Nex and Viz surged forward in a tight formation, wings beating like engines. Their Ultimate technique had been completed. Nex felt elated as the [Extreme Shuriken] spun between them, cradled in the space where their flight paths overlapped. It screamed with layered sound and lightning, and its shuriken rim cut the mist into spirals.

  Yasuya came straight at them. He was not a dragon anymore. He was a celestial storm of light, a pillar ascending forward, too bright to stare at and too fast to doubt.

  Nex felt the timing lock in. This was the run. This was the moment where pride became proof.

  "Hold it steady," Nex shouted.

  Viz answered with a clipped echo ping. "Steady."

  They drove in. The [Extreme Shuriken] howled louder, the vortex inside it tightening, the rim flashing like a saw made of thunder.

  Then Yasuya did the impossible.

  The pillar of light bent. Not a curve. Not a drift. A sharp turn, an L shaped angle cut into the sky like a rule breaking stroke. One instant Yasuya was in their line, the next he was beside it, and the space where he had been still burned.

  "What," Nex shouted.

  They missed.

  Yet following Yasuya's passage, the shockwave hit them anyway. Heat and pressure tore across Nex's chest and back. His wings buckled, his fur singed, and the air slapped him into a spin. Viz spun with him, a ragged blur, both of them losing orientation as the sky roared.

  The [Extreme Shuriken] did not stop. It trailed on, a comet screaming through cloud layers, still searching for a target that had stepped out of reality.

  Nex forced his eyes open through tears of heat. He saw the shuriken streaking away and felt his gut drop.

  "No," Nex snarled. "That is mine."

  He tried to dive for it, but his body lagged. Pain delayed every command. His ribs screamed, his shoulder burned, and his wings felt uneven.

  Somehow, Viz moved first.

  Viz flipped out of his spiral with a desperate snap, then chased the comet as a streak of lightning. He caught up by sheer will and kicked the [Extreme Shuriken] upward with his heel. An electrical current surged from his ears into his leg, then into the orb. The kick was not just a kick.

  It was a charge.

  Nex saw it and his breath caught. Viz was not merely saving it. Viz was hurling it. He was charging it again. The [Extreme Shuriken] leaped upward like it had been fired from a cannon. Its rim brightened, its vortex tightened, and the sound it made turned from a scream into a razor song.

  If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  Yasuya flicked his head and his horns glinted.

  The pillar of light snapped into motion again, and once more it angled hard. Another sharp turn. Another impossible evasion. The shuriken tore past the empty space where his body had been.

  Viz gasped. "He is doing it again."

  Nex tasted blood and laughed once, bitter and thrilled. "Good. Then we do it again."

  The [Extreme Shuriken] arced back down through the sky. Nex shot forward and met it on the return like a striker meeting a ball. He hit it with his claws and poured sound into it, then he added shadow.

  Darkness pooled along the rim like a rhythm, and the shuriken edge thickened with a black sheen, and the vortex inside gained a second layer, a shadow spiral wrapped around the sound spiral.

  Nex kicked it toward Viz. "Take it!"

  Viz caught it with a wing tap and shoved it forward with another electric pulse. The sphere shrieked and accelerated. It looked heavier now, more violent, as if it wanted to cut the whole arena open.

  Yasuya dodged at a right angle.

  The miss did not slow Nex. It dared him.

  Nex chased the shuriken, then struck it again midair, feeding it more sound strings. The strings wrapped and tightened, the orb spinning faster, the rim biting harder. Nex sent it back to Viz like a challenge.

  Viz answered with a fierce grin that did not match his shaking body. "Again."

  They became a blur. Two brothers and a comet weapon. They passed the [Extreme Shuriken] back and forth like a game of ping pong, each hit a clean transfer of momentum, each hit a fresh infusion of power.

  Sound. Lightning. Shadow. Sound. Lightning.

  Every pass made the shuriken more dangerous. The vortex inside began to scream in layers, a stacked chorus of spinning pressure. The rim flickered with jagged light, and shadow clung to it like smoke that refused to disperse.

  Nex felt the technique tug at his arms, at his throat, at his bones. It wanted to explode. It wanted to be released. He kept it contained with control he did not want to admit took effort.

  Yasuya kept evading.

  Each time the [Extreme Shuriken] closed in, the dragon broke the line with another impossible angle. L turns, sharp pivots, instantaneous shifts that made Nex's echolocation maps stutter and redraw.

  "He is not moving like a body," Viz shouted. "He is moving like a comet without rules."

  Nex's eyes locked onto Yasuya, and the dragon's calm stare made Nex furious. It was like Yasuya was letting them work, letting them build something bigger, just to see what it became.

  Nex clicked a hard phrase to Viz. "Keep feeding. Do not let it die."

  Viz answered. "It will hit."

  Nex grinned, teeth bared, even as his wings trembled. "It has to."

  The [Extreme Shuriken] streaked past Nex again and he struck it once more, pouring everything he had into the spin. The comet screamed louder than thunder, and the air around it warped as if the sky itself feared getting too close.

  They did not stop. They could not stop. If it connected, Yasuya would finally feel it.

  But if it failed, the weapon they were creating would become the next disaster in the arena.

  Suddenly a blur of motion slammed into Nex's side. Wind sliced across his fur, and pain exploded through his ribs as he was hurled off course.

  His grip nearly slipped. Frustration sizzled in his chest. The [Extreme Shuriken] was in front of him for a heartbeat, spinning wild, waiting for his next hit. Then wind tore across his face and Gamuikaze laughed right in his ear.

  "Miss me?" Gamuikaze's voice rasped with arrogant delight. His scythe arm scraped along Nex's shoulder before launching him into a twisting spiral. "Let's see how long you can play fetch!"

  Nex cursed under his breath, fury igniting in his gut. "Frick off!" He accelerated forward, propelled by desperation to reach the shuriken.

  The timing was ruined. The shuriken drifted farther away, its comet trail stretching, its spin still hungry. He twisted in time to see Viz hurling the [Extreme Shuriken] back toward him, but he was too far to return the pass to Viz, and the shuriken flew off its axis.

  Gamuikaze capitalized, zooming forward into Nex's path, conjuring a spiral tornado and forcing Nex backward again, the pressure doubling down until Nex could barely breathe.

  The [Extreme Shuriken] was getting farther and farther away.

  No! He wasn't letting it go.