[9th] Week 28 - Midnight Fight

[PeaCe]

[1,647]

“So, what do you say?” Dai was certainly persistent. He kept circling Sho in a mock hostile fashion, his Zanpakutou was unsheathed. Sho shot him an annoyed glance but this did not stop the Ninth Division member’s best friend from continuing his actions. He continued to circle Sho and the desk he was working at.

“This is my room. Why do you insist on coming to visit me in my room and then challenging me to a fight?” Sho had certainly been training in combat, especially continuing with his pursuit of Kidou. Despite this, combat had never been Sho’s true focus and he had admittedly devoted much more of his time to study.

“Just one little fight Sho, it’s not a big deal. I only want to fight to see who is the better of us? I would always cream you when we did fight in the academy, even though you were good with your Kidou, it wasn’t good enough to beat me. What with your Mummification and your two favourite Hadou techniques, you may have managed to beat that Hollow, but they were nothing against me.” Dai grinned proudly; he had always been the better fighter between the two of them. While this would not normally be something to be proud of when thinking of Sho, the two of them had both not been fighters before death although Dai had focused much more on fighting since then.

“No Dai, I do not want to fight you. I want to continue my studies; I have no interest in fighting you to see which of us has improved the most since graduating.” Sho shook his head and flipped over to the next page in the book he was reading on some of the more famous Shinigami.

“Oh you’re no fun Sho,” stated a new, third voice. Both men knew who this was, Mieko had arrived. Noboru had almost thought she wouldn’t turn up, but he was wrong. It had been a faint hope from the beginning, she most certainly had turned up, as she had done everyday since they met. Sho wasn’t sure if she had any other friends. “Fight Dai, beat him. Show him the power of the Ninth!”

He closed his book immediately, knowing that there was no hope against the two of them combined. “Fine, fine,” he said as he stood up. “I’ll fight you Dai, Mieko… you can come watch too.”

“I will win this fight for you Mieko!” Dai proudly announced, but once again she did not hear him and he sunk his head in shame, following Sho and Mieko out of Sho’s room and outside of the compound.

***

The group of three finally arrived in a small field out of the way of Soul Society’s buildings. They’d chosen this spot because they had wished to not destroy anything during the fight. While they were certainly not that powerful in the grand scheme of things, they would probably be strong enough to cause some structural damage to the buildings and didn’t feel like paying for the repairs.

Mieko withdrew some torches from within her robes and dug small holes all around the edges of the circular battlefield. Throwing a torch in each, she used a Kidou spell to bring forth a small amount of fire and went around lighting each of them.

The two combatants admired the now well lit battlefield, if Mieko had not thought ahead it would have been a tough battle in the darkness. Sho grinned, perhaps that would have been fun in its own right though.

“Take your positions,” Mieko ordered, her voice projecting across the small battlefield they’d created. The two fighters each headed too opposite sides of the battlefield and turned to face each other, waiting on Mieko to signal the beginning of the match.

Mieko climbed to the top of the small ‘cliff’, leaving Dai and Sho as the only two entrenched in this small arena. She did not want to get in the way of their fight. “When I say you can begin, you can begin. This match allows the use of any battle tactic to win. No outside devices and the match ends when no fighter is able to continue; to not continue until death. Nobody will die in this fight. Understand?” The two friends nodded and Mieko grinned. “Well then, without further delay… BEGIN!”

Sho and Dai both withdrew their Zanpakutou and ran at each other, Sho slashed first and Dai used his Zanpakutou to block the attack, overwhelming Sho with a surge of force and pushing him back using his own weapon. “Not bad Sho,” Dai said simply, “But you don’t seem much different to when we fought in the academy.”

Sho laughed, “I’m much, much different.” He ran at Dai for the very same slash and Dai threw his sword up to block once again, Sho had never been one to mix it up. This time Sho was different though, he had learnt to mix it up. He was not blindly trying to repeat the same attack and somehow break through as he had done in the academy. The attack had been a fake, Sho used his leg to sweep Dai off his feet and send him back first onto the ground.

Dai watched in shock as Sho sent his sword down, attempting to slash him. Rolling away quickly, his left arm was not completely out of the way and part of it was cut open by the attack. “Damn!” Dai cried, getting to his feet and clutching his arm, “Sorry…” Dai apologised, “Sorry I underestimated you. No holding back now!”

