[HARUKI]
The world stopped.
Every fight. Every draw of his sword. Every life he took. Every fire he started.
Haruki was at a loss for words, let alone a line of thought.
'Ten years,' Haruki gasped internally as the thought hit him so hard that he fell on one knee, trying to keep himself steady.
Now that he paid more attention to the helmet on the side and the face he had just seen, he realized the moves had been way too familiar. The way the man had been fighting him. How he swung his sword.
It was a signature known only to ONE person in Haruki's life.
He should have known.
Gods, he really should have. But a man who only wanted to eliminate his enemies, Haruki, hadn't paid that much attention.
He'd been so focused on unmasking the man and letting the world know that he was the one to unmask the warrior who had been causing so much mayhem over the years that he forgot to think back to the awful familiarity.
Ten years. That was how long he had mourned.
How long had he spent bringing the name of… ten years.
"Did the Sondra Dynamite just falter?"
"No way."
"It makes absolutely no sense."
"He gave us to the man behind the mask, then hesitated?"
The whispers didn't reach him. He heard them alright, but he didn't listen. His world had narrowed down to the ghost of a truth he had never once considered in ten years.
"No," Haruki breathed in disbelief as he stared harder at the black helmet that was in the gourd, and then at the warrior who had been wearing it.
The masked warrior of Craenia.
The same kingdom that had taken everything from so many people over the years. The one that he had kept for last in his fight for the one thing that he loved more than he loved his own life.
The last kingdom in the alliance he had torn apart:
… had clearly taken everything from Haruki.
"Get up, Dynamite. I won't let my victory be judged by your submission. Pick up the dark sword and fight me," the masked warrior scoffed, his voice filled with so much disdain it was almost illogical to try to understand.
And Haruki…
Haruki's world tilted even more. Worse? He couldn't think.
That voice.
That face.
The Craenia armor?
There was just no way.
"Pick up your sword!!" the masked warrior insisted. And Haruki, for all he believed in, felt water pool in his eyes for the first time in ten years. He didn't feel like the Sondra Dynamite anymore.
Not even as the general of Jara.
At that moment, he felt dead. Broken.
It was a feeling that he wasn't sure he knew how to react to.
"What the hell is he doing?" Saito wondered in the distance, voicing what all the warriors were thinking. It made no sense.
The fight had been matched a little too well.
They had been fighting to the death moments ago, so what changed?
What was it that had the mighty Sondra Dynamite on his knee without so much as a push or shove from the now unmasked warrior? The battlefield was conflicted, possibly too excited by the sight before them.
The impossible was happening.
The warrior who was never seen now had a face. One that none of them was familiar with. Perhaps because of the endless scars on that face, or the red eyes that the warrior had.
Maybe it was because of how huge he was built and how he carried a blade that was the size of three blades at once. Maybe it is a single way that every step he took and always made the warriors on his battlefield cower in fear for the lives they would never get to live.
He did look young, though. That masked warrior. If it wasn't for the endless battle scars, it would have easily been assumed that he was a middle-aged warrior. Just like the donor dynamite.
"General Kira!" Saito shouted from across the battlefield.
And Haruki felt his breath leave him.
General Kira.
Kira.
A name he had adopted and grown to make everyone believe and call him, because he was too painful to utter to anyone. A name he had wielded like a weapon to keep him sane.
Now it felt like the cruelest of names.
At that moment, Haruki forced himself to stand.
He didn't pick up his sword, no. He left it there in the pool of blood and the ashes of a battlefield that they had been living in for a while now. And for a moment, everyone stared in silence.
The undefeated Sondra Dynamite had taken a pause.
But the man in front of him. The one with that face. Didn't seem as bothered.
In fact, when he noticed the Sondra Dynamite had left his sword on the ground, the unmasked warrior grabbed it harshly from the puddle of blood and flesh and thrust it into Haruki's hands.
The unmasked warrior ignored the way that the Sondra Dynamite was shaking like a leaf before him. It was a sight that unnerved the unmasked warrior, and frankly, it had him wondering what this Sondra Dynamite was playing at.
"Focus, General Kira," the unmasked Craenia warrior said with so much spite and hate.
But Haruki didn't move.
Not even to hold the sword that had won him endless battles.
"The Sondra Dynamite being begged to take his sword is diabolical, don't you think?" one of the red helmets spoke, his words making everyone hum in response and agree with him.
It was truly diabolical.
How a man who had never been bested was reduced to whatever they were seeing in front of them. and it wasn't even something that the unmasked warrior had done, and they were not sure what to make of this.
"We don't have all day, Konno! Finish the job!" a sudden voice spoke.
Haruki stiffened for a moment.
Then he turned to the source of the sound.
It wasn't the red helmets he had marched with one too many times to war with, no.
It was someone else.
Someone with the power to pull whatever this was. Someone with the power to fix things and yet had chosen to ruin it all. Someone who could have made so many lives keep going, and yet refused to.
Because of power.
The kind that came with having a masked warrior hidden from the world. The kind that came with the masked warrior having a face that was only ever familiar to one person in the Sondra realm.
Yuma Ishida.
The Craenia king.
"Konno?" Haruki asked, the name falling off his lips with so much grace and affection that it felt weird after so many years.
'He took everything and changed it all, save for this one?' Haruki asked himself as he stared past the masked warrior, at King Yuma Ishida. It made no sense whatsoever.
If the fates were playing a game, Haruki wasn't even sure he wanted to play anymore.
Not after everything that he had done.
Not after all that he had had to deal with.
"That's my name," the unmasked warrior confirmed, and Haruki felt his heart clench painfully. It hurt so badly that he hunched over in pain and rage and unspoken emotions.
And then he let his tears flow.
The general who had spent his life burning through kingdoms like they were nothing was tearing up.
The warrior hovering over him noticed it, clearly caught off guard by the sight.
But Konno wasn't bothered.
"Get your shit together, Dynamite. I have a war to finish, and I can't do that if you're crying like a baby on a battlefield littered with your killings," Konno insisted grimly.
He then grabbed the Sondra Dynamite by his armor, gripping the sword that was attached to the Dynamite's armor, and pulling him up. And even then, there wasn't much change.
Not even when Konno's with how intriguing Haruki's armor was.
Who even fought with one sword while carrying another?
"You can use this sword if you're too ashamed of the one that got you bested," Konno scoffed as he unsheathed the sword with a crimson tassel. But he didn't get to completely unsheathe it.
Haruki pushed him away, and fast. With all his strength.
The tasseled sword stayed in its sheath, and the one that Konno had been begging him to pick up was in his hands again.
"Don't you ever… ever touch that sword," Haruki warned, his tone icy even as his eyes stayed red and swollen with tears and emotions.
"General Kira!! General Kira!!" The red helmets cheered hopefully.
"Konno!! Konno!!" the black helmets shouted with pride.
But amid the cheers and the stench of lives fading away, there was a truly broken warrior who didn't know the first thing about what he had believed for years.
He looked like he had truly seen a ghost, like the universe had decided to pull his leg in the worst of ways, because what was this now?
Who even did this to a person?
"Fight!!"
Everyone wanted to go home. But they couldn't go home if this wasn't settled. And with the two warriors facing each other, they were aware of it, because with a renewed sense of rage, Haruki fought.
He swung his sword so cruelly that it was almost insane.
He made sure to land hits on Konno like it was what he had been born for.
Haruki had so much anger that had been reborn, and formally, if this was the end of the road for both of them, then Haruki would see to it that the fates made the choice this time.
"You fight like a bitch in heat, Dynamite," Konno mocked.
"I see your humor never changed over the years," Haruki said before realizing what he had just said.
"What did you just say?"