Naoki

His storm had arrived.

Naoki stood his ground. Noticing that Mizuri wasn’t moving either, he calmed his accelerating breathing down. Everything has to be perfect.

They locked eyes.

Here it is, Naoki soundlessly said. Mizuri understood and slowly, very slowly, she cracked a little smile.

Then, with one more glance around, Naoki realized something. They both weren’t moving a step. They both were preparing some sort of powerful move while holding each other off with minor attacks.

Which meant...

He unsheathed his katana one inch further as he realized that the duel had become a one-dash duel.

Not that they’d agreed on it explicitly, but he knew that this one dash would decide the entire duel. They were standing opposite each other, on opposite edges of the flat concrete, both in sunken portions where their immense magic had obliterated the already-cracked concrete under their feet.

The temperature was getting higher and higher, and Naoki began to wish for the rain to hurry up and start pouring. That way, Mizuri’s fire wouldn’t be able to heat the surrounding air too much.

Probably.

Of course, the extra time also gave Naoki to think of something else, one of the more useless things he always thought about during duels.

He’d always won the one-dash duels he’d accepted before, and he’d always said something to his opponents.

Yup, he was thinking of a cool thing to tell Mizuri when they collide.

He thought of the one-dash duels he’d had before.

Back in his first year of middle school, he’d fought a classmate who’d been a Master. The classmate had been confident that he could “totally beat” Naoki in a one-dash duel.

Which was normal, Naoki guessed in hindsight, since the guy’s abilities as a Master had mostly been speed and strength enhancement.

Then again, speed and strength didn’t matter if he couldn’t hit Naoki. Naoki had cleanly dodged, kicked him in the stomach, and stepped in at the last moment, whispering “Remember. This is what fast feels like.”

The poor guy had flown right into a wall, collapsing it on himself.

Naoki had spent the entire night that night on his bed awake, his head buried in his pillow, wondering why he’d said that. It made him sound arrogant, and it was entirely against his policy of not making enemies, since enemies were a pain.

Another time, the year the world finally found out that Naoki was an Angel, one of his seniors had challenged him to a duel. Naoki had been in his second year of middle school, she her third.

The duel hadn’t really lasted. The girl had been an Angel of Water of something similar, so using wind to accelerate himself didn’t seem the right thing to do. Besides, duels involving water on one side and wind on the other usually ended in draws.

Naoki had simply made a circle around her, screaming “Lightning!” at the top of his lungs as he brought down a couple million volts through her.

She’d survived, thanks to Naoki holding back and her defense barrier holding.

Naoki had spent no less than three hours groaning in bed after that.

But this time, he didn’t really have the luxury of blurting out such stupid lines. Mizuri at least deserved a good line from him. After all, she was the only person ever to duel him for more than two minutes.

Heck, she was the first person to ever last for more than thirty seconds.

And saying she lasted thirty seconds didn’t do her justice, either. She had put up a decent fight, and Naoki was sure he wouldn’t be getting away from this duel with any less than one more wound other than the burn he’d already gotten.

Then he remembered something, and he was sure he had the perfect thing to say.

So he relaxed his grip on his blade.

The concrete under him was a molten mess, though no longer burning, but everything had to be perfect, so he sent a brief high-pressure wave of wind downward, cracking the concrete even further and creating a circular space to step on.

Naoki let his left foot trace a semicircle to his left, starting in front and drawing a line toward a point behind.

He bent his knees.

The rain came, and he made what was probably the biggest mistake of his life.

He stared directly into Mizuri’s flames.

What greeted him drove him mentally into the ground. Mizuri had created a fireball, but her fireball wasn’t just any fireball. The amount of energy Naoki felt from it made his legs shake.

Somehow he knew it was weaker than Shizuka’s bullet had been, but this was different. It wasn’t anchored to any physical thing, so Naoki had no way of deflecting it as he had done with Shizuka’s bullet.

And the flames were dancing. If he compared Mizuri’s guiding movements to his own, the fireball outclassed his guiding by a long shot.

So for the first time, he became aware of just why Mizuri was the “legend,” the second-most famous Angel of the Higashi Academy now.

But that wasn’t the full extent of his mistake. Somehow, unconsciously, his gaze was drawn right to her eyes.

For the first time in his life, Naoki doubted if he’d win this duel.

Of course, it wasn’t as if he didn’t have his own special move of sorts, but it was something he’d promised himself not to use freely. After all, when he had done his calculations, he’d found that, in addition to being able to destroy the average Angel’s defense barrier in less than a second, the move had energy enough to level the entirety of Japan’s Floating City.

Rose Wind Style, Eighth Movement. His most powerful move, from which he’d created the Seventh Movement by dampening it with extremely high-level magic.

Mizuri could die.

But then again, if she was able to create a fireball of such caliber...

He’d do it. She’d totally do it to him if she had the option to.

Naoki closed his eyes once again and spaced out from everything else, concentrating only on the song playing from his headphones. He’d forgotten the title, but he still remembered when the drop was coming.

He also decided only using the Eighth Movement wouldn’t be enough. So he rehearsed the sequence in his mind.

First, a powerful blade of wind. He’d use the Second Movement for that.

Second, a high-level spell to further increase his speed. This he’d never done before, but he was gonna risk it.

Third, the Eighth Movement.

He knew the blade of wind would be nowhere near enough to slice through Mizuri’s fireball, but it would at least add pressure. He needed pressure if he wanted to execute perfectly.

Naoki opened his left eye—the song had reached the buildup.

Only his left eye.

He bent forward, forty-five degrees exactly.

He held his katana’s sheathe with his left hand; the handle with his right. He pulled the tuning fork from his pocket and held it between his right hand and the katana’s handle.

His left eye twitched. A small blue spark jumped from his eye to the blade, where it lingered, perfectly still.

Perfect.

The buildup reached it climax. The drop came.

He dropped the tuning fork.

He hurled himself from the ground, faster than ever before.

Rose Wind Style, Second Movement.

Rose Wind Style, Eighth Movement.