Cocky Attack on Titan Face Claim DESTROYED with Swords and Logic! You won't believe what happens next!

Unlike Ai Masuyo, Koyuki was not a creature of idle reminisce. There was nary a thought of the past in her mind. Her focus was solely on present combat and a future where Ai Masuyo was beaten into the ground. Nostalgia was just that: nostalgia, a bittersweet cloud that obscured the only thing that mattered about their shared past in this heated moment:

How Ai Masuyo fought. How Ai Masuyo failed. How Ai Masuyo broke.

She had a decent amount of experience with all three questions, and she was ready to answer them one by one all over again. In a sequence that neither of them would have ever tried in traditional kendo, Koyuki let the blow to the shoulder come in to slam the full length of her bokken against Ai Masuyo's waist. Ai Masuyo brought her guard down to break the connection, but the damage was done. Koyuki felt the satisfying thud of wood against now-bruised muscle, and while she didn't smile, her snarl visibly widened; triumph. The blow was struck, the first in several dozen before this contest would be settled.

"Nice-"

"Fuck off." Koyuki said with bare hackles, a hand reaching up to make sure. her hairtie was still in place. Ai Masuyo was not going to co-opt her moment here with that cheery sportsmanship nonsense. The next big blow was going for her right in the mouth.

And like in traditional kendo, they reset themselves like a bad habit; both hands returning to Chudan and then going at each other again. Ai Masuyo struck first, bokken raised high to crash down onto the Yakuza captain... and Koyuki was all too ready to meet her head on, bringing her blade up diagonally for an initial guard against the heavy blow. Ai Masuyo came down on her like a great wave, forceful and unyielding, and the collision made her fingers rattle, her hands shake, and the impact travelled across her arms and all the way down her body-

But she held, and then she pushed back, baitng Ai Masuyo to come down on her guard even harder, and when Ai came in with the 2nd strike, their blades briefly disconnecting-

Koyuki slid to the side, letting her opponent's blade hit the tatami mat ground below, as she grabbed her bokken by its own blade and kept her own promise; she grabbed Ai Masuyo by the hair and smashed the hilt into Ai Masuyo's face one, two, three times.

Smash the guard. Splinter the sword. Shatter the resolve.

Ai-Kido was founded upon the precedent that the sword was the soul of the warrior. Somewhere along the way, her grandfather stumbled upon the epiphany that disarming a combatant addressed one half of a greater whole. Even if you removed the blade, a worthy adversary wouldn’t be deterred. Their will of fire would carry them through a battle even in the face of imminent defeat. An opponent’s resolve, therefore, was the first and foremost target. The only surefire way to damage that resolve was through one's demonstration of ability, strength, and an even mightier spirit.

Masuyo’s first strike was just to test the durability. She meant for the second ichimonji to be the last. She wanted to impress Koko and make up for all that lost time with a single stroke, only for her strike to miss. Not one of those feelings would be received because, at the end of the day, that was who Koyuki Sanada was.

She was the woman that would grab her hair, drawing a sharp yelp from the Demon of Shibuya as she stumbled over her own feet on the spot. Masuyo forced their eyes to meet and the ice-cold glare she received conveyed intentions far better than the steel-fisted grip and malicious breath close to her face could ever hope.

Masuyo howled when the first strike smashed her on the nose bone, stunning her in time for the second blow to rattle her brain. Her body went numb. She almost asked the question of ‘why?’, knowing the answer was already there in the back of her mind. It had been with her since they were children. This was always the kind of match Koyuki had wanted. The fight she would have one way or the other. Unchanging. And part of Masuyo hoped it would always stay that way.

The Demon’s steel eyes flashed with a vigorous intensity as the third blow punched her on the lip, slicing it across her front teeth. The corners of her mouth twitched from the taste, threatening a smile.

Masuyo gripped her bokken and drove the hilt like a stake into Koyuki’s gut. If she could force the Yakuza captain to lurch forward, the aikido girl would return the unpleasant favor by grabbing Koyuki by the scalp and tossing her over her shoulder. The moment her lifelong friend’s back slammed into the floor, Masuyo would already have her sword raised high into the air, acting on her singular intent in the next instant to dash her brains against the floor as she swung the blade down fast enough to split the air in two.

It took them -well, her- roughly a minute before they abandoned any pretense of a kendo match.

