Chapitre 4: Chapter 4
"Are we all ready?"
Neo watched from the roof besides the bar's roof, eyes for once filled with interest.
Team STRQ lined up against one edge of the roof, and Kojiro stood in the other. Neo wriggled her fingers, and a countdown from ten appeared.
"You all ready?" Summer asked, sword in hand. Everybody else nodded. Taiyang readied his stance, Raven drew her katana, and Qrow unhooked his scythe.
"Summer, why didn't you bring your weapon?" Qrow hissed.
"It's in the prototype phase!" Summer whispered back, the countdown ticking down to five.
Kojiro smiled, before leveling the monohoshizao at them.
"I advice that you all concentrate."
The timer abruptly ticked to zero, and big, cartoony letters appeared in the air.
Taiyang slowly walked forward, flaring yellow. Kojiro arced an eyebrow at Taiyang's other teammates, but they looked on confidently. Qrow shifted on his feet a bit impatiently.
Kojiro whipped his sword forward, and with padded forearms, Taiyang deflected the attack without any issue, and kept walking forward. The attack, done with all the force Kojiro could muster, didn't even faze the brawler.
Taiyang's next punch was met by an attempt at batting it aside, but nothing happened. Kojiro took a punch to the gut, and his eyes widened as he staggered back, the back of his heel meeting the edge of the building.
"Is this your semblance?" Kojiro asked, preparing a counterattack instead.
"Why would I tell you now?" Taiyang said, setting into a firm stance and throwing another punch. This time, Kojiro knew better than to block or deflect, and instead, ducked underneath it, and stabbed forward with his sword at his side. It was batted aside without even a hint of effort, and to Kojiro's bigger surprise, a red vortex opened where Kojiro was falling, and Qrow's scythe came out of it, whistling viciously as the steel blade parted the air before it.
This time, Kojiro rolled out of the way of the Scythe swing, dodged another punch, and settling into a stance near the corner of the roof.
"I suppose this will be harder than I thought."
Suddenly, Kojiro was up in the air, exercising an agility that surprised everybody on the rooftop but Neo. His sword blade came down on Qrow's head, and he had to use the blunt side of his scythe to deflect the attack. The monohoshizao rattled as Kojiro slid off of the scythe and onto the ground behind Taiyang. Kojiro then aimed another slash at Taiyang's back, but he turned to block the sword strike with another leather padded forearm.
"So even if he's invulnerable to being pushed, he still has to block the attacks." Kojiro thought, keeping an eye on his back in case the other two sprang into action.
Which Summer did, rushing forward in a storm of rose petals. Without turning, Kojiro turned and sliced a rose petal in half, his sword cleaving into the blur of white that was Summer. The sword didn't meet Summer at all, who seemingly phased through the blow without any effort, before using her own sword and slashing at Kojiro's throat. At the same time, a scythe entered Kojiro's peripheral vision to the right, and a punch came from the left.
The situation looked grim for Kojiro, but in that instant, he activated his mind's eye.
There were still many escape routes the team hadn't accounted for yet. He whipped his wrist up do stall the scythe as he dashed forward in that tiny space between Qrow and the scythe. After he was out of the enclosure, he sent his sword arcing backwards to stall out any further attempts at attack, before taking a deep breath and focusing again.
Taiyang was still glowing a bright gold, and none of his opponents were particularly worn out. Yet, there still was one person that hadn't acted, and with this opportunity, they probably would.
Kojiro saw Raven whip her sword through the air, and a red vortex appeared, before she dashed into it.
Now, where would she strike?
Kojiro's sword arm was his right, and so the likely conclusion was an attack from the back and at his left side was being prepared.
And as the sound of air being forced apart sent mild gusts of wind around the rooftop, Kojiro planted his feet, his sandals skidding on the concrete as he struck to his left with all of his strength. Raven was hit back out of the portal, where she stumbled and struggled to regain her footing.
This distraction, however, gave room for the others to strike. Summer came first, a storm of rose petals surging forward. Taiyang strode towards Kojiro slowly as Qrow took to the side and prepared to flank him.
However, Summer had already performed her charge before, and if there was one thing that he learned after being bisected by Saber after she avoided his Tsubamei Gaeshi, was to never repeat the same move.
Kojiro just slid imperceptibly to the right as Summer solidified in front of him, sword pointed, yet again, at a vital area.
However, his shift gave him an opportunity to dodge the stab and retaliate with a swing of his own, scoring a large tear in Summer's cloak and making her aura flare a bright white as she was hit to the ground.
A kick sent Summer away to the other edge of the roof, and he took another deep breath, back to the roof's edge, as he smiled faintly.
