A Son and A Wife

Fudo slid his broadsword along his pants to rub it clean, flipped it in his hand, and charged at Kire.

Kire immediately turned to the nearest building and ran inside. I had no idea what the interior of these buildings looked like, but right after Fudo, I ran right in.

The interior was crowded with bookcases and misplaced walls. This building seemed to have already taken a hit from Kire's laser eyes, which meant it was weaker than normal.

Fudo ran into the building's main room, turning to the right, while I turned to the left.

It became silent as Kire used the unpredictable path the building took after he pulled his laser eyes through it to his advantage. With complete silence, we were all hidden from each other... it would be a matter of reaction time.

I slowly paced through the carpeted building, pushing myself between the thin bookcases, and keeping the silence pure.

Alatus walked in now, and as soon as she got in, she shot her bow toward the ceiling, piercing the thin sheet of metal that separated each floor. As soon as she did, another hot beam of strands shot upward. It gave away Kire's position, and Alatus pulled out her radio.

"North-Eastern quadrant," She whispered. I nodded, as if she could see me nod through the radio, and started to move closer to that area.

I cleared a book case and swung down with my dagger. Kire skillfully defused the attack, slammed my wrist into the bookcase, and kept it there.

I saw his eyes turn red hot as if he was going to shoot a beam through them, so I pulled my needle out from my boot and stabbed it into his forehead.

Needle, which was a small piece of sharp metal I had for the purpose of impaling people, could slide in and out of my boot cuff. It was a hidden weapon for emergencies, but in times like this, I could attack with it as my main weapon.

He quickly pulled out the needle from his forehead, and I grabbed my dagger again, flipping my body and throwing it at his chest.

Kire caught it by the blade, cutting the palm of his hand, and threw it back at me.

The dagger slid into my left forearm and I crashed into a bookcase, knocking over a ton within the bottom floor of the building, and causing some of the windows to break from the impact.

The building wasn't a boring square, and some parts were pushed out as a little overlook into the city. Glass surrounded the overlooks and wooden paneling kept them connected to the wooden interior...

The more I observed my surroundings, the worse I realized this could get. Kire could burn the entire building down with us inside of it.

I pulled out the dagger from my forearm and quickly bandaged it with a bandana I had in my hair, holding it into a ponytail. It was let loose now.

I lost sight of Kire, but not of his beam. I quickly dropped to the floor as it began to fly once more, and Fudo closed the distance to fight him.

Kire caught his sword, melted the tip-off, and kicked Fudo in the chest. When the hit connected, his laser eyes went off again, cutting off Fudo's eye patch from his head. That hit was so close, I thought his head was split in half.

A weird gauntlet popped up on Fudo's arm, which I thought initially belonged to Belle, and he shot it out of every single window on the first floor.

The windows all shattered, the building shook, and everything, all at once, came in.

The weird projectiles that looked like boomerangs wrapped around Kire and with strings tying him up held him close to the ground. His eyes couldn't reach the Essence Strands, and the building was getting weaker as we waited.

"Surrender... or you'll be crushed," Fudo said. His eyes were glistening in the sunlight that now filled the room... that one underneath the eye patch was scary... a dark purple with a glowing, red pupil.

"C-Crushed...? Crushed? Crushed?" Kire started to violently shake under the strands.

"INORA!" He screamed out.

In a burst of insane heat, I felt my clothing start to ignite. I turned my head away from him, and the red hot strands appeared in a bubble around him. The structural integrity of the building was shot, and Alatus tackled me out of the window while shooting two arrows toward the back end of the building itself.

We hit the ground as the red-hot strands started to violently flow around the first floor, and eventually, implode underneath the pressure.

"What the fuck was that?" I whispered, looking back up.

The building disintegrated... all that was left were scraps of rock and dust, all floating around Kire.

His body was seared with those strands, and he burned the ground everywhere he took a step.

"Who is Inora?!" I screamed out to him.

Kire's eyes were menacingly glowing in the sunlight now. One look toward me, and time slowed down to the point that I could see the strands moving.

Oh shit... this is aimed at my head...

"REFRACTION"

Fudo screamed out at the top of his lungs. His eyes shifted in color, and the line of strands coming from my head bent upward and hit a tree above me, cleanly burning a hole straight through the leaves and branches. Nothing fell, because nothing was left.

Fudo's eye started to bleed relentlessly under that weird move he just used, and before he could start to regain his composure, Kire punched him in the stomach and put a hole in it.

"You people... Nova... Genesis... YOU'RE ALL SCUM!" Kire said.

He was talking like a madman now... could this be a memory from the past?

I walked over to Fudo calmly, pushing the Essence Strands over his wound to stop the bleeding and hope it healed, and approached Kire without any weapons in my hands.

"Who did you lose?" I asked him.