Quest to Nowhere: Rondo

Part 2: Rondo of Destruction

Lonoa slowly walked out from the frontline of the Radou forces, as he did he could see Tomoe walking out from the same spot on her line. Lonoa thought she looked surprisingly feminine given her reputation on the field of battle. Had he met her somewhere else he could have seen himself trying to pick her up.

Her hair was fairly short, and a very dark black color. It was just short of her shoulders, but it appeared to be rather messy in a somewhat organized fashion. Her skin had a dark tan color to it, which didn't seem to match well with the green color of the Bridgar's military uniforms. And over her right shoulder poked out the handle of her sword, which was strapped onto her back it seemed.

The two finally reached near the middle of the battlefield, and stopped about sword's distance apart from each other.

“So what gave you this idea?” Tomoe asked him.

“Well,” Lonoa said, “After looking over everything, I realized that this was unfortunately the only possible way that we could win this battle without losing all my men. Of course I wasn't really expecting Bridgar to agree to it.”

“Oh? Well they don't really know,” Tomoe said with a little smile, “I figured that they wouldn't need to know about this. I'm acting in their best interests, even if they wouldn't think so.”

“Seems we both think the same way,” Lonoa commented.

“So how should we do this?” Tomoe asked as she crossed her arms over her chest.

“First one to give up, get knocked out, or die I guess,” Lonoa suggested.

“Sounds like fun,” Tomoe said with a big smile on her face.

She then took off the jacket top to her uniform revealing the black tanktop she was wearing underneath it. This took Lonoa a back a bit, since he found himself attracted to her appearance, but then he quickly realized how muscular and toned her arms were. Which reminded him exactly who was standing in front of him.

“The jacket is too restricting to fight properly in,” she explained as she reached back for her sword.

“If you say so,” Lonoa said as he grabbed the sword at his hip.

* * *

As Lonoa swung his sword down at Rowel, Rowel's speed with his blades seemed to increase since he was easily able to block the incoming strike with one of the reversely gripped kodachi, while quickly attempting to counter attack with a strike at Lonoa's body with the other.

Lonoa managed to jump back just enough for the tip of the blade to just missing cutting open his stomach.

“See,” Karen pointed out to Maegane, “When the General fights all out like that, no one can match him.”

“Seems you weren't paying complete attention,” Maegane said as she shifted the hair on her face over from covering her left eye to covering her right eye, “Had Lonoa not jumped back Rowel would have been dead.”

“What?” Karen said looking over at her.

Maegane turned her head to look at her too saying, “Although Rowel has gotten faster, he doesn't have the strength to stop the Gemelo with only one of his arms. So if Lonoa hadn't had to pull back, this fight would have been over already.”

With Maegane's left eye visible to Karen, it was not only clearly different from her right eye, but clearly different from a normal human eye. The normally white area of her eye was colored with a medium to dark green color, while her pupil was an orange color. There was also a thin vertical black line that ran through her pupil, and her circular iris.

Maegane turned her attention back to the fight, while Karen sat quietly trying to also focus on the fight, but she also tried to figure out who exactly Maegane was, and what was with her eye.

* * *

Rowel stood looking down at the spectacular battle that was waging in front of him. Both lines of Bridgar and Radou had encircled Tomoe and Lonoa as they fought. It had started slowly to happen, but now almost 14 hours into their battle the two lines were almost intermingling. Far more concerned, if not transfixed, on the fight and far less concerned with the opposing soldiers.

Lonoa and Tomoe swung at each other fiercely. Each clash of swords seemed to echo and shake the ground. They would quickly attack each other, one parrying the other striking then vice versa. This would continue for a number of minutes until they hopped back to rest a bit before continuing again. Although the fight had been going for a long time, Rowel hadn't seen either land a strike on the other. Some clothing was cut, but no cuts of the skin had occurred.

Rowel had stayed far away from the fight, as much as he would like to watch he was the one that had make all the decisions in General Lonoa's stead. Obviously the higher ups weren't very happy with what Lonoa was doing, but as the fight went one they seemed to better understand the greater implications.

