The dust and fragments of debris floating in the air had almost completely dissipated, revealing the silhouette of Yukino who remains motionless as he watches his enemies.
"What the hell was that?" - Knocked down at the foot of one of the trees, with a battered body and dislocated joints, Azami forcefully accommodated her neck to regain mobility, without taking her eyes off her opponent. As if she were bubbling her blood, rage built up in the young woman who rose from the ground spitting coagulated blood.
Even though she was undead, her regenerative capacity was directly linked to his life flow. While for the major arcana the spiritual flow could be taken from the primordial stream just as the Loa guardians did, it was not in the same way for those who were considered creation failures.
A squirrel passing near Azami's motionless body was soon caught at high speed by his hands and sucked in with screams of pain. As if his flesh were ripping completely to the nerves.
"This is not enough for me to recover. Girls, I need you to buy me time to return to combat "- Nodding their heads together, they complied with the order without recriminating anything at their leader. The first to launch the counter attack was Yumi, who transfigured her flesh and blood from her right arm to form a sharp razor very similar to a scythe.
"Kaze Kusanagi!" - The leaves that were on the stone floor of the esplanade of the temple were raised in the middle of a current of air that converged in four directions. Before Yukino's eyes, what was once a pile of dry litter had turned into small pieces of sharp material. Even though his armor was undamaged, there was a slight cut on her right cheek from which a little blood flowed.
Smiling at her adversary accepting the challenge, the guardian threw herself squarely at her rival, throwing her spirit swords at her opponent's weapon. A subtle aroma of burning bone was released with each blow that Yukino's lumenfang managed to land against Yumi.
Who could only match the speed of his enemy, without achieving a significant change that would allow him to turn the situation around.
"Don't think you can have fun to yourself, Yumi!" - Right behind him, Inoue appeared brandishing a tessen at the same time that a powder came out of his lips that when it made contact with Yukino's skin, caused a burning that soon transformed the exposed skin into necrotic tissue.
Of that group of adversaries, Yumi and Inoue turned out to be the most dangerous in relation to their special techniques. The Kaze Kusanagi technique could invoke the force of the wind on objects selectively, changing their trajectory, acceleration and shape at the will of the summoner.
While Inoue possessed a terrifying ability known as Shi no Hokori, a powder created from her dead cell phones that acted with the same behavior as a flesh-eating bacteria. Any human being who came into contact with the spores of her, would experience an agonizing death to return from the grave turned into an undead without will.
As in the case of Vargas, for Yukino that only meant a wound that slowed her healing even with his spiritual power. But if the damage managed to accumulate significantly, the guardian's body would be reduced to a shell of rotting flesh that would eventually only follow Inoue's orders.
Seeing that a hand-to-hand battle would be a clear disadvantage due to the number of opponents, Yukino hit the ground under her feet with an enormous force that shook the foundations of the temple.
Thanks to this, her enemies lost their balance falling to the floor, allowing her for a few seconds to invoke two elements that she had obtained thanks to her near-death experience and the hard training that Vargas put her through.
Giving up on her heels, she leapt through the air that lifted her above the tops of the treetops. At that moment, from her armor at the level of her back, sprouted two metallic joints, similar to the bare bone of the ailerons of birds. In them, a thin layer of energy manifested itself turning them into a pair of wings, which allowed him to stay in the air while she held the palm of her hand with the index and cordial fingers as a point.
Extending his left arm, an arc of energy began to form from his prosthesis, which he held firmly as he recited a chant with the subtlety of a whisper.
Her enemies managed to get up from the ground, contemplating how now her rival was floating above them with a threatening tone to which the proud young women could not take lightly. With her pride hurting from hers, Yumi lunged with momentum in Yukino's direction as she slashed her blades through the air to hit him with a slashing attack.
"Idiot, go back to Inoue immediately!" - Aiko, who had been silent for several minutes, had a panicky expression on her face as she spread her palms towards Inoue. By the time Yumi reacted to her warning, her body was completely exposed in the sights of Guardian Loa's attack.