Not that Koyuki was complaining because kendo had about as much bite as a toothless dog and moved at the pace of a crippled tortoise. They could wave sticks at each other, test their adversary's defenses, match blows, bait strikes, sneak in shots beneath each other's guards, and still make zero progress towards putting the other woman to sleep. No, kendo was the sport of a person who wanted to roleplay swordfighting; all the flash and none of the bloody substance. That wasn't them, and when Koyuki pulled Ai Masuyo's hair back and stared into her eyes, she knew she opened the floodgates to the real fight.

Good.

She brought the hammer down on her. One, two, three shots that smashed, smashed, smashed blistering wood right into her mouth. Did she cut something? She couldn't see nor did it really matter. She was going to be doing this until something leaked. She brought the hilt down for a fourth shot, this one aimed in between Ai Masuyo's eyes. It never came. Ai Masuyo was quicker, bringing her own hilt down in a rising arc that stabbed her right in the gut. A starburst of pain erupted at the point of contact and Koyuki let loose an angry yelp that quickly trailed off into a seething hiss as her hands scurried for some kind of support, and settled for Masuyo's shoulders. She just needed a second-

And a second was all Ai Masuyo needed to grab her by the scalp, step into her, reverse, and send her flipping over bodily in a filthy koshinage. She could feel her delicate hairtie come undone in the fall, her long hair framing her as her back smashed into the tatami mats, her eyes wide open, more insulted that she got caught by such a basic throw rather than actually hurting. Her sword clattered to the ground next to her, forgotten for the moment.

She should have just gotten a haircut.... one that Ai Masuyo seems ready to rectify as she brought the entire sword smashing down on her hair. Reflexively, both hands shot out to sandwich the descending blade, catching it just a hair's inch away from her face. A blaze of friction seared her palms as she made contact with the bokken, and her hands trembled and shooked as she repelled the blade, as it as swayed back and forth in the air.

But Koyuki Sanada did not suffer stalemates.

With a grunt of exertion, her sandwich grip on the bokken doubled, then tripled, as she poured her strength into breaking Ai Masuyo's blade. The tell-tale sounds of splintering crackled through the air in the second before Koyuki tore the blade in half, the pointed edge sailing through the air from the impact of its destruction... right before Koyuki caught it by its wooden edge, shifted her now-free grip to its makeshift 'hilt', and drove it into Ai Masuyo's cunt-

She signed mentally. Friendship was annoying. It made you hold back.

-the back of Ai Masuyo's knee, digging it right into the tender joint.

“What don’t you do with knives, Masuyo?” Her father asked suddenly. Masuyo looked up from the onions she’d been chopping. She was confused by his question, but then she never considered the things he did when she was that young.

“Point them at people?” She replied simply and softly.

He nodded to her with a smile. “That’s right.”

Her father stopped stirring and pulled out his wooden spoon from the pot, knocking it once against the lip before he left it on the counter and turned to meet the wide-eyed gaze of his #1 helper. "Now, what do you do if someone points a knife at you?"

Her shoulders were firm as the words that came from her mouth spoke like scripture. Which they were. ’"Disarm them, but do not initiate forcefully. See past the weapon and isolate the blade away from vital areas to force an advantage by-"

Her father laughed. Masuyo stiffened and furrowed her brows at him, perplexed. Was that the wrong answer? "Stand with courage. Surpass their intent to do you harm. Knives, swords, fists, and cruel words are just tools made to achieve the same end. They can cut and hurt as much as anything, but they can never destroy what is unbreakable."

His large hand touched her head, running his fingers through her hair. "You're a strong child. Stronger than I ever hoped you would be, and you'll soon find that a lot of kids are nowhere near as strong as you. Many of them never will be, maybe none of them. But strength on its own is just like a knife."

He stood back up and turned to his cutting board, plucking his santoku from the counter as he continued chopping with a grace she'd yet to match. "Don't hold it too loosely, don't grasp it too hard. Don't chop too fast, don't move too slowly. Let your other hand be your guide and treat everything you cut as precious, because everything is."

Masuyo's thoughts seemed to harken back to those words in these moments. It must have been some stray feeling within her inner conscience warning her of the inevitable: ‘This was going too far. She was going to hurt her best friend. Nothing would be the same after this.’ But didn't they know better?

