Meanwhile, while Itsuki was reenacting World War 2 with his incessant gunfire and explosions with Amanda as his sole enemy, over on the other side of the arena, the audience witnessed a clash of blades rather than fire.
Ikki was clashing with Stella and the two were locked in close quarters combat.
The battle separated into two groups in the large arena, isolating each pair’s ally from each other.
Ikki’s black katana strikes were being evaded and Stella was pushed to only being able to dodge. Ducking from a slash, she wanted to dash away but couldn’t since the second she needed to focus her core energy was being interrupted by her opponent's following and flowing attacks. His rhythm kept her off balance and his strikes were cutting it close, almost to a hair’s breadth.
Opting for a simple method, Stella produced fire from one of her hands, creating a small fireball burst in between them.
Ikki had no choice but to avoid this since taking that head on would have drained his stamina and core energy by large amounts. It was already scarce as it was as an F-ranker, so he couldn’t let himself get knocked out of the fight yet. With enough time opening up for her to counter, Stella pressed her counterattack and she crossed blades with Ikki.
From the audiences’ perspective, Stella now had Ikki on the back foot since he was retreating as he barely parried her howling slashes. Each attack blew Ikki back or had him needing to correct his stance, but in truth. Stella picked up on how her strikes did little to whittle his stamina down.
He took her head on, but masterfully maneuvered himself and his blade into her own in a manner that transferred her momentum through a fluid stroke of his sword. Her attacks were like water droplets being smoothly tipped off a leaf’s gentle surface.
The force Stella was putting out with her weapon in its blade form should have damaged and put strain on Ikki’s bones and muscles, reducing him to an extent that he should be taking a knee from exhaustion.
Instead, the force was being used to allow Ikki to gain some distance or even throw her own momentum off, making Stella expend more core energy to chase him down or correct her posture by force.
“You can’t run forever.” Stella said, sending Ikki flying.
“Yeah, I guess not.” He replied. “But I’m still in the fight.”
Hardening his soul, Ikki struck forward, his blade meeting Stella’s in succession, never too long but just enough that it made Stella defend herself. The heat of her blade would damage his own, so slight strikes to probe for weaknesses was Ikki’s goal.
But even still, there was no way she would run out of energy before him, but this kept her from landing a decisive blow. When she moved for the kill, Ikki evaded and slipped in again when he found another chance. Stella was getting nowhere like this. Yet, she still pressed on, trusting in her long-honed skills with her weapon and her statistical advantage.
“Don’t get your hopes up! I’ll still win!” Stella shouted, her core energy stirring the air with foreboding heat making the audience sweat. Ikki on the other hand, kept calm and trained his eyes on her, examining how she attacked, tracing the imaginary lines of her blade’s possible paths in front of him.
Seeing him slow down and put less into attacking, Stella found that she had enough leeway to examine the situation since her recent horizontal slash blew Ikki a few more meters back than usual.
Looking over to Amanda, Stella hoped to coordinate with her since it was obvious that these two grunts had a plan, and she wasn’t foolish enough to underestimate her opponent. She expected to see Amanda trouncing her opponent, but instead she found her friend’s situation strange.
“Just when the hell are you going to run out of guns!” Hiding behind her floating barriers while dashing around Itsuki, Amanda cut down a recent barrage of grenades that flew at her, making Itsuki grin.
“When I run out of ammo!” He said curtly, while unloading another set of submachine guns on Amanda’s barriers of crumbling ice. He had yet again rattled her with explosion after explosion. His guns clicking empty, he threw them down like the many other guns on the ground around him and took out another riot shield with reactive armor strapped to its front, which made Amanda back away in an attempt to figure out how to take him down sooner.
Not falling for his suicidal explosive shield charge, she hailed ice arrows onto his shield, but it had little effect as the reactive armor lessened her attacks effectiveness.
“Hmmm?” Noticing Stella’s gaze on him as he braced with his shield, Itsuki turned to her while still suppressing Amanda with a hail of gunfire using a submachine gun in his other hand.
He stared at her, as if saying, what the heck are you doing! Hurry up and focus on your own fight! He quickly turned back to charge at Amanda and Stella felt her brow twitch in annoyance.
Doing just as Itsuki had silently said, Stella turned her head back but flinched when Ikki profited from her slight distraction and knocked her blade form switch axe away as he charged with both his swords closing in from two different angles.
Stella staggered and suddenly found the white tachi’s blade coming at her in a reverse grip. This was unlike the Japanese style of swordsmanship he was using earlier, and Stella got the uncanny feeling as if she was fighting another person.
She knelt down to dodge but found that Ikki was not letting up. His black katana came slashing down on her, but in an all too familiar form.
