Chapter Forty-Four — Avalanche in Fire
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Chapter Forty-Four

Avalanche in Fire

 

How much time passed since Kasuga had entered the battle?

So many things had happened to Nekohiko in the short span it took him and Etsuko to have their disaster of a fight that he had lost all track of whether it was even the same day, let alone the same hour as when he had last seen Kasuga in the skies.

Yet all fights were ridiculously short when it came down to it. Only the feeble human mind made it seem longer or more meaningful than it was in reality. Perhaps, it simply wanted to make sense of it.

So close to Suzumegara, he couldn't even see around him. Most of his vision was swallowed up by the luminescent wings and the glassy and metallic surface of Suzumegara's body on top of which the walls of the Nagare castle began. Everything else was too far to see.

Even the people.

Spirits, the people! Kataji!

He had completely forgotten about him too!

Nekohiko's mind darted toward Kataji's room and any of the wooden parts inside. Before, Kataji had erased all eyes and mouths on Nekohiko's bodies, but now, Nekohiko found one in a flash.

Kataji was curled down beside all the wooden parts that lay in disarray around him. Hells, the room must have spun and tumbled Kataji and all these wooded parts around! How much damage had the young man received? But Kataji seemed fine, if shaken.

On Kataji's cheek, one huge dark bruise bloomed. His body shook in sobs as he whispered to one of Nekohiko's many parts, more concerned about it than about himself.

"...Itsuki, are you all right? Can you hear me? Itsuki... Itsuki..."

"Kataji!"

The young man was alive and well, ah! Kataji snapped his head toward the sound and crawled to the small wooden cube from which Nekohiko observed him.

Oh, but Kataji looked awful. He was scratched and bruised all over form the tumble. His cheeks were stained with tears -- and yet his teeth were gritted hard in his mouth. More angry than hurt, actually.

"Those bastards!" Kataji yelled, reaching to Nekohiko to hug him. "They didn't hurt you, did they?!"

No. What? Who cared about that?

"You're alive," Nekohiko breathed at him in relief, then threw a glance to the door that was visibly sealed with black glass from the outside. Yes, he remembered now. The Nagare guards had sealed Kataji inside so that he wouldn't escape. But that also meant that nobody would come here to hurt Kataji for a while, too.

Good, good... One less thing to worry about.

"Itsuki, tell me you're all right--"

"No time Kataji! I have to go!" Nekohiko cried and fled.

It was enough for him to know Kataji was fine. For now, he had other, much more desperate things to take care of.

He switched his consciousness to the ladybug and--

--instantly regretted it.

The wind whistled around him as Mikawa and Aomi glided through the swirling snow -- though it most looked like coming down crashing! Yet Mikawa was clearly in control, and Aomi didn't shriek in fear either. If anything, the two were more distracted by what went around them than by the fact that they were slashed by the wind as they cut through the air on their way to the battlefield.

Oh, the battlefield!

Nekohiko's ladybug couldn't take in so much visual information at once! He saw forests swaddled in white, the rooftops of buildings in the town below, and above it all -- Fuji trapped in a snowy storm in the distance.

The gusts became sleet the lower the duo fell. Aomi squealed, burying her face into Mikawa's feathered shoulder and wrapping her legs around his from the back -- which the boy didn't handle well at all.

"Aomi! I can't breathe! We're... gonna fall if you... don't let me... Kheeeee-khe!"

Another deafening crash sounded from the side, and an explosion of lightning-blue seared the snowy skies.

Nekohiko's focus went for the myriads of Nagare soldiers swarming the clouds where Mikawa was headed. So many of them, the air looked as though buzzing in a swarm of wasps. And interspersed between them -- planes and spirals of white ice. A lace of it stretched across the sky like a net!

"Aomiiii!" Mikawa roared. With a furious whorl, he stopped dead in the air, hanging suspended on nothing more but his Nagare Lord's will.

Nekohiko almost tumbled from behind Aomi's ear -- the stillness was so sudden.

