Who is Queen? [Shishiyuki, Kasha]

"I am aware."

A flat, yet profoundly confident, response to Kasha's smug comment accompanied the immediate utilization of the Kusamakura Hangetsu Taishou, the Half Moon Caravan. After all, she would hardly need exceptional spiritual exertion in this situation. Even a fraction of her capability was more than enough to perform all but the most esoteric and lethal of Ichibyou Senkuka's techniques. Her first step was already quite faster than it ought to have been on account of the Half Moon Caravan, but this step was only the most subtle of repositions. A slide of one foot across the stone floor, then the other, and a narrow avoidance of the reiatsu that threatened to scorch her if she did not respond appropriately.

"I have no intention of having fun with this."

Considering her position was already shifting to one side, Shishiyuki opted to utilize the momentum of this evasive maneuver to whip a single leg toward Kasha's shoulder. Nearly on instinct, she had readied herself to perform the Houtou, but such a thing was not only far too destructive, it was not even a demonstration of the Koizumi family techniques. If this was to be her victory, she would have it made only by the style of which she had been deemed master. Instead, she reoriented just neatly enough to perform the Chihaya Senbashoku, the Ship-Breaking Perch. A technique all but identical to the Ship-Breaking Minnow in its fundamentals, a single digit carrying the full force that one's body could impart into a single blow, it bore only one distinct difference; delivery by way of the tip of the foot, rather than the tip of one's finger.

Could such a blow, if flawlessly delivered to the back and not sufficiently guarded against, have simply shattered Kasha's ribs, if not her spine? Yes, possibly. But would it be lethal?

Most likely not.

Humph. What a bore, Kasha knew that any of the woman's strikes would be devestating and while she'd love to wear a scar from her - a reward given without being earned was a disgusting thing on her part but this woman was not known as a bird for no reason. She was not as scarred as Shishiyuki for that very reason.

Every scar deserved to be a stroke of art on the canvas that was her body.

Kasha didn't think about whether or not she wanted to sidestep, it was true that she preferred evasion but one of the reasons that she did not bother with dodging this particular strike was because of one important detail that also tied into her preference for an exposed upper body.

Wings.

It did bother her a little that her student liked to copy her particularly literal bird motif but she figured she'd demonstrate it for Shishiyuki by tensing her back and letting her reiatsu flare in a red haze that looked like brilliant bird wings for a moment and counter the kinetic force of Shishiyuki's offence.

Hoping that the surprising burst from her rear was enough to stagger her for even a minute, Kasha's hand shot to try and put a finger on her diaphram. The key moment of disorientation since no move within the Phoenix Crown Fist was recorded to use jabs when it mostly involved tearing and cauterising flesh instantly and that was her student's little unorthodox idea.

She just wished that he had actually bothered naming it, but she never expected him to name such a cruel technique which tried to forcefully inject her fire attribute reiatsu into Shishiyuki's lungs and burn them even a little. It was not the true usage that would fill their lungs with heated ash and cause them to suffocate and burn horribly - Kasha did have honour after all, and no killing was a rule but as far as maiming her lungs for a little bit, it was free game.

It was quite a foolish thing, to treat a scar as something to be merited for its occasion. Shishiyuki did not bear the scars on her body simply because she had been wounded by others. In her thousand years of life, she had crossed paths with so few who could truly match her that she could likely count them on her hands. No, Shishiyuki bore every one of her scars proudly for a profoundly different reason.

Each and every one of them was a sign that she did not take half-measures. She would not allow mere injury to disrupt the execution of even a single technique which belonged to Ichibyou Senkuka.

While Kasha's reiatsu flared outward, Shishiyuki did not stagger in the slightest bit, for she had already committed herself in the fullest to the completion of the blow. This, in turn, meant that even the rebuffing she met was something she had simply expected might occur. After all, this was not some mere amateur she was facing. This assessment was only proven all the more correct as a technique which she certainly did not recognize was brought into the equation.

It was with no small degree of reluctance, then, that she used the force of her kick to reposition herself, rather than to simply bore into Kasha's back. Every unknown was a dangerous thing to consider in a fight with one such as she. After kicking off of Kasha's back and taking up a wholly different stance several feet away, Shishiyuki simply watched and waited. The two of them, as far as she was concerned, had narrowly avoided crippling each other for life.

"A good method of keeping yourself protected."

"Mmmph. Having fun yet?"

Kasha teased while swatting her hand to try and send another pressurised wave of searing heat to burn the trails of her nails through Shishiyuki's gut. Taking a moment to stare at her intensely focused, it would be incredibly fatal to her wellbeing to even lapse for a minute and so for however long she spent staring at Shishiyuki felt like a fight in its own right.

Overall she thought it was okay, deciding to test the waters with part of her style which made it so problematic for another individual to fight her at times. That was one of the most basic and original techniques, Fire Rat Breathing Style. She concentrated her breathing, regulating the flow and pressure of her reiatsu in the process before she expelled it from her pores in a thick burning haze that caused her whole body to look distorted from the sheer amount of heat she generated around herself that made her look like a mirage.

