The Rust Room woke early.
Kori was already there taping fingers. She stood beside a glass rack where two long, black cases rested like sleeping animals. Beside them, a second rack held replicas - blunt twin swords and a staff-spear with the exact same weight and balance as the real things.
"Hands," she said by way of hello. Raizen and Hikari raised them. Kori checked wrists, thumbs, shoulders. "Good. Today you learn how your work holds up against someone who worked just as hard."
Mina's voice floated from behind the observation glass. "Telemetry live. Dueling bay two primed. Scoring on vitals - head, neck, chest, spine."
"Replicas first," Kori added, patting the padded weapons. "You'll earn the real ones - on limiter."
Behind the corner came 2 silhouettes. They didn't seem older than Raizen and Hikari. One was tall and airy, hair the bright ash-brown of wood smoke, cut long so it fell past the collar and looped behind one ear. A slim monocle hung from a chain like a private joke. He stood with the lazy confidence of a man who owned rooms by accident.
"Arashi," Kori said. "Annoying accuracy, but a beast when it comes to guns"
He slightly bowed like a noble at a gala and grinned. Two sleek training pistols rode in open holsters at his hips - vented slides, pale-blue practice coils. Nonlethal, per Mina - but enough sting to make a point.
The second was quiet even when she moved. Straight crimson hair fell to the middle of her back, the color of a new wound. She carried a claymore across one shoulder as if it weighed as much as a thought.
"Keahi," Kori continued. "Heavy track. Doesn't talk much. She's wayyy stronger than you might expect."
Keahi nodded once, her eyes (one blue, one icy) steady.
"Warm up," Kori said. "Then we play."
They warmed up like they'd been built for it.
Raizen took the replica twins and knew instantly they'd been measured to him, grips where his palms expected them. Balance under his knuckles like a promise. He rolled his shoulders and the blades settled at the angle his body liked to move.
Hikari lifted the staff and felt the weight sit along her forearms like a calm animal. A small circle with the spear end - smooth. A counter-circle with the staff end - obedient, no wobble. Right.
"Good," Kori said. "Bay two. Raizen first."
The bay was a square of matte flooring bordered by white walls. Above, cameras and sensors blinked. Mina's graphs breathed.
Arashi rolled his shoulders, light as wind. "First touch buys tea," he said, amused. "First vital buys dinner."
"Hey man" Raizen laughed, raising his hands in the air. "I don't have that much money"
Kori's hand cut down. "Go."
Arashi didn't draw first. He walked, stole distance, then - crisp - cleared leather and snapped a blue-white sting that cracked like a temple clap.
Raizen leaned - it missed by a milimeter.
He was moving before the second shot. Close the distance. That was the answer to a gun. He slid, one blade guarding high, the other low. A third shot went for his thigh - he let it ride the flat and used the push to spring forward.
"Hello," Arashi said, already drifting back. Side-hop. Pivot. He gave angles, not ground.
Raizen cut left - muzzle dipped. There. He stabbed for the line the bullet would ride - Arashi smiled like a teacher spotting a clever mistake.
"Not bad."
Two shots, almost stacked - one at chest, one at ankle to steal the eye. Raizen picked wrong on purpose, let the chest shot scrape his guard and moved through the ankle aim before it lived. His blade moved, stopping right before Arashi's neck.
"Score: 1–0 Raizen" Mina called.
Arashi's eyebrows climbed, delighted. "Again."
He stopped being readable. No rhythm, mid-step fire, high-low, low-high. Raizen stopped chasing and started cutting space, letting shots define the corridor he needed to enter. Twice more he clipped fabric by a scoring plate; twice Arashi ghosted away laughing under his breath.
"Distance," Kori called calmly. "Steal it. Don't beg for it."
Raizen stole it - half-step into the hip, parry the wrist, force the muzzle to the floor. The second blade came for the chest vital -
Arashi cheated.
He didn't fight the pin - he sat with it, rolled, and turned Raizen's control into a gap. A practice round snapped from his off-hand pistol - Raizen hadn't seen the draw - and sharp pain exploded across his chest.
"Vital: Arashi," Mina said, impressed.
"Score 1–1."
Reset. Breathe.
They traded next points like fencers.
Raizen slid a blade to shoulder- 2–1.
Arashi tapped ribs
2–2.
Last point wins.
"I will remember this lesson," Arashi said lightly, eyes sharp. "Thank you in advance."
Then he cut triangles into the bay, two guns speaking a language that punished hesitation. Raizen answered by carving safe zones and stepping into them a beat early, blades flashing only to move hands, not to chase barrels.
He almost had him - bind, wrist stolen, forearm trapped, blade lined for center mass - and Arashi heel-tapped, micro-pivoted, and saved not his chest but his elbow, stealing Raizen's lever just long enough to flip and mark a clean shoulder vital.
"Match point, Arashi," Mina announced. "Winner: Arashi."
It was that close. Too close.
Kori's hand found Raizen's shoulder. "You tried to finish with pride," she said. "Finish with math next time." A glance at Arashi. "And you - govern the humor when you teach with pain."
Arashi smiled. "As you wish."
"Next" Kori announced.
