Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ The Battle Lord Chronicles: Of Truths and Lies ❯ Cats vs. Dogs...Er, Wolf ( Chapter 31 )

Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho or any related names or items. Kiara is owned by Yusuke'sSister.

 

Claimer: I do own the plot line, the title, the Kuro Tournament, Kristy, Jason, Jessica, Chris, Bashere, Rhurac, and anything else related to them.

 

"Talking"

'Thinking'

'Telepathy'

 

Thanks to my beta reader, Anna Jaganshi.

 

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Of Truth & Lies

 

Chapter 31

Cats vs. Dogs...Er, Wolf

 

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As I stood before my opponent, I let my eyes rake over his figure. He was fairly tall--just over six feet or so, so actually about the same height as my brother. Of course, this meant that he seemed huge to me as I barely even came up to his elbow--and well-muscled, though not bulky. He was actually pretty lean in my opinion; a true tom cat. He had spiky black hair and a pair of coal black eyes. The neko also had a pair of cat ears and a cat tail that were pure black. His left ear, I noticed, had a little part missing.

 

Age wise, the neko captain appeared to be in his mid-twenties, which meant he was probably at least 300 years old. He was wearing a black muscle shirt with a high neck and a pair of torn black pants. His upper arms were wrapped in bandages, as were his feet, which were bare. The neko held a light smirk on his face, and his eyes sparkled with amusement.

 

Before I could continue my observations however, the announcer's voice suddenly rang out throughout the arena. "Shihajimeru!"

 

Instantly, I tensed up, expecting an attack, but it never came. The neko youkai just stood there with his arms crossed before him with that amused look in his eyes. Finally, after a moment, the neko lowered himself into a slight bow.

 

"I'm Ty," he introduced. I felt my mouth drop open as I stared at the neko before me. He however, just let his smirk widen. "Don't you know that it's polite to introduce yourself to your opponent?" he asked--well, more commented, really, but that was beside the point--as he titled his head to the side, looking thoroughly amused.

 

My first thought was that this was some sort of a trick to get me to lower my guard. I could definitely see him doing that, considering the underhanded switch that he'd pulled earlier. And after all, why else would he be acting to polite...ish...

 

Deciding to just go along with it for now, I returned Ty's bow, although I didn't take me eyes off hi, "Kristy," I replied shortly. I hesitated then, unconsciously tensing up, before voicing a question that had been on my mind for a while. "Why...why did you switch with your other teammate? Wouldn't you rather fight a team captain?"

 

Ty chuckled. "I suppose," he replied. "But you interest me a lot more. I've actually heard quite a bit about your last match..."

 

As he trailed off, I felt my eyes widening as I realized that he was speaking about my ability to use multiple elements. My eyes narrowed once more and I began to watch Ty a bit more closely. This wasn't good; he knew a bit about how I fought, but I knew absolutely nothing about him.

 

Suddenly, I realized that Ty and I had begun to slowly circle each other while talking. I carefully gripped the hilt of my katana; thank Kami that he only had his claws as a weapon...But, then again, that probably means that he'd good enough of a fighter to only need his claws while still being a captain...Crap...

 

"Though," Ty suddenly said, a contemplative expression on his face, "I certainly didn't expect the reaction that my switch received from you team captain. I mean, he still got to fight Kana, who could possibly beat me in a fight."

 

I raised a single eyebrow. "That's probably because he's my older brother..."

 

Ty blinked, surprised, and then suddenly chuckled. "Yes," he commented, absently nodding his head, "That'd make sense." He paused and then grinned, clapping his hands together once. "Well, let's get started then, shall we?

 

Without any further warning, Ty suddenly lunged at me. I quickly pulled my katana from its sheathe and brought it up before me, just barely in time to block Ty's claws from shredding my face. I was momentarily surprised by my neko opponent's sudden ferocity, but I quickly shrugged it off in favor of shoving Ty away and retaliating with an attack of my own.

 

From there a back and froth battle ensued, not too dissimilar from Jason's own battle. However, after only a minute or so, large difference started to become quite clear.