The perfect combination of offence and defence in addition to a style which didn't draw any blood, if the stillness persisted then her hotblooded nature would happily start things back up again with a jump that cracked the stone below her feet. Up towards the ceiling and kicking off that to shoot like a meteor down towards Shishiyuki.

"Certainly not."

Indeed, Shishiyuki was not enjoying this. It was not, however, because she could not. Rather, allowing herself to enjoy this would be far from prudent, seeing as the very idea of killing anyone, much less one of her own kin, was far from ideal. No matter how little she thought of the elder Kasha, she would never dare to lose control of herself so sufficiently as to kill the woman.

More to the matter at hand, however, Shishiyuki's eyes immediately followed after Kasha, though the application of such tremendous heat for the sake of disguising her intentions was admittedly quite impressive. She might have conceded that it even gave her difficulty, were she facing an opponent she respected. Instead, she simply watched as if it were hardly something worth concerning herself with. The leap upward from Kasha seemed almost amateur, something so fundamentally opposed to the principles of combat that she wondered if it were merely a faint. The moment you abandoned the ground, you ceded the battlefield to your opponent. Flight was always a factor, of course, but the earth below was still a fundamental part of the arena.

As Kasha shot downward toward Shishiyuki, she took in a single breath, her whole body tensing as she centered herself and ended the Half Moon Caravan. It would not be necessary, whether this blow decided the fight or not. It was possible, she supposed, that Kasha would use this dive as a feint, but Shishiyuki doubted she would do so. She even met the woman's eyes, and despite it being so opposed to her character, she smirked. A challenge had been made now.

With a single measured blow upward, Shishiyuki simply struck out with a fist that carried all the energy she might have applied to one blow. It was not a technique that one could use against any opponent in any situation. It was, rather, one which depended fundamentally on matching the enemy's committed strike. The Chihaya Shousei Kyoureki. A blow which utilized the body's energy not to attack, but to reflect. The energy in Shishiyuki's fist rotated at such speeds as to border on the incomprehensible, creating a strike that was not only able to slice through nearly anything, but which would rotate the vast majority of external energy away from her and back toward the one who had attacked her. If met directly, as was the explicit intention of the technique, it could not reasonably be outclassed by any technique. Only raw strength.

It was, of course, a tremendous gamble, but Shishiyuki had not gained her scars by fighting safely.

Simply yielding the ground was normally enough to concede the fight, Kasha knew that but that's because to remove one's feet from it was to commit in its entirety to that move. The human body could not readjust itself once it had moved, yet Kasha did not abide by human restrictions. She was after all, the flowing flame-like bird and she flew.

From Shishiyuki's perspective the transcient red wings appeared again and appeared to flap from the sudden tense of her muscles which caused her trajectory to change. Raku Ho Ha, took advantage of a person's commitment and in doing so Kasha appeared to move away and underneath the fist so that she could grab at Shishiyuki's outstretched wrist with her immolated hand and hold it.

This was arguably more foolish than just meeting the strike in a dead heat contest of prowess since her hold was sure to not last long but it's all she needed to swing herself in off the point of contact and put her foot against Shishiyuki's chest. A mirror of how the sage had adapted her last attack to be delivered through the foot, quite clever and now Kasha was trying to exploit the very same action to give her lungs a painful stab of pain from the heat outside and that was injected inside. Again, not enough to maim her but to ruin her ability to focus her breathing for a bit due to the extreme amounts of pain.

Impressive. Very impressive, in fact. Shishiyuki would certainly bear scars from this single decision, but that did not bother her terribly much. The searing pain that filled her chest was quite distracting, yes, and most likely would have simply fainted from it outright. However, the chief point of Shishiyuki's focus in this fight had not actually been on the fight in itself.

It had, rather, been on holding herself back.

Shishiyuki might have considered Kasha wholly foolish for bringing herself into such close quarters, where her style was at its most dangerous, but of course that would have been unreasonable, given Kasha could not begin to know of the deepest secrets of Ichibyou Senkuka. Then again, whether or not it was reasonable was hardly relevant to Shishiyuki now, considering her usual self-control had been quite disrupted by Kasha's own ability.

For the briefest of moments, Shishiyuki had prepared herself to prepare the Jitteika, but such a technique would without question have been far too potentially lethal for a situation like this. So, instead, she simply looked to the foot now squarely against her chest. An advantageous position, given Kasha likely assumed she would choose to try and escape. But she was far from a coward.

Striking out with a single knee, at speeds which most could never hope to match, Shishiyuki performed the Chihaya Raitonsui, but with one modification for this particular situation. She had no intention of her knee striking her opponent's chest. It was, rather, a raised knee which shot directly toward Kasha's leg, the very same which had stricken her chest. There was rather little one in this position could do to dodge such an attack, given the degree of commitment she had already made. This technique was quite explicitly designed to shatter the whole of one's ribcage upon impact, to kill if delivered powerfully enough. A single leg was, by comparison, a quite fragile target.