“Is that! My technique!”
In her eyes, she could see that the stance and posture Ikki was taking was the one-handed noble style of swordsmanship from her country. The parallels she could see continued as she was put on the receiving end of her own style of attacks, feeling as if she was fighting a mirror version of herself.
Slamming against the flat of her weapon, Stella deflected the force of Ikki’s attacks but had difficulty fighting this mirrored style of swordsmanship, it was not every day that you would fight an opponent who could copy your exact moves.
“How did you learn that! There’s no way you’d be able to do that, unless.” A troubling idea ran across Stella. Ikki was watching her all this time and while she had ignored it, it came to prominence now.
“It's exactly as you think. I watched you, I learned as I traced every detail I could from your form.” Ikki said as he pressed on with his slashing assault. “I must thank you for your hard work, I could feel it with every strike I took, you’ve honed your technique down to such a degree that it gave me pause, I’m impressed.”
Stella’s thoughts went blank for a moment, finding his words kind, but shook her head.
“But that doesn’t explain why you’re copying me, and what was that attack earlier, that didn’t look like Japanese swordsmanship at all!” She broke away with a wide slash, Ikki blocked Stella’s counter and flew back a distance with the recoiling force running down his blade, then into his arm, and then his legs.
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Landing, he nodded in response to her query. “Yes, in fact you're right. That was actually my imitation of my friend's skill with a knife over there, since I flunked last year I couldn’t take any classes to hone my swordsmanship or gain any proper training, so I had to either watch and learn, or find a good friend who was willing to teach me anything remotely related to fighting.”
Turning to look where Ikki was indicating with a jerk of his neck, Stella saw that it was Itsuki and she understood that he had made a friend, just like her. The look of comradery Ikki had made her parallel her own relationship with Amanda, they were friends, recent, but close friends.
Touching as it was, Stella refocused and gripped her switch axe’s golden hilt tighter.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but you won’t win. Not you, or your friend.”
“Maybe you're right.” Ikki said sadly, but his lips quickly changed back into a confident smile. “But I have a few tricks of my own to try.”
They charged at each other, respective swords clashing. A samurai fighting with all the skill he had cultivated, while the fire princess of legendary fantastical powers pressed on with magic and other worldly might.
As they battled, their blades created sparks as they crossed, their duel becoming a showdown between masters of the blade. But to change the tide, Ikki’s white tachi shined and for a moment his speed increased, but only by a few degrees. Yet, it was enough to change his pace in just the right way to put Stella in a bind.
Her weapon was heavy and if she didn’t have enough focus or distance, her ability to defend became an issue, her sword’s posture caught at an odd timing. So she put up a hasty block but found Ikki’s black blade descending on her in the next moments.
No problem, she thought, but found that her expectations were again subverted.
Striking with greater momentum than before, Ikki’s Kuraken pressed deep into Ignaria’s edge. Its creaking was ominous, yet Stella held firm, engulfing her weapon in a red fire which drove Ikki away. The heat lapped at his skin, burning slight black tinges to his light brown features.
He winced in pain, the sensation of taking damage more apparent than usual. This was a result of the power Ikki had manifested with his core energy.
By sacrificing or heightening his senses, Ikki was able to bring out great strength through physical and psychological suffering. As masochist as it sounded, this was quite an endearing power he had. The more he suffered, the stronger he got, but who knew how long Ikki’s mind could last under all that pain and anguish.
“W-WHAT THE F-—---” The terrified voices of the audience began to drown out their battle, making Stella and Ikki notice and have to jump away as to not get caught up in what was happening nearby. They witnessed as Amanda let loose an enormous shard of ice that came down on Itsuki like a hammer of judgment.
The crowd screamed in horror since the shard of ice was more like a small iceberg crashing down from the heavens, but Itsuki faced it unflinchingly.
Suddenly materializing on his back was an enormous metallic gray colored ammo box with a belt fed mechanism to a gun larger than himself appearing in his hands. Without even flinching, he raised the enormous barrel up, cocked the apparent heavy machine gun’s firing hammer, and let devastation run wild.
“Target sighted.” He mumbled, as if he were part machine.
Thunder cracked in rapid succession as the ground crunched under Itsuki’s boots. Each chitin bullet he fired was of a caliber that was the size of a soda can and with the explosive power of a mini frag grenade filled with C4.
Firing at over 1000 rounds a minute, it was obvious what it would do to anything put in front of it.
The once enormous iceberg above him was reduced to pieces in seconds. The sheer force of the gun’s recoil should have broken his bones by just firing it, but it didn’t. Itsuki looked like he was firing any old gun, yet it still didn’t seem so. It was as if he were just a fixture to mount guns onto.