He turned away from the fight and headed back into the command tent. Inside was one soldier manning the communication box, which he didn't look to happy about having to do, and on the communication box was Weis who had the receiver up to his ear.

“Yes... Yes I understand.... But it's still going.... I don't know,” Weis said into the receiver.

Weis was technically a Major, but he wasn't really a soldier, it was more of an honorary position since he was actually there to keep track of Lonoa and keep him from doing stuff like what Lonoa was doing now. He wore a suit rather then a uniform, and had his blond/brown hair slicked back. He was a rather wily character, and Rowel didn't like having him around, because he always made things difficult.

“I understand.... goodbye sir,” Weis said continuing to talk into the receiver before tossing it carelessly to the communications soldier.

Weis groaned before looking over at Rowel. He didn't look happy, which made Rowel happy, although he didn't show it.

“I can't believe this!” Weis complained.

“Something wrong?” Rowel asked.

Weis walked over and poked him in the chest sharply with his finger, “You better hope he wins, otherwise I'm going to make sure you and his lives are a living hell, even if no one else does!”

He then stomped out of the tent, and Rowel watched him leave. It seems that things were going better for them with the politicians. Hopefully things stayed that way.

* * *

“You can't!” Rowel pleaded.

It had nearly been 23 hours since the start of Lonoa's and Tomoe's fight started, and although the two had begun to lag a bit, the fight continued to go on strong. But because of some behind the scenes dealings, the fight might all have been in vein.

“This is what we've decided,” said one the the members of Radou's council who had traveled to the front lines to help in the execution of their dealing. “Once the treaty is signed I expect you to retrieve General Lonoa, he is key to the restructuring that will be occurring.”

Rowel held in his further contempt for what was going on, because he knew it would do no good. Regardless of what was going to happen in the duel, the deal had been done. Radou would join the Bridgar Empire, something they had fought so hard to prevent. All he took solace in now was that at least this war would end with blood being spilled.

* * *

Lonoa and Rowel continued to clash swords. Lonoa would attack only to be blocked by Rowel's two kodachis, and then quickly counterattacked by one of them causing Lonoa to hop back out of range. Each time Rowel countered he seemed to be getting faster, until he managed slice into Lonoa's shirt a bit at his stomach. He had just barely missed cutting into Lonoa with that attack, and they all knew that if it happened again, he would likely land that next strike.

Karen could barely hold in her excitement. She knew that finally the tide was turning for the General, but she couldn't help but feel like something wasn't right. Something about the Maegane girl gave her a bad feeling.

“It seems you've finally stopped warming up,” Lonoa said as he inspected the cut in his shirt.

“You're the one that wanted this,” Rowel told him sounding very confident.

Lonoa looked up at him with the trickle of blood that continued to run down his nose from under his forehead protector and said, “Well then I guess I should too.”

He changed his stance pointing the large sword straight out in front of him, and standing with his feet rather wide. Rowel couldn't recognize it, but he could tell that it was completely full of openings, but he decided to wait and see what Lonoa had learned in the time since he last saw him.

“Gemelo viento,” Lonoa said and with a loud crash the sword split into two, one in each hand. The two swords were both about half the size of the sword they were created from, and looked exactly the same other then that one had an all white blade, and the other one an all black blade.

* * *

It was just over 24 hours into the fight when Rowel yelled to Lonoa.

“It's over! We lost!” Rowel yelled to his friend holding back a tear.

Somehow through the intensity of the duel both Tomoe and Lonoa heard him, both losing their concentration in that instant. Lonoa let his guard down just as Tomoe's sword came down towards his head. Even though she tried to pull it back, the sword seemed to act with its own will, forcing her to make the first and only cut in the whole duel.

The tip of the sword cut a shallow 1 inch long gash into Lonoa's forehead. He stumbled back out of surprise and fatigue, falling to the ground. Tomoe wanted to apologize, but felt too tired to speak. She slid her sword into its sheath, and started to walk away as Rowel and some of the other Radou soldiers ran to Lonoa who had passed out from exhaustion.