"A THOUSAND SOUL-EATING ARROWS!" - Just a second away, countless bolts of energy fired from the arc whose light reflected a purple tone close to black. Thanks to her training with Vargas, Yukiono had managed to combine her spiritual flow with a dream eater technique, taking her to a different level in terms of her execution.
Like the impact of shrapnel fire from a rifle, Yumi's body was hit at point-blank range and thrown to where Inoue was standing. Who due to Aiko's intervention, she was protected by an energy dome that repelled attacks from outside.
Before her puzzled look, she could only contemplate how her partner was brutally rammed by the attack, without even being able to put up a guard. Coagulated blood rolled down the dome of the energy dome, showing a grotesque scene that was accompanied by the guttural sounds of a fading Yumi.
By the time the attack stopped, the young woman's shattered body slowly slid down the silhouette of the dome until she fell to the ground. Yumi's eyes were so wide that her pupils seemed to lose themselves in the white of her sclera, without movement or response to visual stimuli from her surroundings.
"WHAT WAS WHAT YOU DID TO YUMI DAMN BITCH!" - With the shattered body of her partner at her feet, Inoue yelled angrily at Yukino, who only watched the young woman with contempt as he launched himself from the sky to ram her.
Like a hawk hurling itself at her prey, Yukino's fists repeatedly slammed into the area of the dome where muddy blood could be seen. One impact after another, as if trying to fragment the defense that Aiko had laid out for her ally.
Inoue turned his face towards Aiko while gesturing with her right hand hidden behind her back, trying to buy time to execute her plan. He separating his hands from her, extending her arms covering her left and right flanks, beginning to generate a dark mist that was covering her until filling the space inside the energy dome.
Realizing the nature of the miasma within the dome, he launched himself in the opposite direction seeking to cover Vargas's body. At the precise moment that I reached it, the dome broke, letting out the black mist that began to cover everything in its path. The density of the miasma was such that it seemed as if a thick cloud had descended from the sky. In its wake, the vegetation and wild animals that fled from it were rotting.
If that cloud reached Vargas in his current state, it was completely certain that he would not survive that attack.
"Damn it's catching up with us, I need to do something quick!" - Recalling the time when Hanabi put it to the test in her office, he thought if it was possible that at her current level he could create a pocket dimension, like the one in which the remains of the dream eater were locked.
With no more time available for him to gamble everything in one go, Yukino placed his hand on Vargas's chest, infusing part of his spiritual energy as if he wanted to form a shell. In the first attempt the energy collapsed shaking the battered body of the guardian, unleashing fear in Yukino, who had never tried to recreate such a high level technique in his training.
With the toxic mist on her heels, the guardian made one last attempt, partially able to recreate the nature of the barrier with which Inoue had protected herself. Like the pocket dimension, it was a pseudo space where time did not pass. Which allowed Vargas's condition not to worsen, but it also did not allow him to regenerate to return to combat.
The fog had enveloped everything in his immediate surroundings, the panorama around him was completely bleak. The trunks of the trees that had been exposed to the toxic miasma collapsed, falling to the ground with such a crash that it could be heard from a great distance.
With the difficulty of his vision reduced by the thickness of the fog, Yukino walked slowly extending his left arm, feeling the air in search of his opponent. Inoue's laugh echoed gloomily through the surroundings from different directions. Making the guardian throw blows in the air looking to accidentally connect one.
"It's funny, until recently you looked all proud looking at me over your shoulder and now you are no better than that miserable mole you are trying to protect. My miasma as you have seen, has the power to turn any living being that comes into contact with it into a corpse. But I see that your power is enough to keep it at bay. Tell me, will that flimsy shell that you put on your friend be able to resist too? " - The sweat began to drip down Yukino's forehead, her nervousness took hold of her as she continued to keep track of her minutes mentally.
The soul eater's curse kept eating away at her spirit power, there was no way to remove it from her body. As much as I tried with the help of Hanabi or Vargas, the result was always the same. While she will use her spirit power, eventually over the minutes the curse would attack her body and eventually degrade it.
