02 Fuyukage North High, Courtyard / Enter Shadow

From a distance, Shing!, the ringing of a second blade.

Shooting down the length of the courtyard.

Bolt-wise, no arc to be traced. The blade flying true to its mark. A curveless wake.

The interception, his salvation. The resulting resonance fills the transfer student's head, the crystal Clang! of steel on steel. It's all he can hear. A pair of tuning forks now, vibrating in his mind, unbidden.

He opens his eyes.

Still towering over him, his senpai. On her face, the subtlest of expressions. One he chooses to interpret as surprise.

And in the closeness between them, between him and her, his former savior turned would-be executioner, he sees them: the twin blades, (or, at the very least, sibling blades), hers, knocked out of her grip, identifiable not only by the name (… or, at any rate, her synecdochic pet name for him …) written so invisibly, yet so threateningly, across its length, but by its singular intactness, pristine and gleaming; and this newer challenger, the intercepter, little more than a hilt and an unpolished, jagged steel stub, the seeming remnant of some apparent past shattering, though doubtless quite deadly yet; the clearing of their synchronized fraternal apex locked now, one blade short, the other tall (gee, where had he seen this imagery before?), in some pocket of localized time, together frozen in that critical, familiar fermata before gravity presumes itself to reassert its dominion over those whose imparted wills can no longer sustain them.

… As can be said now, of the two weapons.

~

However, neither falls to the ground.

The combatants (… of whom Hikari is one, granted … b-but then, who's the other?), the blades' owners, allow no such thing.

And no sooner has Hikari grabbed her weapon by the hilt than she is already swinging it once more, going straight for the transfer student's jugular, again, (persistent, ain't she?), this time impeded not by the re-throwing of a blade which is already in the air, but by the transfer student's sudden displacement, his simply no longer being where he spatially was, as he is launched away by a kick, sent flying to the ground by the boots of some unseen other.

On the ground now, the transfer student struggles to breathe. A cramp in his side where he landed. Wind knocked out of him.

With great effort he turns on his back, wincing in pain, and sees, standing in front of him, facing off against his former savior, this latest savior, the owner of the stub blade, wielding his jagged steel insouciantly, smirk on his face.

Hikari nods at the newcomer. The faintest tilt of her head.

"… Hikage," she says, plainly.

The man (?), possibly a few years older than the hooded high school senior, from appearances, clicks his tongue in annoyance.

"How rude," he replies, grinning. "You used to call me nii-chan when we were younger, you know." He rubs his chin with his free hand. Scratch of slight stubble. "Or have you forgotten?" Shaking his bangs out of his eyes. Shaggy, unkempt mop. (The transfer student, willing to bet that the man is perennially between jobs.) "… Little sister."

A slight inhale, from Hikari. Of annoyance or of vexation, the transfer student ventures not to say. (… Pretty sure those are the same thing, buddy.) And then, for a moment, the building-up of some delicate, hair-trigger tension from deep within her.

But she closes her eyes. Swallows it, whatever it was.

"… So?" she says, finally. Eyes open. "What finally brought you back home? On Banishment Night, no less? The Himekawaian prodigal son. … Had enough out there? Left home all those years ago? Just needed to see for yourself that badly, only to realize a truth you already knew, deep inside? … Because you do know now, don't you, Hikage? Dear brother. I warned you. Adage of our town. Nobody ever lea—"

"—'Nobody ever leaves'. Yeah, yeah. Sound like a freakin' broken record, already. … You know what you're like? You're like a doll. The kind with a string on her back."

"Mmm. I'll take that as a compliment. Referring to my well-proportioned figure, no doubt." She feigns some kind of mock-timidity, places a hand on her cheek, twists back and forth in place, parodically. "Ah, but you mustn't look at me that way! We're blood-related, after all~…"

The man rolls his eyes, before his gaze drifts, ever so slightly, to the first-year sprawled out on his back, on the ground. He studies the transfer student.

Then he looks back to his sister, smiles.

"Well, maybe I'm just here," he says, his arms gesturing as if to say that It Can't Be Helped (TM), "to make sure you don't do anything stupid tonight."

At which Hikari, too, side-eyes the transfer student.

