The Melody Of Two Swords

Wakamatsu

Touou is a kingdom that has quite a reputation regarding their soldiers, and Wakamatsu takes pride in saying  that hes one of them. He may not be a captain or a big noble, but Wakamatsu likes to think that he himself has built a reputation in the infamous Touou army. Hes faster than the average soldier, and Wakamatsu has always been big, even by soldiers’ standards, and then built just as tall and trained just as brawny as the rest of them.  and knows his way around a blade; training harder than most on them. But when you watch them in the ring, fighting, like this, Wakamatsu can't help but think that he needs to put more training in.

Wakamatsu has been a soldier under Touou for as long as his memory goes back. And he's seen a lot of different kinds of people. Wakamatsu's seen hardy, giant men the size of oxen, wielding blades the size of battleaxes like they're weightless, rending holes in the earth where they fall, and slight, swift soldiers that move like cats in the night. He saw (and sees) princes that move like soldiers, and soldiers move like dancers.

But none of them compare to the duo that is Kagami Taiga and Aomine Daiki.

When it comes to swordsmanship, there's much to say for strength and skill and speed. But there are lots of swordsmen who are strong and fast and skilled. (Including himself).

But if you ask Wakamatsu, it's the ones with passion that become the most fearsome.

And there's no one with more passion than them.

Wakamatsu has seen a few battles in his short time and been in most of them but you don't need a background in warfare to know that when it comes to skill with a sword, Kagami and Aomine stand at the top.

Watching them fight is really, genuinely entertaining stuff.

For his size, Kagami is exceptionally fast, and the way he moves is both like a soldier and not. His technique isn't exactly textbook; a little messier, but with the right bones and highly polished fundamentals—like a man who had learned the basics and then taught himself the rest. Not all men can do that. It takes a certain kind of talent, a gift, even to muddle ones way to a level of skill like this. It's not at all like the usual fights that Wakamatsu has had to sit through. On any normal opponent, it would have thrown them off. When you train day in, day out, against a certain style, you grow accustomed to its tendencies.

But this is Aomine Daiki.

Never in all Wakamatsu's life has he seen someone move with a blade like Aomine. He knows these movements, how each one should look; how each one should feel—on his own form and his opponents—but somehow, Aomine's body takes those same familiar shapes and makes them more. On his body, they're fascinating; vivid and rippling and as ever-changing as the wind, and even though the sun is bright and high, somehow when Wakamatsu watches him, the way his body twists and sways to the beat of silent drums makes him think of gypsy fires at twilight. Each of his attacks is distinct and deliberate; so incredibly deft and precise, yet at the same time, his every movement flows so flawlessly into the next that to the naked eye you would know what one ends and the next begins. Like an elegant, unstoppable God.

It's so elegant.

There's no other word to describe it (although he would never say that to the guys face, of course).

The arena feels different, with Kagami Taiga in it.

Wakamatsu can't quite place it, but somehow, when he steps out there with his sword in hand and head held high as if to defy the Gods themselves, the very air changes. It's hard to pinpoint exactly how, or exactly why, but he feels it, like some people can feel a thunderstorm brewing days before it actually hits; a shift in energy that gives him goosebumps For the better or for worse, ever since his arrival here his presence has been felt throughout the castle, like the fire the burns inside him is too hot for his body to contain, and can't help but spill out into the world around him.

You can't help but be in awe.

Even the ones who have seen their fair share of fights. Even the ones who have no interest in him, or whose only interest lies in wanting to see him fall. Because he doesn't fight like the rest of the soldiers, and on some level, they all know it, Wakamatsu knows he knows it. He towers up over many of the soldiers; a brawny giant of a man with an urgent, almost brutal kind of strength behind his blade, yet the way he moves is so light and sure, like the earth has no pull on him.

Like if he wanted to, he could just leap up into the sky and never come back down.

Somehow, despite the ferocity of the fight in the ring, it's... unexpectedly uplifting to witness.

He doesn't look like a soldier or even human, really; he looks like a beast; a survivor. One that will never be shackled. And in him, he sees the wilderness again.

When he watches Kagami Taiga fight, he feels the spirit in him; nurtured from a half-life spent in the wild, and suddenly finds himself longing for a world without walls.

And when he feels that pull; that whisper on the wind that calls to the latent wanderlust in the heart with the promise of adventure and freedom.

Hears it call.

It looks like fire in the night and moonlight upon a clear lake.

It sounds like the hoof-beats of wild horses, or a lion's roar echoing across its plains, and a wolf's howl stretching out long into the night.

It's as fearless and as beautiful as it used to be.

Only this time, it looks more red than blue.

Those kids are something else. Looking from Kagami to Aomine, he wonders if he hears it--if he feels it to.