The movement did, indeed, buy them both a couple seconds of time to breath and think-- and it allowed Eld the opportunity to come up with a plan. One could only hope that it was a good plan. Akizetsumei felt that there was something more she could do, but she couldn't really remember what-- and, in fact, the idea kind of frightened her.

Prepared as she was, Akizetsumei continued to strike down shadow after shadow, only calling for Eld to duck once-- and not even calling for him to do it this time; she simply put her elbow on his shoulder and pushed down hard and fast, a physical way of commanding him to duck. She came up and out of this with a vengeance, carrying a similar slow and sweeping rhythm to that of Eld's own. She did not need to spin anything, only swipe her fans in wide arcs, to clear multiple silhouettes at once-- even though it did little good.

However, in moments, she began to see a change. The speed in which the shadows were descending upon her in particular-- not quite Eld --was slowing, whilst she could see beyond it the appearance of rain bursting into wide splashes of water in the distance, an expulsion of water that appeared closer and closer with each fraction of a second.

Seeing this, with the silhouettes spawning at a much slower pace, she let loose one wide arc with both of her fans, to clear the space before her, at least for a second. It was immediately following this that she held the fans back, to loosely hold them over Eld's shoulder indicatively. She didn't say anything about it, but she was expressing a need to swap weapons with him: both of her fans for Oboreru's steel quarter staff.

And as she made the quick offer, hopefully with a fast and flawless follow through, she replied with a dark sort of confidence: "As high as you need to go."

Eld followed Kaze's wordless command to duck, narrowly avoiding having his head chopped off by an imitation of his own scythe. He kept at it for a little bit before making his move, wanting to make sure Kaze would be fine on her own before taking to the air.

Feeling her hand her weapons over their shoulders, he quickly swapped with her, though he wasn't really sure what he was going to do with a pair of fans, metal or not. He certainly wouldn't be able to use them as proficiently as Kaze, he figured, swinging to catch a nearby water Oboreru with the edge.

He was quite surprised when as he swung it, a gust of wind came out and blasted the thing into a puddle. "Whoa! I thought it was just you doing that this whole time..."

This made taking out the Oboreru's quite easy, combined with his senses, and he soon felt they had enough room for him to make his room.

"Now, Kaze!" he shouted, putting all his strength into his legs and jumping straight into the air. Rapidly wielding the fans, he rained blasts of wind down on any of the water clones that appeared, in order to protect Kaze as she assisted him.

Upon procuring the steel quarter staff, Akizetsumei initially swung it out from the bottom, to hold it out in front of her like one might a broadsword. For a moment, she was able to stand still like that, but shortly, just before another silhouette in the rain appeared before her, she fell forward, quarterstaff first. A further attempt to lift it provided the appearance of absurdity, as she struggled to lift it off of the ground, even an inch from the ground. She strained so much to do this, yet she could only succeed in lifting it 7/8ths of an inch. Tragic!

She stood up straight again, arms folded over her diaphragm, with a look of dejection across her face. She didn't appreciate the staff being so heavy, not one bit.

Akizets could only give this so much attention, however, as another silhouette was upon her in that moment. This was about the same time that Eld finally got the opportunity to swing one of her fans for the first time. Of course, it was a good thing he didn't hit anything with it, and summoned a wind instead! The only way to summon wind with the things was to have them open, and when they were open, they were as fragile as paper.

"Great--"

Akizets began to speak cheerfully, but paused to take a strong step forward, over the quarter staff, and unfold her arms over her chest. With a thrust of her open right palm, she dispatched the silhouette into nothing more than a splash remnant of existence.

"--aren't they?" she finally managed to say, with a smile of pride across her lips.

When Eld called for her to go with his plan, Akizetsumei almost forgot what he was talking about, but went with the flow on instinct. She knelt down and placed her index finger upon the quarter staff. Fortunately, Eld had her covered at this point, otherwise she'd have been trudging dangerous water.

