Ride 768: Doubashi attack!!
Pag 1
1: Orange....
“Less of a hero”? Ah!?
2: Nonsense!!
You've never been a hero to begin with!!
Pag 2
1: Ha..... Hakogaku!!
Even Hakogaku caught up!!
2: Thick.... thick.....
3: A man like this holds the strongest of powers!!
6: I'm thin compared to him!!
That's not true, Oosumi-kun!!
7: Senpai, is he strong?
The Hakogaku member who last year defeated Sohoku's Kaburagi in the first day's sprint is
Pag 3
1: him, Doubashi Masakiyo!!
Buah!!
Pag 4
2: Buah...
So in the end you've decided to run?
3: “Chicken”
Pag 5
1: We're passing by the sign the signals 5km until the sprint line!!
2: Hakone Academy.....!!
3: Ace sprinter, Doubashi!!
Ugh.....
6: We're at “5km left” until the sprint
7: There's not much left
Pag 6
1: It won't take more than “10 minutes”!!
2: So you've come, Doubashi!!
It's “san”!!
San!!
How many times have I told you!!
3: Again!!
Pag 7
1: You want to get revenge against me!!
2: That's how someone who won last year would speak, but you lost against me!!
3: Hahaha, are you being a sore loser?
I'm telling you you're the one who lost!!
4: Whatever, come at me!!
It's not whatever, what are you even thinkin when saying that!!
Are you that self confident
Pag 8
1: We'll definitely win!!
2: Interesting, buah!! I came here to humble you!!
4: Ugh....
He's different.....!! He's much more dangerous now that he's running rather than when I met him this morning in the tent!!
Pag 9
1: Hakone Academy's Doubashi!! He's so overwhelmingly intimidating!!
It's like the pressure of a huge raging bull that has its eyes on you!!
2: Just by looking at me he makes me feel like my hands and feet are restrained
Issa fought against someone like him last year!?
4: No!!
5: Calm down
Steady your breathing
6: Swallow your nerves, Danchiku Ryuuhou!!
Pag 10
1: He moved on his own!!
Everyone is so overpowered by Hakogaku that they're not moving!!
For me, on the contrary
2: It's a chance!!
Nagoya's Komao used the curve and jumped ahead
He plans on going ahead alone!!
Pag 11
3: The sprint line is 5km from here!!
Horse acceleration!!
I think I can aim for a breakaway victory!!
4: That guy has a reputation for running solo!!
Gallop!!
This is bad!!
5: Doubashi has an incredible pressure!? But isn't this kind of things
6: just fears that we create ourselves!?
7: I can keep going like this!!
Doubashi isn't worth fearing!!
Pag 13
1: Where are you going?
3: Uaaaaaaagh
Pag 14
1: I thought I was 200m ahead of him, and yet
2: I could have let you go freely, but if you keep wandering around in front of my eyes like that
3: I can't win comfortably!!
Wa-
Pag 15
1: Hakogaku's Doubashi accelerated in an instant and passed Nagoya!!
Gallop!!
2: Together with Sohoku!!
3: Ah!? “Sohoku”!? Tch!! He reacted at the same time as me...?
4: You're the only one who can react at the same speed as me in this leading pack
Orange!!
Pag 16
2: Chicken!!
Pag 17
2: Orange is still behind!?
3: Did he give an order to this guy?
4: And he still managed to keep up with my speed of reaction!?
6: What, this guy's eyes, this running
Pag 18
1: What happened, your expression has changed!!
So this guy wasn't a chicken!!
2: Sorry, Doubashi-san
We'll take this sprint
3: The two of us!!
Pag 19
1: Garuaagh
2: After stopping Nagoya down, Sohoku number 5 jumped out from there
3: and attacked again!!
Tch
4: Hahaha
I told you!!
Pag 20
1: “We'll definitely win”!!
2: Orange!!
Hahaha, what we're aiming for is to be
3: “Japan's number one”!!
4: I'll make you Japan number two!!
61 notes
·
View notes
daffodil + chan
a song
the prompt: daffodil (a god bows before a mortal)
read it on ao3
---
"You have no power over me."
running through his hands like water, and suddenly the earth is not his to control. The skies do not turn with the twist of his head, lightning does not fork in the air when his eyes, dark as night and yet still lit by some unearthly light, fall upon you, his mouth wide as if to gasp for a breath he cannot take-
And yet, still, it shivers down your spine; the magic that draws you here even as you rip it apart, the prize of your conquest to rip the world into two.
"Take it back," he hisses through his teeth, the ground trembling with every syllable that slides down his tongue. You watch his mouth as it forms the words, the flash of teeth behind thin lips reminding you of the way that the swordsman you'd fought through to get here had smiled at you - the last of his seven challenges, the last of his demons, or angels, or citizens of the sprawling, damned city he claimed as his kingdom.
And here you stood, at the pinnacle of the eighth, and stared him in the eye without cringing away because now you knew the truth. Now you knew that what he whispered in the dark was a lie and what you saw with your eyes wasn't always true, and though he may be a god and a king amongst beings that you could never hope to rival, a god can only hold as much power as you give him. A god can only claim dominion over a beast that bowed to his dogma.