It was always this way. Whenever they met, just like this, there was never an errant thought in her mind, because Koko was different. She had no peaks, no boundaries she was unwilling to cross. So, in that same way, neither did Masuyo. It was a constant race to outbid the other's power that sent the Ai prodigy's heart ablaze. She loved being stuck in this struggle, she loved fighting her without restraint, and most of all she loved-

*CRACK!*

Masuyo's eyes shot wide as he'd sword splintered and broke apart in Koko's grasp. A small chunk whizzed by her as the sword was suddenly in two forcing her to stumble a step forward. It was the perfect range for Koko to act. And she did.

The Demon yelped as an unseen blade stabbed her in the back of her leg, nearly collapsing underneath her own weight as she fell forward onto one knee. Masuyo slapped her palm to the floor beside Koko’s head, keeping herself from falling as her manic eyes came face to face with her aggressor. An unsteady breath expelled the pain from her body, traveling as a warm pocket of air that would waft across Koko’s solemn face. Masuyo stared into her the eyes of her adversary, finding that unforgiving gaze that hadn't faded since their youth. How great was her intent to do her harm? When would enough be enough? The answer, she always knew, wasn't even worth asking.

In this moment, this was all they were. All they needed to be.

The aikido warrior clutched the loose strands of yakuza hair beneath her fingers and raised her fist, still bearing the broken half of her wooden sword, and slammed the hilt down one, two, three times into Koko's visage.

Koyuki had beaten Masuyo more times than she could count (A lie, she absolutely kept count), but she had never broken her. Knocked her out? Sure. Choked her out? Yes. Battered her into submission with a bokken? Been there, done that. But break her fangs and kill her fighting spirit? No, that was still a work in progress. No defeat, no setback, no matter how grievous, could keep her down for long, and that was the thing Koyuki Sanada hated and respected about Ai Masuyo.

Perhaps the only thing she respected about her.

She had no opinions on her vocation as a ramen chef. Her compassion was meaningless; thrown out liberally and unstrategically. Pointless. She didn't care for her unbroken streak in the local amateur MMA circuit; it was a competition for hobbyists and maybe-talent in a toothless martial format. She had the fashion sense of a Manzai clown, the energy of an unwanted puppy, and the intelligence of an American. She was a sum total of a certain Japanese Archetype that pretended that everything was alright with this country, cursed with the smug belief that a little kindness would solve every problem. It was the height of tokusentai-conditioned delusion.

And what was left then? The most cynical part of her wondered whether that one thing was the only thing keeping this whole dance going. Was Ai Masuyo simply the toy she couldn't break? Did thirteen years of friendship, of ups and downs, of spats and reconciliations, of misadventures and late nights, only amount to an angry child refusing to grow up because her tonka truck outlasted her childhood?

She didn't know. She wasn't sure she wanted to know, but here she was at it again:

Breaking, breaking, breaking away at the girl who could not be broken.

She struck, Masuyo fell, her knee finding the floor and her palm slamming down next to her head. Mistakes. If their positions were reversed, her knee would have found her chest and that falling palm would have found Ai Masuyo's head. She'll follow up with a sword strike, of course, keeping it well enough within the rules. They were pins, after all, painful pins, but pins nonetheless. And then they were face to face, and Koyuki was reminded again that she had nice eyes. You couldn't respect eyes, sure, but they were pleasant. Her face softened for a nanosecond... then rehardened. She removed the blade from the tender knee-joint and raised it-

Ai Masuyo got there first: Ram.

The first hilt slam rattled her brain, her grip on her own piece of blade tightened.

Ram.

Blood. She smelled blood in her nose. Her other hand searched blindly for her blade

Ram.

Koyuki stabbed the blade chunk up into Ai Masuyo's shoulder. A blunted strike, but like the attack on her knee joint, one she would feel. Shaking her head brtiand trying to soothe the rattling in her skull, she would quickly shove Masuyo off, push herself up to one knee, and diagonally slashed Ai Masuyo across the throat with her full blade.

It would do real damage beyond some friction burns. She just wanted to make the point that, in a real sword fight, Koyuki Sanada had killed her first.

It never stopped amazing people how fast the two of them could get to this point.

There was a pretense here of a match with rules and principles. A foundation of sportsmanship and professionalism between equal competitors. Then, at one point or another, things took an irreversible turn. Sometimes Koko would bash her on the nose, other times Masuyo would throw dirt in her eyes. They would push each other over the bridges, fight over running streams, and settle beneath a stormy sky and falling rain.

