Zuko vs. Azula will always be my favorite Avatar fight.
Ishin's forum posts
Katsuro was death given soul and blade. A legend whose very name made reeling cowards of armies once thought unstoppable. A legend with whom the Demon King now clashed.
As the restless winds sang songs of shinigami turned samurai, Ishin's blade sliced through a skull turned black mist - a doppelganger born from the darkness at Katsuro's whim. Neither flesh nor blood fed Ishin's sword. And below his arms, a figure flew out the bowels of a shadow. The cold hand of Ishin's supernatural instinct yanked him from offense to defense, and the Demon King circled out the sight of death, but not out the reach of danger. A blade of burning light hissed through his side, rending his flesh and spilling his blood as he circled beyond range. The wound - a cauterized work of art - was deep but not fatal.
The pain soon swarmed hot from his side, like a horde of hornets stinging at every nerve. Ishin winced, but behind his Spartan reserve, his soul grinned as strategy claimed his mind. His senses caught the rising ki of Katsuro's second shadow, and his eye the silver gleam of what remained of the Genshokage's anti-metal sword. Like a panther stalking its prey, the second shadow pounced, and the Demon King took to the sky with a leap, all but avoiding Katsuro's hope of impalement. Heaven above and Hell below protested his evasion, the barren sky screeching, and the earth rumbling.
His soul had nearly been theirs. Instead, he landed, exaggerating the severity of his wound with a wince and labored growl. The lurid light of Katsuro's blade met his featureless eyes, and the Demon King dropped his arms to assume an uncommon low guard. There, Ishin stood, feigning a loss in technique from the crippling pain of his wound. Sword held low and his upper-body exposed, it was an appeal to Katsuro's killer instinct.
Come get me, the stance dared, seemingly open yet quietly offering a strong defensive posture.
Range and reach hidden, the Demon King'd feint, commit his weight, and move to draw the Genshokage out his black shell for a counter at the first glimpse of an attack. He'd dart like a thunderbolt, the air burning bright from speed never meant for mortal men. Ishin's blade'd rise from low guard to long point, roaring into a thrust destined to intercept Katsuro mid-attack, and stab through his chest and out his back, its reach dramatically extended by a lunging step so that his blade could gore Katsuro's heart before his plasma sword could even glimpse at Ishin's flesh.
Be the Genshokage countered mid-attack or not, his eyes'd meet the white of Ishin's grin as the sky thundered, and a storm of black flames swirled out the Demon King's mouth to consume the Genshokage in a fire as dark as the shadows his foe calls home. The flames'd crackle, burning far hotter than mortal fire, burning all that dared stand in their path, be they nonflammable and even that which has already been burned. The fires'd lick through Katsuro's armor in search of moisture - the water on his skin, the blood in his veins - to bond into a corrosive soup that'd rend the electrons off Katsuro's molecules, and leave nothing of him behind, nay a corpse, nor a sword.
And through the flowing wall of flames that burned all but their caster and his possessions, Ishin sought the last in a triad of death blows, trusting his flames to hold Katsuro's attention. Free hand on the flat of his blade, he steered it to twice slice through Katsuro's throat, and once stab into his skull before retreating out of range to watch the smoke from Katsuro's pyre stretch to the sky.
Ishin's side would burn, his wound would gush, and his blood would stain the dry soil. But Katsuro, the Genshokage, would perish.
Silence filled the lonely air. Katsuro, shogun of sorrow, drew his blade with a deathly glimmer. And the gods of war above watched as those of death dueled below.
The Genshokage moved, and his blade rode the air with grace and savagery. Soon, whispers of fear echoed, flowing out the rotting throats of the corpses Katsuro had buried in this decrepit land. They were an army once, proud and strong. But against the Genshokage, they were little more than paper tigers watching a storm closing in. On that day, they cried out the color from their eyes, emptied their hearts, and committed to the crippling grip of fear. Yet as the air slowly chilled and Katsuro's blade neared, there was no clamoring heart in Ishin's chest - only a supernatural instinct from a body and mind primed to work as one.
