Chapter 17: Armageddon Part IV [Blade of the Blind]

Same afternoon

Author's note: Hey guys, Slayer here! Got you guys a new chapter here. I also thought that I'd mention that if you guys are enjoying what you I've put put so far, I'd love to hear you guys' thoughts. Any and all thoughts you've got, whether it be praise, criticisms, plot holes you've noticed, whatever it is. If you've got thoughts, feel free to drop them in the comments section, I'd greatly appreciate it. Anyway, until next time, enjoy chapter 17! Later!

 

For what felt like an eternity, neither fighter made a move. Both Aizo and Stitch circled one another, eyeing each other cautiously. Aizo’s guard stood poised and ready, monitoring even the slightest of Stitch’s movements. Stitch, meanwhile, stood ready to pounce, as if he were a predator hungrily stalking its prey and waiting for the opportunity to strike. And after about thirty seconds of this, he did just that. Stitch aggressively charged at Aizo, swinging his blades wildly, yet skillfully. He kept his movements rapid and aggressive, unpredictably making use of his extremely stretchable limbs and not giving Aizo room to breathe. Aizo, meanwhile, took a defensive approach, focusing on blocking, parrying, and weaving the storm of attacks. Every now and then, he would respond with a strike or two of his own in order to create space, but he never fully committed to a full on assault. 

 

In the middle of their duel, a huge crashing noise could be heard off in the distance, back towards where Amaku was. Aizo turned his head towards the noise and saw a series of dust clouds that exploded over the trees themselves, followed by more thunderous crashing and rumbling in the ground. 

“ Brokuma,” he thought, looking at the large dust clouds with worry on his face. “ Just hold on a little longer.”

While he was distracted, Stitch, taking notice of how his opponent had seemingly completely forgotten about him, was beginning to truly grow agitated. He charged in and violently swung his blades at Aizo, who returned his attention to the fight at hand and crossed his blades just in the nick of time to defend against the attack. 

 

“<Why’re you starin’ off into space, hot shot?>” Stitch taunted as his knives clashed with Aizo’s Xiphos’. “<What, am I borin’ you? Am I not worth the effort to you!?>”

Aizo, with a grunt of effort, pushed back against the knife wielder and created some space between them.

“<I know this ain’t all you got,>” Stitch seethed, gripping his blades so tightly that his hands were shaking.  “<You wouldn’t be here otherwise. Now stop runnin’, get your head outta the goddamn clouds, and SHOW ME WHAT YOU’VE GOT!!!>”

 

With the next assault, Aizo obliged his opponent. Stitch went for a wide swing with his left arm and in response, Aizo deflected the blade with an upward strike with his right sword, knocking the knife out of his hand. Aizo then immediately used the same sword to backhand strike Stitch across the face with its pommel, forcing him to spin around, and then followed up with a kick to the back, knocking Stitch to the ground face down. Immediately following this up, Aizo aimed to jump and come down on him with both blades. 

 

Stitch, with the little time he had, instinctively took a handful of dirt from the ground, whipped around, and threw it into the eyes of his assailant. Aizo loudly winced and grunted as dirt flew onto his face and into his eyes, robbing him of his sight. As he came down to the ground, he fell on top of Stitch, the swords missing their mark as they struck the ground right next to his head. However, this was not the worst of it. Taking advantage of his opponent's blindness, Stitch delivered a heavy two-legged kick directly in the stomach and forced him off of himself. Aizo was sent tumbling backward, dirt caking up against his clothes. Pain echoed throughout his body, from his freshly attacked stomach, to his nose which had only recently stopped bleeding, to his eyes which burned from the dirt in them. Fighting through the pain, he forced himself back to his feet and rubbed his red, watering eyes. Even after this, he was still barely able to open them for more than a second at a time before having to close them again. That, and his vision was significantly more blurry due to the moisture. 

