“Listen,” Takato started and rose to his feet. “Do you really think that your little grim reaper has what it takes to help you take down both Adisa and Mayumi? What if you run into Domingos before you get to them? Have you thought about that?” he said with a deep gravity in his voice.

Takato’s instantaneous personality shifts always gave Chris a sense of whiplash. Nothing the green-eyed grave-robber had said was out of the realm of reasoning.

Chris pictured the hulking Angolan in his mind. The snazzy-dressed brute was the first person Adisa and Mayumi recruited. The story he heard of their meeting was that he was trying to hit on Mayumi… right in front of Adisa in the middle of a shopping mall.

‘Crazy’ is nowhere near enough to describe the essence of the big man. Luckily, the altercation that led to him fighting the couple resulted in charming them both instead of being killed.

“Be honest,” Takato said as he walked up to a classic round top gravestone. “Do you think she can beat Domingos?”

Chris stayed silent, imagining Tayte taking part in an intense staredown with Domingos in a darkened space. His mouth began to move on its own. “It’s possible—”

“Have you seen his Relic?” Takato interrupted as he halted to glare at Chris.

Another moment of silence followed.

“Well, I have,” Takato said, “and it’s a real problem. I can tell you what it is…”

Chris groaned, rolling his eyes back. “Oh, but let me guess, I have to forfeit my Relic to you in exchange for that info, huh?”

“No. I am offering you my Relic if you help me take him down.”

Another sense of whiplash had Chris do a double-take. “What?”

“One-on-one with Domingos. No chance. Two on one. Better chances, but still doesn’t look good. But all three of us?” Takato cocked a smile. “We can take that monster down. After all is said and done. I’ll forfeit my Relic either to you or Tayte. It depends on what you two agree on.”

The offer was promising, but Chris had heard something similar before. He couldn’t let his guard down. “No, I’m not falling for that.”

“I don’t care about the Trials!” Takato shouted, blasting a fist into the back of an arch-shaped gravestone. His voice became shaky with fury. “A-A-All I want is that bastard Domingos. He’s the only reason why I joined Post Mortem in the first place.” He winded down and leaned onto the gravestone, reverting to his laid-back demeanor. “I was waiting for the perfect moment to strike… guess I waited too long, huh?”

“Why? Why do you want to kill Domingos so bad?”

Once again, Takato changed like a chameleon and gave Chris a grim look.

###

Tayte woke up in a winter wasteland.

Nighttime had fully taken over. Pieces of trees were spread across the snow-covered grass mixed with shredded leaves and woody fragments. She lied on her back allowing the nightly snowfall to sprinkle all over her aching body—which relentlessly signaled pain from the top of her head to the tip of her heel.

She propped herself up using her elbows and Tatsunori was standing on the other side, grunting and grasping onto the left side of her head as she shook it and mumbled to herself.

Both of the girls’ clothes were torn with the bleeding cuts in their flesh visible through the slits.

Tayte pulled her knees up and slowly rested her right arm on them. She stared at her butchered fingernails with dried blood congealed at the tips out and let out a cold breath.

“Go away!” Tatsunori screamed.

Tayte looked over at her as she started swatting at nothing. Seeing a distraught Tatsunori forced her to remember… Tokyo.

###

The Shinko Dojo took a trip to Tokyo to participate in the national bojutsu tournament where its best students would fight against rivaling schools.

Tayte was the only one of Shinko Dojo who got past the quarter-finals. She won the tournament without breaking a sweat. Her opponents were tediously underwhelming.

On her way home from a celebration with her sensei and fellow students, Tayte was approached by Tatsunori in a grimy alleyway. Both girls were aged 20. Tayte’s grays were taking over her black hair, and Tatsunori's growth spurt was still going.

“So, you’re following me now?” Tayte asked. She had her gym bag slung over her shoulder and wore a leather jacket over her gray sweater, and black jeans and sneakers.

Tatsunori, panting, scowled at Tayte.

The tall, stern girl wore a bomber jacket over her graphic tee, and ripped jeans and sneakers. She held a blue gym bag in her hand and tossed it onto the ground. “Good fight you had there. You’re going to put Shinko Dojo on the map.”

“I guess so,” Tayte said. She glanced at the gym bag. “Why did you throw it on the—?”

Tatsunori crouched down and zipped open the bag. She pulled out two black steel bo staffs and tossed one over to Tayte.

Tayte caught the weapon and arched her brow. She tested the weight in her hand and was pleased with it.

