"HYAAAAH!!"

The black blade Onimaru is brought down, contesting the flames of a Roaring Moon. They turn black upon touching the blade, channeling its wicked, demonic inheritance, and the sword channels a beam of black light back at the dragon forced back into the interdream mist.

Only then does she answer the dog's question.

"It is certainly more than I bargained for."

To hold the line against dreams, intrusions into waking life. She would never have imagined this some short months ago, and yet it is reality now. She flicks the last embers of blackened flame from her Honedge, readying herself for the next paradox to breach the edge of reality.

"Nevertheless... I am fully capable of handling this!"

She swings her blade again as a Great Tusk emerges from the mist, the sound of metal on metal clanging harshly in her ears as she shunts its massive bulk away by its tusk.

"Are ya?" The dog asks, narrowly avoiding being speared by a Great Tusk. Were it not for the gentle, guiding caress of his sword, it would have killed him. Creatures such as them, especially unaugmented as they are, simply aren't cut out for a fight like this. Dogs and wolves are meant to fight their own kind. Only by banding together can they overcome something greater.[break][break]
"'Cause I've fought 'em before. Creatures like these...they're monsters. They have no souls." He speaks with an eloquence that many in Rocket would not believe him to possess. A dog's language is beneath their notice. The language of the east is not widely spoken here in Hoenn.[break][break]
"So you gotta be a little bit crazy to fight 'em." Kusanagi, first among his Kartana, rushes forward. Crowned in water, his tera blast makes a dent in the Great Tusk. Its trumpet sounds with pain.[break][break]
"You got any crazy in you?"

Spinning body of a Kartana aids her in pushing the Great Tusk back. Her sword sings of heavenly violence, vibrations run down her arm as she cuts into impossibly-hard ivory. She grins with that sound, and Onimaru takes the brief break to gorge himself further on her blood.

"My soul... is my blade!"

The cursed demonic sword in her hands becomes more like her with every drop of blood. One day he shall take everything, become her in her entirety.

Til that day...

"It isn't crazy at all. It's nature. The strong prey upon the weak. That's the natural order.

"But this blade... drinks only of the blood of the strong!"

A monster-slaying sword.

Onimaru hungers, desires nothing more than the blood of a predator. Thus, he feeds on her strength alone.

She brings her sword down atop the Great Tusk again, the Honedge wreathed in a blackened aura. Drunk on blackened blood, he longs for nothing but death!

"Shadow END!"

Their blades are blood drunk. Watching her dance in the light of a crescent moon, the pink mist flutters like falling cherry blossoms. They're not underground - not anymore.[break][break]
They're where they're supposed to be. They're somewhere orderly, in a world that hasn't moved on from them. This world shouldn't exist. Couldn't exist. It's a past that never was. Mythology brought to life. In the skies above them, long serpentine dragons dance. On the ground, their blades are soaked with the blood of monsters.[break][break]
"Ho ho. Looks like Kazumi-san's got some crazy blood in her after all!" The mad dog of the Hasegawa laughs. Here, beast or humanity make little difference. It's all the same in the end.[break][break]
"Careful now. These swords? They like to drink blood. They think we're real tasty. Who made yours? This one's made by Muramasa himself." He holds the blade up for her inspection, like they're not wholly surrounded by monsters.[break][break]
Only one thing is out of place: the Dubwool that bleats, kicking his feet into the ground. It challenges all comers. It protects the two canine samurai while they dance their mad dance.

Droplets of blood fall like spring rain. She paints the earth with it, calligraphy to suit the madness of battle. All around, dreams come to life, jeering at them, watching from the shadows as they slay their fellows. They all want their turn, and they shall get it whenever the dog and the wolf deign to.

"Awataguchi Sakon-no-Shougen Kunitsuna. Onimaru, the demon blade."

She introduces her sword, but the blade's reputation alone doesn't matter.

The origin of the sword only matters to a point. Any duelist would happily recount the tale of Musashi winning a duel with a carved oar. It was skill that brought out a blade's potential, and no matter the pedigree, one who did not live and breathe swordplay could not muster enough from the finest crafted sword to out-do the greatest swordsman who ever lived.

