Night 42: Rooftop - Residential area between Germaine St and Bohr St

[hajike_tobiume]

[from here]Momo landed on the rooftop of one of the houses across the street from the bookstore. Fingertips digging into the shingles to stop her momentum as she slid out of the flash step, Momo's vision swam and she coughed harshly, spitting blood out of her mouth. She stayed kneeling once she came to a stop, leaning against the stone of the

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[hajike_tobiume]

As the undead knight's lips moved, Momo caught the intent behind it. The duty-bound side of her was relieved as it meant she could put Signum to rest while her soul was still her own, yet it made the side of her that valued friendship protest in agony. How could she destroy someone who was a friend, someone who was still there? Signum was strong, surely she could overcome this is she'd somehow managed to overcome death? Yet, the question remained if the knight had indeed overcome death. Momo had seen, felt, the knight's spirit threads cease as she died. She had known Signum's death had come. But... if Landel could force her healing kidou to harm instead, could he not possibly fool her senses?

You don't have time for this, the duty-bound side of her said. She was shinigami and this was a soul in the process of corruption. Friend or not, especially friend, Momo could not let this happen. She firmly believed Signum would not want her soul to endure more than it had to, to have everything that had been noble and honorable in her stripped away.

Another tear slid down Momo's face. "You understand what I have to do, Signum. Your soul is corrupting." Her voice broke just a little. "I can't save you, but I can end it before it completely claims you. I am sorry... my friend."

[blazing_general]

"Once was enough." The knight shook her head, though what exactly she was denying was far from clear. A finger dug into the neck wound, releasing a cloud of embers rather than blood... and marking it as free of any protection. "Do it if you can."

The all-consuming fires made thought hard, but within them one course was always easy to consider. The knight raised her sword and charged, flame surging forward. The rest would have to follow from this...

[hajike_tobiume]

Another tear fell as the shinigami nodded. "I shall, brave knight, or I will die trying."

Then Signum charged, the billowing flames around her drying the tracks of tear on Momo's face. She needed to remove the knight's head from her body, but the shinigami was unarmed and none of the kidou capable of acting as such was usable under the limiter. This left Momo with only one option.

She had to use Laevantein against Signum.

The thought of using the knight's personal weapon to finalize her death was a sickening thought, as she saw Laevantein being to Signum as Tobiume was to her. She knew it was different, that the knight's sword was not a part of her soul, but she'd seen the blade before it, too, started to corrupt. Still she was left with no other option she could see. Yet, how was she to disarm something that blazed as brilliantly as the knight's uncorrupted soul had?

Hoping the knight's speed was reduced by her current undead state as it appeared to be earlier, Momo dove to the side and rolled to her feet behind the knight, trying to avoid the sword and get a decent look at where exactly Signum's armor had fused to her body. For this to work, she needed to limit the knight's mobility without resorting to a binding spell that might leave her open.

[blazing_general]

Again the knight found itself chasing an elusive target, but for some reason now it found itself less hurried, as though this were simply one of the games it had played with...

What had the name been? It seemed important, even to the flame-addled mind.

But there was nothing playful about the zombie's strikes, no hint of quarter or reserve; those had most definitely been lost to it. The blade swung backhand, reversing to swipe at the shinigami behind the knight as it turned. Again the attack was easy to read, but the strength behind it still made for a fast swing.

Facing the zombie's back had hardly been profitable, anyway- the damage to its armor had mostly occured on the front, where here and there rents appeared and missing plates from the complex, unearthly battle gear exposed cloth or skin.

[hajike_tobiume]

The shinigami leaped back out of the way of the sword, grateful that for once she was fighting without previous injuries. Her eyes raced over the knight's form, finding that Signum's back was far more protected than her front, as if she'd taken damage before finding Momo. This was not going to be easy for her while unarmed and the roof did not offer her anything as a makeshift weapon aside from a rooster-crowned weather vane. It looked rusted, but it would probably be better than nothing.

Two fingers held up, Momo grasped her reiatsu and a short incantation fell from her lips as she watched the knight turn back to face her. "Hadou #4 Byakurai!" From her fingertip, a bolt of concentrated lightning shot out, aiming for the junction of the knight's sword arm and shoulder. The moment the spell left Momo, she ran across the roof, trying to get to the weather vane. Along the way, she stumbled once and spit out some blood as the spiritual backlash hit her.