 

As he was struggling to get his bearings, he eventually noticed that not only was he no longer under attack, but he hadn’t seen or heard anything from Stitch since he kicked him. He looked all around him, forcing his eyes open through the burning to try and gain an understanding of his surroundings. After about ten seconds of hazy observation, he heard a rustling coming from the trees at the edge of the clearing. Quickly manifesting a shuriken with his quirk, he turned towards the noise and threw it. The shuriken flew into the foliage and the far off sound of it striking wood echoed from beyond the trees. Given his current visual impairment, this result didn’t surprise Aizo, but he still felt the need to at least try to retaliate. 

 

Then, not a moment later, he felt the sudden, striking pain of a blade cutting him across the left shoulder from behind. He grimaced and grunted, grabbing his left shoulder, then quickly turned behind him towards the source of the attack. He threw a wild haymaker in the direction of the attack, but missed his mark. For a brief moment, his blurry vision caught the sight of Stitch, who swiftly moved right past him after striking and then ran back into the foliage. In his right hand, Aizo manifested another three shurikens and hurled them in Stitch’s direction and once again, the sound of them striking the wood of a tree echoed. 

“<If I said that was a nice try, would you believe me? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!>” Stitch cackled. Aizo swore under his breath out of frustration, rubbing his eyes in an effort to restore his vision. This helped with the burning slightly, but he still wasn’t able to keep them open for too long before closing them again. Preparing himself for Stitch’s next move, he conjured up another pair of xiphos. However, whereas the previous two had a solid, clearly defined shape, these new ones appeared to be in a constant state of flux, almost glitching as if they were about to dematerialize. He held the blades out in a sloppy defensive stance, shifting his body in every direction in response to every sound he heard. Every small rustle of the leaves or snap of a branch caused him to flinch in anticipation.  

 

Once again, Aizo felt a sharp stinging strike him across the back. After letting out a brief cry of pain, Aizo retaliated by swinging in the direction in which the attack came from, his blades hitting nothing but air. Immediately after this failed counter attack, Aizo felt his legs being swept from under him and he was forced to the ground, landing on his side. Upon impact, the xiphos’ in his hands deformed and shattered like black glass. 

“<Aaaww, so close!>” said Stitch, his pretentious voice trailing off towards the foliage once again. “<What’s the matter, lil’ boy? Got a little somethin’ in yer’ eye? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!>” As the taunting laughs of his opponent echoed all around him, Aizo snarled and slammed the ground in frustration. He was furious, seething, shaking, and in pain in multiple areas. Even with the multiple new wounds that Stitch had given him, nothing was more irritable and hindering upon his efforts at the moment than his dirt-blinded eyes. 

 

“Aizo,” a familiar female voice echoed in his mind. Upon hearing this voice, Aizo ceased his seething and shaking. “In times of adversity, it does you no good to let your frustrations rule you.”  

With these words echoing through his mind, Aizo calmed himself, slowly rose back to his feet, and took up a defensive stance. This time, however, he did not create any weapon constructs. 

“ You have more than just one sense, kid,” a second formal male voice echoed. “ If your opponent robs you of your eyes, you still have ears and a nose. Listen for footsteps and breathing, scan for a unique scent to follow.”

 

With these words, Aizo recalled that everytime Stitch retreated, he would do so near a tree. As such, he blocked out all unnecessary noises, everything from the faint breeze in his ears to the background rumbling and noises from the far off fight between Amaku and Krush. Following a hunch, he listened for the abnormal rustling of leaves and the snapping and cracking of branches. At the same time, he breathed in deeply through his nose until he eventually caught a faint scent of rusted steel. Then, out of pure instinct combined with the observations of his opponent’s fighting style, Aizo weaved his head to the side as one of Stitch’s arms extended from out of a tree and flew right by him, the knife he was holding anchored the hand into the ground. Aizo quickly took hold of the extended limb and pulled with all his strength, forcing Stitch out of the tree and tumbling back into the clearing. 

 

The knife wielder stared in shock at his blinded opponent, who was still maintaining a tight grip on his extended arm. 

