13 - Withering Strelitzia

“At least I’ve gotten used to what fighting this bitch feels like.” Sakuto thought. A bit of blood streamed down from his nose, but he didn’t pay much attention to it. He walked forwards, holding his blade in his shadowy arm.

“Shadow regeneration works completely differently. It takes a lot of effort to maintain, but it can do wonders when it comes to recovering body parts or even clogging up bad wounds. Besides, I have a plan or two...”

“This was how Jackal kept up with me so well, no matter how much I cut him apart, he just glued himself back together.”

“Doing this shit is pretty exhausting, but it’s the only way I can keep up with her own cracked regeneration.”

Aizawa glared at him like he owed her lunch money.

“His adaptation sparked up twice already. From what I can recall, it needs to spark three more times to render my ability completely useless.” She thought. “And here he is, using his shadows to keep himself afloat.”

“He’s become extremely hard to kill, extremely dangerous, and now the clock is up against me.”

“A real nightmare matchup...”

“And the perfect soldier to take him down...”

“You know, me and you...” Aizawa began. “We would be strong enough to kill Kaito Kamiki himself.”

Sakuto didn’t reply. He was a bit flattered, and was impressed by how far along he had come, but still, his focus remained on his objective.

“Come to think of it, a shadow arm has its own benefits.”

“I can do this-!”

Sakuto swung his right arm and it transformed into a series of whip-like chains that broke their way through the debris and attempted to strike her.

“Come on, Jackal! We finally get to fight together!”

Aizawa dodged the chains by jumping high up into the air. While airborne, the shadows quickly formed a set of tentacles that chased her down. She sliced them apart. Once she landed, she threw her blades around and dismantled absolutely fucking everything in front of her. The motions were so fast they looked blurry, and so dangerous and intense they pulverized the fallen building behind them. Their power and sharpness caught even Sakuto off guard a little.

He jumped back, retracting the shadows back a little. He formed a pair of drills with them and shot them both at Aizawa. They both missed. Aizawa continued closing in, and her makeshift mobile blender aura moved alongside her, cleaving through all of the buildings in a hundred meter radius pretty consistently. Sakuto shadow stepped again, constantly throwing shadow projectiles at her.

The chase continued until they neared a skyscraper. Sakuto appeared on top of it and upon seeing Aizawa close in on him, he quickly recollected all of his shadows in his hands and fired an array of large shadow balls. They, after travelling a little, exploded and launched dangerous shadow shrapnel at Aizawa - effectively bombarding the ground.

Aizawa smirked and blocked the incoming hellfire with her blades. Some of the shrapnel landed and not only pierced her, but also expanded while inside her, blowing up parts of her body. When she least expected it, hidden among the debris, there was a large shadow spear which pierced her hand. It was going to expand and kill her.

So she cut her own hand off and jumped away. She noticed how Sakuto was on top of the skyscraper, commanding the bombardment, and it enhanced her own voltage even more.

“He’s found his rhythm, huh?”

“He is imperfect. He cannot deny his flawed nature.”

Aizawa used her other hand to launch one of the blades at the skyscraper, and she cut it in half. She then launched it more times, cutting the whole tower into multiple blocks stacked on top of each other. They started sliding away and falling down. Sakuto quickly jumped down by greatly increasing the size of his shadow arm, and managed to punch one of the blocks at Aizawa herself. She cut it in half, but from the ruins, Sakuto himself emerged. He struck her in the stomach with enough force to almost knock her out. By stepping to the side, he transformed his shadow hand into a claw and attempted to go for an immediate dismemberment.

Aizawa pulled her black quickly enough to slice through Sakuto’s shadow claw. The latter quickly regenerated it and swung, but now the surprise element was gone. Aizawa cut the distance and kicked Sakuto away, and chased him down.

On the ground, Sakuto had no other option but to move back as fast as possible. Aizawa, with an almost feral expression, rushed at him and threw his blades around. They didn’t just cut the immediate surroundings apart, they dismantled and broke down every structure in a roughly six hundred meter radius. The large amounts of dust that rose from the devastating attack was enough to be mistaken for fog. But there was one thing that the blades couldn’t cut through, no matter what.

Sakuto, with heavy wounds masked by shadows enveloping his body, stood there. He was in range of the powerful slashes, but survived them. Most importantly, he knew that this type of attack was something Aizawa could launch at any moment.

“Eventually, he’ll get close enough. He’ll fall right into my grasp.”

Aizawa, smirking at the slightly confused Sakuto, launched one of her blades into the sky...

...

“Delta one, do you copy? We’re flying over the city right now. We saw some soulful activity for a few moments, but it seems to have stopped.”

The pilot readjusted his headset, leaning back a little. It was heartbreaking for him to fly above the city he loved so much, but he had to do what he had to do. He needed to gather intel and try to assist the press, and the only ones available for that type of job would be armored military planes. Not a single reporter wanted to go anywhere close to Prague, especially after the GSC declared it an ‘instant death zone.’

“Lad, how long do you think we should circle above here?” He asked his copilot.