“I know you, Enberg,” Tatsunori said, smiling. “I know you’re bored, Tayte. You could’ve fallen asleep during that fight in the finals. Am I right?”

Tayte responded by staring back at her.

“So how about it? Here, no senseis can reprimand you. Nobody is here to stop either of us, and they would never let you use these weapons in competitions. We can go on as long and brutal as we like.”

“Why?” Tayte asked.

Tatsunori bit her lower lip and looked down on the ground.“My grandmother died without knowing who I was…” she mumbled painfully. “Even though I was the one who spent the most time with her. I guess her brain decided I wasn’t information worth saving. And now… my own mother is starting to forget about me. Her only daughter. Her only child. She can’t even remember my name on most days,” she explained. “And then you, you only show up during summers. Your Japanese isn’t all that great, and yet, everybody remembers who you are all year long. Well, it’s because you’re so good at what you do.”

“There’s nobody here to watch us though. If you win, who will remember it?”

“You would remember, Enberg. That’s all I need right now.”

Tayte dropped her gym bag from her shoulder and took off her jacket. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Tatsunori said in disbelief. “Really? I can’t—”

Tayte swung the steel across her jaw mid-sentence. Tatsunori crashed into the ground face-first and tumbled back into the wall of a building. She moaned continually.

If only she stopped there.

Tayte continued swinging without mercy before Tatsunori got up.

And when her opponent managed to scramble back to her feet. Her efforts were less than futile. Like a sand cat trying to take down a lioness. She had no chance. Tayte knew this but continued anyway.

As the smell of blood reached Tayte’s nose, and the sounds of steel hitting Tatsunori’s and bones cracking filled her ears—she couldn’t help but smile.

Then, Tayte began to laugh maniacally, wildly entertained by the brutality she was free to unleash onto her opponent. It was more than euphoria. It was something else. Like a mix of drugs intoxicating her brain, bringing her to the closest state of nirvana as she swung her staff.

Tatsunori’s counter-attacks only made Tayte more entertained and become infinitely more aggressive.

There were plenty of opportunities for Tayte to stop.

Like when she lost count of how many times she heard a bone break.

Like when Tatsunori started to sob.

When Tatsunori started to cry for help.

When Tatsunori stopped fighting back.

That would’ve been a great time to stop… but it felt so good.

By the time the buzz subsided. Tayte, sober, stared down at her bloody opponent. Tatsunori’s deformed face was directed back at her. It was bloated and blanketed with red. Her eyes were swollen shut, her nose bent to the side, and her lips busted open. Her breaths were labored and concerning.

Tayte started to shiver. Not of excitement, this time. She dropped her weapon and looked down on her bloody hands. The hands of a lunatic.

She didn’t even call for help after brutalizing her opponent.

She just walked away.

Like the trash she was…

The sickening psycho she was… always in search of her next fix.

Her brain immediately began the process of hiding the memory away… in the bin of useless information.

###

Tayte reeled her mind back into the present and blinked away her tears, and then a thin, spinning snowflake passed by her eye and was pulled into her airways as she inadvertently breathed it in.

She convulsed and had an all too familiar coughing fit. The back of her throat and her upper back panged like they were being cut. As blood gushed out from the coughs her convulsions grew.

The sight of her blood and the melding of pain from the inside and outside flicked something off in her brain.

She laughed madly.

Under all the pain she was enduring there was intense jubilation growing. The agony and glee mixed into a brand new feeling that had Tayte wheezing from laughter. With her dopamine-filled mind, she fixed on Tatsunori.

Her opponent was winding down and her frosty, left side was slowly returning to normal.

“No… no. Don’t take it away!” Tayte whined childishly. “What’re you doing? Bring it back!”

Tatsunori stood firm. “I can take you down on my own…”

Tayte looked around and found her scythe nearby a collapsed tree. She slogged, still in the middle of her laughing fit. “Bring it on, then.” She hunched over, reached down with a strained grunt, and picked it up with her good hand.

“Yuki… Onna…” Tatsunori called and sluggishly pulled the Relic from her thigh.

Tayte glanced at one half of a long tree trunk sliced down the middle under some detritus between her and Tatsunori. And found the remaining half behind her opponent, slightly slanting on a bed of debris.

“I’m not even tired, yet, you know?” Tatsunori said, baring her teeth. “Looking at you, I don’t think you can say the same, Enberg.”

