As he roared his kiai and charged at Katie, closing the distance with her, Nabiki turned to Akane. “Hey… when he says he’s gonna lose with all his might, is he or is he not holding back?”

When he reached Katie, he swung down diagonally on his target–who abruptly moved to his right, outside of the slash and to safety. The gust of wind kicked up off the blade’s passage reached both sisters, standing some twenty yards away, causing their hair and the loose fabric of their dirndl uniforms to ruffle about in a strong but not lascivious manner.

“Nevermind,” Nabiki said.

Akane, face buried in her hands, wanted to go home.

The draft from that missed blow was much stronger near the wooden blade, and Katie looked at Kuno’s lowered weapon in surprise. Her eyes darted from the edge of the bokken to his face, hidden by his bangs save for his confident smirk.

“… Well, shit,” she muttered as she realized this man wasn’t the joke she thought he was.

“Again!” Kuno shouted and the bokken came up in a rising sweep aimed for Katie’s lower right side.

Katie moved with the blade, sidestepping ahead of it before ducking down beneath not only its arc, but the path of the leading edge of the shockwave that came off it. Just as quickly Kuno swung down, and Katie dodged to his left into a roll. Getting back on her feet, she jumped back from Kuno as he pursued, angling her body and her evasions of his strikes to get out the path of that blade even as the strikes came up short.

“Again! Again! Again! Again!” Kuno repeated with every blow. “Again!”

He swung downward diagonally left, she ducked to his right.

“Again!”

Rising vertically, she moved up and to his left.

“Again!”

Downward right, she went dropped straight down and rolled back from his reach.

Kuno Tatewaki was exactly as Katie said–not in the least bit smart. However, everything else that was said about him not woven into his flowery nonsense was true. He was the undisputed and undefeated champion of the High School Kendo circuit–so much so that he was summarily banned from the High School Kendo circuit at the end of the previous school year.

He was stronger than every other boy at the school.

And, most importantly, he was losing with all his might.

“Again!” He yelled and unleashed a horizontal sweep for Katie’s hips that she had no recourse but to hop straight up over, curling her legs for the wooden blade to pass beneath her knees.

He also knew how to fight. “Foolish!”

Like a viper the bokken’s tip was thrust straight forward, aimed for Katie’s heart. In the same instant Katie’s feet shot back to the ground and she sidestepped the thrust.

The blade missed, but the force of the blow crossed the open air between Kuno and the school’s wall, striking it and blasting a bowling ball-sized hole clean through it.

The loud crack of the wall simply breaking from the force of Kuno’s blow brought Akane’s head up from her hands, and she looked over. “What was that…?! What happened?!”

Nabiki’s eyes narrowed a bit as she focused her camera on Katie’s pale, wide-eyed face as she too beheld at the damage done.

“Our girl just learned she’s screwed.”

Katie jumped back from Kuno thrice, until she was halfway towards the corner, and stopping to rest her hand against the wall–her eyes not leaving the hole Kuno made in it until she came to rest. She looked at the wooden sword, then at the wooden head of the maniac wielding it.

Around her, students murmured in silence, the boys crowding closer to look at the hole in the wall he made.

“He didn’t even hit the wall, with a wooden sword…” The karate kid from earlier said in a shaking voice.

“The Captain… this is why he’s feared,” a kendoist among Akane’s opponents said grimly.

The boxer was shaking in his boxing shorts. “We’d never stand a chance against that… I’ll take getting beaten up for months by Akane before I take one hit from Kuno-senpai…”

Akane grimaced in disgust at the crowd, then looked back at Kuno and Katie. Her eyes narrowed as she sized up the two combatants, Katie still leaned against the wall while Kuno enjoyed the dramatic breeze funneled through the hole in the wall he just made.

He was wearing that insufferable, but richly deserved smirk as he brought his sword to his shoulder. “Mesmerized by the beauty of my strength, I see?”

Pulling her hand from the wall, Katie looked from the sword to his face, to his hands, to his face again. “I’ll fess up, yer the strongest martial artist I met in this town since I got here.”

In spite of her ashen expression moments before, she was calm as she let the tension flow from her body and relaxed back into a fighting stance. She brought her fists up high in front of her, her right leading her left, and when her stance lowered, she brought her right leading foot off the ground, her toes just touching the ground.

Akane’s focus tightened sharpened, her eyes widening as she locked onto Katie’s stance, then her face, and then most importantly her eyes. She leaned forward a bit, Nabiki edging up alongside her and trying to muscle in to get the best possible shot.

“That’s… Muay…” She murmured.

“Muay Thai?” Nabiki finished. “Oh man, she’s toast. Kuno-baby’s dumb, but he can at least bring a knife to a fist fight.”

Akane looked from Katie to Kuno and back, before she–to Nabiki’s surprise–just relaxed. Noticing no tension at all in her little sister, Nabiki looked up at her. “What?”

“It’s over,” Akane simply replied.

Kuno lowered his sword again, once again taking it in his mid-stance, the tip pointed at Katie. “Acknowledging an opponent’s strength in the face of defeat, perhaps you do understand the precepts of bushido. When I defeat you, I promise to make as much time as I can to date you.”