Eld would actually find that, when swinging the fans towards the ground whilst in mid-air, he was boosted somewhat. It would be inefficient to get himself into the clouds this way; they were so high up, after all, that he'd run out of steam half-way there if he really tried. That, however, would actually keep Eld at a level setting, to not quite fall or rise much at all, whilst he defended Akizetsumei.

The quarterstaff rose as she did, but with a clear and defined oddity: she wasn't holding it at all. As if stuck to her index finger, it rose as she stood up, latched upon her finger as if it were part of her, moved without even the slightest difficulty. Slowly, she slid her arm out, hand first, to set perpendicular to her body. The quarterstaff pushed away from her subtly, leaving the proximity of her fingertip by an inch, before its north end suddenly tipped.

An onlooker might think, initially, that it was falling oddly, but it did not such thing. The north end fell, but the south end rose: it committed to a full rotation. Again-- again-- again-- rotating before Akizetsumei's now open palm, spinning and tearing into rain, the resistance needed to provide a buzzing sound much akin to that of an engine turbine. The cycling of its form quickly became something that no being could ever physically create with their hands, something even a psionic might have trouble duplicating. Its speed quickly became one of such intensity that a subtle outline of its rotation was the only trace of its existence left.

In a quick moment, one that Eld would have easily missed had he not been keeping an eye on Akizetsumei, the woman spun around to face Eld, to look up to him in the sky, and with the quarterstaff almost devotedly sticking close to her right hand, she swiped her right arm in the air, towards him regardless of their distance from one another, at the highest speed she could manage. The motion would be instant. The quarterstaff, too, moved in that instant-- and, oddly, when it came to a stop, with Akizets knelt forward at the end of a lunge, the staff was spinning no more . . .

One second, Eld had been looking at Kaze as she...spun a pole very rapidly. He never saw it stop, for the next second a tremendous force hit him and he was suddenly rocketed skyward. It nearly gave him a heart attack; he had to gasp for breath, but it was hard to get any air in his lungs going this fast. He was starting to panic.

But he managed to get a good gulp of air, and forced himself to calm down. If he was going to accomplish what he set out to, it would require all his concentration and focus.

Closing his eyes, he focused on Qi...his own, the Qi in Purgatory, even the minute Qi in the air around him. If he was to succeed, he'd need every last ounce of it he could muster...

Akizetsumei watched the sky and Eld's pursuit of it. She'd really thrown him fast, hadn't she? Maybe she should have gone a little slower, or maybe she should've warned him-- or . . . or something like that. Hm, Akizetsumei hummed to herself as she lifted a finger to her lips, thinking to herself, Maybe I should've warned him about lightning.

Oh well. Just a minor afterthought! She couldn't quite remember why that was important, anyways. It was probably silly. The rolling thunder in the clouds and the flashes of light on the dark sky were all just for effect, anyways. Nothing to worry about!

Then, it hit her-- another wind, an incoming force from behind her. Akizetsumei looked over her shoulder once, and then she saw it.

Droplets of water, sent from the heavens, burst like shrapnel, spreading out over a wide range, bathing the already wet earth with more of the heavens' lifeblood. An explosion-- an explosion of water, spread out over such a space, covering such a wide area, and carrying the power of a depth charge all the same.

Standing within the center of this, upon the ground on which Eldridge and Akizetsumei were nearly overwhelmed, was a much more solid figure. He had details, he had an image; he wasn't just a silhouette in the rain. The outline of his figure was much more defined than a normal man's, his skin was far bluer than healthy, and his limbs carried an apparent twitch that no man, woman, or child could consider healthy. His eyes were empty-- a white space amidst a hollow, blank expression. His left arm appeared to be more water than solid, just as his left leg below his knee.

A very real thing within his hands, however, was the farming scythe.

Oboreru was there, standing within Akizetsumei and Eld's small battlefield, but his sister was not. His head, with a featureless face, twisted from right to left, seeking the battlefield, but found nothing.

