Question's Test

It was a successful strike on Masa, though not nearly as clean as Yumi had hoped. The unorthodox fighting style that she developed created the opening that she wanted in Masa’s defense. However, she managed to still react enough to it. Using her forearm, Masa altered the angle to minimize the cutting force only leaving her with moderate wounds on her shoulder and arm. While they were more debilitating than the shallow ones Yumi carried, they wouldn’t slow her down.

Their fight couldn’t be over just yet.

Ignoring the pain of the wounds, Masa recovered quickly from the surprise attack and pushed Yumi back. She needed to gather herself and process what happened. Unlike anything before, Yumi broke her guard successfully. It wasn’t the same sort of attacks that she had used before. The same confidence of that shoulder charge came through within her last attack. ‘This is where she’s most comfortable…a sword style like I’ve never seen before…’

Apprehension began to build up for Masa as an unexpected development. She battled many foes. Demons with all assortment of abilities that she witnessed, if only briefly. That someone like Yumi gave her trouble seemed a little incredulous to imagine. Yet she had managed to back her into a corner that she hadn’t felt for five years.

The memory of five years ago had never left it. It replayed so often for her that it was just a part of her life now. Though it was never something that adapted and adjusted to her. Every playing of it remained the same jarring and disturbing record as the first. Haunting her steps, she never escaped that day.

Yet in the playing of the memory, she remembered something that she hadn’t before. Perhaps it was their fight that refreshed such an old memory, maybe it was altered now, but it had something, rather someone else in it. She had waited until the Demon Hokuren finished his fight with the first one to challenge him before stepping in to kill him.

Masa stared at Yumi seeing the familiarity in her face. The strange feeling that she had before started to make sense now that she saw the context. “You were there that day,” she said with realization of who Yumi was.

“Glad you finally remembered me. I was going to be a little sad if this fight ended with you still not remembering me. We might not have talked that day, so I can’t blame you that much for not noticing.”

“So you’re here because I interrupted your fight?”

“No, as I said before I have a question for you.”

“Right a question.” Given what she expected from their fight, in that it wouldn’t be a fight worth remembering, Masa forgot about that fact. She planned to just brush her aside and continue on towards her destination. This far in though, Masa didn’t plan on changing her mind on it. There remained no intentions of playing along with whatever Yumi wanted. “We continue.”

Chapter 472 – Question’s Test

Yumi moved around Masa getting back into her rhythm of the fight. She stayed light on her feet shifting balance around, altering her momentum in the last moment. The staggered start left her frozen briefly only to pop up disjointedly in front of Masa. It was an awkward movement that Masa hadn’t grown accustomed to yet.

Knowing that she didn’t move the same gave Masa a little preparation for what was to come. But it still took her off guard in the moment. Her defense wasn’t ready for a spin kick. However, she accepted the blow to her ribs in order to block directly the sword that followed up in the new pattern. Masa unfortunately couldn’t track the blade as Yumi intentionally made her movements to distract her from where it would be coming.

Yet the attack never came.

Masa stared at Yumi, who seemed to be beaming with excitement. ‘That was just a ploy. She knew that I would expect it and calculated all of that out…’ She blocked several more hits from Yumi before she finally struck with her sword again. The unpredictable nature of Yumi’s style made it even more challenging than she expected to be able to fight her. This ceased to be a normal sort of sword fight that Yumi geared her towards. ‘It’s like she’s staged everything from the beginning to control the pace making me think she wasn’t in control…’

That level of arrogance or confidence, Masa wasn’t completely sure which dominated in Yumi at the moment, began to annoy her. This woman took her as someone that could be played with and manipulated. Masa charged forward in a blinding burst of speed that jumped up the level of their battle once more.

Even matching in strength, Yumi charged towards Masa, catching her blade in her hand and deflecting it away from her sword. However, Masa swapped her dominant hand bracing with her bloodied forearm the back of the blade to block Yumi’s white sword.

Their exchange continued, but Masa noticed that Yumi had started taking her sword strikes directly when she switched over to her preferred style. Now that she focused on it, it seemed weird. Her blade should have been cut through Yumi with ease, yet she took it.

In the middle of the attacks, she finally noticed what had been in front of her the whole time. It wasn’t something that she noticed before focusing less on the tiny details and overall shape of Yumi. Her style had less predictability than someone straightforward in a sword fight leaving her attention distracted. But there was a rather easily seen hexagon of transparent energy that rested on the contact points blocking for her. ‘She’s using her body as another weapon combining the two elements together…’

Masa pushed back to reset the pace, understanding better how her style worked. Taking another swing, Yumi parried with her leg and then wrapped around it catching the blade under her knee holding Masa in place. The next attack was going to be coming in Masa knew with her completely exposed thanks to the unusual pin that Yumi made. She could only release her hand from her katana, despite it feeling wrong to do so.

She jumped back letting Yumi’s swing slice the air alone. But Yumi flipped forward with Masa's sword still clutched tightly. Masa stepped back keeping the spinning blade away from her. As Yumi landed from the flip on her hands, she kicked the katana free. She dropped her legs down spinning around kicking Masa’s sword back to her so that their fight could resume as normal.