Only now could Aomi ease out of her cringe. Too bad that what opened to their eyes below them was much, much worse than any violent sleet or hail.

The Towa soldiers were flinging ice spears at the sky from within the city streets of Hamamatsu underneath. The spears didn't fly high, so none of them could reach Mikawa or those Nagares who'd stopped around the same height. Compared to Mikawa, the others could only float on spell arrays which were bound to dissipate after a while, but so far, every single soldier could handle it without bother.

It was the height slightly beneath them where the icy net had already been dyed with splashes of crimson.

But not only with Nagare blood. Apart from the black uniforms, some of the people impaled on the thin luminous spears wore the fluid aquamarine and teal colors of Towa.

Right before Mikawa, a breach in the icy net appeared as the broken body of a Towa soldier flew through it as though thrown with inhuman force.

Mikawa could only lean away as he and Aomi stared in horror at the corpse. In the gash through which he had been thrown, new strands of rime already grew back together to restore the lacy net.

"Hurricane formation to shatter!" an officer cried out somewhere to the side.

Only silence rang in response as the soldiers reformed for the spell casting.

So close to Mikawa, Nekohiko could see the boy's eyes searching the slaughter beneath them for the signs of the famous chain lightnings peeking through the endless mist of a blizzard and winds clawing at each other in the city's walls.

Ah, poor city of Hamamatsu! Nekohiko thought. These warring idiots would surely destroy you!

It wouldn't even take long now because--

A huge black shadow of descending Suzumegara swallowed the stretch of land on which Hamamatsu stood. The Moth Spirit wasn't even that close, and already its size dwarfed the city and the plains and the seashore around it. The powerful, sizzling wings sparked with electricity.

"Suzumegara is casting!" the Nagares cried and broke apart to free the way for the Bizarre Beast's spell.

Mikawa raised his ashen face to the Moth Spirit, then down to where Suzumegara was looking.

"Kasuga," he whispered. Then clapped Aomi's arms around his shoulders. "Hold on! We're flying right through Suzumegara's wind tunnel!"

"Hold on, tight, my thoughts!" Aomi yelled, too. At Nekohiko, he hoped. Because, really, he had little doubt that the girl's thoughts could also loosen under pressure such as this.

His small ladybug feet quivered as he grabbed onto Aomi's hair stalks and held them with dear life.

Through his bones, the echo of Binding energy rushed as Suzumegara opened its mouth to cast.

A charging noise swept through the air in a blinding flash. A beautiful moment of silence followed. Then an ear-splitting crash as the electric storm reached the rimy net across the sky.

At the point of impact, ice shattered in a twinkling veil of crystal shimmer. But Suzumegara didn't let go. The storm it had evoked only grew in size as though prying the ice net apart like a cloth being ripped.

Mikawa snapped his hand out, touching the edge of the static field around Suzumegara's spell. Electricity sank into his arm like a hungry animal, but he let it without so much as wincing.

Electricity never hurt Nagare Lords, did it? It welcomed him, instead. He dove in with a smoothness of a swallow, then rushed through the air once again -- flying toward the ground with the speed that sent even more ice in his path into shatter.

Suzumegara's wind tunnel let all the Nagare soldiers in, protecting them from the onslaught of ice sleet and spears hailing from Hamamatsu. But of course none of the soldiers could fly as fast as Mikawa.

Only a moment -- and he and Aomi landed hard on the tallest roof of the city. Shingles exploded around him from his landing, yet he and Aomi already had their eyes on something far more important.

"There she is!" Aomi screamed, pointing. 

Yes. There -- in the middle of the city, amidst the fragile spiralways of ice like a cage, was a stark figure in the black uniform. Lightnings escaped her, wild and incandescent. Most of the ice cage bars broke from her lightnings, but newer ones replaced them almost immediately.

Only a few other people in black pirouetted beside her, escaping the spears and whips of ice lashing at them. They clearly could not handle such aggression when the Towa soldiers hid amidst the civilians of Hamamatsu -- a native Nagare city. Nagares feared hurting their own civilians, and so they were at a disadvantage against Towas.

