The Reverse Mirror

Hiroshi and Tatsuya both turned to look where Yuki disappeared into the night. Neither knew if he was alive after taking such a kick. Unfortunately, they didn’t really have much time to think about it. Saki made her stance clear. She held the line keeping anyone from advancing past her.

They stared a little awkwardly at each other, not completely sure what they were going to do. But Saki made their decision for them. She saw them both as threats, naturally. So she turned her attention to them. Her body disappeared and then popped up in between them. Spinning out, she took them both out with a kick to Tatsuya’s stomach and punch to Hiroshi’s face.

Being more resilient than Yuki, they only flew back into the placed classrooms. Tatsuya saw it coming a little better than Hiroshi. He recovered quickly in mid-air and landed on top of a desk, though his force did cause it to slide backwards. When it came to a stop, he heard a strange moan pop up from behind him. The thought that he might be surrounded by more of Takako’s army put him on edge.

Such a thought immediately left his mind once he took in the classroom. “What…the hell?!” A strange odor wafted through the air. He quickly tried to shut his eyes, but he still heard the sounds of all of the different voices coming from around him. ‘What did Takako do to them…to make them do THAT?!’ He really started to believe in Yuki’s theory that it was mind control. It was the only way to explain something so impossible.

Tatsuya jumped off the desk wanting to return to the hallway immediately. He couldn’t take all of the sounds coming from the room any longer. Saki stood waiting for him, likely knowing that it wasn’t enough to take him down. She already had another fist ready for him. But he slipped around it with very little effort.

Saki glared over at him, her left arm still fully extended. “Tatsuya…you won’t escape me this time.”

“I’m going to have to be a little more serious this time around if I’m expecting to live through this.” He pulled up his shirt a little after it had been pulled down from all of the rough treatment. Their fight resumed.

“Your death is assured this time.”

Roughly adjusting his position, he shifted his weight around on his feet getting prepped for the fight. “I’m not really a fan of assured death,” he joked awkwardly, “I prefer the more certain life sort of thing.”

Annoyed with his clearly lack of serious commitment to their fight, Saki spun around to kick him. Unfortunately, all that she hit was the air with a disappearing image of Tatsuya. She ground her teeth with the bone nearly audible. “You coward! You won’t fight, you just run away!”

Deeper in the hall, Tatsuya surfaced out of reach of Saki. He stroked his shirt with a little unease after the near miss. “Death isn’t exactly the sort of motivator for me.” All his joking, he knew the gravity of his situation. ‘Hiroshi’s not really well suited to this sort of fight. His things need preparation and they restrict him to the rules along with anyone else. He can’t exclude people. So all it would do is create a stalemate and we need to get to Takako before anyone else.’

He glanced around the hall trying to find Hiroshi anywhere. After the opening attack by Saki, they lost each other and he didn’t need Hiroshi doing anything stupid. ‘I was better prepared for the attack than him. But he’s not dead from just that I know.’

The hesitation was all that Saki needed to make another attack. She grew more cautious of Tatsuya and his strange ability to dodge her unlike anyone else had been able to do. However, she connected with him that time. From the force of the attack alone, she pounded him backwards and through the floor partially. His body might have been able to take her attacks, but the building wasn’t made of such materials.

Splinters and shards of wood jumped around his legs as he fought for a hold. He quickly lost his ground in a very literal sense. ‘Crap…this isn’t going to work…’ Just as the ground gave way he jumped away, disappearing from Saki’s sights for a moment.

He saw the way things were going with Saki. ‘If I’m going to do this I’m going to need to get out of the school.’ While he started trying to think of ways to get Saki out of the school, a crash from a neighboring classroom distracted the two of them. ‘Is that…’

More noises came from the room. It became pretty clear who it was. Saki reacted sooner than Tatsuya, becoming a blur. Tatsuya was half a second late on his reaction. “Damn it!” She was after Hiroshi to finish what she started. He pushed all of his speed to get into the classroom. ‘I thought she wanted me… I don’t need her to have a short attention span!’

The sound of desks breaking along with two fighters clashing echoed from the room as Tatsuya broke through the wall. He used everything he had in his speed to throw it behind his fist. It connected with Saki’s cheek shooting her through the room and windows out into the neighborhood in a large explosion of dirt and debris.

Tatsuya slid to a stop just before falling out of the school. He looked back at Hiroshi before glancing over at his work. A pillar of smoke in the distance showed him how far he had actually sent her flying. Sweat dripped down the back of his head realizing he overdid it. “Damn, I didn’t know I’d hit her that hard. I haven’t a clue what I hit into her.” He clapped his hands together praying that no one had been injured from what happened.

“Tatsuya! What do you think you’re doing?!”

Turning back to Hiroshi, he could see that he was understandably upset. “Hey man, it wasn’t part of the plan.”

“What was part of the plan then?”

“I was trying to save you!”

“And what about those that you might have killed!”

“I wasn’t thinking about that at the moment.”

“We’re in our own city! We’re supposed to be protecting the people here!”

“I know that! But this sort of battle isn’t going to be clean!”

Hiroshi rushed over to Tatsuya and grabbed him up his collar. It mostly just pulled at his shirt than anything else. “Tatsuya! We—“

There was no chance to try to yell at him anymore as Saki burst through the wall with a very pissed off look in her eyes. During the entire argument, Tatsuya had been checking on Saki knowing that she was no more harmed by the attack than the first punch she got on him. He pushed Hiroshi back as Saki’s collision with Tatsuya ripped them through the classroom.

The initial impact alone sent out a shockwave that rattled the entire room. As Saki’s propelled force sent Tatsuya back they decimated the floor and walls crashing into the next classroom on the other side of the school.

