One Plus Two Equals Three [Erika, Mizu]

"Gojū Hachi - Fuuryouki (風領域 ("てんらん"); Fifty Eight: Wind Domain)."

She muttered in tandem to her opponent's own Tenran though as Mizu was empowering it with further kido, Erika's was complimenting her swordsmanship. The blade she held becoming the medium of which the air reacted and so with the act of a few testing cuts she turned the air around her into disarry and caused the oncoming blades of wind to be met with as much air resistance as was necessary to leave her with minor cuts after it finally hit her.

"Is this all you are capable of? Kido, and more kido?"

Erika tested her opponent's pride and confidence though it would get them nowhere by the two doppelgangers opting to mirror one another. This wouldn't tell her anything and so she'd take the initiative here. She quickly made it clear that her questions were rhetorical. Erika was a show not tell kind of person.

"I hope not. The warm up is over, I'm going to be serious from this point on."

With that explained her demeanour shifted immediately from a bored, half-hearted display to threaten anything within her vicinity. It carried into her reiatsu which until this point had been passively exerted but now might as well have people on edge with the feeling of a knife pressed to their throat.

A drop of sweat slowly made its way down the curve of Mizu's cheek, a first, subtle sign of exhaustion. She felt good, limber and full of energy, but she also knew she couldn't just keep using high level spells without making an inch or ounce of progress. Though her latest attack managed a few minor cuts and scratches on Erika, it was obvious she would either need to use even stronger spells and risk total exhaustion or mix things up and possibly lose in every other category. She had no doubt this clone of hers was terrifying with the rest of Zankensoki. At minimum, she knew she was outclassed in a sword fight.

"No..." muttered Mizu, barely above a whisper. She had lost many many times before, but it had been a while since she felt outclassed like this. Not since she fought that frightening Arrancar in the Arena of Light, Ulquiorra. Erika seemed to have a counter for everything she threw at her! She could feel herself faltering a bit, unsure of what to do now. Any time her Kidō proved insufficient, she lost. Period. Her eyes shut tight, pushing away these thoughts of defeat.

So what?! So what if her Kidō wasn't good enough? Does that mean she should just throw her hands up in surrender? Mizu could feel the knife to her throat from Erika's Reiatsu, and though it made her skin crawl and hair stand up, it also sharpened her own senses and mind. In an act of defiance Mizu grasped her Zanpakuto tight and held it in front of her with both hands. Though her stance wasn't anything special, it was solid and confident in the face of lopsided odds.

Dirt kicked up as Mizu shot forward in a dead sprint, her blazing gold eyes focused only on her target: Erika. She Flash Stepped in a zig zag to possibly throw off the other woman, though she knew such a gambit was unlikely to work against an experienced fighter. Upon reaching Erika, Mizu swung her Zanpakuto in a downward slash, simple but effective. She hoped.

She looked less than amused by Mizu's approach, one might even say she seemed irritated but one could never tell with Erika. A scowl was such a common expression that it was her face at rest. Erika had already gotten under her skin with the taunt, she determined that she had won from that alone.

The other woman's technique was not the issue but the difference in reiryoku, it did not matter if Erika wasn't as proficient with kido if she could expend more of her spiritual power to counter it. She fell for the provocation though and rather than trying to close the gap between their levels of power, she had surrendered her advantage to challenge Erika at her own strengthes.

"You're dead."

Erika said to the empty space filled with Mizu a moment later, and then she showed her opponent the difference in their swordsmanship and speed by making an upward slash that happened faster than a person could blink. She was above all an honest woman, when she said she was serious she meant it, so the attack had no punches pulled in slashing the other vice-captain with surgical precision.

It was as simple as Mizu's attack but tempered through centuries of experience. It did not waste any force with every bit of force focused at the tip of the blade to maximise cutting through any resistance and defence; it was not lethal, but it was calculated to slash her from her thigh to her shoulder without piercing deep enough to strike an organ, and with that same momentum from her sword the forward motion of her opponent would stop so she'd crumple to the ground rather than fall on top of her.

Being slower than her opponent was hardly new to Mizu. Being less skilled wasn't new either. Being so drastically outclassed in both categories simultaneously definitely made things harder. The last time she was so out-gunned was against Ulquiorra, and ended up blowing herself up just to only win by the Arrancar forfeiting due to a wardrobe malfunction. The instant Erika gripped her sword and her eyes couldn't keep up with the woman's movements, Mizu knew she had messed up.

There was no time to come up with a plan, no time to form coherent thoughts. The only thing she could manage in the fraction of a second between Erika's sword and her own body was a battle-hardened, instinctual reaction to conjure a Kidō barrier, a translucent red wall, but with so little time and her own attack drawing her body forward, it could do little more than shatter upon being struck. The one benefit it provided Mizu was to prevent her from falling forward completely. Erika's sword still managed to cleanly slice through her weakened armor, though it did its job in guarding her body from too much harm.

