rain flame to have every been documented. Normal rain flames can't form ice, but if you get them sufficiently pure you can create ice with them as well, but Geraldino's rain flame is so pure that he can create…" Geraldino's entire arm is now covered in the ice with his joints being uncovered and they form a giant clawed hand at the end of his arm and his sword is also covered in the deep blue ice. The ice suddenly burst into blue flames and the rings break. "BURNING ICE!" He yells and Kotsu grits his teeth and prepares himself.