It was something to commend in a student but was honestly more arousing to Kasha, the very act itself spoke to make her concede some respect to the Head. Beyond that stupid title of being leader of the family, it was the way she did not hesitate to strike back. Normal individuals would cower like mutts at the adversary that was her reiatsu being such a thick haze of pure heat and spiritual density that surrounded her body but Shishiyuki had not only remained in close proximity and chose to resist than retreat - she had retaliated.

The only thing she could do was make sure that the fabric over Shishiyuki's leg was burned away and that pretty scarred flesh was given a burn for its work. The only saving factor for her leg was the dense amount of reiatsu that surrounded her form which helped to resist some of the damage but the sound of bone breaking filled the room for a moment and she felt the warm sensation of blood dripping down the leg where pieces of bone had been blasted through. Combined with her fiery aura the liquid was sizzling as it boiled on her skin.

"You really are something hot and spicy. Not many people have the guts to attack something that burns them at the touch."

Despite the fact her leg was ruined, it didn't stop her from kicking off Shishiyuki and release the woman's wrist, that hand swiping at her face to deliver another attack from afar as she backed away and gave her some space. Just a little breather, it was getting quite hot in here wasn't it? Kasha wondered just how the climax would go after this clash of bodies.

While she showed no sign of the pain that ran through her absolutely destroyed leg, it hurt like a bitch to just stand there and have to feel the pressure run up its length which had lost any kind of support in it.

"I will not disrespect even one technique by cutting it short simply for my own well-being."

Shishiyuki may have been quite burned by Kasha's techniques, but that was, if anything, only beneficial to her. She now understood precisely the degree of heat she had to expect for future strikes, and she knew how much to steel herself for future contact. After all, it was not as if this fight was over. Her opponent could not be expected to evade well on a broken leg, but Shishiyuki was not one to bet everything on a single crippling blow. She did not give Kasha any time to breathe, any time to recover. A swift dash directly to her side, in such a manner that any evasive maneuver would demand she utilize her broken leg to the fullest. A demand that Shishiyuki knew would be far too taxing on even the most well-trained body, at the speeds they both were capable of.

The Houtou that Shishiyuki had demonstrated to her most prized pupil had, of course, not been one of the techniques of Ichibyou Senkuka. But it had been one step in the development of a technique which she had deemed acceptable for the school. The destructive rotation of spiritual energy was a principle that Shishiyuki knew all too well could be refined into something greater. Something worthy of one day being passed to a successor.

Mugen - Empty Spiral.

As Shishiyuki reached Kasha, her leg whipped toward her opponent's remaining leg with all of her momentum. While the Houtou created what was in effect a rotating saw of spiritual energy, the Mugen created a near-imperceptibly small disc. When one struck with Mugen, there was no spray of blood and viscera. The more condensed, more rapid rotation instead pulled away at such speed that it created a vacuum for the duration of the impact. It was enough to damage the site of the blow down to the deepest level, to turn bones nearly to dust and to tear muscle beyond mundane repair. Of course, the Koizumi had access to some of the greatest practitioners of kido in the Soul Society. Even something as catastrophic as this would be no issue to them.

So this was it. If she were a weaker woman, a coward if you will then she'd have given up, tapped out. What kind of person would she be if she did that? Unacceptable and to what was a lot more of her nature the Master of Phoenix Crown Fist the bird that was referred to the emperor of all birds just stood defiantly and started laughing without bothering to try and dodge or counter. It wasn't like making a move like that would do anything and so she was content with their spar and give Shishiyuki the freedom to maim her leg which wouldn't be something that she forgot anytime soon.

"Bwahahahaha-Ugh."

Kasha didn't exactly fall to the ground though after she had both of her legs maimed to the point of being unusable. Given the way her hands were at her side and facing towards the ground, it would take a moment to see that the normal jets of her reiatsu that she'd swipe a target with from afar were instead functioning in such a manner as to take all the pressure off her not exactly ruined but still utterly screwed up leg that had the sizzling of blood audiably continue.

"Well played, Shishiyuki. I didn't quite expect that level of performance from you, and some of those techniques were pretty nice."

Contrary to the sensible option of actually going straight to get help, Kasha seemed unfazed and remained in her dubious looking stability on her one foot that could take the pressure with only immense levels of pain rather than being physically unable to perform.

"Worked up a nice sweat, I might go back to the sauna now and wait until my runt of a student gets back. I'm sure he'll have plenty of fun practising his healing techniques on the level of shit you just inflicted. Wanna come or still insisting on waiting for your boyfriend elsewhere because his mummy is too much?"

Her words were still abrasive, her face was smug as she finished but her eyes held her in a different regard than what they initially had - they did actually respect her now but Kasha didn't do anything as shallow as changing the way she acted based on that. For her the best thing she could do for people was treat them all the same even if that was provocative.

The woman had teeth and was more than just bark, how could she not be so riled up after that climax of a finish? Hence, cooling off and letting all that just steam out of her sounded great.