The more that Masa saw Yumi’s style the more it started to find a rhythm for her. She realized that while a good way to fight against someone traditionally focused as she was in sword fighting, that Yumi still lacked the experience. After the shock of it wore off, she could see the mistakes and gaps within it. It became easier for her to predict and manage.

Their battle evened out with the martial arts of Yumi’s fighting breaking down into blocks and parries. Masa held her ground against Yumi, re-establishing the balance.

The katana blocked Yumi’s kick that stood alone with Yumi kicking off the blade to get to her back side. Without even a kick, Yumi grabbed her sword with Masa flipping her blade back to block. They spun around counter to the opposite flank and broke away.

Yumi flipped to the side kicking her sword up into the air letting it fly free as she parried with her leg Masa sliding the blade down her barrier. Before it could reach the end of the hexagon, Yumi brought up her elbow to stop. She pushed back and lowered down to the ground sweeping at her legs. The katana dropped down to block Yumi. She kicked twice against the katana with the third becoming the sword back in her hand. Nothing budged in the struggle, only destroying the ground.

Bouncing off crumbling debris Yumi threw in her fists parrying or being blocked by Masa in a flurry of strikes that couldn’t find their target. She kicked off the rock and wrapped her arm around Masa, throwing her into the air at the nearest destroyed crater that they created through all of their fighting that they ignored.

Following up behind Masa, they exchanged counters within counters as she flew over the ground. Masa deflected all of the power away such that it negated any additional motion to her body. Terrain ripped up on the flanks as they focused only on themselves finding the opening that they needed. Their strength rapidly increased.

Masa corrected her position with ease to land in the crater as Yumi crashed upon her, deepening the crater threefold with little effort on her part. She kicked off Masa to flip backwards and launch back at Masa. Her arm met against her blade sliding down with Yumi’s sword coming in from above, but Masa freed herself and slid her katana up to block the strike.

Together, they struggled with their blades with Yumi pushing with a kick to the back of her blade to shatter the defense. She carried through the motion to drag her foot forward, but the katana blocked her. Braced against the ground, she turned around kicking away the blade, but only for it to be so faint that Masa used her exposed arm to take another shallow wound.

Yumi flipped away, throwing her sword to the ground as Masa followed in chase. She leapt up on the hilt to jump over Masa landing behind her. Rapid punches thrust out at Masa with each being blocked, but slowly making her take a step back. Yumi slipped around taking the back of her arm to hit Masa in the shoulder despite aiming for her neck. Their movements had become easily read by the other making any sort of surprise impossible.

The swordswoman flipped over with the force that Yumi provided. In the middle of her flip, Yumi struck, altering her direction into the ground. Yumi dropped down her blade failing to hit anything more than earth. Rather than remove the blade, she dragged it over the ground chasing the rolling Masa until it hit her katana.

Cast into the air with a swing by Masa, she jumped off the kick that Yumi tried to make, giving her the extra lift to soar through the air briefly. Yumi covered the distance in an instant clashing swords and completely obliterating the entire terrain behind Masa. Masa let the force slide over her shoulder and turned her katana down in an instant, unleashing one of her instantaneous striking techniques.

Yumi only caught a glimpse of the blade weakly blocking it with her forearm and sword as blood dripped down from the wound. She shook it off with ease and jumped back into the fight as it didn’t even slow her down.

She swung down her sword from above as another sword appeared merging with it as it suddenly changed from a generic common blade into a bastard sword increasing in size. The force that Yumi swung with pushed Masa’s feet into the soft earth.

Their blades sparked and battled against each other as Masa braced her katana against the heavier blade. ‘I actually felt weight behind her sword even though it’s just energy. What is she doing?’ The size change of the blade changed the balance and force that Yumi applied. She pushed aside the struggle letting Yumi’s sword slide off as she went in for a torso strike only to see Yumi’s hand block with her dominant hand bringing her to a halt.

Tearing up the ground, Yumi turned her sword up to swing, but Masa released her primary hand using her off hand to stab the katana into the dirt, locking Yumi’s blade in place. Yumi dropped a little letting her foot come up as Masa actually used her arm to block Yumi rather than her blade.

They paused for a moment.

Yumi stared up at Masa with a smile across her face. Things were going better than she had hoped. She didn’t know how much more Masa had left, but they were still close. ‘I’ve gone past my limits of when I fought against Hokuren! Am I close to her? I want to see more!’ Excitement built up for Yumi as their fight could only keep getting better for her.

Once they broke and leapt back, Yumi recalled her blade back to her hand. They stared across at each other waiting for the next move. Each saw so much of the other that they were reading clearly through their moves. Little could be done to surprise them anymore. At least that was what Masa thought.

The bastard sword suddenly warped shapes again as it became a katana of matching length to Masa. Yumi then assumed the stance that Masa found all too familiar. The shock of seeing her mimicking her own style so clearly left her open that she didn’t even see the invisible blade strike.