Editing BlazBlue:Phase Shift 4 Chapter 4 (section)

===Part 3===

The fateful day was the same as the one when the Black Beast had been stopped and the one when it had started moving again: the last day of the year.

In the encampment of the ambush forces spread out across the forest, Celica had come to the edge of the woodline with Nirvana and finished her lunch rations as she stared out toward the west. The cauldron where the Black Beast was expected to appear was supposedly somewhere in that direction, far beyond the limit of her sight.

She couldn't confirm it one way or the other, but she had a feeling that it was true. She had felt a sort of haze around her chest since she had woken up this morning, making it impossible to relax. She somehow got the sense that the seithr in the air she was breathing was thicker than it had been the previous day.

"...Do you see something?"

"Wah!"

Suddenly hearing a deep, reverberating voice coming from diagonally behind her, Celica jumped up like a small animal and turned around to look. There she saw the owner of the voice, Hakumen, and Jubei, dressed in his battle armor. She felt like she had been caught doing something wrong, so she ducked her head and turned her lips up in a smile.

"Nope, nothing. I just thought it'd be neat if I could see something from here."

"The cauldron, you mean?"

"I guess."

Answering vaguely, Celica leaned her back against a nearby tree trunk, turning her gaze westward again.

"My chest has felt all tingly since this morning. It's pretty rough, knowing that this is going to be the end."

"You nervous? Well, no surprise there."

Jubei walked to Celica's side, breaking twigs beneath his feet. Following Celica's lead, he turned his red eye in the direction of where the cauldron was supposed to be.

"Don't get too worked up now. No sense in wearing yourself out when nothing's even happened yet."

He was wearing two swords on his back. One was a sword in a red sheath with hilts sticking out of both ends, Mucro Somnio: Musashi. The other had a black sheath, and was the last blade that Jubei's younger brother ever wielded: the Time Killing Blade, Hihiirokane.

"Yeah, you're right. Nothing's even happened..."

Yet. As if it was trying to prove those words wrong, Celica, Jubei, and Hakumen all saw black smoke suddenly rise before them.

No, it wasn't smoke... it was more of a mist. It was seithr.

Celica took her back off the tree trunk like she was bouncing off of it. Jubei swiftly leapt to the top of a tall tree and stared off into the distance from an overhanging branch. After a few seconds, Jubei shouted down to Hakumen in alarm.

"Hakumen! It's starting!"

"Indeed."

Hakumen turned on his heel and headed back to the camp, leaving a brief response in his wake. Smashing dry twigs beneath his feet with every step, he spoke to Celica.

"You two make haste and return as well. We're sallying out."

"I- I'm on it!"

"Jubei already said as much, but do not strain your nerves. We will escort you safely."

When he said 'we,' he meant himself, Jubei, and Nirvana.

"Okay!"

Chasing after Hakumen with Nirvana and Jubei, Celica answered clearly.

The time had finally come.

The end had finally begun.

The seithr splitting the earth and spilling into the air increased in intensity and volume in the blink of an eye, and it looked almost like a black lake in the west as it spread out over the bare rock beach. Its edges spread out like they were groping around for something, but there were no people within their range. Everyone had already been evacuated. Nevertheless, the seithr writhed like a wave, or perhaps more like a snake, and found its way to the nearby abandoned coastal town and crashed over it, destroying it utterly.

As if doing that was the last step in its preparations, the seithr pooled towards its center. Rising out of the seithr like a snake uncoiling came a single massive head, followed by a second, then a third. Countless heads lifted themselves up and glared sinisterly with glowing red eyes, all looking to the west at once.

Past the waves that withered beneath the seithr, beyond the muddied sea, floating alone off the coastline, there sat a single small island. It was Ishana.

The innumerable heads let out a chaotic roar, making the air tremble and the ocean froth. Big arms and legs ripped themselves free of the seithr and a colossal body fell out all at once, like the seithr had given birth to it. The grotesque scene was plainly visible even from far outside where the seithr could reach. Everyone was mercilessly subjected to the same repulsive and dreadful sight.

Now that the Black Beast had fully materialized, arrows of light fell down upon it from the north like incessant rain. It was the Ars Magus Corps lying in wait for it. Stationed on a plateau with barely enough of a view to overlook the seithr on the coastline, they fired and fired for all they were worth. The sound that their veritable hail of arrows made as it rent the air and struck the seithr was similar to the sound it would've made if it were hitting the ground instead.

A great portion of the seithr protecting the Black Beast was shaved away, and the beast itself squirmed in annoyance as it was bathed in the arrows of light. Its great feet stopped moving and it turned its heads away from Ishana to find the Ars Magus Corps. The monster had strayed from its previous path, and in so doing it was immediately met with a pounding right to its abdomen from the Ars Magus rain.