Tatsuya’s whole world felt like it had been turned upside down and shaken up in a blender and then poured out. He lay prone in the classroom amongst the bodies of other classmates. It was the room that he wanted to forget. Kicking her off of him, Tatsuya grabbed a couple of desks and spun them around him whacking Saki with them. The metal and wood splintered into dust nearly, but they still dropped Saki into a different part of the school.

Across the room and hallway, he saw Hiroshi hurrying to his side. “Don’t!” he shouted, holding up his hand towards his friend. “This is my fight. I’ve got her attention, you go where you need to be!”

“You can’t beat Saki alone!”

“Hey, have a little confidence in your friend!”

“She’s been protecting Yuki from bullies since school started, she’s better in a fight than you are!”

Coughing, Tatsuya just felt in his body what Saki had done to him. “I’m fully aware of that. But someone has to stop Takako and that should be you! Only you know what must be done, what has to be done! I can’t do it!”

Grimacing, Hiroshi’s face betrayed his distaste for what Tatsuya said. But his expression twisted and changed understanding of the situation. He put himself on the course and he knew what he needed to do as Tatsuya told him. As all the thoughts ran through his face, he finished reconciling things with his fate. “Fine, just stay alive until I kill Takako! If Yuki’s right, Saki should come back to her senses!”

“Of course! I’ve got no plans on dying today!” He watched Hiroshi run off in the direction of Takako. Once out of sight, he turned to look back in the direction of Saki and the cloud that covered her. She walked out of it shortly still looking pretty pissed and with her clothes a little torn up for the trouble. “No plans by me. I can’t speak for her plans…”

Chapter 342 – The Reverse Mirror

Walking out of the classroom, Tatsuya met Saki out in the hall again. He glanced around at the condition of the school. In the distance, he heard flames going off from Haruo’s fight that they left him to handle. “It’s a miracle that this school is holding together with everything we’re doing to it. Yuki’s going to be pretty pissed that we’ve wrecked all of his work.”

“He’s already dead.”

“Now you’re just making assumptions.”

“He couldn’t have survived my kick.”

“I guess we’ll find out.” Pretending that he knew what he was doing, Tatsuya tried to imitate something that he saw in a martial arts movie for a fighting stance.

Saki glared at him like she was insulted in his efforts. “You’re full of openings.”

“Then try me.”

Taking the bait, she charged after Tatsuya without a thought to what he was capable of doing. He moved around her as she completely missed once more. However, it was something that she had gotten used to seeing and stopped. She spun around with her leg destroying the wall of the hall to toss a storm of debris at him.

Some of the debris hit and a lot of missed. It staggered him out of his evasion and she closed the distance. He knew it was coming, but could do nothing to stop her. Saki pummeled him into the ground, crashing him down to the first floor in a rain of debris.

It took Tatsuya a moment, but he emerged from the debris and crater he formed. A bit of blood dripped down from his forehead where he smacked into the ground and foundation of the school. He examined the rest of his condition to be sure of no other injuries. While looking around he saw his shirt torn up from the fall. “You ripped one of my favorite shirts, Saki,” he shouted back up to the second floor. “Hope you plan on replacing this!”

All he got for his troubles was some debris she shot down at him. He batted it away with it not having strength enough actually to harm him. Before he went back up, he looked around to find Miyako. He could see her further down near where they last saw her. She had her hands full with all of the students and others attacking. ‘She’s still kicking…I’m glad.’ As he began to jump, he felt the school shudder from all of their fighting.

Just as he leapt back up to the second floor, the third floor collapsed down near where Yuki originally fell. The damage spread quickly and collapsed the second floor as well. Tatsuya paused, realizing that everything falling was on top of Miyako. ‘She’ll be fine…that wouldn’t even harm her anymore…’

Thinking about someone else other than his own wellbeing was a bad idea as he remembered. Saki didn’t give him much time to do nothing. He thankfully saw her coming and managed to evade her attack. She improved her reaction time against him and followed up with a second swing. It required a lot of correction, which in the steps between seconds was an eternity.

He could dodge it as well, but not the third that she had. She was already on top of him and the amount of correction was almost non-existent. Tatsuya knew he couldn’t do anything to evade the attack. Putting up his arms, he did everything to fortify his position to her attack. The force of the hit knocked him back, but he managed to stay on his feet.

Shockwaves ripped through the hallway tearing up the fragile walls. The school shook a little as each hit it took made it less safe to remain within. More of the third floor came raining down around him. None of that stopped Saki from charging through. Since his defense mostly held, she didn’t plan to stop until he went flying.

Each blow she left on him pushed him back further and further. While he didn’t have a good sense of space, he knew that he was going to run out of floor soon. Behind him was the destroyed part of the school that Yori wrecked in his opening attack on Yumi. ‘If I fall, she’s going to take full advantage of me being off balance. I need to do something, playing defense isn’t helping me here…’

Tatsuya tried to dodge Saki's punch, but it opened up his defenses. He ended up taking part of the power from her fist to his shoulder. It knocked him a little off balance, but it did at least put him into a better position against her. Taking her extended arm, he grabbed her and threw her down the hall the way she sent Yuki. “At least we’ll be out of the school now.”

Following Saki, he jumped through the school on what remained until he came out to the night air. Saki had already landed safely, not giving him a chance to keep his momentum. He landed on top of a house that still somehow remained standing after Saki crashed through it. “I’ll be able to utilize the full extent of my powers out here.” Tatsuya suddenly became blurry to Saki’s eyes until she started to see two of him. “This is something new I figured out my power can do. Let’s see how much trouble this causes you.”