Between the mountains of thought and action lie a valley, a subconscious censor whose duty is in the sequence of perception-evaluation-planning-conscience-reaction that plagues all minds and slows all warriors - all but Ishin, the Demon King. In place of his subconscious censor is a marriage of skill and the supernatural whose vow is to enable one thing; an instinctive and near-instant answer to danger. And so, under a wretched sky, the Beast from the East drew his katana with a quickness envied by lightning. Katsuro's blade rose with a murderous gleam, and found not Ishin's sternum, but the black edge of the Demon King's space-time sword.
Wrapped in enchanted folds of exotic matter, it shifts the space-time coordinates of all it touches, cutting by separating anything from anything, be it bone, true adamantium, or Katsuro's blade. So with the swiftest of parries, Ishin sought to slice Katsuro's blade in two and slide out the range of his pommel's blow. A bird's tweet sounded above them, but no others answered its call, for it soared in a land preparing for death. And were it not for his all-cutting blade and subconscious mastery, death would have claimed Ishin by the swing of Katsuro's first strike. Instead, Ishin's speed rose like a tide, and he ghosted in the ticks between seconds.
After-images trailed him like a stream, his blade moving first, and his legs second. His blade moved in ambiguity, tight and controlled, teasing much but revealing little. Was it a cut or a thrust? From this angle or the other? It was a maddening wave of probabilities, too quick for any foe but the Genshokage himself to know what to parry. And like a panther, Ishin pounced. Gliding downwards in a diagonal cut, his blade screamed towards Katsuro's temple. The Demon King however, was no fool. Katsuro was a master of masters, and were his first blade to be left in ruin by Ishin's earlier parry, he'd soon unleash a second sword to do the deed of death.
Aiming for the head, Ishin cut from his wrist and his outside so as not to open himself, but as his blade roared for the Genshokage's head, the Demon King committed his body elsewhere, steering his blade away from Katsuro's head to the outside of his sword-arm's exposed wrist were he to raise a newly drawn blade in defense of his skull. And yet, the second strike - like the first - was but a feint, there to merely drag Katsuro's legendary defense to and fro - from head to wrist - till Ishin caught the faintest glint of an opening.
There.
With a step, the Beast from the East lunged forward like a gale force, his speed scorching the air and tearing it asunder. His feints were guided by the dance of his blade, but the real strike came with a lunging step and steered his blade away from Katsuro's wrist and back to his head. The air shrieked and sparked as Ishin's blade sliced through molecule after molecule - and threatened to cleave right through Katsuro's skull and cut his brain in two.
◈◈ Parts Unknown, Japan ◈◈
There were no lush fields in this land. Water did not flow in abundance, and the poor soil grew nothing but weeds and corpses. It was a land as barren as the sky above it, and as dry as the rocky peaks surrounding it. This was a proving ground, for warriors old and new, great and lame. Here, men from all walks of life came to see the whites of their opponent's eyes, and paint the soil red with broad strokes of blood. And in the distance, a warrior marched.
Ishin Keijijo - the Demon King.
The wind swept through the arid land, and lifted the dust and rock into its harsh embrace. It whistled a dry tune as it raced from here to there, then vanished as suddenly as it came. It was to be the last sound this land would know until the starving edge of Ishin's blade met the supple flesh of his foe.
Katsuro Hanzo Yamamoto - the Genshokage.
As much a legend as he was a scourge of the living. He was the pale horse of death. A nightmare from which there was no waking. And Ishin had come to cut him down. Trekking down a rocky mountain path, his hair as black as the shadows from which Katsuro hailed, Ishin felt his blood rush with a warrior's intent.
Minutes stretched into hours, the Sun's heat boiled over him, yet his stride never slowed. And his gaze never wavered, for the featureless slits of white he called eyes had finally caught sight of the monster he had come to slay - or be slain by.
"Heaven is only a death away".
Log in to comment