Until she was behind him, that was.

In an instant, Akizetsumei was behind her brother-- what remained of her brother --with weapon reared. Her right hand was out and open, but again, the quarter staff did not meet her flesh. Instead, and rotated at a quick pace, but not nearly as fast as when she sent Eld to the heavens. Without a thought of hesitation, she swiped her hand, and thus the quarter staff by extension, towards her brother . . .

. . . Only to be equally surprised when, in a flicker of rainwater, the quarterstaff met nothing but the air. Akizetsumei stumbled forward for a single step, surprised, but not shocked to the point of risky behavior. As if anticipating her brother's move-- a correct guess, for that matter --she flickered within the rain just as he, leaving behind nothing more than an afterimage in the blade of the Dusk Remnant. Just the same as before, the quarterstaff flickered away with her, just as the scythe did with him, when he burst away in a flood of rainwater.

In the air, Akizetsumei reappeared, only to find her brother before her already, scythe lifted to the sky, down in mid-swing for her. She regarded this with a disapproving glare, a blink of an eye before she was gone again-- gone again in a flicker, and next to Oboreru's side, swiping another horizontal strike from the spinning weapon for her brother. The rain shuddered where he once hovered, announcing his exit-- his exit, and his reappearance to her right.

Akizetsumei flung herself back, narrowly avoiding her brother's strike, and throwing herself back towards the unstable earth. She flickered in the midst of it, and Oboreru followed suit.

They met, next, upon their feet, in the mud, face to face, quarterstaff spinning towards Oboreru's chest, scythe shoved towards Akizetsumei's stomach. The two weapons met, flaring a sudden outburst of rainwater, another shrapnel charge that spread from both a simultaneous clash and the likewise release of their particular elements: Oboreru, to guide the rain like needles to her, and Akizetsumei to catch her brother with a burst of wind, one which she made no attempt to hold back.

The result was the disappearance of them both.

Already, Eld was far away from the battle on the ground; too far to even tell what was happening, let alone do anything to intervene. All his focus was on his Qi; in order to better rein it in, as he called it forth he let it spiral around him rather than just trying to contain it. It was the same tactic he used when fighting Gestahl, and it had the same effect: it caused him to start spinning as he moved.

But just as he thought he had a handle on it, a new problem surfaced: pain. It seared him all over. The amount of Qi was greatly increasing the spiritual pressure around him, making it feel like his bones were trying to jump out of his skin.

Just...a little...further... he told himself.

When Oboreru reappeared upon the soft earth, Akizetsumei was ten feet before him, landed as if she was already in mid run. The rain quickly closed in on her, falling to her, targeted to her, flowing for her like scraps of metal to a powerful magnet. They were too slow, however, though needles. Akizetsumei's speed was something godly . . .

The rain closed in, collapsing in an expulsion of water, yet met nothing-- meant nothing, as Akizetsumei was already before her brother, spinning quarterstaff over her head, rearing down for a vertical strike. Oboreru's form hastily appeared again just an inch to the left of the falling weapon, scythe drawn back, geared to strike her. When Akizets was visible again, she was in the midst of a jump over the horizontal strike, whilst committing her own likewise blow for Oboreru's skull.

He ducked, another immediate action, as Akizetsumei touched ground. As he rose, he struck up with the scythe, prompting Akizetsumei to appear next to it, posed as if in the midst of a successful dodge. Oboreru struck again-- again-- again-- and again, initiating a flurry of blows, matched only by his sister's speed.

The rate at which he swung created a blur before him, with the scythe swung out nearly every which way. Akizetsumei, however, appeared in flashes and afterimages, each time in a posed dodge, her figure straight up and profile facing her brother when dodging a vertical strike, curled up and in the air for a lower horizontal blow, ducked down to one knee for a high horizontal strike, ducked down and awkwardly sat upon the ground for any amount of diagonal strikes-- a slew of afterimages reoccurring so regularly that it nearly appeared as if there were dozens of her.

