Old Versus New

Rizevim Oberon walked out of the guild with some kind of cocoon around him. No, they were wings! Six wings like that of an angel's slowly spread behind him.

Kirika furrowed her brow. "Oh, my. Pretending to be an angel...how unoriginal!"

"You don't have to worry about that, I already know."

Before their voices finished echoing, they clashed once more.

Against Kirika Hotsuin who controlled the earth beneath her feet and charged, Rizevim Oberon spread his wings and flew almost twenty meters to the center of the road.

Kirika swept her arm in front of her and slashed through the air, sending her aura through the atmosphere. Boom! A hurricane with wind speeds of a 120 meters per second blasted towards Rizevim like a cannon shot.

"?!" Waving his dexterous wings, Rizevim tried to avoid the attack, but a *click* sound reached his ears. Looking down, he found that Kirika had already closed the distance between them. Before Rizevim could even figure that out, Kirika thrust her right hand towards Rizevim's chest.

"Did you know, that everything in this world is made of elementary particles?" While saying that, Rizevim retracted his wings to protect himself. When Kirika made contact with the wings, they immediately disintegrated into countless white feathers and stopped the attack. "Elementary particles are things even tinier than molecules and atoms. We know that there exist gauge bosons, leptons, and quarks. There are also hadrons which are made when antiparticles or quarks gather, but, well, they're all divided into a few general categories. These elementary particles make up the world. However," said Rizevim in a soft voice, "That kind of common knowledge does not apply to my dark matter!"

Boom! Accompanying gale winds, the six wings behind Rizevim instantly recovered their forms.

"The dark matter I create is matter that does not exist in this world. It's not matter that hasn't yet been discovered, nor matter that theoretically exists, but rather matter which undeniably does not exist."

A material made by an Esper Ability that could not be classified by science.

Faced by these white wings that seemed to have come from a different world and defy the laws of physics, Kirika's will was not shaken.

Who cares what they were? They would all be shattered by the power of Aura. "Good for you. I'll just blast you apart along with your Esper Power." With one more step forward, Kirika could tear apart Rizevim Oberon's heart.

However... "You still don't understand." As Rizevim finished his sentence, his white wings let out a 'swoosh' and projected a brilliant white light.

A burning pain forced Kirika to back away from Rizevim involuntarily. At the same time, she noticed the change in the situation; she was actually hurt by an outside attack.

"That was diffraction. Light or electromagnetic waves change direction when passing through narrow gaps; this is common knowledge even in textbooks. Using multiple gaps at the same time will make the waves interfere with each other." Simply put it was by diffracting light through the countless unseen gaps on the wings to change the nature of sunlight and use it to attack Kirika. It was not that the white wings gave off light, but that the light itself was changed by diffracting through them.

"Ah, the value of things depends on how you use them. So, how does it feel to be burned to death by sunlight?"

However...

Kirika smirked, "… Go back and study up on physics, you fucking idiot. No matter how you diffract sunlight it doesn't change the nature of it into something like a beam of light that kills."

"Hm, that is indeed the case with the normal physics of this world." Rizevim's six wings curled up and gathered strength.

"But! My dark matter is matter that does not exist in this world! It completely disobeys the laws of physics of this world. Sunlight that gets diffracted by the dark matter will also have its own set of laws! Foreign bodies are like this: by just mixing in a little bit, the world will completely change!"

SCHWING!

The six wings blew up a gale wind towards Kirika Hotsuin. Kirika used her aura to subdue the wind while trying to figure out her opponent's aim. Looking closely, she found Rizevim smiling.

"Reverse it!"

When Kirika heard that; she tried to dodge, but the six wings had already begun to strike. However, unlike before the six wings were used solely as blunt weapons for hitting.

A series of violent sounds exploded out from Kirika's body as she was blown over 10m away, hitting one of the trees on the sidewalk. The thick trunk of the tree got snapped by that one blow. Kirika sighed, "So, the sunlight and wind before, that was all for...."

"Woman, you said before you can reflect everything, but that's actually incorrect." Rizevim's wings spread soundlessly as Kirika flew up to a rooftop, but the over twenty-meter long wings aimed at her like giant swords to strike her down.

"If you reflect sound then you can't hear anything, and if you reflect physical objects you cannot hold anything. You subconsciously establish a filter that sees everything as harmful or not, and use your reflect to push away anything that could harm you."

Kirika spit out the blood in her mouth, blew apart the water cylinder on top of the building with one stomp and jumped aside using the rebound.

The white wings that struck down crashed into the building, and split the building vertically in two. Large dust clouds swelled outwards from there.

"The sunlight and wind affected by my Esper Power are infused with 25,000 different kinds of energy. Then by observing your reflection and using a filtering system that judges which energies are deemed 'harmful' or not, I can use the energies that are subconsciously accepted as not harmful to attack you."

Even if Kirika Hotsuin changed the rules which her aura was based on, Rizevim would immediately use his Esper Power to inspect the change. The repeated attack and defense this way would only make Kirika's wounds get worse and worse.

