The GATE Academy [Please read description]

Chapter 9: Victory and News

The new Hiro-Hisashi flexed his newfound muscles before rushing towards me like a linebacker in football. In the split second I had before he was on me, I could have sworn that the ground was shaking.

This guy was like 3 Ren Tomoyas and I knew that one blow from him would be enough to ground me. That just meant that I needed to be that much more careful. Unfortunately his speed remained the same as before, it seemed as though his drastic increase in muscle mass did not effect his previous abilities or perhaps his speed was increased to compensate for the new mass and in turn seemed the same. Whatever the physics behind his speed was, it was the same.

Luckily, I still had advantage speed-wise over Hiro-Hisashi, though, his speed was not quite as slow as I had hoped it would be.

As the 8' tall hunk of muscle barreled towards me, I quickly sidestepped to my right, drew my sword from its sheathe with my left hand by reaching across my body and grabbing the hilt from my back, and sliced the left side of Hiro-Hisashi. His skin was super compact with muscle and I felt like I was cutting through diamond, which I can cut through, but with much difficulty. This guy was definitely stronger than Ren.

As I successfully drew my blade across his side, I stepped my left out in front of him. Hiro-Hisashi had raised his left arm and was bringing it down to crush me. I crouched and lifted my right leg off of the ground and ducked out of the way of his arm to sit directly in front of him. I leaped up to eye-level with Hiro-Hisashi and dragged my sword along his right leg and upwards along his torso, I could see pain and pure abhorrence in his eyes as I did so. I continued through with the leap and flipped over Hiro-Hisashi's left shoulder, landing in a crouch behind him on his left side.

Hiro-Hisashi reared his head back and roared in pain before turning to his left and swinging his tree-trunk-of-an-arm towards me. I looked at the approaching attack from my left and waited until his arm was close enough. Once his arm was a short distance of three feet away, I propelled myself out of my crouch in a sort of backflip that resulted in me shifting over five feet to the left upon landing. Hiro-Hisashi, with his attack dodged, had to continue with his move, which left me the perfect opportunity to strike.

I, still crouching, switched my blade over to my right hand and ran as close to the ground as I could towards the left leg of Hiro-Hisashi, five feet away. Upon reaching an appropriate range, I sliced horizontally across the Achille's Tendon of Hiro-Hisashi's leg. He immediately began to collapse backwards to his left, which all the more increased his leftward spin.

I continued my sprint and evaded the collapsing mass as it crashed into the ground with an earth-trembling thud. Firepower was not necessary in his defeat.

I turned around to face the grounded Hiro-Hisashi and approached him, I raised my sword and...

In a split second, Hiro-Hisashi was kneeling on his left knee with my neck in the firm grip of his right paw/hand. Gasping for air, I spewed out a column of flame into the behemoth's face, but with a single squeeze from him, my air passage was completely cut off and my flames ceased to come forth.

"You..." I looked down at Hiro-Hisashi's bleeding left foot as he began to stand, lifting me up off of the ground a good two feet. Black splotches started to impair my vision.

"Do you know how long it's going to take for this to heal?? I'm going to..." Hiro-Hisashi began to raise his left fist in the air behind him, "... end your life here!!" He roared.

Hiro-Hisashi began to throw his punch, but before he could do so, a crouching figure intercepted it by landing on his arm and catching the punch with his right hand alone.

"Hey there, cat boy," Riku grinned.

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Asuka Isobe, yes, the name sounds more familiar now. The Isobe line of pixies were the most difficult to fight, too bad I didn't have my true demon form on me right now, I could have ended this quickly.