Themselves, the teal uniform blurs of Towa soldiers couldn't fly or reach to the airborne Nagares. But they could skate high enough on the ice spirals they'd crafted all around Kasuga. That was more than sufficient for them to not allow flying Nagares to rescue their Queen and manage an escape.

Towas obviously didn't intend to kill or harm her. Only to seize. 

"Elder Sister!" Mikawa roared, swinging his head to the sides to locate the nearest Towas who were trapping Kasuga in their icy prison.

Behind him, Nagare reinforcement soldiers finally arrived. Thousands of them were dropping from the sky onto the roofs, their black feathered cloaks splashing behind them in the wind gusts, swords and bows at the ready as they took aim at the enemy they found down below.

But Towa wouldn't be Towas if they weren't prepared.

Nekohiko's lateral Spiritside sense warned him before his eyes could register it. A huge squall of razor-sharp ice sweeping at them from the side.

"Mikawa, move!" he cried out from behind Aomi's ear.

The boy jerked his head at Aomi in shock, then saw it himself.

"Everyone, up!" he ordered.

The Towas had sent a pendulum swing of a colossal ice blade over the building roofs. Those few Nagares who couldn't soar out of the way could only be cut or crushed by the ice.

Mikawa and Aomi didn't need to jump out of the way themselves. However vile, the slicing pendulum of Towas simply phased through both kids. But the adult soldiers were not as lucky.

"Spirits!" the boy cursed as he watched dozens of his people smashed or slashed on the spot by the vicious Towa magic. Red splashed across the snowy roofs like campfires in the wilderness.

In response to this cruelty, the Nagare magic came, just as merciless. The soldiers assembled a formation to leech all breathable air out of a particularly large area where they'd glimpsed Towa soldiers. Oh yes, Nagares sometimes did that when they were truly angry.

They had people suffocate by hundreds.

And Nekohiko could only reel. What if Nagare civilians were there, too?! How furious were Nagares now that they didn't give a damn about that anymore?

Stop destroying my Empire and each other!

But what could he do?! He was nothing but a pathetic ladybug.

Mikawa didn't remain beside the troops who engaged with the enemy -- like an ice spear, he flew through the raging blizzard to where Kasuga fought against more than a hundred Towas almost entirely on her own. Blurs of teal mingled with electricity -- it was hard to even see through the explosion of colors amidst the sleet, let alone ram through the blade-like ice.

The boy halted at the edge, watching helplessly at the nearing shadow of Suzumegara and then at his sister who needed Suzumegara's power to break free. Conflict distorted his features even more when his attention was drawn to the cacophony of shrieks of the Hamamatsu citizens down below.

"Why are we stopped?" Aomi demanded, jerking Mikawa by the shoulders. "She's right there!"

Mikawa shook his head, distraught. "She called Suzumegara to come and save her. I felt it." He turned, his face petrified as his eyes pinned into the gargantuan shape of the Moth Spirit slowly descending through the snow clouds. "It's coming. But It... can't calibrate the strength of its attacks. This city will not hold against even the smallest of Its spells..."

Nekohiko's mind also thrashed in disbelief. It was Aomi who merely shrugged and laughed it off.

"Can't you free your Sis instead, stupid?"

Guilty, Mikawa drew back. "My... powers... aren't offensive. And against so many ice spells... my wind powers will only strengthen them..."

"Cast." Aomi stomped her foot when he only gaped back at her. "Cast a spell!"

"--a spell..."

"Any spell will do. Do it! Now!"

She added a mean smack at the back of his head. If the timid boy was anyone else -- Kataji or even Nekohiko -- she would receive a fair smack right back. But of course Mikawa was only bullied into doing what she told him that much faster.

An unsure, small bolt of the simplest Nagare energy sparked to life in his hands. It didn't even have that much power in it, so uncertain he was at what he should be throwing it and why.