Tayte dismissed her trash talk and focused on the snow falling around her, catching a glimpse of tiny, thin snowflakes. “Snowflakes, huh?” Tayte said and started spinning the Relic with just her left hand.

Tatsunori stopped in place. A look of defeat plastered on her face.

“Here I am wondering why you don’t just freeze me with that breath of yours to get it over with,” Tayte said as she spun the scythe faster. “Or wait, do you have limited uses of that? Or, it doesn’t work on people, hm? Maybe that’s why you didn’t freeze that wound on your side. Well, I’ve got one more trick I’d like to try out.”

Tayte concentrated on the winds that gathered around the blade of her spinning scythe, inhaling deeply and exhaling. Then she closed her eyes and put her hurt hand on her chest.

She breathed in through her nose, feeling the cold air in her belly that brought along with it more sharp snowflakes, tolerating the sharp pain in her innards, and breathed out through pursed lips as if she was whistling. She repeated.

Tayte could hear her opponent's running footsteps and the crunches it made moving through the debris.

As a cold slash flew towards her, she avoided it with a subtle tilt to the side and then threw her scythe behind her.

With her hand extended backward she continued her breathwork and the scythe spun in mid-air, pushing winds forward like a giant mechanical fan. Tayte stepped to her side as the winds of the Relic strengthened.

The technique had Tatsunori crouch and clench her body as she tried to move up to Tayte, fighting against the powerful, propelling winds. A wide beam of wind blowing from the spinning Relic slowed her movements, with every strenuous step she took, she was pulled two steps back. She raised her Relic in her hand and then struggled to swing it downwards for a slash.

And then, the detritus was pushed towards her by the winds, but each one missed until the halved tree trunk was shot up.

It whirled at Tatsunori and hit her arm equipping the Relic, dragging her back to the slanted tree trunk with the help of the winds.

Tatsunori’s arm was sandwiched between the halved trunks as the winds incessantly propelled, fixing the trunk in place.

Everything was going according to plan. Tayte sauntered forward, maintaining her breathwork. She lowered her other hand and placed it over her stomach. Afterward, she inhaled through her nose, filling her lungs with air, and held her breath as Tatsunori screamed in panic.

Tayte counted in her head.

One… two… three… four… five… six… seven.

She stopped, exhaling slowly through her mouth making a quiet sound. For a moment all the chaos rampaging in her head was silenced.

But it was in fact, just for a brief moment.

She opened her eyes and jumped in front of her spinning scythe—it thrusted her towards her opponent in seconds, she spun around avoiding hitting her, and stood up from behind. Tayte grabbed onto the wrist of her opponent’s fixed arm and twisted it.

Tatsunori made a sharp cry and dropped her Relic. She looked back at Tayte, wide-eyed with her jaw trembling.

“I thought that to control the wind I needed to be holding on to the Relic, but it turns out the Relic is just to help channel the power, like a wizard’s wand,” said Tayte and held up a fist with her hair blowing back in the air. “As long as the Relic is summoned I can control the wind.” She pulled her fist back and a white whirlwind enveloped it.

“Kazeken,” she said calmly with a smile and blasted her enhanced fist into the back of Tatsunori’s elbow.

The broken bone popped out of her bent arm in a burst of blood and bits—its crack obfuscated by the booming winds.

Tayte pulled back and her Relic stopped spinning, dropping to the ground, and allowing the trunk to set Tatsunori free to writhe and sob in anguish on the ground.

The loud sobs forced Tayte to avert her gaze from Tatsunori and shudder.

There was nothing left to do but, slog her way back to her Relic, and so she did.

“Wait!” Tatsunori cried out.

Tayte halted, and slowly turned back, grimacing at the horrible state she left her opponent in.

Once again.

“Stay down,” she said with a crack in her voice. “This fight is over. You’re done.”

“We’re done when I say ‘we’re done!’” Tatsunori stood up and gave out a scream, falling back to the ground again.

Fixed on the crack bone that jutted out of her opponent’s skin, Tayte shuddered again and crossed her arms, hiding her hands under them. “This is over, okay?” her voice was still breaking. Tayte resumed walking.

“No! Come back! I am not done! Come back! Are you really just going to leave again?”

Tayte fought back the urge to turn back.

“You’re just going to up and disappear again? Walk away from bojutsu without telling me a word? Do I really mean that little to you? Tayte! Tayte! Tayte! Tayte! Please… at least… say it!”

Tayte halted and turned around once again, unable to keep her eyes on Tatsunori. “Say what—?”