The only miscalculation, if it can even be called that, on Erika's part was the Sei-kotsu Sōkō's resiliency. Pain still seared through Mizu's mind as she felt lacerations open up on her leg and opposite shoulder, but her abdomen and chest weren't cut through like butter and for that she was grateful. Things were looking bleak, however; there was nowhere to run and her armor was destroyed, and in one clash it was made obvious she couldn't even pretend to keep up with Zanjutsu alone. Knowing that, she drew her left hand up and quickly spoke a spell into existence "Gekiryū Kanketsusen - Apply Cold!" Out of porthole above her head rushed a geyser of freezing water so cold it began turned to ice as it struck the ground, which was aimed directly for Erika.

Is that all? Her raised eyebrow asked seeing the oncoming ice. She held the hand up to take the brunt of the ice, becoming encased despite her sidestep given their close proximity. How naive, Erika had no qualms with taking blows even if it was a detriment. This was no different.

Her arm had become a weapon which a heave and shockwave from her reiatsu blew out in a curtain of frozen chunks to smash the encased arm against her opponents head with all the force of a club wielding monster. A club of ice that showed the arm that was dying in realtime underneath its translucent shape.

She would use her opponent against themselves, completely fine with launching her doppelganger away from her where she felt the most secure. Battle was as much a mindgame as it was a deadly dance: expressing assuredness in her own success to seed doubt in her opponent was as viable a tactic as slicing them into pieces.

Defeating a warrior's body paled to smothering their spirit like a drowned cat. The body was a sack of meat if the person had no strength to guide it.

This was it. This was her defeat within Mizu's eyes, coming toward her in the form of an unavoidable strike that would leave her crumpled on the ground. Her golden orbs could hardly keep up with the woman coming to slam her frozen arm into Mizu's head, leaving no time or room to call out any kind of incantation. Nor did she have the skill to defend with her sword, something made abundantly clear by their previous clash. There was only one option available to Mizu and she knew it.

Crystallize, Shōsenmaru

Though she didn't say it out loud, Mizu's sword shattered into hundreds of shards of amethyst, her once-golden eyes now turned a bright violet. These shards immediately formed layer after layer of defense between Mizu and her attacker, done far faster than casting any Kidō spell. Even with this wall of crystal, Mizu was not out of the woods as Erika's arm smashed into the layers and shattered first one, then two, then all but the final layer that remained in one piece but was slammed against her, sending them both flying over a dozen feet away.

"Ugh..." muttered Mizu as she rose to a kneeling position from where she'd fallen in a heap on the ground. From there she moved her left hand first over the laceration on her leg and then her shoulder, using Kaidō to swiftly close the bleeding wounds. She's not just faster and more skilled than me, but she's stronger too. Not to mention even if I'm better with Kidō, she can put way more force into her spells...ugh! I'm so weak! Frustrated at her endless limitations, Mizu stared down at her blade-less Zanpakuto and decided on the one thing that could pull her through this Shōsenmaru, you have to be the difference. I know we can win together!

Casting aside her frustrations, at least for the moment, Mizu rose to her feet and stared her opponent down. With a flick of her wrist all the shattered crystals, and the remaining wall, all gathered around her in a swirling torrent of vibrant shards. With another flick, two plain spears were formed by her crystals and immediately fired at Erika like javelins. As soon as they came close to their target, Mizu caused the spears to suddenly shatter into a flurry of glass-sharp shards that would swarm the tiny woman, possibly shredding her up if they met their mark. All the while, Mizu's left hand fed a near imperceptible amount of Reishi into the ground as she mumbled a silent incantation of an unknown spell.

Crystalised water clashed with a purple counterpart, a sparkle of ice and water catching the light to surround the two before they were separated, and her arm free from the explosion of ice against the defence.

Her golden eyes had shifted from their hard glare to become like a sword pointed at Mizu's throat. She was an expert of zanpakuto and she knew what she had just seen. An immediate release of shikai could only mean one thing and her opponent became all the more dangerous as a result.

How exciting.

It made her blood boil a little bit to get to fight someone who had unlocked their bankai. It was an opportunity to grind her blade on a complete sword, sharpening it, that changed the context of this entire fight. Before she had been trying to make her opponent acknowledge and recognise her own weakness but now she wanted to find her opponent's peak so that she could summit her.

She smirked at the oncoming spears while flexing her free arm. It had suffered from being frozen but that was fine. This arm was now less valuable than her dominant hand due to its reduced acuity, and so it was her stronger hand that swung the blade.

"Gojū Hachi - Fuuryouki (風領域 ("てんらん"); Fifty Eight: Wind Domain)."

Once more the reiatsu blew out of her sword in the shape of Tenran to whir the winds into action. It was made to capture and redirect the crystal spears into a whirlwind; she could let them grow their speed before firing them back, or simply keep them trapped in the tornado around her to prevent Mizu from freeing them.

There was a likeness to this zanpakuto that she found familiar and she had theories on how to beat zanpakuto that worked as projectiles, but this particular approach was less effective if the user could generate more projectiles.

Regardless, with all the tiny fragments flying around her as she rolled her wrist to keep the sword - and the wind - moving. Erika wanted to see just how much the vice captain was going to throw at her until she saw another weakness to exploit.

