“Wait, is that—” The moment Kaname recognized it was the same moment Whi-Bon pressed the button.
“Moffu.” There was a short, sharp explosion, and Terumo Bridge split right down the middle. The remote control had detonated the plastic explosives that had been set at its halfway point.
The explosion itself was a small one, but it caused a mathematically perfect collapse of the bridge’s pontoons and girders, forcing the bridge down under its own weight.
“Gah... ahhhh!”
The bridge began slowly to collapse into the ocean below, sending up large splashes. And as the hundreds of attackers cried out in desperation...
“Fumoffu,” Sou-Bon whispered, eyes closed. He almost seemed to be saying, “I wish there had been another way.”
“That’s too far!” Kaname yelled, bringing out her fan for the first time in a while to smack Sousuke on the back of his head.
The hundreds of enemy soldiers who had fallen into the sea swam to the island’s shore, crying pitifully for aid, but the Bonta-kuns poked at them with their mops and forced them back into the water.
With the destruction of their one invasion route, the Achsheros Army couldn’t keep up the attack. They remained close to twenty thousand strong, but cowed by the tragic sight they’d just witnessed, they fell into a frightened silence... and eventually, one by one, they dispersed.
The battle of Terumo Bridge had concluded in victory for the Fumoffu Market Organizers’ Committee. Many staff members called it a miracle, but the greater miracle was that everyone involved had survived. The next day, the incident was glossed over with a police report that the collapse had been caused by the weight of the fans swarming the bridge, which had overtaxed a structural weakness.
It was rumored that someone among the Fumo-ket staff had connections in the police department, but Kaname didn’t feel like digging into it any further.
And so, Fumoffu Market and its participants were safe once more. But...
“Isn’t it supposed to end with you all wiped out and spoken of in legend?” The night after the battle, partly because the bridge had been destroyed, the Bonta-kuns had remained on the pier to hold a victory party. It was there that Kaname whispered those words to Sou-Bon, who was celebrating amidst their fumo-brational toasts.
“I don’t understand what you mean, but it’s no issue,” Sousuke said through his headset. “The bonds between paws are greater than any.”
And with that, the Bonta-kuns toasted together with a cheer of “fumo, fumo.”
[The End]