Back-to-Back Fists

Turning back towards Kaede and Katsumi, Seiji mounted his determination to stand for Yuki. “It’s now just the three of us. Yuki’s got business elsewhere, he doesn’t need to be held up fighting Yumi’s friends. That’s not something he needs on his shoulders too.”

He saw the two girls, Yumi’s friends, standing on either side of the hallway. They both had the looks of ready to resume their fight as he made the interruption. Neither looked very pleased by the distraction. However, Kaede more than Katsumi seemed more up for the fight. She had a smirk on her face already looking ready to charge. Katsumi seemed to be remaining passive and holding her ground.

It was Katsumi that bothered Seiji more than anything. He had seen Kaede’s type too many times to find it that surprising. They all wanted to fight and had the confidence in themselves and likely plenty of arrogance to go along with it. Nothing special about Kaede. ‘What’s with the girl? I never asked Yuki which was which…but she’s got an unnerving presence unlike her friend. I can’t get a read on anything.’ Reading someone for Seiji wasn’t the normal sort of thing.

For him, it was a gut check. His personal experience and reaction that his body had to the individual was his method of reading. Which meant that he was blind or mistaken just as often as he was right. But in a fight, it was invaluable. Besides his fighting experience, it gave him a fighting sense that let him understand his opponent, for good or ill as it had been recently. Katsumi gave him shit, almost like she was invisible. It felt strangely chilling just looking at her.

Delaying wasn’t really a choice, caution was required. He wanted to see what the hell they did next. A two on one fight against powers wasn’t something to dive straight into head first. They already proved to him that they could handle themselves.

Kaede didn’t really give him a chance for that though. She wanted his blood and jumped straight in to pick the fight back up. Her only courtesy was the time she gave Seiji to deal with what he needed in unloading Yuki to someone else. “Ready to die?” she shouted in her charge, coming into a clash with Seiji.

Taking her fist to his forearm, Seiji kept his balance. Weight carried behind her hand, but didn’t have the force he felt before. ‘Just a reintroduction…’ He threw her off him, keeping careful watch over Katsumi, not sure what she would do next. ‘I’ve only seen her play a more support role to the main girl’s aggressive fighting. It’s when they team up that it’s trouble…’ Alone Kaede didn’t present him with any real challenge. As a pair, they easily outflanked him and succeeded in scoring hits he would have otherwise avoided.

He had some hesitation in jumping straight in for a counter attack against Kaede. The last time he tried that, he got a sharp knee kick to the cheek. It was hardly the most painful thing he had ever felt, but it hurt a lot more than he expected from such a small ass girl. And, he preferred not to leave himself so open to an attack. He couldn’t really sense Katsumi and that made him uneasy in the fight against two. Which meant that Kaede came in for another attack.

More in earnest this time, she delivered a barrage of attacks against him. He kept his arms up to block her punches. ‘She’s got more of her back in these hits now… She’s back to being serious…’ Seiji grabbed her wrist as her blows started to come to an end. He spun her around quickly and threw her in the direction of Katsumi. ‘Keeping them both in my sights is about the only way I’m going to be able to manage these two…’

With them lined up, Seiji took action. He quickly covered the distance to catch back up with Kaede and rammed his fist into her stomach as the finishing blow to shoot her into Katsumi. The short haired girl flew backwards into her friend and smashed through the wall of another classroom disappearing in smoke.

Seiji came to a gentle landing outside of the new hole to monitor the situation. ‘That should have dealt with at least the one girl. I didn’t put everything I had into the punch, but it should be enough to knock her out. Which should just leave the other passive one. Though, up until now, everything I’ve attempted against her has done nothing. No signs of injury… She could be the more troubling of the two…’

As the dust began to settle, he saw two forms through the gray veil. Shit. A bad sign for him, he knew. A low sigh slipped out of his lips. “Dammit…guess I’m not that lucky…” He prepared for the next round against the two. ‘How tough is this girl? I might have been withholding my full power, but I still gave it a lot of force.’

