Hate When It Rains

Aziel emerged from a mirror, tumbling across the ground. He eventually trembled to his feet, using his scythe as support.

"He has incapacitated Ujinari," Aziel muttered. He undid his hair bun, allowing his long flowing hair to drop to his shoulders. "Can I really win on my own?"

Kurome turned away from Ujinari's body, and Aziel shifted his gaze to his feet, deliberately avoiding eye contact.

"No!" Aziel charged at Kurome, hollering at the top of his lungs. "I don't have time to doubt myself!"

At the last moment, Aziel drew his scythe up over his head and snapped it down toward Kurome.

Kurome parried with his dragon fist, and Aziel's blade clashed against it with a shriek that sent sparks flying into the air.

Aziel was quick to recover. He threw an uppercut slash at Kurome, attempting to cut deep.

Kurome scarcely sidestepped, going cross-eyed as the blade passed a breath away from his face.

Quickly, before Aziel could respond with a follow-up, Kurome swiftly punched Aziel in the throat, knocking the wind out of him and stunning him for a brief moment.

Within that moment, Kurome caught Aziel with two long, powerful swings to the head.

Aziel tumbled through the air, landing on his feet despite his skull roaring with pain and dizziness.

"He's blind," Aziel darted forward. "I can cut off his sensory with Meng's communication prana."

As he ran, Aziel twirled his scythe in his right hand, and Kurome's ears throbbed, failing to take in sound as if clogged by earplugs.

Unable to see or hear, Kurome leaned on his remaining senses, which he had strengthened over the last millennium.

He waited for Aziel's aura and scent to come within reach, then he braced himself and began swinging in a blind fury. Some blows landed, but Aziel inflicted equal damage on Kurome, leaving him with a dozen cuts and lacerations.

Their battle continued with both fighters zooming through the terrain, covering several thousand miles within mere seconds. As they fought, Kurome's fist met Aziel's blade with parity, each clash sending echoes throughout the Shi Mountains.

Kurome and Aziel broke their clash, circling one another to catch their breath.

As they circled, a pungent zing filled Kurome's nostrils. The scent reminded him of the days he spent living in a cave outside the Korosu's Village. It was the familiar smell of a brewing storm.

Realizing that Kurome was holding his own by sensing his location, Aziel intended to overwhelm Kurome's senses by making Kurome unable to pinpoint his location.

He spun his scythe, summoning hundreds of clones, each containing part of his aura.

Kurome's mind went haywire. Sensing clones in the hundreds and unsure of which was the actual Aziel, Kurome pushed forward, engaging the clones.

He moved as if he were in a trance, dodging, blocking, and attacking with pure aptitude. With each swing of his dragon fists, Kurome destroyed masses of clones.

As he and his clones battled Kurome, Aziel couldn't help but think of Hashira, muttering under his breath.

"After seeing things through his eyes, I always find myself wondering how Hashira, a few years younger, would fare against Kurome. I reckon Hashira would win, but if Kurome and Tensai revealed themselves during Hashira's reign as patriarch, I doubt they would've posed much of a threat.

"Even then, going into his fight, Hashira had no prior knowledge of Kurome's abilities, and yet, he was a mere second away from victory. Now here I am, struggling to defeat the same opponent even with a thorough understanding of his strengths and weaknesses. I cannot let this opportunity go to waste.

"Failure isn't an option."

Kurome defeated the last batch of clones, finally recognizing the real Aziel as he was the only remaining aura.

Aziel's scythe met Kurome's fist again, this time in the air. They clashed relentlessly, soaring to heights above the dense storm clouds where it was nothing but blue skies and direct sunlight.

Aziel created a fresh batch of clones, once again overriding Kurome's sensory prowess by splitting his aura amongst the clones.

Although sharing his aura with such a large group drastically decreased their individual power, Aziel and his clones pressed forward.

Aziel muttered, "He can't see, hear, or sense me. I can win!"

Aziel threw his scythe at Kurome's position in the sky.

Kurome spun through the air, narrowly avoiding Aziel's scythe, which vanished into a newly formed mirror.

Another mirror appeared before Kurome's face, and Aziel's scythe emerged from it, slicing through Kurome's ear before he could dodge.

In shock, Kurome rocketed into the distance to regain his composure. He bled from the side of his face, which once housed his ear.

"Don't think you can get rid of these earrings by just removing my ear," Kurome snarled. "They'll regenerate as if they're part of my body."

Ignoring Kurome's comment, Aziel and his clones flew toward him, soaring through the skies with their scythes pointed forward.

Kurome readied his dragon fists, "If I can't locate the real one, I'll just have to destroy all of them."

"Doragonken: Twin Dragons' Blitz!"

Kurome unleashed a series of punches, hurling prana dragons from his fists in rapid succession.

The projectiles slammed into clones, destroying them on impact.

Focused on the clones in front of him and hindered by his severed hearing and senses, Kurome failed to detect the whistle of Aziel's scythe as it cut down on him.

"Homage to Hashira," Aziel said mid-swing.

"Mirror Prana: Sludge Cannon!"

Aziel's scythe emitted a beam of cooled oils.

The dense liquid collided with Kurome, restricting his movements due to their adhesiveness.