These "dozens," however, all converged into one, with Akizetsumei airborne behind Oboreru, still in the midst of a powerful swing. Her leg bent forward and reared back, slamming her foot into the back of her brother's skull. He stumbled, first, nearly even falling upon his face, before flickering out entirely.

Akizets had only a moment to land on her own two feet and take in a deep breath before she witnessed her brother again. He, too, was airborne, but higher up, providing the appearance of suspension. She narrowed her eyes upon his faceless figure, and in a fraction of a second, she was gone.

Her figure only appeared for a tenth of a second before an attack was completed; to the naked eye, it was almost instantaneous-- and yet, Oboreru, once within the air before his sister, faded in a subtle burst of rainwater just as quickly as Akizetsumei struck out at him, only to appear next to his sister at yet another tenth of a second, a fraction of even that after he dodged her strike, swiping out at her just as quick as she.

And so, Akizetsumei, too, faded. It was her maximum speed, an instantaneous movement, an instantaneous slash with a no longer spinning quarterstaff, summoned to Oboreru's right-- and yet it did little. Again, he was gone.

Their forms soon became two individual flickers, nearly impossible to differentiate any longer. Each time one dodged, they rose into the air by another inch. The speed of their attacks and consequential disappearances soon reached an absurd degree. Akizetsumei, by that point, was moving at her fastest pace at a regulated constant, yet Oboreru was matching her comfortably . . .

His head was pounding; the change in pressure around him, both spiritual and physical, did not mesh well the concussion he'd sustained. It took physical restraint to keep from just curling up into a ball, but he knew this pain was not something coming from outside. He'd been told about how he supposedly had a massive amount of spiritual energy, but never before had he truly felt like it--felt its weight as he did now. It was like his body was going to rip apart at the seams.

The spinning wasn't helping, either. The more Qi he released, the faster it seemed to spin him, until the world felt like a giant cylinder and he was at the center of it. Or perhaps not unlike the quarterstaff, when Kaze had been swirling wind around it.

And then suddenly, his world was lighting up, flashes of light occurring all around him, and shortly after that he felt wet--even more so, as though he was partially submerged.

I'm...I'm really in the clouds...

His momentum was rapidly slowing, but the sheer force of his entrance punctured a small hole all the way through to the top. Though he was repeatedly blinded by cloud to cloud lightning (which, perhaps due to the Qi and the air pressure around him, didn't seem intent on striking him), he stared upward as the small rift expanded through the cloud, until finally there was no more cloud to split...

A single ray of light shined through, passing all around Eld, all the way down to illuminate the area around Kaze and Oboreru. As his ascension finally reached its peak, he had a brief notion, though he knew it to be impossible, that he'd somehow pierced through to Heaven. And as he remained in a brief, hovering limbo, he a single thought went through his head, drilling through all the pain disorientation he was feeling, reminding him of what he needed to do.

Are you watching...

He pushed the Qi further into himself, compacting it, increasing the pressure, pouring every ounce he could until his vision began to darken and his body felt like it would explode into atoms, giving into the urge to curl into a ball. And for a few brief moments he hung suspended, a sixteen year old boy surrounded by a whirling sphere of wind and spirit energy.

...Remmy?

And with a cry of exaltation, he released all the pent up force he was carrying, his limbs spreading out feeling like they'd be ripped out of their sockets. To anyone looking from below, it would seem like a bomb went off in the clouds. Instantly there was a large space of clear sky, and it was only growing larger, the clouds retreating from the center of the disturbance, riding an invisible shockwave.

Kaze and Oboreru, being directly below Eld, would hear a resounding boom and feel a light, residual blast that carried the last the rain...and then, there would be nothing but a clear, evening sky overhead...

