Rather than a wet squish, followed by the thuds of two bisected Motonubu halves falling to the ground, an ear piercing and metallic clanging cracked through the air. The kneeling Motonubu hadn't moved from his compromised position. There had been no need to. No longer did Daisuke alone cast a shadow upon him.

Between the two men stood Junko. Her two drawn blades cleanly intercepted Daisuke’s Sixeyes and despite the pressure the general put into his blow, she seemed to be pushing back against his advance without much trouble. This new arrival provoked two different responses between the men; Motonubu a tad frustrated, while Daisuke’s bewildered expression signaled his mind was straining to find some explanation for this sudden intrusion. Junko herself wore no markings of any country, and the banality of her simple manner of dress with the strength to resist a world famous soldier simply didn't line up.

The truth could not be disputed however. The woman easily kept Daisuke’s weapon bay and, a moment later, shifted her posture and leverage to force Daisuke back with a mighty push. Her two blades looked positively mundane next to the heavily ornate Six-Eyes but with them she repelled the general's legendary weapon with enough force to draw sparks across both their edges.

Even Junko looked a bit surprised at that. It certainly wasn't what she was used to.

Daisuke leapt backwards rather than push his luck with this new unknown factor, putting a sizable distance between himself and his targets. He leveled his weapon again in anticipation of a follow-up from Junko, but the woman merely retained her defensive stance over the fallen Motonubu.

“Took your time, eh?” Motonubu finally stood back up and wiped some ash off from his cloak. “You were not hoping to swoop in after I had been dealt with and claim the prize yourself, were you?”

“You looked like you had it under control.” Junko’s spoke very carefully and only on her exhales. The lack of martial discipline in the people she worked with was often a source of aggravation. If Motonubu got sloppy and died, she wouldn’t get her check. “Do your job,” she quietly continued, “and let me worry about mine.”

Straightening out his clothing Motonubu didn’t seem to take the comment as an insult. “General Daisuke,” peeking out around his human shield Motonubu briefly waved the glass hourglass so that Daisuke could see it. “I can see you believe in the artifact’s power now, otherwise you would not have tried such an uncharacteristically underhanded tactic. Should our paths cross again, perhaps we can have a more civil negotiation.”

By now the artificial fires Motonubu started were dying out. In a similar manner the ones conjured by Daisuke were rapidly fading away. The defensive cloak of smoke and flames keeping the Annitou forces at bay wouldn’t last much longer. “I leave you to your work, Legionnaire Junko.”

The pieces started to fall into place for Daisuke, who watched with frustration as Motonubu faded away into the protective darkness behind the formidable woman. His tone became less aggravated now, seemingly because Motonubu was no longer the target of his ire. “Legionnaire, huh? Of the Last Legion?” Daisuke shifted his own stance and held his weapon to his side, more akin to that of one used by duelists rather than soldiers. “You're from the City of Kings, then? One of their bodyguards?”

A long breath escaped from Junko, not in response to her opponent but because she was preparing for a counter. Typical of Motonubu to deliberately handicap his allies to ensure his own survival. Of course he divulged information regarding her history to an enemy just to make the fight harder for her. She wouldn’t be able to finish this on a single draw now that Daisuke knew what to expect. “I thought,” Daisuke’s tone shifted towards an almost friendly tone, “that the Last Legion held their honor code in the highest esteem. Sneak attacks don’t feel very honorable to me.”

It was bait. He was trying to bait her. This appeared to be a common trait among Garion soldiers. Must have been something they taught cadets at their academy. Junko didn’t respond and kept her swords pointed at an angle to easily intercept attacks directly in front of her. Waiting wasn’t a good strategy either, not with General Daisuke’s ability to cause pressurized explosions. He could be building another nasty blast of wind somewhere out of her range of sight. The onus was on Junko to make something happen.

“Or, would you happen to be from some dishonored clan? I’m not familiar with them all, but if I had to guess-” Daisuke inhaled mid-sentence. An opening! Junko shot forward on her own tightly drawn breath, her blades moving from defensive to offensive position in one fluid movement. The distance between herself and Daisuke was significant but she closed it before he could even move onto his next word.

Likewise Daisuke instantly responded, cutting himself off and redirecting his attention to Junko's charge. Since he stood perfectly still he had all the time in the world to react to the woman’s rapid advance. His ploy to instigate her appeared to work, so obviously he had some follow-up planned. From all appearances Junko fell right into his plan.

That was all well and good and Junko prepared herself for what might come, but still her mind raced to find some answer for the man’s apparent disregard for his own safety. Daisuke might take a duelist stance but his uncontrolled breathing and lackadaisical approach to physical combat meant either he wasn't an expert in martial arts, or had something else up his sleeve. No matter how legendary the Sixeyes might be, it was still just a weapon. Slipping past it and delivering a mortal blow wouldn't be any more difficult once she got close enough. Was he just overconfident, inexperienced, or was this some deeply layered trap? Too much thought numbed the mind, or so the Kiku-ichimonji creed used to say. Fate would settle this soon enough. As she drew right within striking range, Junko got her answer.

With a simple errant twitch of the Sixeyes, it was done. From beneath Daisuke's feet two swirls of fire erupted. Like rushing water the flames licked up from in between the slats of the wooden boards of the damaged dock and shot upwards into the air five, ten, almost twenty feet high. The green fires surged up right in Junko's path like a mighty wall. A wall she was about to run straight into.

Perhaps Daisuke thought such a barrier would deter her. A very misplaced thought, as Junko soon proved.