Katie didn’t waver from her stance. “Wait, I gotta date you if I lose, too?”

“This is a battle for the heart!” Kuno declared passionately. “Mine or yours, one can only take the other!”

At that, the boys all looked at one another, and the boxer spoke up. “Wait, so if he starts dating her… does this mean Akane’s free?”

“Absolutely not! For my heart belongs to Akane as much as this maiden’s will belong to I!” Kuno corrected them. “Unless you have proven your worth and captured her heart, then it is to no avail!”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

A silence followed.

Karate kid spoke up. “Kuno-senpai, does this mean that Akane has all of our hearts?”

“Which means she's free to date us, technically?” Fencer-kun asked, filled with hope.

“NO!” Kuno, Katie, Akane, and Nabiki all said in unison.

“God no,” Katie added for emphasis. “Bless your hearts, though, you tried.”

Kuno began running towards Katie again, keeping his sword pointed at her. “But I shall succeed!”

Katie looked up, just as he raised his sword high again for another vertical strike.

“Prepare yourself, I strike!” And down the sword came again, nowhere near close to her–but it didn’t need to be. The shockwave of his swing surged at Katie, who sidestepped to her left.

“Again!” Kuno shouted as he swung straight up this time, sending another wave of air slicing at her. Katie moved the other direction, avoiding it even as the razor-sharp air lashed horizontal cuts across the sleeve of her uniform and unprotected forearm.

His return stroke was followed by another and another, sending slicing waves at Katie as she performed repeating side hops consecutively to avoid them. With each swing her closed the distance to Katie, shouting again with each unsuccessful attack.

Nabiki stepped even closer, catching every frame. “… You’re running out of wall…”

Akane, arms folded now, waited patiently.

As Katie evaded one more air blade, Kuno let out a victorious laugh. “Even to the end you stand defiant! That is the way of the warrior, yield nothing and stand to the last!”

Instead of vertical slashes, his wooden sword came up straight, a viper poised to strike again at Katie’s heart. The moment Kuno locked on, Katie’s retreat stopped, and she drew her fist to counterattack.

“It will do you, no good! This is your defeat at the hands of The Breaker of Furinkan High, but the beginning of…” Kuno launched himself forward. “OUR LOVE!”

Instead of evading, Katie lunged straight into Kuno’s stab, swinging a powerful haymaker aimed straight for the tip of Kuno’s lancing bokken.

Both fist and sword stopped barely an inch from one another, but there was a tremendous roar and crack as the wall beside them and the ground between them was split by a fine line the same width. The air trembled for a moment, as Kuno’s devastating attack dissipated with such speed that Nabiki’s camera caught the vapor ring of the expanding shockwave.

Nabiki’s eyebrows rose. “Wait.” She did a double take. “Wait, no, wait… what?”

Akane’s lips curled into a smile.

Kuno stared, transfixed on Katie’s fist. “Wait a moment, hold on… what did you–?”

Katie lashed her leg up in a high kick, catching the bokken and launching it up and out of Kuno’s hands.

The kendoist stared at his now vacant grip, then up at his weapon as it ascended skyward, then came tumbling end-over-end to land neatly in Katie’s upraised hand.

He blinked twice in the moment that passed, and followed the weapon with his gaze as Katie brought it down and examined it.

“Huh…” Katie said as weighed it one hand, then in two. “Ain’t nothin’ more than a wooden sword, not even HF… though fer the life of me why would anyone make an HF wooden sword…”

Kuno’s hands began trembling as Katie firmly gripped the weapon. “… M-Madam… you seem to have my weapon.”

Katie stopped and looked at him. “Mm, I sure do. Now… I got me a question; do you have another one on you?”

At that question, Kuno quietly shook his head.

In response, Katie let out another short hum and nodded. “All right. Now then… I believe I had a request I asked of you. Id est, it’s time I got to smashing your face on every flat surface in this here school yard.”

Kuno cleared his throat. “Madam, may I ask to have my blade back, before you proceed to engage in such activity. I… ahem… am a kendoist you see, and I need a blade in order to fight you to the fullest of my ability.”

Katie looked from Kuno to his bokken, and back again. When he smiled emphatically at the idea of his weapon being returned, she promptly threw it to her side–and with a crunch the bokken punched clean through the wall to get stuck halfway.

“My guy… if you come ‘round here picking a fight you can’t win without a stick? Then that is a YOU situation.”

Kuno stopped. “Madam, I beg your pardon, but I believe you challenged me–” Katie’s plowed a right cross into his face and followed it in quick succession with a left. Bruises immediately appearing on his cheeks, Kuno twirled away from her groaning in pain.

“There we go,” Akane said as Katie pressed the attack.

Tottering around to face her, Kuno weakly raised his hands to block. His world flashed white as she swung her left leg in a roundhouse into his ribs, kneed him in the stomach with her right leg, and rotated her body to elbow him in the side of his head. Each blow sounded like thunderclaps, both to him and to the spectators watching in stunned silence.

