Where Winter Meets Summer (Rusame Countryhumans)

Breaking the Silent Night

This was getting nowhere.

The look of panic swept across his face as he cried out, begging me to stop whatever I was doing. I will admit, I was hurting as I continued to force my powers but I had already made up my mind.

I wasn't going to stop until I dragged him out of his self-loathing.

At this time, the sun had sunk into the horizon, leaving my radiant, arctic blue aura as the primary source of light. At the moment, Ame had gone into hiding among the untouched trees. I took this moment to rest a bit as I deactivated my Awakening, allowing the arctic blue light to fade from my monochrome eyes. Without warning, I felt my body give out under me and I lurched forward, slumping against a half fallen tree. My breath appeared as frosty puffs as I tried to ease my spinning head and blurring vision.

I already knew this was going to be bad but it seems that I seriously underestimated exactly how bad it was.

Why am I doing this again?

The silence was eerie but I could feel his presence nearby. Whether or not he realized the point I was trying to drive home, I was still unsure. With a swipe of my hand slicing through air, the trees complied and snapped in half as ice washed up the side of their trunks. Before they could tumble to the ground, a sudden burst of yellow and gold bloomed and exploded, sending flaming wood chips flying.

America glared at me with his smoldering eyes and I glared right back with my frozen, jaded ones. Had he found the will to fight? Had he realized what I was trying to do?

He slowly walked out into the open and shrugged off his jacket, tossing it to the ground. I bead of sweat rolled down my face as a strange feeling of anticipation welled in me. America seemed to have sensed the tension and responded. In the blink of an eye, he appeared behind me with his Awakening fully ablaze. No hesitation. No holding back.

He had realized.

Flashes of red and blue burst through the darkening woods, paired with gusts of wind from the extreme temperatures being thrown around. The pain I had felt before was gone, replaced by an exhilarating sensation that numbed my mind and body. Ame seemed to be performing at his best as well, but I found that I wasn't able to read him like before. On the surface, it seemed like he was being reckless and random but every move was performed with an intent in mind. So not only was he fine-tuning his Awakening, he had also improved his hand to hand combat.

I barely had enough time to dodge his lightning-fast attacks but he seemed to be struggling to dodge mine as well. We were perfectly in sync, and our brawl began to feel more like the most dangerous waltz in the world. The ground beneath us would be swept with ice and snow for a second, then scorched black the next. The night around us never darkened.

Before we knew it, the fire that danced through the battleground no longer shed it's usual amber glow and was now burning with a glorious gold. I had also made the unconscious adjustment and now, we were flawlessly playing with the two most dangerous, contradicting substances in existence. The nocturnal fabric of night was ripped apart as a brilliant blaze of Sunfire entwined into the shape of a colossal sword. In response, a glacial shield of ice rose high into the sky. As the two elements collided, an explosion of celestial blue shredded through the night like a magnificent supernova.

Steam billowed through the air, creating a hot, humid mess as we flung ourselves apart to catch our breaths. A pressed smirk played on both of our lips but that was when a piece of me shattered.