[center][b][h1]Minamoto-no-Yoshitsune[/h1][/b][/center]

[h2]FIght Club: Tengu Style, at the Core[/h2]

As the Archer’s bow attempted to parry Usumidori, she swept them aside with her blade. Her prowess lay within skill, not strength and thus knew not to be drawn into such contests with a knight of the West, and so rather than trying to press the blow, slid the sword aside and [i]moved[/i]. 

The arrows she dealt with far more easily, as invisible as they may have been, she was mistress of the winds. A child of the tengu she was raised, and a child of the tengu she died, and thus it was child’s play to detect the arrows, sailing through the air as they were. The shell of air around her exploded, forcing them back at their sender, and obscuring the field with dust and debris whipped about by winds not out of place in a storm.

“I was famed for my skill with the blade, indeed,” she responded, a battle-joy writ on her face and voice, “but if you thought a mere five arrows was enough for me, think again! Fill the air as a typhoon would rain, and perhaps you may catch me!”

And oh, perhaps the Archer could. Great was his strength, his speed, and his skill. She had been brought down when she was betrayed and surrounded, when her retainers and dearest Benkei were cut down to the last, and her very own  tantō ripping open her own stomach. If the Archer caught her off-guard, if the Archer could fill the air with as many arrows as the stars in the sky, if the Archer was faster and smarter and had resources to spare.

But war roared in her veins, in her mind, in her [i]soul[/i], and she knew that more likely than not, if the Archer or someone else did not flip the battlefield utterly, the Archer could not catch her as things were now.

A smile on her lips appeared as she danced through the winds faster than any an eye could see, as easily as any beast of legend, and only came back into vision in truth behind the Archer, and her sword flickered.

Like a shower of falling stars swordstrokes fell in scores upon the Archer, of wind and steel in equal measure.

[i]“Play faster, o Archer,”[/i] she whispered.

[@KoL]