by Nisioisin
If anything, it felt like the excess momentum I had built up was going to pulverize my own elbows─you’ve got to be kidding me with this.
Offense was one thing─but why did her defense have to be so insane as well?
Who ever heard of a strong-arm defense?
Partial or not, I was wielding the physical strength of a vampire, the most powerful aberration out there─I had the strength of the aberration slayer’s thrall.
How could she stop me with her two little arms?
And she was still joking around while she did it, not even gritting her teeth.
“I reckon your position─your feelings on the matter. For what it’s worth, a defender of justice like myself must admire you for them.”
Kagenui squeezed my wrists even tighter. Her grip strength was tremendous, and it was like being caught in a vice. My hands were being stretched apart like taffy.
“There is no reasoning with illogic─I’ll not try to persuade you anymore. I’m not Oshino or Kaiki, after all─the only way I know to gab is with my fists.”
“……nkk!”
“Still─I don’t know, even if you’re fine with it!”
Holding my wrists, Kagenui followed with an instant upward kick using the tip of her foot─I managed to sway backward, barely in time, but wound up getting a fair chunk of my face shaved off.
Thanks to my half-ass dodge, this time I felt real pain─but Kagenui’s assault obviously didn’t end there. Next, she brought the same leg back down in an axe kick.
Her strike traced the exact same arc as the one I had received from Karen the other day, but in terms of speed, force, even the way she reversed her upward and downward momentum, Kagenui’s technique was a whole different can of worms than Karen’s.
I wanted to bend my body backward even further to avoid it, but since she had a firm lock on both my arms, I couldn’t even do that.
My shoulders were ripped loose from the force of the blow, along with my clavicles.
By this point some of the damage to my scraped face had healed─but Kagenui’s next move was to punish that same face once more with a head-butt.
Quite a move.
Kagenui totally fought like a street brawler.
When it came to violence, slow and steady could go too far.
“Even if you’re fine with the way things are, what about the rest of your folk?!”
Kagenui finally let go of my hands, my two wrists─only to unleash a flurry of attacks, like a dam gushing forth.
She used her feet to sweep me like a scythe, but no sooner was I flying through the air than she hit my torso with a succession of rapid blows, like a storm of fireworks being announced in the sky─now I knew what a drum feels like.
There were sparklers shooting from my eyes.
I was pretty sure I even saw sound effects in the air.
“You may be fine with it─but you’ve already got the grounding for it. You’ve been an aberration yourself before and that’s coloring your views─you’ve been immortal before. That’s why you can forgive your sister for being a fake, an aberration and an immortal─it’s all peaches and sunshine for you, isn’t it! But what about the rest of your folk─the ones for don’t have bump to do with aberrations?!”
“…….nkk!”
“For instance, what about your wee Karen?! Do you think she could pure say the same if she knew her own sister was an aberration?! What about your mother! Do you think she could say the same if she knew the baby for whom she’d suffered pangs of childbirth was a monster?! What about your father!”
She was like a bone-knife working through a conger fish.
I could feel my ribs, or rather my ribs along with the meat around them, being crushed into pulp. Or rather, she was a hand mixer whipping my whole insides up into a milkshake or a smoothie.
I was still suspended in mid-air as Kagenui continued with her combo.
If this was some fighting game, my health bar would probably be long gone─surely “YOU WIN” would be flashing on Kagenui’s side of the screen by now.
“Most of all, what about the child, herself? If your fake sister knew that she was pure an aberration─would she honestly be able to live on?! Could she stay your sister like nothing had changed?!”
My sister.
Tsukihi Araragi.
Real─fake.
“It’s fine now because she doesn’t know─but what do you reckon it will do to her when she finds out?! There’s no way an immortal monster can adapt to its environment─you should know that better than anyone else!”
“Ngkk!”
“Or when, inhuman as she is, she still clamors after being a defender of justice? What is it they reckon themselves, the Fire Sisters? Think how uppity, how cruel an immortal monster can be in the face of human folk─that, too, you should understand better than anyone else.”
I did understand.
I knew─what Shinobu Oshino had been like before.
I knew the whole of her.
If an immortal aberration were to dedicate itself to justice, there was no telling just how obscene, how over-zealous that justice would be─
I knew that.
