The Knight of Seridegan

Chapter 3

     Ray was experimenting a little with his magic, more specifically, Ten Shards of Wind. He had noticed that the closer he got them while forming them, the more it felt like they just wanted to become one thing. So, he sat there in his room for the better part of the day. (Weekend, no skipping classes for this hero... totally) He had gotten it to become one shape, but it wasn't exactly what he wanted. instead of being able to become more condensed in one space, as one blade, it had to cover something, like the blade of his sword. doing so made it want to explode on impact with anything it touched, which could be useful, wasn't what he wanted. He wanted to be able to have more strength in his attacks. The wind would absorb a part of what was being blocked, but he could control the sides into becoming wicked sharp edges, not off balancing his sword in the slightest.

 It was time to use this on a training partner, but admittedly he had to be very careful not to hurt them.  He wondered who it would have to be.

    Ray was outside training with Aki, who had summoned a scythe the day that he had pretended to summon his Kusanagi, but in a different class. It was odd really, she had to separate from her previous one to her new one. It looked mystical, that's the only thing he could place it as. it had a black and white shaft, the two colors intertwined and met at the end that connected to the blade. 

     The blade looked to be made of gold, but was as strong as steel. He knew this because she was swinging her scythe at him at the moment and even with his added strength from his Kusanagi, it made him stumble a bit to block her hits. He had had an idea about how to win the fight, because if he didn't become creative soon, he would lose the spar. He lifted his arm, and started his incantation, " Wind god of the East, heed my call, strike and repent, Ten Shards of Wind." 

Aki, expecting to be shot at, jumped back to get out of the way, but was surprised to see Ray take all ten of the blades, and drag them across his kusanagi, transforming the ten knife sized blades into a translucent wind covering over his blade. He gave a swing of his blade, and it connected with Aki's blade. Instead of him buckling, there was a boom and some of the pent up wind in his blade shot forward, and moved Aki a few feet away from him.

       Unknowingly, she had made a repetitive pattern, feint twice, block, strike at the chest, then go for the legs, but he made sure to block or step back in time. He finally managed to get out of her line of sight with a hayaokuri. He appeared behind her, already in mid-swing and stopped right before her neck. He held his blade there and Aki realized what had happened. She lowered her scythe and turned around with a huge smile plastered onto her face. 'How can one be so happy after losing?' He gave a small smirk and asked, "What's with the smile, is there something funny?" He looked at her, with her hair blowing softly in the wind before she looked him in the eye and said, "No, it's just that no one has helped me train before and for that I thank you. It's also quite exhilarating fighting someone who may or may not have more skill than you, is it not?" He nodded his head in confirmation. 

     He looked at the clock and realized he needed to train the spells that he had decided to learn. He thought about letting Aki watch or train with him, and realized it wasn't a bad idea. He looked over his shoulder and got her attention. "Hey, Aki, want to come and practice spells with me?" Aki visibly thought for a second and nodded her head, accepting. And so, the Black and blonde haired individuals used their high speed techniques to get to the academy training grounds, which he was told instead of concrete it was apparently a secret material to negate most magical effects, hence why spells don't really break this place.

     He raised his hand and shouted a ten shards of wind spell and releasing it. He didn't have to use the incantation, but it was pretty weak without one so he usually did. People strong enough had to try not breaking things or else the headmaster and Instructor got onto them and that was something he did not want to be a part of. So he and Aki just practiced their magic, Aki using some sort of high speed magic making her attacks way faster then before, while he used his ten shards of wind and used celestial regeneration a couple times on Aki to make sure she didn't run out of Spirit Aura. Ray had realized near the beginning of their training that Aki didn't have a lot of Spirit Aura, so using the celestial regeneration, instead of healing wounds he used it to heal Her Spirit Aura. (ok, I've been putting Spirit Aura way too much. For the rest of the chapter it will be called SA) He realized that his training was doing well for him, because he could now slightly sink ten shards of wind without incantation into the material surrounding the training grounds.

 He looked outside and realized it was getting dark so he shouted that he'd have to leave in a few minutes. He came inside and picked up the notebook that Aki had let him see for low level light spells, which were fast but didn't really hit hard. He headed towards Aki and gave her book back, and headed back to his dorm.

     He sat down at his desk close to a big crystal clear window at the side of class. It was the day after training his spells with Aki, which had actually drained a bit of his SA, but luckily he had almost two times the amount of SA then normal Senshi, at least, that's what Jigoku said. He was able to regenerate most of his Spirit Aura before the night had ended. 

     He looked to the window to his left, and seen that Aki was looking at him, not even trying to hide her staring. He swiveled his head fast and caught her staring. She just looked down at her book as if nothing happened, but he knew that he won. Wait, what was he saying, it's not a competition, why did he do the things he did? He looked back at the window, slightly listening to what the teacher was saying about monsters that frequented the city of Seridegan. These monsters happen to live in a different dimension, and are called Mushin, literally meaning no heart, the name coming from where stabbing them in the heart doesn't kill them. Well, it could, but the thing was, there was more then one heart, so stabbing one didn't do much so you would have to impale both. They were also iconic for having white ceramic like plating on their bodies, mainly the face though. Which, somehow cutting through it kills the beast, much easier then stabbing both hearts.

     He was walking down the street when he heard scrapes coming from an alley-way. It was fairly dark, with a fence at one end. Walking in he seen four guys with long knives ganging up on a girl that wasn't even fourteen yet. One had on a black shirt and some tattered gray sweats, the others had matching uniforms of white shirts and blue jeans. He let loose a bit of his Spirit Aura and the guys turned, seeing him for the first time. 

     The one with the black shirt, who he assumed was the leader, had a feral grin on his face, before saying, "Look what we have here, a hero. Go get him boys." He felt a tug within himself, and heard Jigoku asking to take care of this. 'Watch and learn Ray, this will be the next technique that I show you, so listen and listen well.' Three out of the four guys were almost on top of him, but then Jigoku spoke. 

     "What are the corners my chains cannot reach? What is the pain I cannot inflict? Scream in agony, Jigoku no kusari" The feeling permeating from his words made the gang stop in their tracks, not having ever felt such energy before. Grabbing for his kusanagi, he unsheathed it and watched as the sword lit up with black flames. Pointing his blade in their direction they were surrounded by chains made out of the same black fire, slowly eating away at their body and soul. Jigoku let Ray have his body back, allowing him to walk up to the girl.

     "Hey, my name is Ray, it's horrible that those guys where beating you up, I'm very sorry about that. What's your name kid?" Looking at her again, this time actually paying attention to detail, he realized she had black hair and blue eyes, having a black jacket, partially covering her blue shirt (Jacket is unzipped, no X-Ray vision here) and she was also wearing Black Jeans.
     "My name is Jhi, they used to be friends of mine, but then I left because they done sick and horrible things to others." His mind wandered a bit, thinking of all of the responses that he could say to that, and decided simple was nice.
      "So Jhi, do you want to become a senshi? Because if so, I might help with it." Jhi immediately responded with an answer that didn't shock him, but disappointed him to hear. "I want to be a senshi, if I do I can get revenge for my mother and father." Ray scowled a bit at the revenge part, but decided he would try to put in a good word for her, that is, if she was worth his time. "So Jhi, why not train with me? I am currently a student at the academy, and I could teach you what they teach us."

Yes, I realize Jhi is a little... Edgy, trust me, she wont be for long.  Also, I realize that it looks like Ray is better than Aki, let me tell you one thing. Aki doesn't have the same... background as Ray, which you will find out later (YAY! Character development!)