 

From the numerous sparring sessions that we'd had, I had found that I was just a little bit faster than my brother, if only because he focused more on strength and because of my smaller stature. In fact, I was the fasted of all my friends, and this lead me to shape my fighting style around speed and agility. Now, however, as I fought, I realized that Ty was on an entirely different level.

 

Every time I struck, he was there blocking me. Every time I blocked, he just barely managed to slip around my guard. He was just a little bit faster, just a little bit stronger, just a little bit more powerful. Before long, both of my arms and hands were covered in miniscule cute, while Ty remained untouched.

 

After a little while, I finally started to get a bit pissed off, not to mention terrified. Snarling, I called upon my youki and not a moment later my katana was lit with fire. Ty, however, just grinned widely, obviously expecting this to be a bit more of a challenge now. I simply glared harder at him, anger and fear welling up inside me. To my great shock, the flames on my blade suddenly grew to twice their normal size. I blinked, staring down at my blade; that had never happened before. Still, my anger didn't leave me, and I had no doubt that it was a part of what was fueling the fire.

 

I quickly dashed at Ty, swiping at him. He avoided it, of course, and we then went back to our usual style of battle. Now, however, the stakes were just a little bit higher.

 

Despite my new and improved blade though, it appeared that Ty was still just playing around with me and holding back quite a bit. To my great annoyance, I found that he had just as great an advantage over me as ever. Quickly, I racked my brain, attempting to come up with an idea of how to turn this fight in my favor.

 

Almost immediately, my mind jumped to the astral projection technique that Mr. Rawl had taught me. And just as quickly, I discounted it. I was told to use it during an emergency, and while this fight was definitely difficult, I didn't want to use up all the tricks that I had up my sleeves, especially not where Bashere could so easily see them. Instead, I turned my thoughts to the other psychic abilities that I had. Ty wouldn't expect any of them; he'd said that he knew about my other match, but I hadn't used any of my psychic abilities there.

 

Immediately, I felt a smirk form on my face; this plan would work out perfectly.

 

Still fighting with all I had--if only to avoid getting my head chopped off-I immediately dug into Ty's mind. I then sped through the halls of his mind without really even paying attention to my surroundings. I was half tempted to check out some of his memories, but I knew that I didn't have the time, even with the accelerated time here in people's minds. Soon enough I was into Ty's ability room, then through it, without having even paid attention to what I'd seen.

 

I then found myself standing in the empty conscious room. I quickly detached a part of my youki and left it there, before pulling out of Ty's mind--just in time to see Ty's claws swinging toward me. I quickly ducked and rolled out of the way, avoiding certain death by mere inches. I then jumped back to my feet and proceeded to leap back into the fight.

 

From there thing grew a bit easier for me. Now I could tell everything that Ty was going to do, before he actually did it. I was able to tell when and where he was going to strike, how he was going to block...Everything. Before long, Ty was the one who was starting to get little cuts along his arms from me.

 

Oh, don't get me wrong, Ty was still more skilled and experienced than me, but now we were fighting on at least a fairly even plane, since I now held a major advantage over him.

 

Of course, it didn't take Ty very long at all to notice the abrupt shift in the fighting. 'It's like she can tell what I'm going to do before I do it,' I heard him think. He started to make his movements more random then, but it made no different to me.

 

'Have I started to tire or something?' Ty thought, a puzzled expression coming onto his face. 'No...I feel fine for the most part...And I distinctly saw her smirk before.' He paused for a moment. 'And my mental barriers are completely fine, so it's not that...' He snorted mentally. 'Well, considering as she's apparently a fire, shadow, and wolf youkai, I highly doubt that she has any other abilities....And why the hell does she look so amused right now?'

 

Indeed, I could barely stop myself from laughing aloud; listening to people's inner monologues is so entertaining. I brought my thoughts away from my amusement, however, and focused on racking my brain for ideas about what to do next; this was working out great and all, but we were still fighting to a standstill--not too unlike Jason's fight as well, now that I thought about it. I just desperately hoped that it didn't end in a similar manner however.

