Interlude 8

Tea Capital
Oda Naginata

She was hot. The grass she was laying upon was nice and soft, and the smoke that covered her like a blanket was warm. Distantly, she knew she should be getting up now, but she was entirely too comfortable to move. She just wanted to keep sleeping.

“Fire Release! Fire Dragon!”

Steel crashed into steel. Fires roared to life and died shortly after. Sandals shifting to tear up grass and earth. Amused laughter carrying through the air.

“Fire Eater Seal!”

Tiredly, her eyes cracked open, head laying on her hands and smoke rolling over her dress. She was sleeping in her dress? That was no good, she had saved up for almost a whole year to buy this dress. If it got ruined, that would be a waste.

“Haha- HAHAHAH!”

She was laying in a garden- a garden that was on fire. There were a number of cobbled paths leading through fine flower patches and set near little ponds. The surroundings were the trees of Tea country, burning as merry torches in the night. Figures blurred through the air, dark outlines framed by brightly burning foliage around them.

In brief flashes, she could see a man with burning moth wings clash against another- three men with strawhats all wielding straight swords layered in vibrant green light. A red-burning katana moving in vision-blurring arcs to turn aside any of the three green-shrouded blades and occasionally hails of sharp metal that came from random angles in the distance.

“All of that and a swordsman too?! When will your depths end- Ryoma?!”

“I dabble.”

The blades sizzled as they crashed- the red-shrouded katana moving three times as fast just to maintain pace against the array of enemies around it.

“And using wind against my fire? Where did you come from, to have such magnificent power? Surely not just Suna? Why have I never heard of you before?!”

“We ninja are a secretive bunch, you understand?”

“Haha-HAHAH! Fire Release! Indiscriminate Arson!”

A sphere of fire bloomed to life and immediately started to expand- one of the strawhatted men grabbing another by the collar and tossing them away. The other simply leaping away fast enough to avoid the rapidly expanding wall of fire. The ground was torn up and turned to glass where the fire passed, and the man that remained disappeared in the hot white light.

A wooden giant burst from the earth, onimask grimacing in terrific fashions as it emerged in a burst of sand. It was taller than any man, with segmented joints and a heavy shoulders. Tornados of green light emerged from its eyes, which swallowed the fire like spicy sashimi. For a half-moment the garden was dark again, revealing the burning-winged man and a pillar of glass, before the onimask leaned forwards.

“Release!” A voice called out.

The fire exploded outwards again- the burning-winged man jumping forwards through the expanding fire. The roar of flame and light covered his movements for a moment- then a ringing of steel crashing into steel as his white-hot blade was sent aside by the parry of a green-wreathed sword.

A hot line carved itself into the earth, to the side of the wooden giant as another green-wreathed blade carved through the air and cut into his side.

A backhand sent one of the straw-hatted men flying back to smash into a garden statue, their form obscured in a puff of smoke before revealing mesh and burned skin. A woman slumped under a cratered statue, hand clutching a baton of sorts.

White and green blades burred into a violent hurricane of clashes, broken by the moth-wing man leaping up and twisting into a swing- another hot line of white fire split the garden and a distant tree, which promptly exploded.

The moth-winged man grunted as yet another straw-hatted man hit him with a barrage of long needles, fingers raised and strings of light tugging them through the air. He was halfway buried in the sand, pulling himself up from the earth.

She woozily pushed herself up from the earth, the theater was playing. If she had spent the money to hire a production like this, she needed to fully enjoy it. Anything less would be a waste. Even as her limbs tugged her back to sleep, her eyes widened and shook off slumber.

She needed… she needed to be awake.

The blades howled into another long series of clashes, now only two green-wreathed blades against a single white hot edge, the immense oni-masked giant disappearing into the earth again.

“The other ninja under transformations… I suppose this one must be the ninja from Kiri then!”

A puff of smoke. A snarling growl. One strawhat was replaced with a long red braid clutching a deep blue blade. “This trick was stupid from the beginning.” His blade was thinner now, barely more than flashes of blue light that clashed against the white katana, three or more head-to-head blows every passing second.

“It let me hit him with my senbon.” The remaining strawhat defended, blades blurring and fingers twitching as he took potshots at the burning moth.

“And he’s not fucking slowing down- is he!?”

“The poison is specifically resistant to denaturation-“

A laugh and a blur that carried the three men from one side of the garden to the other- leaping over a ravine in the center and turning a pond into steam in the process.

“Which means?!” The red-haired man snarled.

“-Which means his blood is hot enough to boil sake, people are normally dead at that temperature!”

“Fire Release : Tongues of Fire!” The moth-man roared, interrupting whatever the red-haired man was about to say next. The wings on his back twisted into sharpened blades, which caught the strawhat’s green blade. The white sword flashed, clashing again with the blue-wreathed blade.

Leaving a single hand free for the burning man to punch the red-hair man in the center of the chest, making him double over before flying back with a gong-like boom, eventually smashing into a distant tree. The trunk screamed as it shattered then collapsed.

Hands clasped together a moment after. “Fire Art : Smokeshield!”

The smoke gathered more and more by the moment, drowning out vision as the burning moth disappeared in a swirling egg of hot ash, sword spinning through the air. Needles bounced off the swirling smoke, scattering about as a hand reached back for the white-hot blade-

The blade leapt from his hand, soaring through the air and stabbing into a distant tree trunk. A string of gleaming light retracted from it, pulling back towards the strawhat as he leapt away and landed at the lip of the crevasse.

The burning moth landed on the smoke-covered ground again, swordless and lashes of fire slowly unfurling on his back.

“And now you’re all alone again, Ryo-ma. Your position is turning to ashes. How much do I have to beat you for you to run?”

The wooden giant rose out of the earth, like a demon crawling out of the underworld, limbs rotating and claws shifting as it took its place behind the strawhat.

“You haven’t noticed it yet, have you?” Strawhat asked calmly, reaching up to point at his enemy.”

“Hm?” The burning moth replied, tilting his head. Long locks of white hair ended in cinders and licks of flame, shifting as he moved.

“You’re swaying, and it’s not my poison that’s doing that. My paralytic would make you freeze up.” Strawhat hefted a hand and clenched a fist. “All my punches to the head, the blades stuck in your flesh, you’re not just walking them off.”

The burning moth raised a hand, looking at his fist for some sort of sign before giving a little huffing laugh. Slowly he started to remove the long needles from his flesh. “So it seems, but blows like that aren’t going to defeat me. Every passing moment I digest more of the Fire Lotus, and my chakra grows. I’ll burn you alive long before you finish me off with those.”

“You’re right. Those soft taps mean nothing.” Strawhat agreed easily, cracking his neck and raising his fists. The wooden giant mimicked his stance, raising its clawed hands in fists and spreading its stance wide. “It’s gonna take a real badass Ryoma-style punch to take you down.”

“Heheh… So you’ve taken my blade, and you think that gives you an advantage…” The burning moth began ruefully, before slowly spreading his arms wide. “Tell me, when did you start thinking of my hands as less dangerous than my sword?”

Smoke gathered, densifying enough to choke the air. Laughter in the air and fire all around.

“Dance of the White Camellia.”

Her eyes widened as the last dregs of sleep slipped from her mind.

Laughing Smoke threw himself forwards in time with Ryoma and the wooden giant, and fists began to blur. The smoke continued its attempts to collect- each time scattered by the force of the arms swinging through the air and fists crashing into each other with metallic and wooden booms.

“Burn!” Laughing Smoke roared as fire engulfed him.