With great effort, the time limit with which she managed to maintain the transformation despite the effects of the curse was fifteen minutes. A few minutes of increase, but that compared to the past, guaranteed that he could fight against his enemies as long as he had a support.
But the twist of fate that was attached to his neck like an execution rope was there, with Vargas out of combat in a sorry state, everything depended on his ability to reduce his adversary in the shortest possible time and find a gap to escape.
One minute, two minutes, with each uncontrolled blow thrown into the void, the seconds flowed like water leaking through the gaps between his fingers.
"You are someone very boring, but who knows, they say that you know people better when they see inside. How will you be inside? " - The miasma that surrounded the whole place soon began to concentrate in front of Yukino, entering violently through her nose and throat to her lungs and stomach.
Before her, the remaining miasma took the form of Inoue, who was laughing frantically while in hers eyes an expression of madness reflected the desperate face of her enemy. Little by little consuming the vitality of her internal organs, she was lifting it until the tip of her feet barely touched the ground.
Struggling to maintain consciousness by seeking to cut off the flow of the miasma with her weapons, Yukino had already reached the twelve minute barrier. Just three minutes after the beginning of the corruption, his fatigued and emaciated body began to gradually lose the spiritual armor that enveloped him.
The breastplate that covered his chest was the first to shatter into small pieces like shards of glass. The cracks on the surface gave the appearance of having received a lot of accumulated damage to the point of being like a series of cobweb threads. The spiritual energy that shaped it escaped, emanating one by one like a light beam of light.
As soon as this happened, the lumenfang on her arms dimmed to extinction, completely breaking the bracelets of the armor. The artificial hand that until recently was protected by the spirit covering, had been exposed in plain view of Inoue's eyes.
Who for some reason, looked away from Yukino's eyes to focus on the prosthesis of his left hand. A sensation in his mind ran through his brain like a slight spasm at a memory that was locked deep within his being.
On Yukino's body, the marks of the curse began to manifest, making it clear that the fifteen second time limit had already been reached.
"Kyaaaaaaa!" - The miasma that consumed the body of the guardian suddenly vanished the moment that heartrending cry was heard in the silence of the night. Until a few moments ago Inoue, who had his adversary completely at her mercy, was now on her knees on the ground, holding her hands to her head while the expression on his face was the living reflection of despair.
"Onee-san. Hey, leave that and let's play. She has black hair and brown eyes, a toothy smile and scrapes on her knees covered with adhesive bandages, a fish-print T-shirt and her nose slightly red from a cold.
"Sa-Satoshi?" - Satoshi Hasegawa, it was the name of Inoue's little brother. When he was just a few months old, his father abandoned them and his mother deep in debt.
The days of the Hasegawa family were always surrounded by tumultuous incidents, which marked Inoue's childhood in such a profound way that his emotional scars still oozed the feeling of desolation.
After the seizure by creditors, the family had to leave their home and start living in a small apartment with just a few tatami mats. The image of his most treasured toys and objects being loaded onto the truck by the loaders made Inoue's little heart clench even more with the force that his mother squeezed her hand in frustration.
Upon arriving at their new home, the gazes of the neighbors did not stop observing them inquisitively, inventing many stories about the unfortunate woman and her children.
"What are these tools? Did your mom pick them up from the trash for you fatherless girl? " - It is said that children are the purest creatures that there can be and are like little pots that parents fill until they are shaped. In elementary school children used to be cruel to Inoue; her mother being suffocated by debt, she worked all day to cover household expenses and interest on the debt. Making it impossible for her to attend parent meetings on many occasions.
Observing that, the children took the opportunity to abuse the poor girl, who tried to keep her desperation silent trying not to cause more pain to her mother. Enduring the hell that was school every day, her only oasis was that tiny apartment where she found the most valuable thing to her: Satoshi.
The first time she saw her brother, innocent Inoue's heart felt a cluster of butterflies flutter in it. Thinking of all the games they would have together and the happiness they could get to enjoy with her mother.