 

'Well,' I thought to myself, 'I could see if I can influence his mind.' I'd never really had any time to experiment and see what the extent of my psychic abilities were before, even with Mr. Rawl's teaching, and now seemed like a good a time as any to do so.

 

'Ooh!' I suddenly thought, feeling as though a light bulb had been turned on in my mind. 'I wonder if I could use his memories against him!'

 

Carefully, I dove back into Ty's mind, making sure to keep myself fully aware of my physical body while I was there; it wouldn't do to have a repeat of last time. Immediately, I found myself in Ty's Conscious Room. I sighed, and then hurriedly made my way back toward the halls of his mind.

 

Once there, I ran straight down the hallway, throwing open any doors I saw that were marked as containing bad memories. After only a few minutes I came to the end of the hall and then retreated back into the physical world to see what effects my actions had had on my opponent.

 

It actually took a few seconds for it to come into effect. The first signs showed as Ty frowning fiercely as he fought. He shook his head a couple of times, trying to get grid of the memories I knew were now plaguing him, but it was no use.

 

Despite this however, Ty continued to fight viciously. He was a bit distracted now, but he was still determined. I frowned slightly, thinking that he had an even stronger will than I'd expected, and then increased the flow of youki that I was sending to his mind, pushing the memories to the forefront of his thoughts.

 

The effects were instantaneous. Ty immediately dropped to his knees, his claws retracting back into his hands. He grasped his head in his hands then, his eyes clamed shut. The worst part of it, however, was the slight, nearly inaudible whimpering and mumbling that was coming from him.

 

I winced slightly and looked away. I really hated seeing someone like this, especially someone whom I was kind of starting to respect, at least for his skills. I was also particularly glad that I had long since tuned out his mental thoughts, not at all wanting to hear them right now. I sighed a second time as I placed the tip of my katana against his chest, right above where his heard was. I then quickly cut off all of the youki that I was exerting into his mind. Just as the last of my presence pulled out, I could feel the echo of all the door that I'd opened suddenly closing sharply.

 

Immediately, Ty let out a gasp. He took a few seconds to let his heart calm down, and then all of the sudden he seemed to realize just where my katana was. His eyes quickly flew open and his head jerked upwards to stare at me. Just moments later, I could tell that he'd figured out exactly what had happened.

 

Just after that, the voice of the announcer rand through the stadium, once more, exclaiming the outcome of the match, "Winner: Team Kagekaze! The final score is Team Kagekaze: 4, Team Neko: 3. Team Kagekaze will proceed to the next round."

 

As per usual, the crowd erupted into cheers, although I could tell that many of them were quite confused about exactly what had happened in the last few minutes of the battle. Out of the corner of my eyes I saw the healers approaching. Two of them hoisted Ty to his feet and began to help him toward the door on the far end of the arena. A third one began to lead me away as well.

 

Inside of the infirmary, Ty had stopped nest to a large metal door, which the healers were about to lead him through. He resisted, however, and turned to face me.

 

"Interesting fight," he murmured while grinning. "Very interesting." I smirked in reply as he continued. "You'll be great, eventually, I can tell. You just need a little more fine tuning and experience to increase the apparently innumerous abilities that you have."

 

I chuckled lightly. "Thanks, Ty. It really was a great fight. I'd love to have a rematch sometime."

 

Ty blinked, surprised, and then stared at me for a minute like I was insane. Finally he seemed to realize something as his eyes abruptly widened and he let out a bark of a laugh.

 

"You really don't know, do you?" he commented, highly amused. "Yeah, I'd love a rematch too, but I'm afraid that that won't be possible."

 

The healers started to get a bit more impatient then, and they began to tug Ty through the doorway. He followed them willingly; though he called back over his shoulder to me. "Come on, Kristy. What did you honestly think happens to the teams that lose?"

 

With a loud thud, the solid metal door closed behind him.