This battle was nowhere near the intensity of his battle against Saber or Musashi, but for this body that had only been training for ten years?
It was a suitable challenge.
Qrow's attack came next, and behind him, Raven's portals opened as the siblings attacked as one, Qrow's scythe swing coming from the bottom and Raven's katana strike falling from above.
This would be a problem if the monohoshizao wasn't so absurdly long.
The blade was made so that even a slight flick of the wrist could bring the sword blade up to deflect a potential attack, and Kojiro did so in rapid succession, misdirecting Raven's strike to the right and Qrow's strike to the left. Then, he stepped forward, turned back, and scored a hit against Qrow's back. His momentum carried him forward and almost pitched him off of the roof, while again, Raven struggled to land properly.
Without a moment of rest for either side, the battle continued, Taiyang's fist came. Kojiro sidestepped the attack and instead, went to attack Summer, who tried to parry Kojiro's blow with a sword.
What a foolish decision. For somebody that had dedicated entire lifetimes to the sword, such a passive parry wasn't enough. Kojiro made his sword dip under Summer's parry, and the katana nearly hit her in the face, if not for another one of Taiyang's attacks forcing Kojiro to jump away once again.
Now, things were looking up for Kojiro, who was slowly chipping away at everybody's aura except for Taiyang's, whose semblance was draining his aura anyways.
Team STRQ began recovering as Taiyang kept up the pace, trying to keep Kojiro occupied with flurries of attacks, Taiyang's seeming invulnerability giving him an edge. However, the golden shimmer began slowly flickering, and Kojiro took this opportunity to unleash two fast strikes.
The blade flashed in the air, momentarily catching the glint of the sun, before two strikes hit Taiyang in both shoulders. More yellow aura flared, and Taiyang was forced to take a defensive position.
"Your semblance… It's blunt force negation, is it not?" Kojiro asked, taking in a deep breath as his lungs and muscles began to feel sore.
"Smart.. of… you… to figure it out." Taiyang Panted.
Kojiro smiled, and in the next moment, he disappeared, reappearing right in front of Taiyang. His soreness did not matter anymore with a simple application of Fade Out.
The attack was dodged, and Taiyang had to tilt to the left for the blow to completely miss him.
However, Kojiro had already planned for this.
"Hiken."
Seemingly impossibly, he brought his swiftly falling katana into an upward slash. Taiyang's eyes widened as the strike hit him under the chin, finally making his aura fizzle out.
"Tsubame Gaeshi."
"Wait, that isn't what you said that technique was."
"Indeed, it was not." Kojiro said. "This is but the origin of that technique. To turn your sword like a swallow turns in mid air. The Swallow Reversal."
Taiyang took this opportunity to go down the stairwell and watch the match from there.
The defeat of their bruiser, marked a turning point in their fight. Without the immovable object, the unstoppable force that was Kojiro's skill with a blade quickly overcame Summer's speed, Qrow's wide swipes, and Raven's broad strokes.
With a last strike of the sword, the blade reflected the white light that Summer's aura gave out, before it was sheathed once again. Summer collapsed, and with that, the match was over.
"How…? Since when could people get this strong without unlocking their auras?" Raven said, struggling to stand.
"It's not about natural talent." Kojiro said. "It's just… mastery through endless repetition."
From the other rooftop, Neo clapped demurely as team STRQ staggered back out of the bar, waved their goodbyes, and returned to the bullhead docks.
Neo reappeared on the rooftop of the bar and pointed at herself.
Kojiro looked at her in confusion.
She then pointed at Kojiro's sheathed sword, herself, and then mimed swinging it. All with an exasperated look on her face.
"You… want to learn how to fight?"
Neo nodded, before avidly swinging the parasol /umbrella that they had stolen all those years ago.
"You want to fight… with an umbrella?"
Neo nodded again.
"Well, all right then." Kojiro said, sighing. "I may not be the best with fighting with polearm like objects, but I have fought against them frequently, and I should be able to provide some advice."
Pinching her forehead and sighing, Neo waved her hands and her illusions sparked to life again, forming words.
When did you do this? Is this more of your swallow nonsense? Talking about stuff that doesn't exist?
It was Kojiro's turn to sigh. Truly, his life was simple and complicated at the same time.
…
"And the Mt. Glenn tunnel saboteur has not yet been found, but the council has elected to blame the-"
The scroll clicked shut, and the gathering of gang leaders and their henchmen fell silent. Standing next to Mason and Verdant, Kojiro looked on impassively as the silence turned into a storm of whispers.
"You guys understand any of this?" Verdant whispered, fidgeting with the hem of his cloak.
