Eventually, the balance tipped in Kuon’s favor.
He wasn’t sure when he noticed. Their fight was too fast and furious to be certain. Kuon never utilized his winning move because Hanabi had chosen to fight close, despite it putting her at a disadvantage. He could also sense her emotions—he couldn’t ignore her desire to keep fighting him like this.
But upsetting the balance was an option.
When his magic had nearly run dry, and Kuon was certain the match couldn’t continue a moment longer either way, he finally seized the opportunity.
Here I go, senpai.
The color of his aura shifted. When Hanabi sensed it, a flicker of hesitation crossed her face, but she accepted it. She smiled. Okay. Come at me. Thank you for keeping me company.
One of Hanabi’s Servant Blades flew toward Kuon. He made no attempt to avoid it.
Clang!
He simply cut it down. The answer he’d found was to destroy her weapons.
Hanabi had staved off Kuon’s attacks because she had seven Blades. If even one of them was lost, the balance between them would easily crumble.
Kuon’s Blade raced toward Hanabi. Hanabi turned all her Blades into attacking Kuon, as if defending any more was pointless. She was ready for defeat, hoping to take him out in the process, and was satisfied with that outcome.
Then she felt like Kuon had stopped time for a moment. In a soundless world colored like a negative image, Kuon stared back at her. His eyes spoke to her with terrifying intent. I’m going to win this, they said.
A chill ran down her spine.
Kuon stopped attacking her. Instead, he swept all six of Hanabi’s Blades away at once. By the time she registered the loss of her Servants, his roundhouse kick had hit home and sent her flying.
Why, Hanabi wondered. Why break my Blades? Why kick me away? Why put me where I could shift this to a ranged battle, where I’d have the…
Oh. Was that why?
“You shouldn’t have,” she said.
Reimei (Type-3 Artillery) recovered its balance and she reached her right arm behind her, pulling her Scout Nova Rifle to the fore. She aimed as she raised it, Kuon square in her sights.
A Scout Nova Rifle was a weapon that was more powerful the stronger the wielder’s magic was. The “Nova” it fired was magic transformed into an ultra-heated beam of light which traveled at light speed. It vaporized anything it touched.
Returning the favor, since I kept coming in close? You’re going to let me shoot all I want here at the end then win anyway?
They were the same, she thought, smiling through the scope.
She was done for, Hanabi realized. Doomed. She’d worked it out; she knew what these feelings were.
He came right at me. He showed me everything. And I…
The magic in Hanabi’s rifle’s energy pack grew. Kuon stood perfectly still in its sights. Hanabi squeezed every last drop of magic she had left into it. This boy had shown her the essence of his Fencing, so she would show him all she was capable of. This was a shot the headmaster had called the Moonbuster and had forbidden her from using—an unparalleled blast from an unparalleled genius.
“Defend yourself!”
It was a full-power attack from a Division 5.
Hanabi’s right arm was dead.
Kuon held the Blade in his left hand, standing with one foot forward in a form known as Shitotsu. She was a dozen meters away from him, and his thrust would never reach her. It was even too far for a throw.
His visor sounded an alarm. The enemy had locked onto him with a rifle charged with so much magic En said it could probably blow up the moon. She was a genius in a very different way from his former self that was Suzuka Hachishiki, and she was putting everything she had into this one attack against his current less-than-genius self, Okegawa Kuon.
This was overkill, too much for him. He was delighted by that. He would respond in kind.
Even at this distance, he was sure he could see her smiling.
The light hit.
He saw her line, leading toward her weakness.
Shichisei Kenbu: Shimetsu.
The thrust Kuon unleashed struck Hanabi’s magic light bullet.
Something common to all weapons—not just Division Maneuver ones—using magic in place of bullets was the mechanism which reduced human magic to particles. This mechanism wrapped the magic in a force field and converted it to heat energy. This allowed magic—more or less an invisible life force—to be used as a powerful, superheated light beam.
The purpose of Shichisei Kenbu was to allow the ungifted to compensate for the difference in magic levels. Its ultimate arts were all about making magic attacks ineffective.
Shimetsu was an art which used Tensetsu to perceive the core of the light beam’s force field. Once perceived, it allowed the user to shatter and scatter the beam, converting it back into its original magic.
Put simply, Shimetsu negated magic bullets.
The light shattered.
Before the remnants could coalesce, Kuon had already poured the last of his magic into a Chijin. He covered a few dozen meters in an instant, ignoring the dizziness, nausea, headache, and circulation backflow caused by the violent loss of magic, and unleashed his final attack.
Hanabi was right in front of him. She clearly had no idea what had happened. She’d never had her rifle shot negated before. Even then, she was responding, her right hand about to move. Kuon saw this and respected it even as he put the full momentum of his lunge into the swing of his Blade. An instant later, Hanabi’s DM, Reimei, exploded. The match was done.
Or, Kuon thought it was, at least.
He couldn’t even use Tensetsu. He just watched as Hanabi’s DM split and moved away as if in slow motion, and, in minimal gear with her body freed, Hanabi used what she’d learned from all of Kuon’s attacks to counter them.
Division Purge.
He never imagined she had something like that up her sleeve.
Kuon’s respect was elevated to sheer admiration. Hanabi’s hand held a small knife hidden in the grip of her rifle, the trajectory of it matching the sideways slash of Kuon’s Blade perfectly. This was one of the moves Kuon himself had used earlier.
Parry and strike!
Showing off his repertoire, even in this short match, had come back to haunt him. Pulling off something like this after seeing it once was what made fighting a genius so dangerous. He couldn’t dodge it now. He couldn’t even kill the momentum of his own strike.
Kuon had meant to rocket past her, but Hanabi’s body blocked his route, and there was nothing he could do to stop her knife from hitting home.
Kuon’s Blade pierced Hanabi’s heart.
Hanabi’s knife pierced Kuon’s.
The system detected both strikes and displayed a result across their vision, but the impact of their clash sent both Cavalleria into a tailspin and neither of them were able to read it.
✦ ✦ ✦
Okegawa Kuon told nobody he’d been Suzuka Hachishiki in a previous life. When he was five, his master told him to keep that to himself.
“Huh? Nobody’s gonna believe that, nitwit. They’ll think you’re a weirdo or straight-up delusional.”
A devastating blow.
“And imagine if the Hero did show up again. The idiots in the army would just train him again, send him off to fight alone, and he’d die for nothing, again.”
The finisher:
“And the way you are, you won’t get his results. You’re Division 1. You come forward like that, you’ll just raise expectations you can’t ever hope to meet. You’ll be nothing but a big fat liar.”
For all these reasons, Nanahoshi Kaede had forbidden Okegawa Kuon from telling anyone he was Suzuka Hachishiki reborn. If he ever did, not only would she never teach him Shichisei Kenbu again, she’d use every power she had as headmaster to ensure Kuon never became a Cavalleria.
“Indulge that vanity, if you like. Throw your whole second life away. See if I care.”
She clearly meant it. From that point on, Kuon didn’t even tell his parents he’d been the Hero in his previous life. It was for the best. Like his master said, he no longer had Hachishiki’s talent. His experience in his past life had given him some strength, but he couldn’t fight like the Hero did. He had to change. Okegawa Kuon had to become strong despite his weakness.
En had also told Kuon something about Kaede in confidence and was severely punished for it later.
“She was absolutely furious with the world and the army for putting everything on the Hero’s shoulders and driving him to his death,” she’d said, “and with Hachishiki-sama for failing to value his own life. But what she finds hardest to forgive was her own inability to prevent it.”