One Plus Two Equals Three [Erika, Mizu]

"Gojū Hachi - Fuuryouki (風領域 ("てんらん"); Fifty Eight: Wind Domain)."

She muttered in tandem to her opponent's own Tenran though as Mizu was empowering it with further kido, Erika's was complimenting her swordsmanship. The blade she held becoming the medium of which the air reacted and so with the act of a few testing cuts she turned the air around her into disarry and caused the oncoming blades of wind to be met with as much air resistance as was necessary to leave her with minor cuts after it finally hit her.

"Is this all you are capable of? Kido, and more kido?"

Erika tested her opponent's pride and confidence though it would get them nowhere by the two doppelgangers opting to mirror one another. This wouldn't tell her anything and so she'd take the initiative here. She quickly made it clear that her questions were rhetorical. Erika was a show not tell kind of person.

"I hope not. The warm up is over, I'm going to be serious from this point on."

With that explained her demeanour shifted immediately from a bored, half-hearted display to threaten anything within her vicinity. It carried into her reiatsu which until this point had been passively exerted but now might as well have people on edge with the feeling of a knife pressed to their throat.

She looked less than amused by Mizu's approach, one might even say she seemed irritated but one could never tell with Erika. A scowl was such a common expression that it was her face at rest. Erika had already gotten under her skin with the taunt, she determined that she had won from that alone.

The other woman's technique was not the issue but the difference in reiryoku, it did not matter if Erika wasn't as proficient with kido if she could expend more of her spiritual power to counter it. She fell for the provocation though and rather than trying to close the gap between their levels of power, she had surrendered her advantage to challenge Erika at her own strengthes.

"You're dead."

Erika said to the empty space filled with Mizu a moment later, and then she showed her opponent the difference in their swordsmanship and speed by making an upward slash that happened faster than a person could blink. She was above all an honest woman, when she said she was serious she meant it, so the attack had no punches pulled in slashing the other vice-captain with surgical precision.

It was as simple as Mizu's attack but tempered through centuries of experience. It did not waste any force with every bit of force focused at the tip of the blade to maximise cutting through any resistance and defence; it was not lethal, but it was calculated to slash her from her thigh to her shoulder without piercing deep enough to strike an organ, and with that same momentum from her sword the forward motion of her opponent would stop so she'd crumple to the ground rather than fall on top of her.

Is that all? Her raised eyebrow asked seeing the oncoming ice. She held the hand up to take the brunt of the ice, becoming encased despite her sidestep given their close proximity. How naive, Erika had no qualms with taking blows even if it was a detriment. This was no different.

Her arm had become a weapon which a heave and shockwave from her reiatsu blew out in a curtain of frozen chunks to smash the encased arm against her opponents head with all the force of a club wielding monster. A club of ice that showed the arm that was dying in realtime underneath its translucent shape.

She would use her opponent against themselves, completely fine with launching her doppelganger away from her where she felt the most secure. Battle was as much a mindgame as it was a deadly dance: expressing assuredness in her own success to seed doubt in her opponent was as viable a tactic as slicing them into pieces.

Defeating a warrior's body paled to smothering their spirit like a drowned cat. The body was a sack of meat if the person had no strength to guide it.

Crystalised water clashed with a purple counterpart, a sparkle of ice and water catching the light to surround the two before they were separated, and her arm free from the explosion of ice against the defence.

Her golden eyes had shifted from their hard glare to become like a sword pointed at Mizu's throat. She was an expert of zanpakuto and she knew what she had just seen. An immediate release of shikai could only mean one thing and her opponent became all the more dangerous as a result.

How exciting.

It made her blood boil a little bit to get to fight someone who had unlocked their bankai. It was an opportunity to grind her blade on a complete sword, sharpening it, that changed the context of this entire fight. Before she had been trying to make her opponent acknowledge and recognise her own weakness but now she wanted to find her opponent's peak so that she could summit her.

She smirked at the oncoming spears while flexing her free arm. It had suffered from being frozen but that was fine. This arm was now less valuable than her dominant hand due to its reduced acuity, and so it was her stronger hand that swung the blade.

"Gojū Hachi - Fuuryouki (風領域 ("てんらん"); Fifty Eight: Wind Domain)."

Once more the reiatsu blew out of her sword in the shape of Tenran to whir the winds into action. It was made to capture and redirect the crystal spears into a whirlwind; she could let them grow their speed before firing them back, or simply keep them trapped in the tornado around her to prevent Mizu from freeing them.

There was a likeness to this zanpakuto that she found familiar and she had theories on how to beat zanpakuto that worked as projectiles, but this particular approach was less effective if the user could generate more projectiles.

Regardless, with all the tiny fragments flying around her as she rolled her wrist to keep the sword - and the wind - moving. Erika wanted to see just how much the vice captain was going to throw at her until she saw another weakness to exploit.

The idea of losing against someone who had bankai without seeing it was a thought that made her sick to consider. She'd vomit in disgust at herself and want to die to recover what little honour as a warrior she could. So she'd look for the means to push her opponent over that threshold.

Now, she might've been fascinated by whatever her opponent was trying to do but Erika also operated on a different sense of time than this woman did. She might be patient but she wasn't going to stand here all day waiting for it, and so about the time that Mizu was most vulnerable Erika decided to strike.

Far too much commitment when she should know her opponent had greater speed, the chunk of rock was trying to close the lid on her field and make it a prison but Mizu should understand that the wind was tied to her sword motion.

Her hand stopped, an upward flick of her wrist to throw all these rocks into the air and give her a clear dash to close to the distance with speed that she felt an aftershock in her petite frame. Faster than the sound of her sword touching the ground reached their ears and faster than the speedster's own eyes registered the movement, Erika meant to dash past and leave a nice wedge shaped hole in the side of Mizu with her flash of gold.

"I told you I was going to be serious, if you don't fight me with your all then you'll spend far longer in the infirmary than I will, or do you underestimate me that much?"

She reiterated with a bit of blood coming from the side of her mouth. She'd bit her lip on the way past.