You see now that you are no beast. You are no believer in any lie he utters to the darkness.
"Take it back," he says again, the note of his voice changing. He pleads, his brow furrowing and his shoulders curling in as if waiting for the final blow. "Take it back now, before it's too late."
"I can't," you tell him, and you watch him fall to his knees, and you know that it's wrong and your heart pounds in your chest and it
like the ground does at the impact of his knees, crumbling into the pieces it was in when you first took his hand, alone on the side of the road with only one thing to call your own. And what was that thing, the little warmth you'd held to your chest in the dark and the cold? What had you traded away for the comfort of the house that crumbled around you now? Why had you destroyed him to get it back, where was it now, why did it not appear within his hands at this, the hour of his reckoning?
"Please," he spits into the cold ground, the dirt and the leaves and the curl of ivy that grows up the walls around you, old and ancient and not yet sprouted from its roots all at the same time. His hands curl in the dirt like he can reach down and pull the earth to him, like he can stop the wane of his power if he just tries to hold on a little bit tighter. "I know what you want, and I don't have it. I can't lose-"
Broken, fragile thing. Small god of limited earth, crouched at your feet like he might worship you instead. You'd thought him all-powerful once, and then you'd thought him severe and his servants and beasts and playthings petty, and then you'd thought him
because he'd smiled at you in the garden that bloomed from his own hands when you expressed your desire for a flower to tuck in the braid of your dark hair, and his hand had been soft in yours, and when he looked out across his kingdom and the clamouring faces of the people he'd brought to live there, he'd looked at them the same way that he'd looked at you.
Beneath your foot, the ground cracks, fracturing outwards like a spiderweb. It's your heart, you realise morosely, sinking from your chest and into the depths of the earth, disappearing with whatever he'd taken from you; and it was a wretched thing and it had betrayed you a hundred times over, but you still mourn at the loss of it and all the dreams it had carried with it. It blooms in your flowers in the corners of the room, embeds itself into the land and sings along with the song of his power, a thing you can hear but cannot touch, a beast once born that now does not belong to you.
"I'm sorry," he says, his breath like mist in the cold air, and even without your heart, you can't bear to see him so cold.
Your hands reach for him without permission, your body kneeling in the dirt before you can stand your feet firm upon the earth and refuse to move. He flinches away, but your fingers are soft upon his chin and the curve of his jaw, gentle when they brush the soft dip of his neck. "I only wanted to know what it was," you tell him with a voice that cannot hold itself steady. "I thought if you loved me, you would give it back." It's the only voice you have - you are not like him, or like Felix, speaking with many tongues. You don't have any power of your own.
"It's because I love you that I can't give it back." His voice is hoarse, every word a knife that he swallows without ever once flinching. "It's because I love you that I couldn't tell you what it was."
"But didn't I deserve to know?" you question. "Doesn't my life belong to me?"
Finally, his eyes rise, looking up at you with a fire that belies the cold of his skin. "Of course it does," he gasps, and his hand reaches up, dirt-stained fingers dragging at your cheek. "That's why I gave it to you, and I never asked for anything else."
"But you wouldn't give back what you took in the first place."
The sudden violence of his voice crumbles the walls and fractures the sky, the clouds blooming te dark colours of a bruise. The absence of his hand on your cheek stings in the cold; his face turns away, screwed up in regret and a pain he won't allow you to feel. You lurch forward before he can disappear, drawing him into your arms; stiff shoulders, spine of beaten steel, slow beat of a heart you once held in your hands.
He'd stood so tall and unmoving in the morning light, when you'd first walked down this path, and now in the dark of the setting sun and the ending of the earth, his weight slumps into your grasp, his resolve melting into the warmth of your body. "I didn't want you to suffer again," he says to the soft cotton of your shirt and the curve of your collarbone, his breath a whisper against your skin. "I couldn't watch that, when you asked me to make sure it would never happen again."
Surprise comes in the pause of your breath and the still of your arms, the jump of a heart you're not sure you still possess. "I asked you to make me forget?" you question the world behind his back, and into your neck, he sighs.
"You couldn't forget," he murmurs. "She was dead before I found you, and when I took her from your arms - you couldn't forget. There was nothing I could do to fix what had been broken. And then you begged me to let you forget, so I remembered her for you." He pauses, his throat hitching like he's swallowing something down. A sob maybe, or the tears he will never let fall. "I can't give her back though. She's not here anymore."
You push him upright, your hands on his shoulders, his neck, his face. Brushing away the hair that falls in his eyes, wiping at the blood that drips from the cut on his cheek. "Why didn't you tell me?" you ask, because the answer is incomprehensible. "Why did you let me go this far?"
"Because I was scared," he admits, and his teeth clench and his spine stiffens against the urge to hide away from you again. "Because I'm a wretched, evil, stupid thing who thinks they can-"
His words die in your throat; vile, wretched things that you store away to spit out later, into the ground where they belong. He is none of that; he is soft, and hesitant, until your fingers find the sharp curve of his hip and the lines of his back, dragging him closer and his lips open like there is nothing in the world to devour but you and
40 notes
·
View notes