The battle between Akizetsumei and Oboreru continued at a schizophrenic's pace. To watch them was to experience the world's own speed gaining by thousands of measures, while to watch the rain was to see it nominal once more. They continued to rise into the sky, inch by inch, over the course of seconds, until a fall to the earth would guarantee a swift death for either of them.

It was not until then that a hole punctured the sky and bathed them in a sudden azure-orange light. Oboreru slowed significantly, and unconsciously, so did Akizetsumei, until a roar bereft the sky of clouds and the last raindrops found their way to the earth.

Oboreru stopped. He was geared in the midst of a dash, hovering still, one knee lifted to his chest, the other leg out behind him-- but something was wrong. Under the light of an early evening sky, bathed in a cool and calming twilight orange, he remained still. There was only one attempt. What was left of Oboreru must have stalled entirely when the technique ceased to function. Provided the chance, he would have fell to the earth just like that.

Spotting his motionlessness, Akizetsumei took full advantage of the opportunity provided to her. Oboreru's speed seemed destroyed, and so, in an instant, she had herself, with spinning quarterstaff in tow, before Oboreru. The staff rotated at turbine speeds above her head, and with a glower of indignation, Akizetsumei let the spinning weapon descend into the confines of her brother's head. Rose water burst up and freckled the sky as Oboreru's body was flung back towards the beach, a crushed skull leading.

His body skipped across the ground, landing once, bouncing and spinning in painfully gathered momentum, striking again, and tapering off into a hollow thud and deathly limpness.

Akizets remained suspended in the air, watching the lifeless form of her brother, the water that once composed what remained of his arm and leg soaking into the ground beneath him. Pangs of regret and guilt drenched her heart, but deep down on the inside, she knew this very event already happened years ago. She knew the want to save her brother was a psychological want for the impossible-- she knew that she'd already killed him once before, and all that remained of him was a ghost and a grudge. That ghost, now, could at least fade into an endless n--

Much to Akizetsumei's surprised, she witnessed the impossible. As if turned to mush, the earth below Oboreru swallowed his remains and the scythe by his side with a series of fingers crawling over his form and dragging him under. Were it not for her genuine surprise, she would have pursued this immediately and stopped it from happening, as something about it, in hindsight, felt terribly wrong.

"What the . . . heck? How did . . .?" she whispered her surprise aloud.

After seeing nothing more come of this, however, Akizetsumei looked to the clouds-- or, rather, the clear orange sky. There he was, the man that brought an end to the storm. No matter how much she felt she could not forgive him for something, she genuinely wanted to tackle him into an embrace amidst the air. She didn't quite know why she refrained.

He'd never felt so exhausted in his entire life. It was as though he'd been running for the better part of a week; sweat poured off of him, and he panted for breath. But the pain and disorientation was fading--and, with the clouds receding into the distance and the sun shining down once more, he felt a measure of tranquility. Even if they still had to finish Oboreru himself, with that, the danger to his home was gone.

As gravity started to take hold once again, he knew he didn't have time for a break just yet. He reached for more Qi, knowing he'd need it to slow his fall to survivable levels...

...but came up short. Perhaps he had some spiritual energy left, but for the time being it was receding, like the shoreline after a large wave.

Oh... was all he could think, numb with a sudden fear that gripped him, as he began to rapidly plummet.

Akizetsumei stared up at Eld, watching him, waiting for the moment that he'd descend to the ground in a totally cool way.

Except it didn't look all that cool when he did finally drop from the sky. It was something of a free-fall. Akizets remembered feeling very attached to such a thing, but after doing something absolutely stunning like clear out an entire storm, she felt that there should have been flips and stylistic posing. That would have been extremely admirable. Akizetsumei was extremely enthused for this. Were she sitting, she'd have been on the edge of her seat, waiting for Eldridge Tsukimono's followup.

But then she realized that Eld wasn't intentionally descending at all-- in fact, he was falling. Akizetsumei watched for another couple of seconds, waiting for a flip or something to suggest that he had control of himself, but upon finding no such thing, she realized that Eld was actually falling to his death.

