"Chesuto!"

CHESUTOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

So the voice in Noe’s head went before the worst part of the dream started. She had no idea what one might define this saying as, what it might translate to, but she knew full well what it meant. And this scream—this screech—was more than just deafening, as it completely drowned out the already-deafening chanting from before. Then everything would go silent.

From the blood-fire, bodies would begin to emerge. The costumes they wore were old, centuries old, and thankful that they were, for they covered much. But these clothes were still stained that sickening crimson, and their faces contorted in an easily-impressionable terror. Here was a samurai, his robes bunched around the abdomen where he had been cut, and a thick red line about his neck. There was a lady of the night, stabs running all up and down her body. And next was a priest—a Christian friar—with a cross etched over his chest.

The faces were nearly the exact same, every single time. Noe had even begun to memorize their order. They were no figment of her imagination. If she had believed in reincarnation, she might have speculated that she was some crazed slasher in a past life, centuries before, and that this was karma’s way of repaying her.

Ordinarily the dream would stop once she had seen a few bodies, became aware of what was going on, and woke up in a cold sweat. But this time was different. Body after body manifested itself in those flames, many of which she had never seen before, without end…

* * *

Little did Noe know that right now, in this very life, she was acting quite a bit like a crazed slasher herself. In her hands was a massive, shining katana, shining with the same radiance as her eyes—oh, yes, her eyes were glowing now, too. The sword was well over three feet long, handle and hilt jet-black, and blade a colder shade. Her face was rabid, her teeth bared, and a crack in the bricks stood at her feet were she had just made impact.

Justo, as we shall call him, for that is his name though he has yet to give it, thought he’d be dead for sure on the next strike—until he saw how exhausted Noe was. If her breathing before was strained, then this now would give the suggestion that she’d cough up a lung; clearly a lot of the little energy she had had gone into that strike. But, at the same time, her face did not seem to waver. Under the suggestion of whatever was cursing her, she was ready to keep going until she dropped dead.

Not more than a couple seconds later Noe steadied herself again, took her sword up in a stance, and let out a weaker, but still undeniably primal, scream. Having thus psyched herself up, she rushed in, a fraction of the speed she moved at before but swift nonetheless. Justo had just enough time to roll out of the way again, and another crack was formed in the walkway by the sword's arc.

As Justo got up to his feet, he noticed a street lamp before him, within arm’s reach. Perfect. Unless this girl, in her frenzied state, had only the brainpower to think of just using a downward swing, he needed a way to counter her. And, as much as it pained him to steal from the city’s resources, there was nothing much better suited for the task at hand than engineering-grade materials. Now, the question was…

He stuck his left hand out, letting it hover over the pole. A faint column of light connected them for but a brief moment.

Yes. Steel!

Aluminum would have done him in a pinch, but he would have needed a lot more, and who knows how well it would have held up against such a massive sword. The column of light still intact, he pressed his palm against the pole, and with this motion diffused the light across the pole’s surface. Once the light had expanded to cover a suitable area, it stopped. A great SNAP could be heard as this whole section of the pole broke off from the rest—still aglow—folded in upon itself, and became malleable in Justo’s hand. It rolled, lengthened, squashed, stretched, and finally…settled. The glow wore off; there in Justo’s hands was a solid-steel baseball bat. Not even rubber around the handle.

As for the street lamp, it now had a not-insignificant part of its electronics exposed, but nothing could be done about that.

CHESUTOOOO!

The screech came again, and Noe hurtled in after it. This time, however, Justo stepped into her range, cutting short whatever preparations she was making for her strike. She swung nonetheless, but this swing, in proportion to her windup, was weakened by Justo’s own steel.

Noe scowled, but thought quickly. She drew the sword back up, and—

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Three swings, three angles, and three clean parries from Justo. Noe scowled harder. This melée did not seem to be going how she, or whatever was possessing her, had thought it would. Already locked with her opponent’s piece, her only option for now was to pour more pressure on him.

