“I’m not a fish!”
“Shoot! You blocked me again. This could only be the fabled Unspoiled, Unsoiled, Unfoiled Fresh Fish Fencing passed down from fishy mother to fishy daughter for generations, thwarting the legendary Shinsengumi and savvy fishmongers alike! Admit it!”
“Would you please stop giving my attacks those weird names? I’m not a fish! Neither was my mother—Fukunuki-chan, please. That should not come as a surprise.”
Fish Girl’s sword was as silver as the scales of a salmon, and it leaped like a lively lunker on a line. The blade’s sharp tip waggled and wobbled in every place at once, giving the appearance of a whole school of fishy fencers.
“Wait. Are there more of you? Do you have fishy family? D-don’t tell me you’re the youngest of fishy five! Do you have three older brothers with the catchphrase ‘Say my name, fishes!’? ‘Omae wa mou sea-ndeiru’?? Yeah, Fisht of the North Star? What’s next? The bad fish puns? ‘Stay away from that kid, baby sis. He’s all washed up’?”
“First off? No. Second off? We’re not fish. Third off? I’m an only child. I don’t need three random older brothers, please and thank you!”
Every clash of our sparkling silver sabers raised showers of sparks. Our blades crossed in a dizzying whirlpool of after-streaks. Fish Girl was a master of control. Every time she moved, you could feel the intent. She didn’t waste a single step or a solitary swing.
Me? I fought for dear life to hold onto my dear life. She possessed a mermaid’s grace, an easy mastery; I possessed a madman’s pace, a queasy disastery. She never left me an opening for ichi no tachi. I was left performing wuxing combos, every one of which she parried.
“I was not mermaid to put up with this nonsense…”
She was so fast that even my super-reflexes couldn’t keep up. I pushed my control over my body to its limits, and she still ran circles around me. I swung my sword like an utter fool, tool, and mule (yeah, ’cause I was half-assing it?) and never got a chance to take that last half-step forward. I was left applying all five elements of wuxing to my sword-cane while Fish Girl repelled every hit.
“Wait a—ahhh!”
My reflexes kicked in, and I moved instantaneously. I stepped, and I slashed. My brain turned off; it was pure muscle moving with the certainty of inevitability. It felt, dare I say, cool as shit. I moved to evade Fish Girl’s blow, and as I stepped off the line of her attack, I darted in with one clean, beautiful motion, and—aaaaah!
“Phew! That was a close one. Thanks, Miss Armor Rep and Dancer Girl. You stopped me in the nick of time. Too bad about my arm—yeah, the sudden stop kinda lopped it clean off… Hey, thanks for the heal, Sleeping Beauty!”
A low-level weapon like the Middle-Aged-Men Masher couldn’t cut through Fish Girl’s OP equipment. Thing was, the attack itself was bad business. Thank goodness Miss Armor Rep intervened and turned my sword at the last microsecond. My hit had almost landed—if Dancer Girl’s chains hadn’t snaked around my arm at the very final milli-instant, there would’ve been catastrophe.
“Your poor arm! I’m sorry, Haruka-kun. I…I should’ve parried in time…”
See, when I’d realized what was about to happen and tried to pull back, I’d wrenched back so hard on my arm that my reflexes had kicked in and snapped it off at supersonic, bone-shattering speeds. And that didn’t even stop the sword’s momentum! My muscles and tendons were shredded from my wrist all the way up to my bicep. Silly body, not keeping up with my impossible motions!
But much more importantly—that was really, really bad. What’d almost happened was completely inconceivable. Coincidences had coincided; the magic, qi, and breathwork Hoplology demanded had come together to produce a miracle—a completely natural, perfectly unconscious strike. It was much, much, much too close to “a teensy-weensy huge lot past superfluously safe” for comfort.
“Ow! Fish Girl, are you okay? I didn’t turn you into sashimi? You’re not secretly freshly filleted and gasping your lamprey last? Still got all your fins and gills attached?”
“I don’t know about fins and gills, but I have all my arms and legs. No cuts here! And even if there were any, they wouldn’t make me sashimi.”
Oh, thank goodness. She was okay. No charges of schoolgirl sashimi-ing on my criminal record today.
“That momentary flash of inspiration when Hoplology took the wheel was a real eye-opener! And ichi no tachi is a real belly-opener—yeah, ’cause it’s an overhead strike that cuts through the centerline of the body and passes through to the back? Some fish are filleted belly first, and others are filleted back first. I guess it depends on the size and knife? Point is, you gotta watch out for an accidental opening.”
Now Wisdom understood ichi no tachi and wasted no time slapping an emergency lock on it. Although I wouldn’t be able to perform the technique again until it was analyzed front to back, I was able to stop myself from performing it. Much like Miss Armor Rep’s Sword Flash, I had learned such a skillful skill it didn’t qualify as a Skill. Still, if someone could sweep in and stop it, then I must not have had the right luck and terrain advantages… Ichi no tachi was really too powerful. I would really have to keep it locked down tight during training.
“’Course, it only goes off if all conditions are fulfilled, and that’s nigh on a miracle. A collision of coinciding, conspiring coincidences! I don’t want to jump the gun here, but I think it might be fatal? Maybe?”
“No maybes about it. It is fatal! Please don’t sashi-me—I’m a girl, not a fish!”