[blazing_general]

The knight met the attack head-on, and seemed surprised when the bolt tore through the joint, as though it hadn't realized there was no longer any armor to protect the joint.

The sword rose again regardless for a too-long second, but then the arm gave out and collapsed.

The zombie stopped as though to considered this, and then slowly switched hands.

[hajike_tobiume]

Wrapping her hands around the weather vane, Momo looked over her right shoulder to see where the knight was. She, too, was surprised to see how effective that bolt had been. Granted, Signum was most likely as proficient with her off-hand as she was with her primary, but the shinigami would take what she could get. At the very least, this restricted the knight from delivering a powerful two-handed attack.

The metal of the vane gave, the thing far more rusted than Momo had originally thought. It was unwieldy with the rooster attached to the end of it with the cardinal direction prongs. Keeping an eye on Signum, she reversed it, grasping the small space between the rooster and the directional prongs. This had to look ridiculous, she thought, as she raised it like a sword. A part of her wanted to see the knight's familiar subtle smirk at the image the shinigami presented with her makeshift weapon, but she also knew the more she saw of Signum, herself, the harder this was going to become.

[blazing_general]

If the zombie felt anything, it was disappointment Momo had bought time only to use it to raise a useless weapon like this against her. How ridiculous it looked wouldn't have been an issue if it had been effective, but the length of metal was a poor bludgeon, and no mundane weapon would survive parrying her blade, let alone a makeshift one like this. Damaging her was no good without a follow up... she had lost her two-handed swings, it was true, but with her inhuman strength that hardly meant she could no longer overpower her opponent.

The knight shook her head and the sword dipped down, then rose in an arc, cutting through the roof as though it wasn't there and starting a small fire. It was the only warning Momo was going to get.

Again, she charged.

[hajike_tobiume]

As ridiculous as it was, Momo actually had a plan, though the knight's warning made her rethink it. It was the way the blade cut through the roof as if it was nothing more than butter and the trail of fire left behind. She knew the blade was heated, but she hadn't realized exactly how much it had been. Still, she knew what she needed to do. A part of her really hoped she'd come out of it alive.

Snapping off the rusted half a foot of the end of the vane with her foot to make it more proportional to her size, Momo watched the knight charge her, eyes darting over Signum's form, noting the locations the armor exposed decaying flesh. The knight was halfway to her when the shinigami charged as well. She set her jaw and held the vane down at her side, wishing again that she had Tobiume; if she had her zanpakutou she would be able to save the knight's soul - not this.

Utilizing her speed, Momo feigned moving on toward the undead knight's wounded side, hoping to provoke an attack. If it came, she was prepared to dart to the right and drive the end of the vane into the crack she'd seen in the knight's armor along her leg. Not once did the thought of using the vane as a means to block Laevantein cross her mind; she knew it would not withstand the burning blade.

[blazing_general]

The attack was easy to draw out; the knight had always been an aggressive combatant, and in death the old desire to meet force with force went untempered by any appreciation for its opponents likely desire to avoid any such clash. It had reason not to counter her movements subtly as well; its destructive impulses were tempered by an irreconcilable need to remain in the presence of the one who had called it. Destroy her too quickly and it would lose its purpose...

The knight turned towards her opponent as she feinted, blade tracing another glowing arc in the night sky as it slammed down towards its target, and another surge of flame followed, bathing a swath of the roof in front of her in fire. No, the dead had no need for reserve.

[hajike_tobiume]

As the attack came, Momo put on a tiny burst of speed and darted to the right, narrowly being missed by the blade. The fire, on the other hand, was another matter. Gritting her teeth, she brought her free arm up to protect her face, the fabric of her sweater setting ablaze, and she attacked with the weather vane.

Staying this close to the knight was going to cause her some horrible burns, at the least, but Momo had to stay close and was no stranger to fire. Of all the things that she endured throughout her training in the Academy and her further development as a seated officer, fire was something she understood. It was something she was far more intimate with that most others understood. There was a reason she'd changed her hair style from the twin tails when she'd graduated; it was terribly embarrassing to set her hair on fire with her own shikai.

[blazing_general]

In life the knight would have had little trouble moving far enough to catch the attack on armor, but in death she was slow to respond and the st0rike found its mark, the vane slipping between buckled plates, unleashing another cloud of embers.

