2nd Chances

Part 2

In a flash Tengen blitzed towards Giyuu using a technique Giyuu easily read.

"His first form." Giyuu quickly dropped his stance and opted for defensive measures.

"Dead Calm" Giyuu's eyes tracked every motion, every twitch of Tengen's muscles. He perfectly countered every single slash whilst simultaneously avoiding any small explosions Tengen's weapons created.

Giyuu quickly leapt back, a giant Spiked ball flying straight towards him. He easily avoided the ball as it smashed the surrounding ground where it landed.

Giyuu hadn't had to fight to this level in a long time, the added addition of his arm back made his attacking capabilities a tad lower then he'd like. He was still adjusting to moving like this again, to swinging a blade with two hands.

There was no time for distractions, the two hashira's attacks were unrelenting. Giyuu was put on the backfoot choosing to dodge, block or parry any attacks he saw possible. After what seemed like a losing battle to the others he decided to finally go on the offensive.

The entire first half of the sparring match wasn't even a challenge, he found it so odd that he could so easily defend such attacks that would normally be unblock-able or near unavoidable.

"Enough practice, let's see what I CAN do." Giyuu countered one of Tengen's attacks, quickly pushing tengen on the defensive. Giyuu easily began to overwhelm tengen with raw speed and strength, normally this would be impossible but now it seemed so easy to him. Perhaps a side effect of having fought upper moons and the demon king, a simple non-marked hashira not even in his prime was practically light work for him. Now that he had time to get used to his arm again he used his techniques to perfection.

Giyuu's only problem was Gyomei, every time he came close to completely knocking Tengen out of the fight, he would stop him. Gyomei's weapons possessed incredible range which was quite tricky to get around. He had no problem keeping up with these two but their teamwork was his only issue.

Giyuu moved to clash blades with Tengen, in an instant he zigzagged his blade between both of Tengen's nearly knocking one out of Tengen's hands and shattering the other on contact. Then in the brief second he had left he weaved in between Gyomei's attacks using his breath style's naturally high agility. Closing the distance in less then a second.

"This is it."

Giyuu slowly began to overwhelm Gyomei's defenses with each subsequent strike he turned up the pace until finally breaking through allowing for his blade to come only inches from his neck.

"That's enough!" Kyojuro yelled, signaling the end of the match.

Giyuu retracted his blade back as he began to sheath it. He took a deep sigh, he did beat them by a good margin, but it didn't feel right.

"Himejima-San, you were holding back." He said with a sigh.

"Sorry, I didn't wish to harm you." Gyomei said apologetically with tears flowing down his face.

"What the HELL was THAT!" Tengen loudly exclaimed as he approached Giyuu, the other hashira doing the same.

"What do you mean." Giyuu replied back dryly.

"When did you become that strong?" Tengen said with a look of disbelief similar to the other hashira.

Throughout their entire match he had noticed it the most. Giyuu's eyes, they didn't seem at all the same. Tengen had seen many things in his life, but those eyes of Giyuu's, they were the eyes of someone who had seen things. They looked weary but at the same time, so calm?

To them, it seemed like Giyuu suddenly became many times stronger seemingly overnight.

Giyuu clenched his right hand a few times.