In the end, it only took about a minute for us to herd the troublemakers down onto the northern slope of Mount Rokko, where they returned to their human forms. Staying in dragon form while on the surface was, generally speaking, a hassle.
“We’re finally sixth-years, and some jerks are already trying to pull us down?!” “Who are those cretins, anyway?! Oh… It’s the student council…” “They’re onto us already…?”
We had transformed into our human forms as well, which made it rather easy for the delinquents to surmise our intentions. Being the president, Sadie stepped forward to speak for us as a group.
“I know you,” she said. “You’re the near-dropouts of the new sixth-year class. You’re an embarrassment to our entire academy, and I request you never pull a stunt like this again.”
“Shut’cher mouth! You’re only the president ’cause the job got handed to you on a silver platter—where do you get off talking down to us?!” “What she said! You’re the president in name only!” “Hurry up and retire already, you faker!”
Oof—that’s the worst argument they could have possibly chosen to make.
Sadie’s smile had grown noticeably strained. “Oh? I see you have some very fascinating ideas, don’t you…?” she muttered. They say sometimes when you’re truly upset, you find yourself smiling in spite of yourself, and I suspected the president was experiencing exactly that.
Suddenly, with a mighty thud, Sadie stomped the ground with all her strength. It felt like a minor earthquake, and I nearly lost my footing.
“Everyone? Crush these fools. On the double, please. We brought just as many members as their group numbers, conveniently enough, so I’d like each of you to claim one of them for yourself. Take them on one-on-one and slaughter—pardon me. Killing them is off the table, of course. Take them on one-on-one and destroy them, please.”
It felt like Sadie was using her command, in part, to quell the roiling rage within her. Regardless of her intentions, the meaning of her command was clear: We had been granted permission to use force.
“Let us demonstrate what the members of our fair academy’s student council are truly capable of. It’s clear, after all, the only solution to this problem is a lesson in how far separated we are from them.”
The delinquents seemed rather less enthusiastic after Sadie’s speech than they’d been before.
“Sadie, what the hell are you—” one of them began, but she never got the chance to finish her sentence. Ricuen had, before anyone even realized it, circled around behind her and struck the back of her neck with a powerful barehanded chop.
“I believe my work here is done, then. Let me know when the rest of you are finished, please.”
Considering how Ricuen fought, there was simply no way she wouldn’t circle around behind her enemies if they gave her such a wide-open opportunity. Her unfortunate target fell face-first onto the ground, fully unconscious. One of our foes was down, and four remained.
As to the exact nature of Ricuen’s movements, describing them was unfortunately beyond me. She was capable of moving as quickly as it was physically possible for a dragon to move—in other words, they didn’t call her “Wyrmspeed Ricuen” for nothing.
✦ ✦ ✦
The remaining delinquents, finally realizing the predicament they were in, fanned out at once.
“Oh, crap! The student council’s here!” “You just noticed?! Let’s do this—we’re taking them down!” “Yeah! We’re all dragons here! We can take ’em!”
If they’d stayed clumped up together, there was a chance we could have defeated them all in a single attack. In that sense, they had made the right call. As for our side of the equation, the fact that they’d spread out made it easier for us to follow up on Sadie’s rather eccentric order to battle them one-on-one.
“Well, then—I believe I’ll take on…you,” Direwolf Etigra said as she pointed toward one of our remaining foes.
To be clear: Her finger was pointed toward the delinquent. Her gaze, on the other hand, was directed straight up at the empty sky above. Whatever she was thinking about, it seemed very unlikely her chosen foe had anything to do with it.
Etigra would never look the people she spoke with in the eye. That habit was a touch rude of her, in my mind, but looking a conversational partner in the eye would have been meaningless for her. The rest of us made eye contact and observed people’s expressions in order to judge how they were feeling and better understand them. She, however, could understand people perfectly clearly without going to the trouble.
“I should inform you in advance: Seven seconds from now, you will be unconscious,” said Etigra.
Her unsettling, almost devilish proclamation seemed to send a chill down her opponent’s spine. “D-don’t you mess with us! We’re sixth-years, too! We’re on your level!” the delinquent shouted, succumbing to rage and charging forward blindly.
Etigra, on the other hand, began walking backward at a slight diagonal angle, still facing her foe. The delinquent closed the distance in an instant, of course, and began a ferocious onslaught, but each punch and kick she threw missed Etigra by a hair’s breadth.
The delinquent clicked her tongue with irritation. “I almost had you there—this time, I’ll knock you out for sure!”
She hadn’t “almost had her” at all, in truth, but I could hardly blame her for seeing it that way. Etigra simply knew exactly how she had to move in order to evade every strike. Woodland wolves were known for having senses so finely tuned they could tell when prey was moving through the trees far, far off in the distance, and Etigra’s senses were even keener than that—or so the rumors had it, anyway. That story was how she had earned the popular title “Direwolf Etigra.”
Etigra was entirely calm and composed, so anyone watching the fight would be forgiven for thinking her opponent was missing her, rather than that Etigra was dodging. All it took was a slight lean on her part to cause her opponent’s strikes to sail through the open air. From Etigra’s perspective, however, that wasn’t anything remarkable—it was simply a truth that had been set in stone since before the fight began. Her extraordinary senses bordered on a form of precognition, and I was certain she’d used them to set up some sort of trap for her foe, though I had yet to see through to its nature.
At long last, Etigra’s skirt fluttered as she lifted her right leg high into the air. Her opponent had chosen that exact moment to charge forward, and wound up plowing face-first into Etigra’s foot. It was almost like her foot was magnetic, and her opponent’s face had been drawn to it irresistibly.
“Bwa— Ugh…” Etigra’s opponent grunted. I wasn’t sure if she’d tried to say something, or if it had just been a painful exhalation, but one way or another she collapsed to the ground in a heap.
“As predicted: seven seconds, on the dot,” Etigra said, punctuating her victory with an extended yawn. “I must say, when you know the exact timing with which you’re going to win a battle, it’s terribly tedious to actually go through the motions.”
Etigra pulled some sort of sweet out from her pocket and popped it into her mouth. It seemed that was her personal reward for a job well done.
“There really is no greater pleasure in life than eating. You can never experience a food’s flavor at any time other, after all.”
That, I suspected, was a sentiment only Etigra herself would ever understand…though I was in firm agreement that eating was one of life’s greatest pleasures. I, for one, rarely felt more alive than when I was sinking my teeth into a slab of meat.