Its long necks thrashed about in frustration, and it swung its massive legs through the sky and smashed the earth beneath it, sending countless fissures running through the ground. The Black Beast charged forward with a roar, seeming to pull its body along behind the sound, and from its mouths shot a wave of seithr. That single attack blasted away a portion of the Ars Magus Corps along with the very ground they stood on atop the plateau, but in the instant after it did, a white shadow darted past the wave and assaulted the Black Beast from a diagonal, slicing into its side.

Seithr sprayed from the wound in place of blood. The man responsible for that gushing wound was Hakumen, half of his body now drenched in the stuff. He paid it no mind, bringing the naked blade of his nodachi down once more. He stabbed his long blade so deep into the base of one of the Black Beast's necks that it seemed like it had simply sunk right into it.

Its roar, previously sounding like an enraged animal trying to cow its opponent, now changed to a high-pitched shriek.

Its heads writhed madly. Hakumen moved his arms like he was driving the beast. Changing his grip on the still-buried nodachi, he sliced it from the inside like he was trying to throw it over his back. The resulting cut was many times deeper than the actual length of the blade itself, causing the Black Beast visible harm.

"This is Ookami..."

Kicking the rampaging Black Beast in the side and jumping to its front, Hakumen muttered with admiration. Nine had said that it would show its true power when it was wielded against the Black Beast, but he was only now truly understanding what that meant.

The sword was becoming sharper and more forceful than a sword should be, cutting his enemy ever deeper. He could swing it with the weight of a guillotine and the speed of the racing wind.

Leaping out in front of its red eyeballs, Hakumen swung Ookami down to strike one of its heads right in the brow. Even though the blade didn't reach all the way through, he still smashed the giant head downward so far that it nearly hit the ground.

That one strike was the decision maker for the Black Beast's heads: they were now considering Hakumen to be a greater threat than the Ars Magus Corps, and prioritized crushing him first.

The heads swooped down at Hakumen from left and right, trying to devour him with colossal fangs. He took the first one on with Ookami. He used the recoil from that clash to narrowly dodge the second head, but in avoiding the fangs of the third one he ate an intense head-butt, and Hakumen's body got sent flying.

Realizing that a neck was stretching out to pursue him, Hakumen shouted, "Cut it now, grimalkin!"

A grazing slash ran along the neck in time with his voice, and it pulled the seithr that was pursuing him away as it slipped out toward the Black Beast's hindquarters. Jubei had taken that as his cue, jumping into the fray from who knows where.

The sword he had swiftly drawn from his back in mid-air was Hihiirokane. He gripped the sword in his right hand while he used the claws of his left hand to cut down and kick away the pursuing seithr.

With speed and precision that would be impossible for a human, he raced above the seithr and jumped again, this time swinging his right arm wide.

"Hihiirokane!"

The sword responded to Jubei's leap, trembling in his cat paw as he took a big swipe. It changed into a different form, but remained just as sharp as ever; it now appeared less like a sword and more like an animal's claw. The blade of the sword split into three, and he aimed it at the towering Black Beast with its spear-like fangs.

Jubei took a breath. Then he bit into the Black Beast's collar with the sword and pulled it all the way to the bottom of the creature in one go. The Black Beast roared madly as its very soul was sliced open rather than just its body. Jubei felt a sensation strangely different from the feeling of cutting flesh or seithr before he scrunched up his face, pulled Hihiirokane out, and shouted at the top of his lungs.

"Nirvana, Celica!"

"Here we go!"

Celica answered Jubei's call, and Nirvana, who had been busy fighting using her arms as blunt weapons up until then, picked her up.

Grabbing and mowing down the seithr in front of them like she was sweeping it away, Nirvana easily bashed her way through. Arriving at Jubei's side, she stood before a massive gaping rift.

The Black Beast's entire body was crawling with vein-like, pulsating, dark red lines. Three distorted vertical gashes now ran over that pattern, as if someone had painted over it. This was the wound left by Hihiirokane, and the entrance Celica and Nirvana would now use.

"Watch yourself in there. Don't overdo it."

Turning to face the seithr alone, Jubei was thinking that he was hardly one to talk as he gave Celica a little lecture.

He returned Hihiirokane to its scabbard and drew Mucro Somnio: Musashi in its place. He gripped the two separate parts of the sword in his left and right hands and touched their pommels together, which connected their hilts and turned the whole thing into one long, strangely shaped two-bladed sword. He held the sword in his mouth and extended his sharp claws.

Seithr swelled before him before assaulting him like a massive wave. Jubei watched it coming with only his left eye, then did a flip.

One heartbeat. That was all it took for Jubei to scatter the roiling wave of seithr many hundreds of times larger than himself.

He was truly moving faster than the eye could follow as he spun through the air, cat claws and sword leaving who knows how many cuts in his wake.

He was strong. As Nirvana leaped through the air and forced the rift open, Celica was watching Jubei from her arms.

"You too, Jubei-san! Don't lose!"

Celica raised her voice as loud as possible so it wouldn't be drowned out by the sound of the wriggling seithr and gave a single wave of her hand before throwing herself along with Nirvana into the monochrome black rift.