The wound though, did not immobilize the limb to the degree the earlier magical attack had her arm. The knight again reversed into a backhand, swinging her sword up and around at Momo.

[hajike_tobiume]

Momo's eyes flickered across the knight's leg armor when the vane hit the mark, piercing into the rotting flesh. It hadn't affected the limb, but she hadn't been expecting it to. Even in life, it would not have hampered the knight by much. To the shinigami, the vane was about to serve its purpose, even as the embers that rose from the wound seared into her hand, drawing out a hiss of pain.

The undead knight's return attack was coming and Momo knew she was at a severe disadvantage given it would come from her blind side. Yet, the shinigami stayed close, choosing not to retreat out of the blade's range. She had to remain in contact just a bit longer...

Two fingers of her left hand came up as Momo held onto the vane with her other hand. A quick incantation came to her lips, the vice captain trying to complete the phrase before the knight's attack connected. The heat from the flaming sword rused in on her and Momo knew she wasn't going to get the incantation finished in time. Forcing the spell purely with her reiatsu, Momo brought her left hand up in an attempt to block the knight's arm where she predicted her arm to be.

"Hadou #11: Tsuzuri Raiden!"

A favorite trick of one of the other vice captains, one that had been Momo's senpai at the Academy, lightning traveled from Momo's hand through the weather vane. It started arcing across the metal armor pieces the vane had been in contact with, spreading across the undead knight's body. Signum had once asked Momo if shinigami fought wearing armor. This was one of the reasons they did not.

The vice captain was not given the chance to see how effective the spell was as she had miscalculated where the strike was coming from. Instead of Signum's arm, Momo's hand met the white-hot guard of the knight's blade. Searing her hand, she cried out in pain just before Momo found herself tumbling across the roof top from the force of the knight's blow. And Momo had thought Signum was strong before.

The edge of the roof was rapidly approaching, and Momo was slow to respond with as dizzy and in pain as she was from a combination of the knight and the spiritual backlash. Whens he got her body to listen to her mind, she clawed at the shingles, trying to slow her momentum down. She reached the edge and slipped over it, disappearing from her opponent's sight. Hanging from the gutter by one hand, Momo was glad she weighed so little given the hordes of zombies below her, their calls growing more urgent as blood from the shinigami's left arm pattered down upon them.

[blazing_general]

Though her heart no longer beat but with the breath of the fires within and her flesh already burned, for some reason, the vagaries of magic, the lightning nonetheless seemed to wrack the zombie's body. Certainly the lightning was familiar to the knight, but this was the wrong face, the one who had called it was not the lightning-wielder...

Where flames that danced around the knight seemed thinner and more erratic than before, and where once they had burned purely now wisps of smoke rose from her body. And yet, still, she moved...

At first it could not tell where its quarry had gone, but it could tell she was still nearby and soon discerned Momo's direction and approached the ledge...

[hajike_tobiume]

Momo was not accustomed to using lightning kidou, but she understood that fire did not beat fire, it only fed it. She wished she knew more ice-based kidou, but the ones she did were beyond her whist under the institute's limiter. So, she made do with what she had available to her.

The shinigami dangled precariously from the edge of the roof. As she eyed the zombies below, she knew she needed to get moving. The longer she hung there, the harder it was going to be to pull herself up. She had no idea how much the lightning had affected the knight and she certainly did not want to be in her current position when Signum inevitably found her.

Momo's position was easily given away when she tried to use both hands to pull herself up. Her hand was very burnt and she cried out in pain at the contact of the rough shingles against the seared skin. She endured it, though, tears of pain slipping from her eyes as she managed to crawl her way back onto the roof.

Kneeling, she ignored the blood dripping onto the roof as the towering figure of the knight stood right above her. This was not good.

[blazing_general]

The knight stared down coldly. Too weak, to be felled by a single glancing blow; that was why one wore armor. To think it had lost to this one, and with its mind whole and free of the flame, even if controlled...

And that she had, hadn't she? Even the lightning-wielder had never managed that. But this wasn't about that meaningless fight. Unlike during Landel's little farce, her purpose here was not decided, even if the corrupting flame tended to limit the options she saw or how much thought she gave them. She had Momo where she wanted her now... or, rather she was where she needed to be.

"Hinamori," the Knight's voice rasped, mind-to-mind, a harsh and broken telepathy that grated on every sense at once.