The girls met in the middle without noise.
Keahi planted her claymore's tip and studied Hikari's staff-spear like a problem to honor. She was taller, broader. When the blade left the floor, it sounded like authority.
"You call it when you've had enough," Keahi said softly.
"You too," Hikari answered.
Kori's hand cut air. "Go."
Keahi moved first - no feints. The claymore fell in a clean descending arc that would have ruined a man if live. Hikari wasn't there when it arrived. She was on the line, then beside it, staff sliding the flat just enough to miss, heel snapping to settle.
Keahi dragged the blade through horizontal. Wind sang. Hikari ducked, let it hiss above her hair, and pecked the back of Keahi's knee with a reverse-end jab. Scored, not vital. 1–0.
Keahi shortened the swing and bullied space. Hikari gave ground on purpose, drawing the big blade into a pattern with too much muscle memory. Third swing. Fourth. It felt like her and the claymore's weight were completing each other.
Hikari met the next swing at the midpoint, rolled the heavy steel out of line, and stepped in, crowding past the arc where claymores are weak.
Keahi didn't panic. She used her shoulder like a hammer.
They collided. Hikari bounced, breath hard for a beat. Keahi didn't rush. She settled into a high guard that wrote a simple sentence: Don't risk the crown. I cut here.
Hikari smiled a breath. "I'll read a different page." She seemed to say.
Circling. Hikari began to write little questions with the staff end - tap, withdraw - forcing half-inch angle changes until the claymore held a posture that looked solid and wasn't. Feeling it, she feinted high with the spear tip, stepped thirty degrees to Keahi's blind side and hooked the ankle with the tooth below the head -
Keahi hopped the hook like she'd expected it, turned the hop into a short drop and brought the blade straight down.
The mat buckled. If that had been steel and stone - Hikari didn't finish the thought.
"Strong," she said, meaning it.
"You're quick," Keahi replied.
The next exchange mattered.
Keahi drove forward in three compact steps to force half-length, where big blades surprise people by being nimble. Hikari choked up on the staff and fought like a fencer with a long dagger - beating the flat, returning small cuts.
Point Hikari. 2–0.
Keahi breathed once. She backed out and lowered the tip toward the floor, making the claymore into a trap - an invitation for Hikari to overreach.
Hikari didn't bite. She stayed on edges, pulse steady.
Then Keahi tried a final trick: a deliberate shoulder-drop telegraphing horizontal, followed by a brutal, rising diagonal meant to catch a dodge.
Hikari stepped - wrong for the telegraph - right for the truth.
Her right foot planted heel-first; her left swept a shallow crescent across the mat, weight switching on the inside edge without a bob of the head. It was a half-moon pivot that bled momentum into stillness and returned it in a straight line. The staff-blade snapped up from below and set, calm as a decision, beneath Keahi's jawline. If this hadn't been training, that was the end.
They froze.
"Vital," Mina said softly. "Winner: Hikari."
They didn't move for a breath. Keahi's icy eyes studied Hikari like a page she wanted to memorize. Then she lowered her sword and touched fist to chest in a small salute.
"What you did – I'm not sure what it was… But it was superb" she said, weight on the word.
"Thank you," Hikari replied.
Kori gathered them at the edge.
"Good," she said - Kori's word for excellent. "Raizen - close the space sooner. Don't chase hands; suffocate decisions. You were a breath away from putting him on the floor."
Raizen nodded. The hunger for the rematch set.
"To you," Kori told Hikari, "You didn't flinch when you should have and didn't celebrate when you could have. Learn one thing from her," a chin at Keahi, "and one thing from him," a look to Arashi, "and you'll be something I don't have a word for yet."
Mina dimmed the bay lights toward neutral. The scoreboard cleared. Kori tapped the case glass. "You earned a minute. One pass each with the real ones. No heroics."
Then she opened the cases. There, the masterpieces Obi has crafted.
Golden breath woke along twin spines. Ocean-blue gathered at the staff end and slipped down channels like a river finding its bed. Everyone nearby felt it - the hum wasn't loud, but it asked something from your bones.
Raizen cut a single, precise line from low left to high right. Air seemed to slide apart and ease shut after. The blades didn't sing so much as agree.
Hikari set the staff end to the ground, blue pulsing once, twice. Then she lifted and drew a tiny spiral with the spearhead - but exited the spiral with that same half-moon pivot, heel-then-edge, a weight transfer clean enough that her shoulders didn't rise a millimeter. The tip stopped dead on a point, without tremor.
Kori's expression didn't change - except for her eyes. They sharpened as if someone had just said a name she knew.
"Time." she affirmed. "Cases closed."
As the lids latched, Kori stood a moment longer, gaze on the mat where Hikari's crescent had kissed the floor.
Under her breath, too soft for the bay, she said a thing only the very trained would understand.
Her jaw set.
"Mina," she added, voice back to flat.
"Clip the last twenty seconds. Mark it private."
Mina glanced through the glass, curious.
"Flagged."
Kori turned away, face unreadable again. The Rust Room dimmed a notch, fans hushing.
And after what she'd just seen, tomorrow would ask even sharper questions.