Editing City Series:Volume8b Chapter10 (section)

===Aoe’s Continued Sight Mode: In DT Castle===

'''<Aoe’s Over Reload>

Aoe charged forward without hesitation. The countdown above his head had already reached 9 seconds remaining.

Just as the 9 became an 8, he poured renewed strength into his legs.

“Didn’t that Mekton guy tell you? Every part of a battle is setup for what comes next!”

“Including what you said when the second one failed to hit me?”

Aoe did not respond while the remains of the table hit the floor.

He charged forward with the box cutter held in his right hand like a sword’s hilt.

But Daikatana reacted. His left hand held the grip of his nagamaki while his right hand reached for the wakizashi at his hip.

“Do not assume I have only the one blade!”

He drew the wakizashi and aimed for Aoe’s throat.

Aoe’s feet reflexively slowed when he heard the blade slicing through the air.

He twisted backwards before also tilting back his head and taking evasive action.

The wakizashi blade swished through the empty air in front of his throat.

A smile formed on Daikatana’s lips.

“Inconvenient for us both that neither of us are entirely reliant on our blades, isn’t it?”

With those words, the path of the wakizashi shifted from Aoe’s throat to his right hand.

'''<Aoe’s Over Zoom>

Daikatana’s blade shattered the box cutter blade Aoe held in his right hand.

The blade broke quite noisily.

Daikatana instantly returned the wakizashi to his hip. His now empty right hand joined his left hand on the grip of the nagamaki stabbed into the wall and he took a powerful step forward.

The blade sliced through the wall it was embedded in, allowing it to be easily raised overhead.

“Perish with your power taken from you!” shouted Daikatana, but Aoe had something to say back.

“You fool.”

Aoe stepped forward and manipulated the broken box knife. With a flick of his thumb, he pushed more of the blade out. Once the remnants of the broken blade came away at the break-off line, a short but brand new blade remained.

“Allow me to introduce you to a modern weapon!” shouted Aoe, jabbing the box cutter blade straight toward Daikatana’s chest.

Daikatana noticeably gasped and directed his face toward Aoe’s blade.

But his expression quickly returned to neutral and he did not let go of his nagamaki’s grip.

“Oh!” he roared, swinging the long weapon positioned to his left side. He swung it overhead and then to the right.

He sliced through the wall behind him.

The stone wall was at least a foot thick, yet he sliced an arch through it.

He backed away, right toward that wall.

Aoe saw an arch-shaped cutout of the blue sky behind Daikatana.

“…Oh.”

He stopped his forward momentum when he realized there was only empty air out ahead.

While he was braking, Daikatana tilted his body to take a defensive stance.

The full length of the box cutter’s blade stabbed into the left shoulder of his Japanese clothing and audibly struck flesh.

He frowned for one quick moment.

But that quickly changed to a smile.

A breath burst from his mouth, which could have been a gasp of surprise or a laugh of delight.

He pressed his back against the sliced wall behind him and leaped out into the empty air 15 yards from the ground.

The wind washed over him as he smiled and turned his head toward the red box cutter embedded in his shoulder.

“This was a good lesson for me.”

A moment later, the emblem vanished from his metal staff. The blade symbol drawn in see-through gray expanded as it vanished. With a splitting stone sound, the symbol image grew in front of him.

Aoe narrowed his eyes and took a defensive stance as that metallic light grew before his eyes.

“Mh.”

But when he looked up again, the light was gone.

As was Daikatana.



'''<Aoe’s Over Zoom>

Aoe frantically stopped his advancing feet.

He saw the castle’s roof below the hole cut in the wall.

A 20-yard castle lift formed the floor of that roof. The cut-away portion of the wall lay atop it, but Daikatana was nowhere to be seen.

“So he got away. I won the battle, but the war was a draw.”

A word mail window opened in front of his eyes. It was from Fooblicky and it was about…

“Cloths from the windows?”

He looked out from the hole in the wall and viewed the castle.

He could not see the side of the caste from the central communications tower on its roof, but he could see the inner side of the castle wall and the towers at the corners of the castle. He could see the same color from all the windows there.

The color of white cloths.

He shouted on reflex when he noticed that color fluttering in the breeze.

“Oh, no!”

'''<Aoe’s Sight Mode has updated>