“You know what!” Tatsunori trembled and dropped her forehead to the ground. “Say… say… that I am the toughest person you’ve faced till now. This was the best fight you’ve had.”

“What impact will it have on your life if to say that? Just what have you been doing with your life throughout all this time? You’ve joined a globe-trotting group of grave-robbers, probably seen lots of countries and had all kinds of experiences, and this is what you need to hear?”

“Just say it!” Tatsunori shouted as she raised her head. “Admit it! I almost won! Look at yourself. Say it! Say that I won! Say that there hasn’t been anyone you’ve faced more difficult than me and there probably never will be!”

“What difference would that make in your life, Tatsu?”

Tatsunori’s expression twisted in a strange manner. “What is up with that look of yours?”

“What do you mean?”

“You look… sad. I’ve never seen that look on your face before. I don’t like it. What? Do you pity me, is that it?”

“What’re you talking about—?”

“Stop playing dumb! Oh, you think you are SOOOO WELL PUT TOGETHER!” Tatsunori snapped and pulled herself up, sitting on her knees as she scowled at Tayte. “I know you. I really know you, Tayte, and you’re unstable, so don’t look at me like you’re better than me!”

“I’m not—”

“What’s up with that stupid voice of yours? Why are you acting like this now? I prefer it when you laugh in my face and do not take me seriously. Treating me as if I am some pathetic, little girl is even more humiliating! I’m not the pathetic person here, Tayte! You are! You find joy in being close to death, you like being in pain. When you get punched in the face; you smile! I know you, I understand how your brain works…”

“What do you want from me, Tatsu?”

“I want to hurt you as you hurt me… I never understood why you left even after what you did to me. Why did you leave? Was I not good enough to wait around for a rematch?”

“I wanted to go home to Suagrmaple help my family with the funerary business.”

“That’s fucking bullshit!” Tatsunori shouted. “Why did you do it? You’re not afraid of death, so why did you walk away from it?” She studied Tayte for a full minute in silence.

Tayte jitters started rising again as she was being studied.

“Wow… you’re getting a kick from being yelled at. There is so much wrong with…” Tatsunori’s eyes widened. “That’s the reason… you were fed up with being trapped in that loop. The loop of chasing after the next fix. Hoping that it would bring a euphoria even greater than the last. That’s it! Isn’t it? It’s not that you’re afraid of getting yourself killed or any of your loved ones killed! You don’t care about that stuff!

“Death to you is just, like, finishing a mid TV show or something. It served its purpose and it’s time to move on. Cast to the deepest recesses of your memory. You just hate being a slave to the adrenaline. Not being able to stay still, constantly thinking about the next big thing you can do, but forcing yourself into monotony didn’t help, did it? The Trials were your “reward” for abstaining for so long. It was just supposed to be one treat for you and then it was back to cold turkey. But now, it’s too late and you’re hooked again. Even if you win. After it’s all over. Would you really be able to return to that boring life of yours? You screwed up, Tayte. You’re back in the loop again, and now, you’ll always be miserable.”

Tayte wheeled back and walked away in silence.

It didn’t stop Tatsunori.

“You just keep on living that daredevil lifestyle of yours till the day you die. Do you think anybody is going to show up at your funeral? Hah! Nobody loves you and nobody ever will. And have mercy on the moron you trick into getting together with you. You’d make a terrible mother, ugh, even just imagining you near a child makes me nervous.”

Tayte's expression crumpled slightly as she felt her eyes burn and the path before her blurred.

“Are you listening to me, you lunatic! I’m not the loser here, you are! You’ll never find peace!” Tatsunori ranted. “I am going to win the Trials and be remembered as the girl who broke down Tayte Enberg, that’ll be my legacy!” She grabbed her Relic off the ground with her good arm and hurled it at Tayte.

Tayte whipped back and swept her hand to the side, expelling a gust of wind—sending the Relic back to its sender, whirling rapidly.

The blade of the naginata sliced cleanly through Tatsunori’s neck.

Tayte froze with widened eyes as her rival’s head silently fell off her body and blood squirted from the stump.

Tatsunori's body dropped and ashes rose from it and her severed head as they hardened into husks and cracks began to spread. Her naginata emanated ashes as well, hardening and cracking as quickly as she was.

Slowly, Tayte looked at her shaky hand and then collapsed to the ground to watch her rival dissolve. Her rival was just a corpse now.

Then there was just ash.

And then just dust.

And then nothing.