“Such a brute,” commented Kaede, walking out of the smoke with her long black hair dragging along the floor. As she walked, parts of the floor crumbled behind her mysteriously.

‘Her killing aura has increased…’ The look he had seen before from others, it was damn hard to miss. He had seen worse, but she had quickly changed her attitude. There might have been a playful looking smile through her face, but her eyes were out for blood. It had an unhinged sort of appearance, as if already insane from the bloodlust. ‘I don’t think I’m going to like this very much…’

Time to think wasn’t really available, though it wasn’t like Seiji was going to use it anyway. Kaede leapt into action jumping through the air spinning herself around. Her massively grown out hair went flying with a bit of a life of their own. Spread out in a wide arc around her it initially didn’t look like much other than flailing to Seiji.

However, a few pieces of debris and dust rained down in front of her charge. He saw the pieces suddenly turn into dust as they came in contact with her hair. The how of it didn’t really make sense to him, but he understood the threat clearly. “Oh hell…” He knew he didn’t want to be hit with that and Kaede made her intention with her attack.

Seiji bent back planning on just letting Kaede sail over him, but something stopped him. He looked behind him and saw Katsumi holding him up to stay in line for Kaede. “Damn! When’d you get there?!” He tried to dodge to the side instead, but Katsumi wrapped around his waist, keeping him held down.

There was no longer any time. He was out of options and only centimeters from being hit. He threw up his arms to do what he could to protect himself.

Blood sprayed through the air with the slashing of Kaede’s hair. Katsumi lost her hold when a forceful blast clashed. Seiji flew backwards, trailing blood from his numerous wounds over his arm and chest. He collapsed to the floor with his head bent back through the hole he had created earlier.

Familiar ass pain spread over his body. The warmth of blood pouring out over the skin. This was a fight. He was going to have to start taking things more seriously. “Ugh…this is really annoying…” Seiji started to pull himself back up as paper ashes slid off his body where it hadn’t soaked in with the blood.

“Survived that attack, huh?” Kaede noted sounding a little annoyed. She jumped a little on her feet getting closer to him. “Even with that special power that protected you, I’ll cut you down!” She slowly stalked forward, eying up Seiji for her next attack.

“Special power?” He wasn’t even to his feet yet and Kaede looked to make her next swing. ‘Not good, don’t know how I survived that last attack, but with how sliced up I am, I won’t survive another at this distance…’

“I’m going to enjoy painting the walls in your blood!”

“Kaede…”

“This is my favorite part!” Her hands pressed together with a little popping of her knuckles.

“Kaede.”

“I don’t think you’ll be needing those arms anymore!” Spinning around her hair, the walls already fell down around her from just loosely throwing her head about.

“Kaede.”

Kaede stopped looking very annoyed. Her hair fell down around her feet, spreading out and sinking. “What the hell do you want?!”

“It’s too late.”

“Huh?”

“Your hair. You did it again.”

“What are you talking about?”

Suddenly the ground seemed to sink around them by a few centimeters. “What the hell?” barked Seiji looking around not sure what was going on. That was all he managed to get out before everything fell out from under him. He fell.

Kaede followed in her confusion after Seiji as the floor broke apart under her. She fell on her back against the second floor along with Seiji. However, due to her hair, Fumiko and Haruo’s fight below and Seiji’s action to make the original hole, it wasn’t really suited to holding anything. The second floor fell apart aided by Kaede collapsing them quickly. Both dropped once more to the first floor.

From the top, Katsumi leaned over looking down at the two checking on them. Which was a mistake, despite her observation before, she didn’t notice how weak the floor was from all of Kaede's movements. Her weight was all it took to bring the rest crumbling. Katsumi attempted to jump away, but it only pushed things even faster. The ground she jumped off of had no give to push back and she fell faster.

For a good five or six meters of the hall on the third floor everything rained down. Katsumi fell on the second floor, but as more of the third floor classrooms broke down and spilled in the second floor’s already weakened state folded quickly.

A large pile of debris fell down around her leaving the entire hallway of the first floor mounded up in rumble.