Dai charged at his friend, using a one handed slash which Sho blocked promptly. Dai sent his remaining first into Sho’s mouth and sent him staggering back at the sheer impact. Luckily for the scientist, he had removed his glasses on the way.

Not relenting, Dai continued to use his free hand to punch into Sho’s gut until the scientist took the hint and jumped back out of his range. “I hope I didn’t get you too bad,” Dai remarked, chuckling.

Sho spat blood from his mouth onto the floor and grinned, “No not really.” Dai hadn’t been expecting this reaction; Sho had always gotten extremely angry during their fights in the academy when he’d been bested in even a small part of the match.

Not wanting the fight to turn into a trash talking competition, the Ninth Division Shinigami ran at his best friend and leapt into the air, now towering a little over Dai’s height and sent a powerful horizontal slash at Dai. The former artist blocked but he couldn’t hold back all the force of the attack; his Zanpakutou flew out of his hands and onto the floor nearby, he had been disarmed.

In an effort to avoid seriously wounding Dai, sho spun his sword around and sent the hilt of the sword into Dai’s chest, causing him to clutch it in agony. Sho sent several knees into the chest of his opponent and delivered an uppercut, knocking him to the floor.

Mimicking Sho’s earlier tactic, Dai delivered a leg sweep and Sho went crashing to the floor. Rushing over to his Zanpakutou, Dai picked it up as his opponent got back onto his feet. “I was wrong about you Sho… you have been training… but so have I!” Dai ran at Sho, but at a slower speed, both of them were now wounded, Dai admittedly more so than Sho.

Using a strike he had perfected, Dai swung his whole body around with his Zanpakutou, but this was blocked by Sho’s own weapon. This was not the complete attack however, with Dai performing another rotation immediately and striking lower, bypassing an unaware Sho and slashing him across the chest. Once again mimicking Sho – perhaps to prove he was better – Dai performed a vicious uppercut to Sho’s chin and sent the Ninth Division member flying a foot back.

“Is that all you’ve got?” Sho asked, slowly getting to his feet.

“I could ask the same of you,” Dai responded, winded and breathing heavily.

“I still have tricks left…” Sho replied, grinning. Dai’s eyes shot open in fear in realisation. This entire match they had been evenly matched, but Sho had not once used his most prominent field of combat, Kidou.

“The south gate is broken,” Sho began, throwing away his sword.

“N-No… Damn!”

“The North gate shatters,” The Ninth Division rookie continued, with Mieko watching, visibly impressed. Dai turned and began to run; hoping to reach the edge of the battlefield and leap up onto the area Mieko was standing and avoid the attack.

It was all over, “Hadou #15, Genshi!” Sho cried. Dai jumped towards the cliff but lost his footing and slipped. Turning around in defeat, he dropped his sword and fell to his knees. Energy gathered around Sho and three rings flew out, heading in all directions across the battlefield.

Sho and Mieko both knew Dai was in danger and Mieko leapt down from her position and quickly withdrew her Zanpakutou. She managed to block most of the attack, but was still sent back by the attack, damaged enough to make her the third person in the battle to spit up blood.

“Sorry,” Sho said, walking over, “I guess I got carried away.”

“Nah, no problem,” Mieko replied, glancing at Dai who had fainted, “I only took the hit so he wouldn’t suffer any really bad injuries, and if you hadn’t have used the spell, it wouldn’t have counted as a win.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Go stand over near Dai,” Mieko ordered, “I’m no member of the fourth, but I should be able to patch you guys up.” Sho did as he was told and sat down next to Dai who was lying on the ground, unconscious. “You did well today, Sho.”

 

[PeaCe]

Dead? Yes, very much so.

[1,044]

Year#1 in Rukongai

For a brief second there was a sharp, stabbing pain that encompassed his entire body and then… nothing. Only a second or so later he felt another sharp surge of pain, although this was not nearly as painful as the last and only affected his chest. Opening his eyes, Sho found himself in a feudal era looking area, a far cry from the brilliantly lit streets of Tokyo.

An old man sent a second, rough kick to his chest and Sho rolled away in distaste. “What the hell do you think you’re doing old man?” He shouted, hopping to his feet. “Where the hell am I?” Taking a better look around, he recognised nothing but he knew immediately this was definitely not a part of Tokyo. “A… dream?”