As Tomoe walked back to her tent the Bridgar soldiers cleared a path for her, some offered to help her since she looked like she was about to pass out, but she managed to straighten herself up and appear as though she was fine. She didn't want to appear weak in front of her men, even after a duel which she had every right to be tired from.

A wood elf girl in Bridgar's uniform ran up to Tomoe looking very concerned. She seemed to somehow persuade her to let her carry her sword, which she grabbed by the sheath. She then escorted back to her tent, where Tomoe collapsed onto her bed the second the tent flaps were closed.

The medics tended to Lonoa's fatigue and injury, but for some reason no matter what they did to the cut it wouldn't stop bleeding. The only thing that seemed to do any good was to wrap it tight with bandages, which seemed to slow the bleeding, but not actually stop it.

* * *

“You did well my old friend,” Lonoa said as he lowered his hands, “I know now that you should have been the one to fight Tomoe.”

“How can you possibly know that?!” Rowel questioned having become frustrated with Lonoa's obsession with the past.

“Well I fought you the same way she fought me,” Lonoa responded rather nonchalantly. “But now I have to beat you. Then I can finally fight her again.”

“Your talking crazy!” Rowel yelled out, but his yell was deafened by a sudden gust of wind that began to circle the arena.

Maegane looked back at Karen, “You are going to want to get down right now, if you don't want to get hurt.”

Karen ducked down along with Maegane as the wind began to pick up even more as it swirled throughout the arena. It was almost as if a giant tornado was forming, but the wind began to center around Lonoa. He then slashed his swords at Rowel from his distance far out of range of a normal attack.

The wind seemed to collect around the two swords, and then be released with the slashes. Combining the winds into a destructive force that looked as if a tornado was being shot at Rowel. Rowel tried to block as best he could, while as trying to dodge away from it, but it pulled him in and slammed him back against the wall of the arena causing it to crumble in that spot on top of him.

As the wind dissipated Karen ran off to where Rowel was, and started to remove some of the rocks that had partially buried him.

“GENERAL!” Karen yelled to him, “Are you ok?!”

Rowel moaned and barely opened his eyes, but he couldn't seem to do much else. His body was covered in innumerable cuts all over his body, including a particularly deep on in his left leg which had been made worse by part of the broken wall falling onto it. Maegane pushed her hair back over her eye, and walked rather casually over to Lonoa who was breathing rather heavily as he recombined his two swords back into one, and placed it back on his belt.

“You probably didn't need to use a 'Fury of the Five Winds' attack. That was kind of over doing it.” she said to him.

Lonoa said nothing as he lowered his forehead protector back over his eyes, and wiping the trickle of blood that had now stopped with the forehead protector back in place. He then merely turned around and walked away with Maegane in toe.

* * *

Lonoa adjust the duffel bag on his shoulder as he walked past Rowel towards the Hospital's front gate.

“General, you can't leave now!” Rowel said to him.

Lonoa stopped and said without turning around, “I'm not your General anymore, and nothing you say is going to change my mind.”

Rowel sighed to himself, “Lonoa... you can't live like this.”

“No?” he said whipping his head around, “I can't live like this!”

He pointed at his forehead with his thumb. It was covered thickly with bandages, but it was obvious that they were doing very little to stem the bleeding.

“I'm going to get my wife and daughter from Ister,” Lonoa continued, “I'm going to find another army, even if I have to go and recruit another country's army, and then I'll get my revenge on Bridgar and Tomoe.”

Rowel shook his head. As much as he would have liked to have gone with Lonoa, he knew nothing would be accomplished from it. He knew that staying, and helping Radou transition into Bridgar's Empire would be the best thing for him to do to help the people of Radou. Unfortunately Lonoa wasn't seeing things clearly now, but he'd hope that one day Lonoa would succeed so that he could conquer his demons.

The two said nothing more to each other as Rowel watched Lonoa walk out the Hospital's gate. He didn't ever expect to see Lonoa again.