“<How the hell did you->” before he could finish speaking, Aizo quickly took the knife out of the extended arm and used it to skewer Stitch’s hand into the ground, ensuring he couldn’t go too far in any particular direction. Stitch cried out in pain as the knife dug through his flesh and nailed his hand in place. Meanwhile, Aizo took  the opportunity in order to rush at his pinned opponent with a newly constructed pair of xiphos’. Stitch quickly reacted to his approaching enemy, and doing his best to ignore the pain, used his skewered hand as leverage to pull himself forward and out of the way of his attacker. Hearing the movement of something approaching him, Azio went for a sideways strike in an attempt to at least wound Stitch before he could escape. However, the knife wielder, with lightning fast instincts, slid underneath the strike, using his other arm to trip up Aizo along the way, and continued leveraging himself forward until he reached his anchored limb. Upon reaching it, he then quickly ripped the blade from out of the ground and his hand, painfully grimacing all the while. Gripping his bleeding hand tightly, Stitch once again disappeared into the trees surrounding the clearing. 

 

Meanwhile, Aizo once again brought himself back up to his feet and began scanning for Stitch’s presence. 

 

“<You…son of a bitch,>”  Stitch’s voice said from beyond the foliage. Meanwhile, he heard the tearing of fabric from the same direction; more than likely Stitch was tearing up his own clothes to bandage up his wound. 

“<That was my favorite hand, and you stabbed it with my favorite knife… I hope that little cheap shot of yours was worth it. ‘Cause for that…you better believe I’m gonna make this hurt!>”  

 

With this threat made clear, Aizo knew that he had to end this fight with the very next encounter or there wouldn’t be another. With his senses heightened, he stood in the middle of the clearing and once again canned and waited for Stitch to make his move. As he did, a third, stern male voice spoke in his mind. 

“ When your life is on the line, honor and principles become dust in the wind, ” the voice said. “ When your back is against the wall, when you’re faced with an enemy that wants nothing more than to see you dead, the only rules that matter are what you are capable of and what you are not. He who refuses to use every tool at his disposal is marked for death before the fight even starts.” 

These words, though they brought upon Aizo a weight of shame and disgust, carried with them an undeniable truth which made the burden all the worse. Regardless, he knew what he had to do. 

 

Standing up straight, he released his grip on his Xiphos’, allowing them to dematerialize and disappear. 

“ You are the pride of the Kazukuji bloodline, the future of our family. If we lose you, we lose everything, ” the voice said with devout absolution. “ No matter what the cost, no matter what terrible deed that must be done, no matter who must fall so you may rise… You… Must… Survive! ”

 

With a newfound determination coursing through his veins, Aizo assumed the Sha No Kame sword stance and, using his quirk, constructed a traditional Japanese katana. With this new weapon in hand, he held his ground, standing in the center of the clearing, silently waiting for Stitch to strike. He turned his senses to the max, listening and smelling for anything that would give away the knife-wielder’s position. All the while, he himself was as silent as the grave, only ever making the slightest of sounds when shifting his feet in the direction of a suspicious noise. 

 

After about twenty seconds passed, Aizo’s ears picked up the sound of rustling leaves and branches being abnormally shaken, most likely by an unnatural amount of weight being forced upon them. Not long after, his nose picked up the scent of rusted steel. Aizo had a general idea of where his opponent was, however, after fighting him for this long, he knew that Stitch wouldn't make a move unless he believed it was safe. As such, Aizo chose to face the opposite direction of his opponent’s supposed position, pretending to be unaware in order to draw him out. Sure enough, the ploy worked as Stitch suddenly emerged from the foliage, charging straight at Aizo’s back, his knife extended outwards with the intent to stab him. However, rather than flesh, the knife was instead met with the umbral black blade of Aizo’s katana, which deflected the blade upward. As Stitch’s momentum carried him forward, Aizo smoothly and efficiently spun behind him and delivered two lightning fast cuts down and across his back, making sure the wounds weren’t too far below the skin. 