Upon arriving at the apartment, the girl was greeted by Mrs. Aoi, a middle-aged woman who was the only one who was friendly with Inoue's mother. She was widowed at a young age, she had lost her husband and her only child before she gave birth to him in a car accident.
Spending time with Satoshi was a blessing that she believed had come from heaven for her. So she was grateful that they allowed her to take care of him while little Inoue came home from her class.
The relationship they had was the closest thing to a loving aunt for them, she being immensely happy when she was greeted with a gentle pat on the head and a smiling face.
Even though food was limited in that household, a bowl of rice and some vegetables with bean sprouts were something she ate as if it were a wonderful delicacy. When Satoshi was four years old, his mother decided to admit him to the nursery that was close to the house. That was a radical change for Inoue's life when she saw how Mrs. Aoi had stopped visiting them.
On one occasion when they met by accident on the apartment stairs, Inoue reached out to grasp his hand, immediately feeling a slap loaded with contempt.
"Never try to touch me again!" - The little girl's eyes began to fill with tears as she could not understand the reason why Mrs. Aoi had acted in that way when she found her. Feeling at times that she had made a mistake and offended her, she sought each time to deliver small letters under the door apologizing for her. Only to discover within hours the small pieces of paper thrown in the trash can in the hall.
The days of fleeting happiness at home were replaced by loneliness when opening the door coming home from school. With her mother arriving late in the afternoon and close to night, the girl tried to have the food ready, anxious to receive her mother and her brother.
Her fingers were always covered in healing bandages, unable to properly master the kitchen knife. But little by little in her pursuit, she gained dexterity until she was finally able to make a decent meal.
Her dinners with her mother and her brother in the evening became the reward for the dedication she had put into that task.
By the time Satoshi was able to enter elementary school, Inoue was already in sixth grade. Being of higher grade, it was impossible for her to be able to live with him at school as she would at her home.
When the hour of the end of the classes arrived, her faithful sister remained waiting for him at the school gate. When their eyes met, a candid smile on Satoshi's face made Inoue's cheeks turn red as he watched him with tenderness close to that of a mother. She carrying him in her arms like a spoiled child the whole way home.
One afternoon on their way back, a vehicle with tinted windows slowly followed them until they reached the apartments. As they were about to enter the communal patio, a man got out and held them forcibly into the back seat.
Inoue was completely terrified as she hugged a Satoshi who wouldn't stop crying, while the men in the front seats yelled at them trying to shut up the boy. When one of them reached out to grab him by the head, instinctively Inoue bit the guy's hand. Who without thinking twice hit him on the left cheekbone causing his eye to close completely.
The residents of the place only focused on observing through the windows of their apartments, without getting involved. Indolent of the situation in which the unfortunate little ones found themselves involved.
After a few hours, Naoko, the children's mother, appeared walking with her head downcast while she held some bags of food. She being greeted by the driver of the car who asked her to approach the rear window.
When the crystal lowered enough, Naoko's eyes panicked as she stared at her vulnerable and beaten children. Trying to cry out in horror, the man's hand came to rest over her mouth as the cold barrel of a gun dug into her side.
"I am sorry to have to do this to you even when you pay us the interest on the debt on time, but your husband has come back to us to ask for more money and it is not something you can cover with your current salary" - Isamo, the father of the children, completely mired in their vices, did not hesitate to sell their own children to the Yamguchi clan. Putting them as collateral for a loan that he ended up losing in gambling.
Upon learning of this, Aoi turned around in a sea of tears pleading with the man to have mercy on her children. Offering herself as collateral to cover that debt that now rested on her head.
Even though she was already close to forty years old, Aoi's face and body looked like those of a younger woman. Making the gangster's gaze fill with an unhealthy glow accepting her proposal.
From that day on, she Aoi began working in a bar for escorts in order to protect her children. Who, knowing of the sacrifice of her mother, endured even more in silence the derision of the people who lived around her.
