"Bastard!"
As Ariyama launched himself at Genichirou, the blonde's face shifted from confusion, to realization, then to pure glee.
"Took you long enough, moron! I've wanted to gut your ass ever since that night."
He pulled a knife from his pocket and pointed it. The blade seemed to shimmer, then two copies split off from it, hovering above Genichirou's shoulders before shooting at Ariyama.
He gritted his teeth and moved to intercept. He dodged one knife and swung his sword to deflect the second.
"Oh, not bad! But without that Matsune bitch with you, you're a dead man!"
"Shut it!"
Ariyama was already close enough to slash Genichirou across the chest. One thing he noticed was that the blonde's reaction time was nothing to be proud of. A line of Ted opened across his chest, followed by Ariyama's knee crunching into his side. Genichirou barked in pain and rage, taking a few steps back before jumping away all together.
While in mid air, Genichirou summoned a half dozen knives and sent the glittering objects speeding at Ariyama, who was just now regaining his stance.
Crap.
Ariyama bared his teeth as he swung his whole body, bringing his sword around and up, catching three of the knives along his blade and sending them flying away. As he moved, he narrowly avoided another two, but with the last one, he wasn't so lucky.
Pain
Pain is what he felt as the last knife dug into his left thigh. At first, it felt weird, for his skin to be penetrated like that. As the knife embedded itself into his flesh, it stayed like that for a few moments before the proper pain set in.
But Ariyama couldn't focus on that, because Genichirou was already raising his knife and creating another torrent of knives. Shit. What was he going to do? Ariyama surveyed the scene and came to the obvious conclusion that the knife Genichirou held in his left hand must've been the main one, the Enchanted Tool itself, while everything else was just copies.
So, he needed to rip that knife out of his hands somehow–
"Focus on the fight, you brat!"
Genichirou screamed as he fired off the knives, but this time, only half of what he'd summoned, leaving the others still hovering over him. So he could control how many he fired too?
Just great…
Ariyama gasped as the pain flared red-hot down his left, and had to clumsily let himself collapse onto his knees to avoid the knives. The five or so sharp projectiles whizzed over his head, but Ariyama was stumbling to his feet before they even hit anything behind him.
He couldn't slow down. He just couldn't. Or else he'd be pierced every which way by those knives. As he ran to block the remaining objects, the pain flooding his leg began to spread upwards to his hip, as if it was an infection. Were those knives poisoned? He wouldn't be surprised, to be honest.
His arms burned with strain as he swung his clunky sword, left and right, blocking and smacking the oncoming knives. He was doing a lot better already than he had back during their first encounter, but that was solely thanks to his training.
Matsune had called him a 'quick-learner', after all.
"Come on now, 'Saato-kun'! Wanna show off for your little girlfriend, huh?"
Ariyama glared at Genichirou, noticing the cowering Kazura still on the floor in his peripheral vision. Her face was a mask of shock, her jaw hanging.
He deflected the last knife, his hands shaking and going numb, just as Genichirou moved into him at break-neck speed and kicked him across the hallway. Ariyama skidded, then jammed his sword into the floor to stop his momentum. The force almost tore his arm out of its socket, but it succeeded in slowing him to a halt.
Ariyama spat blood and when he looked up, he saw the nasty snarl on Genichirou's face, contrasting the cocky, easy grin he had on not even a minute before.
Why?
Ariyama had been too busy engaged in the fight to ask the simple question: why?
Why was it Genichirou?
Ariyama didn't particularly like the guy, since he was always so confident that it got on his nerves. But still, why was it him? Why couldn't it have been some random student Ariyama had never interacted with?
But then the thoughts came rushing to Ariyama's mind. It all lined up too perfectly to be coincidental.
Even though he'd supposedly been a transfer student for weeks before, Ariyama had only first seen Genichirou after coming back on his first day after the incident. Was that planned? Was Genichirou only getting close to him so he could kill him, like he was trying to do now?
But what was Genichirou's plan at all? Matsune – and by extension, Ariyama – were only trailing him due to him being an unregistered Tribute. So, did being unregistered automatically mean he was up to something malicious, or was it that maybe he was just trying to live his life, free of the control of the Pilgrims' Society?
Up until the point they found out the hooded man was seen snooping around the school after hours, Ariyama would've considered that. But by that point, he knew for sure that the man was up to something.
So what was Genichirou's plan?
He didn't have time to think, as he struggled to his feet and jumped back into the fray.