 

Stitch screamed in pain as he stumbled to his knees about fifteen feet away from Aizo. He tried reaching behind him, his wounds appearing as a bloody cross on his back through his torn sweatshirt and flesh. He looked behind him towards Aizo with a hateful glare, his painful cries turned to pained grunts and seething. 

“<You… you little… bastard,>” he seethed, gripping his knives tightly. Aizo, sensing potential retaliation, preemptively slowly took up the Seigan no Kamae stance, holding his sword out in front of him. Meanwhile, Stitch’s breathing had grown more aggressive and rapid. 

“<...I’ll… I’ll kill you… I’LL GUT YOU LIKE A PIG!!!>” 

He then quickly rose up from the ground and, with a feral scream, whipped both of his arms straight out at Aizo. Aizo, combining his knowledge of Stitch’s fighting style with his focused senses, sprinted forward, and deflected both blades with an upward parry. He then released the katana construct, continued running straight forward while following the sounds of grunting and seething from Stitch, and rammed him in the gut with his shoulder. However, Aizo didn’t stop after this initial impact, he continued forward until eventually slamming him against a tree on the edge of the clearing. Upon impact, Stitch let out a pained gasp, coughing up saliva as Aizo’s shoulder dug into his stomach and his back slammed against the oak. His arms also retracted like out of control measuring tape receding into their holders and his knives fell out of his hands to the dirt. 

 

Aizo then forced his eyes open, red, bloodshot and watering profusely, in order to locate his opponents hands. Upon finding them, he manifested a pair of daggers and used them to brutally nail Stitch’s hands to the tree, the blades holding them over his head. Once again, Stitch howled in pain from his wounds, but he was not lost in his pain for long. Much like the first time Aizo had him pinned, he retaliated and extended his stretched his head out for a surprise head but. However, this time, Aizo was prepared for this surprise attack, quickly shifting his head back as the headbut came at him. Quick to respond, he took hold of Stitch’s extended head and delivered a head but of his own, the attack landing square on Stitch’s face and breaking his nose with a loud crunch. Immediately after delivering this devastating blow, not giving Stitch any time to recover, Aizo maintained his grasp on his opponent’s head and delivered a heavy punch to the face which forced Stitch’s head to return to its normal state. Aizo then quickly manifested a katana with his quirk and held the tip of its blade right in Stitch’s face. 

“Enough!” Aizo demanded in a mix of pain and anger. Stitch reluctantly, at least for the moment, gave up the fight and leaned his head back against the tree in a sign of surrender. 

 

Both fighters were battered, bloodied, bruised and exhausted, each of them breathing extremely heavily now that the fight was over. Aizo, though he may have been the victor, was still barely able to see, his eyes still red and watering. It was taking everything he had to stand up straight, let alone maintain the katana in his hand and the xiphos’ pinning his opponent to the tree. Stitch, meanwhile, wasn’t looking much better. His nose was bleeding from the head but he’d just received, his pinned hands were bleeding all over the tree and down his arms from the xiphos, and for him the most painful thing had to be the giant cross on his back which was only stinging more due to contact from the rough bark of the tree. It was a miracle that either of them hadn’t fallen unconscious yet. 

 

While the two of them were recovering, a series of massive booms could be heard from beyond the clearing back towards where the other two were fighting. Among them, the loud screams of a singular voice could be heard. Aizo, recognizing them to be the screams of Amaku, stared in the direction of the fight, wanting to run off and back him up. However, something was holding him back as he looked back at Stitch. He kept looking back and forth between the far off conflict and his downed opponent, unable to come to a decision. Stitch looked up at him, taking notice of this quandary. 

 

“<What the fuck’re you waiting around for?>” he asked. “<What, you’re just gonna stand there and let your->” 

At that moment, something clicked in Stitch’s mind. He looked at the two blades pinning his hands to the tree, then to the blade being held in his face, then back up to Aizo. 