The sight made Amanda shriek.
“THE HELL! JUST WHAT—-”
But Amanda had no time for further cursing as she immediately rolled out of the way as Itsuki pointed the heavy machine gun at her, its barrel still warm and primed to fire. His bullets tore into Amanda’s ice barriers as fast as she was making them and while the bright side was that she was taking no damage, she couldn’t attack in this situation.
Each bullet, which was more like an explosive cannonball, jolted her slightly every time it glanced over her armor. Getting close was no longer an option since it seemed like Itsuki had finally brought out his trump card.
That gun could possibly break through if Itsuki got a direct hit, so Amanda planned her next moves as Itsuki continued to fire.
She looked around and noticed a new development and kept Itsuki’s attention. But Itsuki wasn’t easily fooled. Like a skilled explorer, he kept an eye on the changing situation. Suddenly stopping his gunfire, he dashed away, avoiding a flaming axe that came down on where he was standing.
“Sorry about that, Itsuki! She’s too fast!” Ikki called out to Itsuki, regretting that he let Stella out of their one-on-one duel. Ikki was so awed by Stella's swordsmanship that he forgot that there was another person he was trying to look out for.
Trying to dash over to re-engage Stella and get her off of Itsuki’s back, Ikki pushed his legs as fast as he could, but it would take him a few seconds to get over to that side of the arena. Stella had the benefit of instantaneous speed on demand while Ikki needed a bit of time to cover the same distance.
“Are you okay!?” Stella asked as she pulled Amanda from her crouched position behind her crumbling defensive ice barriers.
“Yeah, I’m fine! Help me put down the twerp! He’s too deadly with all those weapons and I– OH SHOOT!”
Picking up on Amanda’s distress, Stella noticed in the corner of her eye that Itsuki was gone from where he had dashed away, leaving the heavy machine gun and its ammo box on the ground. A quick turn of their heads revealed that he had closed in on them immediately after he dashed away using an enhanced jump and some unknown method they had missed seeing.
With no room to swing their weapons since he was quite literally in their face, Amanda tried to pull Stella back but found resistance as Itsuki gripped the red and black collar of Stella's outfit. He grinned and then slammed his forehead into Stella’s face.
“Grah!” Stella let out a yelp and bled from her nose.
The crowd booed Itsuki but he let their hateful jeers go through one ear and out the other. Amanda retaliated for the audience by thrusting her sword at him.
Moving the still reeling red-headed girl with his grip on her collar, Itsuki kicked Stella in the gut, propelling her into the path of Amanda’s blade.
Stopping her sword thrust in time, Amanda caught Stella and dashed away but was left open to attack mid movement. Getting Stella to safety first, Amanda threw her out of the way and braced for impact as Itsuki charged her again with a shotgun fully cocked and loaded.
Itsuki was relentless, it seemed that he wasn’t tired at all and just unceasingly charged after every attack his opponent made and every dodge, he himself made. It was pure violence he was putting upon them, no fancy swordsmanship or supernatural powers.
Just metal and flesh thrown at his opponent.
At the same time, Ikki had closed in and had moved to once more cross swords with Stella as she wiped her bleeding nose. Just in time, she parried Ikki’s attack but was locked down by him. His style of swordsmanship switching between his own, then her own, and then that irregular knife work.
It threw Stella off, and she couldn’t set the pace of the fight, not while still trying to understand how she had been injured. The only thing she could think to do in her rushed mind was to counter Ikki the moment when he used her own technique.
She could pull a feint on him by already knowing the path his blade would take when he used her style of fighting. Stella knew her swordsmanship better than anyone else, so she went for it with confidence.
“Let’s see how you handle this!”
She swung, catching Ikki in the middle of one of his swings using her technique, but Stella let her swing falter on purpose as she repositioned from Ikki’s attempt to recover and dodged Ikki’s sweeping swing as it flew over her head.
She went in for a strike, but Ikki’s eye picked up her movement’s irregular pattern.
“You're getting sloppy.” Ikki whispered. “You’re too off balance now.” His eyes never left her for even a moment, so Stella’s foolproof strike was suddenly met with an irregular guard made by Ikki using the hilt of his smaller tachi.
Stella found herself forced back as Ikki parried with his tachi’s hilt to stagger Stella, batting her weapon away and she found herself with no time to counter as Ikki closed in for a slash against her chest.
At the same time, Itsuki switched to full auto on his shotgun and his weapon began to sing a finality to this duel.
[Ikki Kurogen with Kuraken]
image [https://postimg.cc/jW6F7PGn] image [https://i.postimg.cc/25gRgxGG/1694891834444.jpg]image [1694891834444]