Using the longer of her two blades she continued on with her attack, thrusting it into the obscuring flame where she assumed Daisuke's weapon would still be pointing. The clashing sound of metal on metal proved her right, and with another sweep of her arm Junko pushed aside the wide brim of the Sixeyes.

Then as her training demanded, Junko stepped right into the wall of fire and wind that bellowed beneath her.

General Hashimoto Daisuke's control of these elements was frightening to be sure, but air and fire were fundamentally intangible. The cut of a blade or the force of her will could not be stopped by something so incorporeal.

Flames licked the sides of her body but her feet deftly wove through the eruption. Wind battered her at odd angles to try and disorient her, but she instinctively twisted and contorted herself to remained balanced. Wreathed in the green fire and black smoke Junko emerged from to the other side of Daisuke's firewall having not lost a single bit of momentum. Before her stood the still unmoved Daisuke. Her own expression somewhat mirrored his; yet while both were calmed and focused, the back lit flames cast only Junko's face into a far more terrifying visage.

This fierce charge would need to pay off right here and now, before the swirling inferno had time to consume her entirely. In those precious seconds the intense heat of Daisuke's flames hadn’t yet set in, as even the man's jutsu couldn't override the basic nature of thermal transfer. But that was just the kind of game Daisuke played best.

He made a passing attempt to block her thrust with the Sixeyes by pulling it back towards him. The ornate metal fan was built for moving air however, and the full force of Junko's lunge easily parried it away. The fan bounced off Junko's Sahori like a pebble thrown against a brick wall. That left Daisuke’s unarmored torso completely exposed.

That’s what it looked like, at least. That was the tricky thing about air- it was always there, even if you couldn’t see it. Junko brought her Hikoboshi in to finish the job her longer sword started, but her thrust failed to find its mark. As soon as she stepped forward to sink into Daisuke’s chest, the tip of her blade made contact with something. The Divine Wind couldn't so easily be parried.

A swirling pressurized mass detonated right at the cusp of Junko's attack, similar to the one used against Motonubu only moments earlier. As Junko felt herself and the fires clinging to her get thrown back she cursed her own rotten luck. Daisuke's poor stance and the wall of flame had just been so he could hide the fact he'd been building this bomb up the whole time!

There would be no deflection this time- the blast rapidly expanded outward and forced even Daisuke back, pushing both of them even farther away than when they stood when the duel started. Daisuke was still mostly intact, whereas the now roaring fireball of Junko sputtered and scattered back like a log tossed out of a campfire. The loose pieces of broken dock under her feet made it impossible to recover quickly. Meanwhile Daisuke slid backwards on the soles of his sandals like a professional ice skater, effortlessly avoiding sections of splintered and cracked wood as he did so. It was the very picture of practiced grace and skill.

Of course Daisuke didn't want to fight. Why would he, when he could just wait for Junko to burn up like a spent match?

The blast of fresh air from Daisuke's technique dumped the equivalent of a canister of gasoline dumped onto Junko. Like someone blowing into a furnace the sudden influx of oxygen rich wind ignited the flames already coiling around her clothing, changing it from a deadly but manageable fire into a massive funeral pyre. The true one-two punch of General Daisuke wasn’t the manipulation of these two elements; it was the way in which they complimented and enhanced each other to such a degree that General Hashimoto Daisuke never needed back-up. He was his own back-up!

The word unfair flashed through Junko’s rapidly blanking mind, but of course it was. Life wasn’t fair. Where you were born, how you were raised, what kind of society you came up in, the limits of your physical body- thousands of details that might work out against or for you, big and small. And you couldn't control any of them. That was why victory had to be grabbed at any cost.

And why the former Last Legion bodyguard took on any job she could. Almost any job, anyway.

Junko's self-immolation relit the night air. Daisuke twisted his wrist to hold his Six-Eyes parallel with the ground just in case any other random strangers decided now was the chance to hop in. Who was this woman, anyway? Did it matter? How many nameless, faceless thugs had the man put down over his career without a second thought? A quick finishing blow was the most merciful thing he ever allowed himself to consider against enemies like this. She couldn’t fight back now, not with her entire vision swimming from heat and fire. Better to just be quick about it. He could finish her cleanly at this range anyway.

Moving to perform another motion with his Sixeyes, Daisuke arm trembled then unexpectedly dropped. A weakness shot through the tendons in his arm, and that flash of unanticipated impotence was quickly followed up by excruiating pain. In order to stop himself from dropping the weapon altogether Daisuke has to stop his own Divine Wind, instead reaching out with his other arm to catch the suddenly useless limb.

With his good arm he swung the weapon to his left, then to his right, his eyes scanning the now gathering Annitou forces on the periphery of the fight. Who had done it? There, on his arm, he could feel it- a cut, a wound, almost close enough to have nicked an artery right near his upper arm. Even his robes looked as though they hadn’t been cut, like someone slipped a scalpel in between the seam and left the fabric intact. Daisuke was well acquainted with battlefield injuries and knew in that moment that no projectile was stuck in the wound, nor could it have come from any other source than the one he had been watching burn in front of him.

Somehow, in that final thrust, that woman's blade managed to nick him. If fate had placed Junko just a bit closer to Daisuke, or given her just a bit more luck on the draw, no doubt Daisuke's arm wouldn't even still be attached. That type of razor thin escape wasn't something Daisuke was very used to experiencing. What kind of demon woman had Motonubu hired?