“Zero fucking seconds.” The copilot replied, nervously watching the readings. “Let’s get the hell outta here, I got a bad feeling about this.”

“Come on, man.” The pilot sighed. “I’ll give it a few more minutes. It’s not like we can teleport outta here anyways, we’re not like those soulfuls...heh, did you see the shit they were doing below? Looked fucking awesome, aye?”

“...”

“Dude? Hey, I know you’re stressed, but you can at least keep a conversation-”

His copilot was impaled by one of Aizawa’s blades.

“W-what the fu-” The pilot tried to reach for him, but the blade had already pierced too far into the man’s body for him to live. He watched in horror as the plane suddenly began losing altitude, but gaining speed, rapidly. Parts of its body were straight up ripped off, and it was flung towards...

Sakuto watched as Aizawa flung the plane at her. He sent a massive flying slash towards it and split it in two. The petrified pilot inside had long passed out, and now, passed away as the two halves of the plane landed and were set ablaze in a majestic fireball. Aizawa shattered the distance and almost blitzed Sakuto, the latter barely having enough time to react and put his blade up. The two clashed with their weapons some more, before Sakuto decided to try retreating again and saying in the distance he was most comfortable in.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

That’s where he felt his left hand get chopped off again by a rather sneaky slicing attack. Blossom Reaper chased him down, and it stuck itself in the ground in front of Sakuto, who jumped up to evade its deadly attack. What Sakuto didn’t anticipate, however, was Aizawa using it as a grappling hook and propelling herself forwards, striking Sakuto with a perfectly timed right overhand. Sakuto tumbled down, quickly regaining his stance and fighting back. He threw a knee and hit Aizawa in the liver with it, before jabbing her in the face and hitting her as hard as he could in her jaw. Aizawa blocked the punch, but it broke her wrist.

She, instead of falling back and regenerating, continued to push forwards. At that very moment, he tossed her blade again, cutting off Sakuto’s right leg. But Sakuto still stood and fought on.

“This is getting rather tiresome...”

Aizawa jumped forwards, extending her palm. Sakuto quickly dodged to the side, and prepared to counter. He summoned his blade and tried to intercept Aizawa’s hand, but felt something cold pass through his stomach.

He was effectively split in two.

“I wonder...”

“Just how persistent is he going to be in staying alive?”

Aizawa was shocked to see the extent of Sakuto’s shadow-enhanced regeneration. Sakuto found the moment and kicked Aizawa in the stomach hard enough to shatter all of her ribs. Not only that, but the kick had a shadowy itch to it - they dug into Aizawa’s body and ripped parts of it out. Aizawa had no option but to pull back.

Sakuto still stood. His stomach was stitched with shadows, so were his arm and leg, and every scarred part of his body.

“For fuck sake, if it hadn’t been for you, Jackal, I’d be a zombie right now.” Sakuto thought, all of his focus being poured into fixing the critical wound. Once he found himself fit for combat again, he took a step forward.

“She’s gonna try and catch me off guard. She already realized how effective juking that stupid instant kill is.”

“I wonder, what if I invite her to try and land it?”

Sakuto’s eye shone with resolve, and his soul presence flared with hatred. He pushed forwards, utilizing his shadows in a tentacle-like attack that aimed to capture Aizawa’s limbs and allow him to put her down for good.

Aizawa jumped up and slashed the shadows apart, but one of them got through and grabbed her by the leg. She quickly cut her own leg off. Sakuto fired off more tentacles, but Aizawa successfully deflected them and threw her blades at Sakuto, piercing parts of his stomach and limbs. Sakuto did not care, he just plugged his wounds shut with shadows, as if not even caring that the solution wasn’t exactly permanent. He looked half black already.

They clashed with their weapons more, before clashing with their fists, before dealing enough damage to each other to kill any other soulful and regenerating twice as much. Sakuto had his eyes sharp on trying to figure out the counterattack, and Aizawa had her sights set on the memory erasure.

Sakuto, escaping one of their exchanges after receiving sufficient damage, slid into his shadows and appeared rather far away, hidden behind one of the buildings that were still miraculously standing. Aizawa wouldn’t let that slide. She launched her blades at him at full speed and one of them pierced his back, the other - barely missed his neck. Sakuto quickly removed himself from the blade and turned around, just as Aizawa had gotten closer, he punched the building with enough strength to collapse it completely. On the other side, Aizawa did the same, their generated forces destroying all that was in between.

Sakuto dashed back and Aizawa kept on pushing forward. She saw that Sakuto was starting to run out of gas, but so was she. Nevertheless, she intended to keep pushing, even if it meant bringing herself closer to death than she’s ever been.

“Think, Sakuto, think...”

“The last time I was in a fight this bad, adapting was easy as the source of adaptation was effectively everywhere. But now...think, Sakuto, think! What can you...”

He suddenly coughed up blood, and wiped some of it away from his nose. Aizawa, confused but pleased nonetheless, quickly remotely impaled him on one of her blades. She cut his feet off with the other one, resulting in him falling down, blood splattering on the ground. The shadows on his body started to slowly fade away, and blood poured out of his wounds.