“<Ooooohhhh…so that’s how it is?>” he said, a wicked smile slowly forming on his face. “<You can’t go to him. Your precious little swords here won’t last long once you gain enough distance and you don’t want me getting’ loose. Well, ain’t that a bitch?>”  

 

Aizo turned back to Stitch, clenching his blade tightly out of frustration. He hit the nail on the head right off the bat. He had no way of keeping his opponent pinned without running the risk of setting him free by creating distance between him and his constructs. Even though his opponent was the one who literally had his back against the wall, time was slowly robbing Aizo of that advantage.

“<Well, lemme ease ‘yer mind on one thing, slick,>” said Stitch. “<The moment these things disappear, there’ll be hell to pay for you. So go ahead, try an’ make a run for it. But you best believe me when I say I plan on payin’ you back for everything you just put me through, only difference being that I’ll break your fingers one by one before I even think about nailing you to a tree.>” 

 

Aizo turned away from Stitch, doing everything he could to maintain a somewhat cool and collected demeanor while the wheels in his head turned. As they did, plan after plan was formulated and each of them was thrown out. Eventually, though, one of them was not thrown out as with the others. One particular idea stuck with him, an unpleasant, twisted, one way ticket idea. Regardless of this reservations towards the idea, it was the only one that allowed him to leave the area without the risk of having to deal with Stitch. 

 

With his mind made up, he slowly turned back to his opponent, who had a massive, snarky grin on his face. Aizo, meanwhile, looked down on him with focused resolution. 

“<Oh, what to do, what to do?>” Stitch mocked. “<So few options, so little time. What’ll you do? Wait here and leave your friend at the mercy of my brother, or make a run for it at the risk of turning your back on me? And believe me, that last choice is a risk you’ll pay for dearly .>” 

In response to this, Aizo brought his blade even closer to Stitch’s throat. 

“...I believe you,” he said in a cold, almost callous tone. 

 

He lowered his weapon slightly and pressed it against Stitch’s throat. The smug grin on the pinned cadet’s face slowly disappeared, his gaze shifting between the blade at his throat and the one wielding it. His expression of worry and confusion soon returned to its former smugness, though not quite as confident as it was before. 

“Hehehehe…adorable,” he said. “Clearly your friend never told you, but I've got a gift fer’ readin’ people. You put on a good bluff, but you don’t have the balls to-”

Before he could continue, Aizo put a touch more force into his blade, forcing Stitch’s head against the tree to try and avoid the pain. 

“Did you ever stop to consider… maybe you’re just not as clever as you think?” said Aizo coldly. He continued pressing the blade ever so slightly more against the throat of his opponent, who shifted wriggled against the tree as the blade’s tip poked against his flesh. 

 

“You wouldn’t- GGKKHH!!… you wouldn’t dare!” Stitch’s voice strained from the pain. 

“You’re a master of reading people, aren’t you?” said Aizo as the pressure from the blade actually drew a drop of blood from the knife weilder’s throat. Stitch’s groans of pain grew even louder as the red liquid dripped down his neck, onto the blade and into the dirt. 

“Then much like the Bigu guy said to you on the plane,” Aizo then leaned his head closer to Stitch. “Look into my eyes, little man… You…tell…me.” 

Stitch looked up at his tormentor with eyes of growing anguish and pain, only to be met with nothing but cold, uncaring emptiness as Aizo continued pressing the blade into his throat and drew more blood. Stitch clenched his teeth, and grunted as the pain continued to grow with each centimeter of steel. 

Then, in the middle of all of this, another huge BOOM was heard from behind the two of the them, and briefly after, the sound of screaming could be heard, slowly growing louder and louder and louder as a something fell out of the sky and landed right behind Aizo and Stitch. The impact shook the ground and created a massive dust cloud which enveloped the clearing. Aizo briefly shielded his eyes from the dust with his arms while all Stitch could do was close his eyes and slightly turn his head away. As the spread of dust in the area began to die down, they both looked towards the source of the impact where the dust was most prevalent. Through the thick cloud, the two of them saw…