But it didn't matter.

Because as soon as the vaguest shape of the Binding spell appeared in his fingers, Aomi stole it into hers. A startled gasp escaped Mikawa.

Nekohiko only blinked.

He wasn't shocked per se. He knew that Aomi was born a Binder. But then, of course, she'd had her Binding sealed off as Nekohiko's had once been. It was natural that she wasn't a Binder able to cast by herself.

But like Nekohiko had been able to steal someone else's Binding in the past -- so could she.

He just didn't know how good her Binding theory was to be able to maintain another person's spell and even stranger -- to enhance it. And to change it. And to complicate its pretty simple initial formation.

With widening eyes, Nekohiko watched as the coldly-electric bolt of Nagare energy in Aomi's hands expanded in size due to her complex, fast finger positions, its color shifting from blue to violet and then to burning purple-red. Which only grew brighter and hotter until--

It was literally hot! A blazing, fiery spell of... a very expertly-crafted Hira technique!

"What are you doing!? This is too dangerous!" Mikawa squealed, reaching back for his changed spell.

A Hira spell! Pure-searing flame brand in Aomi's hands! Even the air around them heated up, sending all the snow and ice hissing as it turned into the steamy fog.

This much power...

Nekohiko had seen people so young handle Hira spells with such ease only once in his lifetime -- especially this particular technique of fire folding and condensing invented by Lord Hira Okinaga himself. Was it too surprising that the previous young person who'd done it so impressively in front of Nekohiko had been Abihiko, Aomi's brother?

No. Not surprising at all. These people breathed fire, for all he knew.

"Out of my way!" Aomi elbowed Mikawa aside. "This shit'll explode if you stop me!"

The folded fire coiled in Aomi's fingers like a whip ready to lash out. She directed the fierce ray of it outward, aiming at Kasuga.

Or at the ice prison around her.

The blaze arched over the roofs like that ice pendulum had done before. Only it didn't need to be precise and razor-sharp and solid. It only needed to go...

"Boom!" Aomi said and ducked into Mikawa not really caring if he ducked as well.

"Kasugaaaa!" he screamed but was finally yanked down when she realized just how incapable he was at protecting himself against her firestorm.

And it was a firestorm! An inferno of orange and red swallowing up the roofs over the city.

Shit, the city! Nekohiko jumped from behind Aomi's sweat-drenched hair to see what happened to Hamamatsu amidst all these elements clashing.

Aomi's Hira attack hadn't been as devastating as Suzumegara's hurricanes, but still...

"Aomi, stop the fire from spreading!" he yelled into her ear, jumping up and down to make her pay attention. "Aomi! The city will burn!"

"It has ice people and wind people around!" she retorted, annoyed. "Let them handle it instead!"

"Kasugaaaa!" Mikawa yelled again, struggling to stand up.

He didn't need to have worried.

A calm, endlessly cool voice called him from the back. "Who authorized your presence on the battlefield?"

Both Mikawa and Aomi swung around, nearly toppling off the melted and scorched roof tiles.

"Elder Sister!" Mikawa breathed, wanting to run into Kasuga's arms.

But Kasuga didn't look very welcoming of the idea. In fact, she didn't look anything other than absent. Her eyes roved through the city skyline from which new clouds of the restarting blizzard were coming. She gave Mikawa and Aomi only the briefest of her moments before she turned away.

"Hiroto! Kumiko. Escort Mikawa and the prisoner back to the castle."

"Are you kidding me?" Aomi snarled. Her jaw was flexing under her skin -- in full view of Nekohiko's as he clumsily tried to get off her ear and to her shoulder pads. "I saved your ass out there! Not even thank you?"

"Towa coldsnappers attack the Nagare city air dome to crack it!" one of the soldiers cried. Others echoed him.

"A snow avalanche coming to villages under Fuji!"

"--an attempt to freeze moisture in human bodies, Your Majesty!"

