Chapter 9 (2/2)
Animal growls escaped their throats. The arm trusting the fist trembled, the hand holding the sword became numb.
They hit the limit at the same time. At the last moment, as if by prearranged common consent, they both stepped forward.
An explosion occurred.
The turbulent torrents of power rampaged as if intent on reducing all creation to ash. The kings, having thrown their everything at the opponent, were swallowed by the violent torrents, at their mercy, without the time to put up defense.
Suoh scattering sparks, Munakata shedding crystals, the two swirled through the sky, falling, and crashed into the wrecked ground with a loud thud.
But, despite that, it wasn’t over yet.
“…Khe.” Suoh stood up.
“..Phew.” Munakata got up to his feet as well.
The damage they both took wasn’t something they could hide, but two pairs of eyes still gleamed with inexhaustible fighting spirit, the power they radiated turned into an aura that painted their whole bodies their respective color.
The sharp expressions on the two’s faces were not losing out to the clash of the first and the sword. Suoh’s mouth was drawn in ferocious grin, and a brisk smile played on Munakata’s lips, both equally bold and daring. Thrill that almost exceeded wrath was showing through.
“You p.i.s.s me off so much, seriously.”
“Ditto.”
“I'mma go nuts.”
“Aren’t you already? Is that supposed to be a joke?”
Suoh clenched his fists again, and Munakata swung his saber sharply. Naked fighting spirit bended their brows, the determination not to yield flaring up vehemently.
“Hey, Munakata. I can’t stand ya.”
“What a coincidence, Suoh. I feel the same way about you.”
“I'mma squish you like a bug.”
“I shall cut you limb from limb.”
“Can’t wait to see your weeping mug.”
“I am looking forward to seeing you grovel before me.”
The two were throwing biting words back and forth cheerfully. The flames and crystals, blown around, created a storm of falling red and blue blossoms.
Suoh held out his left hand, bending his right arm and drawing it behind his back. Munakata held up his sword vertically in parallel with his body.
“Here I go.”
“Have at me.”
The two kings made a mad dash, shaking the earth’s very axis.
The two souls leaped, casting off the shackles.
That’s when…
“—At the end of the battle, will the opposites unite?—”
The gentle words flowed easily across the two kings’ battlefield. Behind their tranquility, however, was hidden power. The power that was strong enough to rival that of raging flames and crystals.
Both Suoh and Munakata were moments from clas.h.i.+ng again but gave a start and stopped dead in their tracks instead. For the first time since the beginning of their battle, they took their eyes off each other, turning their heads sharply to the source of the voice.
At the intersection that was transformed into the battleground, a single person stood. He was a graceful man, wearing traditional j.a.panese clothes and felt hat; a j.a.panese sword he had with him was stuck into the ground like a staff. His appearance, with a faint smile tagging at his lips, was reminiscent of a sage frisking in the fairyland.
The man, however, was not a sage but a king. High above their heads another giant crystalline object was floating, concealing wast power just like the red and the blue ones.
The transparent Sword of Damocles devoid of color - the symbol of the last of the Seven Kings, the Colorless King.
“Pleased to meet you, Red King Suoh Mikoto, Blue King Munakata Reis.h.i.+. I am the king without a color, Miwa Ichigen, the arbiter of the Seven Kings. Upon the request from the Gold King, Kokujouji Daikaku, I came to visit you, belated though my appearance may be,” the man - Miwa - said. “I will not insist that you talk out your differences. Nor will I ask you to understand each other. However, I do demand you lay down arms. This is it for today. Enough.”
As if all the rage and madness around him bothered him none, his voice was all-encompa.s.sing, rich and unfathomably deep. There was calm and subdued maturity about it, as if its owner watched over the two young kings with a smile.
Suoh and Munakata, previously flabbergasted, finally snapped out of their daze and narrowed their eyes at him.
“What the heck?! b.u.t.t outta th—”
“Excuse me, but please step asi—”
Tap.
In contrast to the two kings’ raised voices, Miwa only tapped the tip of his sheathed long sword on the road lightly.
The all-seeing gaze trained itself on Suoh and Munakata from behind the fringes of his quirky black hair that reached his shoulders.
“Everything between the two of you will be settled. But not here, and not now.”
Suoh and Munakata found it difficult to trust their minds in that moment, but it was a hard fact that they both sensed that the man’s words were, indeed, “true”.
Then, as if on the heels of that realization, “knowledge” made its way up to the surface from the depths of their heads.
The Seventh and the Colorless King, Miwa Ichigen. The right-hand man of the Gold King, with his power laying in prophecising: the supernatural ability to see the future.
Miwa’s power was by no means suited for combat. Neither to Suoh nor to Munakata, he was a king that could be considered a threat.
Yet, at the same time, for some inexplicable reason, neither of them could ignore him. Like Suoh, Munakata, and Kokujouji, he also had a sort of mysterious presence about him that was, however, very different from theirs. His arguments, not backed up with superior power, nonetheless smoothly penetrated into the midst of the kings who took their stands based on power, without arousing resistance and alert.
The arbiter of the seven kings.
Now they understood how fitting that introduction was.
“Excuse me but—” Miwa smiled with a smile of a Bodhisattva sealing up Ashura. In that smile “absolution” of the many long years of life he had on Suoh and Munakata dwelt.
The Colorless King was also known as “The Jester King”.
Who if not a jester could take the others’ stubborn convictions, look at them objectively, present them in a detached manner, and resolve disputes over them with a smile.
“—spare me of the repeat of Kagutsu. For today, this is enough. Do I have your understanding?”
And—
That was where the curtain abruptly fell.
And that also was the beginning of the ambiguous “bond of fate” tying Suoh and Munakata, the Red King and the Blue King.
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