“Now it’s time to feel my wrath…Yokozuna Bomber!” Boakeno’s massive body leapt into the air.
With Shachi’s and Penguin’s heads under his arms, Boakeno jumped high, then used his momentum to fall to the ground and crush the two of them beneath his six hundred pounds of solid bulk. Beneath him, they couldn’t budge.
“Bya ha! That is the power of sumo! Curse your own weakness and that no-good old man as you die…”
Several of their bones were broken. Their heads were ringing from being slammed into the floor. But even still, Penguin and Shachi rose to their feet.
“Nwah?!” Boakeno gasped.
The Yokozuna Bomber was Boakeno’s greatest move and had dispatched many worthy adversaries in its day. But these two had taken it directly and still stood.
It creeped him out; they were like zombies. His charges, his slaps, and his best technique had inflicted so much damage upon them, yet they were still alive. For the first time, Boakeno felt a kind of fear toward Penguin and Shachi. Then his eyes traveled back to Bepo.
“Byuh huh…” he giggled, a nasty smile crossing his face.
“Can you still fight, Shachi?” Penguin asked.
“Of course. I gotta land a shot on his skull… Hey, wait! What’s Bepo doing?”
Penguin looked up to see Bepo sitting still, staring directly upward.
“This ain’t no time for moon gazing! Crap, the sumo wrestler’s gonna go right for him!” Shachi fretted.
As a matter of fact, Boakeno had already set his sights on Bepo. At this rate the polar bear wouldn’t be able to avoid his Hakkeyoi charge. This hit could break through rock. If he targeted Bepo, the defenseless polar bear’s life would be over, and Boakeno knew it. He leaned forward.
At that moment, a strange chill ran through his body.
“What’s this?” he hesitated. Boakeno’s warrior instincts stopped him in his tracks.
Bepo was gazing motionlessly up at the sky through a hole in the ceiling. It was as though he wasn’t even present in the room. He seemed utterly vulnerable. There were no clouds in the night sky, just a brilliant moon. A beautiful, perfectly full moon.
“Bepo, get away from there!” Shachi screamed.
“He’s going after you! Run away!” Penguin called out.
But their cries fell on deaf ears. The polar bear’s eyes were wide open, transfixed on the sky and the full moon in particular.
“Hmph! Thought I felt something weird for a second…” Boakeno mused. “I guess my mind was playing tricks on me. I’ll send you to the afterlife now! Hakkeyoi!”
This time, Boakeno headed straight for Bepo.
“Bepoooooo!” Shachi and Penguin screamed, but it was too late. The man flattened Bepo. Or at least that’s what should have happened.
“W-what?” gasped Boakeno in shock. His surprise was warranted—Boakeno’s Hakkeyoi charge had been stopped in its tracks by nothing more than Bepo’s out-stretched arm.
“Awooooooooooo!” Bepo howled. It was a vicious, feral roar, nothing like his usual voice.
Then he began to change. With a loud, deep thump, his body enlarged. He became far taller than Boakeno, over ten feet tall. His white fur had all grown out as a thick coat covering his whole body. There was something almost spiritual about the image he presented. Shachi, Penguin, and even Boakeno were all stunned into paralyzed silence.
It was Sulong, the “moon-lion” transformation. This was a battle form that brought out a Mink’s latent feral side upon the sight of the full moon.
“What’s happening to him, Penguin?” Shachi asked.
“All I know is that Bepo turned huge… But we take advantage of it! Flatten that sumo wrestler, Bepo!” Penguin called out. Whether he understood the words or not, Bepo fixed Boakeno with a vicious glare.
“Vwoaaaaar!” Bepo roared, swung his arms, and attacked.
It was all Boakeno could do to defend against the flurry of blows that came next. Their weight and power were next-level.
If Boakeno could weather these strikes and survive, it’d give his pride as a sumo wrestler a boost, but even Boakeno could sense he was in danger of losing consciousness. All of his past experience taught him that he was in real danger now.
“Doskoi!” He threw a sumo slap directly into Bepo’s strikes.
“Vwoaaaaar!” Bepo roared again.
“Doskoi! Doskoi! Doskoi! Doskoi!”
They traded high-speed blows again and again. From a distance, it looked like an even fight—both Bepo and Boakeno were striking hard enough that landing one good shot would probably finish off the other. In speed and power, they were equals. Their exchange continued, each one effectively neutralizing the other.
However, there was a difference: Bepo was engaging in an unconscious rampage, and Boakeno was reacting sensibly with an unexpected change in tactics. Bepo took a larger swing, and Boakeno was ready for it. In the way that a sumo wrestler reaches for his opponent’s belt, he lunged toward Bepo and grabbed the bear around the waist.
“Vwoaaahh…” Bepo roared in frustration.
“I have you now!” Boakeno cried, picking up Bepo and leaping into the air. “Yokozuna Bomber!”
He had Bepo’s joints locked in his grip and was prepared to slam him to the ground. At that moment, Boakeno was certain of his victory. And in a sense, it should have been his. But he made one mistake.
He underestimated the instincts of the Minks, who are born combatants. Bepo had no rational mind at that moment. He had no complex thoughts. He simply recognized the innate danger of being slammed into the ground, and that was enough. His instincts as a warrior produced the ideal response to the situation.
“Vwoaaaaaaah!” As he fell through the air, Bepo unleashed all of his pent-up strength. He weighed more than Boakeno at the moment, and the Yokozuna Bomber, which used the attacker’s own weight to crush the opponent, was Boakeno’s most effective technique.
That was the very source of the sumo wrestler’s mistake—because it was his greatest attack, it would also be the one capable of destroying him if the tables were turned.
“Mmmmvwoaaa!” Bepo let out a massive bellow and unlocked the joints that Boakeno was gripping, then switched their positions in the air—turning the attack into Bepo’s Yokozuna Bomber instead!
“Hrrrrg!” Boakeno grunted as he hit the ground under the full weight of Bepo’s body. Even Boakeno the sumo wrestler, who prided himself on his ridiculous toughness, had never expected to be the victim of his own greatest technique.
“Oh, dear…oh nooo!” Boakeno whimpered, sensing that he needed to leave. He would take the punishment for running from Bacca later, if he had to. He just needed to get away right now. To that end, Boakeno used all the strength in his powerful legs to jump backward. And he did not realize that this was actually his fatal mistake.
“Hey, Shachi,” said Penguin.
“What, Penguin?” asked Shachi.
“I see something rushing toward us.”
“Yeah. And it’s something I wanna knock out.”
“I’ll take the right.”
“Then I’ll get the left.”
In his haste to escape from Bepo, Boakeno didn’t look over his shoulder. He didn’t notice the two grinning opponents waiting behind him.
“One, two, three!” they said in unison, pulling back with spear and axe, putting all of their strength into the attack. Both swings clonked Boakeno directly on the back of the head.
“Byaah. Byaahahhah. This is nothi…byoh…” The massive man crumbled. Shachi ran to him to check that he was completely unconscious.
“Heh. Was that it?”
“All in a day’s work for us,” they smirked to one another, and exchanged a high five. The fight against Boakeno was over…
“Vwoaaaaah!”