“It’s our job to take care of these things before something like that happens! You can’t quench a fire with oil. It must be stamped out quickly before it becomes a blaze─as Nobunaga Oda once said, if the cuckoo will not sing─it must be killed! You’re alone in your stance, in your feelings on this matter! Don’t fool yourself into believing that everyone is so open-minded! Whatever values, whatever sense of righteousness you hold, is your business─but don’t shove your ideals down strangers’ throats!”
I doubted Kagenui was really as angry as she sounded─I think she was just shouting to better punctuate her flurry of blows.
But.
It was clear that something in my words had set her off─had I said something wrong?
I could only imagine.
Since Kagenui was actually travelling with her own aberration and monster, Ononoki─there seemed to be some contradiction at play in her.
A familiar, a shikigami.
But also sisters─a two-man cell.
A step-sister.
“SHO─RYU─KEN!”
She just said shoryuken.
Almost like a finishing move for her combo, Kagenui released a flying uppercut, driving straight into my heart─naturally, since I didn’t even have a foot on the ground, I was tossed up from the momentum, heart splattered to goo, and my whole body struck the ceiling.
So hard that my clear impression was made in the concrete.
I almost expected to crash through to the floor above.
“Ngh…ugh…”
Urrk.
I remained that way, pasted to the ceiling for a moment─before finally obeying the law of universal gravity and dropping to the floor.
Obviously, I was unable to make a graceful landing. This time, I landed face up in a hard back-flop.
Now I knew what an over-easy egg felt like.
I’d go great on a piece of toast.
“Don’t relax yet─I’m not done!”
Relax? Who was relaxing? Kagenui didn’t even give me enough time to worry before she straddled my supine body─in what was known as the mount position.
“I wonder how Yotsugi is doing─what do you say we go take a look at what she’s up to?”
Take a look?
I wasn’t sure what Kagenui meant by that, but I was soon to find out.
Through hands-on experience.
Tactile experience.
Before I could even intuit anything.
Her comment was just an opening salvo. She began pounding on me with her fists─devastating me to a pulp with her fists of devastation.
Along with the floor beneath me.
Her punches were passing through my body, or I should say my flesh and bones, like that was only normal, and hitting the floor─until.
Kagenui’s fists pulverized the floor beneath us─they
were like heavy industrial machinery.
I hate to bring up anime at a time like this, but you know how in Lupin III, the character Goemon Ishikawa XIII is always using his Zantetsu blade to slice neat holes through the floor?
It was pretty much like that.
Only it wasn’t neat or a circle─it was more of a ragged jigsaw-puzzle shape, as she sent chips of floor flying around crudely like a drill bit in every which direction.
Yozuru Kagenui punched straight through the floor of the abandoned building.
First the fourth floor, and then the third floor, in succession.
She was ruining our ruins.
Heck, I bet Kagenui could demolish this whole building with just her bare hands. We could turn it back into a vacant lot without even having to call in contractors.
She may have been human, but she’d long since surpassed human limitations.
This was combat art. It was like Karen’s omnidirectional approach to karate, which gathered various techniques, but instead geared towards total destruction. You know that karate oath, “We come unarmed.” Well boy, did Kagenui ever!
At this point, my body was acting like the dried towel laid across a stack of tiles in karate to soften the impact─I was acutely aware of all the bits of flooring getting mixed up in my flesh.
There was no time for me to heal.
If anything, it felt like before one round of damage could take shape, the next round was already starting─I bet I looked like a strawberry flavored McShake at this point.
Anyways.
After our preposterous elevator ride, Kagenui’s fists finally ceased moving and she stepped away from my body, leaving me splattered on the floor─along the way, she had planted close to five hundred punches on me (since I didn’t have anything else to do, I started counting halfway through to kill time).
We were on the second floor.
Ding! Second floor, arena─
“My lord and master, no wonder it felt like I was getting bobbed all over my upper body… Look at thee. Try not to hold me back so much. If it goes on for too long, it will get very irksome.”
A vampire with golden eyes and hair.
Shinobu Oshino, I realized, was staring down at me with a look of utter contempt.
Judging from her words, Kagenui had aimed well─the classroom on the second floor that we’d fallen into was the very space where the two aberrations, Shinobu and Ononoki, were facing off.
The four of us were together again after a journey across the shortest conceivable distance.
Shinobu feeling what I was feeling even after being separated from my shadow proved that the loss of her vampirism was no trifling matter.
Oshino’s approach was formidable, but it must have been very frustrating for her to have all these sensations thrust at her in the midst of a very serious battle segment.
However.
She wasn’t the aberration slayer for nothing.