Their fights couldn't be held back by the rules and norms of today. Masuyo understood that from the very beginning.

She managed two successful blows to the face. Koko was bleeding now, but that didn't deter her. She had seen her friend come back from worse and give it back ten times over. She’d made the mistake of underestimating that unknowing fire one time too many.

As she reeled back for the third blow, a stabbing pain underneath her shoulder made her scream out and drop her weapon to the floor. Masuyo bared her feet and tightened her fist only to be pushed back and staggered on one knee.

All she caught out of the corner of her gaze was Koko swinging in her direction. The yakuza’s eyes were fixated on her neck. The sword became a blur as it traveled through the blade's path towards its target. Without the use of her hands, the aikido girl was an open target. Marked for death. Masuyo’s eyes stared straight ahead and followed her friend’s line of sight; her steel, unflinching gaze anticipating the impact. Right until the last moment.

Her head moved swiftly. The Demon's jaw suddenly swung open and chomped down on the blade, a violent crack bouncing off the walls around them the instant Masuyo stopped the sword between her teeth. A downward striking palm and an upward striking fist would strike the wood at a fixed point, shattering the yakuza's sword in two with one deft movement.

Hunched forward and breathing heavily from her flared nostrils, Masuyo wouldn’t take her eyes off her adversary. The corner of her mouth curled into the faintest hint of a grin as her teeth dug into the wood of the blade she’d stolen with her mouth. She wasn't going to be killed. Even as a joke.

If Koko wanted to beat her, she had to use everything. Nothing less.

Sometime after the fight had concluded, Koyuki would have claimed that she saw that move coming all along.

She was only half-lying; she fully expected Ai Masuyo to attempt to one-up her little bokken-breaking stunt. But with the assistance of her teeth? No, no. Wasn't expecting that level of showmanship at all. The brief widening of her eyes as her bokken plowed into chittering teeth and rattling gums and a shaking jaw - and was stopped dead in its tracks? That was genuine surprise, and that second of shock was all Ai Masuyo needed to double team the poor innocent bokken with a set of twin strikes that shattered her blade in twain.

Show. Off.

Now, the believable part of her claiming this was part of her plan all along was her instinctive follow-up to Ai Masuyo. She had broken the blade, yes, but she did it incredibly close to her face, and while Koyuki's first actual intended follow-up action was to take the stump of jagged wood and plunge it into Ai Masuyo's eye (say that 7 times really fast), that pesky little thing called friendship once again stood in her way, panging away at a loud angry gong called conscience.

So she got creative instead.

The blade broke, the impact sent her reeling back, but she found her footing and lashed out with her jagged blade-

And sent the air-bound splinters flying into Ai Masuyo's face with force of her strike.

If she were so suitably distracted, Koyuki would stubbornly follow up with her original plan and step in, grab Ai Masuyo by her recently wounded shoulder and shove the jagged splinter of her bokken into Ai Masuyo's neck.

Stopping short before impact of course.

"Tag, you're dead." she said with a smug smirk.

Catching the blade was easy.

Setting one's mind to accomplish virtually any task was one of the first lessons she'd ever learned. Anyone could do anything when they mastered themselves; body and mind as one. Koko was a prime example of that. Even now, with nothing but the drive of slashing her friend's neck in the decisive moment.

So yeah, taking the blade was easy for Masuyo.

Now she had to do the hard part.

Masuyo had already begun to move a moment after she'd broken the sword. Koko's posture had been broken by her counter. There was no better chance to counterattack than this. She threw herself forward at the yakuza warrior, clenching the blade tightly between her teeth. Her thoughts were given over entirely to the attack and that was exactly why she never saw Koko's counter until the splinters were grazing the skin of her eyeballs.

The Demon had flung herself face first into a spray of wood chips and bamboo thorns. Her hands swatted at the air in front of her as while the rest of her stumbled back on a few, panicked steps. It took her a second to even understand what Koko had done. But the time she forced her eyes to open, the Blade of Shinjuku was staring her down. Digging her thumb into her aggravated shoulder and holding a sharp stick to her jugular. Its tiny prick against her neck seized control over her body. Masuyo froze.

'Tag. You're dead.'

Crap.

Masuyo clicked her tongue and shoved rival away on the shoulders. She reached up and pulled out the wood from her mouth, peeking back at Koko with one inflamed eye. Her mouth tasted like charcoal and ammonia.

