Chapter 62

Whatever the case, though, this girl knew why she was here. That was bad. Oumi channeled strength into the hand behind her back, but Kumokawa cut her off. “Don’t,” she said. “A bright red water gun with red pepper in it won’t be able to blind me. If you really want to wound my pride, you should have brought a flamethrower.” “There’s yellow mustard paste and fresh green wasabi in there, too.” “Oh no… Red pepper is one thing, but wasabi carries the actual risk of blindness. And is that stuff even JIS certified? I bet it’s not. But anyway.” Kumokawa paused for a moment. “A fight between us will end in your defeat. If you’re all right with that—well, far be it from me to refuse. But I don’t want to fight for no reason if I can help it. I went through the trouble of saving you—killing you now would leave a very bad taste in my mouth. Frankly, my very carefully wounded pride could end up snapping in half.” “How can you be so sure…?” “You can only fight with your two hands. But I make full use of my hands and feet in melee combat. I really doubt I would lose. I can walk on my hands and even do a long jump with them. Here, I’ll give you a moment to calculate how ginormous the gap between us is.” Oumi thought for a moment. “You’re lying.” “Ack, you got me. I can’t do long jumps with my hands. But I can use my right hand and right leg to throw and pin. Plus, my right leg can do kendo, and my left leg can throw javelins. But I bet real kendo practitioners would get really angry if I held a shinai with my foot. Never lost, though.” “……” Just as a test, Oumi took the red pepper water gun from underneath her skirt and immediately pulled the trigger. But a moment later, Kumokawa’s head had already done a one-eighty-degree rotation, and now it was where her knees used to be. Pointing one leg straight up toward the ceiling, not caring that she was wearing a miniskirt, she now stood straight up on her right foot and right hand. “As you can see, not only does my flexibility afford me a wealth of different attacks, it also lets me drastically shift where my vitals are. That by itself is enough to mess with any combat techniques optimized for fighting people standing normally.” Kumokawa rotated, twirling tightly like a ballerina. Whoosh, swoosh. Eventually her head and limbs returned to their former positions. “On any other day, I would have grabbed your leg with a hand while you were caught off guard, then drop-kicked the crown of your head. I’ll overlook that since we’re still in the trial period here. Think of it as a free service I’m offering you—one that’s about to end.” Her technique must still have drawbacks, Oumi thought, analyzing the other girl. In general, strikes, pinning techniques, and throwing moves depended greatly on the body weight of the parties involved. Trickier motions would normally get in the way of weight transfers, but Kumokawa seemed to be using unique rotational motions to give herself—and her opponents—a boost in that regard. Maybe her martial arts utilized a supernatural power that couldn’t be explained by that alone. The energy produced by an object in motion—centrifugal force. “So?” said Kumokawa. “What’s your decision? Should we fight?” “No thanks,” said Oumi, holding out a hand. Kumokawa tossed Oumi the garden spade kunai she’d confiscated. With her weapon back in her possession, Oumi mulled things over again. What she needed to do right now was not to parade herself and march onward to victory. Rather, she needed to acquire a treasure—supernatural abilities—and use that to bridge the gap to victory. To lift the entirety of the Koga to that level. Thus, someone condescending to her didn’t pain her in the least. How pathetic would it be if she was defeated and stripped of everything she had as a result of stubbornly clinging to trying to win for no reason and no real benefit? “What are your plans now?” asked Kumokawa. “My, uh, plans?” “The corner there. I was asking if you still wanted to sneak a peek.” Explosions and quakes. The Kiharas and Gremlin still seemed to be duking it out just around the bend. A battle between people freely wielding things that went beyond human understanding—things the Koga wanted. Sneaking a peek was the very limit of what she could do. She’d die if she got involved. She couldn’t even deny the possibility that she’d be swallowed up the very instant she challenged them, before she even figured out which side was which. And knowing all that, Oumi still said this. “…Of course I’m going.” She was an elite, tasked with the role of initial actor, though all the physical modifications meant she’d never look anything more than ten years old. But her eyes alone retained their original light—a light that would never be lost, no matter how much she changed her body. “I need to find a way to lift the Koga up, and I will. It doesn’t matter if Natural Selector had to be called off. Someone has to do it, and I’m sure that if I do, someone in the future won’t have to live under threat. So yes, I’m going. No matter what happens.” “Sheesh,” said Kumokawa with a sigh. She shook her head. And then… “I suppose I have no choice. I’ll wound your pride to keep you from dying.” Oumi didn’t even have time to ask a question. An instant later, all four of Kumokawa’s limbs whizzed, and Oumi fell completely unconscious.