Unable to move within the liquid, Kurome fell to the floor. Plunging through thick rain clouds, he eventually slammed into the ground, cratering the terrain.

"What don't you understand," Kurome stumbled to his feet with just a minor headache. "I cannot die. I am cursed.

"Cursed to live in this nightmare for all of eternity."

Kurome rocketed into the sky, aiming for the feint white glow above the clouds, which he guessed was Aziel's aura.

"Aziel!" Kurome shouted. His hair whipped back as he increased his speed. "Tell me. Are you cursed or seeking to become accursed?"

"Neither," Aziel replied from higher up. "However, I know people on both ends of the spectrum."

"I'm a walking nightmare with an arsenal of despair," Kurome said, his movements becoming a blur of speed. "Aziel! You cannot escape me!"

Kurome elevated high above the blanket of clouds. But what he felt struck fear in him.

He sensed only one source of prana. But the energy it possessed was like none other.

Kurome's heart leaped into his throat, and his spine tingled with dread.

Kurome shuttered. "All this time, he's been waiting for an opening to prepare this attack. His ririsu prana. It feels dreadful."

Aziel lifted his scythe high over his head. His hands trembled from the weight of his weapon or perhaps the prana contained within it. At that moment, Aziel's once white aura mixed with a sinister black, similar to his brother's.

Independent ririsu. The rarest form of ririsu. It is said that this ririsu resides within those with potent personalities and desires. This power manifested within Aziel after the passing of his father during a failed expedition to hell.

His ririsu reflected the personality traits that shaped his nickname: The One-Eyed Reaper. Aziel earned this nickname because of his remarkable similarities to The Grim Reaper, a popular character in ancient folklore.

One of these similarities was the almost identical ability that allowed them to reap souls. This similarity stems from Aziel's ririsu, which causes the victim's death by severing their spirit's last ties to life. Its only drawback is its lengthy startup time. However, if you give Aziel a chance to initiate this attack, it will almost always result in a casualty.

Aziel declared, "I know I cannot change the fact that Hashira is no longer here. But before his death, he vowed to drag you down to hell alongside him."

Aziel's scythe descended upon Kurome, too fast for Kurome to dodge and too powerful for him to endure.

"As his student, I shall fulfill his dying wish."

"Ririsu Prana: Soul Reaper!"

The blade sliced through Kurome. While his physical wounds didn't look fatal, Kurome's spirit had already been reaped, and he entered something similar to a grace period, a short period of time where he still had consciousness as his physical and spiritual bodies were being pulled apart.

Because one's spirit or soul is the root of their life force, energy, and power, pranas, by extension, are forms of energy linked to the physical and spiritual. As such, due to Aziel reaping Kurome's spirit, for the brief moment that Kurome was in the grace period, he experienced life without prana.

For a brief moment, Kurome was freed from his prana.

For a brief moment, Kurome escaped his eternal nightmare.

For a brief moment, Kurome's curse was lifted.

It all seemed to move in slow motion.

Kurome fell from the sky. The wind whipped his hair back, and cold air blew on his face as he stared incredulously at Aziel.

As he fell through the lazy iodine skies toward the cratered earth below, Kurome's body felt calm. He waved his hand in front of his face. He could tell this wasn't just another nightmare. Right now, he could see everything.

As an attribute of his now gone prana, Kurome was free from those deep black eyes that lacked sclerae. His fresh hazel eyes radiated brown sun warmed with inner gold.

"I can see," Kurome whispered, his tone soft with shock.

Oblivious to the raging storm below him, Kurome took in a surreal view above the clouds.

His eyes shimmered in the heat of the midday sun, and the golden fingers of sunlight bathed his umber skin.

The view was beautiful yet oddly tranquil.

As Kurome's eyelids grew heavy, his mother's last words echoed in his mind. "Kurome... Wake up."

Still falling, Kurome returned his gaze to Aziel, who floated idly in the sky above. Oddly enough, Aziel reminded Kurome of a character in a story his mother used to tell him.

As Kurome kept falling further and further, he felt free as he spread his arms, basking in this newfound sovereignty.

"Mother..."

Kurome smiled openly at the endless expanse of sky.

"... I'm awake."

With that, Kurome's eyes released their first set of tears, and he shut his eyes for the first time since birth. An endless amount of slumber to make up for a millennium-long nightmare.

***

In the large crater caused by Kurome's fall, Aziel towered over Kurome's lifeless body watching Ujinari remove the earrings from his corpse.

As a result of concentrating so much power in one place, Aziel's arms were completely paralyzed, causing them to hang uselessly at his sides.

Aziel gazed down at Kurome. "You once asked me how I'd describe your eyes. It may not be much, but the hate sewn into them reminds me of someone I used to know, someone who's also fallen deep into a pit of hatred.

"If it means anything, I liked your hazel eyes more."

A moment of silence ensued. But it was swiftly ended by a sudden downpour of rain.

Aziel looked up at the darkened sky. The rain beat against his face, wetting his hair and wounds.

"It's raining," Aziel muttered, reminiscing of a similar scene after a battle with a relative.

"Thank you for always managing to hide my tears...

"But, still...

"I hate when it rains."