Kasuga could barely spare another glance at her brother and Aomi; that was understandable. In this, Nekohiko was fully on her side. If only he could be on her side physically as well...

He now regretted having never learned how to fly in this crude ladybug body. He could only jump pathetically and crawl to not diverge too much from his route. It would take him hours to get from Aomi's clothes onto Kasuga's...

"Grab her arm!" he squeaked at Aomi as he passed down her forearm. "Put me there! Come on!"

At first, Aomi was too enraged to do anything other than threaten to flick him aside with her fingernails. But her rage quickly subsided. An expression of bloodlusty vengeance replaced it.

"Hey you! Bratty Majesty!" she cried and lunged for Kasuga through both Nagare soldiers who had flown here to take care of her and Mikawa.

She could only grab Kasuga by the thinnest of edges on Kasuga's military cloak. But that was enough for Kasuga to lurch back. And enough for Nekohiko to fling himself with full abandon at the magpie feathers on her glorious uniform.

"No touching Her Majesty!"

A hard slap brushed Aomi's hand off Kasuga's clothes. The soldier who had "allowed" Aomi to grab his queen was positively horrified. And he was even more so when Aomi kicked him in the shin in revenge for slapping her.

But all that was already in the past for Kasuga's scattered concentration. She gave Aomi a passing glance, then -- with a purposeful, reserved grace -- stepped off the roof and launched herself into a blinding-speed flight through the wind-and-snow-swept sky.

The velocity of the Nagare Lords had always astounded Nekohiko. But even more so their disregard for the heights or the position of the human body compared to the ground. The Nagare Lords could fly sideways, backward, feet-up, even in a cartwheel tumble if they so desired. Apparently, they had never heard of such a thing called nausea or vertigo.

He could not handle the world spinning and turning and tilting around him. But even like this, he still noticed that Hamamatsu wasn't burning. Some kind Binder souls had extinguished the fires and had even pushed most of the Towa soldiers out of the streets and into the open battle above the city or outside of it.

He understood why Kasuga flew away from Hamamatsu. The avalanche that was coming off the slopes of Fuji was a bigger threat to be dealt with, and fast. With her quick black bow and its lightning arrows, she had almost no trouble disposing of the clusters of Towa Binders in the city. But stopping the disastrous avalanche would have to be a much more drastic use of her powers.

Towas cast their ice spirals toward her to skate to her level and attack her with more precise spells. But she hardly noticed them. As though playing, she dipped and dove and zoomed through their icy nets. Her lightning arrows turned into lightning blades that she swung around, shattering all the ice structures in her way.

The ice broke in chimes and angry hissing of her electricity. Each slash -- slice -- hack of her blades collapsed entire spell arrays in seconds.

With her speed, Nekohiko could bet all Towas saw was flashes of purple light, and nothing else. Here, there. Gone the next moment. Appearing further away after.

A destructive, sizzling figure in black amidst an electric storm.

She stopped in the air over the village buried in the snow under Fuji's slope. Nekohiko's heart jolted when he saw what she was looking at.

The avalanche high overhead! It had already begun crashing down.

Kasuga snapped her Netsuito bow upright like a thin black rainbow shimmering in her hands with shifting hues of light coursing through it. And as though in reply, the dark monolith of Suzumegara's shadow sailed forth above, spreading its wings for another spell casting.

Its wings sparked up in brilliant glow.

"Release!" Kasuga told it through the Spiritside bond they shared.

The order resonated through Nekohiko as well. And so did Suzumegara's unleashed funnel of lightnings and ravaging wind. The black funnel cut through the avalanche sheet like a knife through a fluffy bread bun -- not so much slicing, but rather caving it inward as far as it could go.

But before Kasuga could even gauge the effect Suzumegara's funnel had taken on Towa avalanche, she already turned away to focus her gaze on the Towa flank scattered across Fuji's slopes out of the avalanche's way.

About a thousand soldiers, desperately trying to push their avalanche spell past Suzumegara's offense. Kasuga didn't invoke her lightning arrows this time. Too many people gathered in one spot to bother with arrow flinging.