Good, thought Justo, she’s stopped swinging for now. But these sorts of deadlocks were a challenge in and of themselves; even simply standing still, his body was wasting energy. If he pressed in, it could not be for long, and if he drew back he risked getting overwhelmed completely. Then there was the third option: using a less-than-overhanded method to stop the opponent dead in their tracks. As far as Justo knew, Noe was basically moving on instinct; she would not be able to read him if he, say, hooked his foot around her leg and stole the terrain out from under her.

But as he looked down at her legs, considering how he would execute this move, he caught sight of something far more alarming: Noe’s sword was digging into the steel of Justo’s improvised bat. It was not quite a “knife-through-butter” speed, but still fast enough to show that either the steel Justo had nabbed was of very poor quality, or this sword Noe had summoned seemingly out of nowhere was of exceptional quality. It dug deeper, deeper, deeper…

Finally Justo leapt backwards. The moment he did, the bat split cleanly in two, the top half hitting the brick with a ringing thud. He had landed on the sidewalk; he considered, for a moment, simply chucking the handle at Noe and hoping it would stop her, but figured that a girl his age might be a little angry if she suddenly woke up with a massive welt on her head (assuming she'd come out of whatever spell she was under in the first place). And, after all, he had other tricks up his sleeve.

There was a grassy island in between the brick walkway and the concrete sidewalk. Noe stood on one edge, astride the cracks she had already made in the brick, and Justo now stood on the opposite edge. As many a tactician would likely agree, fertile earth was some of the easiest terrain to take advantage of (even if it was placed there artificially), and all the easier it was for Justo, for he had ways of manipulating it that few could replicate. The trick would be the timing.

Just as he had predicted—not that it was difficult to predict—Noe raised her sword and took her stance for one more charge, which Justo hoped would end up as her last.

CHESUTOOOOOO!

With a thundering stomp, she planted one foot forward into the sod, kicking up particles of soil. Good. As she raised her other foot and brought it along over the threshold, Justo dropped the handle and took a different stance. Extending the thumb and pointer finger of each of his hands together, he held them out, forming a downward right angle in his sight. Then, letting his thumbs drop to form two more angles, perpendicular to their respective indices, and a diamond overall, he brought his two hands closer together, closer…

It was fortunate that he was in Seikyo, where the air was humid, especially during the spring and summer, for if he had done this anywhere else, it might have suddenly become for a moment unbearably arid. The plants completely withered, the earth cracked, even in that brief span of time; but while the air dried out, the area that was lined up with Justo’s line of sight and the shape he had formed with his hands, that is, right where Noe’s right foot was about to land, grew wetter and shinier. One more push from Justo.

SOLUTION!

Noe landed ankle-deep in what could only be described as a tiny slice of swampland. But her left foot she was able to pull away from this, and brought it onto the concrete, bearing in closer to an unarmed Justo. In the next instant she saw Justo quickly pull his hands apart.

FIXATION!

But it seemed to be too late for him. One more step and that glistening, bloodthirsty sword would be ready to have its feast. He was breathing harder, likely exhausted from having already had to outmaneuver a possession-driven girl three times. Noe shifted her weight to her left, and—

THWUMP!

She stumbled and fell face-first onto the concrete, only barely managing to break the direct impact by dropping her sword. She tried to pull herself forward and recover the weapon, but found she was unable; her right foot was stuck, firmly planted under solid earth. The air was back to normal, seemingly having had its humidity returned to it by the sod. She growled, shrieked in frustration, her eyes wide with rage, but it was no use; her quarry quickly put his own foot on the hilt and kicked the whole thing away. This was followed up by a swift CHOP! from Justo’s knife-hand in-between her shoulder blades. She went limp, and her eyelids drooped as she lost consciousness.

That oughta put her out for a couple minutes, thought Justo, still catching his breath, as he turned his attention back to the sword. He squatted down again, hunched over that massive piece of steel, and extended his hand out, forming another column of light beneath it.

Now, let’s see what you’ve got…