“Not a dream my boy, sadly not a dream.” The old man slumped back against a tree and began to whistle a tune the teenager had never heard before. “Oh no… how they all wish that it was a dream… how they wish. Yes, yes, they wish… but sadly it is never a dream.”

Raising an eyebrow in confusion Sho further observed that behind the old man was a tiny field with a beautiful lake fuelled by a small waterfall; with the excess water flowing downstream into the horizon. The two of them were at the end of what appeared to be a market district street, but it was sometime during the night and only the two of them were out at this time.

“What’s your name young one?”

Sho was shocked to find he was wearing robes as opposed to the clothes he’d been wearing when… when he saw a bright light. A scream, Mayu’s scream. The sound of a truck, the horn he knew all to well from living in the city.

“Mayu! Dai!” Sho cried out, pacing around looking for any signs of his friends, “Mayu! Dai!” He dropped to his knees, the same memory flashing before him. In the car, the three of them… a truck? A scream?

The Old man gave him a peculiar nod and prodded him on the forehead with his walking stick, knocking the recent arrival back. “Mayu Dai hmm?” The old man pondered, “My, my… why that certainly is an interesting name… odd though, I must say. Having a female last name, that is.”

Sho looked up at the man, tears forming around his eyes, “No… Noboru Sho. My name is Noboru Sho.” He sent a fist at the ground, pounding it with the utmost of anger. He had pieced the horrible truth together.

“Ah, Noboru is it?” The old man nodded, “We get some emotional arrivals here, no doubt. But I must say you are perhaps one of the most eccentric arrivals we’ve had in a long time. What seems to be the matter, boy?”

Slowly raising his head he removed his glasses – surprised that of all the items he had, clothing, money, his house keys… they had remained. Perhaps because they meant so much to him and they’d become a part of him. “I… I killed my friends.” The recently dead teenager fainted in shock.

“Oh dear me,” the old man pondered, hopping up and letting out a loud whistle which alerted a middle-aged looking man to appear from within the closest house. “New arrival… get a wet towel.”

***

His eyes opened and Sho found himself staring at the inside of thatched roof ceiling, something he’d never seen in the city but that he’d read in a book at one point when he’d found nothing else of any interest to him.

“You’re awake,” said the gruff voice of a middle-aged man standing next to the old man whom Sho had met before he fainted from the shock of realising what he’d done to his two closest friends.

“I’m dead, aren’t I?” Sho asked, tears seemingly beginning to freshly form on his face, in much the same quantity of the night before.

“Yes,” the old man replied emotionlessly. “This is Rukongai, where souls come upon death. Don’t worry, it’s pretty nice around here, although not all its cracked up to be when you hear about it while you’re living.”

“Where are my friends?” Sho inquired, which elicited an odd look from the two men who had never found someone ignore their death so quickly upon it being confirmed. “I caused an accident and the three of us were all in the same car, there’s no way they would have survived, I’m sure of it.” The last part was said with a heavy tone of regret, he didn’t care that he was dead right this moment; he had to find his friends.

“Rukongai has eighty districts. District one is the wealthiest, eighty you wouldn’t want to go near, in other words, the lower the number, the better the conditions that you live with. Each district is massive and from what we can see, the assignment of district is purely random. It’s unlikely you will ever see your friends again.” The Middle-aged man said this with a dull monotone, as if he was merely reading a criminal his rights upon arresting them; it was something he had probably told people many a time.

“Never see my friends again?” Sho asked, throwing the bed covers away and getting out of the bed, “Why? How massive are these districts? Surely with persistence I can find my friends!”

Ignoring him, the old man cleared his throat, “This is district twenty-three. We have it pretty good around here, but everyone’s expected to work. I know you might think the after-life is full of free-spirited people. It’s not, it works much the same as when you’re alive.”

“A… job?” Sho asked, “Now how am I going to get one of those?”

“You’re living with us. We’ll provide three meals a day, the room we’re in now and some money on the side. In exchange you work for us for at least a few hours each day, with a day or two off every week depending on how busy we are.”

“Is that a good offer?” Sho questioned, not sure what the working conditions were like in Rukongai and more specifically in this particular district itself.

“It’s your only offer.”