Shadow Slave | School Days

 Flames roared through the grand hall, devouring everything in view as they rose to the ceiling untamed and unruly. Dead bodies were littered across the floor, each one forming their own small pool of blood and telling its own story of a life easily and brutally snuffed out by Mordret's martial prowess.

Sunny stared down his opponent, each of his senses honed to a sharpened point as his eyes remained focused on Mordret. If either party made a single wrong move, they would end up maimed or even worse. Visions of the future battle played throughout Sunny's head as he shook it slightly to rid himself of distractions.

Mordret's cheerful voice rang out through the inferno, filled with madness and excitement as he smiled brightly. "You see it too, right? We're equally matched, predicting the outcome of the fight before it happens is useless. Let's leave it to luck!"

Instead of responding with words, Sunny's fist blurred as he launched his initial salvo of strikes at Mordret's head. A spinning heel kick intended to rip his skull from his body soared past his head soundlessly, Mordret leaned back to avoid the blow only for a devastating palm strike to meet him in the ribs.

Raising his sword to block, Mordret felt his bones shake under the impact, letting out a grunt of effort as he spun the flat of his sword sending Sunny sliding to the side. Mordret's blade shimmered through the air, cleaving apart soot and flames as it closed in on Sunny with lethal grace.

Swaying out of the swords lethal arc, Sunny sent a flurry of kicks at Mordret's chest which he was forced to block with the flat of his blade. With a flick of his wrist, Mordret's sword cleaved the air slicing the position where Sunny had once been. If he was an ordinary opponent, Sunny would have died immediately.

But he was far from ordinary.

Twisting his body, Sunny narrowly avoided the blade, landing in a crouch and preparing to blitz at Mordret once more. The fight escalated in intensity quickly. Each time Sunny closed the distance between them, Mordret opened it once more as the two danced across the wire thin line that kept the two uninjured.

Feinting left, Sunny leapt up and drove his elbow into Mordret's throat. However, Valor's white ghost leaned backward in the exact moment he needed to. The strike grazed his skin, making it go red slightly from the friction as Mordret retaliated with a downward slash.

Sunny leapt backward, allowing the slash to leave a deep gash into the marble floor, sending shards of stone flying randomly. "It's like I'm fighting a mirror, unless I stop moving, we can't hit each other! And when we do, it would be trading blows! Tell me Sunny, do you bleed?"

Nodding slightly, Mordret laughed slightly "I do too! But obviously we can't trust one another, so let's prove it with evidence!" Blurring toward one another, Sunny lashed out with a knee strike which was deftly evaded by Mordret. Swaying back slightly, Sunny spun on his heel like a top before slamming his foot into Mordret's forearm.

'Capoeira? Where did he learn that? He isn't even Mexican! What a culture vulture.' Mordret joked internally as he was forced to grunt from the throbbing pain that seared through his forearm. Another kick caught him across the jaw, sending him stumbling backward toward a burning table.

Mordret landed on the table with a thud, not paying mind to the flames that licked at his shirt before shaking his body slightly to disperse them. Gripping his sword in both hands, Mordret blurred from view. His onyx blade whistled its deadly song through the air as he unleashed a series of slashes, each one getting progressively faster than the last and more precise.

They were adapting to one another, slowly getting used to the intricacies of the other's battle style. It would only be a matter of who assimilated the other's battle style into their mind then dissected its weaknesses first to determine the winner.

That is… if either had any weaknesses. 

Mordret stood still, his tall frame relaxed with one hand resting on his sword as he stared at Sunny with a wide smile. The two released grunts of effort as blood trailed from Sunny's body, it always came down to issues like these when one fought a sword user.

An irrefutable fact had demonstrated itself within this fight, as well as many others Sunny had engaged in. For him to hurt Mordret, he would need to put in far more effort than Mordret needed to only for a similar level of damage. But that didn't matter, Sunny had a nigh limitless pool of stamina to draw from.

Sunny exploded forward, tearing the distance between the two into pieces. His movements remained a whirlwind of blinding speed and precision as he weaved countless martial arts together. Frankly, he didn't know how he had learnt them, that was a secret he would need to investigate far later.

If he survived.

A low sweeping kick knocked Mordret off his feet, sending his body barrelling to his side as his balance abandoned him midair. As he twisted upward, Sunny sprung from the floor with a push that dented the ground, slamming a brutal elbow into Mordret's jaw.

Instead of blocking like a regular human, Mordret flickered through the air, disappearing into thin air as Sunny's elbow struck nothing. Unable to see where his opponent had gone, Sunny was only greeted with the blinding glint of a sword as he bent his head to the side, ducking a downward slash from Mordret.

Using the opportunity, Sunny shifted his weight, moving into the gap between Mordret's arms before sending his foot upward, slamming his heel into Mordret's jaw with a sickening crunch as his brain bounced across the borders of his skull. Being sent flying backward, a spurt of blood escaped Mordret's nose as he rolled out of the way to dodge a downward stomp from Sunny.