The reputation of the one who wields the blade is far more important.

"You need not warn me. I know the danger. My elder brother, my father, my uncle, my grandfather and his brother... all of them perished within a day of drawing him for the very first time."

But she is different.

Her blood is thicker, more pure than those weak men. Onimaru need sate itself on her prowess alone just once, a single time, and it was hers.

How could it resist?

"It seems we have entered the dream, Hitoshi. What now?"

"Dunno." Is all he can muster to that. Last time, the dog had a proper beast with him - a creature that walked the line between humanity and something else. Each one walks on human legs, yet they bare fangs like a proper animal. Envy wells in the heart of a creature who can only walk the earth on four legs.[break][break]
"The only thing I know's that there's gonna be bloodshed." There always was, and always will be. A creature like him drowns in the stuff. Takes lives. Thoughtlessly. Perfectly. Oh how these seeds of doubt grow.[break][break]
And grow, and grow.[break][break]
A creature dies for him while he thinks. A Roaring Moon's breaking swipe sends a poor, untrained Dubwool's head rolling. It did its best to protect them. No more. Its existence here was an accident born of picking the wrong pokeball. Yet still, here it was. Here it dies.[break][break]
A samurai must not show grief, yet this dog shows it. Despite the blood his mother boasted of endlessly, leading back to a great clan, he empties his guts onto the flowers.[break][break]
"You think...these things're real, too? These monsters we're fightin'? Or just figments of a bygone dream?"

The battlefield smelled of blood. In some sense it was foreign for she had never been here before. Yet in another, it was like returning home. This was the place she inhabited in her dreams. The place she had longed to be all her life. Now she was finally here. How could she not savor the intensity?

"Bloodshed suits me fine."

They had only met a short time ago, and yet this wild killer, this dog, was the only one she had met who she envied. The way he did not even seem to see the line between life and death, the way he killed so effortlessly. She envied his ferocity, the way that he killed so casually to not even think of it.

"They are records of past and future. Their violence is an echo of their origin."

She watches in the distance, Iron Jugulis and Iron Moth clashing over the vista of the sun setting behind a mountain. Their respective attacks light up the sky, carve violence into the heavens.

"No matter where they are from, their fighting spirit is the only thing that is real, Hitoshi."

He considers life as he cuts. He thinks about how life brought that nameless sheep to him. It is a wolf's job to murder sheep, and she pays his death no mind. A dog's job is to protect the sheep. One saves. The other kills. Both stem from the same origin point.[break][break]
His blade offers him empty promises. It glows red. It thirsts. Hungers. Longs to taste the blood of these strange beasts. Nothing will satisfy their blades save carnage.[break][break]
It is an evil thing, the blade. It is not a tool of peace. Only a fool could see a sword and call it anything except a tool for murder. How many has he slaughtered upon the end of a blade? They sneer at him. There are more efficient methods. Yet always, he has insisted upon looking people in the eye, cutting them.[break][break]
He's never thought about why. Sometimes he wishes he had been born in an era where the way he fought was the norm. Perhaps that is why they are here, in this dream. Sitting beyond the mist is a shogun and the real power behind the throne - a beautiful dark-haired lady. Watching. Waiting for her retainer to return.[break][break]
These thoughts muddy the waters, but the bottom line remains the same: this is not where he dies. If he must mourn this nameless sheep, let him mourn. Let him cry. Let him fight.[break][break]
So, gripping his sacred sword, he cuts.[break][break]
"There's gotta be a way out." The dog observes, catching a Roaring Moon on its wing. "We gotta find it!"

A wolf smells blood and she hungers for more. Eyes watch the chaos unfold. Monsters live amidst this dream, and they must become them now. In this hunting grounds, it is hunt of be hunted.

"The only way out is through."