“Kakak,” laughed Kagenui. “You were being such a loudmouth, but it looks like you took it fist and skull, Yotsugi…”
The scene was just as Kagenui teased.
In a corner of the dim classroom, opposite from where Shinobu and I were positioned, lay Ononoki. If not for the situation I was in, I doubt I could bear to witness her plight.
I didn’t look human myself at this point, but clothes, hair, every bit of Ononoki was bloody and beaten.
You didn’t have to look twice to see that, up until a moment ago, she had been on the receiving end of some very thorough abuse.
That is to say, Shinobu didn’t have a single scratch on her.
Not so much as a strand of blond hair was out of place, and there wasn’t a speck of dust on her jersey.
It wasn’t a difference in healing abilities.
This came down to a difference in their fighting skills, plain and simple.
That said, as aberrations go, I doubted that Ononoki could be considered weak and helpless. Having experienced Kagenui’s intensity firsthand, I could testify to that─there was no way any partner of hers could be a pushover.
Since I wasn’t in the classroom with her, Shinobu wouldn’t have been able to use her aberration-slayer blade… It made me realize afresh just how overwhelmingly monstrous Shinobu Oshino, the former vampire, was.
And just how utterly sadistic…
From the state of things, it looked like Shinobu had been toying with her… The stone-faced Ononoki’s eyes were actually tearful.
Geez, if she could tell that I was getting put through the wringer, why not finish up quickly and come help me instead?
She was pissed off about being called a hag, but come on… If she was going to emulate Karen’s style, she might try and be utterly masochistic as well.
Besides, this was a serious situation. It was no time for fun!
“I was just about to turn the fight around. I can handle myself, sister─he said with a dashing look,” Ononoki insisted as Kagenui approached her.
Um, that wasn’t what I called a dashing look.
That was a teary-eyed look.
“I see, I see. But how about you leave the climax to your big sister. Well, the erstwhile Heartunderblade, it seems the finals are between you and me.”
Stepping in front of Ononoki as if to protect her, Kagenui laughed and patted her shikigami on the head before drawing herself up to face Shinobu.
“Come, Heartunderblade. We fight.”
Kagenui showed no sign of being intimidated, at all.
No sign of wanting to flee even against a legendary vampire.
An expert on immortal aberrations.
Also known as the aberration roller─Yozuru Kagenui.
“Ha.”
Shinobu laughed too, in response.
“Ha!”
And again─and again, like a howl.
“Ha”Haha”Hahaha”Hahahaha”Hahahahaha”Hahahahahaha” Hahahahahahaha”
Loud and long─laughing as only an aberration could.
Uproariously.
Savagely, wantonly, illicitly, belligerently, and baring her fangs, Shinobu laughed and laughed and laughed in response to the onmyoji Yozuru Kagenui’s invitation until─
“No, I refuse.”
She spoke those words and raised her arms like a champion.
Kagenui and Ononoki both did a double take at Shinobu’s unexpected reaction. Ignoring their gazes, she helped me up─I had at least recovered enough to resemble a human being─and continued, “I fear my master is ill-pleased with me for bullying the maidling. I’d rather not purchase any more of his loathing. The finals, ye say? Do not be vain, human─my master has yet to be bested by thee. Is that not so, my lord?”
“Yup,” I replied.
Meeting the demand Shinobu placed on me─the fire she lit beneath me, I borrowed her shoulder to help myself stand. Since the eighteen-year-old version of her was taller than I was, that shoulder was located pretty high up, but I did my best.
“I haven’t lost yet─I’m not ready to submit. Neither your fists, nor your words, have done anything to persuade me.”
“I already told you.” Kagenui sounded fed up. She repeated, here on the second floor, the same thing she’d said to me on the fourth floor. “Whatever values, whatever sense of righteousness you hold, is your business─but don’t shove your ideals down strangers’ throats.”
“They’re not strangers.”
I─
Although my outsides had knitted together, without holding onto Shinobu I doubt I could have managed to remain standing, my insides shredded to pieces like I’d swallowed a cyclone. Yet, even though I could barely move─I gathered every ounce of strength I had to rebut Kagenui.
The same thought had occurred to me earlier.
Strangers?
That, no.
I couldn’t let that pass unchallenged.
“They’re not strangers. They’re family.”
“……”
“And I do shove my ideals on my family.”
Also…
I went on falteringly, hanging off of Shinobu like a wet sack. I was blatantly touching her breasts, but even such an act of God didn’t concern me right now.