"Such is my dark matter." Rizevim smiled and spread his wings. "This area, since it's been touched by my Esper Power, it's changed into a new dimension!"

"Whatever." Faced with this taunting, Kirika controlled the air flow and allowed a quartet of sickly green wings of flame behind her.

CLASH!

Kirika's wings swept away Rizevim's wings, and Rizevim's wings blew apart Kirika's wings. The buildings which were made of steel beams and cement were trembling from the blast waves and shook continuously. Suddenly, the two were no longer where they had been. The two of them continuously attacked each other, moving in parallel down the main road at an extreme speed. Occasionally they flew towards a windmill electricity generator, and other times they kicked streetlights away, flying down the road at a frightening speed.

"That power of yours which is locked in your GingaOh Driver...! I hate it, yet I envy it! That power...I can use it to become one of them! It's not fair...the reality warping powers of those stones were given only to the tall poppies of this world!" Rizevim said while waving his wings that spanned several tens of meters long.

"Wait, you're still on about who does and doesn't have a damn belt at a time like this?"

"This has nothing to do with the Drivers! I only want the right to hold the Philosopher's Stone, the most powerful Magic Stone there is!"

Kirika ignored Rizevim's words and stomped on the gravel road, and then kicked the rocks that were sent flying up using a karate kick.

A loud explosion rang out.

"The Philosopher's Stone...I'll use it to give myself a power that can make me one of them! It isn't fair that people like you can walk all over regular magicians and humans!"

The vectors of the pebbles were changed thanks to the aura and fired off faster than Etherion, but vanished after a few millimeters. However, the pressure waves did not vanish, and the attack felt as if it would tear the very air apart. But, Rizevim also put strength into his wings and scattered the attack. The waves of attacks between the two clashes against one another, sent a 'tsunami' of air throughout their surroundings and blew streetlights and advertisement signs into the air.

"Bullshit." Kirika continued, while on that train of thought. "Maybe you think what you're saying is nothing less than the absolute moral truth, but everything that's coming out of your fucking mouth is complete bullshit."

"Even though you have a Driver Belt, you have no idea the value of that right! People like you have no right to say that about me."

"...At the moment you spoke those words, you became one of those common filth that pass themselves off as great villains."

"That doesn't sound convincing." Rizevim said uninterestedly. "I don't want to lay hands on normal people either. If I'm in a good mood I'll even let Council members off. Having said that, I don't really care if those people live or die. Aren't you the same? In our battle just then, how many spectators and bystanders have got hurt? Cement and asphalt were traveling over the speed of sound, and shock-waves wiped out everything. That's the kind of battle between us. Including children, they are all the same. You don't have to right to lecture me, murderer. In order to battle with me, the you that kills off bystanders has no right to lecture me. Don't tell me you truly believe you are exempt from your own ideals."

"Ha, 'battling with you and killing off bystanders in the process', is it?" Even when accused of this, Kirika smiled leisurely. "What a scumbag. It's because you have no aesthetics that you can say bullshit like that."

"Huh?"

"In the end, do you understand why you're a nobody leading a guild of losers and I'm the Super Galaxy King?" As Kirika laughed, she spreads her arms out wide. "Right between you and me, there's an impassable wall!"

Rizevim was fuming at her comments, but he also noticed it.

Their surroundings.

True, the battle between Kirika Hotsuin and Rizevim Gideon had destroyed the road. The glass from the buildings had shattered, traffic lights had been blasted off, and trees had been blown away and were sticking out of the cement buildings.

But, something was missing.

Tragedies.

Glass shards had rained down from above, but there was no-one hurt. A sweeping gale had twisted the path of those shards into falling elsewhere. The advertisement signs had miraculously protected those that were to slow to run away. The others were the same, with not a single person hurt. Though it was uncertain, in their fighting to this point, probably not a single bystander had been hurt.

"I-impossible...!" Rizevim felt his throat go dry. "Are you saying… that you protected them all?" Thinking back, the first sneak attack could have been much more powerful. But if that was the case, Kira Hase, Kirika's companion at that time, would also have been hurt.

This was Kirika Hotsuin's way of doing things.

Even in a death match between the two, even on a battlefield where a slight mistake could get one killed, Kirika protected the normal people who she had never met before. "Don't joke around! Are you saying everything was under your control from the beginning?!"

Kirika showed impatience, as if saying 'of course', and taunted Rizevim for his incompetence that he could not do the same. "Ahahahaha, you should see your pathetic face. You're so mad." Towards Rizevim who was shocked, Kirika cackled madly, "Now this is what should be called a villain."

If after doing this much, if one was still called a villain, then just what did a hero in Kirika's mind have to do?!

"Stop spouting nonsense, woman!" Rizevim roared out and increased the power in his six wings. Changing the lengths, the structure, the white wings spread out and transformed into six lethal weapons that aimed at six of Kirika's vital points.

Facing these, Kirika only smiled. "Now, it's showtime!"