Ashes to Ashes

(OOC: This is for my second ability. The first part referrs to the posts I made in the General area under Epiphanies.)

“We start now.”
Suzaku had informed Kajitora as she drew her sword and disappeared. She appeared behind him and swung her sword across where Kajitora’s neck would have been, but Kajitora moved leaped out of the way at the last moment and the cut nicked his shoulder. It hadn’t been deep, but due to Suzaku’s pure strength and the speed of the cut, Kajitora felt his left arm tingling for the blow. He was in complete shock as he looked down at his shoulder while moving away, which caused him to trip over his own feet. The wound was so shallow but he could barely move his left arm. He slammed into the ground and immediately he looked up to see Suzaku standing above him about to thrust her sword down into his head. He rolled out of the way in fear, and Suzaku’s sword hit the ground sending sand flying into the air and a shockwave throughout the earth. Kajitora got to his hands and knees and scrambled away to get to his feet. Suzaku pulled her sword out the ground like it had been stuck in a stick of butter, and continued her pursuit.

Finally, Kajitora was on his two feet again, but the murderous woman was already swinging at him again. Her sword missed, but Kajitora could feel the wind from the swing slap him in the face like a wall of wind. His eyes widened as he thought, what power! Kajitora almost fell again, from the wind but he regained his balance as another swing threatened to disembowel him. He jumped back just in time, but an almost solid form of wind punched him in the gut. Kajitora folded forward, holding his stomach and instantly he knew that he had made a mistake. Suzaku had moved to the side as he bent over, and she was bringing her sword down hard to decapitate him. Kajitora did the only thing he could, he drew his sword and blocked Suzaku’s blade with the bottom of his hilt-focusing his reiryoku into the hilt making it better to try and stop the sword cut with. He looked at Suzaku’s soulless eyes, his own eyes burning red with his resolve. “What’s the point of this?” Suzaku’s sword still went down but was deflected to the side. He hadn’t been a samurai and learned to block with his hilt, he would have been dead.

“You have to kill me in battle…that is the only way for you to take control of holding together this world.” She smiled and he thought he knew why, she knew his next question.

“And what if I lose?” He asked.

She had the exact psychotic smile that she showed at the beginning of their conversation as she whispered dramatically, “I…while become the queen of this world. And you will become MY servant!”

Kajitora stepped back again, he had felt like he had just been mind f***ed as he brought his hands up to grab his head. As if that will help my headache, he thought. Suzaku shunpo’d directly in front of Kajitora, her sword above her head ready to come down on Kajitora and cleave him in half. Kajitora looked through his hands and saw her attacking. He decided he was ready to stop running, stop defending, stop blocking-this had got him nowhere with Suzaku but with a partially destroyed shoulder and being set on fire. As Suzaku’s blade was coming down, Kajitora’s blade was coming up even faster, as if pushed by his reiatsu which began to pour forth like the rays of a sun. His sword strike took Suzaku’s arm clean off, and her smile did not fade as her arm and sword descended meters away from her body. Damn it, he thought, she’s really not going to stop unless I end this. Screw using her reiatsu, I’ll use my own reiatsu as a weapon.

Kajitora took his new reiatsu that was brimming with his resolve and forced it into his sword. He shunpo’d back away from Suzaku, who continued to come at him. Once all the reiatsu he could stuff into the sword, was in and ready to bust out he focused on it. He focused the almost infinite reiatsu into a straight line within his mind, and on command the reiatsu shoot forth in a beam. Suzaku was still coming and her last words came to him, “Your reiatsu is my reiatsu-“. On contact with the condensed beam of pure energy, she began to dissolve like water that was being absorbed into the sky.

He was breathing heavily at the end of the battle, and his hands were burning from the red hot sword that was probably over heated. A wave of confidence washed over his mind and suddenly he felt like he knew more about this world he was in, this volcano infested world. Yes-he understood the rhythm of the eruptions, and that this place had been a tropical rainforest before its destruction. Kajitora thought about Suzaku’s last words, how even though he thought that technique had been his own invention-she had already known that he was on the path to learning it. He thought that even though he thought the reiatsu was his own, there was also the possibility that it had been his reiatsu mixed with her’s, or completely her’s.

He was one step closer to learning more about his zanpakutou and his inner world, but he was also greatly disturbed.