Slowly, Inoue made it to high school, and the tough times of debt seemed less burdensome. The change of scenery in a new school, allowed her in a way to forget her reality and she began to experience a bit of the freedom that she had been denied.
That fragile bubble from day to day soon broke when it was time to go to school for her brother. Satoshi's radiant smile changed to a serious face and a captive gaze of suffering. Inoue knew what her brother was going through, for she herself had experienced it first hand.
Feeling a deep regret in her heart, the teenager tried to enliven the spirits of her little brother by giving him all the love she could by taking him to the playground or by telling him stories that from time to time, made the brightness of those beautiful eyes return for moments.
But misfortunes never come alone and everything that is crooked can never be straightened no matter how hard it is put. When she got to high school, a mild summer when the ginko leaves swayed in the breeze in the air. Inoue was coming home holding a small box with a cake inside.
That day was the birthday of her beloved brother Satoshi hers, a day that meant the most precious thing in the world to her. In the middle of trips that she made at school with her friends, the young women had managed to get some money to celebrate her brother's birthday.
"Hey girl, make that chubby face of your little brother smile from ear to ear" - Yumi held a bag of orange soda as she handed them to Inoue with a smile. Upon entering high school, the four girls felt an affinity with each other and formed a small group. Sharing their very similar lives and stories, trying to make each other strong by seeking their happiness.
With the debt almost paid off and her mother with a more spirited countenance, Inoue felt that her life was a little closer to regaining happiness. But all that ended when I reached the doorframe of the apartment.
The door was partially open, a smell of blood and liquor could be smelled as soon as the threshold was crossed. With her hands shaking in anticipation, the young woman pushed open the door and began to take short steps trying to keep her balance even when her legs looked like two bamboo poles swaying in the wind. Everything in the apartment was disorderly as if someone had entered to rob.
When he reached the living room, her lips began to tremble as her eyes filled with tears of agony. On one side, the body of her mother was prostrate in the middle of a pool of blood with a kitchen knife stuck to her chest. The look on her face had already lost its light for a couple of hours, but her eyes kept staring in the direction of the closet.
A few groans mixed with crying made Inoue immediately run to open the sliding door in one fell swoop. She dropping to her knees as she saw a small body struggling desperately to cling to life.
"Onee-san, I'm scared." - Extending her hand seeking to reach Inoue's, the life force was leaving Satoshi's little humanity. Who only for a few seconds could feel the warmth of the hand of her beloved sister, and then give a last breath with a smile on his lips.
With a scream that seemed to come from hell itself, Inoue let out all her despair and agony transcending those memories until the present of the battle.
Completely thrown on the ground in a fetal position, the young woman did not stop screaming due to the effects that the curse of the soul eater was subjected to her broken spirit.
"Satoshi, satoshi please forgive me ..." - Standing almost falling, Yukino continued assimilating the memories that had been shared through the bond of the curse. Even though her opponent had tried to kill her, he couldn't help but feel compassion for the young woman seeing the suffering she had gone through.
Thinking to herself that if the circumstances were different, she could possibly have gotten to know each other in a different way and be friends.
"Stop screaming like a stupid damn freak!" - Like a bolide that appears in the sky in a fleeting way, Azami stood in front of Yukino, kicking Inoue's body throwing her against Aiko, who could barely receive her against her chest without falling.
Grabbing Yumi by the neck, Azami smiled as he began to drain the young woman's existence without the slightest remorse from her. Due to her pain, Yumi regained consciousness from her as she pleaded in horror for her to stop.
Aiko, who was still stunned by the blow, saw that situation and ran creating a barrier to stop the outflow of Azami, who, having her within reach of her, broke her shield, taking her in the same way, taking her life.
The bodies of the two girls served as food for Azami, who stuck his tongue out of her like a reptile while he glanced at Yukino, who was still suffering from the effects of the curse mark.
It had already been two minutes since the time limit had been broken and the guardian now faced a much greater danger. The coin had been tossed into the air and with it, a life and death wager began.