She stares at the transfer student for a long time. Back to her brother.

Then, her lips start to tremble. Whatever's inside her, she can no longer contain it. Her knees begin to shake, face flushes red. She breaks out into a dreadful smile. Baring of teeth. Pupils narrowed.

She tosses her head back to the almost-night sky, her black hood slipping off as she cackles terribly, back arched, free hand clutching her stomach, sword hand drooping loosely at her side, her hideous laughter echoing across the courtyard of Fuyukage North High. Site of her truancy, his alma mater.

She laughs for a very long time. By the time she is done she is in tears.

Wiping away the corners of her eyes with the sleeve of her cloak, she says, "Oh … Oh, that's rich. That's so you, Hikage. More concerned about the welfare of some outsider than your own kin." Smile receding, though not gone completely. Taking on a more bitter shape, now. Indignant sneer. "… Speaking of which, you missed Mom's birthday, ya know. … Three of them, now, by my accounting." She casually twirls her blade up in the air, baton-wise, before catching it again by the hilt. Then shrugs. "… Well, then again, so did I. Heh."

The brother's face, growing severe. "How is she?" he asks. "… How's Dad?"

Hikari throws her arms in the air, scoffs. "What am I, an intermediary? A secondhand relayer of familial matters? An enabler of you continuing to run away from your own neuroses? … Why don't you come home and see for yourself, you care about them so much? Supposedly."

The older brother says nothing. He knows there is nothing he can say.

And then, out of the turgid silence following, the air around the two River Princesses swollen with all the things they wanted to say, (but couldn't, because what he or she wanted to say, and what he or she knew they were permitted to say, after such a long period of non-communication, were two very, very different things), neither speaking, he eyeing her, she him, each circling the other, their swords (or perhaps more accurately, sword and one-sixths of a sword) not so much drawn, exactly, as on the cusp of being drawn, each waiting for the first move …

… Out of that silence comes, at last, a kicking-up of dust, an atmospheric rushing-in of air, as the two siblings charge toward one another.

~

No.

No, not even 'charge'.

They were simply at some squaring-off distance one instant, and in the very next they are not.

As though in the very raising of their swords and the leaning-in of their frames, the mutual assumptions of postures configured to transmute thought, conscious or otherwise, to action, they, the sister, the brother, might not only bypass the very infinitesimals by which measurable time and travellable distances are summed and made real, but be imbued, by dint of their opposing wills, with the sheer unreality of their current movements, the slashes and strikes too fast for the transfer student to comprehend, let alone follow, the blows parried in pre-reaction before they are even carried out in full, the sound of each swing and counter-swing compounding into a clangorous symphony of clashing steel that rings out across the school courtyard and beyond that further into what is now night.

The transfer student, jaw slack, dumbfounded, watches this exchange.

Or at least, tries to.

Because in all his life he has never seen anything move this fast. A dance in time to some signature he cannot hope to ever hear.

… Which is not all he does not hear.

For within their private tempest, within this parallel testing of resolves, the Himekawa siblings do not talk, they do not banter. Not even so much as a single grunt of effort can be discerned.

And how far is either sibling willing to take this? To what extremes? What hazards have been put forth, even before the drawing of the first blade? Not the blades clashing before him now but the blades that were and have been, always, throughout all time, when they were not yet even the re-forging of the earth's substance but the mere existence of the concept of the edge itself; for even without the blade the edge was always waiting for us, the tool by which we might impose our wills upon those who would oppose them.

… Is it not so?

It is.

It is.

Believe it.

~

And then, a stumble. An opening.

One which does not escape Himekawa Hikari's eye. She pounces on it.

With a single kick she sends her brother flying to the ground, some ways away, and just as quickly she is on him again, standing over him.

The brother, Hikage, tries to lift his stub blade up to defend himself, but she steps on his wrist, grinds her sole into a pressure point. His grip goes slack, the stub blade clatters to the ground.

Hikari, triumphant, places the end of her blade to her brother's chin. Tilts his head up with it. Her gaze piercing into his.

"… So?" she says. "You could've left tonight's body count at just one, dear brother."

Smiling wickedly. No hint of effort expended. No sweat broken, not even a single BPM above resting.

"… Now it's gonna have to be two."