"Not particularly." Mason said, lightly hitting the low part of his back with his bat.
"This kind of thing is the leader's job." Kojiro said, shaking his head. The Monohoshizao clinked in its scabbard as he did so. "I am but a mere servant, used to enforce the rules and intimidate people like you all."
"You're not very scary, if that's what you're going for." Mason said. "Seriously. Your hair and those robes don't match. You're like an Atlesian cosplayer trying to be Mistralian."
Ah. Cosplay. In one of the stranger iterations sections of legends he had inherited, there was a strange one called Emiya Gohan. An even odder one was Carnival Phantasm, and to this day, he still had a slight urge to load up religious temple gates and take them elsewhere by truck.
He shook his head. It was best not to go down on that route.
Anyways, Medea's workshop was… questionable, to say the least. The figurine making kit and the various… posters on the wall didn't fit the scheme of a Buddhist temple at all.
"You talk like an Atlesian prick as well." Verdant said, leaning on Kojioro's shoulders casually. "Who uses words like intimidate anyways? We're the Valean underground. Take a load off, dude."
Kojiro was shook from his reminiscence.
"This is just how I talk. It is merely a habit. I assure you, I am as uneducated as you all are."
"… Sure, dude."
The conversation came to a halt as one leader, wearing a slightly torn and stained dress shirt, slammed the table.
"Why the fuck should we care about this? I'm fucking out of here. If this ain't got anything to do with drugs or any of the stuff that we sell, I'm getting out of here."
"Disgusting." Kojiro said, shaking his head.
"Yeah." Mason said. "What a scumbag. If they're blaming all of us, we all should get back at the council together."
"No, not that." Kojiro said, shaking his head. "It's the ugliness of his mind. The simple laziness of backing down from a task."
"… I mean, it is true." Verdant said. "This doesn't exactly affect gangs that aren't looking to expand into Mt. Glenn."
"Then why did he come to the meeting in the first place?" Kojiro said. "It is this dull aimlessness that..."
"Yeah, I'm seriously thinking you're from some sort of rich family." Verdant said, raising an eyebrow skeptically.
Mason just nodded.
Meanwhile, the conversation continued. More and more leaders began leaving, calling their enforcers with them. The bodyguards standing in the corner glared at the group still remaining one last time before leaving to follow their leader.
There was a general silence as poorly dressed gang leaders, ruffian huntsmen, and the extremely wealthy filed out of the room. Only half the table was left, including our boss.
"… So, are any of us disagreeing with trying to get to the end of this?"
There were no different opinions now, and discussions moved forward. Hostilities would be ceased until we took out the Monarchs, or whatever name they decided on.
Negotiations moved forward. Supply deals were negotiated, and weapon and dust caches were totaled. Not everybody was totally honest, not wanting to seem weak, but for now, there was an uneasy alliance.
…
"I did as you say. Most of the gangs left the meeting." The leader in a dirty dress shirt said. "Now, where are the goods?"
"Bold of you to assume that we even had drugs in stock." The orange-haired man said, leaving. "Light him up."
"You bastard!" the leader shouted, running forward, ready to punch the scammer that had just conned him.
From the rooftops, two people stood up, wearing bowler hats and large trench coats. There were clicks as a machine gun was loaded.
"Let's… talk about this?" the man said, holding his hands up.
No more words were spoken. Lead was pumped into the man's chest, and the body was left there, twitching and bleeding.
…
Neo was suffering.
It wasn't because of all of the new work that the Xiong clan had put on them. It was Kojiro's training.
"Now, now. Get up." Kojiro said, brandishing a wooden stick.
Neo shivered in fear. She had seen what Kojiro had done to some thugs with just a wooden stick. Memories of skulls being bashed in and broken bones came to mind.
Neo was wielding a real sword. It didn't make her feel any safer.
"You chose this path, Neo. You'll have to see to the end of it."
The sword came down, and Neo's mute screams echoed throughout her mind, never to be heard again.
(Not that anybody could hear her in the first place).
…
Aura did heal injuries, but it did little to numb the pain. Throughout time, Neo had finally learned the art of parrying. Instead of taking a hit straight on, one should actually angle their sword so the strike gets redirected and sends your opponent off balance.
Then again, Kojiro would probably find a way to counter that defense too.
There was just no way Neo was beating Kojiro with the sword. Her eye turned to the umbrella, and an idea was born.
Maybe… I don't have to fight Kojiro with the sword. Or fight with a sword at all.
That day, a demon was unleashed upon this land… until her training was complete, of course.
As a certain lancer would no doubt say, Rome wasn't built in a day.
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