“It looks like you aren’t an amateur... But I can’t have you getting a big head just because you anticipated one little attack.” Alberta released the whip and flung her skirt up theatrically.
The thighs he glimpsed beneath the skirt were, as he’d thought, equipped with a plethora of weapons.
Alberta grabbed a few of them and threw them at him in one smooth motion. A spike went flying right at him from her right hand. From her left hand came a disc-shaped weapon, a chakram, that traced a curve as it flew at him.
Yuichi closed the space between him and Alberta and snagged the chakram out of the air. He also dodged the spike, just to be safe.
“Sorry, I’m used to chakrams, too,” he told her. His big sister Mutsuko had developed a weapon called a chakram shooter; naturally, she’d tested it on Yuichi, so he knew how they worked, too.
“I knew long-range weapons wouldn’t work from the moment you grabbed the whip!” she snapped.
Apparently Alberta had just been using the projectiles to limit his range of motion, as she quickly hefted a hand-ax in a double-handed grip and swung it at Yuichi as he approached. But Yuichi was already in her personal space before she could finish the blow.
He held back her arms’ descent from below, then crossed them. As her center of balance shifted upwards, he slammed a palm into her vulnerable chest.
But there was something dubious about the way the strike broke her ribs and crushed her lungs; he was sure he hadn’t hit her hard enough to do that.
So Yuichi flew back, getting space between them as Alberta doubled over.
“Looks like you really are dead,” he said.
Alberta’s body was brittle, containing none of the sustaining life force of a living human’s body.
Seeing a corpse moving around inspired a certain degree of primal terror, but it appeared to be, in itself, a fairly easy thing to fight.
Though normally, crushing a person’s lungs would end the battle...
People couldn’t move if they couldn’t breathe, but that didn’t seem to matter when the body was already dead.
Alberta looked up from the place where she was crouching, and grinned.
Yuichi put up a hand casually to grab the thing whizzing at him from behind.
Alberta’s face twisted in surprise.
“I told you, I’m used to chakrams,” Yuichi said. He was holding a chakram made of transparent material. When she’d initially thrown the first, she’d probably thrown another on a wider arc.
It’s trouble, though...
He could beat her, certainly, but she seemed like she’d take a lot of work to knock out. He’d have to bludgeon her into immobility, but he was hesitant to go that far against a woman.
He glanced behind him to see how Natsuki was doing. She’d cut Sakiyama neatly up into a pile of immobile pieces. She hadn’t seemed to show a moment’s hesitation.
Perhaps because the body was already dead, there was nearly no blood.
“I’m finished,” Natsuki said. “What about you?”
“I feel a little bad for Sakiyama, but...” Yuichi said. The man might have been a stalker, but he still thought the man deserved a little more feeling than that.
Natsuki walked up next to him; now it was two against one. Alberta winced, seeming to realize she was at a disadvantage.
“What’s going on here? I can’t lose to people like you! No, I know! It’s this body that’s the problem! I never should have chosen this weak little body!” Alberta shouted.
Yuichi thought Alberta might be setting up for an escape; her shrill cries were probably a bluff. She just wanted to distract them long enough to get away.
“Takeuchi, what should we do with her?” he asked. Ende’s ward seemed to be working, but they also needed to act soon. Normally, he wouldn’t mind if an enemy wanted to run away. But the way she was acting, Alberta might come back again with a stronger body.
“I think we’ll have to kill her,” Natsuki said. “Don’t worry, even if the police find her, she’s already a corpse, so the time of death won’t finger us. At worst, we’ll get off with desecration of a corpse.”
“I wasn’t asking about the legal ramifications... should we contact Nergal? Maybe he can pick her up...”
This was all Nergal’s fault for failing to adhere to his promise. Yuichi felt he had responsibility to come here and collect her.
“You know... Sakaki, you can be extremely insensitive sometimes,” Natsuki said with a frown.
“Ah... right, we can’t do that. Sorry.” It seemed the antipathy between Natsuki and Nergal was deeper than he’d imagined.
“If you can’t do it, Sakaki, I will.” Natsuki strode forward, apparently thinking they’d make no progress if she left the matter to him.
He was just about to warn her not to let her guard down, that Alberta might not be completely out of the fight — when suddenly, it was all over. Alberta’s head tumbled off of her shoulders.
Judging by the shocked expression on her face as her head rolled around on the floor, not even Alberta herself knew exactly what had happened.
“Takeuchi, did you do that?” Yuichi asked. He was sure that no one present had done anything, but he had to ask anyway.
“If I had a move that would work at this distance, I would have used it already.”
“You know it wasn’t me either, of course,” Ende added from the distant place from which she’d been watching the battle.
There were no customers or servers around, either; they were the only ones present.
“What happened?” Yuichi looked at Alberta. Her head really had been sheared clean off, with a cut as smooth as if it had been done with a sharp sword.
“I don’t know. I’m as surprised as you are,” Alberta’s head admitted as it rolled along the floor.
Even the one who’d been decapitated didn’t know, it seemed.
“If my big sis were here, she’d say ‘is it a new Stand user?!’ or something...” Yuichi snarked, but at the same time, he knew that this was a seriously dangerous situation. If this had been an attack, that meant the person behind it could kill without warning.
If the enemy is nearby and has to see what they’re attacking, that’s a little better, at least...
It might be wishful thinking, but if that wasn’t the case, then they were all fish in a barrel.
Yuichi opened his senses, searching for a presence.
He could tell that someone was outside. A moment later, the cafe door opened, and a girl carrying a sword came in.
It was Yurika Maruyama.
Previously her weapons had been converted from toy swords, but what she was carrying now appeared to be a genuine broadsword. She was also wearing proper armor, unlike before. It wasn’t exactly full plate, of course, but she had a headpiece, a breastplate, gauntlets, and leg coverings to protect all her vitals.
“Ah! Hey, look, look! The Brave Slash I just learned actually hit!” Yurika called out the door after seeing the condition of things inside the cafe.
“Don’t just whip that stuff out! You scared the hell out of me!” Another person entered, bristling with annoyance. It was a sullen-looking boy wearing a uniform for the same school as Ende’s.
“Don’t worry,” Yurika assured him. “My skills only hit monsters I’m in an encounter with. But once I’ve encountered them, they can even slice through walls to get at them.”
The two were looking at Alberta, which meant they probably weren’t here for Yuichi and Natsuki.