"Hey! That isn't fair! Those type of moves only happen in Naruto! Wait, shit, copyright!" Mordret exclaimed. Before Mordret was able to continue his rant, Sunny was upon him once more, twisting his body at an impossible angle even for the most trained contortionists as a kick tore through the space where Mordret's head had once been.

Swaying downward, Mordret brought his sword upward in a controlled arc, hoping to cleave his opponent into pieces before Sunny regained his balance. However, Sunny spun midair, slamming his foot onto Mordret's shoulder and pushing off it to add to his speed as he pushed away from him.

The kick wasn't intended to do damage, merely to increase the distance between the two and void being utterly bisected by the lethal blade. Sunny's feet only touched the floor for mere moments as Mordret appeared above him, swinging his blade downward to catch Sunny as he landed.

Leaning to the side, the attack grazed his arm slightly, causing pain to lance through his body. However, Sunny wasn't allowing Mordret to repeat the same move unpunished as he spun on his heel, slamming his elbow into Mordret's liver and sending him skidding to the side.

With a grunt, Mordret stagged back, a crazed smile arriving on his face as he took his stance once more. "Say Sunny, you want to know something? I'm afraid, so very afraid. I'm afraid of dying to you right now in whatever brutal way you have planned." Running his hand across his bloody nose before smiling even wider than before. "But that's what makes it fun!"

In a blur, a glancing cut opened a shallow wound on Sunny's shoulder, sending a thin line of blood trickling down his arm and dampening his black shirt as another slash threatened to remove his ear. But Sunny wasn't done. Leaping onto a balcony, Sunny silently pushed off it and launched himself at Mordret. Attempting to slam his knee into his stomach only for Mordret's kick to send him flying into a nearby wall.

Yet Sunny didn't stop. With a slight shake of his head, he shook off the lingering debris before blurring toward Mordret. His fists lashed out in a blur—jabs, hooks, palm strikes—each in an attempt to breach Mordret's defences. Mordret blocked each blow with the flat of his blade, deflecting each blow with his defences still holding strong. Suddenly, the next attack came.

It wasn't a strike as he had done many times before, instead his fingers curled around the bladeless section of his odachi in a firm grip. Before Mordret even knew what had happened, he was midair, the force of Sunny's throw caused Mordret's body to contort in odd angles as he saw Sunny below readying himself for a follow-up.

"Nope! This happened before I think, wait I might be delusional! Anyways, let's try this again!" Mordret exclaimed as he fell before his arm blurred from view. Sunny only had enough time to grab a nearby knife before throwing it into the air however it was too late.

A vacuum blade smacked his knife to the side, a slam of sound colliding with Sunny's ears leaving an incessant ringing as Sunny leapt to the side and narrowly avoided the falling blade. "It isn't fucking normal to break the sound barrier. Much less to do it to this extent." Sunny hissed silently.

"So, you can talk when you fight! Here I thought I was in a one-way relationship… kind of like your one with Seis—OOPS I shouldn't be distracting you mid fight." Sunny usually was not one to easily fall into anger, yet the mention of Seishan's name rose a rage within him that Sunny forgot he had.

Eyes darkening, Sunny blitzed toward Mordret and sent a punch at his stomach. "This isn't an anime; you don't get way stronger by getting angry." Mordret chided, his left hand snapped forward, not to swing his sword but as a counter grab. Gripping Sunny's wrist tightly, he pulled him toward him and slammed a brutal knee into his stomach.

Letting out a small grunt of effort, Sunny met Mordret's eyes as a crazed smile arrived on his face. "Don't let me get this close again if you want the fight to last." He stated his tone monotone. In a moment, Mordret's face was slammed into the marble floors, blood spurting from his nose as he leapt away from Sunny.

The two heavily damaged fighters stood across from each other, Mordret snapping his nose back into place as Sunny punched his left shoulder lightly, a brutal pop resounding through the flames as he relocated his shoulder back into its socket. Suddenly, both opponents released a torrent of blood from their mouths as they fell to a knee.

Sunny's continued strikes at Mordret's stomach and the continued beatings Mordret had dished out onto Sunny had pushed their bodies to the limit. Damage finally set in on the two, however both could only widen their eyes as they saw their opponents' wounds slowly closing before them.

"They experimented on you too?" Both said in unison. "We'll talk about it later; loser spills all their secrets and maybe dies after." Mordret said with a smile. Sunny didn't offer him a reply as he watched the man let go of his sword and suddenly fall unconscious.

Thinking the fight was won, he was only proven severely wrong as he saw Mordret's body slowly sway to his feet, a press of death he had never felt before in his life settling over his body as he stared at the man… no… demon who stood before him.

"What a monster."