Kuro draws her blade again as her shadow grows long in the light of the setting sun. A prehistoric moth breathes the last of the dying sunlight, descending upon the dog to take its final meal of the day. Shadow congeals, and Kazumi rises from the ground to deliver an airborne aerial ace that severs its wings.

She lands a short distance away, the Slither Wing desperately crawling along the earth as it loses blood.

"When do dreams end, Hitoshi?"

She flicks blood from her sword, staring down the hateful glare of the paradoxes past and future that have noticed they are there.

"When morning comes."

But the night has just begun.

The cherry blossoms fall. With them comes a weeping wind. It mourns with him. These creatures are but passing dreams, but they die with the same fear in their eyes as anything else.[break][break]
Yet for every victory, every glancing blow, they pay dearly. Had the dog not dived into this dream with three Kartana, they would be dead. Nor is it his skill that saves them. Kusanagi, Tsuchigumo, and Munechika are skilled. They did not idly survive the strange aeons from which the dog found them. Each is a worthy blade in its own right.[break][break]
Yet still, they are being driven back. It is a slow thing, a matter of inches, but it's true. They're being forced off the field. Somewhere beyond the rainbow is a path back.[break][break]
"Dawn itself's a fading dream." He speaks in an older man's voice. That man had gathered disciples around him. He feels pangs of guilt, remembering none of their names. "...but we must carve a path to it all the same. I made someone that promise, once."[break][break]
A gentle caress turns into a thirsting pierce. Steel comes alive with ghostfire. If he dies here, he breaks a promise. If he dies here, that innocent Pokemon and so many more died for nothing.

She dances so elegant in the night. Nothing but the light of the moon, the smell of blood, and memory to guide her. All of it is theory, finally applied. If not for this sword in her hand, theorymay have remained that way. But bitterness has its way of drawing out one's true self, no matter how long they spent denying it.

"A promise is the only thing in this world you have, isn't it?"

She is a wolf, and with power in her hand, she carves away at the wall of abominations encroaching. Scream Tail grasps at her ankles, Sandy Shocks electrify her blade, but nevertheless she does not slow down. She cuts through them. She swings Onimaru in steps til her blood runs hot, and he drinks of her fevered movements, rendering them far more perfect than she could ever dream. Each movement comes so effortlessly. She feels light on the wind with every swing.

Deplete.

Drain.

Draw forth.

Til nothing is left, she carves away these paradoxes. Their rage is the only thing that is real, and she makes it so by clashing against them. Only in battle can they be granted their wish, to become something more than a fleeting instance. Every vibration in her arm, every cut she delivers, every blow she takes, it is all real.

Blood blooms before her like a flower, and it smells just as sweet.

"Give up on your word and you have nothing."

She will grant them their wishes in all her mercy.

"Yumi...?"

A beautiful evening, or a savior.

Who was this woman, and why did this dog speak of her so fondly? His owner, perhaps? Was she a person at all, or did the dog have some tendency toward the poetic? Did he find the night so beautiful he must express it?

Impossible to say.

"... That's right. Don't die before the light of the rising sun."

She said it, though it was only for her own satisfaction, an order delivered to herself. It was not aimed at this man. A wolf does not deliver orders that a dog would understand.

The smell of battle, slick with blood, was more intoxicating than she realized. Lost in the heat of it all, spurred onward by Onimaru's brilliant black sheen, she continues to cut.

Slice.

Stab.

Sever.

She moves until her body no longer moves on its own, until the lust builds and takes over. The sword moves of her accord when her body no longer will, fueled by her blood. It carries more of it than her body now. She is becoming it, and she is as much the sword as it is her. A soul intertwined with steel, she is finally alive in this battle unto dreams.

She is lost in the intoxicating pleasure, wetting herself on the blood of her foes, fighting til she can feel nothing but the bend of the grass and the waves of the sea.

She moves in sync with the dog, and when he staggers, she is there to defend him, severing an Iron Bundle's head.

Sparks fly, and she grins.

It is not til she falls to one knee that she even realizes that her body is still there.

Her soul is her blade. For one glorious moment, she forgot she was anything but.

"... Ah..."