“Hurgh, huuh…!” Kuno groaned as he stumbled from side to side. “W-wait…!”

Katie turned and over and brought her knee up high to smash it flat against his nose. When he staggered back, she began to hop in place.

“I’m sorry, is this goin’ a bit too fast?” She asked, her eyes alight with malice. “Here, hon… let me make it easier fer ya! I STRIKE!”

She kneed him in his right side.

“Again!”

She kneed him in his left.

“Agan!”

Kicking his right leg in, she dropped him to his knee.

“Again!”

She slammed a left low kick into his right arm.

“AGAIN!”

She kneed him across the face, sending him spinning around to land on his belly.

Katie adopted a low, strong stance, her left fist and foot pointed at Kuno as he lay there.

“Hey now, you ain’t tapped out already, are ya? That’s just the ground! I still gotta few walls I want you ta meet!”

Groaning in pain, Kuno tried to lift himself up onto his right arm, but a flash of pain made him think better of it and switched to his left. Trembling like a leaf, he slowly got up and staggered forward away from Katie and towards the students. Flecks of spittle and lines of drool cascaded from his mouth as he attempted to rise to full height, but once more stopped from his radiating injuries.

His blurry vision focused on the horde of boys normally laid out by Akane at this point in the morning, and he let out a mumble. “… Word…”

Behind him, Katie inched closer, her face a mask of wrath. “They can’t hear ya, buck.”

Kuno lowered his head, then raised it to yell. “A SWORD! SOMEONE PASS ME A SWORD!”

The boys who feared his wrath enough to attack the girl they admired, stared back in solidarity as they answered all at once.

“Nah.”

Katie’s right hand came to rest on his left shoulder, and she leaned close to his ear. “Sowin’ all that wind with that stick of yours, only to not have it when the whirlwind comes a knockin’. That’s a damn shame.”

Yanking Kuno around, she grabbed his right shoulder and drove her right elbow into his face a half dozen times before she spun in place to build up massive momentum and drove her right knee into his left arm, an audible snap filling the airbefore Kuno hobbled back from her.

Akane was positively radiant now, never in her wildest dreams did she think this morning would be so satisfying.

Nabiki, still filming, pondered where this video was even going to go now. “Is Worldstar still a thing, or will LiveLeak get more views?”

Despite his bruises and his broken bones, Kuno spaced his feet and kept standing. Heaving for breath, he looked up at Katie with his left eye–the right already swelling shut just like how his lips were starting to balloon–and began to blubber.

“… You… you have not…”

Katie lifted an eyebrow.

“… beaten me.

She turned and brought a hand up to her ear. “What was that bucky? Yer kinda mumblin’ there.”

“… You have not beaten me,” he said, gaining strength as he declared. “With no sword… with no arms… with naught but the spirit of the warrior, the honor of the Kuno bloodline… I will demonstrate my true power!”

In spite of his pain, he managed to stand upright and even partially open his swollen eye “You, an American… cannot understand the depths of power, that the bushido code provides me…! This is the moment, that I, Kuno Tatewaki… will strike you down with all my might…”

After a brief pause, Katie gestured for him to finish.

“… And you shall date me with all of yours!”

Katie nodded. “There ya go. Just wanted to make sure you’re still a denser than a devil’s food cake.”

She snapped back into her fighting stance. “But you know what? Let’s get that first date going right now.”

Kuno stopped. “… Wait, you shall?”

Spacing her feet, Katie got ready as she looked at Kuno and the school behind him. “Mm… the issue is… it’ll only last about eight seconds.”

And just like that, Kuno seemed to have forgotten he was injured at all. Closing his eyes, he began to speak as Katie shot towards him like a missile. “Even a date of one second is fine when it is with-”

The blow that followed didn't seem visually all that different, but where the others merely prompted desperate flailing, the knee that caught Kuno in the solar plexus forced his eyes to widen in sheer heightened panic.

Akane's joy cut a little as she felt something was very different from the other hits.

Nabiki, not a martial artist, could read the panic in his eyes. "What's with th–"

She was cut off when Kuno opened his mouth to speak and proceeded to spew out a mouthful of blood. “Oh… shit.”

“Let this be a lesson to ya, bucko.” Katie swept back, performed a full body rotation as she dropped low, then leaped and swung her knee up to collide full force with his chin shattering his jaw.

A blast of wind washed over the students behind Kuno, blowing back hair and flipping up skirts, before there was a loud bang behind them. Behind Katie, Akane gasped when she saw a huge dent appear in the face of the clock near the top of the school’s front. At that same moment, Katie ground her knee against Kuno’s ruined chin, her green eyes lit up with fury. The air was still–filled with incredible tension even after the strange impact.

“Don’t be the clown…”

All at once the suspended tension snapped, and she completed the motion of her knee to launch Kuno skyward.

“AT YER OWN RODEO”

The recoil of her blow caused her to perform a backflip, and Kuno–a trail of condensation rings radiating from him in his short flight–smashed into the clock at the center of the school’s tower and hitting the clock’s bell behind it with a loud, warped clang and an uncomfortable grinding of gears.