Bonds of Blood and Steel.

The black rain fell like a curtain of lead over the ruined city, drumming on the rusted metal of cars and cracked asphalt. Natasha and the blindfolded girl stood in the middle of the avenue, separated by ten meters of deadly silence. The water slid down their clothes, but neither blinked. The world seemed to have shrunk to just the two of them.

The air vibrated. In less than a blink, the distance vanished.

Natasha exploded into motion. Using Iaijutsu, she drew her katana in a lethal motion, aiming to cut her opponent from the left shoulder to the right hip in a perfect diagonal slash. The blade flashed with purple energy, slicing through the raindrops in its path.

CLANG! The sound of clashing metal resonated like thunder in the empty street. Natasha's attack stopped centimeters from the girl's neck. The enemy general hadn't retreated a single millimeter. With a raised hand and insulting calm, she had blocked the katana using one of her closed Tessen (war fans). The black steel of the fan wasn't even dented.

Natasha gritted her teeth, surprised by the solidity of the defense. Without giving her time to react, Natasha pivoted on her heel and unleashed a flurry of cuts. Right. Left. Head. Legs.

"Haaah!" Natasha shouted, increasing her speed.

But it was like trying to cut the wind. The blindfolded girl moved her fans with liquid fluidity. Sometimes she kept them closed to deflect Natasha's rigid blade with a sharp blow to the side; other times she flicked them open with a sudden CLACK!, trapping the katana between the iron ribs and forcing Natasha back to avoid being disarmed. The most frustrating part was that the enemy barely moved her feet. She only shifted her waist and neck, dodging the steel by millimeters, as if she were bored.

"Stop playing with me!" Natasha roared.

Frustration ignited her blood. Her purple aura intensified, evaporating the rain around her body. She upped the pace. Her attacks became blurs of violet light. Finally, the pressure was too much to stay still. The blindfolded girl leaped backward, climbing onto the roof of an overturned school bus to gain height.

"You won't escape!" Natasha yelled.

With a leap, Natasha landed on the rusted metal of the bus. The roof groaned under the weight of her power. The fight transformed into a destructive dance. Natasha launched a horizontal slash meant to behead her rival. The girl ducked at the last second, and Natasha's cutting wave sheared through the bus's structure, sending the top half of the vehicle flying in an explosion of scrap metal and glass.

They jumped from the wreckage onto the facade of a corporate building. Running vertically up the wall, they exchanged blows. Every clash of their weapons sent shockwaves that shattered the windows of nearby buildings. Shards of glass rained down on them, mixing with the black water. A lamppost was cut in two by a miscalculation from Natasha. A mailbox was crushed by a kick from the blindfolded girl that Natasha barely dodged.

The city was turning to rubble around them, but Natasha couldn't land a single hit. Her defense is perfect, Natasha thought, panting as they landed back on the asphalt. My cuts are too broad. She's using my strength against me.

Natasha changed her grip on the katana. The Yokota Kijin style relied on area-of-effect slashes. But she needed something more. She waited for the moment. The blindfolded girl lunged at her, opening both fans to create a guillotine of wind. Natasha didn't dodge. She lunged forward, right into the trap.

"Now!"

Instead of a wide slash, Natasha halted her momentum dead and transformed all her speed into a linear thrust, a technique of pure penetration: Tsuki. The tip of the katana passed right through the middle of the open fan defense.

RIP! The blindfolded girl reacted by tilting her head back at supernatural speed. The katana didn't pierce her skull, but the sharp tip grazed her face. A strip of white cloth went flying. The blindfold had been torn.

They both separated with a jump, landing a moderate distance apart, one at each end of the shattered street. Natasha was agitated, her chest heaving violently, sweat and rain plastering her hair to her forehead. She had several small cuts on her uniform and arms. Her opponent, on the other hand, hardly seemed to have exerted herself. Her breathing was calm.

Silence reigned again, broken only by the sound of the rain. The girl with the fans brought a hand to her face, touching the torn cloth over her left eye. Slowly, a smile curved her lips. It was the first time she spoke directly.

"My, my..." her voice was soft, almost affectionate, but laced with poisonous mockery. "My dear little sister learned some tricks in my absence."

Those words hit Natasha with force. Her heart stopped for an instant. Her eyes widened, and her grip on the katana loosened. "B-Big sister...?" Natasha stammered, completely losing her combat stance. The rain seemed to have turned icy cold all of a sudden.

"Well, you tore my bandage," the girl continued, lowering her hand. "I must say you're the first to do that in years. Congratulations, little sister."

With deliberate slowness, the girl grabbed the knot of the blindfold behind her head and pulled it. The white cloth fell to the wet ground, finally revealing the face that had been hidden.

Natasha felt the air leave her lungs. The girl had the same pale face she remembered, but it had changed. Her eyes... were identical to Natasha's, but inverted. Where Natasha had her right eye amber and her left eye blue, she had the right eye blue and the left eye amber. They shone with a cold malice. And that wasn't all. Two black marks, like scars of corruption or tattoos, ran down from her forehead, crossed her eyes, and ended on her cheeks, pulsating with a faint light.

"It can't be..." Natasha whispered. Her hands began to tremble uncontrollably. The katana slipped from her fingers and fell to the asphalt with a pathetic metallic clang. "You're supposed to... you should have... you died... in the attack years ago... I saw your body..."

The girl let out a laugh that froze Natasha's blood. "What's wrong, little sister? You look like you've seen a ghost," she mocked, tilting her head. "Have you already forgotten your big sister, Natsuki?"

Natasha's mind collapsed. All the emotional walls she had built, all her training, her coldness... everything crumbled before the image of the person she had loved and mourned the most. "Sis..." she started to say, taking a faltering step towards her, her guard completely down, seeking a hug, an explanation, anything.

It was a fatal mistake.

"Pathetic fool." Before Natasha could finish the word, Natsuki disappeared. In a blink, she was right in front of her, invading her personal space. Natasha looked down. The closed tip of the black metal Tessen was pressed deep into her abdomen, sinking into her stomach.

Natsuki brought her face close to Natasha's ear, whispering with terrifying intimacy: "Die... dear little sister."

BOOM! Natsuki snapped the fan open while releasing a concentrated burst of kinetic energy at point-blank range. The impact was devastating. Natasha spat blood, and her ribs cracked. Her body was sent flying backward like a ragdoll, hurtling through the rain at breakneck speed. She crossed the entire street in the air and crashed brutally against the facade of a three-story brick building.

The impact was so powerful that the structure, already weakened by the years, couldn't hold. The wall collapsed on top of her. Tons of brick, concrete, and beams fell, burying Natasha in a cloud of dust that the rain hurried to settle.

In the middle of the destroyed street, Natsuki stood alone. She elegantly brushed an imaginary speck of dust from her kimono. She looked toward the mountain of rubble where her sister had been buried. Her inverted eyes gleamed with satisfaction. A diabolical smile, devoid of any human empathy, formed on her face. "Sweet dreams," she whispered to the rain.