No. She flashed Netsuito bow above her head like the flag with which she marked her next target -- the hapless Towa avalanchers flank.

Then she whispered to Suzumegara one more time. "Aim."

...

Noooo!

She would use one of the greatest Spirit beings in his Empire against the fellow citizens of the said Empire! Not to break the spells, not to rescue or defend anyone. But to actually destroy?!

If she did that -- nothing would be stopping Iokirihime or Morokata from using their own Great Spirits to counterattack her after this disaster of a battle was over!

His entire Empire would go Boom! like that ice prison had done a few moments ago!

He had to stop her.

Someone... someone had to stop her -- whatever the cost! Someone had to save the Empire and all the people in it!

The Towa flank had noticed her and started to form another of their ice prison netting to cast at her, but that only made Kasuga's resolve to use Suzumegara against them so much greater.

Suzumegara's giant wings lit up in a blinding flash of blue and violet as It prepared Its new spell.

"Release--" Kasuga began saying.

Nekohiko threw the last of his will into jumping at her face, a scream on his lips. To hell with his coverup and security. It was his Empire! He couldn't allow it to be destroyed by this girl's fury!

"As the Emperor, I order you to stop!" he bellowed.

But his cry had been entirely swallowed by an ear-splitting crash as the area where Suzumegara's electric spell and Towa's ice prison spells had tinged the air blue and silver.

A gash of a spell colored bloody vermilion cut through the battlefield like a beautiful, thin ribbon of blood in a wound.

Someone's spell just in time... and one so powerful!

Not a Hira spell, but Hira-based, twined together with bits of Nagare, Towa, and even Hisome. All of them, fused to create a heady, explosive spell only a few people could muster.

Nekohiko's breath caught. His heart wound up faster as he snapped to see around for the source of the spell's caster.

And so did Kasuga.

She only had enough time to raise her bow to notch another lightning arrow and aim at her attacker. But not enough to actually release that arrow.

Because the Black Bow clanged with a loud crash against the sword as a person in bright red Spirit Wayfarer's robes broke Kasuga's arrow even before she could target it.

The bow and the sword steadied against one another.

The black, radiant swirls of Netsuito against the Bound silver and copper of the Maple Apple. Both weapons pressed against each other, shedding sparks of Bound particles as their owners locked in a glaring match.

Netsuito was a Legendary Weapon, though, so it was little doubt how the adolescent Queen could hold her own so unflinchingly against an adult man. But the mundane, throwaway sword like Maple Apple could still keep on par with Netsuito.

In the right hands, that was.

And all this while the sword's owner had to keep himself up in the air on a separate spell while Kasuga's flying was as natural to her as breathing.

"Hold down your weapons, Your Majesty," Abihiko told her evenly. His eyes were blazing on his pale face, a glint of Maple Apple's reddish glow reflected in them. "Towa soldiers also will once you do."

Kasuga's whole body trembled with tension as her electric charge struggled to push Abihiko away.

"Shouldn't the Emperor treat all his people equally and fairly?" she said, grinding out her words in beautifully-restrained anger. "Nagare city has been attacked and used against our very army. Make Towas stop first, then we will see if I choose to follow. Or not."

With the most charming expression of confusion on his face, Abihiko smiled.

In his red, flapping robes and his vermilion ribbon tied so familiarly in his hair, it was almost as though Nekohiko was thrust back into his youth and his memories from long ago.

"The Emperor? Where?" His smile only grew wider as his teeth showed. "I am here only as an Eldest Brother in search of my long-lost little siblings. Have you seen them?"

 

Ah, here's another picture I wanted to draw. Now with Aomi+Mikawa combo ^^. And no -- before anyone asks, they are not coupled together, at least in my notes or the future chapters, he-he. Strictly friends *_*. Although I've been told this picture looks a bit romantic with all the snow around them, but lol -- what about the last Kataji and cat pic, then? ^^

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