“So that’s it? That’s your limit?” Aizawa asked, approaching him. Her presence was flaring up. “Quite disappointing.”

The shadows almost completely disappeared, only his arm remaining intact, but barely moving. It was as if Sakuto’s own body had given up on him. His presence started becoming lower and lower too. Aizwa dashed at him.

“Complete Memory Erasure-”

“She doesn’t want to kill me.”

Sakuto’s presence suddenly flared, just as Aizawa was almost a centimeter away from permanently killing him. His shadowy right arm extended into a tentacle that pierced the hand Aizawa was going to use to deliver the devastating attack.

“That won’t help you.” Aizawa said, a little shocked at the response but trying to recollect herself. He pulled her hand closer to Sakuto, but...

Sakuto regenerated a part of his hand at the end of the tentacle. And with it, he held Aizawa’s hand. He held it tightly enough to break it, in fact.

“She needs to make contact with my head to use the amnesia attack. It only makes sense.”

“And besides, neither of us have murder as our main objective. If it comes to that, sure, but...”

“My job is to adapt to her soul expression and get the cure, and then kill her. And her job is to zombify me. So the playing field is different, but it still feels like we both want to murder each other. At least that’s what I want to do to this evil bitch.”

A spark appeared on Sakuto’s chest. Three out of five, and Aizawa also knew about it. Usually, if placed in such a predicament, she would smirk and admire the opponent’s value as a Nachtvessel, but now, she seemed anxious...even tense. Aizawa tried to cut her arm off and escape the grasp, but Sakuto extended the shadows more and wrapped them around Aizawa, poking holes in her and piercing her, turning her torso into cheese. Aizawa tried to push Sakuto off, but she found difficulty moving.

“Oh no you fucking don’t!” Sakuto yelled, and instantly, a strong electric current passed through Aizawa’s body. It was strong enough to fry any ordinary human, and it somewhat paralyzed Aizawa.

But despite the circumstance spelling death with fancy golden letters for Aizawa, she didn’t surrender. She unsummoned her weapon and summoned its wire in her mouth. The blade jumped at Sakuto and pierced him in the neck. Sakuto tumbled back a little. His priority now was to try to remove the blade, he tried to do so with his hand but couldn’t. He had to cleave out a portion of his neck and leave the blade there, while instantly covering it with shadows so as to not bleed to death, while simultaneously dodging the second blade’s rapid bites. And most people can’t drink and walk at the same time.

Aizawa ended up finding another opening amidst her blades’ biting attacks, and rushed in again. She had it in her mind to feint a memory erasure attack, and then actually use it during a counterattack, but all of that was thrown in the trash bin once Sakuto struck the ground and a massive formation of ice emerged. It knocked Aizawa back, just far enough to allow Sakuto to...

“Fuck...I gotta keep my range...”

“He did this against the Heisei, and he did this against me too...”

“This one's for you, you mad dog...”

He summoned a shadow dragon from the ground.

He rode atop the dragon. As Aizawa saw the sight, the first thing she felt was the desire to rip it apart. The second thing she felt and saw was a sharp tentacle aimed right at her head. She dodged it, and with a few sweeping attacks, made quick work of the dragon with her blades.

The shattered shadow fragments all melted into one giant spear in his hand. Sakuto aimed it at Aizawa and threw it with all of his speed and power. Aizawa dodged it, and the spear ended up powering through the rest of the city, destroying everything and anything in its path.

Parts of the destroyed area around them were now set on fire - the fire from the plane crash had spread a long way, and parts of the burning town gave a special illumination to the sight.

Aizawa regained her posture before noticing something odd pop up next to her. It was a small shadowy ball that exploded into a dozen shrapnel. Nothing nonstandard. The shrapnel, while Aizawa was cleaning herself up from them, reformed into a kind of rope and wrapped itself around Aizawa’s neck. And it started squeezing.

A second later it was supposed to pierce into her neck and injure her beyond recovery. But as if with surgical precision, Aizawa cut the restraints apart with her blades. She held them in her arms, tightly, watching Sakuto regenerate his lost limb. It was obvious that they had both been through hell and...they weren’t back, and they wouldn’t be until one of them fell.

“Sixty percent done...”

“All that’s left now is to stick the landing.” Sakuto took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. His head started hurting a little.

And suddenly, he noticed a faint light emerge from the ground. It was green and purple, and there was only one thing it could be compared to...

“ ✦ Divine Acclamation. ✦ ”

“What?! No way!”

“If she tries to open it again, isn’t she just straight up gonna die from exhaustion?! That’s what I was told, at least!”

“ ✦ Mindless Vortex. ✦ ”

“It’s significantly weaker than the last time, but it’s still there...meaning whatever effect it has, it’s gonna mess me up. And of course, the dimming is gonna mess up my shadow manipulation...fucking hell, she did this to mess up my regeneration!”

"I told you, Sakuto Hitori." Aizawa said with psychotic smirk. "I will make you feel true despair."