The idea of losing against someone who had bankai without seeing it was a thought that made her sick to consider. She'd vomit in disgust at herself and want to die to recover what little honour as a warrior she could. So she'd look for the means to push her opponent over that threshold.

Even with her drastically improved crystal control after unlocking Bankai, Mizu found it a struggle to maintain control over the shards trapped by Erika. It's not worth exhausting myself just to get those shards back, I need to strike hard and overpower the whirlwind! An idea struck the Vice Captain, and she quickly set about bringing it to reality. "God of armor, God of panoply, God of the aegis: Repel! Zuishinkabe!" These words summoned a tan barrier to Mizu's left the size of a bedroom's wall, where it stood unmoving.

Maintaining only the barest of control over the shards trapped by Erika, Mizu focused the majority of her attention on the rest of her crystals which she gathered and formed into a sphere about five feet across. With a flourish she commanded it to move to the wall she'd just made, and with yet another movement of her wrist it pressed into the wall which began stretching. And stretching. And stretching. Like a rubber band, it stretched further and further until it could no further and Mizu's entire arm shook violently from pressure pulling against the sphere. [i]Wait for me, Masamune-san![i]

The shaking in Mizu's arm stopped as she released her hold over the crystal ball, but not before pointing her other outstretched hand at it, wordlessly covering it in an invisible Kidō net. The end of the net remained wrapped around Mizu's hand, thus when the sphere shot from the rubber wall like a rocket, it dragged her behind it through the air. Though this was all within her plan, she was still startled by just how quick she was being dragged by the catapulted crystal. About halfway between her previous location and Erika, Mizu released the Kidō net and came to a stop; but that wasn't the only net she held. With a heave Mizu tugged at the net she'd previously sent into the ground, and by using herself as a fulcrum she dragged a car-sized chunk of rock and earth through the air far above her head.

"Take...this!!

With all the strength Mizu could muster, she pulled at the chunk of earth and moved to slam it down directly onto Erika's head. At roughly the same time the crystal sphere, now covered entirely in spikes, would also reach the other Vice Captain and potentially crash into her as she's pincered between both of them.

Now, she might've been fascinated by whatever her opponent was trying to do but Erika also operated on a different sense of time than this woman did. She might be patient but she wasn't going to stand here all day waiting for it, and so about the time that Mizu was most vulnerable Erika decided to strike.

Far too much commitment when she should know her opponent had greater speed, the chunk of rock was trying to close the lid on her field and make it a prison but Mizu should understand that the wind was tied to her sword motion.

Her hand stopped, an upward flick of her wrist to throw all these rocks into the air and give her a clear dash to close to the distance with speed that she felt an aftershock in her petite frame. Faster than the sound of her sword touching the ground reached their ears and faster than the speedster's own eyes registered the movement, Erika meant to dash past and leave a nice wedge shaped hole in the side of Mizu with her flash of gold.

"I told you I was going to be serious, if you don't fight me with your all then you'll spend far longer in the infirmary than I will, or do you underestimate me that much?"

She reiterated with a bit of blood coming from the side of her mouth. She'd bit her lip on the way past.

A miscalculation, born of inexperience. When was the last time she fought someone this fast? Ulquiorra, in the City of Lights? But she was perfectly fine standing still and taking her attacks head-on, after all she could regenerate from anything she threw at her. The rest of her previous opponents had all been monstrous Hollows or people who couldn't hold a candle to Erika's speed. There was nothing she could do, not with this gulf between them.

"Agh!" Blood poured from Mizu's Shihakushō where it fell upon the dirt with a splash, the quantity dizzying to the young Shinigami. Through gritted teeth she managed to bring a shaking hand up to the gaping hole where half her side had been and began applying as powerful Kaidō as she could manage to the missing chunk. At this point even if she was left open to another attack, Mizu knew she needed to deal with this injury or she'd risk far more than just losing a battle between Vice Captains. Sweat poured from her head as she slowly but surely recovered first the flesh, then the blood and muscle. Despite everything it was somehow a quick recovery, though the pain still rocked her head, the use of Kaidō sent exhaustion to all her extremities, and the healing job was a rough patchwork at best.

As she was healing herself, Mizu pulled all the scattered crystals from where Erika had been back to her. Upon reaching her she dropped all the shards to the ground. There's no point in sending crystals after her, she'll just dodge and they'll be too far away to form into defenses. Have to keep them near me. Mizu had to adapt, this she knew. She couldn't rely on previous experiences to fight Erika. She had to try something new.

"Hadō 89: Sangai Gobashira Taihō!" Upon her command, five redwood-thick crimson pillars of energy formed around Mizu, each dwarfing her by a wide margin. "Hadō #88. Hiryū Gekizoku Shinten Raihō!" From her fingertips, and with the support of her other arm, Mizu launched a gargantuan blast of bristling electric energy that surged forward in a beam of destruction that overtook the entire length of the training field in no time at all. That wasn't all that rushed toward Erika though as the five pillars of dense, powerful Reishi surrounded the second blast on all sides, shaking the earth and electrifying the air from the combined spells' might.

Dodge, Masamune-san...do it...

Everything rode on this gambit.