That she could not allow!

Eld would feel a sudden rush of wind, one different from the one whipping about his form. This one would come from behind him, behind his back, in an unnatural instant. It was then that he'd no longer feel the sensation of falling-- but instead, the sensation of levitation.

No, not that, either.

The sensation of being carried. Yes, that was it. Were he to open his eyes, he'd find Akizetsumei in the air, standing in place, feet flat upon the air as if it were an actual surface-- with Eld in her arms. It wasn't quite that she was catching him with her arms around his chest or back or anything of the sort, though. No, it was as if she were suddenly carrying him bridal style, one arm under his knees, the other under his shoulders-- and were he to look to her face, he'd see the woman smiling brightly under the twilight sky.

"Hi!" she'd greet him cheerily as soon as she had his attention.

Terror had spread like ice through his veins. He couldn't even scream, and even if he did it was unlikely anyone would hear him. His only consolation was that he doubted he'd have much time to feel pain.

But when a sudden stop came, it was far too early and didn't involve his guts splashing across a large section of the landscape. Instead, it was rather gentle, and when he dared actually look around, he realized he was no longer falling...Kaze had caught him.

"H-Hi," he replied, slightly dazed...at least until he looked down and realized they were still very, very high in the air, at which point he became acutely aware of his situation and threw his arms around her with a small yelp, clinging tightly.

When Eld threw his arms around her and squeeze tightly, Akizetsumei took a hesitant step back. She felt her knees weaken quickly, and her body felt extremely heavy. She knew when something bad was happening to her footing, and that was about right now. Something absolutely horrible was happening to her footing. Eld was putting all of his weight into her, and it forced her to stumble back and--

"H-hey, w-wait-- y-you'll throw me o-off--"

It was then, before she could even get the word "balance" out, that she, too, became acutely aware of something:

Eld was heavy. Eld was very heavy. Eld made the quarterstaff feel like a pennyweight. There was absolutely no way in hell she could pick him up.

". . . u-uh oh."

That was not a good sound for her to make, considering the situation. In fact, that was never a good sound in any situation, regardless of what it may be. A sudden and belated rush would overtake the both of them, as Eld and Akizetsumei both would find themselves plummeting to the earth. If ever Eld needed a reason to scream, it would be now, when even a season veteran to personal flight and breaking the laws of physics screamed on instinct in the midst of a fall.

Eld's moment of daring to feel at least somewhat safe was quickly revoked as Kaze buckled under his weight. "Uh oh" was not something a person ever wanted to hear from the person whom had their life in their hands.

And he definitely didn't want to hear her screaming; for a few seconds it caused him to scream too, but the hope her presence provided kicked his survival instinct into gear again.

Still clinging to her even as they fell, he yelled, "You shot me up to the clouds! Don't you have enough power to just float us both?!" Even Eld had a bit of trouble being polite to a cute girl when potentially plummeting to his death.

In the midst of their fall, something caused Akizets to cease screaming. Indeed, her scream tapered off, faded, and ceased to be, replaced instead by nothing at all, with Akizets staring at Eld's face with her head tilted to one side and brows lifted in the confusion of chronic amnesia.

"Oh! Right!" Akizetsumei replied as she remember what he was talking about.

And just in time, too . . .

Eld would feel a sudden jolt as Akizetsumei's feet touched down upon and invisible surface, her legs bent hard at her knees, and her body slowed to a quick and steady halt. Both she and Eld would come to an abrupt stop, only two feet from hitting the ground. There was a strong wind coming from below them, but not one that felt like it could really carry them. Maybe it could carry paper, but not them. Incidentally, that seemed to be the strength of wind that was always exerted beneath her feet when she defied the laws of physics.

Were Eld to look at her face, though, he'd see that she was straining to no end-- and then he'd soon see the ground, as she toppled over, off from the surface on which she stood, to fall forward to the ground with Eld still in her arms.