"Dead nothing, cheater. A real sword wouldn't splinter like that." She said, rubbing her eyes behind her arm,  only slightly hiding the saltiness in her tone.

"A real sword," Koyuki countered smoothly. "Would have carved through the roof of your mouth, through your nostrils, sliding through one of your eyes and into your brain." Quite the painted sight and one she had never ever had the luxury of seeing. Yet. "So, dead." Koyuki said with the tiniest hint of a grin and a sharp snap of her fingers. Oh, she was enjoying this. No more bravado from the girl who would not give up, just the petty spoilsport that sometimes snuck out beneath all the optimism, and the speeches, and all the cheer. "Alternatively, dearest Susu, I drag the blade through your mouth, opening every inch of your gums, carving your cheeks in half, and directing the stroke down towards your weirdly-shaped neck."

"Again?" She snapped. As reserved as Koyuki still seemed to be, this was the rough equivalent of her doing a gloating dance around Ai Masuyo proverbially murdered corpse. "Dead."

"'But Koko, didn't you splinter a sword in twain too'"?" 'Koko' nodded along, as if conceding the point, before opening her mouth as if a thought had occurred to her. "Well, that's different, cos see one: I'm just that cool so it's quite plausible I could do that to a real sword. two: the crux of the move was to stop the sword, allowing me to reach out with my own blade, slit your femoral with a REAL SWORD, and let blood loss take you so AGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIN?" Another fingernsap and then an accusing finger. "Dead, bitch."

Koyuki wasn't really a 'small joys' kinda person. You either went big or you went home, fuck smelling the daisies in between, but seeing Ai Masuyo pout like a little bitch was one of those shameful little pleasures in life, one she would never get old off. And once it happened, once that little bit of weakness was shown, she couldn't help but keep pushing that button.

"So now that we've established you're dead three times over," Koyuki said, raising her ruined sword and adjusting her huge kimono ribbon with her other hand. "Could you face the main camera - I think it's southwest of us in that corner - and announce your forfeiture. After that, you may kneel so I can symbolically behead you." Koyuki tapped her wrists as if asking her to hurry up. "You may, of course, continue the fight if you are an honorless white pig with no actual cooking skills."

Nothing would piss her off more than for Ai Masuyo to follow through.... but thankfully, she more than knew her friend enough to know her giving up would be mutual principles suicide for the both of them.

“Weird neck?” Masuyo unconsciously brought a hand up and rubbed it along the side. It felt like Koko had an innate talent for always picking cheap shots where she could find them. Or at least making her own.

The aikido girl felt her brows furrow as she crossed her arms. Trying to hide her bitterness wouldn’t have done any good. It was no secret that Masuyo Ai hated to lose. It was easily the least kept secret in Shibuya. Being dead wouldn’t have upset her nearly as much as knowing that she had been bested. In Musashi’s time, there was no place for near-wins and shallow blows. Koko understood that precedent as well as she knew every vital spot on the human body.

She'd even made a point of listing them all out on a diagram once. A diagram she drew herself.

There was a litany of responses Masuyo could have made. Even in her head, though, none of them sounded right.

"Okay, okay. I see your point. Maybe I would have been dead with a real blade slashing at my face. But how about this?” Masuyo would declare and point her finger. “A real katana is thinner and weaker than bamboo. I would have just bit down harder and broke it apart before you could cut me."

Masuyo had never chomped through layered steel before, but she was willing to bet that neither had Koko. Neither of them could decisively say that the pride of Ai-Kido couldn’t chomp her way through a tempered blade.

"Not to mention you’ve been holding back this whole time. Your patterns are beyond easy to read. If this was a real fight, I would have avoided a fatal cut at the last moment. So, not dead!"

That unwavering resolution in her tone would make it hard to tell how much of that was genuinely her belief and how much was faux bravado. Why was she even arguing about this? Koko had it in her to land a mortal wound on her if she had been given the opportunity. Masuyo knew her better than that.

Still, it stung. Something made her face sour as she wordlessly and stubbornly walked forward, brushing past Koko's shoulder as she moved back towards the center of the room. Masuyo would throw a glance at her rival over her shoulder, making a silent promise with the resolution in her eyes alone. When that moment passed, she would turn and face the opposite wall and begin walking in the direction of the weapon rack.