Chapter 328 – Back-to-back Fists

Another punch knocked down another student. “Damn, is there no end to all of these?!” complained Miyako. The hallway seemed to endlessly spill with students and random adults. They all came from classrooms or some weird void that just produces evil beings.

While she finished off a student, a mid-aged woman jumped her from behind. Her hand felt warm like it was trying to melt her skin. But Miyako grabbed her by her neck and threw her off her back. She used the woman’s body to take out a few others coming at her and finish off the little remained of the classroom door. Only a moment later, she had to elbow a short student in the face to stop them from stabbing her in the back.

“Bastards!” She had to dodge a girl that could make her arms into metal blades. The whole thing looked pretty painful to see, but staring and being impressed wasn’t really really an option. Even dodging, she got clipped along the cheek. It was only a small amount of blood. She gripped one of the blades coming off the girl’s arm and ripped her off her feet and threw her into the ground. The blades embedded themselves leaving her stuck. While completely open, she kicked her in the ribs, tossing her through the classroom.

She then spun around wide with her fist to backhand some businessman. He went flying into the crowd. Miyako shook out her hand a little, feeling the numbing pain from repeated use. Her skin was red and raw from all of the fighting. An endless fight was something she pondered at times, but this wasn’t the sort of time for it. “Is there anyone that can actually put up a fight?!”

On call, naturally, the ceiling behind her collapsed. The force of everything blew out a cloud of dust over the entire area. Then even more of the ceiling collapsed all around her. It attempted to bury her as she protected herself shouting out to the others in her group, but her voice disappeared in all of the noise.

After almost thirty seconds of silence and settling of debris, Miyako broke out of the pile coughing up dust that got stuck in her throat. “What the hell are ya doing?!” She looked around trying to figure out who made the mistake of bringing down the school around them. “We’re supposed to be holding them off, not destroying the school!”

Another cough came out from underneath the debris. Before Miyako could figure out if it was one of her or an enemy, they broke free. It was so close to her that she threw a punch out of instinct. However, they blocked it. She hadn’t really looked at who it was, but since they stopped her she threw another. It couldn’t be one of her group, none of them were that good. She could tell from the first punch she threw. And they kept up with her and even returned a couple back at her. ‘They’re good…’ Miyako couldn’t move very well with all of the rumble around her feet. She broke off the fighting to jump out of the mess that slowed her movements.

The other seemed to have a similar idea. They were like mirrors in their movements. And with the same idea, they both charged back in with their fists flying. The two clashed in the middle blowing out a shockwave of air from their collision with even greater strength put behind their punch.

It became clear that it was going to be a stalemate the way it was going. They jumped apart to get a better read on the situation. Miyako could feel the throbbing in her hand from the last blow. “Damn…that’s some power you got!” She smiled a little, finally finding someone with something real to offer.

“I can say the same to you. You've got a hell of a punch!”

“Who are ya? You don’t look like the rest of the mindless mob.”

“Same to you. Are you with Hiroshi’s group?”

“You with that bastard Yuki?”

“So we’re on the same side.”

Suddenly Katsumi and Kaede pulled themselves out of the rumble as well, appearing behind each of them with Katsumi behind Miyako. “Seems that way…” She immediately recognized Kaede, the girl from before that left her in the state that she was in now. “It’s you!” Miyako charged over only to have to stop and fall back as Kaede swung with her hair, she remembered the lethality of it. She fell back against the other that joined her.

“I’m Seiji,” he answered over his shoulder. In front of him, Katsumi looked as ready for a fight as she had ever been, which really wasn’t saying much. But he felt that he could trust the woman at his back. He grinned a little, feeling better about the situation now.

Miyako suddenly remembered the name. “You’re the one that gave us the info.” She had been back getting another round of treatments from the doctor to prepare her for combat, against the doctor’s wishes. So she had never seen Seiji. “Miyako. Got my back?”

“Hell yeah! You?”

“I think I’m going to like ya!” She grinned as well, feeling like she had found some kindred spirit.

They lowered themselves a little standing back to back preparing for the fight that came. “It’s time to fight!” they shouted together in their charge.